letters of a dakota divorcee _by jane burr_ boston the roxburgh publishing co. incorporated copyrighted by the roxburgh publishing company all rights reserved gratefully dedicated to my sioux falls friends. author's note. this little volume will soon assume the proportions of an invaluable reference book as the divorcee is gradually becoming extinct in south dakota. species may thrive in a given latitude and longitude for ages. suddenly the atmospheric, climatic, or diatetic conditions become so altered as to preclude the further development of the species--yes even the further survival of the animal. the result may be either of two alternatives: st. the animal finding the habitat no longer conducive to its well being may migrate singly or in bunches to another environment. in this case scientists have noted that the animal undergoes a considerable morphological and physiological change. nd. in an environment unfavorable to its existence an animal may become extinct. in the case of the south dakota divorcee the former alternative would seem to be the course followed, for up to date the animal has shown itself to be quite too resourceful to lapse into that most archaic condition--extinctness. time was when it roamed the prairies and hills of the state in vast herds, but owing to the removal of the protective underbrush in the form of the referendum (which decrees that one year is necessary for its complete development), it has gone in great droves to nevada and oklahoma, which promise to be a more suitable environment for it. there are a few rare species left, but they are disconsolate and hang-jawed and by no means representative of the species. in former years the divorcee reached maturity in three short months, and was so tame that it built its lair near the city limits and some even ventured quite into the hearts of the villages and attempted to live there. but these were half tamed individuals and by no means indicative of the genus as a whole. then peculiar to relate, the environmental influences caused them to grow less rapidly and six whole months passed before a single specimen could call itself full fledged. the other dakota animals sported around with the divorcee and received it _a bras ouverts_, but the latter developed a slight _degage_ mannerism and the other beasts grew alarmed and crawled within their dens. now they have almost died out entirely as the atmosphere grew not only unfriendly, but owing to the sudden cool change their development was intensely slow. the animal originally migrated from new york and thus anything slow would naturally unnerve its intuitively high strung temperament. and if in some future sociological period of the earth's history some antiquarian of the post-aviatorian age, prying into the _modus vivendi_ of the men of pre-air-shippian times can learn "a thing or two" about that delicate gazelle-like mammal so as to show his contemporaries how "fierce" living was before the age of trial marriages and legitimate affinities, the dessicated author will rattle what is left of her teeth in a contended mummified smile. duckie lorna: sip a mint julip--slowly, gently, through a long dry straw, then before it dies in you, read my p. o. mark--sioux falls, south dakota,--yes, i've bolted! don't dare to tell anyone where i am for if my husband should find out, he might make me go where i could get a divorce more quickly--you know i'm here for his health. i would splash round in orange blossoms, and this is the result. my boarding house is a love, furnished with prizes got with soap--"buy ten bars of our fluffy ruffles soap, and we will mail you, prepaid, one of our large size solid mahogany library tables." would you believe dear, that these sioux fallians have already complained because i bathe my dear, shaggy othello in the bath tub. and there isn't a human being here with a pedigree as long as his. if you hear any talk about my being seen in a staten island beer garden with bern cameron, don't believe one word of it--we didn't go in at all, the place was too smelly. and that fib about his giving me a diamond ring,--deny it please, as i have never shown it to a soul--so you can see how people manufacture gossip. i walk to the penitentiary for recreation, as i may have to visit there some day and i never like to be surprised at anything. it isn't refined. my attorney is thoroughly picturesque. he wears a coat in his office that his wife must have made. his collar came from noah's grab bag, and, if you remember, there was no washing machine on the ark. a heavy gold chain meanders down his shirt front to protect his watch from improbable theft. on sunday he passes the contribution box and is considered a philanthropic pest. i asked how much the fee would be and he said, "one hundred if you furnish witnesses, two hundred if we do." you can hire a man for five dollars out here to swear that he killed you. when my attorney talks, he sits on his haunches, showing his teeth that would do credit to a shark, and fancies he's smiling when he permits his cracked purple lips to slide back. i wouldn't trust my case to him, only he could not lose if he tried. every time i look at him i wonder if there could be a face behind that nose and those whiskers, which give his head the appearance of a fern dish. he wears an old silk hat whose nap is attacked with a skin disease. they say he belongs to one of the first families of this town--first on the way coming up from the station i suppose. he was married years ago, but isn't working at it now. i am so unstrung after our seances that i feel like crawling right out under a bush and eating sage. if i weren't afraid of him i'd raise my umbrella while he talks--his conversation is so showery. in my ingrown heart i hate him so there is no danger for me, tho' i've heard that he's a perfect fusser with the women. i telephoned the livery stable yesterday and asked if any of the hearse horses were idle, as i'd like to take a ride. the fellow said he'd send me a winner, so i togged up in my bloomers, boots and spurs and stood on the veranda waiting. a young boy galloped up with something dragging behind him. i said: "do you call that insect a horse?" he answered; "no, but it used to be, m'am." the poor creature was all bones and only waiting for a nudge to push him into the grave. i mounted the broncho, which kept "bronking," but after an encouraging tclk-tclk, i made a detour of the block, then sent the nag to the stable. there were two children and a dog drowned here yesterday--it almost makes one afraid to go near the tub. the man who sits on my right at the table, says he's here for nervousness. first time i ever heard a divorce called that, but anyway we all know that he gets out of jail on december, and i will be glad, for the way he plays the anvil chorus with his soup makes me get out of my skin backwards. hope some day that the devil will play dominoes with his bones. the lady on the other end, chews with her lips and of course i'm always excited for fear her dinner will fall overboard. the way she juggles food would get her a job in the vaudeville game any day. she sits up as tho' she'd been impaled, and the shaft broken off in her body. long ago--a being, desirous of unhitchment could come here, rent a room, hang her pajamas in the closet and fade away back to broadway, but times are changed, and you must serve six months or the judge's wife will not let you have a divorce. the judge's house is next to mine and the way i look demure when i pass, is a heathenism hypocrisy. but he is under petticoat tyranny and i dread ruffling the petticoat. formerly the law was three months, but the cataract hotel had the legislature change it as they could not make enough money. we had chicken last night and asparagus tips--did you ever notice what a lot of skin a boarding house chicken has? and the tips just missed by one, being tip. the meals are an unsatisfactory substitute for something to eat, and i find myself filling up on bread to keep my stomach and backbone apart. i am up against old timers that are always to be met at boarding houses--the dear old soldier and the lady "too heavy for light amusements, and not old enough to sit in the corner and knit," as george ade puts it. she is simply ubiquitous; she is everywhere; she does not gossip! oh no! still she wonders if they really are married, you know, and if that strange man is her brother or not? oh you know the whole tribe! dear old parasites on the body politic! i have also had sudden paralysis of the jaw from looking into a country mirror and was not again convinced, until consulting my own hand glass during the night that one of my eyes had not slipped down below my nose. i can get along very well if my hair is not parted at all, but i insist upon my features remaining in the same locations. i am copying down some of the stories that i hear as they are well worth it, and may come in handy some day. i have the advantage of coming upon them suddenly for the first time, with an absolute unbiased mind, which like the bellman's chart in "the hunting of the snark" is "a perfect and absolute blank." i know i shall go mad before the six months are up, for after ten days, i am down-down deep in a bog of melancholy, and so bored that i feel like the president of the gimlet club. my stomach like nature abhors a vacuum, so me to the strangled eggs and baked spuds which are our unfailing morning diet. in the name of charity, send me messages from the world i love. devotedly, marianne. dearest lorna: there's an old maid here (heaven knows she's out of place) who wears her hair in one of those "tied for life knots," and she comes tip-toeing to my room each night to ask me if i think she'll ever get a man. because i've had one, and am making something that resembles a trousseau, she thinks that i have a recipe for cornering the male market. her dental arch is like the porte-cochere of the new belmont hotel, and last night a precocious four-year-old said, "miss mandy, why don't you tuck your teeth in?"--miss mandy would if she could but she can't. she is the sort who would stop her own funeral to sew up a hole in her shroud. the moonlight nights here are a perfect irritation, and i really think this moon isn't half as calloused to demonstration as our dear old new york moon. there are so few men here that the female congregation is getting terribly out of practice. i have found out lately that our attorneys out here rob us of everything and politely allow us to keep the balance. my abode of virtue is filled with furniture from the vintage of the early forties and i sit in it alone and am so pathetically good, that i am beginning to suspect myself. you know i was born when i was very young and have been desperately tidy about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because i'm so bored i have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. six months here ought to put ballast into the brain of the silliest. i think that marriage has become a social atrophy, and i never want to be guilty of irrevocably skewering two hearts together. i fear myself only when i'm bored. eve never would have flirted with the snake if adam hadn't got on her nerves. i always could resist everything but temptation. bern once told me that every married man ought to be made to run after his wife. and i told him he'd be out of breath most of the time if he tied up with me. i went to church sunday and the funny man at the head of the table said he was going round to view the ruins in the afternoon. father time, who sits opposite me and mows down the food said, "every stylish woman i see, i know she's getting a divorce and i can't understand it, as most of them are good looking." i answered "you didn't see the other half." i am not going to correspond with bern as our mail might be intercepted. for although i'm passing through the mournful ceremony of losing my husband in south dakota, i don't want to gather too much dust on my skirts on the way to the funeral. we send each other registered letters every day--but that's different--nobody could possibly get those. there is a woman here who does a queer, pretty sort of embroidery. and she said this morning with unquenchable urbanity, "i will learn you how to do shadow work." now bern and i have been busy on all sorts of shadow work for the past four years in new york, but this is a different pattern. sioux falls is plethoric of widows and when one is freed, the other convicts writhe under the burden of their stripes. dearie, won't you drop in and try to quiet my dressmaker? she is beginning to show evidences of dissatisfaction--inscrutable sign-manual of finances at low tide. i'm not rich but i'm sweet and clean--did i hear two dollars and a dish of cherries? i have bought a calendar with the dates on a block of pages--one page for each day, just for the joy of tearing them off with a vim every twenty-four hours. sometimes i allow two days to pass, then i do a war dance like a sioux, wild at the opportunity of pulling off a couple at a time. there is a n. y. central time table on my desk and i am eternally looking up train connections until i feel like a bureau of information. i have enough money to get back on, tucked away in my stocking. and if i have to take in washing i won't touch it. funds are getting very low so i've started writing short stories again but "like" usual, publishers don't seem to recognize a genius and my p. o. box is always filled with long yellow comebacks--slip enclosed "sorry we find your valuable mss. unavailable for our publication, etc." however, nothing beats trying but failure. and although everything on this mud ball looks inky, and i am once more past grand master of hoodoo philosophy, i shall grit my teeth and push ahead as i have done a thousand times before. my debts are growing like a snow ball and although i am not entirely broke, i am so badly bent that it ceases to be funny. there isn't a blooded dog here except the ones we easterners bring. the sioux falls dogs are like the people--you can't tell exactly what breed they are, but as a few of the n. y. lawyers and doctors and a few of the n. y. dogs have remained here, we hope for a better blending in the next litter. there is an englishman here who calls himself "chappie" but "baw jove" he never saw the other side of the atlantic if i am any judge. but you can hand these people any sort of pill and they'll swallow it without making a face. we have no indigestible pleasures here, but the food. i am suffering from gastric nostalgia. i was so hungry for something sharp and sour last night that i bought a bottle of horse-radish and ate it in cold blood. today my digestive apparatus is slumped and i feel like the ragged edge of a misspent career. every night the man in the next room, treats himself to a skin full and comes home so pleasantly lit up that he has to be put to bed. last night he must have drunk like the sands of the desert, for he was a bit more tipsy than ever and flung apologies and hiccoughs over my transom. i look back upon my old life as an impression received in the dawn, and already it seems but a level highroad on a gray day. marriage laws were made by old maids--any one can see that. and they have decreed that conjugal love, apart from passion, is elevating and a woman in yielding herself may evict the sanctum of love if the man may legally call her his own. it's all wrong dear--woman has been sacrificed to the family. and what a degrading imitation of nature to propagate the species. how glorious never again to be shod in the slippers of matrimony--i seem to demand the advantages of marriage with none of the drawbacks. to return to things less serious, othello hates something about my new combination lingerie and barks like fury when i put it on--maybe it is the blue ribbon--i'll try a dash of lavender tomorrow. you will agree that my _geistes ab vesend_ has reached an alarming degree when i tell you that this a. m. after my tub, i liberally dashed tooth powder all over my body instead of talcum. my affection is all for you--for the opposite sex it seems to have grown as cold as a raked-out oven. goodnight, marianne. september . most precious lorna: i am excited--excited--from the bottom lift on my french heels to the top hair on my golden puffs. now who would have thought that the "fate sisters" would discover me way out here and sit on the corner of minnesota and th spinning their breakable yarn. well--well--yesterday the one with the weary look and the crooked nose, got a knot in her twine and this is how it happened. i was crossing this minnie-something street, when a shrill siren and the cannonade of a powerful exhaust warned me to stay my tootsies. i wasn't looking for a big white aseptic machine out here or any other kind, so the blooming thing crashed into us and rather than have bunky hurt, i ran the risk (not quite, but nearly) of losing my life, but not until i had assured myself that the man at the wheel was exotic to this soil. zip-bang-gasoline-smoke! and i was fished out, laid tenderly on the back seat and rushed to a druggery. i allowed the dramatic spirits of pneumonia to be forced down my throat by his manicured hands and somehow i couldn't find the courage to take my head away from his shoulder--it was such a comfy, tailored fifth avenue shoulder. you know my reputation-- years in a circus and never lost a spangle. what is it that the christian scientists have on their souvenir spoons: "there is no life in matter?"--well old girl i can sign a testimonial to the opposite. poor little bunky added one more knot to his tail during the mix-up, but as every knot is worth twenty-four dollars on a french bull pup's tail, i don't mind this acquisition. i was asked the other day if bunk was a pomeranian and i said, "no, a french bull pup." the woman answered, "that's the same thing, isn't it?" finally with a little home-made sob i opened my eyes and asked the same question that eve put to adam the morning after god had presented him with that poisonous bon-bon. "where am i?" and it's none of your inquisitive business what he answered. the white auto will call tonight to see of i'm still living and meantime i have ordered fifty yards of white dabby stuff from "fantles" to keep busy on. no--not a trousseau--i shall never--never marry again--i'm too full of experience. i told the white auto that i had been hemmed in so long that i did not know how to act in decent society any more and he said he's the best hem-ripper that ever lived, so i think i'll take a chance. isn't there a great difference in men, dear? but, in husbands--they vary only in the color of their hair. i'm so glad motors stand without hitching. now you'll say "can't you leave men alone for six months?" sometimes my conscience does get feverish and bothers me, but it's so seldom that i am grateful for the change as it acts as a stimulation to my gray matter--whatever that is. my honest intentions were to leave off my puffs and artificials while here, just to give nature a chance, but now that i have been run over by an auto i consider the plan inadvisable. there are dandy golf links here but they don't allow "divorsays" on the ground. the sioux falls women, (cats for short) had it stopped three years ago, because they were all neglected when any number of my tribe appeared. not a soul knows what i'm here for. one must never tell. that's the first divorce colony by-law. i have become a perfect diplomat and know how to keep still in three languages. i just casually told my troubles to the boarding house keeper and her daughters, but they don't count, as they are such dears, and it won't go any further. as long as i live, my attorney says, i must sign in hotel registers from sioux falls--if i do the clerks will stoop to pick cockle burrs and tumble weeds off my skirts and help me to loosen my indian wampum--whatever that is. father time, whom i mentioned in my last and who possesses as much energy for getting divorces (this being his third time on earth) as roosevelt exhibits in the baby market, has taken to peddling "the ladies home journal," and the "saturday evening post," and if you only knew how cunning he looks with his abbreviated coat and short, quick, little steps, you would give a dollar for a picture of him to paste in your book of curiosities of the world. court was in session last week and all sorts of real indians paraded the streets. they weren't like our dear old irish indians on manhattan island, who perambulate inside little houses placarded with one night corn cures; these were the real article and their wives walked behind, just like new york wives, carrying an orphan asylum on their backs and provisions for the week on their hips. poor down trodden creatures. i feel like organizing a class to show them how to _marcelle_ their mops and "straight front" their stomachs. a tommyhawk for me and no mop to _marcelle_ if i try to revolutionize indiandom. last night at a wonderful performance of fiske in "rosmerholm," the house was packed with indians and in the ghostly part where everybody throws himself into the mill-stream, squaw sloppy-closey and chief many-licey opened soda pop and passed it to each other for a drink out of the same bottle. poor fiske was horrified and threatened to stop the performance if the soda pop artillery didn't cease its bombarding. the wind tears around the corner of my room on the bias and the cats keep up a thomas concert beneath my windows all night long. no wonder i have nightmares. last night i dreamed that i was a saint with an apple pie for a halo--this boarding house pie habit will eventually tell on the strongest nerves. last night i cut my leg on a barbed wire--no dear i wasn't hurdling the fence--the wire was on the side walk, where everything except the kitchen stove usually lies. i hope i won't have lockjaw--it's harder on a woman than it is on a man anytime. i was just thinking how clever it would be, if a man who had a chattering wife, would keep a bunch of rusty pins on hand. i sat down to the piano this morning and ran through that pyrotechnical _solfigetto_ by the other bach, and father time, who sat enchanted, said, "you and the piano has met before." it's a shame to cheat the aged. thank heaven that the sunshine is free and that the florist's window is gratis to look at, otherwise on my slender means i should have to take advantage of the bankrupt law. my old friend insomnia again stands incessantly at the foot of my bed and bids me corner the sunrise market. a heavy heart is mine tonight and though i try to fancy beautiful pictures in the crystal ball of the future, i grow sick with anticipation as the visions fall away before they are half formed, leaving me melancholy and wondering if there is an angel somewhere who collects the sighs of such ever-repressed feeling. goodnight, marianne. october . lorna dear: well, lorna, you and i were "all day suckers" to believe that mrs. phyllis lathrop was touring california; i bumped plump into her yesterday in front of the poor-house. no, dear, i did not go there to stay, merely to visit. phyllis is nice in her red-headed way and looked very fresh and sweet with the lower part of her face lost in a tulle abyss. she lives just a whisper away from me--so strange i haven't seen her before. she's trotting around with a sioux falls fellow who looks like a dutch luncheon favor. every time he lifts his hat i look for bon-bons to drop out. says she must be loving someone all the time, even if she is considered in the light of an accommodation train. she's the unfinished sort of a woman who carries her beauty around in little tubes and seems so used to audiences that i always feel that she must have sung between the acts. _town topics_ said something about "the soft breezes of california restoring the bloom to phyllis' cheeks"--to think that _t. ts_ got fogged in the matter is consoling to such lesser lights as you and i. you can take it from me, "the soft breezes of california" are blowing into her room in a nearby sioux falls boarding house, but instead of being laden with the scent of flowers they are redolent of hash from the cookery. i'll take off my hat to her. she was a slick duck. of course she denied nothing to me--her time is up soon; then she will lay her history before the judge, who is always busy picking hairs from his coat and doing other things of vital import while you pour out your heart's woes. the fellow whose motor sent me to the brink of the styx, is now preparing me by night light to take the d degree of happiness. you have heard of him i know, carlton somerville, the wall street broker. i forget what it was his wife did that got on his nerves, but anyway he too is hibernating in sioux falls clay. we have gotten "first-namey" and have frankly decided that in order to keep our cleverness from dying of inanition, we will practice on each other. how could you, my dearest friend, accuse me of being forgetful of bern? he wouldn't appreciate me at all if i forgot how. and really six months of non-practice would be ruination. carlton has fallen in love over his depth with that beefy mrs. claymore and takes me motoring to pour his love (of her) into my aural labyrinths. i don't object to playing second fiddle, but when it comes to holding the triangle for the drummer, i pass blind. never mind, while he isn't watching some day he'll get stung, for i'm really fond of him. you say that you are so much stronger willed than i am--did you ever look at yourself in the mirror? carlton has eyes that i adore--they are the deeply sad sort that would make one think that love had passed that way. if it really hasn't, he might as well begin to put up the grand stand and have the tickets printed. my dear, i'd never marry another man with a memory--most inconvenient asset that a husband can possess. "chappie," the englishman, has started a society paper--sort of six months gestation of _town topics_, so carlton and i are batting around after midnight, so "we won't become saw." there are all sorts of ways to make a bee buzz. do keep bern from wearing red ties while i'm gone and give him a shove along the straight and narrow, once and so often. after a month and a half of drinking sioux falls water, i would bring a higher price as a lime kiln than i would in the woman market. one's pelt gets wind tanned and such a thing as a daintily flushed face is as unlooked for out here as consideration from the natives. my head ached so yesterday that i called on a doctor, "visit including all medicine, one dollar." isn't it "patetic?" he raved about the climate and said he brought his wife here with t. b., and she improved so much. naturally i asked, "how is she now?" he said, "o, she's dead." don't blame him for raving about the climate, do you? my dear it is worth a trip out here to see a whist party "let out." no, not "bridge,"--they haven't heard of it yet--just plain whist; but as i was saying, to see one turn out with its white alpaca skirt and blue satin ribbon belt. i've paid two dollars at hammerstein's to see things not half so funny. o, for a sip of fleischman's coffee--there are grounds for divorce in every cup out here. the butter we eat, walks in from the country alone, and at every meal we get smashed potatoes piled as high as the snow on the alps. i can't look a potato in the eye any more. there is a couple here on business from michigan,--a mr. and mrs. jones, odd name that. isn't it sad that they are so happily married, they might both be getting divorces, but as it is they are simply wasting a year out here for nothing. i passed the judge on the street this morning and i was so nervous that i walked bow-legged. but thanks to _skirts et cetera-et cetera_. i have sampled all the churches and have finally landed at the christian science house of worship, as i would rather any day hear a pianola grind out its _papier mache_ music than listen to a poor performer. if i had carnegie's millions, i'd go straight to chicago, buy a big, fat, thick, beef steak, step into the middle of it and eat my way out. i'm hungry, hungry. i worry down the "dope" that they deal out in the dining room, then go back to my sanctum and finish on limey water and crack-nells--you know what they are, a powdery sort of counterfeit cake that chokes you to death if you happen to breathe while you're chewing it. last night while trying to cut some stringy roast beef and still retain my dignity, the man with the red tie said: "put your other foot on it." i'm afraid if i don't eat potatoes again, my stomach will shrivel so that i will never be able to sit through a course dinner when i get back. potatoes distend it all right--i feel like i have swallowed one wing of fleischman's yeast factory whenever i eat them. you have to come down on the meat with such force to make any impression on it, that more gets pushed up between your teeth than goes down your alimentary canal; then you spend the balance of the night squandering japanese dental floss. i unconsciously finish my prayers with "lord preserve us from the holy trinity of roast beef, roast mutton and roast pork." you can recognise one of the clan in a moment by what is known as the "divorsay jaw." no feek and weeble expression on our faces but "do or die" is the look we have in our optics. every time i go to church i vow i'll never go again. the organ is asthmatic and the wheezing gets on my gray matter. the judge has begun to wear a fur coat--dakota cow fur, i think, and he looks for all the world like a turkey gobbler in distress. i sleep on what they call here a "sanitary couch." can't fathom the mystery of the name, for mine is so chucked with dust that i dream i'm in a sand storm crossing the sahara, and when i awaken my sympathies are keen with the camel. there's a new boarder here whose face looks like a chapel and every time she opens her mouth you're afraid it's going to be the lord's prayer. she wears a wide ruching which makes her look excited; distributes tracts, and can't see a joke. she says she's miss and leaves envelopes around with "mrs." written on them in red ink--modest writing fluid i've always considered it. will you buy me some new puffs? mine are all ratty and i feel bare-footed without them. enclosed is a clipping from my hair. read it carefully. false hair is no crime as long as it matches--like that german song that says "kissing is no sin with a pretty woman." have you caught "three weeks" yet? i had a violent attack a few days ago. cured it with a small dose of christian science before meals and some of bunyan's _pilgrim's progress_, which i shook well after using. you can imagine what disastrous effect eleanor glynn's book had on the "divorce colony." we all bunched together and said "what's the use," and if it hadn't been for the old man who eats his soup out loud, we would have bolted in a mass to suggest "free love" to our respective "fiascos"--dakota's past tense for "fiance." i long so to flash my calciums on a fifth ave. stroller that i'd flirt with god if i met him. i close dear with a sigh over my chin, which is getting triple (an invention of the devil). _auf wiedersehen_, marianne. october . my dear: i've changed lodgings and before i took the new chambers, i inquired of the landlady if there was any electricity in the house and she answered "yes," so today i asked here where it was, and she pointed to the telephone. o, me! o, my! this life is wearing me to a fraz! last week the autumn leaves fell and in order to show mrs. judge how simple and near to nature i live, i raked their lawn, and ours, clean, and stood long after dark making huge bonfires on a line with the sidewalk. but lo! the fleas that were of the earth became the fleas of me and i have occupied most of my time since scratching. but anything to pass the hours away. our hedges are cut for the last time this fall, and look as though they are fresh from the barber. isn't that phrase "for the last time" the most desolate utterance that a human voice can make? it goes thundering down the aisles of time only to be lost in the arcana of treacherous memory. to dream for the last time--to love for the last time--bitter contemplation--funereal introspection. i am suffering from acute nostalgia--by this time you are standing in the gun-room at keith lodge, drinking your first. i can hear duncan ask: "scotch or irish," and see you tip it off with blake and the rest. no bridge for you tonight--early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. native woodcock, jack snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its delicate tracery in frost; the tall-stemmed alders echoing your shots to skyward; the big dense timber with its springy ground all saturated with the fragrance of the mounting sea: i seem like something dead whispering to you from the tomb. nothing lasts longer than twenty-four hours in new york--not even a memory, so no one misses me. it's another of god's jollies and i know i'm ungrateful dear, for you are thinking of me i know, with my dear old "sport" ready to point for you tomorrow, just to receive your pats of recognition and thanks. my feelings are worn into meaningless smoothness like the head on an old coin, and because i have added my quota of absurdity to the morning papers i am no longer interesting. but, pshaw! one can't buy cocaine for a nickel, and as i could live extravagantly on the interest of my debts, i haven't more than five cents to invest. don't mind this slump in grit--it will return to par and slang tomorrow. keep a record of all you do to send to me, and above all--win the cup. with whom are you shooting? i will now stuff the cracks of my door with medicated cotton, open the portholes and smoke my cigarette alone--lord preserve me, if anybody knew! see if you can't get the humane society to form a branch out here to feed and water the widows. i have just returned from a little walk with carlton--i suppose my eyes prattled, for he smiled at me through his wrinkles and was rather more thoughtful of my comforts than usual. his _insouciance_ is charming and always turns the tide of my melancholy. he is the only man who ever ventured to stand on my tack and take me broadsides. we have framed up a little bacchic plot to be enacted on our way back from the post where i shall soon meander to mail this on the late rock island. i am certainly in love, because i know the symptoms, but i can't tell with whom. some temperature, high pulse and strange flutterings--but who is the victim? bern or howard in new york or carlton here? the thought of all of them stirs me, so how am i to know which is in the lead? hope the period of incubation will soon be over and the blooming thing assert itself. i have often been vaccinated and the thing always takes, but still i am not immune and never will be until i am six feet under, even if i live to be an hundred years old! did you catch the an? but it's disgusting not to know whether it is the measles or something worse, however i am taking all precautions and awaiting developments. i often wonder what i'll do with my decree when i get it--i can't wear it on my finger, and it certainly isn't the thing for gold leaf and a shadow box--oh! i shan't waste time placing it; perhaps carlton will find a pigeon-hole for it somewhere. i haven't written to bern in days, but i don't care; i never considered a banker as one of the human race, anyway. poor bern; he's thrown out like a bill in parliament! beaten by a blackball called carlton--i'd hate to see him now. roland the furious is charming in a poem, but in a drawing room, prosaic and expensive. carlton and i went to church sunday and were refused communion--the dear good bishop has but one eye, so he sees things half way. i said: "if this is god's table, i want communion, if it's the episcopal, i don't." in his sermon he called divorcees "social lepers, social filthiness," and said: "after the new law goes into effect, we'll have no more dumping here." he's an old pop-gun that shoots spit-balls, so the wounds he makes are not fatal. carlton refuses to go to church here or anywhere else again, and will once more trudge along his sunday field of bacchus cultivated by venus. by the way, after june st, all divorcees will be required to stay one year, then they won't come at all. oklahoma had a hunch and changed her law back to three months. now the colony will transplant itself, then watch the death agony of sioux falls. she's foolish--foolish! the easterners have made this burg what it is. take away our influence and she'll sink into nothingness again. some of us are bad, but all of us are not; however, the sioux falls gossips make no distinction. they lift their $ . skirts when they pass us, for fear of inoculation by the _bacillus_ divorce. i often wonder if they realize that the prejudice is returned with compound interest. when any new gossip is born, they fly around the streets like the beads of a rosary when the string is snapped. perhaps you haven't noticed how serious this letter is. i'm frowning as i write--a habit most bad on the eyebrows--surest of signs that i am sinking again into the quagmire of love. i have felt my pulse so often and know all the symptoms--which i more than enjoy scrutinizing--not even the finest emotion escapes me. i believe that i play the game well for i am still unjaded, which is unusual with so much over-feeding. is your new fur coat unborn lamb, or did it happen? speaking of possessions--my appendix still gives me ample proof of its constancy. the blue devils are chasing me today and i am wearing the expression that sits on the lips of every portrait in every exhibition. i smile to keep from crying, because if i cry--i'm lost! as i am of the experienced elite of society that sups, i must bid you adieu--i promise more jocosity in my next. affy, marianne. december . since writing you i have heard the turkey gobbler say his last prayer and have had a coming out party for "penny," short for appendix. the receiving party was comprised of two eminent surgeons, two trained nurses, who served adhesive plaster and instruments, and an "etherist" who poured. costumes were uniformly white with great profusion of gauze trimmings, with which i also eventually became somewhat decorated. one of the internes wasn't half bad, so i kept the nurse busy combing my adopted hair and pinning it on becomingly. it is a much quicker and easier process to have your appendix cut out than your husband. i was away four weeks and am now back in sioux and well taken care of by my landlady, whose hair and face disagree as to age. my walls are hung with ten-cent store art, and if i were not awfully strong-minded i could not overcome the effect. the white auto called last night, and as my head rested on his shoulder our conversation was the rambling sort that may be ticketed "all rights reserved," so i won't repeat it as the postmaster-general would refuse me stamps in the future if i sent it through the mail. in chicago they'd take out my phone if i squeaked it over the wires. carlton is deeply interested in some mines out here--spinach mines i think. i made up my mind to something last night--i am determined to get him away from that carrotty giraffe whom he used to believe he loved. if in my convalescent state i am unable to arouse his sympathy, i'll relapse into white muslin emotions and thereby gain my end. i am made from dust and the slightest rustle from the right man's coat can blow me whithersoever it willeth. you know i am a spoiled child who has had everything it wanted, so bon-bons no longer excite me. carlton is so thin that you can see daylight through his lattice work, and cold as paving stone in winter. he's a real "millionery," but his cash is degrees below, so i am determined to warm up his eagles and teach them to fly. i am going to touch that cash box under his left breast and show him that the devil has a sister. the man wants bleeding--he has too many bank notes in his veins. he seems to be toppling so i might as well register him in my "book of mistakes." do you know that i still keep a record of these undying passions of mine with a picture of each culprit attached, and carlton is . i thought, when i was sixteen, i would record the one divine fire that was like to consume me, and now i have eighteen volumes of this -degrees-in-the-shade literature, all bound alike in a perfect _edition de luxe_. i'd rather regret what i have done than what i have not done. you dear old ostrich, i can hear you sigh over me, but don't you waste your gasoline. you, too, should have callouses on your emotions by this time. bunky and othello have both decided to bark at my chemiselets and skirtlets in one,--maybe they think they are too flossy to be concealed. i agree there. phyllis lathop's lawyer, mr. maryan soe early, got her decree for her last week and she flew back on the . train to manhattan and gordon booth. of course everyone knows that he is booked. her plea was extreme cruelty; said her husband struck her. the dear old judge asked her to explain in detail some of the circumstances of her husband's brutality. she said: "while crossing lake michigan there was a terrible storm on, and as my husband was descending from the upper berth, the boat lurched and he struck me with his elbow." phyllis said the judge smiled very broadly and gave her her decree on "extreme nerve," instead of "extreme cruelty." she writes that she and gordon are having such times together--batting around their old stamping ground, bronx park--strange how hard it is to overcome habits. they slink off to the new york woman's trysting place when there is no longer any reason for secrecy. one bitter cold day last winter bern and i met phyllis and gordon in the very spot that we always frequented, and poor individuals were stamping their feet to keep them from freezing. the monkey house was full of people and they dared not remain there any longer. we all smiled as much as to say: "you don't tell, and i certainly won't." not a word ever came out, so the treaty was well kept. bern and i were more or less engaged at the time. we laughed over it when she was out here, and i asked her why she never repeated it, as she never keeps anything to her gossipy self. she answered: "if i had said that i had seen you there, i would have had to explain my own presence in the park, and i never incriminate myself." she says that "there are two new kinds of monkeys out there and one looks like elbert hubbard--sits all day surrounded by his hair." she's running a bar in connection with her tea table now, which is equivalent to putting salt on the tail of the social male bird. she can hardly believe that she's free, and says that it will take some time for her to realize "that there aint no beast." isn't it strange that the most fascinating lover in the world can turn into the veriest beast within six months after he has hit you on the head and dragged you senseless into his fifth avenue home? of course you're senseless or you would not have tied up. phyllis says that she has gotten out of the habit of decent food, that every time she really dines, she gets strange pains in her underneath. i wish i could fly back home, but i must grit my teeth and get rid of my beast too. i wonder which breed i'll try next time. boston bull, i suppose, i think that's where carlton was first kenneled. i have a large stove in my sitting-room and keep it going myself. othello looks as though he'd laugh himself to death every time i put coal on--darn his pelt! he's crazy over sioux falls--possibly because there are seven dogs to the city block. he goes away on bridal tours every few days and then i have to get out a search warrant. i could live quite decently if i did not have to invest in so many rewards for him. it is so terribly cold here that my very thoughts are frozen and my hot-water bag does nightly service. the thing sprung a leak last week and i took it to a garage to ask if they would mend it, and the fellow answered: "certainly, madam, we have quite a trade in hot-water bottles and "nature's rivals."" i have also found out that the only place to buy burnt wood is at mr. trepaning's the undertaker and embalmer. all the stiff and crackling branches of the trees are weighted down with a three-inch ruching of snow. it is all silently fascinating, especially so because since starting this letter two short raps at my window announce carlton who comes each night to accompany me to the late post after the landlady is snoozing. his arms are around me as i scrawl, and the thousand tiny little thrills that answer so eagerly to his nearness, assure me that it is not deplorable to be thirty-nine. good night, marianne. december . so near xmas, dear, yet none of the yule-tide joys float out to this frozen wilderness. snow, snow everywhere. the tall alders, whose vivid coloring so inspired me when i arrived, are now black and gaunt, and the pitiless desert wind comes tearing and howling from the north to bend and crack their stiffened joints. i often wonder--am i any more the arbiter of my fate than these lifeless snow-draped spectres around me. carlton left the hotel almost a week ago and took the room next to mine. we are hopelessly in love with each other, and he wonders how he ever could have thought of accepting happiness from mrs. claymore, accompanied by so many freckles and a half million dollars. as for bern, dear, he will survive. i am much older than he is, so that some day he would be forty with all his emotions and i would be fifty with the rheumatism--it would never do. henceforth i shall be prodigal of negatives, except where carlton is concerned. we have attained the intimacy which thinks aloud, and instead of hating sioux falls and longing for my sentence to expire, i am beginning to worship every inch of the ground, and only pray that such an exile should last forever. none of the fulminating fires that i have heretofore known are mine--only calm and peace and the joys born of a perfect understanding. we have not let the moment slip when souls meet in comprehension. i almost decided not to confide all this to you, but it slipped off my pen and i'm not sorry, for no woman living was ever before blessed with a friend like you. you and i have visited the lowest dantesque circles of despair together, and no confidence between us could amount to an indiscretion. our landlady thinks that we are merely speaking acquaintances, and it is best, as this new-found sympathy must not be distilled by sioux falls scandal-mongers, though i should like to shout it from the house tops through a megaphone, i am so happy and proud of it. so you shot with aldrich and he tried to get you to buy "steel preferred." i am glad you did not invest and sorry you did not win the cup. i shall never again shoot for pleasure. i am ashamed of my trophies. perhaps love has made me mushy but i don't regret it as hate made me flinty. have you noticed how our bonds have slumped--the whole thing was a golden fleece. commercialism bores me to extinction. i suppose the world began with trade, since adam sold paradise for a pippin. are you still of the opinion that tradespeople should be branded on the forehead down to the third generation?--you dear snobbish treasure. henceforth i shall only deal in sentimental tramways and have shares in the moral funds--maybe not moral according to the threadbare ideal of the genus _homo sapiens_. surprising that a girl as young as alice noah--no relation to the fellow who built the ark--should just take out legal separation papers in new york. how can the _modus vivendi_ suit her better than divorce? perhaps she wants to cinch her alimony until she finds another affinity. then alice for dakota. it is foolish to cut your financial string when you might just as well dangle, especially until you find something worth dropping for. dear, will you please send me a reel of sirdars? i can't smoke anything else and no one sells them out here. our landlady has one eye that looks up the chimney and another that goes cellar wards and carlton says that she always regards him obliquely--never mind, she is a good stupid soul and i can forgive a landlady anything but perspicacity. i don't see how our intimacy has escaped her,--to me it looks like the first foreign sticker on an american five dollar dress suit case. why do you write such short letters? is it because you have but a limited number of ideas and must dispense them carefully? what did philip leighton die of? his wife, i suppose. they never had anything in common but the kiddies. that means no more hunts at blackburn heath unless someone careless like philip absorbs the estate. mrs. philip was a pennsylvania girl. _n'est ce pas?_ that accounts for her effulgent spontaneity. isn't it a shame for me to wax bombastic over a girl who, if she were just a little brighter, might be called half witted. she's the girl with the massive mother, who suffers from dislocated adjectives. they say when she was married her prayer book was missing, so she carried a cake of ivory soap instead--the mother was divorced and could have had alimony if she had wanted it, but she had better sense than to want it. she has venomous optics--the fellows used to say they flew when she flashed her calciums; ugly as the seven deadly sins and so mannish that i was always afraid her trousers would show beneath her petticoats. the giddy old cat! if she had been hanging since her sixtieth birthday, she would certainly be breathless now. all day, dear, i go about my duties with a most ladylike absence of passion, but when night comes i cross the sandy waste of the past and stretch out my hands to fondle the idea of perfect companionship. our thoughts seem to be a reverberation of the same thunderous roll, and while they are not identical, they are of the same breadth and elevation. the conditions of propinquity are responsible; and as love did not come to me, i had to do as mahomet did with the mountain. when he goes from me, joy vanishes, but leaves a bright track of light behind, which bursts upon me through the clouds of cigarette smoke that he has left. each day i awaken more warmed and thrilled, like the sun which finds the mountain tops that he touched with his departing rays still warm when he sends his shaft of light in the morn. no maelstrom of distrust do we feel, only a mighty, overpowering passion that no undress of intimacy can ever destroy. good-night, friend of my babyhood, my girlhood, my womanhood. my greetings for your birthday. affy, marianne. february . don't be cross with me, dear, i am in no danger. your repeated letters came--i read them, then straightway forgot that they should be answered. it is no evidence of a lessening of my love for you, but because life has become so mysteriously perfect for me that i dream away my hours. one night, seemingly a million years ago, but really only within the present week, i felt cold as i stood by my stove and plaited my hair--i have nice hair, lorna, haven't i? but i didn't seem to notice it. i was in my nightie and i shivered. my white chiffon bedspread with the pink roses strewn over it was near, so i drew it close about me and felt that i had protected myself from the chill. it wasn't an external chill that made me quake, but something old and deep-rooted and lonely that came from the depths of the soul in me and begged and pleaded for recognition. the big stove with its dozens of mica eyes threw out comforting little rays of coziness, but the real me still shivered. i walked to the window and opened it. strange, disquieting, but gracious thoughts that i had lost somewhere in the twilight of the night before, came riding back to me on a snow flurry--it was so still that i feared to breathe, lest i disturb the solitude--the sky wasn't heavy and gray, but clear and blue and seemed like a soft silken canopy that the gaunt maples upheld to protect me and my love, and the virgin snow that fell on my outstretched arms in soft little rosettes that disappeared as our loves sometimes do when they have but let us feel the deliciousness of their possession. the heavy old door between my room and his creaked with rustiness and age, as for the first time in years it turned upon its hinges. carlton had watched for my last good-night signal and grew alarmed at its absence and my quietude. i wonder why i didn't feel embarrassed--all i know is that after he discovered a comfortable angle in my morris, i crawled into his arms and lay there quietly without a word until dawn the next morning. our sleep was rhythmic, just like our love. what a strange beautiful night we passed and how difficult it would be to make the world believe! awakening, i felt something cold around my neck, and there, dear girl, he had fastened pearls while i slept in his arms. i cannot even imagine their value, as i know nothing of jewels but how to accept and wear them. such a gift is wonderful at any time, but how much more subtly charming to have it fastened on you as you lay, comfy and subconscious in his strong and doubtless aching arms. such peace, peace, dear, would have benumbed napoleon; but i need few other interests--my universe begins at his head and ends at his feet. this is the purest jag of joy that i have ever been on in my life, and i wonder that one small blonde woman is able to allow herself so much spark and not have her engines explode. i always fancied that i should die if such an ideal existence even attempted to show its face to me; and instead, i take my soup before it's cold, put my shoes on my feet, my hat on my head, retire and arise at the usual hours. he embroiders his talk with bungalows, steam yachts and motor cars for the future, while i fear to buy a pair of boots before a consultation with my trousers pocket. i find myself imprisoned in a banker's portfolio, floundering in statements covered with red ink. he doesn't dream that such is the case, or all his funds would be at my disposal. somehow, if i had my decree, i should tell him; but while i am still someone's else wife i cannot take his money--it would soil my emotions. yesterday, while opening a crate for me, he cut his finger very badly, and as i bound it up he said, "forgive me," and concealing his hurt, he sought pardon for the pain he had caused me. his feelings are intuitively charming, and though he hasn't a university education, he has a universal one, which counts for far more in this world where a stab is given in return for a pin prick. good-night, precious girl-woman, whose friendship has never failed me, whose love has been the most uplifting emotion that i have ever known. marianne. march . lorna mine: my six months were up on march first, but as the judge hates undue haste about serving papers, i waited one whole hour before i shot mine off to new york. i am no longer doing time, but am a full-fledged citizen of south dakota. isn't it nice that my case won't have a jury--it always gets hung and it sounds unpleasant even if it really isn't. oh! these dazzlingly cool, fresh, spring days. if there is anything more beautiful in the west than their gaudy indian summer, it is the half scared spring. the wind is a bit blustery and pretentious, but otherwise nature seems doubtful as to whether she will paint her landscape or not. each night a grand sunset crowns the close of a cloudless day. weeks ago carlton's decree was granted him, but he stays to hold me in his arms while i wait for mine. you ask if we are engaged? yes--awfully engaged all the time. i have never before been able to understand why people put such vast sums in churches. now i know. it isn't on account of the worship, nor of the interior, but for the steps. when you take into consideration what assistance they have rendered lovers, it only seems just that they should be taxed. we worship at christian science church, because it's darker, every night except wednesday; but they have some sort of a shin-dig then, so we switch to the episcopal and take communion with each other. nice clean, comfy, red granite steps that so many pious, divorce-hating feet have passed over. my sympathies go out to all women, even if they are fallen and so did christ's; but the good sioux fallians are above it. they pull all the hay to their side of the manger and forget that we, having never used such food, don't miss it now. it is a pity that we can't infuse more of the "god-honor-and-the-ladies" spirit into this depth of silliness out here. the west is so big and glorious and free, it seems strange that the corn crop should be so superior to the people. i suppose it is because each perfect stalk of corn turns its face to god and heaven, and the people are so busy gossiping they haven't the time to worship. when we pass them on the street we feel like saying: "our reputations are in your hands. in god's name be merciful!" i am keeping house now in my room--light housekeeping, you know. it's positively airy sometimes. my landlady--bless her ignorant soul!--allows my little ice-box to remain in her butler's pantry, which i have christened "cockroach alley." they--the cockroaches--are so large and educated that i have named them, and each one comes when it's called and feeds from the hand. she wears the most artistic skirts--always ball-room back and ballet front. her grandchild was sitting on the floor yesterday, reading the bible, when suddenly she looked up and said: "grandma, there's a grammatical error in this bible," and my landlady said: "well, kill it, child, kill it!" she spends whole hours each day talking to her birds, which, she claims, save the expense of a piano. i told the grandchild to go out into the sunshine this morning and it would do her cold good. she said, very saucily: "i won't go into the sunshine, my grandma told me to go into the air." my grandma didn't tell me to go there, lorna, but someone must have ordered it, for in the "air" i am, and so high that i no longer feel the earth beneath my feet. thank you so much for mr. fitch's article. so you think that sioux falls is like his description of it. he came in one night and left the next morning, then wrote an article which is a gross exaggeration in every particular. in the first place there was never but one french maid here and she was irish. it is true that some scandalous people come here, but there are also scandalous residents; however, there are many more divorcees, quiet, charming and unseen, who do not fret away their six months, but spend them profitably, writing, sewing, taking care of their beloved children, _et cetera_. the very idea of mentioning anything as incongruous as sioux falls and luxury in the same breath--it's a slam on luxury! big and luxurious hotels--mr. fitch ought to be mobbed. wonder if he got a whiff of the lobby of the only thing that can be called an hotel here, or if he had a cold during his prolonged stay of twelve hours, nine of which he slept through. at the hotel yesterday i mentioned to the elevator boy that many children were stopping there. he answered: "yes, there is more children than there is guests." that grill room that he speaks of is a dim memory; i think it lasted two months; and as it depended on divorce custom entirely, and as the main part of the colony sups in its own home, the thing fell through. and the theatres, dear, we have had two good shows since i came, otherwise "ten, twenty and thirty." the women and preachers may be against the quick lunch method of divorce, but you can gamble on it that the business men heartily approve; and these same women and preachers will find their larders and contribution boxes but scantily filled if the odorous money of the dissolute "divorsay" is barred. i am all excited over the article as there is neither truth nor ruth in it, and carlton is intensely amused, so i suppose i will not try to fight the battles of the colony so long as i am lazy and comfortable in the arms of my love. had a long letter from gretchen yesterday in which she says she enjoyed her bridal tour thoroughly, particularly at the falls. i wrote back and asked: "which?--niagara or sioux?" good-night, dearest, i close my eyes and sleep in a moment, as there are no longer any thorns to stuff my pillow. marianne. may nd. lorna dear: it wasn't a bit hard to live through. the papers all came back by return mail, and all day sunday i was in my attorney's office practising. it wasn't any more difficult than a sunday-school lesson, and monday morning at eight o'clock i was waiting at liberty hall for the hoped-for arrival of "the greatest common divisor." at last he came, but with a sour expression, and not knowing what trouble he might have had before he left home, i tried to be patient. we were ushered through the big court room into the judge's sanctum--asked how long i'd been here, and so forth and so fifth--then the comical question: "do you expect to make sioux falls your home?" and the threadbare reply: "i have made no plans for the future," when all the time i had my i. c. tickets for the . train in my pocket. do you know that was the first time i ever really perjured myself--like a lady--before, and somehow i wished awfully that i had let carlton hold the tickets until after the trial. i couldn't even get my kerchief out of my pocketbook for fear the blooming time tables and tickets would show. oh! the judge was terribly saccharine after he warmed up, and i adore him. wish i had to get another divorce tomorrow--he's just like a dear old universal dad, and everyone loves him. well! dear, just to think of it. i've lost my hobbies! isn't it great, and yet isn't it really sad! it means a failure in the greatest undertaking of a woman's life, and it also means that i issue forth--branded. i refuse to hold post mortems and am practising loss of memory. now for the possibilities of the future. possibility is the biggest word in the dictionary. isn't it strange that a woman may live apart from her husband and do atrocious things, without wearing the tell-tale letter on her bosom, yet let a virtuous woman take the step for freedom, and, alas! she carries the scar as long as she breathes. but its worth it, dear. i have thought it all over and i repeat it a thousand times, its worth it. "i have written it upon the doorposts of my house and upon my gates, and i wear it as frontlets between mine eyes"--it's worth it! i have worn crepe for my departed virtues for six years, but i throw it aside now and feel a new being whose glad unrestraint may carry her farther than she intended, just as prudery often lends a woman greater cruelty than she feels. how clever of don willard to buy in northern pacific during the slump. he gets on with his sense of smell--he's a jackal who scents a carcass and gets there in time for a good bone. while unpacking my trunk today i came across my wedding veil and it was all gray and dingy like the end of my honeymoon. how many sweet and tremulous illusions i folded into it on that first night and how soon afterwards did three-fourths of the world look like ashes to me. dreams are harder to give up than realities, because they come back and gibe us even after they are dead and buried, while tangible realities stay fairly well hidden when we screw down the lid. i suppose you think that i talk like old man solomon, but you know that the only serious thoughts i have are mushrooms of one minute's gestation. my landlady does her own washing, so i asked her if she would do mine for ample pay. she suffers so from modesty that she was hardly able to answer me, but finally said: "i would be willing to, but my husband don't improve on it." poor creature, she has lived here all her days and is still unable to direct me to a single place--her bump of location is surely a dent. mrs. judge knows the name of each member of the colony; when they came and how often they have gone away, and the lord help you if your residence isn't right! that's the one thing that the judge is squeamish about, and as mrs. judge keeps tab for him, there is no use trying to fudge. if you don't come up before the judge in six months and one week, she inquires of your landlady the reason for your delay. and of course the landlady knows the reason, even if you don't yourself. every monday afternoon mrs. judge drives by the i. c. station at exactly . to see which one of the widows, whose case was tried that morning, is leaving the same day. of course they all leave unless they are prostrated with excitement. we always pack all baggage on saturday, the dress-suit cases on sunday, and engage the drayman on the way down to the trial monday morning. there has never been any hitch in the arrangements, so i suppose they will remain the same until the end of time. you don't know what a comfort my phonograph has been to me--i would never attempt another divorce without one. the long, lonely evenings--the endless days, when time never moves off the spot, my dogs and i have sat on the floor fascinated with the greatest music in the world. i like my machine because it may be depended upon, never is nervous, and always willing to perform. talent is so spasmodic and dependent upon moods, while the little hard rubber discs tirelessly and graciously amuse you. you say that you will write more anon. i have looked in webster and the brittanica, as i was a bit anxious to find out just what length of time anon signifies, but i have been unsuccessful. in other words, if after breakfast someone said to me, "you shall have more food anon," i should probably starve to death if i sat down and waited for it. now don't be mean to me because i am in love and have neglected you. i send you thousands of messages and ask you thousands of questions each day, and simply because i don't waste time and paper in setting them down is no sign that you aren't constantly in my thoughts. love knows no distance, and i go to you every evening for a good-night kiss just as i close my eyes to sleep, and always do i feel that you know it. there is no barrier of antagonism around you so my spirit enters where you are whenever it so desires. you are melancholy again--how can you live in stays set with nails and maintain the grace of a dancer? it must be because of your child. i could not do it, i'm sure--not even for my child if i had one. you are wiser than most of us fools who have choked our lives in the mud of new york. to men, dear, you are a cold alp. snow bound and near to heaven, impenetrable and frowning with flanks of granite, and yet beneficent. how do you accomplish it when your heart is wrung from year's end to year's end? it must be machiavellian foresight, precious--foresight that you alone, out of the whole set, possess. the world never forgives a failure and never forgives you for telling it the truth, and my standard is truth, as near as possible, and yours is sacrifice complete. which is right? we shall go on begging the question until the end of time. in human transactions the law of optics seems to be reversed--we always see indistinctly the things that are nearest to us. you have never judged, so judge me not. marianne. the black hills, september . dearest lorna: a thousand years ago--or maybe it wasn't so long, i can't clearly remember things any more, time isn't of any consequence, but it was the day i received my decree, and i returned my railroad tickets to the i. c. office--carlton and i packed up some rugs, pillows and luncheon, and floated down the river to breathe confidences. far away on the horizon was a misty hedge of cypress trees darkly traced on a canvas of lavenders and blues, overhung by extravagant yards of cloudy chiffon. nearby the tall alders were all bent to the southward, from the bitter winds, and looked like huge giants on the march with heavy burdens on their shoulders. they swayed at times and seemed likely to fall with their loads. on and on we floated, and on and on they marched. the country was as tremulous as a bride, and to us nothing seemed impossible. in such magic moments when enjoyment sheds its reflection on the future the soul foresees nothing but happiness. toward sunset we moored our boat to a tree in a little backwater where the current was barely felt and mutely watched the changes in the great turquoise satin tent above us that seemed held aloft by the hills to shelter the landscape of barley and corn and wheat that swished and swished like feminine music of taffeta petticoats. we felt reasons all around us why we should be happy--the trees were greens and browns--no one like the other, blended in the harmonious colorings of an old french tapestry stolen from a deserted chateau. all the earth seemed so sweet and so pure, and we were enjoying the world as a clean open-air playground. a few fluffy clouds began to appear, but old boreas blew them away as soon as the west wind brought them up. suddenly his gaze betrayed remembrance and he drew me into his arms and our lips met. thus we remained, languidly content, until long after the sky man had studded the heavens with millions of silver nails. and there, near a field of cattle, like paul potter painted, under a sky worthy of raphael, in a cove overhung with trees like a picture by hobbema, he asked me to be his wife. and then the sweetest ceremony that ever was solemnized under god's loving eyes was fulfilled there in the stillness of the night. he said: "i love you," and for answer i said: "i love you too," and on my finger was placed a cool new band, which reads within: "for all eternity." as old and worldly as i am, i felt all the instinct of chastity and delicacy which is the very material of a first love. our wedding feast was spread out in the bottom of the craft, with no effulgence of light save the reflection of god's own lanterns. all sorts of night things chirped and sang of our joy, and trout leaped from the water in answer to the bread that i crumbled for them. our boat rocked and swayed as the current reached us more directly, and leaves and sticks and weeds went floating by with turgid little whirlpools swirling aft. we were lazy lurdans, nestling there in the moonlight, but time is the precious gift of the almighty and man may gamble it away if he chooses. finally dawn found us floating homeward in the mists of awakening morn. months and months have passed since then--strange new mother instincts have arisen in my soul, and he still presses me to his heart and whispers: "for all eternity." you could not discover my whereabouts, as i left no address in sioux falls. i did not want the world nor society, not even you, but just solitude--and my husband. now we want you to know that in this beautiful wilderness we have a home--a mountain home with placid indian servants, who glide in and out and serve noiselessly and speechlessly: i must confess that i am only one-half brave, as the world, all but you, thinks that a minister has mumbled over us for a second time. you are great enough to appreciate the joy we feel in cheating all humanity. carlton has willed all of his possessions to me and to our precious little future reproduction of our love, who can but be perfect, as he is a creature of perfect conditions. we are also but half great, as it pleased us that the new york papers reported our marriage; but in our lives we are all-great and all-sufficient for each other. our bungalow is built in rugged, primeval "spearfish canon," but you may address all mail to custer, where carlton goes in his motor every day for things that please me. i am so happy, so proud, so grateful that my mate is as far-seeing as i am, and we feel a mutual dread for the time when we must forsake our black hills for the fuller and less satisfying life in new york--but we can't play always, out here in the sunshine. write to me soon and forgive me for doubting that you would understand. marianne. black hills, november . dearest: how happy your letter has made me and how slow you were in making up your mind, but i'd rather have you love me after thinking than to love me just because i'm i. had you not understood, i should have loved you but because you understand i bow down and idolize you as i have done all my days. every girl deserves a mother--it is her natural heritage and nature risks a great deal in cheating her out of her original right. i have been defrauded, but a friend like you compensates for much and is a straight gift from god and heaven. carlton and i have motored over to custer every day for your letter but not until yesterday were we recompensed for all the anxiety and doubt that i might have suffered. we read it together and i am not ashamed that our eyes were moist with joy as we drove slowly away from the little village and out into our free and glorious primevalism again. the twilight fell like a silver dust on the crests of two double rows of ancient elms in a long and lordly country road, and lighted up the sand and the drying wild grass that had waved like so many spears of gold in the sunset of a few moments before. on and on we flew--he with a trembling hand on the wheel and i with my arm around him and my lips pressing his cheek. the rays of our acetylene lamps began to cast lurid lights before us as the darkness thickened, just as my soul's fire is luminous now in an atmosphere ordained to bring forth all its normal glory--and all the while the back seats were empty; empty dear. do you know the luxury of it? we were both dreaming and praying--dreaming of a thousand more such perfect nights, praying in all our fervor and gratitude for more and yet more of our boundless and mutual passion. and then we lost our way as the machine rushed into a mystic cross-road that led due north, for the dipper was before us. i crawled closer and closer to him until i could hear his heart pounding mercilessly as his breath came quicker and my lips pressed closer. the lamps were brilliant then and the woods and fields as silent and endless as eternity. a long snake stretched its lazy length across our path and frogs held mute high carnival on all the little hills and bumps on the high road. we both felt the inspiration of the moment and neither profaned it with words. as far as our lights fell three waving, nodding bands of seered grass, beckoned us on and heedless of the danger we might be rushing toward--our empassioned lips met. and like eternity the mystic course lay hidden in darkness before us, but also like the things that look most forbidding in the future, as we rushed by, the yellow hedge turned golden by our lamps, the grassy plumage rose and fell in sallow waves of approbation. the good little people were with us (you know i believe in fairies) and the faithful engine puffed and struggled and tried its best on the incline that we were ascending, but we were too jealous of our sensations to pay much heed to its unaided success. i would work in the fields for ten days were i sure that the eleventh night would be such another as this. so lofty are the regions where i soar, that a fall would shiver me to atoms, but just to breathe the same air with my love lifts me to the vault of paradise. whole hours each evening i lie on an indian blanket in front of the open grate and dream of the legacy of love that we shall hand down to our children and our children's children until the end of time. ecstatically yours, marianne. december . dearest friend: we are snowed in and our two bronze boys are trying to make a path to the road. we are all so abnormally well and with the nurse and carlton's friend dr. harmen, constitute a lively household though i liked the sweetness of our oneness better. these are happy times and they watch and guard me as though i were another wilhelmina. was ever christmas day so wonderful! our tree is a real cedar of lebanon, uprooted by our beloved indians and decorated with their handiwork. last eve we romped and sang and played tricks upon each other until midnight, when we saucily hung up the biggest stockings and sneaked off to bed to leave our santa claus with his labors. it must have taken him hours for i slept for ages when i finally heard him getting ready for bed. i slipped into my kimono and tried to crawl down stairs and take a peep, but he heard me and would not countenance any cheating so i snuggled up again and went to sleep, but like children, we were all up at daybreak. for days and days carlton has been going on clandestine shopping tours to the meccas around us and has kept all purchases locked and guarded. he can't bear the thought of grown-ups not loving and believing in santa. aside from all the valuable and exquisite things that each received, the gift that proved carlton's feeling toward me,--if i may insult that feeling by even suggesting the necessity of a proof--was a tiny silk stocking, hung quite at the end of the mantel shelf, all alone as though it needed no protection, and filled with--you would never guess in a thousand years, so i shan't keep you suspended in mid air--fifty thousand dollars in u. s. bonds to start a bank account for the little visitor that is to come. every night before we sleep, we talk to our baby, we pray to our baby, we worship our baby. only beautiful thoughts come to our minds; only beautiful things come to our hands,--surely god sends babies for other reasons than to propagate the species--we are grown entirely unselfish; we are filled with kindly sympathies and affection, and our energies and aims reach to heaven. a beautiful pink satin baby basket came direct from printemps, filled with the most delicate little garments that a human hand could create. do you remember the day when we were at school in paris, that we passed printemp's baby shop and planned our progenys' outfits--twenty years ago? i am now fuller of the joy of living than i was then--but on the threshold of womanly emotions. from my window i can see far down the icy canon. the mountain stream is a fluted ribbon of snow and ice, and where the spray tumbled before it froze, there are thousands of filmy rosettes iridescent in the sun's rays. the path is finished and dr. harmen is building a snow man. we are civilized aborigines gone mad with youth out here in the frigid zone, and anything as grown up as bridge has failed to interest us. from our home on the summit of "kewanas crag," silver lake looks like a stray turquoise below and the mysterious black hills around us catch glimpses of gold in the sunset hour, then dye themselves purple, take a tint of glowing rose-water, then turn dull and gray; a drama of color goes on ceaselessly; a play of ever shifting hues like those on a pigeon's breast. do you know of anyone who has ever died in childbirth? if you do, don't tell me, as i am beginning to be frightened. not afraid of the agony, for i rather enjoy pondering over the sacrifice, but so fearful of leaving all of this barely tasted sweet behind me. it seems as though my impatience would consume me--i want so to know whether i may be spared for more and more days of our endless joy. your christmas box came one day too soon and, like the child that i am transformed into, i resorted to tears in order to wheedle carlton into permitting me to open it. the little things are wonderful and the discretion of your love is more so. each little article is an expression of your faultless friendship, for losing which, not even carlton's love could compensate me. the new decorations in my bed room are all in bloom like our love, and i lie awake during my specified hours of rest, gathering mental roses from my wall garden. my revival is as natural as the effect of may on the meadows; of a shower on a dry plant. i awaken with the breath of my spring, which is heavy with oriental sweetness like a rose of frangistan. i should not in such moments as these, feel a death blow. all of the old mental bruises caused by knocking myself against corners, some that i myself created at times, and others that i saw but could not escape, are healed and quite forgotten in this new world of mine. i press a goodnight kiss on your dear understanding lips. marianne. the black hills. february . dearest of all friends: today for the first time i am permitted to write one letter, while dr. harmen and carlton are trying to discover traces of rare genius on the head of carlton church somerville junior, who resembles one of those cherubs circling about the eternal father in an old italian picture. dizzy with the wonder of it all, i lie for hours trying to convince myself that the world is real. when my child awakens and craves his nourishment, i cry for very ecstacy of giving him life. what woman on earth who has nursed her child once, can refrain from doing so again? his velvet lips kiss me; his precious hand, dimpled and immature, fondles me in gratitude. how can any mother ever be unhappy while her infant breathes upon her breast. my wasted years squandered in society seem hideous fancies of a perverted mind, while my one glorious year out here is a deep-breathing, pure record of clean thoughts and a perfect life. no one save god almighty to wish us well on our wedding day; no purring women and overfed men to throw rice and old shoes along with the "wedding formula"--"isn't she a perfect bride,"--"did ever couple seem so well suited,"--"they are real affinities _et cetera_," all of which started me out on my bridal trip sixteen years ago. i shall never witness another wedding as long as i live--it is too insufferably sad a contemplation. it seems strange and pitiful that your sweet daughter is now old enough to make her formal bow into an atmosphere of hatred and vice. if she could but seek rapturous peace out here in my wilderness with some man that she really loves--but no woman is born into mature society with a knowledge of its utter worthlessness. and even were you able to convince her of it now, it would be a sin to rob her sweet mentality of its blushes. no, the precious child must first suffer and find out alone. almost childlessly greedy do i feel, to live so perfectly while you are still sacrificing your years on the altar of motherhood. at least i am thankful that walter has decided to parade his affairs less, now that evelyn is coming out. you proud, queenly, beautiful woman, how can you be so brave? in your place i should have died of hopelessness and grief years ago. but you go on with your precious head high in the air, smiling, though crushed by your agony. day in and day out your nerves are taut--you never rest. why hasn't something snapped years ago? perhaps god gives an abundance of strength to those who are ordained to suffer most. you ask if i have any regrets. no--no--a million times no. i have torn the word from my dictionary and have forgotten the meaning. i repeat a thousand times a day my honest prayer:-- "spare me o lord the crowded way, life's busy mart where men contend, for me the home the tranquil day, a little sock to mend." i try never to think of an end to my happiness, but somehow the crushing thought comes and stifles me into abject fear. then my husband brings me my little child and the evil thoughts are kissed away. yesterday carlton's eyes filled with tears of gratitude as i sat nursing our baby before the open grate and running my hand through his thick brown hair as he sat on the floor beside us. we remain long hours in silence watching the pictures in the blazing back logs, then suddenly we embrace to prove mutually that we still have each other. the river is still a frozen jagged band all down the canon, and the roads are knee deep with snow and ice. i scarcely breathe while carlton is away in his motor, for fear the wheels will skid and hurl him into endless depths down the mountain side. it is impossible to procure food without his going to the railroad, but each day i try to believe that i don't need nourishment just to see if i can't prevent these precarious errands. we live so naturally and so happily that we are staying on indefinitely in our frozen love bower. dr. harmen leaves tomorrow after weeks of rejuvenating pleasures out here. the nurse will remain to render me such assistance as i need, though i am so jealous of her care of my son that i shall claim my mother rights as soon as i am strong enough. junior has his father's eyes with all the softness of the blue periwinkle flower in their splendid depths, and i feel when i hold him in my arms and am held in turn in carlton's that i can never give either of them up--even to the almighty. i will never give them up. they are mine and i am theirs--for all eternity. adieu sweet friend, marianne. february . it has come. the bright fire in the grate is a heap of smouldering ashes and all the pictures and dreams are dead. i cannot breathe--i cannot live--i am insane with grief. and the ignorant world teaches of an all merciful god--an all seeing father! the irony of it! i cannot live--i must go too. it will be impossible to go on, and on, alone--forever and for all eternity--alone--i cannot--i will not! they are lying down there in their shrouds--my husband and his faithful monkaushka with their poor bodies crushed and mangled--o! i cannot tell you more! the machine is an unsightly heap at the bottom of the ravine. i cannot write--i cannot think and yet i must do both. what have i done but love with all my womanhood and all my motherhood! after all it was beautiful for him to die and go to heaven while flowers filled his hands. a loud cry has gone up in my soul; an echo as it were of the funereal _consummatum est_, which is pronounced in church on good friday at the hour when the _saviour_ died. and all day i wring my hands helplessly and can do nought but build dungeons and dungeons in the air. i speak in an altered voice as though my instrument had lost several strings and those that remained were loosened. dearest--can you tell me--am i responsible for his death? all during last night i seemed to hear god's voice asking: "cain, where is abel?" and i wail and beseech: "am i my brother's keeper?" my soul is guilty--guilty of loving him--guilty of his death, for had i not loved him he would never have known the black hills. oh! if i could but be resigned--if i could but bind up my bleeding wounds and lose myself in immeasurable lassitude! i have pressed his lips for the last time, my precious son is at my breast--his long lashes are pressed tightly against his cheeks as if to secure his eyes from too strong a light, or to aid an effort of his young soul to recollect and hold fast a bliss that had been perfect but fleeting. his tiny pink and white ear framed by a stray lock of his hair and outlined by a wrapping of lace from you, would make an artist, a painter, even an old man wildly in love with his perfect little being, and will, please god, restore me, a mad woman to her senses! come to my black hills, i am crushed, desolate, heart-broken--come to marianne. the black hills. july . one week has passed dear, since you left us--a strange week of readjustment and thought. all of those precious months that you have given me are but another expression of your divine friendship. the poignant grief is gone with you and my gratitude to you can but be shown by the degree of bravery that i now manifest. every day this week, my son and i have sat in the sunshine near the two mounds, which my remaining bronze boy has decorated with crocuses from the neighboring ravine. he spends long hours after dark, gathering wild flowers in the moonlight. his devotion to me and my dead love, is the saddest, most boundless tribute that an uncivilized mind could offer. silently he goes about his duties; silently he grieves, and more silently he gathers flowers as a tangible evidence of his devotion. your letters have come each day and will come each day until i lie too, beside my love on the desolate mountain side. such is your unfailing love and sympathy for me, all unworthy of your months of sacrifice and isolation out here in my new home. my son, bless his precious heart, tried to crawl today but the newly developed feat frightened his baby mind and he cried. closely almost roughly, i crush him to me a thousand times a day, so fearful am i that he too may go to join infinitude. you ask me to come back to new york. i must refuse your request. i cannot--i cannot leave my home--the only place worthy of the name that i have ever possessed! some day, maybe, but not now--it is all too dear and consoling to breathe the same air that sustained me in my perfect happiness. how can you say: "don't regret." what do you mean? regret the only joy that my poor starved soul has ever known? no atom of regret enters my grief--only a great unbounded gratitude to god, to the world, to nature, that one perfect year has been saved from out the wreck of time! gratefully, marianne. the black hills, september . two marvelous things have come to me today dear; my son took his first trembling steps alone, and a letter came to me from the man who was my husband. i am trembling with joy over the first and still dazed with lack of understanding of the second. i enclose the letter as i have long since given up trying to think clearly, and must depend upon you, to decide for me any matters of grave import. i am plunged in perplexity; advise me after reading the enclosed letter. lovingly, marianne. new york, sept. . dear marianne: six years ago, i found myself, though fond of you, glad when business took me away. we spent that summer in different places, but about october lived together again. i was still fond of you, but at that time found vera, whose company was very pleasing to me. you and i seemed to be drawn away from each other and we decided to separate at the end of december, when i started on my long cruise. i felt very, very sorry to leave you, but something told me that it was better to do so. i remember you seemed to feel the same, and we kissed each other goodbye as though we were both sorry for something that had to be. leaving the question of dual or multiple personality aside, and putting the matter very simply, i believe that my soul made a right choice in you my wife. i believe that alcohol was necessary for a while to put my body, even at its expense, into a state of conductivity, so that my soul, when i was somewhat alcoholized, could gain some expression; give some glimpses of itself and suggest the trend of my powers. for this reason i believe that some men are made to drink and drug--but that is another subject which i hope to take up with you more fully at some future time. my soul self has always wanted my wife's soul self, and i believe that if i could have you back, my conquered body self would never need to wander from home. a little more pliability--all you ever lacked, and which your trouble should have brought you, could make it so that we could live together in very perfect harmony. then i could release a lot of good plays and good writings, much of which i know already has been completed by my subliminal self. i get frequent glimpses of parts of plays, plots and ideas. you cannot but feel proud of the success of my last book, which ought to show you that i'm getting a grip of myself. my mother and i were _en rapport_ and under the dual personality theory, it is reasonable to suppose that i have been guided by her since her death. i certainly have been guided by god or by her, and it is reasonable to believe that she is god's instrument of my guidance. a young man makes whole ranges of mountains out of tiny mole hills which, when he has learned sense, he will spread under his foot without noticing them. most of our differences were mere mole hills, dear, which couldn't thwart us now. for we are too big now, to be so easily thwarted. can't we give each other the chance to prove this to each other? if you will permit me i will love your child as my own--as every real man ought to love every child, dear little unfinished human beings. formerly i thought i knew a good deal; but god knew better and took me away from you to teach me a few lessons. for they were lessons that i alone needed and god did not want you to undergo them as well as me. they were lessons calling for chastisement and you didn't need chastising. i've taken god's punishment dear, and thanked him for it. and i believe i'm fit company for you now. i am coming next monday to custer, four miles from where you are, and on tuesday morning, starting at eight, i shall walk toward your bungalow by way of the path by the river. i am familiar with every inch of the road, as you know i wrote "treasure-trove" at the wilson ranch near your canon. will you and your little son meet me if only a few yards from your home so that you may judge for yourself if i am fit company for you now. if you do not meet me--then the will of allah be done, for i shall turn back. donald. october . your message came too late, dear; already at eight o'clock tokacon, with my son in his arms, and i were far along on the river path that leads out to the world. our progress was slow with only the croonings and gurglings of my beautiful child to interrupt the silences of nature, as he clung affectionately to the neck of our red man protector, whose solemnity, though he knew not my mission was superb. half way, where tokacon has built an exquisite rustic bower, we stopped and waited while the indian returned to the bungalow. what a strange hour i spent waiting with my baby, who had fallen asleep in my arms. thousands of rebellious thoughts burned themselves upon the retina of my brain, as i sat planning and wondering. i want to be just before i'm generous, or i'm afraid i'll never have the chance to be generous. i sat staring like one at strife with a memory--and then he came, slowly, resignedly. his hair is quite white and there are strange, deep lines on his forehead, and marked parentheses round his mouth which can be but the foot-prints of pain and thought. he could not see us in our secluded shelter and i could not make my mouth utter his name--he who had wrung my heart as a peasant twists an osier withe. on he walked with his head hung low and a lost look in his eyes--then i called "don," as i used to do when i loved him, and he stopped suddenly and listened with his hand to his ear. again i called "don." he turned and saw us. slowly and with the dignity that he cannot lose, he came back to where we sat. he could not speak, but knelt beside us and kissed the baby's lips; my infant opened his innocent eyes and put his arms around donald's neck, as much at ease as though he had known him all of his dear little life. awake and rested, he must needs be tumbled about and played with, which our visitor seemed pleased to do. the strain would have been more than terrible, had it not been for the sweet influence of the child who occupied us both constantly on our long walk, home. meeting one's husband again after so many years, is something akin to the sensations of drowning--every ugly scene of our married life flashed across my brain, also every kindness that he had done me became equally prominent in my memory, that faculty one cannot cast away as one throws down a _serviette_ at table. twilight found us still without words for each other, but when the back logs were lighted (these october nights are cold in the black hills) our thoughts came more freely. i find that i care for him as i would for something long dead and half forgotten, but i am grateful for that, as i was half afraid that i couldn't be even patient with him. however the tolerance that we learn through suffering is the most beautiful offspring of real grief. it was very difficult for me to speak of carlton and our wonderful life that is buried out there on the mountain side, but he is indeed sympathetic and never interrupted the long and frequent silences that my inmost memory created. the logs burnt in halves and fell with myriad sparks and display to the sides of the fireplace, but we touched them not. he seemed to realize that carlton and i were not married in the eyes of the law. how he divined it i do not know, unless it is that he has an uncanny way of reading one's thoughts. he said that he knew and that he understood, and further, that i am a stronger and better woman for all that i have suffered and done. he wants me to leave my west and live again in new york, where he hopes to recreate in me the old feeling for him which he so ruthlessly squandered, when it was his own. he is earnest and sad and i wish that i might care again, for he needs help and so do i, and at least, with our past experiences we might escape some of the ways of wounding each other that married people seem to possess in such unlimited quantities. toward midnight the last candles that tokacon had placed in the sconces, flickered and went out. the helpless embers flared up for the last time, then sank down resigned. donald knelt beside me sobbing bitterly, with his head upon my knee. all seems to be grief here on this earth--nothing but grief! for answer i raised his head and kissed his eyes, then fetched a candle and lighted him to his room. i showed him my indian, sleeping outside my door,--which he never forsakes except to allow me to pass. long into the still night i heard sobs, and opening my door i found tokacon swaying to and fro near donald's room. he seems to understand grief more keenly than any cultivated mind that i have ever known, and he never intrudes, though it takes a mighty effort for him to suppress his own sympathy. at last it grew quiet and we all rested though we did not sleep. the next morning baby and i walked with donald to the bower where we had met him, and there we parted. tokacon came and carried the baby back to the bungalow and i followed later on when i felt sufficiently calm to go about my simple duties again. i am not a connoisseur in consciences, therefore i want days and still more days in which to think and weigh, then maybe a decision will come to me as an inspiration. donald will see you as soon as he returns to new york--be honest with him and yet beneficent. a thousand kisses from my son and me. goodnight, marianne. december . dearest lorna: for the last time i am writing to you from the place which is dearest to me in all the universe. my personal things are packed and on the way to custer. tokacon is waiting with his torch to set fire to my palace of dreams. i could not return to your world--to my old world if i thought that other souls than ours were living in my home. the land, i have given to my indian with sufficient money to build a home for himself, but not one corner of my own shall remain to be profaned by other human emotions. now i am sitting in the machine at a safe distance from the flames, which amuse my son, who is wild with joy and excitement over it. tokacon groans and i weep, for it is a tomb in flames before us. ashes--ashes--everywhere--in my home and in my heart, and every where except in the smiles of my child. donald has given me back my home and he has taken rooms at the club--what people think and what people say, mean nothing to me. i shall try bravely to construct something out of the ashes of three lives that will be worthy of the respect of god's elect. i cannot teach myself to forget; i can only await with patience the reawakening which for the sake of donald and my son, pray god, will not delay too long its coming. i suppose the family cannot be built on a foundation of passion, because something on earth always becomes revengeful when human beings are too happy. i shall never try to be too happy again. now my memories must lie entombed in the arcana of memory. but some day when my son is old enough to understand, i shall come back with him to my black hills of dakota, and breathe to him every sigh of my sorrow. then if he takes me in his arms and whispers "precious mother," i shall not have loved and cherished in vain. marianne. the custom of the country by edith wharton the custom of the country i "undine spragg--how can you?" her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid "bell-boy" had just brought in. but her defence was as feeble as her protest, and she continued to smile on her visitor while miss spragg, with a turn of her quick young fingers, possessed herself of the missive and withdrew to the window to read it. "i guess it's meant for me," she merely threw over her shoulder at her mother. "did you ever, mrs. heeny?" mrs. spragg murmured with deprecating pride. mrs. heeny, a stout professional-looking person in a waterproof, her rusty veil thrown back, and a shabby alligator bag at her feet, followed the mother's glance with good-humoured approval. "i never met with a lovelier form," she agreed, answering the spirit rather than the letter of her hostess's enquiry. mrs. spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt armchairs in one of the private drawing-rooms of the hotel stentorian. the spragg rooms were known as one of the looey suites, and the drawing-room walls, above their wainscoting of highly-varnished mahogany, were hung with salmon-pink damask and adorned with oval portraits of marie antoinette and the princess de lamballe. in the centre of the florid carpet a gilt table with a top of mexican onyx sustained a palm in a gilt basket tied with a pink bow. but for this ornament, and a copy of "the hound of the baskervilles" which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of human use, and mrs. spragg herself wore as complete an air of detachment as if she had been a wax figure in a show-window. her attire was fashionable enough to justify such a post, and her pale soft-cheeked face, with puffy eye-lids and drooping mouth, suggested a partially-melted wax figure which had run to double-chin. mrs. heeny, in comparison, had a reassuring look of solidity and reality. the planting of her firm black bulk in its chair, and the grasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke an organized and self-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that mrs. heeny was a "society" manicure and masseuse. toward mrs. spragg and her daughter she filled the double role of manipulator and friend; and it was in the latter capacity that, her day's task ended, she had dropped in for a moment to "cheer up" the lonely ladies of the stentorian. the young girl whose "form" had won mrs. heeny's professional commendation suddenly shifted its lovely lines as she turned back from the window. "here--you can have it after all," she said, crumpling the note and tossing it with a contemptuous gesture into her mother's lap. "why--isn't it from mr. popple?" mrs. spragg exclaimed unguardedly. "no--it isn't. what made you think i thought it was?" snapped her daughter; but the next instant she added, with an outbreak of childish disappointment: "it's only from mr. marvell's sister--at least she says she's his sister." mrs. spragg, with a puzzled frown, groped for her eye-glass among the jet fringes of her tightly-girded front. mrs. heeny's small blue eyes shot out sparks of curiosity. "marvell--what marvell is that?" the girl explained languidly: "a little fellow--i think mr. popple said his name was ralph"; while her mother continued: "undine met them both last night at that party downstairs. and from something mr. popple said to her about going to one of the new plays, she thought--" "how on earth do you know what i thought?" undine flashed back, her grey eyes darting warnings at her mother under their straight black brows. "why, you said you thought--" mrs. spragg began reproachfully; but mrs. heeny, heedless of their bickerings, was pursuing her own train of thought. "what popple? claud walsingham popple--the portrait painter?" "yes--i suppose so. he said he'd like to paint me. mabel lipscomb introduced him. i don't care if i never see him again," the girl said, bathed in angry pink. "do you know him, mrs. heeny?" mrs. spragg enquired. "i should say i did. i manicured him for his first society portrait--a full-length of mrs. harmon b. driscoll." mrs. heeny smiled indulgently on her hearers. "i know everybody. if they don't know me they ain't in it, and claud walsingham popple's in it. but he ain't nearly as in it," she continued judicially, "as ralph marvell--the little fellow, as you call him." undine spragg, at the word, swept round on the speaker with one of the quick turns that revealed her youthful flexibility. she was always doubling and twisting on herself, and every movement she made seemed to start at the nape of her neck, just below the lifted roll of reddish-gold hair, and flow without a break through her whole slim length to the tips of her fingers and the points of her slender restless feet. "why, do you know the marvells? are they stylish?" she asked. mrs. heeny gave the discouraged gesture of a pedagogue who has vainly striven to implant the rudiments of knowledge in a rebellious mind. "why, undine spragg, i've told you all about them time and again! his mother was a dagonet. they live with old urban dagonet down in washington square." to mrs. spragg this conveyed even less than to her daughter, "'way down there? why do they live with somebody else? haven't they got the means to have a home of their own?" undine's perceptions were more rapid, and she fixed her eyes searchingly on mrs. heeny. "do you mean to say mr. marvell's as swell as mr. popple?" "as swell? why, claud walsingham popple ain't in the same class with him!" the girl was upon her mother with a spring, snatching and smoothing out the crumpled note. "laura fairford--is that the sister's name?" "mrs. henley fairford; yes. what does she write about?" undine's face lit up as if a shaft of sunset had struck it through the triple-curtained windows of the stentorian. "she says she wants me to dine with her next wednesday. isn't it queer? why does she want me? she's never seen me!" her tone implied that she had long been accustomed to being "wanted" by those who had. mrs. heeny laughed. "he saw you, didn't he?" "who? ralph marvell? why, of course he did--mr. popple brought him to the party here last night." "well, there you are... when a young man in society wants to meet a girl again, he gets his sister to ask her." undine stared at her incredulously. "how queer! but they haven't all got sisters, have they? it must be fearfully poky for the ones that haven't." "they get their mothers--or their married friends," said mrs. heeny omnisciently. "married gentlemen?" enquired mrs. spragg, slightly shocked, but genuinely desirous of mastering her lesson. "mercy, no! married ladies." "but are there never any gentlemen present?" pursued mrs. spragg, feeling that if this were the case undine would certainly be disappointed. "present where? at their dinners? of course--mrs. fairford gives the smartest little dinners in town. there was an account of one she gave last week in this morning's town talk: i guess it's right here among my clippings." mrs. heeny, swooping down on her bag, drew from it a handful of newspaper cuttings, which she spread on her ample lap and proceeded to sort with a moistened forefinger. "here," she said, holding one of the slips at arm's length; and throwing back her head she read, in a slow unpunctuated chant: '"mrs. henley fairford gave another of her natty little dinners last wednesday as usual it was smart small and exclusive and there was much gnashing of teeth among the left-outs as madame olga loukowska gave some of her new steppe dances after dinner'--that's the french for new dance steps," mrs. heeny concluded, thrusting the documents back into her bag. "do you know mrs. fairford too?" undine asked eagerly; while mrs. spragg, impressed, but anxious for facts, pursued: "does she reside on fifth avenue?" "no, she has a little house in thirty-eighth street, down beyond park avenue." the ladies' faces drooped again, and the masseuse went on promptly: "but they're glad enough to have her in the big houses!--why, yes, i know her," she said, addressing herself to undine. "i mass'd her for a sprained ankle a couple of years ago. she's got a lovely manner, but no conversation. some of my patients converse exquisitely," mrs. heeny added with discrimination. undine was brooding over the note. "it is written to mother--mrs. abner e. spragg--i never saw anything so funny! 'will you allow your daughter to dine with me?' allow! is mrs. fairford peculiar?" "no--you are," said mrs. heeny bluntly. "don't you know it's the thing in the best society to pretend that girls can't do anything without their mothers' permission? you just remember that. undine. you mustn't accept invitations from gentlemen without you say you've got to ask your mother first." "mercy! but how'll mother know what to say?" "why, she'll say what you tell her to, of course. you'd better tell her you want to dine with mrs. fairford," mrs. heeny added humorously, as she gathered her waterproof together and stooped for her bag. "have i got to write the note, then?" mrs. spragg asked with rising agitation. mrs. heeny reflected. "why, no. i guess undine can write it as if it was from you. mrs. fairford don't know your writing." this was an evident relief to mrs. spragg, and as undine swept to her room with the note her mother sank back, murmuring plaintively: "oh, don't go yet, mrs. heeny. i haven't seen a human being all day, and i can't seem to find anything to say to that french maid." mrs. heeny looked at her hostess with friendly compassion. she was well aware that she was the only bright spot on mrs. spragg's horizon. since the spraggs, some two years previously, had moved from apex city to new york, they had made little progress in establishing relations with their new environment; and when, about four months earlier, mrs. spragg's doctor had called in mrs. heeny to minister professionally to his patient, he had done more for her spirit than for her body. mrs. heeny had had such "cases" before: she knew the rich helpless family, stranded in lonely splendour in a sumptuous west side hotel, with a father compelled to seek a semblance of social life at the hotel bar, and a mother deprived of even this contact with her kind, and reduced to illness by boredom and inactivity. poor mrs. spragg had done her own washing in her youth, but since her rising fortunes had made this occupation unsuitable she had sunk into the relative inertia which the ladies of apex city regarded as one of the prerogatives of affluence. at apex, however, she had belonged to a social club, and, until they moved to the mealey house, had been kept busy by the incessant struggle with domestic cares; whereas new york seemed to offer no field for any form of lady-like activity. she therefore took her exercise vicariously, with mrs. heeny's help; and mrs. heeny knew how to manipulate her imagination as well as her muscles. it was mrs. heeny who peopled the solitude of the long ghostly days with lively anecdotes of the van degens, the driscolls, the chauncey ellings and the other social potentates whose least doings mrs. spragg and undine had followed from afar in the apex papers, and who had come to seem so much more remote since only the width of the central park divided mother and daughter from their olympian portals. mrs. spragg had no ambition for herself--she seemed to have transferred her whole personality to her child--but she was passionately resolved that undine should have what she wanted, and she sometimes fancied that mrs. heeny, who crossed those sacred thresholds so familiarly, might some day gain admission for undine. "well--i'll stay a little mite longer if you want; and supposing i was to rub up your nails while we're talking? it'll be more sociable," the masseuse suggested, lifting her bag to the table and covering its shiny onyx surface with bottles and polishers. mrs. spragg consentingly slipped the rings from her small mottled hands. it was soothing to feel herself in mrs. heeny's grasp, and though she knew the attention would cost her three dollars she was secure in the sense that abner wouldn't mind. it had been clear to mrs. spragg, ever since their rather precipitate departure from apex city, that abner was resolved not to mind--resolved at any cost to "see through" the new york adventure. it seemed likely now that the cost would be considerable. they had lived in new york for two years without any social benefit to their daughter; and it was of course for that purpose that they had come. if, at the time, there had been other and more pressing reasons, they were such as mrs. spragg and her husband never touched on, even in the gilded privacy of their bedroom at the stentorian; and so completely had silence closed in on the subject that to mrs. spragg it had become non-existent: she really believed that, as abner put it, they had left apex because undine was too big for the place. she seemed as yet--poor child!--too small for new york: actually imperceptible to its heedless multitudes; and her mother trembled for the day when her invisibility should be borne in on her. mrs. spragg did not mind the long delay for herself--she had stores of lymphatic patience. but she had noticed lately that undine was beginning to be nervous, and there was nothing that undine's parents dreaded so much as her being nervous. mrs. spragg's maternal apprehensions unconsciously escaped in her next words. "i do hope she'll quiet down now," she murmured, feeling quieter herself as her hand sank into mrs. heeny's roomy palm. "who's that? undine?" "yes. she seemed so set on that mr. popple's coming round. from the way he acted last night she thought he'd be sure to come round this morning. she's so lonesome, poor child--i can't say as i blame her." "oh, he'll come round. things don't happen as quick as that in new york," said mrs. heeny, driving her nail-polisher cheeringly. mrs. spragg sighed again. "they don't appear to. they say new yorkers are always in a hurry; but i can't say as they've hurried much to make our acquaintance." mrs. heeny drew back to study the effect of her work. "you wait, mrs. spragg, you wait. if you go too fast you sometimes have to rip out the whole seam." "oh, that's so--that's so!" mrs. spragg exclaimed, with a tragic emphasis that made the masseuse glance up at her. "of course it's so. and it's more so in new york than anywhere. the wrong set's like fly-paper: once you're in it you can pull and pull, but you'll never get out of it again." undine's mother heaved another and more helpless sigh. "i wish you'd tell undine that, mrs. heeny." "oh, i guess undine's all right. a girl like her can afford to wait. and if young marvell's really taken with her she'll have the run of the place in no time." this solacing thought enabled mrs. spragg to yield herself unreservedly to mrs. heeny's ministrations, which were prolonged for a happy confidential hour; and she had just bidden the masseuse good-bye, and was restoring the rings to her fingers, when the door opened to admit her husband. mr. spragg came in silently, setting his high hat down on the centre-table, and laying his overcoat across one of the gilt chairs. he was tallish, grey-bearded and somewhat stooping, with the slack figure of the sedentary man who would be stout if he were not dyspeptic; and his cautious grey eyes with pouch-like underlids had straight black brows like his daughter's. his thin hair was worn a little too long over his coat collar, and a masonic emblem dangled from the heavy gold chain which crossed his crumpled black waistcoat. he stood still in the middle of the room, casting a slow pioneering glance about its gilded void; then he said gently: "well, mother?" mrs. spragg remained seated, but her eyes dwelt on him affectionately. "undine's been asked out to a dinner-party; and mrs. heeny says it's to one of the first families. it's the sister of one of the gentlemen that mabel lipscomb introduced her to last night." there was a mild triumph in her tone, for it was owing to her insistence and undine's that mr. spragg had been induced to give up the house they had bought in west end avenue, and move with his family to the stentorian. undine had early decided that they could not hope to get on while they "kept house"--all the fashionable people she knew either boarded or lived in hotels. mrs. spragg was easily induced to take the same view, but mr. spragg had resisted, being at the moment unable either to sell his house or to let it as advantageously as he had hoped. after the move was made it seemed for a time as though he had been right, and the first social steps would be as difficult to make in a hotel as in one's own house; and mrs. spragg was therefore eager to have him know that undine really owed her first invitation to a meeting under the roof of the stentorian. "you see we were right to come here, abner," she added, and he absently rejoined: "i guess you two always manage to be right." but his face remained unsmiling, and instead of seating himself and lighting his cigar, as he usually did before dinner, he took two or three aimless turns about the room, and then paused in front of his wife. "what's the matter--anything wrong down town?" she asked, her eyes reflecting his anxiety. mrs. spragg's knowledge of what went on "down town" was of the most elementary kind, but her husband's face was the barometer in which she had long been accustomed to read the leave to go on unrestrictedly, or the warning to pause and abstain till the coming storm should be weathered. he shook his head. "n--no. nothing worse than what i can see to, if you and undine will go steady for a while." he paused and looked across the room at his daughter's door. "where is she--out?" "i guess she's in her room, going over her dresses with that french maid. i don't know as she's got anything fit to wear to that dinner," mrs. spragg added in a tentative murmur. mr. spragg smiled at last. "well--i guess she will have," he said prophetically. he glanced again at his daughter's door, as if to make sure of its being shut; then, standing close before his wife, he lowered his voice to say: "i saw elmer moffatt down town to-day." "oh, abner!" a wave of almost physical apprehension passed over mrs. spragg. her jewelled hands trembled in her black brocade lap, and the pulpy curves of her face collapsed as if it were a pricked balloon. "oh, abner," she moaned again, her eyes also on her daughter's door. mr. spragg's black eyebrows gathered in an angry frown, but it was evident that his anger was not against his wife. "what's the good of oh abner-ing? elmer moffatt's nothing to us--no more'n if we never laid eyes on him." "no--i know it; but what's he doing here? did you speak to him?" she faltered. he slipped his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. "no--i guess elmer and i are pretty well talked out." mrs. spragg took up her moan. "don't you tell her you saw him, abner." "i'll do as you say; but she may meet him herself." "oh, i guess not--not in this new set she's going with! don't tell her anyhow." he turned away, feeling for one of the cigars which he always carried loose in his pocket; and his wife, rising, stole after him, and laid her hand on his arm. "he can't do anything to her, can he?" "do anything to her?" he swung about furiously. "i'd like to see him touch her--that's all!" ii undine's white and gold bedroom, with sea-green panels and old rose carpet, looked along seventy-second street toward the leafless tree-tops of the central park. she went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed eastward down the long brownstone perspective. beyond the park lay fifth avenue--and fifth avenue was where she wanted to be! she turned back into the room, and going to her writing-table laid mrs. fairford's note before her, and began to study it minutely. she had read in the "boudoir chat" of one of the sunday papers that the smartest women were using the new pigeon-blood notepaper with white ink; and rather against her mother's advice she had ordered a large supply, with her monogram in silver. it was a disappointment, therefore, to find that mrs. fairford wrote on the old-fashioned white sheet, without even a monogram--simply her address and telephone number. it gave undine rather a poor opinion of mrs. fairford's social standing, and for a moment she thought with considerable satisfaction of answering the note on her pigeon-blood paper. then she remembered mrs. heeny's emphatic commendation of mrs. fairford, and her pen wavered. what if white paper were really newer than pigeon blood? it might be more stylish, anyhow. well, she didn't care if mrs. fairford didn't like red paper--she did! and she wasn't going to truckle to any woman who lived in a small house down beyond park avenue... undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. she wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could not help modelling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses. she hesitated a moment longer, and then took from the drawer a plain sheet with the hotel address. it was amusing to write the note in her mother's name--she giggled as she formed the phrase "i shall be happy to permit my daughter to take dinner with you" ("take dinner" seemed more elegant than mrs. fairford's "dine")--but when she came to the signature she was met by a new difficulty. mrs. fairford had signed herself "laura fairford"--just as one school-girl would write to another. but could this be a proper model for mrs. spragg? undine could not tolerate the thought of her mother's abasing herself to a denizen of regions beyond park avenue, and she resolutely formed the signature: "sincerely, mrs. abner e. spragg." then uncertainty overcame her, and she re-wrote her note and copied mrs. fairford's formula: "yours sincerely, leota b. spragg." but this struck her as an odd juxtaposition of formality and freedom, and she made a third attempt: "yours with love, leota b. spragg." this, however, seemed excessive, as the ladies had never met; and after several other experiments she finally decided on a compromise, and ended the note: "yours sincerely, mrs. leota b. spragg." that might be conventional. undine reflected, but it was certainly correct. this point settled, she flung open her door, calling imperiously down the passage: "celeste!" and adding, as the french maid appeared: "i want to look over all my dinner-dresses." considering the extent of miss spragg's wardrobe her dinner-dresses were not many. she had ordered a number the year before but, vexed at her lack of use for them, had tossed them over impatiently to the maid. since then, indeed, she and mrs. spragg had succumbed to the abstract pleasure of buying two or three more, simply because they were too exquisite and undine looked too lovely in them; but she had grown tired of these also--tired of seeing them hang unworn in her wardrobe, like so many derisive points of interrogation. and now, as celeste spread them out on the bed, they seemed disgustingly common-place, and as familiar as if she had danced them to shreds. nevertheless, she yielded to the maid's persuasions and tried them on. the first and second did not gain by prolonged inspection: they looked old-fashioned already. "it's something about the sleeves," undine grumbled as she threw them aside. the third was certainly the prettiest; but then it was the one she had worn at the hotel dance the night before and the impossibility of wearing it again within the week was too obvious for discussion. yet she enjoyed looking at herself in it, for it reminded her of her sparkling passages with claud walsingham popple, and her quieter but more fruitful talk with his little friend--the young man she had hardly noticed. "you can go, celeste--i'll take off the dress myself," she said: and when celeste had passed out, laden with discarded finery. undine bolted her door, dragged the tall pier-glass forward and, rummaging in a drawer for fan and gloves, swept to a seat before the mirror with the air of a lady arriving at an evening party. celeste, before leaving, had drawn down the blinds and turned on the electric light, and the white and gold room, with its blazing wall-brackets, formed a sufficiently brilliant background to carry out the illusion. so untempered a glare would have been destructive to all half-tones and subtleties of modelling; but undine's beauty was as vivid, and almost as crude, as the brightness suffusing it. her black brows, her reddish-tawny hair and the pure red and white of her complexion defied the searching decomposing radiance: she might have been some fabled creature whose home was in a beam of light. undine, as a child, had taken but a lukewarm interest in the diversions of her playmates. even in the early days when she had lived with her parents in a ragged outskirt of apex, and hung on the fence with indiana frusk, the freckled daughter of the plumber "across the way," she had cared little for dolls or skipping-ropes, and still less for the riotous games in which the loud indiana played atalanta to all the boyhood of the quarter. already undine's chief delight was to "dress up" in her mother's sunday skirt and "play lady" before the wardrobe mirror. the taste had outlasted childhood, and she still practised the same secret pantomime, gliding in, settling her skirts, swaying her fan, moving her lips in soundless talk and laughter; but lately she had shrunk from everything that reminded her of her baffled social yearnings. now, however, she could yield without afterthought to the joy of dramatizing her beauty. within a few days she would be enacting the scene she was now mimicking; and it amused her to see in advance just what impression she would produce on mrs. fairford's guests. for a while she carried on her chat with an imaginary circle of admirers, twisting this way and that, fanning, fidgeting, twitching at her draperies, as she did in real life when people were noticing her. her incessant movements were not the result of shyness: she thought it the correct thing to be animated in society, and noise and restlessness were her only notion of vivacity. she therefore watched herself approvingly, admiring the light on her hair, the flash of teeth between her smiling lips, the pure shadows of her throat and shoulders as she passed from one attitude to another. only one fact disturbed her: there was a hint of too much fulness in the curves of her neck and in the spring of her hips. she was tall enough to carry off a little extra weight, but excessive slimness was the fashion, and she shuddered at the thought that she might some day deviate from the perpendicular. presently she ceased to twist and sparkle at her image, and sinking into her chair gave herself up to retrospection. she was vexed, in looking back, to think how little notice she had taken of young marvell, who turned out to be so much less negligible than his brilliant friend. she remembered thinking him rather shy, less accustomed to society; and though in his quiet deprecating way he had said one or two droll things he lacked mr. popple's masterly manner, his domineering yet caressing address. when mr. popple had fixed his black eyes on undine, and murmured something "artistic" about the colour of her hair, she had thrilled to the depths of her being. even now it seemed incredible that he should not turn out to be more distinguished than young marvell: he seemed so much more in the key of the world she read about in the sunday papers--the dazzling auriferous world of the van degens, the driscolls and their peers. she was roused by the sound in the hall of her mother's last words to mrs. heeny. undine waited till their adieux were over; then, opening her door, she seized the astonished masseuse and dragged her into the room. mrs. heeny gazed in admiration at the luminous apparition in whose hold she found herself. "mercy, undine--you do look stunning! are you trying on your dress for mrs. fairford's?" "yes--no--this is only an old thing." the girl's eyes glittered under their black brows. "mrs. heeny, you've got to tell me the truth--are they as swell as you said?" "who? the fairfords and marvells? if they ain't swell enough for you. undine spragg, you'd better go right over to the court of england!" undine straightened herself. "i want the best. are they as swell as the driscolls and van degens?" mrs. heeny sounded a scornful laugh. "look at here, now, you unbelieving girl! as sure as i'm standing here before you, i've seen mrs. harmon b. driscoll of fifth avenue laying in her pink velvet bed with honiton lace sheets on it, and crying her eyes out because she couldn't get asked to one of mrs. paul marvell's musicals. she'd never 'a dreamt of being asked to a dinner there! not all of her money couldn't 'a bought her that--and she knows it!" undine stood for a moment with bright cheeks and parted lips; then she flung her soft arms about the masseuse. "oh mrs. heeny--you're lovely to me!" she breathed, her lips on mrs. heeny's rusty veil; while the latter, freeing herself with a good-natured laugh, said as she turned away: "go steady. undine, and you'll get anywheres." go steady, undine! yes, that was the advice she needed. sometimes, in her dark moods, she blamed her parents for not having given it to her. she was so young... and they had told her so little! as she looked back she shuddered at some of her escapes. even since they had come to new york she had been on the verge of one or two perilous adventures, and there had been a moment during their first winter when she had actually engaged herself to the handsome austrian riding-master who accompanied her in the park. he had carelessly shown her a card-case with a coronet, and had confided in her that he had been forced to resign from a crack cavalry regiment for fighting a duel about a countess; and as a result of these confidences she had pledged herself to him, and bestowed on him her pink pearl ring in exchange for one of twisted silver, which he said the countess had given him on her deathbed with the request that he should never take it off till he met a woman more beautiful than herself. soon afterward, luckily. undine had run across mabel lipscomb, whom she had known at a middle western boarding-school as mabel blitch. miss blitch occupied a position of distinction as the only new york girl at the school, and for a time there had been sharp rivalry for her favour between undine and indiana frusk, whose parents had somehow contrived--for one term--to obtain her admission to the same establishment. in spite of indiana's unscrupulous methods, and of a certain violent way she had of capturing attention, the victory remained with undine, whom mabel pronounced more refined; and the discomfited indiana, denouncing her schoolmates as a "bunch of mushes," had disappeared forever from the scene of her defeat. since then mabel had returned to new york and married a stock-broker; and undine's first steps in social enlightenment dated from the day when she had met mrs. harry lipscomb, and been again taken under her wing. harry lipscomb had insisted on investigating the riding-master's record, and had found that his real name was aaronson, and that he had left cracow under a charge of swindling servant-girls out of their savings; in the light of which discoveries undine noticed for the first time that his lips were too red and that his hair was pommaded. that was one of the episodes that sickened her as she looked back, and made her resolve once more to trust less to her impulses--especially in the matter of giving away rings. in the interval, however, she felt she had learned a good deal, especially since, by mabel lipscomb's advice, the spraggs had moved to the stentorian, where that lady was herself established. there was nothing of the monopolist about mabel, and she lost no time in making undine free of the stentorian group and its affiliated branches: a society addicted to "days," and linked together by membership in countless clubs, mundane, cultural or "earnest." mabel took undine to the days, and introduced her as a "guest" to the club-meetings, where she was supported by the presence of many other guests--"my friend miss stager, of phalanx, georgia," or (if the lady were literary) simply "my friend ora prance chettle of nebraska--you know what mrs. chettle stands for." some of these reunions took place in the lofty hotels moored like a sonorously named fleet of battle-ships along the upper reaches of the west side: the olympian, the incandescent, the ormolu; while others, perhaps the more exclusive, were held in the equally lofty but more romantically styled apartment-houses: the parthenon, the tintern abbey or the lido. undine's preference was for the worldly parties, at which games were played, and she returned home laden with prizes in dutch silver; but she was duly impressed by the debating clubs, where ladies of local distinction addressed the company from an improvised platform, or the members argued on subjects of such imperishable interest as: "what is charm?" or "the problem-novel" after which pink lemonade and rainbow sandwiches were consumed amid heated discussion of the "ethical aspect" of the question. it was all very novel and interesting, and at first undine envied mabel lipscomb for having made herself a place in such circles; but in time she began to despise her for being content to remain there. for it did not take undine long to learn that introduction to mabel's "set" had brought her no nearer to fifth avenue. even in apex, undine's tender imagination had been nurtured on the feats and gestures of fifth avenue. she knew all of new york's golden aristocracy by name, and the lineaments of its most distinguished scions had been made familiar by passionate poring over the daily press. in mabel's world she sought in vain for the originals, and only now and then caught a tantalizing glimpse of one of their familiars: as when claud walsingham popple, engaged on the portrait of a lady whom the lipscombs described as "the wife of a steel magnet," felt it his duty to attend one of his client's teas, where it became mabel's privilege to make his acquaintance and to name to him her friend miss spragg. unsuspected social gradations were thus revealed to the attentive undine, but she was beginning to think that her sad proficiency had been acquired in vain when her hopes were revived by the appearance of mr. popple and his friend at the stentorian dance. she thought she had learned enough to be safe from any risk of repeating the hideous aaronson mistake; yet she now saw she had blundered again in distinguishing claud walsingham popple while she almost snubbed his more retiring companion. it was all very puzzling, and her perplexity had been farther increased by mrs. heeny's tale of the great mrs. harmon b. driscoll's despair. hitherto undine had imagined that the driscoll and van degen clans and their allies held undisputed suzerainty over new york society. mabel lipscomb thought so too, and was given to bragging of her acquaintance with a mrs. spoff, who was merely a second cousin of mrs. harmon b. driscoll's. yet here was she. undine spragg of apex, about to be introduced into an inner circle to which driscolls and van degens had laid siege in vain! it was enough to make her feel a little dizzy with her triumph--to work her up into that state of perilous self-confidence in which all her worst follies had been committed. she stood up and, going close to the glass, examined the reflection of her bright eyes and glowing cheeks. this time her fears were superfluous: there were to be no more mistakes and no more follies now! she was going to know the right people at last--she was going to get what she wanted! as she stood there, smiling at her happy image, she heard her father's voice in the room beyond, and instantly began to tear off her dress, strip the long gloves from her arms and unpin the rose in her hair. tossing the fallen finery aside, she slipped on a dressing-gown and opened the door into the drawing-room. mr. spragg was standing near her mother, who sat in a drooping attitude, her head sunk on her breast, as she did when she had one of her "turns." he looked up abruptly as undine entered. "father--has mother told you? mrs. fairford has asked me to dine. she's mrs. paul marvell's daughter--mrs. marvell was a dagonet--and they're sweller than anybody; they won't know the driscolls and van degens!" mr. spragg surveyed her with humorous fondness. "that so? what do they want to know you for, i wonder?" he jeered. "can't imagine--unless they think i'll introduce you!" she jeered back in the same key, her arms around his stooping shoulders, her shining hair against his cheek. "well--and are you going to? have you accepted?" he took up her joke as she held him pinioned; while mrs. spragg, behind them, stirred in her seat with a little moan. undine threw back her head, plunging her eyes in his, and pressing so close that to his tired elderly sight her face was a mere bright blur. "i want to awfully," she declared, "but i haven't got a single thing to wear." mrs. spragg, at this, moaned more audibly. "undine, i wouldn't ask father to buy any more clothes right on top of those last bills." "i ain't on top of those last bills yet--i'm way down under them," mr. spragg interrupted, raising his hands to imprison his daughter's slender wrists. "oh, well--if you want me to look like a scarecrow, and not get asked again, i've got a dress that'll do perfectly," undine threatened, in a tone between banter and vexation. mr. spragg held her away at arm's length, a smile drawing up the loose wrinkles about his eyes. "well, that kind of dress might come in mighty handy on some occasions; so i guess you'd better hold on to it for future use, and go and select another for this fairford dinner," he said; and before he could finish he was in her arms again, and she was smothering his last word in little cries and kisses. iii though she would not for the world have owned it to her parents, undine was disappointed in the fairford dinner. the house, to begin with, was small and rather shabby. there was no gilding, no lavish diffusion of light: the room they sat in after dinner, with its green-shaded lamps making faint pools of brightness, and its rows of books from floor to ceiling, reminded undine of the old circulating library at apex, before the new marble building was put up. then, instead of a gas-log, or a polished grate with electric bulbs behind ruby glass, there was an old-fashioned wood-fire, like pictures of "back to the farm for christmas"; and when the logs fell forward mrs. pairford or her brother had to jump up to push them in place, and the ashes scattered over the hearth untidily. the dinner too was disappointing. undine was too young to take note of culinary details, but she had expected to view the company through a bower of orchids and eat pretty-coloured entrees in ruffled papers. instead, there was only a low centre-dish of ferns, and plain roasted and broiled meat that one could recognize--as if they'd been dyspeptics on a diet! with all the hints in the sunday papers, she thought it dull of mrs. fairford not to have picked up something newer; and as the evening progressed she began to suspect that it wasn't a real "dinner party," and that they had just asked her in to share what they had when they were alone. but a glance about the table convinced her that mrs. fairford could not have meant to treat her other guests so lightly. they were only eight in number, but one was no less a person than young mrs. peter van degen--the one who had been a dagonet--and the consideration which this young lady, herself one of the choicest ornaments of the society column, displayed toward the rest of the company, convinced undine that they must be more important than they looked. she liked mrs. fairford, a small incisive woman, with a big nose and good teeth revealed by frequent smiles. in her dowdy black and antiquated ornaments she was not what undine would have called "stylish"; but she had a droll kind way which reminded the girl of her father's manner when he was not tired or worried about money. one of the other ladies, having white hair, did not long arrest undine's attention; and the fourth, a girl like herself, who was introduced as miss harriet ray, she dismissed at a glance as plain and wearing a last year's "model." the men, too, were less striking than she had hoped. she had not expected much of mr. fairford, since married men were intrinsically uninteresting, and his baldness and grey moustache seemed naturally to relegate him to the background; but she had looked for some brilliant youths of her own age--in her inmost heart she had looked for mr. popple. he was not there, however, and of the other men one, whom they called mr. bowen, was hopelessly elderly--she supposed he was the husband of the white-haired lady--and the other two, who seemed to be friends of young marvell's, were both lacking in claud walsingham's dash. undine sat between mr. bowen and young marvell, who struck her as very "sweet" (it was her word for friendliness), but even shyer than at the hotel dance. yet she was not sure if he were shy, or if his quietness were only a new kind of self-possession which expressed itself negatively instead of aggressively. small, well-knit, fair, he sat stroking his slight blond moustache and looking at her with kindly, almost tender eyes; but he left it to his sister and the others to draw her out and fit her into the pattern. mrs. fairford talked so well that the girl wondered why mrs. heeny had found her lacking in conversation. but though undine thought silent people awkward she was not easily impressed by verbal fluency. all the ladies in apex city were more voluble than mrs. fairford, and had a larger vocabulary: the difference was that with mrs. fairford conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. she kept drawing in the others, giving each a turn, beating time for them with her smile, and somehow harmonizing and linking together what they said. she took particular pains to give undine her due part in the performance; but the girl's expansive impulses were always balanced by odd reactions of mistrust, and to-night the latter prevailed. she meant to watch and listen without letting herself go, and she sat very straight and pink, answering promptly but briefly, with the nervous laugh that punctuated all her phrases--saying "i don't care if i do" when her host asked her to try some grapes, and "i wouldn't wonder" when she thought any one was trying to astonish her. this state of lucidity enabled her to take note of all that was being said. the talk ran more on general questions, and less on people, than she was used to; but though the allusions to pictures and books escaped her, she caught and stored up every personal reference, and the pink in her cheeks deepened at a random mention of mr. popple. "yes--he's doing me," mrs. peter van degen was saying, in her slightly drawling voice. "he's doing everybody this year, you know--" "as if that were a reason!" undine heard mrs. fairford breathe to mr. bowen; who replied, at the same pitch: "it's a van degen reason, isn't it?"--to which mrs. fairford shrugged assentingly. "that delightful popple--he paints so exactly as he talks!" the white-haired lady took it up. "all his portraits seem to proclaim what a gentleman he is, and how he fascinates women! they're not pictures of mrs. or miss so-and-so, but simply of the impression popple thinks he's made on them." mrs. fairford smiled. "i've sometimes thought," she mused, "that mr. popple must be the only gentleman i know; at least he's the only man who has ever told me he was a gentleman--and mr. popple never fails to mention it." undine's ear was too well attuned to the national note of irony for her not to perceive that her companions were making sport of the painter. she winced at their banter as if it had been at her own expense, yet it gave her a dizzy sense of being at last in the very stronghold of fashion. her attention was diverted by hearing mrs. van degen, under cover of the general laugh, say in a low tone to young marvell: "i thought you liked his things, or i wouldn't have had him paint me." something in her tone made all undine's perceptions bristle, and she strained her ears for the answer. "i think he'll do you capitally--you must let me come and see some day soon." marvell's tone was always so light, so unemphasized, that she could not be sure of its being as indifferent as it sounded. she looked down at the fruit on her plate and shot a side-glance through her lashes at mrs. peter van degen. mrs. van degen was neither beautiful nor imposing: just a dark girlish-looking creature with plaintive eyes and a fidgety frequent laugh. but she was more elaborately dressed and jewelled than the other ladies, and her elegance and her restlessness made her seem less alien to undine. she had turned on marvell a gaze at once pleading and possessive; but whether betokening merely an inherited intimacy (undine had noticed that they were all more or less cousins) or a more personal feeling, her observer was unable to decide; just as the tone of the young man's reply might have expressed the open avowal of good-fellowship or the disguise of a different sentiment. all was blurred and puzzling to the girl in this world of half-lights, half-tones, eliminations and abbreviations; and she felt a violent longing to brush away the cobwebs and assert herself as the dominant figure of the scene. yet in the drawing-room, with the ladies, where mrs. fairford came and sat by her, the spirit of caution once more prevailed. she wanted to be noticed but she dreaded to be patronized, and here again her hostess's gradations of tone were confusing. mrs. fairford made no tactless allusions to her being a newcomer in new york--there was nothing as bitter to the girl as that--but her questions as to what pictures had interested undine at the various exhibitions of the moment, and which of the new books she had read, were almost as open to suspicion, since they had to be answered in the negative. undine did not even know that there were any pictures to be seen, much less that "people" went to see them; and she had read no new book but "when the kissing had to stop," of which mrs. fairford seemed not to have heard. on the theatre they were equally at odds, for while undine had seen "oolaloo" fourteen times, and was "wild" about ned norris in "the soda-water fountain," she had not heard of the famous berlin comedians who were performing shakespeare at the german theatre, and knew only by name the clever american actress who was trying to give "repertory" plays with a good stock company. the conversation was revived for a moment by her recalling that she had seen sarah bernhard in a play she called "leg-long," and another which she pronounced "fade"; but even this did not carry them far, as she had forgotten what both plays were about and had found the actress a good deal older than she expected. matters were not improved by the return of the men from the smoking-room. henley fairford replaced his wife at undine's side; and since it was unheard-of at apex for a married man to force his society on a young girl, she inferred that the others didn't care to talk to her, and that her host and hostess were in league to take her off their hands. this discovery resulted in her holding her vivid head very high, and answering "i couldn't really say," or "is that so?" to all mr. fairford's ventures; and as these were neither numerous nor striking it was a relief to both when the rising of the elderly lady gave the signal for departure. in the hall, where young marvell had managed to precede her. undine found mrs. van degen putting on her cloak. as she gathered it about her she laid her hand on marvell's arm. "ralphie, dear, you'll come to the opera with me on friday? we'll dine together first--peter's got a club dinner." they exchanged what seemed a smile of intelligence, and undine heard the young man accept. then mrs. van degen turned to her. "good-bye, miss spragg. i hope you'll come--" "--to dine with me too?" that must be what she was going to say, and undine's heart gave a bound. "--to see me some afternoon," mrs. van degen ended, going down the steps to her motor, at the door of which a much-furred footman waited with more furs on his arm. undine's face burned as she turned to receive her cloak. when she had drawn it on with haughty deliberation she found marvell at her side, in hat and overcoat, and her heart gave a higher bound. he was going to "escort" her home, of course! this brilliant youth--she felt now that he was brilliant--who dined alone with married women, whom the "van degen set" called "ralphie, dear," had really no eyes for any one but herself; and at the thought her lost self-complacency flowed back warm through her veins. the street was coated with ice, and she had a delicious moment descending the steps on marvell's arm, and holding it fast while they waited for her cab to come up; but when he had helped her in he closed the door and held his hand out over the lowered window. "good-bye," he said, smiling; and she could not help the break of pride in her voice, as she faltered out stupidly, from the depths of her disillusionment: "oh--good-bye." iv "father, you've got to take a box for me at the opera next friday." from the tone of her voice undine's parents knew at once that she was "nervous." they had counted a great deal on the fairford dinner as a means of tranquillization, and it was a blow to detect signs of the opposite result when, late the next morning, their daughter came dawdling into the sodden splendour of the stentorian breakfast-room. the symptoms of undine's nervousness were unmistakable to mr. and mrs. spragg. they could read the approaching storm in the darkening of her eyes from limpid grey to slate-colour, and in the way her straight black brows met above them and the red curves of her lips narrowed to a parallel line below. mr. spragg, having finished the last course of his heterogeneous meal, was adjusting his gold eye-glasses for a glance at the paper when undine trailed down the sumptuous stuffy room, where coffee-fumes hung perpetually under the emblazoned ceiling and the spongy carpet might have absorbed a year's crumbs without a sweeping. about them sat other pallid families, richly dressed, and silently eating their way through a bill-of-fare which seemed to have ransacked the globe for gastronomic incompatibilities; and in the middle of the room a knot of equally pallid waiters, engaged in languid conversation, turned their backs by common consent on the persons they were supposed to serve. undine, who rose too late to share the family breakfast, usually had her chocolate brought to her in bed by celeste, after the manner described in the articles on "a society woman's day" which were appearing in boudoir chat. her mere appearance in the restaurant therefore prepared her parents for those symptoms of excessive tension which a nearer inspection confirmed, and mr. spragg folded his paper and hooked his glasses to his waistcoat with the air of a man who prefers to know the worst and have it over. "an opera box!" faltered mrs. spragg, pushing aside the bananas and cream with which she had been trying to tempt an appetite too languid for fried liver or crab mayonnaise. "a parterre box," undine corrected, ignoring the exclamation, and continuing to address herself to her father. "friday's the stylish night, and that new tenor's going to sing again in 'cavaleeria,'" she condescended to explain. "that so?" mr. spragg thrust his hands into his waistcoat pockets, and began to tilt his chair till he remembered there was no wall to meet it. he regained his balance and said: "wouldn't a couple of good orchestra seats do you?" "no; they wouldn't," undine answered with a darkening brow. he looked at her humorously. "you invited the whole dinner-party, i suppose?" "no--no one." "going all alone in a box?" she was disdainfully silent. "i don't s'pose you're thinking of taking mother and me?" this was so obviously comic that they all laughed--even mrs. spragg--and undine went on more mildly: "i want to do something for mabel lipscomb: make some return. she's always taking me 'round, and i've never done a thing for her--not a single thing." this appeal to the national belief in the duty of reciprocal "treating" could not fail of its effect, and mrs. spragg murmured: "she never has, abner,"--but mr. spragg's brow remained unrelenting. "do you know what a box costs?" "no; but i s'pose you do," undine returned with unconscious flippancy. "i do. that's the trouble. why won't seats do you?" "mabel could buy seats for herself." "that's so," interpolated mrs. spragg--always the first to succumb to her daughter's arguments. "well, i guess i can't buy a box for her." undine's face gloomed more deeply. she sat silent, her chocolate thickening in the cup, while one hand, almost as much beringed as her mother's, drummed on the crumpled table-cloth. "we might as well go straight back to apex," she breathed at last between her teeth. mrs. spragg cast a frightened glance at her husband. these struggles between two resolute wills always brought on her palpitations, and she wished she had her phial of digitalis with her. "a parterre box costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars a night," said mr. spragg, transferring a toothpick to his waistcoat pocket. "i only want it once." he looked at her with a quizzical puckering of his crows'-feet. "you only want most things once. undine." it was an observation they had made in her earliest youth--undine never wanted anything long, but she wanted it "right off." and until she got it the house was uninhabitable. "i'd a good deal rather have a box for the season," she rejoined, and he saw the opening he had given her. she had two ways of getting things out of him against his principles; the tender wheedling way, and the harsh-lipped and cold--and he did not know which he dreaded most. as a child they had admired her assertiveness, had made apex ring with their boasts of it; but it had long since cowed mrs. spragg, and it was beginning to frighten her husband. "fact is, undie," he said, weakening, "i'm a little mite strapped just this month." her eyes grew absent-minded, as they always did when he alluded to business. that was man's province; and what did men go "down town" for but to bring back the spoils to their women? she rose abruptly, leaving her parents seated, and said, more to herself than the others: "think i'll go for a ride." "oh, undine!" fluttered mrs. spragg. she always had palpitations when undine rode, and since the aaronson episode her fears were not confined to what the horse might do. "why don't you take your mother out shopping a little?" mr. spragg suggested, conscious of the limitation of his resources. undine made no answer, but swept down the room, and out of the door ahead of her mother, with scorn and anger in every line of her arrogant young back. mrs. spragg tottered meekly after her, and mr. spragg lounged out into the marble hall to buy a cigar before taking the subway to his office. undine went for a ride, not because she felt particularly disposed for the exercise, but because she wished to discipline her mother. she was almost sure she would get her opera box, but she did not see why she should have to struggle for her rights, and she was especially annoyed with mrs. spragg for seconding her so half-heartedly. if she and her mother did not hold together in such crises she would have twice the work to do. undine hated "scenes": she was essentially peace-loving, and would have preferred to live on terms of unbroken harmony with her parents. but she could not help it if they were unreasonable. ever since she could remember there had been "fusses" about money; yet she and her mother had always got what they wanted, apparently without lasting detriment to the family fortunes. it was therefore natural to conclude that there were ample funds to draw upon, and that mr. spragg's occasional resistances were merely due to an imperfect understanding of what constituted the necessities of life. when she returned from her ride mrs. spragg received her as if she had come back from the dead. it was absurd, of course; but undine was inured to the absurdity of parents. "has father telephoned?" was her first brief question. "no, he hasn't yet." undine's lips tightened, but she proceeded deliberately with the removal of her habit. "you'd think i'd asked him to buy me the opera house, the way he's acting over a single box," she muttered, flinging aside her smartly-fitting coat. mrs. spragg received the flying garment and smoothed it out on the bed. neither of the ladies could "bear" to have their maid about when they were at their toilet, and mrs. spragg had always performed these ancillary services for undine. "you know, undie, father hasn't always got the money in his pocket, and the bills have been pretty heavy lately. father was a rich man for apex, but that's different from being rich in new york." she stood before her daughter, looking down on her appealingly. undine, who had seated herself while she detached her stock and waistcoat, raised her head with an impatient jerk. "why on earth did we ever leave apex, then?" she exclaimed. mrs. spragg's eyes usually dropped before her daughter's inclement gaze; but on this occasion they held their own with a kind of awe-struck courage, till undine's lids sank above her flushing cheeks. she sprang up, tugging at the waistband of her habit, while mrs. spragg, relapsing from temerity to meekness, hovered about her with obstructive zeal. "if you'd only just let go of my skirt, mother--i can unhook it twice as quick myself." mrs. spragg drew back, understanding that her presence was no longer wanted. but on the threshold she paused, as if overruled by a stronger influence, and said, with a last look at her daughter: "you didn't meet anybody when you were out, did you, undie?" undine's brows drew together: she was struggling with her long patent-leather boot. "meet anybody? do you mean anybody i know? i don't know anybody--i never shall, if father can't afford to let me go round with people!" the boot was off with a wrench, and she flung it violently across the old-rose carpet, while mrs. spragg, turning away to hide a look of inexpressible relief, slipped discreetly from the room. the day wore on. undine had meant to go down and tell mabel lipscomb about the fairford dinner, but its aftertaste was flat on her lips. what would it lead to? nothing, as far as she could see. ralph marvell had not even asked when he might call; and she was ashamed to confess to mabel that he had not driven home with her. suddenly she decided that she would go and see the pictures of which mrs. fairford had spoken. perhaps she might meet some of the people she had seen at dinner--from their talk one might have imagined that they spent their lives in picture-galleries. the thought reanimated her, and she put on her handsomest furs, and a hat for which she had not yet dared present the bill to her father. it was the fashionable hour in fifth avenue, but undine knew none of the ladies who were bowing to each other from interlocked motors. she had to content herself with the gaze of admiration which she left in her wake along the pavement; but she was used to the homage of the streets and her vanity craved a choicer fare. when she reached the art gallery which mrs. fairford had named she found it even more crowded than fifth avenue; and some of the ladies and gentlemen wedged before the pictures had the "look" which signified social consecration. as undine made her way among them, she was aware of attracting almost as much notice as in the street, and she flung herself into rapt attitudes before the canvases, scribbling notes in the catalogue in imitation of a tall girl in sables, while ripples of self-consciousness played up and down her watchful back. presently her attention was drawn to a lady in black who was examining the pictures through a tortoise-shell eye-glass adorned with diamonds and hanging from a long pearl chain. undine was instantly struck by the opportunities which this toy presented for graceful wrist movements and supercilious turns of the head. it seemed suddenly plebeian and promiscuous to look at the world with a naked eye, and all her floating desires were merged in the wish for a jewelled eye-glass and chain. so violent was this wish that, drawn on in the wake of the owner of the eye-glass, she found herself inadvertently bumping against a stout tight-coated young man whose impact knocked her catalogue from her hand. as the young man picked the catalogue up and held it out to her she noticed that his bulging eyes and queer retreating face were suffused with a glow of admiration. he was so unpleasant-looking that she would have resented his homage had not his odd physiognomy called up some vaguely agreeable association of ideas. where had she seen before this grotesque saurian head, with eye-lids as thick as lips and lips as thick as ear-lobes? it fled before her down a perspective of innumerable newspaper portraits, all, like the original before her, tightly coated, with a huge pearl transfixing a silken tie.... "oh, thank you," she murmured, all gleams and graces, while he stood hat in hand, saying sociably: "the crowd's simply awful, isn't it?" at the same moment the lady of the eye-glass drifted closer, and with a tap of her wand, and a careless "peter, look at this," swept him to the other side of the gallery. undine's heart was beating excitedly, for as he turned away she had identified him. peter van degen--who could he be but young peter van degen, the son of the great banker, thurber van degen, the husband of ralph marvell's cousin, the hero of "sunday supplements," the captor of blue ribbons at horse-shows, of gold cups at motor races, the owner of winning race-horses and "crack" sloops: the supreme exponent, in short, of those crowning arts that made all life seem stale and unprofitable outside the magic ring of the society column? undine smiled as she recalled the look with which his pale protruding eyes had rested on her--it almost consoled her for his wife's indifference! when she reached home she found that she could not remember anything about the pictures she had seen... there was no message from her father, and a reaction of disgust set in. of what good were such encounters if they were to have no sequel? she would probably never meet peter van degen again--or, if she did run across him in the same accidental way, she knew they could not continue their conversation without being "introduced." what was the use of being beautiful and attracting attention if one were perpetually doomed to relapse again into the obscure mass of the uninvited? her gloom was not lightened by finding ralph marvell's card on the drawing-room table. she thought it unflattering and almost impolite of him to call without making an appointment: it seemed to show that he did not wish to continue their acquaintance. but as she tossed the card aside her mother said: "he was real sorry not to see you. undine--he sat here nearly an hour." undine's attention was roused. "sat here--all alone? didn't you tell him i was out?" "yes--but he came up all the same. he asked for me." "asked for you?" the social order seemed to be falling in ruins at undine's feet. a visitor who asked for a girl's mother!--she stared at mrs. spragg with cold incredulity. "what makes you think he did?" "why, they told me so. i telephoned down that you were out, and they said he'd asked for me." mrs. spragg let the fact speak for itself--it was too much out of the range of her experience to admit of even a hypothetical explanation. undine shrugged her shoulders. "it was a mistake, of course. why on earth did you let him come up?" "i thought maybe he had a message for you, undie." this plea struck her daughter as not without weight. "well, did he?" she asked, drawing out her hat-pins and tossing down her hat on the onyx table. "why, no--he just conversed. he was lovely to me, but i couldn't make out what he was after," mrs. spragg was obliged to own. her daughter looked at her with a kind of chill commiseration. "you never can," she murmured, turning away. she stretched herself out moodily on one of the pink and gold sofas, and lay there brooding, an unread novel on her knee. mrs. spragg timidly slipped a cushion under her daughter's head, and then dissembled herself behind the lace window-curtains and sat watching the lights spring out down the long street and spread their glittering net across the park. it was one of mrs. spragg's chief occupations to watch the nightly lighting of new york. undine lay silent, her hands clasped behind her head. she was plunged in one of the moods of bitter retrospection when all her past seemed like a long struggle for something she could not have, from a trip to europe to an opera-box; and when she felt sure that, as the past had been, so the future would be. and yet, as she had often told her parents, all she sought for was improvement: she honestly wanted the best. her first struggle--after she had ceased to scream for candy, or sulk for a new toy--had been to get away from apex in summer. her summers, as she looked back on them, seemed to typify all that was dreariest and most exasperating in her life. the earliest had been spent in the yellow "frame" cottage where she had hung on the fence, kicking her toes against the broken palings and exchanging moist chewing-gum and half-eaten apples with indiana frusk. later on, she had returned from her boarding-school to the comparative gentility of summer vacations at the mealey house, whither her parents, forsaking their squalid suburb, had moved in the first flush of their rising fortunes. the tessellated floors, the plush parlours and organ-like radiators of the mealey house had, aside from their intrinsic elegance, the immense advantage of lifting the spraggs high above the frusks, and making it possible for undine, when she met indiana in the street or at school, to chill her advances by a careless allusion to the splendours of hotel life. but even in such a setting, and in spite of the social superiority it implied, the long months of the middle western summer, fly-blown, torrid, exhaling stale odours, soon became as insufferable as they had been in the little yellow house. at school undine met other girls whose parents took them to the great lakes for august; some even went to california, others--oh bliss ineffable!--went "east." pale and listless under the stifling boredom of the mealey house routine, undine secretly sucked lemons, nibbled slate-pencils and drank pints of bitter coffee to aggravate her look of ill-health; and when she learned that even indiana frusk was to go on a month's visit to buffalo it needed no artificial aids to emphasize the ravages of envy. her parents, alarmed by her appearance, were at last convinced of the necessity of change, and timidly, tentatively, they transferred themselves for a month to a staring hotel on a glaring lake. there undine enjoyed the satisfaction of sending ironic post-cards to indiana, and discovering that she could more than hold her own against the youth and beauty of the other visitors. then she made the acquaintance of a pretty woman from richmond, whose husband, a mining engineer, had brought her west with him while he inspected the newly developed eubaw mines; and the southern visitor's dismay, her repugnances, her recoil from the faces, the food, the amusements, the general bareness and stridency of the scene, were a terrible initiation to undine. there was something still better beyond, then--more luxurious, more exciting, more worthy of her! she once said to herself, afterward, that it was always her fate to find out just too late about the "something beyond." but in this case it was not too late--and obstinately, inflexibly, she set herself to the task of forcing her parents to take her "east" the next summer. yielding to the inevitable, they suffered themselves to be impelled to a virginia "resort," where undine had her first glimpse of more romantic possibilities--leafy moonlight rides and drives, picnics in mountain glades, and an atmosphere of christmas-chromo sentimentality that tempered her hard edges a little, and gave her glimpses of a more delicate kind of pleasure. but here again everything was spoiled by a peep through another door. undine, after a first mustering of the other girls in the hotel, had, as usual, found herself easily first--till the arrival, from washington, of mr. and mrs. wincher and their daughter. undine was much handsomer than miss wincher, but she saw at a glance that she did not know how to use her beauty as the other used her plainness. she was exasperated too, by the discovery that miss wincher seemed not only unconscious of any possible rivalry between them, but actually unaware of her existence. listless, long-faced, supercilious, the young lady from washington sat apart reading novels or playing solitaire with her parents, as though the huge hotel's loud life of gossip and flirtation were invisible and inaudible to her. undine never even succeeded in catching her eye: she always lowered it to her book when the apex beauty trailed or rattled past her secluded corner. but one day an acquaintance of the winchers' turned up--a lady from boston, who had come to virginia on a botanizing tour; and from scraps of miss wincher's conversation with the newcomer, undine, straining her ears behind a column of the long veranda, obtained a new glimpse into the unimagined. the winchers, it appeared, found themselves at potash springs merely because a severe illness of mrs. wincher's had made it impossible, at the last moment, to move her farther from washington. they had let their house on the north shore, and as soon as they could leave "this dreadful hole" were going to europe for the autumn. miss wincher simply didn't know how she got through the days; though no doubt it was as good as a rest-cure after the rush of the winter. of course they would have preferred to hire a house, but the "hole," if one could believe it, didn't offer one; so they had simply shut themselves off as best they could from the "hotel crew"--had her friend, miss wincher parenthetically asked, happened to notice the sunday young men? they were queerer even than the "belles" they came for--and had escaped the promiscuity of the dinner-hour by turning one of their rooms into a dining-room, and picnicking there--with the persimmon house standards, one couldn't describe it in any other way! but luckily the awful place was doing mamma good, and now they had nearly served their term... undine turned sick as she listened. only the evening before she had gone on a "buggy-ride" with a young gentleman from deposit--a dentist's assistant--and had let him kiss her, and given him the flower from her hair. she loathed the thought of him now: she loathed all the people about her, and most of all the disdainful miss wincher. it enraged her to think that the winchers classed her with the "hotel crew"--with the "belles" who awaited their sunday young men. the place was forever blighted for her, and the next week she dragged her amazed but thankful parents back to apex. but miss wincher's depreciatory talk had opened ampler vistas, and the pioneer blood in undine would not let her rest. she had heard the call of the atlantic seaboard, and the next summer found the spraggs at skog harbour, maine. even now undine felt a shiver of boredom as she recalled it. that summer had been the worst of all. the bare wind-beaten inn, all shingles without and blueberry pie within, was "exclusive," parochial, bostonian; and the spraggs wore through the interminable weeks in blank unmitigated isolation. the incomprehensible part of it was that every other woman in the hotel was plain, dowdy or elderly--and most of them all three. if there had been any competition on ordinary lines undine would have won, as van degen said, "hands down." but there wasn't--the other "guests" simply formed a cold impenetrable group who walked, boated, played golf, and discussed christian science and the subliminal, unaware of the tremulous organism drifting helplessly against their rock-bound circle. it was on the day the spraggs left skog harbour that undine vowed to herself with set lips: "i'll never try anything again till i try new york." now she had gained her point and tried new york, and so far, it seemed, with no better success. from small things to great, everything went against her. in such hours of self-searching she was ready enough to acknowledge her own mistakes, but they exasperated her less than the blunders of her parents. she was sure, for instance, that she was on what mrs. heeny called "the right tack" at last: yet just at the moment when her luck seemed about to turn she was to be thwarted by her father's stupid obstinacy about the opera-box... she lay brooding over these things till long after mrs. spragg had gone away to dress for dinner, and it was nearly eight o'clock when she heard her father's dragging tread in the hall. she kept her eyes fixed on her book while he entered the room and moved about behind her, laying aside his hat and overcoat; then his steps came close and a small parcel dropped on the pages of her book. "oh, father!" she sprang up, all alight, the novel on the floor, her fingers twitching for the tickets. but a substantial packet emerged, like nothing she had ever seen. she looked at it, hoping, fearing--she beamed blissful interrogation on her father while his sallow smile continued to tantalize her. then she closed on him with a rush, smothering his words against her hair. "it's for more than one night--why, it's for every other friday! oh, you darling, you darling!" she exulted. mr. spragg, through the glittering meshes, feigned dismay. "that so? they must have given me the wrong--!" then, convicted by her radiant eyes as she swung round on him: "i knew you only wanted it once for yourself. undine; but i thought maybe, off nights, you'd like to send it to your friends." mrs. spragg, who from her doorway had assisted with moist eyes at this closing pleasantry, came forward as undine hurried away to dress. "abner--can you really manage it all right?" he answered her with one of his awkward brief caresses. "don't you fret about that, leota. i'm bound to have her go round with these people she knows. i want her to be with them all she can." a pause fell between them, while mrs. spragg looked anxiously into his fagged eyes. "you seen elmer again?" "no. once was enough," he returned, with a scowl like undine's. "why--you said he couldn't come after her, abner!" "no more he can. but what if she was to get nervous and lonesome, and want to go after him?" mrs. spragg shuddered away from the suggestion. "how'd he look? just the same?" she whispered. "no. spruced up. that's what scared me." it scared her too, to the point of blanching her habitually lifeless cheek. she continued to scrutinize her husband broodingly. "you look fairly sick, abner. you better let me get you some of those stomach drops right off," she proposed. but he parried this with his unfailing humour. "i guess i'm too sick to risk that." he passed his hand through her arm with the conjugal gesture familiar to apex city. "come along down to dinner, mother--i guess undine won't mind if i don't rig up to-night." v she had looked down at them, enviously, from the balcony--she had looked up at them, reverentially, from the stalls; but now at last she was on a line with them, among them, she was part of the sacred semicircle whose privilege it is, between the acts, to make the mere public forget that the curtain has fallen. as she swept to the left-hand seat of their crimson niche, waving mabel lipscomb to the opposite corner with a gesture learned during her apprenticeship in the stalls, undine felt that quickening of the faculties that comes in the high moments of life. her consciousness seemed to take in at once the whole bright curve of the auditorium, from the unbroken lines of spectators below her to the culminating blaze of the central chandelier; and she herself was the core of that vast illumination, the sentient throbbing surface which gathered all the shafts of light into a centre. it was almost a relief when, a moment later, the lights sank, the curtain rose, and the focus of illumination was shifted. the music, the scenery, and the movement on the stage, were like a rich mist tempering the radiance that shot on her from every side, and giving her time to subside, draw breath, adjust herself to this new clear medium which made her feel so oddly brittle and transparent. when the curtain fell on the first act she began to be aware of a subtle change in the house. in all the boxes cross-currents of movement had set in: groups were coalescing and breaking up, fans waving and heads twinkling, black coats emerging among white shoulders, late comers dropping their furs and laces in the red penumbra of the background. undine, for the moment unconscious of herself, swept the house with her opera-glass, searching for familiar faces. some she knew without being able to name them--fixed figure-heads of the social prow--others she recognized from their portraits in the papers; but of the few from whom she could herself claim recognition not one was visible, and as she pursued her investigations the whole scene grew blank and featureless. almost all the boxes were full now, but one, just opposite, tantalized her by its continued emptiness. how queer to have an opera-box and not use it! what on earth could the people be doing--what rarer delight could they be tasting? undine remembered that the numbers of the boxes and the names of their owners were given on the back of the programme, and after a rapid computation she turned to consult the list. mondays and fridays, mrs. peter van degen. that was it: the box was empty because mrs. van degen was dining alone with ralph marvell! "peter will be at one of his dinners." undine had a sharp vision of the van degen dining-room--she pictured it as oak-carved and sumptuous with gilding --with a small table in the centre, and rosy lights and flowers, and ralph marvell, across the hot-house grapes and champagne, leaning to take a light from his hostess's cigarette. undine had seen such scenes on the stage, she had come upon them in the glowing pages of fiction, and it seemed to her that every detail was before her now, from the glitter of jewels on mrs. van degen's bare shoulders to the way young marvell stroked his slight blond moustache while he smiled and listened. undine blushed with anger at her own simplicity in fancying that he had been "taken" by her--that she could ever really count among these happy self-absorbed people! they all had their friends, their ties, their delightful crowding obligations: why should they make room for an intruder in a circle so packed with the initiated? as her imagination developed the details of the scene in the van degen dining-room it became clear to her that fashionable society was horribly immoral and that she could never really be happy in such a poisoned atmosphere. she remembered that an eminent divine was preaching a series of sermons against social corruption, and she determined to go and hear him on the following sunday. this train of thought was interrupted by the feeling that she was being intently observed from the neighbouring box. she turned around with a feint of speaking to mrs. lipscomb, and met the bulging stare of peter van degen. he was standing behind the lady of the eye-glass, who had replaced her tortoise-shell implement by one of closely-set brilliants, which, at word from her companion, she critically bent on undine. "no--i don't remember," she said; and the girl reddened, divining herself unidentified after this protracted scrutiny. but there was no doubt as to young van degen's remembering her. she was even conscious that he was trying to provoke in her some reciprocal sign of recognition; and the attempt drove her to the haughty study of her programme. "why, there's mr. popple over there!" exclaimed mabel lipscomb, making large signs across the house with fan and play-bill. undine had already become aware that mabel, planted, blond and brimming, too near the edge of the box, was somehow out of scale and out of drawing; and the freedom of her demonstrations increased the effect of disproportion. no one else was wagging and waving in that way: a gestureless mute telegraphy seemed to pass between the other boxes. still, undine could not help following mrs. lipscomb's glance, and there in fact was claud popple, taller and more dominant than ever, and bending easily over what she felt must be the back of a brilliant woman. he replied by a discreet salute to mrs. lipscomb's intemperate motions, and undine saw the brilliant woman's opera-glass turn in their direction, and said to herself that in a moment mr. popple would be "round." but the entr'acte wore on, and no one turned the handle of their door, or disturbed the peaceful somnolence of harry lipscomb, who, not being (as he put it) "onto" grand opera, had abandoned the struggle and withdrawn to the seclusion of the inner box. undine jealously watched mr. popple's progress from box to box, from brilliant woman to brilliant woman; but just as it seemed about to carry him to their door he reappeared at his original post across the house. "undie, do look--there's mr. marvell!" mabel began again, with another conspicuous outbreak of signalling; and this time undine flushed to the nape as mrs. peter van degen appeared in the opposite box with ralph marvell behind her. the two seemed to be alone in the box--as they had doubtless been alone all the evening!--and undine furtively turned to see if mr. van degen shared her disapproval. but mr. van degen had disappeared, and undine, leaning forward, nervously touched mabel's arm. "what's the matter. undine? don't you see mr. marvell over there? is that his sister he's with?" "no.--i wouldn't beckon like that," undine whispered between her teeth. "why not? don't you want him to know you're here?" "yes--but the other people are not beckoning." mabel looked about unabashed. "perhaps they've all found each other. shall i send harry over to tell him?" she shouted above the blare of the wind instruments. "no!" gasped undine as the curtain rose. she was no longer capable of following the action on the stage. two presences possessed her imagination: that of ralph marvell, small, unattainable, remote, and that of mabel lipscomb, near-by, immense and irrepressible. it had become clear to undine that mabel lipscomb was ridiculous. that was the reason why popple did not come to the box. no one would care to be seen talking to her while mabel was at her side: mabel, monumental and moulded while the fashionable were flexible and diaphanous, mabel strident and explicit while they were subdued and allusive. at the stentorian she was the centre of her group--here she revealed herself as unknown and unknowing. why, she didn't even know that mrs. peter van degen was not ralph marvell's sister! and she had a way of trumpeting out her ignorances that jarred on undine's subtler methods. it was precisely at this point that there dawned on undine what was to be one of the guiding principles of her career: "it's better to watch than to ask questions." the curtain fell again, and undine's eyes flew back to the van degen box. several men were entering it together, and a moment later she saw ralph marvell rise from his seat and pass out. half-unconsciously she placed herself in such a way as to have an eye on the door of the box. but its handle remained unturned, and harry lipscomb, leaning back on the sofa, his head against the opera cloaks, continued to breathe stentorously through his open mouth and stretched his legs a little farther across the threshold... the entr'acte was nearly over when the door opened and two gentlemen stumbled over mr. lipscomb's legs. the foremost was claud walsingham popple; and above his shoulder shone the batrachian countenance of peter van degen. a brief murmur from mr. popple made his companion known to the two ladies, and mr. van degen promptly seated himself behind undine, relegating the painter to mrs. lipscomb's elbow. "queer go--i happened to see your friend there waving to old popp across the house. so i bolted over and collared him: told him he'd got to introduce me before he was a minute older. i tried to find out who you were the other day at the motor show--no, where was it? oh, those pictures at goldmark's. what d'you think of 'em, by the way? you ought to be painted yourself--no, i mean it, you know--you ought to get old popp to do you. he'd do your hair ripplingly. you must let me come and talk to you about it... about the picture or your hair? well, your hair if you don't mind. where'd you say you were staying? oh, you live here, do you? i say, that's first rate!" undine sat well forward, curving toward him a little, as she had seen the other women do, but holding back sufficiently to let it be visible to the house that she was conversing with no less a person than mr. peter van degen. mr. popple's talk was certainly more brilliant and purposeful, and she saw him cast longing glances at her from behind mrs. lipscomb's shoulder; but she remembered how lightly he had been treated at the fairford dinner, and she wanted--oh, how she wanted!--to have ralph marvell see her talking to van degen. she poured out her heart to him, improvising an opinion on the pictures and an opinion on the music, falling in gaily with his suggestion of a jolly little dinner some night soon, at the café martin, and strengthening her position, as she thought, by an easy allusion to her acquaintance with mrs. van degen. but at the word her companion's eye clouded, and a shade of constraint dimmed his enterprising smile. "my wife--? oh, she doesn't go to restaurants--she moves on too high a plane. but we'll get old popp, and mrs.--, mrs.--, what'd you say your fat friend's name was? just a select little crowd of four--and some kind of a cheerful show afterward... jove! there's the curtain, and i must skip." as the door closed on him undine's cheeks burned with resentment. if mrs. van degen didn't go to restaurants, why had he supposed that she would? and to have to drag mabel in her wake! the leaden sense of failure overcame her again. here was the evening nearly over, and what had it led to? looking up from the stalls, she had fancied that to sit in a box was to be in society--now she saw it might but emphasize one's exclusion. and she was burdened with the box for the rest of the season! it was really stupid of her father to have exceeded his instructions: why had he not done as she told him?... undine felt helpless and tired... hateful memories of apex crowded back on her. was it going to be as dreary here as there? she felt lipscomb's loud whisper in her back: "say, you girls, i guess i'll cut this and come back for you when the show busts up." they heard him shuffle out of the box, and mabel settled back to undisturbed enjoyment of the stage. when the last entr'acte began undine stood up, resolved to stay no longer. mabel, lost in the study of the audience, had not noticed her movement, and as she passed alone into the back of the box the door opened and ralph marvell came in. undine stood with one arm listlessly raised to detach her cloak from the wall. her attitude showed the long slimness of her figure and the fresh curve of the throat below her bent-back head. her face was paler and softer than usual, and the eyes she rested on marvell's face looked deep and starry under their fixed brows. "oh--you're not going?" he exclaimed. "i thought you weren't coming," she answered simply. "i waited till now on purpose to dodge your other visitors." she laughed with pleasure. "oh, we hadn't so many!" some intuition had already told her that frankness was the tone to take with him. they sat down together on the red damask sofa, against the hanging cloaks. as undine leaned back her hair caught in the spangles of the wrap behind her, and she had to sit motionless while the young man freed the captive mesh. then they settled themselves again, laughing a little at the incident. a glance had made the situation clear to mrs. lipscomb, and they saw her return to her rapt inspection of the boxes. in their mirror-hung recess the light was subdued to a rosy dimness and the hum of the audience came to them through half-drawn silken curtains. undine noticed the delicacy and finish of her companion's features as his head detached itself against the red silk walls. the hand with which he stroked his small moustache was finely-finished too, but sinewy and not effeminate. she had always associated finish and refinement entirely with her own sex, but she began to think they might be even more agreeable in a man. marvell's eyes were grey, like her own, with chestnut eyebrows and darker lashes; and his skin was as clear as a woman's, but pleasantly reddish, like his hands. as he sat talking in a low tone, questioning her about the music, asking her what she had been doing since he had last seen her, she was aware that he looked at her less than usual, and she also glanced away; but when she turned her eyes suddenly they always met his gaze. his talk remained impersonal. she was a little disappointed that he did not compliment her on her dress or her hair--undine was accustomed to hearing a great deal about her hair, and the episode of the spangles had opened the way to a graceful allusion--but the instinct of sex told her that, under his quiet words, he was throbbing with the sense of her proximity. and his self-restraint sobered her, made her refrain from the flashing and fidgeting which were the only way she knew of taking part in the immemorial love-dance. she talked simply and frankly of herself, of her parents, of how few people they knew in new york, and of how, at times, she was almost sorry she had persuaded them to give up apex. "you see, they did it entirely on my account; they're awfully lonesome here; and i don't believe i shall ever learn new york ways either," she confessed, turning on him the eyes of youth and truthfulness. "of course i know a few people; but they're not--not the way i expected new york people to be." she risked what seemed an involuntary glance at mabel. "i've seen girls here to-night that i just long to know--they look so lovely and refined--but i don't suppose i ever shall. new york's not very friendly to strange girls, is it? i suppose you've got so many of your own already--and they're all so fascinating you don't care!" as she spoke she let her eyes rest on his, half-laughing, half-wistful, and then dropped her lashes while the pink stole slowly up to them. when he left her he asked if he might hope to find her at home the next day. the night was fine, and marvell, having put his cousin into her motor, started to walk home to washington square. at the corner he was joined by mr. popple. "hallo, ralph, old man--did you run across our auburn beauty of the stentorian? who'd have thought old harry lipscomb'd have put us onto anything as good as that? peter van degen was fairly taken off his feet--pulled me out of mrs. monty thurber's box and dragged me 'round by the collar to introduce him. planning a dinner at martin's already. gad, young peter must have what he wants when he wants it! i put in a word for you--told him you and i ought to be let in on the ground floor. funny the luck some girls have about getting started. i believe this one'll take if she can manage to shake the lipscombs. i think i'll ask to paint her; might be a good thing for the spring show. she'd show up splendidly as a pendant to my mrs. van degen--blonde and brunette... night and morning... of course i prefer mrs. van degen's type--personally, i must have breeding--but as a mere bit of flesh and blood... hallo, ain't you coming into the club?" marvell was not coming into the club, and he drew a long breath of relief as his companion left him. was it possible that he had ever thought leniently of the egregious popple? the tone of social omniscience which he had once found so comic was now as offensive to him as a coarse physical touch. and the worst of it was that popple, with the slight exaggeration of a caricature, really expressed the ideals of the world he frequented. as he spoke of miss spragg, so others at any rate would think of her: almost every one in ralph's set would agree that it was luck for a girl from apex to be started by peter van degen at a café martin dinner... ralph marvell, mounting his grandfather's doorstep, looked up at the symmetrical old red house-front, with its frugal marble ornament, as he might have looked into a familiar human face. "they're right,--after all, in some ways they're right," he murmured, slipping his key into the door. "they" were his mother and old mr. urban dagonet, both, from ralph's earliest memories, so closely identified with the old house in washington square that they might have passed for its inner consciousness as it might have stood for their outward form; and the question as to which the house now seemed to affirm their intrinsic rightness was that of the social disintegration expressed by widely-different architectural physiognomies at the other end of fifth avenue. as ralph pushed the bolts behind him, and passed into the hall, with its dark mahogany doors and the quiet "dutch interior" effect of its black and white marble paving, he said to himself that what popple called society was really just like the houses it lived in: a muddle of misapplied ornament over a thin steel shell of utility. the steel shell was built up in wall street, the social trimmings were hastily added in fifth avenue; and the union between them was as monstrous and factitious, as unlike the gradual homogeneous growth which flowers into what other countries know as society, as that between the blois gargoyles on peter van degen's roof and the skeleton walls supporting them. that was what "they" had always said; what, at least, the dagonet attitude, the dagonet view of life, the very lines of the furniture in the old dagonet house expressed. ralph sometimes called his mother and grandfather the aborigines, and likened them to those vanishing denizens of the american continent doomed to rapid extinction with the advance of the invading race. he was fond of describing washington square as the "reservation," and of prophesying that before long its inhabitants would be exhibited at ethnological shows, pathetically engaged in the exercise of their primitive industries. small, cautious, middle-class, had been the ideals of aboriginal new york; but it suddenly struck the young man that they were singularly coherent and respectable as contrasted with the chaos of indiscriminate appetites which made up its modern tendencies. he too had wanted to be "modern," had revolted, half-humorously, against the restrictions and exclusions of the old code; and it must have been by one of the ironic reversions of heredity that, at this precise point, he began to see what there was to be said on the other side--his side, as he now felt it to be. vi upstairs, in his brown firelit room, he threw himself into an armchair, and remembered... harvard first--then oxford; then a year of wandering and rich initiation. returning to new york, he had read law, and now had his desk in the office of the respectable firm in whose charge the dagonet estate had mouldered for several generations. but his profession was the least real thing in his life. the realities lay about him now: the books jamming his old college bookcases and overflowing on chairs and tables; sketches too--he could do charming things, if only he had known how to finish them!--and, on the writing-table at his elbow, scattered sheets of prose and verse; charming things also, but, like the sketches, unfinished. nothing in the dagonet and marvell tradition was opposed to this desultory dabbling with life. for four or five generations it had been the rule of both houses that a young fellow should go to columbia or harvard, read law, and then lapse into more or less cultivated inaction. the only essential was that he should live "like a gentleman"--that is, with a tranquil disdain for mere money-getting, a passive openness to the finer sensations, one or two fixed principles as to the quality of wine, and an archaic probity that had not yet learned to distinguish between private and "business" honour. no equipment could more thoroughly have unfitted the modern youth for getting on: it hardly needed the scribbled pages on the desk to complete the hopelessness of ralph marvell's case. he had accepted the fact with a humorous fatalism. material resources were limited on both sides of the house, but there would always be enough for his frugal wants--enough to buy books (not "editions"), and pay now and then for a holiday dash to the great centres of art and ideas. and meanwhile there was the world of wonders within him. as a boy at the sea-side, ralph, between tides, had once come on a cave--a secret inaccessible place with glaucous lights, mysterious murmurs, and a single shaft of communication with the sky. he had kept his find from the other boys, not churlishly, for he was always an outspoken lad, but because he felt there were things about the cave that the others, good fellows as they all were, couldn't be expected to understand, and that, anyhow, it would never be quite his cave again after he had let his thick-set freckled cousins play smuggler and pirate in it. and so with his inner world. though so coloured by outer impressions, it wove a secret curtain about him, and he came and went in it with the same joy of furtive possession. one day, of course, some one would discover it and reign there with him--no, reign over it and him. once or twice already a light foot had reached the threshold. his cousin clare dagonet, for instance: there had been a summer when her voice had sounded far down the windings... but he had run over to spain for the autumn, and when he came back she was engaged to peter van degen, and for a while it looked black in the cave. that was long ago, as time is reckoned under thirty; and for three years now he had felt for her only a half-contemptuous pity. to have stood at the mouth of his cave, and have turned from it to the van degen lair--! poor clare repented, indeed--she wanted it clearly but she repented in the van degen diamonds, and the van degen motor bore her broken heart from opera to ball. she had been subdued to what she worked in, and she could never again find her way to the enchanted cave... ralph, since then, had reached the point of deciding that he would never marry; reached it not suddenly or dramatically, but with such sober advisedness as is urged on those about to take the opposite step. what he most wanted, now that the first flutter of being was over, was to learn and to do--to know what the great people had thought, think about their thinking, and then launch his own boat: write some good verse if possible; if not, then critical prose. a dramatic poem lay among the stuff at his elbow; but the prose critic was at his elbow too, and not to be satisfied about the poem; and poet and critic passed the nights in hot if unproductive debate. on the whole, it seemed likely that the critic would win the day, and the essay on "the rhythmical structures of walt whitman" take shape before "the banished god." yet if the light in the cave was less supernaturally blue, the chant of its tides less laden with unimaginable music, it was still a thronged and echoing place when undine spragg appeared on its threshold... his mother and sister of course wanted him to marry. they had the usual theory that he was "made" for conjugal bliss: women always thought that of a fellow who didn't get drunk and have low tastes. ralph smiled at the idea as he sat crouched among his secret treasures. marry--but whom, in the name of light and freedom? the daughters of his own race sold themselves to the invaders; the daughters of the invaders bought their husbands as they bought an opera-box. it ought all to have been transacted on the stock exchange. his mother, he knew, had no such ambitions for him: she would have liked him to fancy a "nice girl" like harriet ray. harriet ray was neither vulgar nor ambitious. she regarded washington square as the birthplace of society, knew by heart all the cousinships of early new york, hated motor-cars, could not make herself understood on the telephone, and was determined, if she married, never to receive a divorced woman. as mrs. marvell often said, such girls as harriet were growing rare. ralph was not sure about this. he was inclined to think that, certain modifications allowed for, there would always be plenty of harriet rays for unworldly mothers to commend to their sons; and he had no desire to diminish their number by removing one from the ranks of the marriageable. he had no desire to marry at all--that had been the whole truth of it till he met undine spragg. and now--? he lit a cigar, and began to recall his hour's conversation with mrs. spragg. ralph had never taken his mother's social faiths very seriously. surveying the march of civilization from a loftier angle, he had early mingled with the invaders, and curiously observed their rites and customs. but most of those he had met had already been modified by contact with the indigenous: they spoke the same language as his, though on their lips it had often so different a meaning. ralph had never seen them actually in the making, before they had acquired the speech of the conquered race. but mrs. spragg still used the dialect of her people, and before the end of the visit ralph had ceased to regret that her daughter was out. he felt obscurely that in the girl's presence--frank and simple as he thought her--he should have learned less of life in early apex. mrs. spragg, once reconciled--or at least resigned--to the mysterious necessity of having to "entertain" a friend of undine's, had yielded to the first touch on the weak springs of her garrulity. she had not seen mrs. heeny for two days, and this friendly young man with the gentle manner was almost as easy to talk to as the masseuse. and then she could tell him things that mrs. heeny already knew, and mrs. spragg liked to repeat her stories. to do so gave her almost her sole sense of permanence among the shifting scenes of life. so that, after she had lengthily deplored the untoward accident of undine's absence, and her visitor, with a smile, and echoes of divers et ondoyant in his brain, had repeated her daughter's name after her, saying: "it's a wonderful find--how could you tell it would be such a fit?"--it came to her quite easily to answer: "why, we called her after a hair-waver father put on the market the week she was born--" and then to explain, as he remained struck and silent: "it's from undoolay, you know, the french for crimping; father always thought the name made it take. he was quite a scholar, and had the greatest knack for finding names. i remember the time he invented his goliath glue he sat up all night over the bible to get the name... no, father didn't start in as a druggist," she went on, expanding with the signs of marvell's interest; "he was educated for an undertaker, and built up a first-class business; but he was always a beautiful speaker, and after a while he sorter drifted into the ministry. of course it didn't pay him anything like as well, so finally he opened a drug-store, and he did first-rate at that too, though his heart was always in the pulpit. but after he made such a success with his hair-waver he got speculating in land out at apex, and somehow everything went--though mr. spragg did all he could--." mrs. spragg, when she found herself embarked on a long sentence, always ballasted it by italicizing the last word. her husband, she continued, could not, at the time, do much for his father-in-law. mr. spragg had come to apex as a poor boy, and their early married life had been a protracted struggle, darkened by domestic affliction. two of their three children had died of typhoid in the epidemic which devastated apex before the new water-works were built; and this calamity, by causing mr. spragg to resolve that thereafter apex should drink pure water, had led directly to the founding of his fortunes. "he had taken over some of poor father's land for a bad debt, and when he got up the pure water move the company voted to buy the land and build the new reservoir up there: and after that we began to be better off, and it did seem as if it had come out so to comfort us some about the children." mr. spragg, thereafter, had begun to be a power in apex, and fat years had followed on the lean. ralph marvell was too little versed in affairs to read between the lines of mrs. spragg's untutored narrative, and he understood no more than she the occult connection between mr. spragg's domestic misfortunes and his business triumph. mr. spragg had "helped out" his ruined father-in-law, and had vowed on his children's graves that no apex child should ever again drink poisoned water--and out of those two disinterested impulses, by some impressive law of compensation, material prosperity had come. what ralph understood and appreciated was mrs. spragg's unaffected frankness in talking of her early life. here was no retrospective pretense of an opulent past, such as the other invaders were given to parading before the bland but undeceived subject race. the spraggs had been "plain people" and had not yet learned to be ashamed of it. the fact drew them much closer to the dagonet ideals than any sham elegance in the past tense. ralph felt that his mother, who shuddered away from mrs. harmon b. driscoll, would understand and esteem mrs. spragg. but how long would their virgin innocence last? popple's vulgar hands were on it already--popple's and the unspeakable van degen's! once they and theirs had begun the process of initiating undine, there was no knowing--or rather there was too easy knowing--how it would end! it was incredible that she too should be destined to swell the ranks of the cheaply fashionable; yet were not her very freshness, her malleability, the mark of her fate? she was still at the age when the flexible soul offers itself to the first grasp. that the grasp should chance to be van degen's--that was what made ralph's temples buzz, and swept away all his plans for his own future like a beaver's dam in a spring flood. to save her from van degen and van degenism: was that really to be his mission--the "call" for which his life had obscurely waited? it was not in the least what he had meant to do with the fugitive flash of consciousness he called self; but all that he had purposed for that transitory being sank into insignificance under the pressure of undine's claims. ralph marvell's notion of women had been formed on the experiences common to good-looking young men of his kind. women were drawn to him as much by his winning appealing quality, by the sense of a youthful warmth behind his light ironic exterior, as by his charms of face and mind. except during clare dagonet's brief reign the depths in him had not been stirred; but in taking what each sentimental episode had to give he had preserved, through all his minor adventures, his faith in the great adventure to come. it was this faith that made him so easy a victim when love had at last appeared clad in the attributes of romance: the imaginative man's indestructible dream of a rounded passion. the clearness with which he judged the girl and himself seemed the surest proof that his feeling was more than a surface thrill. he was not blind to her crudity and her limitations, but they were a part of her grace and her persuasion. diverse et ondoyante--so he had seen her from the first. but was not that merely the sign of a quicker response to the world's manifold appeal? there was harriet ray, sealed up tight in the vacuum of inherited opinion, where not a breath of fresh sensation could get at her: there could be no call to rescue young ladies so secured from the perils of reality! undine had no such traditional safeguards--ralph guessed mrs. spragg's opinions to be as fluid as her daughter's--and the girl's very sensitiveness to new impressions, combined with her obvious lack of any sense of relative values, would make her an easy prey to the powers of folly. he seemed to see her--as he sat there, pressing his fists into his temples--he seemed to see her like a lovely rock-bound andromeda, with the devouring monster society careering up to make a mouthful of her; and himself whirling down on his winged horse--just pegasus turned rosinante for the nonce--to cut her bonds, snatch her up, and whirl her back into the blue... vii some two months later than the date of young marvell's midnight vigil, mrs. heeny, seated on a low chair at undine's knee, gave the girl's left hand an approving pat as she laid aside her lapful of polishers. "there! i guess you can put your ring on again," she said with a laugh of jovial significance; and undine, echoing the laugh in a murmur of complacency, slipped on the fourth finger of her recovered hand a band of sapphires in an intricate setting. mrs. heeny took up the hand again. "them's old stones, undine--they've got a different look," she said, examining the ring while she rubbed her cushioned palm over the girl's brilliant finger-tips. "and the setting's quaint--i wouldn't wonder but what it was one of old gran'ma dagonet's." mrs. spragg, hovering near in fond beatitude, looked up quickly. "why, don't you s'pose he bought it for her, mrs. heeny? it came in a tiff'ny box." the manicure laughed again. "of course he's had tiff'ny rub it up. ain't you ever heard of ancestral jewels, mrs. spragg? in the eu-ropean aristocracy they never go out and buy engagement-rings; and undine's marrying into our aristocracy." mrs. spragg looked relieved. "oh, i thought maybe they were trying to scrimp on the ring--" mrs. heeny, shrugging away this explanation, rose from her seat and rolled back her shiny black sleeves. "look at here, undine, if you really want me to do your hair it's time we got to work." the girl swung about in her seat so that she faced the mirror on the dressing-table. her shoulders shone through transparencies of lace and muslin which slipped back as she lifted her arms to draw the tortoise-shell pins from her hair. "of course you've got to do it--i want to look perfectly lovely!" "well--i dunno's my hand's in nowadays," said mrs. heeny in a tone that belied the doubt she cast on her own ability. "oh, you're an artist, mrs. heeny--and i just couldn't have had that french maid 'round to-night," sighed mrs. spragg, sinking into a chair near the dressing-table. undine, with a backward toss of her head, scattered her loose locks about her. as they spread and sparkled under mrs. heeny's touch, mrs. spragg leaned back, drinking in through half-closed lids her daughter's loveliness. some new quality seemed added to undine's beauty: it had a milder bloom, a kind of melting grace, which might have been lent to it by the moisture in her mother's eyes. "so you're to see the old gentleman for the first time at this dinner?" mrs. heeny pursued, sweeping the live strands up into a loosely woven crown. "yes. i'm frightened to death!" undine, laughing confidently, took up a hand-glass and scrutinized the small brown mole above the curve of her upper lip. "i guess she'll know how to talk to him," mrs. spragg averred with a kind of quavering triumph. "she'll know how to look at him, anyhow," said mrs. heeny; and undine smiled at her own image. "i hope he won't think i'm too awful!" mrs. heeny laughed. "did you read the description of yourself in the radiator this morning? i wish't i'd 'a had time to cut it out. i guess i'll have to start a separate bag for your clippings soon." undine stretched her arms luxuriously above her head and gazed through lowered lids at the foreshortened reflection of her face. "mercy! don't jerk about like that. am i to put in this rose?--there--you are lovely!" mrs. heeny sighed, as the pink petals sank into the hair above the girl's forehead. undine pushed her chair back, and sat supporting her chin on her clasped hands while she studied the result of mrs. heeny's manipulations. "yes--that's the way mrs. peter van degen's flower was put in the other night; only hers was a camellia.--do you think i'd look better with a camellia?" "i guess if mrs. van degen looked like a rose she'd 'a worn a rose," mrs. heeny rejoined poetically. "sit still a minute longer," she added. "your hair's so heavy i'd feel easier if i was to put in another pin." undine remained motionless, and the manicure, suddenly laying both hands on the girl's shoulders, and bending over to peer at her reflection, said playfully: "ever been engaged before, undine?" a blush rose to the face in the mirror, spreading from chin to brow, and running rosily over the white shoulders from which their covering had slipped down. "my! if he could see you now!" mrs. heeny jested. mrs. spragg, rising noiselessly, glided across the room and became lost in a minute examination of the dress laid out on the bed. with a supple twist undine slipped from mrs. heeny's hold. "engaged? mercy, yes! didn't you know? to the prince of wales. i broke it off because i wouldn't live in the tower." mrs. spragg, lifting the dress cautiously over her arm, advanced with a reassured smile. "i s'pose undie'll go to europe now," she said to mrs. heeny. "i guess undie will!" the young lady herself declared. "we're going to sail right afterward.--here, mother, do be careful of my hair!" she ducked gracefully to slip into the lacy fabric which her mother held above her head. as she rose venus-like above its folds there was a tap on the door, immediately followed by its tentative opening. "mabel!" undine muttered, her brows lowering like her father's; and mrs. spragg, wheeling about to screen her daughter, addressed herself protestingly to the half-open door. "who's there? oh, that you, mrs. lipscomb? well, i don't know as you can--undie isn't half dressed yet--" "just like her--always pushing in!" undine murmured as she slipped her arms into their transparent sleeves. "oh, that don't matter--i'll help dress her!" mrs. lipscomb's large blond person surged across the threshold. "seems to me i ought to lend a hand to-night, considering i was the one that introduced them!" undine forced a smile, but mrs. spragg, her soft wrinkles deepening with resentment, muttered to mrs. heeny, as she bent down to shake out the girl's train: "i guess my daughter's only got to show herself--" the first meeting with old mr. dagonet was less formidable than undine had expected. she had been once before to the house in washington square, when, with her mother, she had returned mrs. marvell's ceremonial visit; but on that occasion ralph's grandfather had not been present. all the rites connected with her engagement were new and mysterious to undine, and none more so than the unaccountable necessity of "dragging"--as she phrased it--mrs. spragg into the affair. it was an accepted article of the apex creed that parental detachment should be completest at the moment when the filial fate was decided; and to find that new york reversed this rule was as puzzling to undine as to her mother. mrs. spragg was so unprepared for the part she was to play that on the occasion of her visit to mrs. marvell her helplessness had infected undine, and their half-hour in the sober faded drawing-room remained among the girl's most unsatisfactory memories. she re-entered it alone with more assurance. her confidence in her beauty had hitherto carried her through every ordeal; and it was fortified now by the feeling of power that came with the sense of being loved. if they would only leave her mother out she was sure, in her own phrase, of being able to "run the thing"; and mrs. spragg had providentially been left out of the dagonet dinner. it was to consist, it appeared, only of the small family group undine had already met; and, seated at old mr. dagonet's right, in the high dark dining-room with mahogany doors and dim portraits of "signers" and their females, she felt a conscious joy in her ascendancy. old mr. dagonet--small, frail and softly sardonic--appeared to fall at once under her spell. if she felt, beneath his amenity, a kind of delicate dangerousness, like that of some fine surgical instrument, she ignored it as unimportant; for she had as yet no clear perception of forces that did not directly affect her. mrs. marvell, low-voiced, faded, yet impressive, was less responsive to her arts, and undine divined in her the head of the opposition to ralph's marriage. mrs. heeny had reported that mrs. marvell had other views for her son; and this was confirmed by such echoes of the short sharp struggle as reached the throbbing listeners at the stentorian. but the conflict over, the air had immediately cleared, showing the enemy in the act of unconditional surrender. it surprised undine that there had been no reprisals, no return on the points conceded. that was not her idea of warfare, and she could ascribe the completeness of the victory only to the effect of her charms. mrs. marvell's manner did not express entire subjugation; yet she seemed anxious to dispel any doubts of her good faith, and if she left the burden of the talk to her lively daughter it might have been because she felt more capable of showing indulgence by her silence than in her speech. as for mrs. fairford, she had never seemed more brilliantly bent on fusing the various elements under her hand. undine had already discovered that she adored her brother, and had guessed that this would make her either a strong ally or a determined enemy. the latter alternative, however, did not alarm the girl. she thought mrs. fairford "bright," and wanted to be liked by her; and she was in the state of dizzy self-assurance when it seemed easy to win any sympathy she chose to seek. for the only other guests--mrs. fairford's husband, and the elderly charles bowen who seemed to be her special friend--undine had no attention to spare: they remained on a plane with the dim pictures hanging at her back. she had expected a larger party; but she was relieved, on the whole, that it was small enough to permit of her dominating it. not that she wished to do so by any loudness of assertion. her quickness in noting external differences had already taught her to modulate and lower her voice, and to replace "the i-dea!" and "i wouldn't wonder" by more polished locutions; and she had not been ten minutes at table before she found that to seem very much in love, and a little confused and subdued by the newness and intensity of the sentiment, was, to the dagonet mind, the becoming attitude for a young lady in her situation. the part was not hard to play, for she was in love, of course. it was pleasant, when she looked across the table, to meet ralph's grey eyes, with that new look in them, and to feel that she had kindled it; but i it was only part of her larger pleasure in the general homage to her beauty, in the sensations of interest and curiosity excited by everything about her, from the family portraits overhead to the old dagonet silver on the table--which were to be hers too, after all! the talk, as at mrs. fairford's, confused her by its lack of the personal allusion, its tendency to turn to books, pictures and politics. "politics," to undine, had always been like a kind of back-kitchen to business--the place where the refuse was thrown and the doubtful messes were brewed. as a drawing-room topic, and one to provoke disinterested sentiments, it had the hollowness of fourth of july orations, and her mind wandered in spite of the desire to appear informed and competent. old mr. dagonet, with his reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in new york. but the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and undine, called on for the first time to view her own progenitors as a subject of conversation, was struck by their lack of points. she had never paused to consider what her father and mother were "interested" in, and, challenged to specify, could have named--with sincerity--only herself. on the subject of her new york friends it was not much easier to enlarge; for so far her circle had grown less rapidly than she expected. she had fancied ralph's wooing would at once admit her to all his social privileges; but he had shown a puzzling reluctance to introduce her to the van degen set, where he came and went with such familiarity; and the persons he seemed anxious to have her know--a few frumpy "clever women" of his sister's age, and one or two brisk old ladies in shabby houses with mahogany furniture and stuart portraits--did not offer the opportunities she sought. "oh, i don't know many people yet--i tell ralph he's got to hurry up and take me round," she said to mr. dagonet, with a side-sparkle for ralph, whose gaze, between the flowers and lights, she was aware of perpetually drawing. "my daughter will take you--you must know his mother's friends," the old gentleman rejoined while mrs. marvell smiled noncommittally. "but you have a great friend of your own--the lady who takes you into society," mr. dagonet pursued; and undine had the sense that the irrepressible mabel was again "pushing in." "oh, yes--mabel lipscomb. we were school-mates," she said indifferently. "lipscomb? lipscomb? what is mr. lipscomb's occupation?" "he's a broker," said undine, glad to be able to place her friend's husband in so handsome a light. the subtleties of a professional classification unknown to apex had already taught her that in new york it is more distinguished to be a broker than a dentist; and she was surprised at mr. dagonet's lack of enthusiasm. "ah? a broker?" he said it almost as popple might have said "a dentist?" and undine found herself astray in a new labyrinth of social distinctions. she felt a sudden contempt for harry lipscomb, who had already struck her as too loud, and irrelevantly comic. "i guess mabel'll get a divorce pretty soon," she added, desiring, for personal reasons, to present mrs. lipscomb as favourably as possible. mr. dagonet's handsome eye-brows drew together. "a divorce? h'm--that's bad. has he been misbehaving himself?" undine looked innocently surprised. "oh, i guess not. they like each other well enough. but he's been a disappointment to her. he isn't in the right set, and i think mabel realizes she'll never really get anywhere till she gets rid of him." these words, uttered in the high fluting tone that she rose to when sure of her subject, fell on a pause which prolonged and deepened itself to receive them, while every face at the table, ralph marvell's excepted, reflected in varying degree mr. dagonet's pained astonishment. "but, my dear young lady--what would your friend's situation be if, as you put it, she 'got rid' of her husband on so trivial a pretext?" undine, surprised at his dullness, tried to explain. "oh that wouldn't be the reason given, of course. any lawyer could fix it up for them. don't they generally call it desertion?" there was another, more palpitating, silence, broken by a laugh from ralph. "ralph!" his mother breathed; then, turning to undine, she said with a constrained smile: "i believe in certain parts of the country such--unfortunate arrangements--are beginning to be tolerated. but in new york, in spite of our growing indifference, a divorced woman is still--thank heaven!--at a decided disadvantage." undine's eyes opened wide. here at last was a topic that really interested her, and one that gave another amazing glimpse into the camera obscura of new york society. "do you mean to say mabel would be worse off, then? couldn't she even go round as much as she does now?" mrs. marvell met this gravely. "it would depend, i should say, on the kind of people she wished to see." "oh, the very best, of course! that would be her only object." ralph interposed with another laugh. "you see, undine, you'd better think twice before you divorce me!" "ralph!" his mother again breathed; but the girl, flushed and sparkling, flung back: "oh, it all depends on you! out in apex, if a girl marries a man who don't come up to what she expected, people consider it's to her credit to want to change. you'd better think twice of that!" "if i were only sure of knowing what you expect!" he caught up her joke, tossing it back at her across the fascinated silence of their listeners. "why, everything!" she announced--and mr. dagonet, turning, laid an intricately-veined old hand on, hers, and said, with a change of tone that relaxed the tension of the listeners: "my child, if you look like that you'll get it." viii it was doubtless owing to mrs. fairford's foresight that such possibilities of tension were curtailed, after dinner, by her carrying off ralph and his betrothed to the theatre. mr. dagonet, it was understood, always went to bed after an hour's whist with his daughter; and the silent mr. fairford gave his evenings to bridge at his club. the party, therefore, consisted only of undine and ralph, with mrs. fairford and her attendant friend. undine vaguely wondered why the grave and grey-haired mr. bowen formed so invariable a part of that lady's train; but she concluded that it was the york custom for married ladies to have gentlemen "'round" (as girls had in apex), and that mr. bowen was the sole survivor of laura fairford's earlier triumphs. she had, however, little time to give to such conjectures, for the performance they were attending--the debut of a fashionable london actress--had attracted a large audience in which undine immediately recognized a number of familiar faces. her engagement had been announced only the day before, and she had the delicious sense of being "in all the papers," and of focussing countless glances of interest and curiosity as she swept through the theatre in mrs. fairford's wake. their stalls were near the stage, and progress thither was slow enough to permit of prolonged enjoyment of this sensation. before passing to her place she paused for ralph to remove her cloak, and as he lifted it from her shoulders she heard a lady say behind her: "there she is--the one in white, with the lovely back--" and a man answer: "gad! where did he find anything as good as that?" anonymous approval was sweet enough; but she was to taste a moment more exquisite when, in the proscenium box across the house, she saw clare van degen seated beside the prim figure of miss harriet ray. "they're here to see me with him--they hate it, but they couldn't keep away!" she turned and lifted a smile of possessorship to ralph. mrs. fairford seemed also struck by the presence of the two ladies, and undine heard her whisper to mr. bowen: "do you see clare over there--and harriet with her? harriet would come--i call it spartan! and so like clare to ask her!" her companion laughed. "it's one of the deepest instincts in human nature. the murdered are as much given as the murderer to haunting the scene of the crime." doubtless guessing ralph's desire to have undine to himself, mrs. fairford had sent the girl in first; and undine, as she seated herself, was aware that the occupant of the next stall half turned to her, as with a vague gesture of recognition. but just then the curtain rose, and she became absorbed in the development of the drama, especially as it tended to display the remarkable toilets which succeeded each other on the person of its leading lady. undine, seated at ralph marvell's side, and feeling the thrill of his proximity as a subtler element in the general interest she was exciting, was at last repaid for the disappointment of her evening at the opera. it was characteristic of her that she remembered her failures as keenly as her triumphs, and that the passionate desire to obliterate, to "get even" with them, was always among the latent incentives of her conduct. now at last she was having what she wanted--she was in conscious possession of the "real thing"; and through her other, diffused, sensations ralph's adoration gave her such a last refinement of pleasure as might have come to some warrior queen borne in triumph by captive princes, and reading in the eyes of one the passion he dared not speak. when the curtain fell this vague enjoyment was heightened by various acts of recognition. all the people she wanted to "go with," as they said in apex, seemed to be about her in the stalls and boxes; and her eyes continued to revert with special satisfaction to the incongruous group formed by mrs. peter van degen and miss ray. the sight made it irresistible to whisper to ralph: "you ought to go round and talk to your cousin. have you told her we're engaged?" "clare? of course. she's going to call on you tomorrow." "oh, she needn't put herself out--she's never been yet," said undine loftily. he made no rejoinder, but presently asked: "who's that you're waving to?" "mr. popple. he's coming round to see us. you know he wants to paint me." undine fluttered and beamed as the brilliant popple made his way across the stalls to the seat which her neighbour had momentarily left. "first-rate chap next to you--whoever he is--to give me this chance," the artist declared. "ha, ralph, my boy, how did you pull it off? that's what we're all of us wondering." he leaned over to give marvell's hand the ironic grasp of celibacy. "well, you've left us lamenting: he has, you know. miss spragg. but i've got one pull over the others--i can paint you! he can't forbid that, can he? not before marriage, anyhow!" undine divided her shining glances between the two. "i guess he isn't going to treat me any different afterward," she proclaimed with joyous defiance. "ah, well, there's no telling, you know. hadn't we better begin at once? seriously, i want awfully to get you into the spring show." "oh, really? that would be too lovely!" "you would be, certainly--the way i mean to do you. but i see ralph getting glum. cheer up, my dear fellow; i daresay you'll be invited to some of the sittings--that's for miss spragg to say.--ah, here comes your neighbour back, confound him--you'll let me know when we can begin?" as popple moved away undine turned eagerly to marvell. "do you suppose there's time? i'd love to have him to do me!" ralph smiled. "my poor child--he would 'do' you, with a vengeance. infernal cheek, his asking you to sit--" she stared. "but why? he's painted your cousin, and all the smart women." "oh, if a 'smart' portrait's all you want!" "i want what the others want," she answered, frowning and pouting a little. she was already beginning to resent in ralph the slightest sign of resistance to her pleasure; and her resentment took the form--a familiar one in apex courtships--of turning on him, in the next entr'acte, a deliberately averted shoulder. the result of this was to bring her, for the first time, in more direct relation to her other neighbour. as she turned he turned too, showing her, above a shining shirt-front fastened with a large imitation pearl, a ruddy plump snub face without an angle in it, which yet looked sharper than a razor. undine's eyes met his with a startled look, and for a long moment they remained suspended on each other's stare. undine at length shrank back with an unrecognizing face; but her movement made her opera-glass slip to the floor, and her neighbour bent down and picked it up. "well--don't you know me yet?" he said with a slight smile, as he restored the glass to her. she had grown white to the lips, and when she tried to speak the effort produced only a faint click in her throat. she felt that the change in her appearance must be visible, and the dread of letting marvell see it made her continue to turn her ravaged face to her other neighbour. the round black eyes set prominently in the latter's round glossy countenance had expressed at first only an impersonal and slightly ironic interest; but a look of surprise grew in them as undine's silence continued. "what's the matter? don't you want me to speak to you?" she became aware that marvell, as if unconscious of her slight show of displeasure, had left his seat, and was making his way toward the aisle; and this assertion of independence, which a moment before she would so deeply have resented, now gave her a feeling of intense relief. "no--don't speak to me, please. i'll tell you another time--i'll write." her neighbour continued to gaze at her, forming his lips into a noiseless whistle under his small dark moustache. "well, i--that's about the stiffest," he murmured; and as she made no answer he added: "afraid i'll ask to be introduced to your friend?" she made a faint movement of entreaty. "i can't explain. i promise to see you; but i ask you not to talk to me now." he unfolded his programme, and went on speaking in a low tone while he affected to study it. "anything to oblige, of course. that's always been my motto. but is it a bargain--fair and square? you'll see me?" she receded farther from him. "i promise. i--i want to," she faltered. "all right, then. call me up in the morning at the driscoll building. seven-o-nine--got it?" she nodded, and he added in a still lower tone: "i suppose i can congratulate you, anyhow?" and then, without waiting for her reply, turned to study mrs. van degen's box through his opera-glass. clare, as if aware of the scrutiny fixed on her from below leaned back and threw a question over her shoulder to ralph marvell, who had just seated himself behind her. "who's the funny man with the red face talking to miss spragg?" ralph bent forward. "the man next to her? never saw him before. but i think you're mistaken: she's not speaking to him." "she was--wasn't she, harriet?" miss ray pinched her lips together without speaking, and mrs. van degen paused for the fraction of a second. "perhaps he's an apex friend," she then suggested. "very likely. only i think she'd have introduced him if he had been." his cousin faintly shrugged. "shall you encourage that?" peter van degen, who had strayed into his wife's box for a moment, caught the colloquy, and lifted his opera-glass. "the fellow next to miss spragg? (by george, ralph, she's ripping to-night!) wait a minute--i know his face. saw him in old harmon driscoll's office the day of the eubaw mine meeting. this chap's his secretary, or something. driscoll called him in to give some facts to the directors, and he seemed a mighty wide-awake customer." clare van degen turned gaily to her cousin. "if he has anything to do with the driscolls you'd better cultivate him! that's the kind of acquaintance the dagonets have always needed. i married to set them an example!" ralph rose with a laugh. "you're right. i'll hurry back and make his acquaintance." he held out his hand to his cousin, avoiding her disappointed eyes. undine, on entering her bedroom late that evening, was startled by the presence of a muffled figure which revealed itself, through the dimness, as the ungirded midnight outline of mrs. spragg. "mother? what on earth--?" the girl exclaimed, as mrs. spragg pressed the electric button and flooded the room with light. the idea of a mother's sitting up for her daughter was so foreign to apex customs that it roused only mistrust and irritation in the object of the demonstration. mrs. spragg came forward deprecatingly to lift the cloak from her daughter's shoulders. "i just had to, undie--i told father i had to. i wanted to hear all about it." undine shrugged away from her. "mercy! at this hour? you'll be as white as a sheet to-morrow, sitting up all night like this." she moved toward the toilet-table, and began to demolish with feverish hands the structure which mrs. heeny, a few hours earlier, had so lovingly raised. but the rose caught in a mesh of hair, and mrs. spragg, venturing timidly to release it, had a full view of her daughter's face in the glass. "why, undie, you're as white as a sheet now! you look fairly sick. what's the matter, daughter?" the girl broke away from her. "oh, can't you leave me alone, mother? there--do i look white now?" she cried, the blood flaming into her pale cheeks; and as mrs. spragg shrank back, she added more mildly, in the tone of a parent rebuking a persistent child: "it's enough to make anybody sick to be stared at that way!" mrs. spragg overflowed with compunction. "i'm so sorry, undie. i guess it was just seeing you in this glare of light." "yes--the light's awful; do turn some off," ordered undine, for whom, ordinarily, no radiance was too strong; and mrs. spragg, grateful to have commands laid upon her, hastened to obey. undine, after this, submitted in brooding silence to having her dress unlaced, and her slippers and dressing-gown brought to her. mrs. spragg visibly yearned to say more, but she restrained the impulse lest it should provoke her dismissal. "won't you take just a sup of milk before you go to bed?" she suggested at length, as undine sank into an armchair. "i've got some for you right here in the parlour." without looking up the girl answered: "no. i don't want anything. do go to bed." her mother seemed to be struggling between the life-long instinct of obedience and a swift unformulated fear. "i'm going, undie." she wavered. "didn't they receive you right, daughter?" she asked with sudden resolution. "what nonsense! how should they receive me? everybody was lovely to me." undine rose to her feet and went on with her undressing, tossing her clothes on the floor and shaking her hair over her bare shoulders. mrs. spragg stooped to gather up the scattered garments as they fell, folding them with a wistful caressing touch, and laying them on the lounge, without daring to raise her eyes to her daughter. it was not till she heard undine throw herself on the bed that she went toward her and drew the coverlet up with deprecating hands. "oh, do put the light out--i'm dead tired," the girl grumbled, pressing her face into the pillow. mrs. spragg turned away obediently; then, gathering all her scattered impulses into a passionate act of courage, she moved back to the bedside. "undie--you didn't see anybody--i mean at the theatre? anybody you didn't want to see?" undine, at the question, raised her head and started right against the tossed pillows, her white exasperated face close to her mother's twitching features. the two women examined each other a moment, fear and anger in their crossed glances; then undine answered: "no, nobody. good-night." ix undine, late the next day, waited alone under the leafless trellising of a wistaria arbour on the west side of the central park. she had put on her plainest dress, and wound a closely, patterned veil over her least vivid hat; but even thus toned down to the situation she was conscious of blazing out from it inconveniently. the habit of meeting young men in sequestered spots was not unknown to her: the novelty was in feeling any embarrassment about it. even now she--was disturbed not so much by the unlikely chance of an accidental encounter with ralph marvell as by the remembrance of similar meetings, far from accidental, with the romantic aaronson. could it be that the hand now adorned with ralph's engagement ring had once, in this very spot, surrendered itself to the riding-master's pressure? at the thought a wave of physical disgust passed over her, blotting out another memory as distasteful but more remote. it was revived by the appearance of a ruddy middle-sized young man, his stoutish figure tightly buttoned into a square-shouldered over-coat, who presently approached along the path that led to the arbour. silhouetted against the slope of the asphalt, the newcomer revealed an outline thick yet compact, with a round head set on a neck in which, at the first chance, prosperity would be likely to develop a red crease. his face, with its rounded surfaces, and the sanguine innocence of a complexion belied by prematurely astute black eyes, had a look of jovial cunning which undine had formerly thought "smart" but which now struck her as merely vulgar. she felt that in the marvell set elmer moffatt would have been stamped as "not a gentleman." nevertheless something in his look seemed to promise the capacity to develop into any character he might care to assume; though it did not seem probable that, for the present, that of a gentleman would be among them. he had always had a brisk swaggering step, and the faintly impudent tilt of the head that she had once thought "dashing"; but whereas this look had formerly denoted a somewhat desperate defiance of the world and its judgments it now suggested an almost assured relation to these powers; and undine's heart sank at the thought of what the change implied. as he drew nearer, the young man's air of assurance was replaced by an expression of mildly humorous surprise. "well--this is white of you. undine!" he said, taking her lifeless fingers into his dapperly gloved hand. through her veil she formed the words: "i said i'd come." he laughed. "that's so. and you see i believed you. though i might not have--" "i don't see the use of beginning like this," she interrupted nervously. "that's so too. suppose we walk along a little ways? it's rather chilly standing round." he turned down the path that descended toward the ramble and the girl moved on beside him with her long flowing steps. when they had reached the comparative shelter of the interlacing trees moffatt paused again to say: "if we're going to talk i'd like to see you. undine;" and after a first moment of reluctance she submissively threw back her veil. he let his eyes rest on her in silence; then he said judicially: "you've filled out some; but you're paler." after another appreciative scrutiny he added: "there's mighty few women as well worth looking at, and i'm obliged to you for letting me have the chance again." undine's brows drew together, but she softened her frown to a quivering smile. "i'm glad to see you too, elmer--i am, really!" he returned her smile while his glance continued to study her humorously. "you didn't betray the fact last night. miss spragg." "i was so taken aback. i thought you were out in alaska somewhere." the young man shaped his lips into the mute whistle by which he habitually vented his surprise. "you did? didn't abner e. spragg tell you he'd seen me down town?" undine gave him a startled glance. "father? why, have you seen him? he never said a word about it!" her companion's whistle became audible. "he's running yet!" he said gaily. "i wish i could scare some people as easy as i can your father." the girl hesitated. "i never felt toward you the way father did," she hazarded at length; and he gave her another long look in return. "well, if they'd left you alone i don't believe you'd ever have acted mean to me," was the conclusion he drew from it. "i didn't mean to, elmer ... i give you my word--but i was so young ... i didn't know anything...." his eyes had a twinkle of reminiscent pleasantry. "no--i don't suppose it would teach a girl much to be engaged two years to a stiff like millard binch; and that was about all that had happened to you before i came along." undine flushed to the forehead. "oh, elmer--i was only a child when i was engaged to millard--" "that's a fact. and you went on being one a good while afterward. the apex eagle always head-lined you 'the child-bride'--" "i can't see what's the use--now--." "that ruled out of court too? see here. undine--what can we talk about? i understood that was what we were here for." "of course." she made an effort at recovery. "i only meant to say--what's the use of raking up things that are over?" "rake up? that's the idea, is it? was that why you tried to cut me last night?" "i--oh, elmer! i didn't mean to; only, you see, i'm engaged." "oh, i saw that fast enough. i'd have seen it even if i didn't read the papers." he gave a short laugh. "he was feeling pretty good, sitting there alongside of you, wasn't he? i don't wonder he was. i remember. but i don't see that that was a reason for cold-shouldering me. i'm a respectable member of society now--i'm one of harmon b. driscoll's private secretaries." he brought out the fact with mock solemnity. but to undine, though undoubtedly impressive, the statement did not immediately present itself as a subject for pleasantry. "elmer moffatt--you are?" he laughed again. "guess you'd have remembered me last night if you'd known it." she was following her own train of thought with a look of pale intensity. "you're living in new york, then--you're going to live here right along?" "well, it looks that way; as long as i can hang on to this job. great men always gravitate to the metropolis. and i gravitated here just as uncle harmon b. was looking round for somebody who could give him an inside tip on the eubaw mine deal--you know the driscolls are pretty deep in eubaw. i happened to go out there after our little unpleasantness at apex, and it was just the time the deal went through. so in one way your folks did me a good turn when they made apex too hot for me: funny to think of, ain't it?" undine, recovering herself, held out her hand impulsively. "i'm real glad of it--i mean i'm real glad you've had such a stroke of luck!" "much obliged," he returned. "by the way, you might mention the fact to abner e. spragg next time you run across him." "father'll be real glad too, elmer." she hesitated, and then went on: "you must see now that it was natural father and mother should have felt the way they did--" "oh, the only thing that struck me as unnatural was their making you feel so too. but i'm free to admit i wasn't a promising case in those days." his glance played over her for a moment. "say, undine--it was good while it lasted, though, wasn't it?" she shrank back with a burning face and eyes of misery. "why, what's the matter? that ruled out too? oh, all right. look at here, undine, suppose you let me know what you are here to talk about, anyhow." she cast a helpless glance down the windings of the wooded glen in which they had halted. "just to ask you--to beg you--not to say anything of this kind again--ever--" "anything about you and me?" she nodded mutely. "why, what's wrong? anybody been saying anything against me?" "oh, no. it's not that!" "what on earth is it, then--except that you're ashamed of me, one way or another?" she made no answer, and he stood digging the tip of his walking-stick into a fissure of the asphalt. at length he went on in a tone that showed a first faint trace of irritation: "i don't want to break into your gilt-edged crowd, if it's that you're scared of." his tone seemed to increase her distress. "no, no--you don't understand. all i want is that nothing shall be known." "yes; but why? it was all straight enough, if you come to that." "it doesn't matter ... whether it was straight ... or ... not ..." he interpolated a whistle which made her add: "what i mean is that out here in the east they don't even like it if a girl's been engaged before." this last strain on his credulity wrung a laugh from moffatt. "gee! how'd they expect her fair young life to pass? playing 'holy city' on the melodeon, and knitting tidies for church fairs?" "girls are looked after here. it's all different. their mothers go round with them." this increased her companion's hilarity and he glanced about him with a pretense of compunction. "excuse me! i ought to have remembered. where's your chaperon, miss spragg?" he crooked his arm with mock ceremony. "allow me to escort you to the bew-fay. you see i'm onto the new york style myself." a sigh of discouragement escaped her. "elmer--if you really believe i never wanted to act mean to you, don't you act mean to me now!" "act mean?" he grew serious again and moved nearer to her. "what is it you want, undine? why can't you say it right out?" "what i told you. i don't want ralph marvell--or any of them--to know anything. if any of his folks found out, they'd never let him marry me--never! and he wouldn't want to: he'd be so horrified. and it would kill me, elmer--it would just kill me!" she pressed close to him, forgetful of her new reserves and repugnances, and impelled by the passionate absorbing desire to wring from him some definite pledge of safety. "oh, elmer, if you ever liked me, help me now, and i'll help you if i get the chance!" he had recovered his coolness as hers forsook her, and stood his ground steadily, though her entreating hands, her glowing face, were near enough to have shaken less sturdy nerves. "that so, puss? you just ask me to pass the sponge over elmer moffatt of apex city? cut the gentleman when we meet? that the size of it?" "oh, elmer, it's my first chance--i can't lose it!" she broke out, sobbing. "nonsense, child! of course you shan't. here, look up. undine--why, i never saw you cry before. don't you be afraid of me--_i_ ain't going to interrupt the wedding march." he began to whistle a bar of lohengrin. "i only just want one little promise in return." she threw a startled look at him and he added reassuringly: "oh, don't mistake me. i don't want to butt into your set--not for social purposes, anyhow; but if ever it should come handy to know any of 'em in a business way, would you fix it up for me--after you're married?'" their eyes met, and she remained silent for a tremulous moment or two; then she held out her hand. "afterward--yes. i promise. and you promise, elmer?" "oh, to have and to hold!" he sang out, swinging about to follow her as she hurriedly began to retrace her steps. the march twilight had fallen, and the stentorian facade was all aglow, when undine regained its monumental threshold. she slipped through the marble vestibule and soared skyward in the mirror-lined lift, hardly conscious of the direction she was taking. what she wanted was solitude, and the time to put some order into her thoughts; and she hoped to steal into her room without meeting her mother. through her thick veil the clusters of lights in the spragg drawing-room dilated and flowed together in a yellow blur, from which, as she entered, a figure detached itself; and with a start of annoyance she saw ralph marvell rise from the perusal of the "fiction number" of a magazine which had replaced "the hound of the baskervilles" on the onyx table. "yes; you told me not to come--and here i am." he lifted her hand to his lips as his eyes tried to find hers through the veil. she drew back with a nervous gesture. "i told you i'd be awfully late." "i know--trying on! and you're horribly tired, and wishing with all your might i wasn't here." "i'm not so sure i'm not!" she rejoined, trying to hide her vexation in a smile. "what a tragic little voice! you really are done up. i couldn't help dropping in for a minute; but of course if you say so i'll be off." she was removing her long gloves and he took her hands and drew her close. "only take off your veil, and let me see you." a quiver of resistance ran through her: he felt it and dropped her hands. "please don't tease. i never could bear it," she stammered, drawing away. "till to-morrow, then; that is, if the dress-makers permit." she forced a laugh. "if i showed myself now you might not come back to-morrow. i look perfectly hideous--it was so hot and they kept me so long." "all to make yourself more beautiful for a man who's blind with your beauty already?" the words made her smile, and moving nearer she bent her head and stood still while he undid her veil. as he put it back their lips met, and his look of passionate tenderness was incense to her. but the next moment his expression passed from worship to concern. "dear! why, what's the matter? you've been crying!" she put both hands to her hat in the instinctive effort to hide her face. his persistence was as irritating as her mother's. "i told you it was frightfully hot--and all my things were horrid; and it made me so cross and nervous!" she turned to the looking-glass with a feint of smoothing her hair. marvell laid his hand on her arm, "i can't bear to see you so done up. why can't we be married to-morrow, and escape all these ridiculous preparations? i shall hate your fine clothes if they're going to make you so miserable." she dropped her hands, and swept about on him, her face lit up by a new idea. he was extraordinarily handsome and appealing, and her heart began to beat faster. "i hate it all too! i wish we could be married right away!" marvell caught her to him joyously. "dearest--dearest! don't, if you don't mean it! the thought's too glorious!" undine lingered in his arms, not with any intent of tenderness, but as if too deeply lost in a new train of thought to be conscious of his hold. "i suppose most of the things could be got ready sooner--if i said they must," she brooded, with a fixed gaze that travelled past him. "and the rest--why shouldn't the rest be sent over to europe after us? i want to go straight off with you, away from everything--ever so far away, where there'll be nobody but you and me alone!" she had a flash of illumination which made her turn her lips to his. "oh, my darling--my darling!" marvell whispered. x mr. and mrs. spragg were both given to such long periods of ruminating apathy that the student of inheritance might have wondered whence undine derived her overflowing activity. the answer would have been obtained by observing her father's business life. from the moment he set foot in wall street mr. spragg became another man. physically the change revealed itself only by the subtlest signs. as he steered his way to his office through the jostling crowd of william street his relaxed muscles did not grow more taut or his lounging gait less desultory. his shoulders were hollowed by the usual droop, and his rusty black waistcoat showed the same creased concavity at the waist, the same flabby prominence below. it was only in his face that the difference was perceptible, though even here it rather lurked behind the features than openly modified them: showing itself now and then in the cautious glint of half-closed eyes, the forward thrust of black brows, or a tightening of the lax lines of the mouth--as the gleam of a night-watchman's light might flash across the darkness of a shuttered house-front. the shutters were more tightly barred than usual, when, on a morning some two weeks later than the date of the incidents last recorded, mr. spragg approached the steel and concrete tower in which his office occupied a lofty pigeon-hole. events had moved rapidly and somewhat surprisingly in the interval, and mr. spragg had already accustomed himself to the fact that his daughter was to be married within the week, instead of awaiting the traditional post-lenten date. conventionally the change meant little to him; but on the practical side it presented unforeseen difficulties. mr. spragg had learned within the last weeks that a new york marriage involved material obligations unknown to apex. marvell, indeed, had been loftily careless of such questions; but his grandfather, on the announcement of the engagement, had called on mr. spragg and put before him, with polished precision, the young man's financial situation. mr. spragg, at the moment, had been inclined to deal with his visitor in a spirit of indulgent irony. as he leaned back in his revolving chair, with feet adroitly balanced against a tilted scrap basket, his air of relaxed power made mr. dagonet's venerable elegance seem as harmless as that of an ivory jack-straw--and his first replies to his visitor were made with the mildness of a kindly giant. "ralph don't make a living out of the law, you say? no, it didn't strike me he'd be likely to, from the talks i've had with him. fact is, the law's a business that wants--" mr. spragg broke off, checked by a protest from mr. dagonet. "oh, a profession, you call it? it ain't a business?" his smile grew more indulgent as this novel distinction dawned on him. "why, i guess that's the whole trouble with ralph. nobody expects to make money in a profession; and if you've taught him to regard the law that way, he'd better go right into cooking-stoves and done with it." mr. dagonet, within a narrower range, had his own play of humour; and it met mr. spragg's with a leap. "it's because i knew he would manage to make cooking-stoves as unremunerative as a profession that i saved him from so glaring a failure by putting him into the law." the retort drew a grunt of amusement from mr. spragg; and the eyes of the two men met in unexpected understanding. "that so? what can he do, then?" the future father-in-law enquired. "he can write poetry--at least he tells me he can." mr. dagonet hesitated, as if aware of the inadequacy of the alternative, and then added: "and he can count on three thousand a year from me." mr. spragg tilted himself farther back without disturbing his subtly-calculated relation to the scrap basket. "does it cost anything like that to print his poetry?" mr. dagonet smiled again: he was clearly enjoying his visit. "dear, no--he doesn't go in for 'luxe' editions. and now and then he gets ten dollars from a magazine." mr. spragg mused. "wasn't he ever taught to work?" "no; i really couldn't have afforded that." "i see. then they've got to live on two hundred and fifty dollars a month." mr. dagonet remained pleasantly unmoved. "does it cost anything like that to buy your daughter's dresses?" a subterranean chuckle agitated the lower folds of mr. spragg's waistcoat. "i might put him in the way of something--i guess he's smart enough." mr. dagonet made a gesture of friendly warning. "it will pay us both in the end to keep him out of business," he said, rising as if to show that his mission was accomplished. the results of this friendly conference had been more serious than mr. spragg could have foreseen--and the victory remained with his antagonist. it had not entered into mr. spragg's calculations that he would have to give his daughter any fixed income on her marriage. he meant that she should have the "handsomest" wedding the new york press had ever celebrated, and her mother's fancy was already afloat on a sea of luxuries--a motor, a fifth avenue house, and a tiara that should out-blaze mrs. van degen's; but these were movable benefits, to be conferred whenever mr. spragg happened to be "on the right side" of the market. it was a different matter to be called on, at such short notice, to bridge the gap between young marvell's allowance and undine's requirements; and her father's immediate conclusion was that the engagement had better be broken off. such scissions were almost painless in apex, and he had fancied it would be easy, by an appeal to the girl's pride, to make her see that she owed it to herself to do better. "you'd better wait awhile and look round again," was the way he had put it to her at the opening of the talk of which, even now, he could not recall the close without a tremor. undine, when she took his meaning, had been terrible. everything had gone down before her, as towns and villages went down before one of the tornadoes of her native state. wait awhile? look round? did he suppose she was marrying for money? didn't he see it was all a question, now and here, of the kind of people she wanted to "go with"? did he want to throw her straight back into the lipscomb set, to have her marry a dentist and live in a west side flat? why hadn't they stayed in apex, if that was all he thought she was fit for? she might as well have married millard binch, instead of handing him over to indiana frusk! couldn't her father understand that nice girls, in new york, didn't regard getting married like going on a buggy-ride? it was enough to ruin a girl's chances if she broke her engagement to a man in ralph marvell's set. all kinds of spiteful things would be said about her, and she would never be able to go with the right people again. they had better go back to apex right off--it was they and not she who had wanted to leave apex, anyhow--she could call her mother to witness it. she had always, when it came to that, done what her father and mother wanted, but she'd given up trying to make out what they were after, unless it was to make her miserable; and if that was it, hadn't they had enough of it by this time? she had, anyhow. but after this she meant to lead her own life; and they needn't ask her where she was going, or what she meant to do, because this time she'd die before she told them--and they'd made life so hateful to her that she only wished she was dead already. mr. spragg heard her out in silence, pulling at his beard with one sallow wrinkled hand, while the other dragged down the armhole of his waistcoat. suddenly he looked up and said: "ain't you in love with the fellow, undie?" the girl glared back at him, her splendid brows beetling like an amazon's. "do you think i'd care a cent for all the rest of it if i wasn't?" "well, if you are, you and he won't mind beginning in a small way." her look poured contempt on his ignorance. "do you s'pose i'd drag him down?" with a magnificent gesture she tore marvell's ring from her finger. "i'll send this back this minute. i'll tell him i thought he was a rich man, and now i see i'm mistaken--" she burst into shattering sobs, rocking her beautiful body back and forward in all the abandonment of young grief; and her father stood over her, stroking her shoulder and saying helplessly: "i'll see what i can do, undine--" all his life, and at ever-diminishing intervals, mr. spragg had been called on by his womenkind to "see what he could do"; and the seeing had almost always resulted as they wished. undine did not have to send back her ring, and in her state of trance-like happiness she hardly asked by what means her path had been smoothed, but merely accepted her mother's assurance that "father had fixed everything all right." mr. spragg accepted the situation also. a son-in-law who expected to be pensioned like a grand army veteran was a phenomenon new to his experience; but if that was what undine wanted she should have it. only two days later, however, he was met by a new demand--the young people had decided to be married "right off," instead of waiting till june. this change of plan was made known to mr. spragg at a moment when he was peculiarly unprepared for the financial readjustment it necessitated. he had always declared himself able to cope with any crisis if undine and her mother would "go steady"; but he now warned them of his inability to keep up with the new pace they had set. undine, not deigning to return to the charge, had commissioned her mother to speak for her; and mr. spragg was surprised to meet in his wife a firmness as inflexible as his daughter's. "i can't do it, loot--can't put my hand on the cash," he had protested; but mrs. spragg fought him inch by inch, her back to the wall--flinging out at last, as he pressed her closer: "well, if you want to know, she's seen elmer." the bolt reached its mark, and her husband turned an agitated face on her. "elmer? what on earth--he didn't come here?" "no; but he sat next to her the other night at the theatre, and she's wild with us for not having warned her." mr. spragg's scowl drew his projecting brows together. "warned her of what? what's elmer to her? why's she afraid of elmer moffatt?" "she's afraid of his talking." "talking? what on earth can he say that'll hurt her?" "oh, i don't know," mrs. spragg wailed. "she's so nervous i can hardly get a word out of her." mr. spragg's whitening face showed the touch of a new fear. "is she afraid he'll get round her again--make up to her? is that what she means by 'talking'?" "i don't know, i don't know. i only know she is afraid--she's afraid as death of him." for a long interval they sat silently looking at each other while their heavy eyes exchanged conjectures: then mr. spragg rose from his chair, saying, as he took up his hat: "don't you fret, leota; i'll see what i can do." he had been "seeing" now for an arduous fortnight; and the strain on his vision had resulted in a state of tension such as he had not undergone since the epic days of the pure water move at apex. it was not his habit to impart his fears to mrs. spragg and undine, and they continued the bridal preparations, secure in their invariable experience that, once "father" had been convinced of the impossibility of evading their demands, he might be trusted to satisfy them by means with which his womenkind need not concern themselves. mr. spragg, as he approached his office on the morning in question, felt reasonably sure of fulfilling these expectations; but he reflected that a few more such victories would mean disaster. he entered the vast marble vestibule of the ararat trust building and walked toward the express elevator that was to carry him up to his office. at the door of the elevator a man turned to him, and he recognized elmer moffatt, who put out his hand with an easy gesture. mr. spragg did not ignore the gesture: he did not even withhold his hand. in his code the cut, as a conscious sign of disapproval, did not exist. in the south, if you had a grudge against a man you tried to shoot him; in the west, you tried to do him in a mean turn in business; but in neither region was the cut among the social weapons of offense. mr. spragg, therefore, seeing moffatt in his path, extended a lifeless hand while he faced the young man scowlingly. moffatt met the hand and the scowl with equal coolness. "going up to your office? i was on my way there." the elevator door rolled back, and mr. spragg, entering it, found his companion at his side. they remained silent during the ascent to mr. spragg's threshold; but there the latter turned to enquire ironically of moffatt: "anything left to say?" moffatt smiled. "nothing left--no; i'm carrying a whole new line of goods." mr. spragg pondered the reply; then he opened the door and suffered moffatt to follow him in. behind an inner glazed enclosure, with its one window dimmed by a sooty perspective barred with chimneys, he seated himself at a dusty littered desk, and groped instinctively for the support of the scrap basket. moffatt, uninvited, dropped into the nearest chair, and mr. spragg said, after another silence: "i'm pretty busy this morning." "i know you are: that's why i'm here," moffatt serenely answered. he leaned back, crossing his legs, and twisting his small stiff moustache with a plump hand adorned by a cameo. "fact is," he went on, "this is a coals-of-fire call. you think i owe you a grudge, and i'm going to show you i'm not that kind. i'm going to put you onto a good thing--oh, not because i'm so fond of you; just because it happens to hit my sense of a joke." while moffatt talked mr. spragg took up the pile of letters on his desk and sat shuffling them like a pack of cards. he dealt them deliberately to two imaginary players; then he pushed them aside and drew out his watch. "all right--i carry one too," said the young man easily. "but you'll find it's time gained to hear what i've got to say." mr. spragg considered the vista of chimneys without speaking, and moffatt continued: "i don't suppose you care to hear the story of my life, so i won't refer you to the back numbers. you used to say out in apex that i spent too much time loafing round the bar of the mealey house; that was one of the things you had against me. well, maybe i did--but it taught me to talk, and to listen to the other fellows too. just at present i'm one of harmon b. driscoll's private secretaries, and some of that mealey house loafing has come in more useful than any job i ever put my hand to. the old man happened to hear i knew something about the inside of the eubaw deal, and took me on to have the information where he could get at it. i've given him good talk for his money; but i've done some listening too. eubaw ain't the only commodity the driscolls deal in." mr. spragg restored his watch to his pocket and shifted his drowsy gaze from the window to his visitor's face. "yes," said moffatt, as if in reply to the movement, "the driscolls are getting busy out in apex. now they've got all the street railroads in their pocket they want the water-supply too--but you know that as well as i do. fact is, they've got to have it; and there's where you and i come in." mr. spragg thrust his hands in his waistcoat arm-holes and turned his eyes back to the window. "i'm out of that long ago," he said indifferently. "sure," moffatt acquiesced; "but you know what went on when you were in it." "well?" said mr. spragg, shifting one hand to the masonic emblem on his watch-chain. "well, representative james j. rolliver, who was in it with you, ain't out of it yet. he's the man the driscolls are up against. what d'you know about him?" mr. spragg twirled the emblem thoughtfully. "driscoll tell you to come here?" moffatt laughed. "no, sir--not by a good many miles." mr. spragg removed his feet from the scrap basket and straightened himself in his chair. "well--i didn't either; good morning, mr. moffatt." the young man stared a moment, a humorous glint in his small black eyes; but he made no motion to leave his seat. "undine's to be married next week, isn't she?" he asked in a conversational tone. mr. spragg's face blackened and he swung about in his revolving chair. "you go to--" moffatt raised a deprecating hand. "oh, you needn't warn me off. i don't want to be invited to the wedding. and i don't want to forbid the banns." there was a derisive sound in mr. spragg's throat. "but i do want to get out of driscoll's office," moffatt imperturbably continued. "there's no future there for a fellow like me. i see things big. that's the reason apex was too tight a fit for me. it's only the little fellows that succeed in little places. new york's my size--without a single alteration. i could prove it to you to-morrow if i could put my hand on fifty thousand dollars." mr. spragg did not repeat his gesture of dismissal: he was once more listening guardedly but intently. moffatt saw it and continued. "and i could put my hand on double that sum--yes, sir, double--if you'd just step round with me to old driscoll's office before five p. m. see the connection, mr. spragg?" the older man remained silent while his visitor hummed a bar or two of "in the gloaming"; then he said: "you want me to tell driscoll what i know about james j. rolliver?" "i want you to tell the truth--i want you to stand for political purity in your native state. a man of your prominence owes it to the community, sir," cried moffatt. mr. spragg was still tormenting his masonic emblem. "rolliver and i always stood together," he said at last, with a tinge of reluctance. "well, how much have you made out of it? ain't he always been ahead of the game?" "i can't do it--i can't do it," said mr. spragg, bringing his clenched hand down on the desk, as if addressing an invisible throng of assailants. moffatt rose without any evidence of disappointment in his ruddy countenance. "well, so long," he said, moving toward the door. near the threshold he paused to add carelessly: "excuse my referring to a personal matter--but i understand miss spragg's wedding takes place next monday." mr. spragg was silent. "how's that?" moffatt continued unabashed. "i saw in the papers the date was set for the end of june." mr. spragg rose heavily from his seat. "i presume my daughter has her reasons," he said, moving toward the door in moffatt's wake. "i guess she has--same as i have for wanting you to step round with me to old driscoll's. if undine's reasons are as good as mine--" "stop right here, elmer moffatt!" the older man broke out with lifted hand. moffatt made a burlesque feint of evading a blow; then his face grew serious, and he moved close to mr. spragg, whose arm had fallen to his side. "see here, i know undine's reasons. i've had a talk with her--didn't she tell you? she don't beat about the bush the way you do. she told me straight out what was bothering her. she wants the marvells to think she's right out of kindergarten. 'no goods sent out on approval from this counter.' and i see her point--_i_ don't mean to publish my meemo'rs. only a deal's a deal." he paused a moment, twisting his fingers about the heavy gold watch-chain that crossed his waistcoat. "tell you what, mr. spragg, i don't bear malice--not against undine, anyway--and if i could have afforded it i'd have been glad enough to oblige her and forget old times. but you didn't hesitate to kick me when i was down and it's taken me a day or two to get on my legs again after that kicking. i see my way now to get there and keep there; and there's a kinder poetic justice in your being the man to help me up. if i can get hold of fifty thousand dollars within a day or so i don't care who's got the start of me. i've got a dead sure thing in sight, and you're the only man that can get it for me. now do you see where we're coming out?" mr. spragg, during this discourse, had remained motionless, his hands in his pockets, his jaws moving mechanically, as though he mumbled a tooth-pick under his beard. his sallow cheek had turned a shade paler, and his brows hung threateningly over his half-closed eyes. but there was no threat--there was scarcely more than a note of dull curiosity--in the voice with which he said: "you mean to talk?" moffatt's rosy face grew as hard as a steel safe. "i mean you to talk--to old driscoll." he paused, and then added: "it's a hundred thousand down, between us." mr. spragg once more consulted his watch. "i'll see you again," he said with an effort. moffatt struck one fist against the other. "no, sir--you won't! you'll only hear from me--through the marvell family. your news ain't worth a dollar to driscoll if he don't get it to-day." he was checked by the sound of steps in the outer office, and mr. spragg's stenographer appeared in the doorway. "it's mr. marvell," she announced; and ralph marvell, glowing with haste and happiness, stood between the two men, holding out his hand to mr. spragg. "am i awfully in the way, sir? turn me out if i am--but first let me just say a word about this necklace i've ordered for un--" he broke off, made aware by mr. spragg's glance of the presence of elmer moffatt, who, with unwonted discretion, had dropped back into the shadow of the door. marvell turned on moffatt a bright gaze full of the instinctive hospitality of youth; but moffatt looked straight past him at mr. spragg. the latter, as if in response to an imperceptible signal, mechanically pronounced his visitor's name; and the two young men moved toward each other. "i beg your pardon most awfully--am i breaking up an important conference?" ralph asked as he shook hands. "why, no--i guess we're pretty nearly through. i'll step outside and woo the blonde while you're talking," moffatt rejoined in the same key. "thanks so much--i shan't take two seconds." ralph broke off to scrutinize him. "but haven't we met before? it seems to me i've seen you--just lately--" moffatt seemed about to answer, but his reply was checked by an abrupt movement on the part of mr. spragg. there was a perceptible pause, during which moffatt's bright black glance rested questioningly on ralph; then he looked again at the older man, and their eyes held each other for a silent moment. "why, no--not as i'm aware of, mr. marvell," moffatt said, addressing himself amicably to ralph. "better late than never, though--and i hope to have the pleasure soon again." he divided a nod between the two men, and passed into the outer office, where they heard him addressing the stenographer in a strain of exaggerated gallantry. xi the july sun enclosed in a ring of fire the ilex grove of a villa in the hills near siena. below, by the roadside, the long yellow house seemed to waver and palpitate in the glare; but steep by steep, behind it, the cool ilex-dusk mounted to the ledge where ralph marvell, stretched on his back in the grass, lay gazing up at a black reticulation of branches between which bits of sky gleamed with the hardness and brilliancy of blue enamel. up there too the air was thick with heat; but compared with the white fire below it was a dim and tempered warmth, like that of the churches in which he and undine sometimes took refuge at the height of the torrid days. ralph loved the heavy italian summer, as he had loved the light spring days leading up to it: the long line of dancing days that had drawn them on and on ever since they had left their ship at naples four months earlier. four months of beauty, changeful, inexhaustible, weaving itself about him in shapes of softness and strength; and beside him, hand in hand with him, embodying that spirit of shifting magic, the radiant creature through whose eyes he saw it. this was what their hastened marriage had blessed them with, giving them leisure, before summer came, to penetrate to remote folds of the southern mountains, to linger in the shade of sicilian orange-groves, and finally, travelling by slow stages to the adriatic, to reach the central hill-country where even in july they might hope for a breathable air. to ralph the sienese air was not only breathable but intoxicating. the sun, treading the earth like a vintager, drew from it heady fragrances, crushed out of it new colours. all the values of the temperate landscape were reversed: the noon high-lights were whiter but the shadows had unimagined colour. on the blackness of cork and ilex and cypress lay the green and purple lustres, the coppery iridescences, of old bronze; and night after night the skies were wine-blue and bubbling with stars. ralph said to himself that no one who had not seen italy thus prostrate beneath the sun knew what secret treasures she could yield. as he lay there, fragments of past states of emotion, fugitive felicities of thought and sensation, rose and floated on the surface of his thoughts. it was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. he had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one's self a mere wave on the wild stream of being, yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known within the mere bounds of the actual. but now he knew the sensation in its fulness, and with it came the releasing power of language. words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie. he stared up at the pattern they made till his eyes ached with excess of light; then he changed his position and looked at his wife. undine, near by, leaned against a gnarled tree with the slightly constrained air of a person unused to sylvan abandonments. her beautiful back could not adapt itself to the irregularities of the tree-trunk, and she moved a little now and then in the effort to find an easier position. but her expression was serene, and ralph, looking up at her through drowsy lids, thought her face had never been more exquisite. "you look as cool as a wave," he said, reaching out for the hand on her knee. she let him have it, and he drew it closer, scrutinizing it as if it had been a bit of precious porcelain or ivory. it was small and soft, a mere featherweight, a puff-ball of a hand--not quick and thrilling, not a speaking hand, but one to be fondled and dressed in rings, and to leave a rosy blur in the brain. the fingers were short and tapering, dimpled at the base, with nails as smooth as rose-leaves. ralph lifted them one by one, like a child playing with piano-keys, but they were inelastic and did not spring back far--only far enough to show the dimples. he turned the hand over and traced the course of its blue veins from the wrist to the rounding of the palm below the fingers; then he put a kiss in the warm hollow between. the upper world had vanished: his universe had shrunk to the palm of a hand. but there was no sense of diminution. in the mystic depths whence his passion sprang, earthly dimensions were ignored and the curve of beauty was boundless enough to hold whatever the imagination could pour into it. ralph had never felt more convinced of his power to write a great poem; but now it was undine's hand which held the magic wand of expression. she stirred again uneasily, answering his last words with a faint accent of reproach. "i don't feel cool. you said there'd be a breeze up here.". he laughed. "you poor darling! wasn't it ever as hot as this in apex?" she withdrew her hand with a slight grimace. "yes--but i didn't marry you to go back to apex!" ralph laughed again; then he lifted himself on his elbow and regained the hand. "i wonder what you did marry me for?" "mercy! it's too hot for conundrums." she spoke without impatience, but with a lassitude less joyous than his. he roused himself. "do you really mind the heat so much? we'll go, if you do." she sat up eagerly. "go to switzerland, you mean?" "well, i hadn't taken quite as long a leap. i only meant we might drive back to siena." she relapsed listlessly against her tree-trunk. "oh, siena's hotter than this." "we could go and sit in the cathedral--it's always cool there at sunset." "we've sat in the cathedral at sunset every day for a week." "well, what do you say to stopping at lecceto on the way? i haven't shown you lecceto yet; and the drive back by moonlight would be glorious." this woke her to a slight show of interest. "it might be nice--but where could we get anything to eat?" ralph laughed again. "i don't believe we could. you're too practical." "well, somebody's got to be. and the food in the hotel is too disgusting if we're not on time." "i admit that the best of it has usually been appropriated by the extremely good-looking cavalry-officer who's so keen to know you." undine's face brightened. "you know he's not a count; he's a marquis. his name's roviano; his palace in rome is in the guide-books, and he speaks english beautifully. celeste found out about him from the headwaiter," she said, with the security of one who treats of recognized values. marvell, sitting upright, reached lazily across the grass for his hat. "then there's all the more reason for rushing back to defend our share." he spoke in the bantering tone which had become the habitual expression of his tenderness; but his eyes softened as they absorbed in a last glance the glimmering submarine light of the ancient grove, through which undine's figure wavered nereid-like above him. "you never looked your name more than you do now," he said, kneeling at her side and putting his arm about her. she smiled back a little vaguely, as if not seizing his allusion, and being content to let it drop into the store of unexplained references which had once stimulated her curiosity but now merely gave her leisure to think of other things. but her smile was no less lovely for its vagueness, and indeed, to ralph, the loveliness was enhanced by the latent doubt. he remembered afterward that at that moment the cup of life seemed to brim over. "come, dear--here or there--it's all divine!" in the carriage, however, she remained insensible to the soft spell of the evening, noticing only the heat and dust, and saying, as they passed under the wooded cliff of lecceto, that they might as well have stopped there after all, since with such a headache as she felt coming on she didn't care if she dined or not. ralph looked up yearningly at the long walls overhead; but undine's mood was hardly favourable to communion with such scenes, and he made no attempt to stop the carriage. instead he presently said: "if you're tired of italy, we've got the world to choose from." she did not speak for a moment; then she said: "it's the heat i'm tired of. don't people generally come here earlier?" "yes. that's why i chose the summer: so that we could have it all to ourselves." she tried to put a note of reasonableness into her voice. "if you'd told me we were going everywhere at the wrong time, of course i could have arranged about my clothes." "you poor darling! let us, by all means, go to the place where the clothes will be right: they're too beautiful to be left out of our scheme of life." her lips hardened. "i know you don't care how i look. but you didn't give me time to order anything before we were married, and i've got nothing but my last winter's things to wear." ralph smiled. even his subjugated mind perceived the inconsistency of undine's taxing him with having hastened their marriage; but her variations on the eternal feminine still enchanted him. "we'll go wherever you please--you make every place the one place," he said, as if he were humouring an irresistible child. "to switzerland, then? celeste says st. moritz is too heavenly," exclaimed undine, who gathered her ideas of europe chiefly from the conversation of her experienced attendant. "one can be cool short of the engadine. why not go south again--say to capri?" "capri? is that the island we saw from naples, where the artists go?" she drew her brows together. "it would be simply awful getting there in this heat." "well, then, i know a little place in switzerland where one can still get away from the crowd, and we can sit and look at a green water-fall while i lie in wait for adjectives." mr. spragg's astonishment on learning that his son-in-law contemplated maintaining a household on the earnings of his muse was still matter for pleasantry between the pair; and one of the humours of their first weeks together had consisted in picturing themselves as a primeval couple setting forth across a virgin continent and subsisting on the adjectives which ralph was to trap for his epic. on this occasion, however, his wife did not take up the joke, and he remained silent while their carriage climbed the long dusty hill to the fontebranda gate. he had seen her face droop as he suggested the possibility of an escape from the crowds in switzerland, and it came to him, with the sharpness of a knife-thrust, that a crowd was what she wanted--that she was sick to death of being alone with him. he sat motionless, staring ahead at the red-brown walls and towers on the steep above them. after all there was nothing sudden in his discovery. for weeks it had hung on the edge of consciousness, but he had turned from it with the heart's instinctive clinging to the unrealities by which it lives. even now a hundred qualifying reasons rushed to his aid. they told him it was not of himself that undine had wearied, but only of their present way of life. he had said a moment before, without conscious exaggeration, that her presence made any place the one place; yet how willingly would he have consented to share in such a life as she was leading before their marriage? and he had to acknowledge their months of desultory wandering from one remote italian hill-top to another must have seemed as purposeless to her as balls and dinners would have been to him. an imagination like his, peopled with such varied images and associations, fed by so many currents from the long stream of human experience, could hardly picture the bareness of the small half-lit place in which his wife's spirit fluttered. her mind was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to ralph as pathetic as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant hands had been taught to adorn it. he was beginning to understand this, and learning to adapt himself to the narrow compass of her experience. the task of opening new windows in her mind was inspiring enough to give him infinite patience; and he would not yet own to himself that her pliancy and variety were imitative rather than spontaneous. meanwhile he had no desire to sacrifice her wishes to his, and it distressed him that he dared not confess his real reason for avoiding the engadine. the truth was that their funds were shrinking faster than he had expected. mr. spragg, after bluntly opposing their hastened marriage on the ground that he was not prepared, at such short notice, to make the necessary provision for his daughter, had shortly afterward (probably, as undine observed to ralph, in consequence of a lucky "turn" in the street) met their wishes with all possible liberality, bestowing on them a wedding in conformity with mrs. spragg's ideals and up to the highest standard of mrs. heeny's clippings, and pledging himself to provide undine with an income adequate to so brilliant a beginning. it was understood that ralph, on their return, should renounce the law for some more paying business; but this seemed the smallest of sacrifices to make for the privilege of calling undine his wife; and besides, he still secretly hoped that, in the interval, his real vocation might declare itself in some work which would justify his adopting the life of letters. he had assumed that undine's allowance, with the addition of his own small income, would be enough to satisfy their needs. his own were few, and had always been within his means; but his wife's daily requirements, combined with her intermittent outbreaks of extravagance, had thrown out all his calculations, and they were already seriously exceeding their income. if any one had prophesied before his marriage that he would find it difficult to tell this to undine he would have smiled at the suggestion; and during their first days together it had seemed as though pecuniary questions were the last likely to be raised between them. but his marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without it but merely a blind confidence that it will somehow be provided. if undine, like the lilies of the field, took no care, it was not because her wants were as few but because she assumed that care would be taken for her by those whose privilege it was to enable her to unite floral insouciance with sheban elegance. she had met ralph's first note of warning with the assurance that she "didn't mean to worry"; and her tone implied that it was his business to do so for her. he certainly wanted to guard her from this as from all other cares; he wanted also, and still more passionately after the topic had once or twice recurred between them, to guard himself from the risk of judging where he still adored. these restraints to frankness kept him silent during the remainder of the drive, and when, after dinner, undine again complained of her headache, he let her go up to her room and wandered out into the dimly lit streets to renewed communion with his problems. they hung on him insistently as darkness fell, and siena grew vocal with that shrill diversity of sounds that breaks, on summer nights, from every cleft of the masonry in old italian towns. then the moon rose, unfolding depth by depth the lines of the antique land; and ralph, leaning against an old brick parapet, and watching each silver-blue remoteness disclose itself between the dark masses of the middle distance, felt his spirit enlarged and pacified. for the first time, as his senses thrilled to the deep touch of beauty, he asked himself if out of these floating and fugitive vibrations he might not build something concrete and stable, if even such dull common cares as now oppressed him might not become the motive power of creation. if he could only, on the spot, do something with all the accumulated spoils of the last months--something that should both put money into his pocket and harmony into the rich confusion of his spirit! "i'll write--i'll write: that must be what the whole thing means," he said to himself, with a vague clutch at some solution which should keep him a little longer hanging half-way down the steep of disenchantment. he would have stayed on, heedless of time, to trace the ramifications of his idea in the complex beauty of the scene, but for the longing to share his mood with undine. for the last few months every thought and sensation had been instantly transmuted into such emotional impulses and, though the currents of communication between himself and undine were neither deep nor numerous, each fresh rush of feeling seemed strong enough to clear a way to her heart. he hurried back, almost breathlessly, to the inn; but even as he knocked at her door the subtle emanation of other influences seemed to arrest and chill him. she had put out the lamp, and sat by the window in the moonlight, her head propped on a listless hand. as marvell entered she turned; then, without speaking, she looked away again. he was used to this mute reception, and had learned that it had no personal motive, but was the result of an extremely simplified social code. mr. and mrs. spragg seldom spoke to each other when they met, and words of greeting seemed almost unknown to their domestic vocabulary. marvell, at first, had fancied that his own warmth would call forth a response from his wife, who had been so quick to learn the forms of worldly intercourse; but he soon saw that she regarded intimacy as a pretext for escaping from such forms into a total absence of expression. to-night, however, he felt another meaning in her silence, and perceived that she intended him to feel it. he met it by silence, but of a different kind; letting his nearness speak for him as he knelt beside her and laid his cheek against hers. she seemed hardly aware of the gesture; but to that he was also used. she had never shown any repugnance to his tenderness, but such response as it evoked was remote and ariel-like, suggesting, from the first, not so much of the recoil of ignorance as the coolness of the element from which she took her name. as he pressed her to him she seemed to grow less impassive and he felt her resign herself like a tired child. he held his breath, not daring to break the spell. at length he whispered: "i've just seen such a wonderful thing--i wish you'd been with me!" "what sort of a thing?" she turned her head with a faint show of interest. "a--i don't know--a vision.... it came to me out there just now with the moonrise." "a vision?" her interest flagged. "i never cared much about spirits. mother used to try to drag me to seances--but they always made me sleepy." ralph laughed. "i don't mean a dead spirit but a living one! i saw the vision of a book i mean to do. it came to me suddenly, magnificently, swooped down on me as that big white moon swooped down on the black landscape, tore at me like a great white eagle-like the bird of jove! after all, imagination was the eagle that devoured prometheus!" she drew away abruptly, and the bright moonlight showed him the apprehension in her face. "you're not going to write a book here?" he stood up and wandered away a step or two; then he turned and came back. "of course not here. wherever you want. the main point is that it's come to me--no, that it's come back to me! for it's all these months together, it's all our happiness--it's the meaning of life that i've found, and it's you, dearest, you who've given it to me!" he dropped down beside her again; but she disengaged herself and he heard a little sob in her throat. "undine--what's the matter?" "nothing...i don't know...i suppose i'm homesick..." "homesick? you poor darling! you're tired of travelling? what is it?" "i don't know...i don't like europe...it's not what i expected, and i think it's all too dreadfully dreary!" the words broke from her in a long wail of rebellion. marvell gazed at her perplexedly. it seemed strange that such unguessed thoughts should have been stirring in the heart pressed to his. "it's less interesting than you expected--or less amusing? is that it?" "it's dirty and ugly--all the towns we've been to are disgustingly dirty. i loathe the smells and the beggars. i'm sick and tired of the stuffy rooms in the hotels. i thought it would all be so splendid--but new york's ever so much nicer!" "not new york in july?" "i don't care--there are the roof-gardens, anyway; and there are always people round. all these places seem as if they were dead. it's all like some awful cemetery." a sense of compunction checked marvell's laughter. "don't cry, dear--don't! i see, i understand. you're lonely and the heat has tired you out. it is dull here; awfully dull; i've been stupid not to feel it. but we'll start at once--we'll get out of it." she brightened instantly. "we'll go up to switzerland?" "we'll go up to switzerland." he had a fleeting glimpse of the quiet place with the green water-fall, where he might have made tryst with his vision; then he turned his mind from it and said: "we'll go just where you want. how soon can you be ready to start?" "oh, to-morrow--the first thing to-morrow! i'll make celeste get out of bed now and pack. can we go right through to st. moritz? i'd rather sleep in the train than in another of these awful places." she was on her feet in a flash, her face alight, her hair waving and floating about her as though it rose on her happy heart-beats. "oh, ralph, it's sweet of you, and i love you!" she cried out, letting him take her to his breast. xii in the quiet place with the green water-fall ralph's vision might have kept faith with him; but how could he hope to surprise it in the midsummer crowds of st. moritz? undine, at any rate, had found there what she wanted; and when he was at her side, and her radiant smile included him, every other question was in abeyance. but there were hours of solitary striding over bare grassy slopes, face to face with the ironic interrogation of sky and mountains, when his anxieties came back, more persistent and importunate. sometimes they took the form of merely material difficulties. how, for instance, was he to meet the cost of their ruinous suite at the engadine palace while he awaited mr. spragg's next remittance? and once the hotel bills were paid, what would be left for the journey back to paris, the looming expenses there, the price of the passage to america? these questions would fling him back on the thought of his projected book, which was, after all, to be what the masterpieces of literature had mostly been--a pot-boiler. well! why not? did not the worshipper always heap the rarest essences on the altar of his divinity? ralph still rejoiced in the thought of giving back to undine something of the beauty of their first months together. but even on his solitary walks the vision eluded him; and he could spare so few hours to its pursuit! undine's days were crowded, and it was still a matter of course that where she went he should follow. he had risen visibly in her opinion since they had been absorbed into the life of the big hotels, and she had seen that his command of foreign tongues put him at an advantage even in circles where english was generally spoken if not understood. undine herself, hampered by her lack of languages, was soon drawn into the group of compatriots who struck the social pitch of their hotel. their types were familiar enough to ralph, who had taken their measure in former wanderings, and come across their duplicates in every scene of continental idleness. foremost among them was mrs. harvey shallum, a showy parisianized figure, with a small wax-featured husband whose ultra-fashionable clothes seemed a tribute to his wife's importance rather than the mark of his personal taste. mr. shallum, in fact, could not be said to have any personal bent. though he conversed with a colourless fluency in the principal european tongues, he seldom exercised his gift except in intercourse with hotel-managers and head-waiters; and his long silences were broken only by resigned allusions to the enormities he had suffered at the hands of this gifted but unscrupulous class. mrs. shallum, though in command of but a few verbs, all of which, on her lips, became irregular, managed to express a polyglot personality as vivid as her husband's was effaced. her only idea of intercourse with her kind was to organize it into bands and subject it to frequent displacements; and society smiled at her for these exertions like an infant vigorously rocked. she saw at once undine's value as a factor in her scheme, and the two formed an alliance on which ralph refrained from shedding the cold light of depreciation. it was a point of honour with him not to seem to disdain any of undine's amusements: the noisy interminable picnics, the hot promiscuous balls, the concerts, bridge-parties and theatricals which helped to disguise the difference between the high alps and paris or new york. he told himself that there is always a narcissus-element in youth, and that what undine really enjoyed was the image of her own charm mirrored in the general admiration. with her quick perceptions and adaptabilities she would soon learn to care more about the quality of the reflecting surface; and meanwhile no criticism of his should mar her pleasure. the appearance at their hotel of the cavalry-officer from siena was a not wholly agreeable surprise; but even after the handsome marquis had been introduced to undine, and had whirled her through an evening's dances, ralph was not seriously disturbed. husband and wife had grown closer to each other since they had come to st. moritz, and in the brief moments she could give him undine was now always gay and approachable. her fitful humours had vanished, and she showed qualities of comradeship that seemed the promise of a deeper understanding. but this very hope made him more subject to her moods, more fearful of disturbing the harmony between them. least of all could he broach the subject of money: he had too keen a memory of the way her lips could narrow, and her eyes turn from him as if he were a stranger. it was a different matter that one day brought the look he feared to her face. she had announced her intention of going on an excursion with mrs. shallum and three or four of the young men who formed the nucleus of their shifting circle, and for the first time she did not ask ralph if he were coming; but he felt no resentment at being left out. he was tired of these noisy assaults on the high solitudes, and the prospect of a quiet afternoon turned his thoughts to his book. now if ever there seemed a chance of recapturing the moonlight vision... from his balcony he looked down on the assembling party. mrs. shallum was already screaming bilingually at various windows in the long facade; and undine presently came out of the hotel with the marchese roviano and two young english diplomatists. slim and tall in her trim mountain garb, she made the ornate mrs. shallum look like a piece of ambulant upholstery. the high air brightened her cheeks and struck new lights from her hair, and ralph had never seen her so touched with morning freshness. the party was not yet complete, and he felt a movement of annoyance when he recognized, in the last person to join it, a russian lady of cosmopolitan notoriety whom he had run across in his unmarried days, and as to whom he had already warned undine. knowing what strange specimens from the depths slip through the wide meshes of the watering-place world, he had foreseen that a meeting with the baroness adelschein was inevitable; but he had not expected her to become one of his wife's intimate circle. when the excursionists had started he turned back to his writing-table and tried to take up his work; but he could not fix his thoughts: they were far away, in pursuit of undine. he had been but five months married, and it seemed, after all, rather soon for him to be dropped out of such excursions as unquestioningly as poor harvey shallum. he smiled away this first twinge of jealousy, but the irritation it left found a pretext in his displeasure at undine's choice of companions. mrs. shallum grated on his taste, but she was as open to inspection as a shop-window, and he was sure that time would teach his wife the cheapness of what she had to show. roviano and the englishmen were well enough too: frankly bent on amusement, but pleasant and well-bred. but they would naturally take their tone from the women they were with; and madame adelschein's tone was notorious. he knew also that undine's faculty of self-defense was weakened by the instinct of adapting herself to whatever company she was in, of copying "the others" in speech and gesture as closely as she reflected them in dress; and he was disturbed by the thought of what her ignorance might expose her to. she came back late, flushed with her long walk, her face all sparkle and mystery, as he had seen it in the first days of their courtship; and the look somehow revived his irritated sense of having been intentionally left out of the party. "you've been gone forever. was it the adelschein who made you go such lengths?" he asked her, trying to keep to his usual joking tone. undine, as she dropped down on the sofa and unpinned her hat, shed on him the light of her guileless gaze. "i don't know: everybody was amusing. the marquis is awfully bright." "i'd no idea you or bertha shallum knew madame adelschein well enough to take her off with you in that way." undine sat absently smoothing the tuft of glossy cock's-feathers in her hat. "i don't see that you've got to know people particularly well to go for a walk with them. the baroness is awfully bright too." she always gave her acquaintances their titles, seeming not, in this respect, to have noticed that a simpler form prevailed. "i don't dispute the interest of what she says; but i've told you what decent people think of what she does," ralph retorted, exasperated by what seemed a wilful pretense of ignorance. she continued to scrutinize him with her clear eyes, in which there was no shadow of offense. "you mean they don't want to go round with her? you're mistaken: it's not true. she goes round with everybody. she dined last night with the grand duchess; roviano told me so." this was not calculated to make ralph take a more tolerant view of the question. "does he also tell you what's said of her?" "what's said of her?" undine's limpid glance rebuked him. "do you mean that disgusting scandal you told me about? do you suppose i'd let him talk to me about such things? i meant you're mistaken about her social position. he says she goes everywhere." ralph laughed impatiently. "no doubt roviano's an authority; but it doesn't happen to be his business to choose your friends for you." undine echoed his laugh. "well, i guess i don't need anybody to do that: i can do it myself," she said, with the good-humoured curtness that was the habitual note of intercourse with the spraggs. ralph sat down beside her and laid a caressing touch on her shoulder. "no, you can't, you foolish child. you know nothing of this society you're in; of its antecedents, its rules, its conventions; and it's my affair to look after you, and warn you when you're on the wrong track." "mercy, what a solemn speech!" she shrugged away his hand without ill-temper. "i don't believe an american woman needs to know such a lot about their old rules. they can see i mean to follow my own, and if they don't like it they needn't go with me." "oh, they'll go with you fast enough, as you call it. they'll be too charmed to. the question is how far they'll make you go with them, and where they'll finally land you." she tossed her head back with the movement she had learned in "speaking" school-pieces about freedom and the british tyrant. "no one's ever yet gone any farther with me than i wanted!" she declared. she was really exquisitely simple. "i'm not sure roviano hasn't, in vouching for madame adelschein. but he probably thinks you know about her. to him this isn't 'society' any more than the people in an omnibus are. society, to everybody here, means the sanction of their own special group and of the corresponding groups elsewhere. the adelschein goes about in a place like this because it's nobody's business to stop her; but the women who tolerate her here would drop her like a shot if she set foot on their own ground." the thoughtful air with which undine heard him out made him fancy this argument had carried; and as be ended she threw him a bright look. "well, that's easy enough: i can drop her if she comes to new york." ralph sat silent for a moment--then he turned away and began to gather up his scattered pages. undine, in the ensuing days, was no less often with madame adelschein, and ralph suspected a challenge in her open frequentation of the lady. but if challenge there were, he let it lie. whether his wife saw more or less of madame adelschein seemed no longer of much consequence: she had so amply shown him her ability to protect herself. the pang lay in the completeness of the proof--in the perfect functioning of her instinct of self-preservation. for the first time he was face to face with his hovering dread: he was judging where he still adored. before long more pressing cares absorbed him. he had already begun to watch the post for his father-in-law's monthly remittance, without precisely knowing how, even with its aid, he was to bridge the gulf of expense between st. moritz and new york. the non-arrival of mr. spragg's cheque was productive of graver tears, and these were abruptly confirmed when, coming in one afternoon, he found undine crying over a letter from her mother. her distress made him fear that mr. spragg was ill, and he drew her to him soothingly; but she broke away with an impatient movement. "oh, they're all well enough--but father's lost a lot of money. he's been speculating, and he can't send us anything for at least three months." ralph murmured reassuringly: "as long as there's no one ill!"--but in reality he was following her despairing gaze down the long perspective of their barren quarter. "three months! three months!" undine dried her eyes, and sat with set lips and tapping foot while he read her mother's letter. "your poor father! it's a hard knock for him. i'm sorry," he said as he handed it back. for a moment she did not seem to hear; then she said between her teeth: "it's hard for us. i suppose now we'll have to go straight home." he looked at her with wonder. "if that were all! in any case i should have to be back in a few weeks." "but we needn't have left here in august! it's the first place in europe that i've liked, and it's just my luck to be dragged away from it!" "i'm so awfully sorry, dearest. it's my fault for persuading you to marry a pauper." "it's father's fault. why on earth did he go and speculate? there's no use his saying he's sorry now!" she sat brooding for a moment and then suddenly took ralph's hand. "couldn't your people do something--help us out just this once, i mean?" he flushed to the forehead: it seemed inconceivable that she should make such a suggestion. "i couldn't ask them--it's not possible. my grandfather does as much as he can for me, and my mother has nothing but what he gives her." undine seemed unconscious of his embarrassment. "he doesn't give us nearly as much as father does," she said; and, as ralph remained silent, she went on: "couldn't you ask your sister, then? i must have some clothes to go home in." his heart contracted as he looked at her. what sinister change came over her when her will was crossed? she seemed to grow inaccessible, implacable--her eyes were like the eyes of an enemy. "i don't know--i'll see," he said, rising and moving away from her. at that moment the touch of her hand was repugnant. yes--he might ask laura, no doubt: and whatever she had would be his. but the necessity was bitter to him, and undine's unconsciousness of the fact hurt him more than her indifference to her father's misfortune. what hurt him most was the curious fact that, for all her light irresponsibility, it was always she who made the practical suggestion, hit the nail of expediency on the head. no sentimental scruple made the blow waver or deflected her resolute aim. she had thought at once of laura, and laura was his only, his inevitable, resource. his anxious mind pictured his sister's wonder, and made him wince under the sting of henley fairford's irony: fairford, who at the time of the marriage had sat silent and pulled his moustache while every one else argued and objected, yet under whose silence ralph had felt a deeper protest than under all the reasoning of the others. it was no comfort to reflect that fairford would probably continue to say nothing! but necessity made light of these twinges, and ralph set his teeth and cabled. undine's chief surprise seemed to be that laura's response, though immediate and generous, did not enable them to stay on at st. moritz. but she apparently read in her husband's look the uselessness of such a hope, for, with one of the sudden changes of mood that still disarmed him, she accepted the need of departure, and took leave philosophically of the shallums and their band. after all, paris was ahead, and in september one would have a chance to see the new models and surprise the secret councils of the dressmakers. ralph was astonished at the tenacity with which she held to her purpose. he tried, when they reached paris, to make her feel the necessity of starting at once for home; but she complained of fatigue and of feeling vaguely unwell, and he had to yield to her desire for rest. the word, however, was to strike him as strangely misapplied, for from the day of their arrival she was in state of perpetual activity. she seemed to have mastered her paris by divination, and between the hounds of the boulevards and the place vendome she moved at once with supernatural ease. "of course," she explained to him, "i understand how little we've got to spend; but i left new york without a rag, and it was you who made me countermand my trousseau, instead of having it sent after us. i wish now i hadn't listened to you--father'd have had to pay for that before he lost his money. as it is, it will be cheaper in the end for me to pick up a few things here. the advantage of going to the french dress-makers is that they'll wait twice as long for their money as the people at home. and they're all crazy to dress me--bertha shallum will tell you so: she says no one ever had such a chance! that's why i was willing to come to this stuffy little hotel--i wanted to save every scrap i could to get a few decent things. and over here they're accustomed to being bargained with--you ought to see how i've beaten them down! have you any idea what a dinner-dress costs in new york--?" so it went on, obtusely and persistently, whenever he tried to sound the note of prudence. but on other themes she was more than usually responsive. paris enchanted her, and they had delightful hours at the theatres--the "little" ones--amusing dinners at fashionable restaurants, and reckless evenings in haunts where she thrilled with simple glee at the thought of what she must so obviously be "taken for." all these familiar diversions regained, for ralph, a fresh zest in her company. her innocence, her high spirits, her astounding comments and credulities, renovated the old parisian adventure and flung a veil of romance over its hackneyed scenes. beheld through such a medium the future looked less near and implacable, and ralph, when he had received a reassuring letter from his sister, let his conscience sleep and slipped forth on the high tide of pleasure. after all, in new york amusements would be fewer, and their life, for a time, perhaps more quiet. moreover, ralph's dim glimpses of mr. spragg's past suggested that the latter was likely to be on his feet again at any moment, and atoning by redoubled prodigalities for his temporary straits; and beyond all these possibilities there was the book to be written--the book on which ralph was sure he should get a real hold as soon as they settled down in new york. meanwhile the daily cost of living, and the bills that could not be deferred, were eating deep into laura's subsidy. ralph's anxieties returned, and his plight was brought home to him with a shock when, on going one day to engage passages, he learned that the prices were that of the "rush season," and one of the conditions immediate payment. at other times, he was told the rules were easier; but in september and october no exception could be made. as he walked away with this fresh weight on his mind he caught sight of the strolling figure of peter van degen--peter lounging and luxuriating among the seductions of the boulevard with the disgusting ease of a man whose wants are all measured by money, and who always has enough to gratify them. his present sense of these advantages revealed itself in the affability of his greeting to ralph, and in his off-hand request that the latter should "look up clare," who had come over with him to get her winter finery. "she's motoring to italy next week with some of her long-haired friends--but i'm off for the other side; going back on the sorceress. she's just been overhauled at greenock, and we ought to have a good spin over. better come along with me, old man." the sorceress was van degen's steam-yacht, most huge and complicated of her kind: it was his habit, after his semi-annual flights to paris and london, to take a joyous company back on her and let clare return by steamer. the character of these parties made the invitation almost an offense to ralph; but reflecting that it was probably a phrase distributed to every acquaintance when van degen was in a rosy mood, he merely answered: "much obliged, my dear fellow; but undine and i are sailing immediately." peter's glassy eye grew livelier. "ah, to be sure--you're not over the honeymoon yet. how's the bride? stunning as ever? my regards to her, please. i suppose she's too deep in dress-making to be called on? don't you forget to look up clare!" he hurried on in pursuit of a flitting petticoat and ralph continued his walk home. he prolonged it a little in order to put off telling undine of his plight; for he could devise only one way of meeting the cost of the voyage, and that was to take it at once, and thus curtail their parisian expenses. but he knew how unwelcome this plan would be, and he shrank the more from seeing undine's face harden; since, of late, he had so basked in its brightness. when at last he entered the little salon she called "stuffy" he found her in conference with a blond-bearded gentleman who wore the red ribbon in his lapel, and who, on ralph's appearance--and at a sign, as it appeared, from mrs. marvell--swept into his note-case some small objects that had lain on the table, and bowed himself out with a "madame--monsieur" worthy of the highest traditions. ralph looked after him with amusement. "who's your friend--an ambassador or a tailor?" undine was rapidly slipping on her rings, which, as he now saw, had also been scattered over the table. "oh, it was only that jeweller i told you about--the one bertha shallum goes to." "a jeweller? good heavens, my poor girl! you're buying jewels?" the extravagance of the idea struck a laugh from him. undine's face did not harden: it took on, instead, almost deprecating look. "of course not--how silly you are! i only wanted a few old things reset. but i won't if you'd rather not." she came to him and sat down at his side, laying her hand on his arm. he took the hand up and looked at the deep gleam of the sapphires in the old family ring he had given her. "you won't have that reset?" he said, smiling and twisting the ring about on her finger; then he went on with his thankless explanation. "it's not that i don't want you to do this or that; it's simply that, for the moment, we're rather strapped. i've just been to see the steamer people, and our passages will cost a good deal more than i thought." he mentioned the sum and the fact that he must give an answer the next day. would she consent to sail that very saturday? or should they go a fortnight later, in a slow boat from plymouth? undine frowned on both alternatives. she was an indifferent sailor and shrank from the possible "nastiness" of the cheaper boat. she wanted to get the voyage over as quickly and luxuriously as possible--bertha shallum had told her that in a "deck-suite" no one need be sea-sick--but she wanted still more to have another week or two of paris; and it was always hard to make her see why circumstances could not be bent to her wishes. "this week? but how on earth can i be ready? besides, we're dining at enghien with the shallums on saturday, and motoring to chantilly with the jim driscolls on sunday. i can't imagine how you thought we could go this week!" but she still opposed the cheap steamer, and after they had carried the question on to voisin's, and there unprofitably discussed it through a long luncheon, it seemed no nearer a solution. "well, think it over--let me know this evening," ralph said, proportioning the waiter's fee to a bill burdened by undine's reckless choice of primeurs. his wife was to join the newly-arrived mrs. shallum in a round of the rue de la paix; and he had seized the opportunity of slipping off to a classical performance at the français. on their arrival in paris he had taken undine to one of these entertainments, but it left her too weary and puzzled for him to renew the attempt, and he had not found time to go back without her. he was glad now to shed his cares in such an atmosphere. the play was of the greatest, the interpretation that of the vanishing grand manner which lived in his first memories of the parisian stage, and his surrender such influences as complete as in his early days. caught up in the fiery chariot of art, he felt once more the tug of its coursers in his muscles, and the rush of their flight still throbbed in him when he walked back late to the hotel. xiii he had expected to find undine still out; but on the stairs he crossed mrs. shallum, who threw at him from under an immense hat-brim: "yes, she's in, but you'd better come and have tea with me at the luxe. i don't think husbands are wanted!" ralph laughingly rejoined that that was just the moment for them to appear; and mrs. shallum swept on, crying back: "all the same, i'll wait for you!" in the sitting-room ralph found undine seated behind a tea-table on the other side of which, in an attitude of easy intimacy, peter van degen stretched his lounging length. he did not move on ralph's appearance, no doubt thinking their kinship close enough to make his nod and "hullo!" a sufficient greeting. peter in intimacy was given to miscalculations of the sort, and ralph's first movement was to glance at undine and see how it affected her. but her eyes gave out the vivid rays that noise and banter always struck from them; her face, at such moments, was like a theatre with all the lustres blazing. that the illumination should have been kindled by his cousin's husband was not precisely agreeable to marvell, who thought peter a bore in society and an insufferable nuisance on closer terms. but he was becoming blunted to undine's lack of discrimination; and his own treatment of van degen was always tempered by his sympathy for clare. he therefore listened with apparent good-humour to peter's suggestion of an evening at a petit theatre with the harvey shallums, and joined in the laugh with which undine declared: "oh, ralph won't go--he only likes the theatres where they walk around in bathtowels and talk poetry.--isn't that what you've just been seeing?" she added, with a turn of the neck that shed her brightness on him. "what? one of those five-barrelled shows at the français? great scott, ralph--no wonder your wife's pining for the folies bergère!" "she needn't, my dear fellow. we never interfere with each other's vices." peter, unsolicited, was comfortably lighting a cigarette. "ah, there's the secret of domestic happiness. marry somebody who likes all the things you don't, and make love to somebody who likes all the things you do." undine laughed appreciatively. "only it dooms poor ralph to such awful frumps. can't you see the sort of woman who'd love his sort of play?" "oh, i can see her fast enough--my wife loves 'em," said their visitor, rising with a grin; while ralph threw, out: "so don't waste your pity on me!" and undine's laugh had the slight note of asperity that the mention of clare always elicited. "to-morrow night, then, at paillard's," van degen concluded. "and about the other business--that's a go too? i leave it to you to settle the date." the nod and laugh they exchanged seemed to hint at depths of collusion from which ralph was pointedly excluded; and he wondered how large a programme of pleasure they had already had time to sketch out. he disliked the idea of undine's being too frequently seen with van degen, whose parisian reputation was not fortified by the connections that propped it up in new york; but he did not want to interfere with her pleasure, and he was still wondering what to say when, as the door closed, she turned to him gaily. "i'm so glad you've come! i've got some news for you." she laid a light touch on his arm. touch and tone were enough to disperse his anxieties, and he answered that he was in luck to find her already in when he had supposed her engaged, over a nouveau luxe tea-table, in repairing the afternoon's ravages. "oh, i didn't shop much--i didn't stay out long." she raised a kindling face to him. "and what do you think i've been doing? while you were sitting in your stuffy old theatre, worrying about the money i was spending (oh, you needn't fib--i know you were!) i was saving you hundreds and thousands. i've saved you the price of our passage!" ralph laughed in pure enjoyment of her beauty. when she shone on him like that what did it matter what nonsense she talked? "you wonderful woman--how did you do it? by countermanding a tiara?" "you know i'm not such a fool as you pretend!" she held him at arm's length with a nod of joyous mystery. "you'll simply never guess! i've made peter van degen ask us to go home on the sorceress. what. do you say to that?" she flashed it out on a laugh of triumph, without appearing to have a doubt of the effect the announcement would produce. ralph stared at her. "the sorceress? you made him?" "well, i managed it, i worked him round to it! he's crazy about the idea now--but i don't think he'd thought of it before he came." "i should say not!" ralph ejaculated. "he never would have had the cheek to think of it." "well, i've made him, anyhow! did you ever know such luck?" "such luck?" he groaned at her obstinate innocence. "do you suppose i'll let you cross the ocean on the sorceress?" she shrugged impatiently. "you say that because your cousin doesn't go on her." "if she doesn't, it's because it's no place for decent women." "it's clare's fault if it isn't. everybody knows she's crazy about you, and she makes him feel it. that's why he takes up with other women." her anger reddened her cheeks and dropped her brows like a black bar above her glowing eyes. even in his recoil from what she said ralph felt the tempestuous heat of her beauty. but for the first time his latent resentments rose in him, and he gave her back wrath for wrath. "is that the precious stuff he tells you?" "do you suppose i had to wait for him to tell me? everybody knows it--everybody in new york knew she was wild when you married. that's why she's always been so nasty to me. if you won't go on the sorceress they'll all say it's because she was jealous of me and wouldn't let you." ralph's indignation had already flickered down to disgust. undine was no longer beautiful--she seemed to have the face of her thoughts. he stood up with an impatient laugh. "is that another of his arguments? i don't wonder they're convincing--" but as quickly as it had come the sneer dropped, yielding to a wave of pity, the vague impulse to silence and protect her. how could he have given way to the provocation of her weakness, when his business was to defend her from it and lift her above it? he recalled his old dreams of saving her from van degenism--it was not thus that he had imagined the rescue. "don't let's pay peter the compliment of squabbling over him," he said, turning away to pour himself a cup of tea. when he had filled his cup he sat down beside undine, with a smile. "no doubt he was joking--and thought you were; but if you really made him believe we might go with him you'd better drop him a line." undine's brow still gloomed. "you refuse, then?" "refuse? i don't need to! do you want to succeed to half the chorus-world of new york?" "they won't be on board with us, i suppose!" "the echoes of their conversation will. it's the only language peter knows." "he told me he longed for the influence of a good woman--" she checked herself, reddening at ralph's laugh. "well, tell him to apply again when he's been under it a month or two. meanwhile we'll stick to the liners." ralph was beginning to learn that the only road to her reason lay through her vanity, and he fancied that if she could be made to see van degen as an object of ridicule she might give up the idea of the sorceress of her own accord. but her will hardened slowly under his joking opposition, and she became no less formidable as she grew more calm. he was used to women who, in such cases, yielded as a matter of course to masculine judgments: if one pronounced a man "not decent" the question was closed. but it was undine's habit to ascribe all interference with her plans to personal motives, and he could see that she attributed his opposition to the furtive machinations of poor clare. it was odious to him to prolong the discussion, for the accent of recrimination was the one he most dreaded on her lips. but the moment came when he had to take the brunt of it, averting his thoughts as best he might from the glimpse it gave of a world of mean familiarities, of reprisals drawn from the vulgarest of vocabularies. certain retorts sped through the air like the flight of household utensils, certain charges rang out like accusations of tampering with the groceries. he stiffened himself against such comparisons, but they stuck in his imagination and left him thankful when undine's anger yielded to a burst of tears. he had held his own and gained his point. the trip on the sorceress was given up, and a note of withdrawal despatched to van degen; but at the same time ralph cabled his sister to ask if she could increase her loan. for he had conquered only at the cost of a concession: undine was to stay in paris till october, and they were to sail on a fast steamer, in a deck-suite, like the harvey shallums. undine's ill-humour was soon dispelled by any new distraction, and she gave herself to the untroubled enjoyment of paris. the shallums were the centre of a like-minded group, and in the hours the ladies could spare from their dress-makers the restaurants shook with their hilarity and the suburbs with the shriek of their motors. van degen, who had postponed his sailing, was a frequent sharer in these amusements; but ralph counted on new york influences to detach him from undine's train. he was learning to influence her through her social instincts where he had once tried to appeal to other sensibilities. his worst moment came when he went to see clare van degen, who, on the eve of departure, had begged him to come to her hotel. he found her less restless and rattling than usual, with a look in her eyes that reminded him of the days when she had haunted his thoughts. the visit passed off without vain returns to the past; but as he was leaving she surprised him by saying: "don't let peter make a goose of your wife." ralph reddened, but laughed. "oh, undine's wonderfully able to defend herself, even against such seductions as peter's." mrs. van degen looked down with a smile at the bracelets on her thin brown wrist. "his personal seductions--yes. but as an inventor of amusements he's inexhaustible; and undine likes to be amused." ralph made no reply but showed no annoyance. he simply took her hand and kissed it as he said good-bye; and she turned from him without audible farewell. as the day of departure approached. undine's absorption in her dresses almost precluded the thought of amusement. early and late she was closeted with fitters and packers--even the competent celeste not being trusted to handle the treasures now pouring in--and ralph cursed his weakness in not restraining her, and then fled for solace to museums and galleries. he could not rouse in her any scruple about incurring fresh debts, yet he knew she was no longer unaware of the value of money. she had learned to bargain, pare down prices, evade fees, brow-beat the small tradespeople and wheedle concessions from the great--not, as ralph perceived, from any effort to restrain her expenses, but only to prolong and intensify the pleasure of spending. pained by the trait, he tried to laugh her out of it. he told her once that she had a miserly hand--showing her, in proof, that, for all their softness, the fingers would not bend back, or the pink palm open. but she retorted a little sharply that it was no wonder, since she'd heard nothing talked of since their marriage but economy; and this left him without any answer. so the purveyors continued to mount to their apartment, and ralph, in the course of his frequent nights from it, found himself always dodging the corners of black glazed boxes and swaying pyramids of pasteboard; always lifting his hat to sidling milliners' girls, or effacing himself before slender vendeuses floating by in a mist of opopanax. he felt incompetent to pronounce on the needs to which these visitors ministered; but the reappearance among them of the blond-bearded jeweller gave him ground for fresh fears. undine had assured him that she had given up the idea of having her ornaments reset, and there had been ample time for their return; but on his questioning her she explained that there had been delays and "bothers" and put him in the wrong by asking ironically if he supposed she was buying things "for pleasure" when she knew as well as he that there wasn't any money to pay for them. but his thoughts were not all dark. undine's moods still infected him, and when she was happy he felt an answering lightness. even when her amusements were too primitive to be shared he could enjoy their reflection in her face. only, as he looked back, he was struck by the evanescence, the lack of substance, in their moments of sympathy, and by the permanent marks left by each breach between them. yet he still fancied that some day the balance might be reversed, and that as she acquired a finer sense of values the depths in her would find a voice. something of this was in his mind when, the afternoon before their departure, he came home to help her with their last arrangements. she had begged him, for the day, to leave her alone in their cramped salon, into which belated bundles were still pouring; and it was nearly dark when he returned. the evening before she had seemed pale and nervous, and at the last moment had excused herself from dining with the shallums at a suburban restaurant. it was so unlike her to miss any opportunity of the kind that ralph had felt a little anxious. but with the arrival of the packers she was afoot and in command again, and he withdrew submissively, as mr. spragg, in the early apex days, might have fled from the spring storm of "house-cleaning." when he entered the sitting-room, he found it still in disorder. every chair was hidden under scattered dresses, tissue-paper surged from the yawning trunks and, prone among her heaped-up finery. undine lay with closed eyes on the sofa. she raised her head as he entered, and then turned listlessly away. "my poor girl, what's the matter? haven't they finished yet?" instead of answering she pressed her face into the cushion and began to sob. the violence of her weeping shook her hair down on her shoulders, and her hands, clenching the arm of the sofa, pressed it away from her as if any contact were insufferable. ralph bent over her in alarm. "why, what's wrong, dear? what's happened?" her fatigue of the previous evening came back to him--a puzzled hunted look in her eyes; and with the memory a vague wonder revived. he had fancied himself fairly disencumbered of the stock formulas about the hallowing effects of motherhood, and there were many reasons for not welcoming the news he suspected she had to give; but the woman a man loves is always a special case, and everything was different that befell undine. if this was what had befallen her it was wonderful and divine: for the moment that was all he felt. "dear, tell me what's the matter," he pleaded. she sobbed on unheedingly and he waited for her agitation to subside. he shrank from the phrases considered appropriate to the situation, but he wanted to hold her close and give her the depth of his heart in long kiss. suddenly she sat upright and turned a desperate face on him. "why on earth are you staring at me like that? anybody can see what's the matter!" he winced at her tone, but managed to get one of her hands in his; and they stayed thus in silence, eye to eye. "are you as sorry as all that?" he began at length conscious of the flatness of his voice. "sorry--sorry? i'm--i'm--" she snatched her hand away, and went on weeping. "but, undine--dearest--bye and bye you'll feel differently--i know you will!" "differently? differently? when? in a year? it takes a year--a whole year out of life! what do i care how i shall feel in a year?" the chill of her tone struck in. this was more than a revolt of the nerves: it was a settled, a reasoned resentment. ralph found himself groping for extenuations, evasions--anything to put a little warmth into her! "who knows? perhaps, after all, it's a mistake." there was no answering light in her face. she turned her head from him wearily. "don't you think, dear, you may be mistaken?" "mistaken? how on earth can i be mistaken?" even in that moment of confusion he was struck by the cold competence of her tone, and wondered how she could be so sure. "you mean you've asked--you've consulted--?" the irony of it took him by the throat. they were the very words he might have spoken in some miserable secret colloquy--the words he was speaking to his wife! she repeated dully: "i know i'm not mistaken." there was another long silence. undine lay still, her eyes shut, drumming on the arm of the sofa with a restless hand. the other lay cold in ralph's clasp, and through it there gradually stole to him the benumbing influence of the thoughts she was thinking: the sense of the approach of illness, anxiety, and expense, and of the general unnecessary disorganization of their lives. "that's all you feel, then?" he asked at length a little bitterly, as if to disguise from himself the hateful fact that he felt it too. he stood up and moved away. "that's all?" he repeated. "why, what else do you expect me to feel? i feel horribly ill, if that's what you want." he saw the sobs trembling up through her again. "poor dear--poor girl...i'm so sorry--so dreadfully sorry!" the senseless reiteration seemed to exasperate her. he knew it by the quiver that ran through her like the premonitory ripple on smooth water before the coming of the wind. she turned about on him and jumped to her feet. "sorry--you're sorry? you're sorry? why, what earthly difference will it make to you?" she drew back a few steps and lifted her slender arms from her sides. "look at me--see how i look--how i'm going to look! you won't hate yourself more and more every morning when you get up and see yourself in the glass! your life's going on just as usual! but what's mine going to be for months and months? and just as i'd been to all this bother--fagging myself to death about all these things--" her tragic gesture swept the disordered room--"just as i thought i was going home to enjoy myself, and look nice, and see people again, and have a little pleasure after all our worries--" she dropped back on the sofa with another burst of tears. "for all the good this rubbish will do me now! i loathe the very sight of it!" she sobbed with her face in her hands. xiv it was one of the distinctions of mr. claud walsingham popple that his studio was never too much encumbered with the attributes of his art to permit the installing, in one of its cushioned corners, of an elaborately furnished tea-table flanked by the most varied seductions in sandwiches and pastry. mr. popple, like all great men, had at first had his ups and downs; but his reputation had been permanently established by the verdict of a wealthy patron who, returning from an excursion into other fields of portraiture, had given it as the final fruit of his experience that popple was the only man who could "do pearls." to sitters for whom this was of the first consequence it was another of the artist's merits that he always subordinated art to elegance, in life as well as in his portraits. the "messy" element of production was no more visible in his expensively screened and tapestried studio than its results were perceptible in his painting; and it was often said, in praise of his work, that he was the only artist who kept his studio tidy enough for a lady to sit to him in a new dress. mr. popple, in fact, held that the personality of the artist should at all times be dissembled behind that of the man. it was his opinion that the essence of good-breeding lay in tossing off a picture as easily as you lit a cigarette. ralph marvell had once said of him that when he began a portrait he always turned back his cuffs and said: "ladies and gentlemen, you can see there's absolutely nothing here," and mrs. fairford supplemented the description by defining his painting as "chafing-dish" art. on a certain late afternoon of december, some four years after mr. popple's first meeting with miss undine spragg of apex, even the symbolic chafing-dish was nowhere visible in his studio; the only evidence of its recent activity being the full-length portrait of mrs. ralph marvell, who, from her lofty easel and her heavily garlanded frame, faced the doorway with the air of having been invited to "receive" for mr. popple. the artist himself, becomingly clad in mouse-coloured velveteen, had just turned away from the picture to hover above the tea-cups; but his place had been taken by the considerably broader bulk of mr. peter van degen, who, tightly moulded into a coat of the latest cut, stood before the portrait in the attitude of a first arrival. "yes, it's good--it's damn good, popp; you've hit the hair off ripplingly; but the pearls ain't big enough," he pronounced. a slight laugh sounded from the raised dais behind the easel. "of course they're not! but it's not his fault, poor man; he didn't give them to me!" as she spoke mrs. ralph marvell rose from a monumental gilt arm-chair of pseudo-venetian design and swept her long draperies to van degen's side. "he might, then--for the privilege of painting you!" the latter rejoined, transferring his bulging stare from the counterfeit to the original. his eyes rested on mrs. marvell's in what seemed a quick exchange of understanding; then they passed on to a critical inspection of her person. she was dressed for the sitting in something faint and shining, above which the long curves of her neck looked dead white in the cold light of the studio; and her hair, all a shadowless rosy gold, was starred with a hard glitter of diamonds. "the privilege of painting me? mercy, _i_ have to pay for being painted! he'll tell you he's giving me the picture--but what do you suppose this cost?" she laid a finger-tip on her shimmering dress. van degen's eye rested on her with cold enjoyment. "does the price come higher than the dress?" she ignored the allusion. "of course what they charge for is the cut--" "what they cut away? that's what they ought to charge for, ain't it, popp?" undine took this with cool disdain, but mr. popple's sensibilities were offended. "my dear peter--really--the artist, you understand, sees all this as a pure question of colour, of pattern; and it's a point of honour with the man to steel himself against the personal seduction." mr. van degen received this protest with a sound of almost vulgar derision, but undine thrilled agreeably under the glance which her portrayer cast on her. she was flattered by van degen's notice, and thought his impertinence witty; but she glowed inwardly at mr. popple's eloquence. after more than three years of social experience she still thought he "spoke beautifully," like the hero of a novel, and she ascribed to jealousy the lack of seriousness with which her husband's friends regarded him. his conversation struck her as intellectual, and his eagerness to have her share his thoughts was in flattering contrast to ralph's growing tendency to keep his to himself. popple's homage seemed the, subtlest proof of what ralph could have made of her if he had "really understood" her. it was but another step to ascribe all her past mistakes to the lack of such understanding; and the satisfaction derived from this thought had once impelled her to tell the artist that he alone knew how to rouse her 'higher self.' he had assured her that the memory of her words would thereafter hallow his life; and as he hinted that it had been stained by the darkest errors she was moved at the thought of the purifying influence she exerted. thus it was that a man should talk to a true woman--but how few whom she had known possessed the secret! ralph, in the first months of their marriage, had been eloquent too, had even gone the length of quoting poetry; but he disconcerted her by his baffling twists and strange allusions (she always scented ridicule in the unknown), and the poets he quoted were esoteric and abstruse. mr. popple's rhetoric was drawn from more familiar sources, and abounded in favourite phrases and in moving reminiscences of the fifth reader. he was moreover as literary as he was artistic; possessing an unequalled acquaintance with contemporary fiction, and dipping even into the lighter type of memoirs, in which the old acquaintances of history are served up in the disguise of "a royal sorceress" or "passion in a palace." the mastery with which mr. popple discussed the novel of the day, especially in relation to the sensibilities of its hero and heroine, gave undine a sense of intellectual activity which contrasted strikingly with marvell's flippant estimate of such works. "passion," the artist implied, would have been the dominant note of his life, had it not been held in check by a sentiment of exalted chivalry, and by the sense that a nature of such emotional intensity as his must always be "ridden on the curb." van degen was helping himself from the tray of iced cocktails which stood near the tea-table, and popple, turning to undine, took up the thread of his discourse. but why, he asked, why allude before others to feelings so few could understand? the average man--lucky devil!--(with a compassionate glance at van degen's back) the average man knew nothing of the fierce conflict between the lower and higher natures; and even the woman whose eyes had kindled it--how much did she guess of its violence? did she know--popple recklessly asked--how often the artist was forgotten in the man--how often the man would take the bit between his teeth, were it not that the look in her eyes recalled some sacred memory, some lesson learned perhaps beside his mother's knee? "i say, popp--was that where you learned to mix this drink? because it does the old lady credit," van degen called out, smacking his lips; while the artist, dashing a nervous hand through his hair, muttered: "hang it, peter--is nothing sacred to you?" it pleased undine to feel herself capable of inspiring such emotions. she would have been fatigued by the necessity of maintaining her own talk on popple's level, but she liked to listen to him, and especially to have others overhear what he said to her. her feeling for van degen was different. there was more similarity of tastes between them, though his manner flattered her vanity less than popple's. she felt the strength of van degen's contempt for everything he did not understand or could not buy: that was the only kind of "exclusiveness" that impressed her. and he was still to her, as in her inexperienced days, the master of the mundane science she had once imagined that ralph marvell possessed. during the three years since her marriage she had learned to make distinctions unknown to her girlish categories. she had found out that she had given herself to the exclusive and the dowdy when the future belonged to the showy and the promiscuous; that she was in the case of those who have cast in their lot with a fallen cause, or--to use an analogy more within her range--who have hired an opera box on the wrong night. it was all confusing and exasperating. apex ideals had been based on the myth of "old families" ruling new york from a throne of revolutionary tradition, with the new millionaires paying them feudal allegiance. but experience had long since proved the delusiveness of the simile. mrs. marvell's classification of the world into the visited and the unvisited was as obsolete as a mediaeval cosmogony. some of those whom washington square left unvisited were the centre of social systems far outside its ken, and as indifferent to its opinions as the constellations to the reckonings of the astronomers; and all these systems joyously revolved about their central sun of gold. there were moments after undine's return to new york when she was tempted to class her marriage with the hateful early mistakes from the memories of which she had hoped it would free her. since it was never her habit to accuse herself of such mistakes it was inevitable that she should gradually come to lay the blame on ralph. she found a poignant pleasure, at this stage of her career, in the question: "what does a young girl know of life?" and the poignancy was deepened by the fact that each of the friends to whom she put the question seemed convinced that--had the privilege been his--he would have known how to spare her the disenchantment it implied. the conviction of having blundered was never more present to her than when, on this particular afternoon, the guests invited by mr. popple to view her portrait began to assemble before it. some of the principal figures of undine's group had rallied for the occasion, and almost all were in exasperating enjoyment of the privileges for which she pined. there was young jim driscoll, heir-apparent of the house, with his short stout mistrustful wife, who hated society, but went everywhere lest it might be thought she had been left out; the "beautiful mrs. beringer," a lovely aimless being, who kept (as laura fairford said) a home for stray opinions, and could never quite tell them apart; little dicky bowles, whom every one invited because he was understood to "say things" if one didn't; the harvey shallums, fresh from paris, and dragging in their wake a bewildered nobleman vaguely designated as "the count," who offered cautious conversational openings, like an explorer trying beads on savages; and, behind these more salient types, the usual filling in of those who are seen everywhere because they have learned to catch the social eye. such a company was one to flatter the artist as much his sitter, so completely did it represent that unamity of opinion which constitutes social strength. not one the number was troubled by any personal theory of art: all they asked of a portrait was that the costume should be sufficiently "life-like," and the face not too much so; and a long experience in idealizing flesh and realizing dress-fabrics had enabled mr. popple to meet both demands. "hang it," peter van degen pronounced, standing before the easel in an attitude of inspired interpretation, "the great thing in a man's portrait is to catch the likeness--we all know that; but with a woman's it's different--a woman's picture has got to be pleasing. who wants it about if it isn't? those big chaps who blow about what they call realism--how do their portraits look in a drawing-room? do you suppose they ever ask themselves that? they don't care--they're not going to live with the things! and what do they know of drawing-rooms, anyhow? lots of them haven't even got a dress-suit. there's where old popp has the pull over 'em--he knows how we live and what we want." this was received by the artist with a deprecating murmur, and by his public with warm expressions of approval. "happily in this case," popple began ("as in that of so many of my sitters," he hastily put in), "there has been no need to idealize-nature herself has outdone the artist's dream." undine, radiantly challenging comparison with her portrait, glanced up at it with a smile of conscious merit, which deepened as young jim driscoll declared: "by jove, mamie, you must be done exactly like that for the new music-room." his wife turned a cautious eye upon the picture. "how big is it? for our house it would have to be a good deal bigger," she objected; and popple, fired by the thought of such a dimensional opportunity, rejoined that it would be the chance of all others to. "work in" a marble portico and a court-train: he had just done mrs. lycurgus ambler in a court-train and feathers, and as that was for buffalo of course the pictures needn't clash. "well, it would have to be a good deal bigger than mrs. ambler's," mrs. driscoll insisted; and on popple's suggestion that in that case he might "work in" driscoll, in court-dress also--("you've been presented? well, you will be,--you'll have to, if i do the picture--which will make a lovely memento")--van degen turned aside to murmur to undine: "pure bluff, you know--jim couldn't pay for a photograph. old driscoll's high and dry since the ararat investigation." she threw him a puzzled glance, having no time, in her crowded existence, to follow the perturbations of wall street save as they affected the hospitality of fifth avenue. "you mean they've lost their money? won't they give their fancy ball, then?" van degen shrugged. "nobody knows how it's coming out that queer chap elmer moffatt threatens to give old driscoll a fancy ball--says he's going to dress him in stripes! it seems he knows too much about the apex street-railways." undine paled a little. though she had already tried on her costume for the driscoll ball her disappointment at van degen's announcement was effaced by the mention of moffatt's name. she had not had the curiosity to follow the reports of the "ararat trust investigation," but once or twice lately, in the snatches of smoking-room talk, she had been surprised by a vague allusion to elmer moffatt, as to an erratic financial influence, half ridiculed, yet already half redoubtable. was it possible that the redoubtable element had prevailed? that the time had come when elmer moffatt--the elmer moffatt of apex!--could, even for a moment, cause consternation in the driscoll camp? he had always said he "saw things big"; but no one had ever believed he was destined to carry them out on the same scale. yet apparently in those idle apex days, while he seemed to be "loafing and fooling," as her father called it, he had really been sharpening his weapons of aggression; there had been something, after all, in the effect of loose-drifting power she had always felt in him. her heart beat faster, and she longed to question van degen; but she was afraid of betraying herself, and turned back to the group about the picture. mrs. driscoll was still presenting objections in a tone of small mild obstinacy. "oh, it's a likeness, of course--i can see that; but there's one thing i must say, mr. popple. it looks like a last year's dress." the attention of the ladies instantly rallied to the picture, and the artist paled at the challenge. "it doesn't look like a last year's face, anyhow--that's what makes them all wild," van degen murmured. undine gave him back a quick smile. she had already forgotten about moffatt. any triumph in which she shared left a glow in her veins, and the success of the picture obscured all other impressions. she saw herself throning in a central panel at the spring exhibition, with the crowd pushing about the picture, repeating her name; and she decided to stop on the way home and telephone her press-agent to do a paragraph about popple's tea. but in the hall, as she drew on her cloak, her thoughts reverted to the driscoll fancy ball. what a blow if it were given up after she had taken so much trouble about her dress! she was to go as the empress josephine, after the prudhon portrait in the louvre. the dress was already fitted and partly embroidered, and she foresaw the difficulty of persuading the dress-maker to take it back. "why so pale and sad, fair cousin? what's up?" van degen asked, as they emerged from the lift in which they had descended alone from the studio. "i don't know--i'm tired of posing. and it was so frightfully hot." "yes. popple always keeps his place at low-neck temperature, as if the portraits might catch cold." van degen glanced at his watch. "where are you off to?" "west end avenue, of course--if i can find a cab to take me there." it was not the least of undine's grievances that she was still living in the house which represented mr. spragg's first real-estate venture in new york. it had been understood, at the time of her marriage, that the young couple were to be established within the sacred precincts of fashion; but on their return from the honeymoon the still untenanted house in west end avenue had been placed at their disposal, and in view of mr. spragg's financial embarrassment even undine had seen the folly of refusing it. that first winter, more-over, she had not regretted her exile: while she awaited her boy's birth she was glad to be out of sight of fifth avenue, and to take her hateful compulsory exercise where no familiar eye could fall on her. and the next year of course her father would give them a better house. but the next year rents had risen in the fifth avenue quarter, and meanwhile little paul marvell, from his beautiful pink cradle, was already interfering with his mother's plans. ralph, alarmed by the fresh rush of expenses, sided with his father-in-law in urging undine to resign herself to west end avenue; and thus after three years she was still submitting to the incessant pin-pricks inflicted by the incongruity between her social and geographical situation--the need of having to give a west side address to her tradesmen, and the deeper irritation of hearing her friends say: "do let me give you a lift home, dear--oh, i'd forgotten! i'm afraid i haven't the time to go so far--" it was bad enough to have no motor of her own, to be avowedly dependent on "lifts," openly and unconcealably in quest of them, and perpetually plotting to provoke their offer (she did so hate to be seen in a cab!) but to miss them, as often as not, because of the remoteness of her destination, emphasized the hateful sense of being "out of things." van degen looked out at the long snow-piled streets, down which the lamps were beginning to put their dreary yellow splashes. "of course you won't get a cab on a night like this. if you don't mind the open car, you'd better jump in with me. i'll run you out to the high bridge and give you a breath of air before dinner." the offer was tempting, for undine's triumph in the studio had left her tired and nervous--she was beginning to learn that success may be as fatiguing as failure. moreover, she was going to a big dinner that evening, and the fresh air would give her the eyes and complexion she needed; but in the back of her mind there lingered the vague sense of a forgotten engagement. as she tried to recall it she felt van degen raising the fur collar about her chin. "got anything you can put over your head? will that lace thing do? come along, then." he pushed her through the swinging doors, and added with a laugh, as they reached the street: "you're not afraid of being seen with me, are you? it's all right at this hour--ralph's still swinging on a strap in the elevated." the winter twilight was deliriously cold, and as they swept through central park, and gathered impetus for their northward flight along the darkening boulevard, undine felt the rush of physical joy that drowns scruples and silences memory. her scruples, indeed, were not serious; but ralph disliked her being too much with van degen, and it was her way to get what she wanted with as little "fuss" as possible. moreover, she knew it was a mistake to make herself too accessible to a man of peter's sort: her impatience to enjoy was curbed by an instinct for holding off and biding her time that resembled the patient skill with which her father had conducted the sale of his "bad" real estate in the pure water move days. but now and then youth had its way--she could not always resist the present pleasure. and it was amusing, too, to be "talked about" with peter van degen, who was noted for not caring for "nice women." she enjoyed the thought of triumphing over meretricious charms: it ennobled her in her own eyes to influence such a man for good. nevertheless, as the motor flew on through the icy twilight, her present cares flew with it. she could not shake off the thought of the useless fancy dress which symbolized the other crowding expenses she had not dared confess to ralph. van degen heard her sigh, and bent down, lowering the speed of the motor. "what's the matter? isn't everything all right?" his tone made her suddenly feel that she could confide in him, and though she began by murmuring that it was nothing she did so with the conscious purpose of being persuaded to confess. and his extraordinary "niceness" seemed to justify her and to prove that she had been right in trusting her instinct rather than in following the counsels of prudence. heretofore, in their talks, she had never gone beyond the vaguest hint of material "bothers"--as to which dissimulation seemed vain while one lived in west end avenue! but now that the avowal of a definite worry had been wrung from her she felt the injustice of the view generally taken of poor peter. for he had been neither too enterprising nor too cautious (though people said of him that he "didn't care to part"); he had just laughed away, in bluff brotherly fashion, the gnawing thought of the fancy dress, had assured her he'd give a ball himself rather than miss seeing her wear it, and had added: "oh, hang waiting for the bill--won't a couple of thou make it all right?" in a tone that showed what a small matter money was to any one who took the larger view of life. the whole incident passed off so quickly and easily that within a few minutes she had settled down--with a nod for his "everything jolly again now?"--to untroubled enjoyment of the hour. peace of mind, she said to herself, was all she needed to make her happy--and that was just what ralph had never given her! at the thought his face seemed to rise before her, with the sharp lines of care between the eyes: it was almost like a part of his "nagging" that he should thrust himself in at such a moment! she tried to shut her eyes to the face; but a moment later it was replaced by another, a small odd likeness of itself; and with a cry of compunction she started up from her furs. "mercy! it's the boy's birthday--i was to take him to his grandmother's. she was to have a cake for him and ralph was to come up town. i knew there was something i'd forgotten!" xv in the dagonet drawing-room the lamps had long been lit, and mrs. fairford, after a last impatient turn, had put aside the curtains of worn damask to strain her eyes into the darkening square. she came back to the hearth, where charles bowen stood leaning between the prim caryatides of the white marble chimney-piece. "no sign of her. she's simply forgotten." bowen looked at his watch, and turned to compare it with the high-waisted empire clock. "six o'clock. why not telephone again? there must be some mistake. perhaps she knew ralph would be late." laura laughed. "i haven't noticed that she follows ralph's movements so closely. when i telephoned just now the servant said she'd been out since two. the nurse waited till half-past four, not liking to come without orders; and now it's too late for paul to come." she wandered away toward the farther end of the room, where, through half-open doors, a shining surface of mahogany reflected a flower-wreathed cake in which two candles dwindled. "put them out, please," she said to some one in the background; then she shut the doors and turned back to bowen. "it's all so unlucky--my grandfather giving up his drive, and mother backing out of her hospital meeting, and having all the committee down on her. and henley: i'd even coaxed henley away from his bridge! he escaped again just before you came. undine promised she'd have the boy here at four. it's not as if it had never happened before. she's always breaking her engagements." "she has so many that it's inevitable some should get broken." "all if she'd only choose! now that ralph has had into business, and is kept in his office so late, it's cruel of her to drag him out every night. he told us the other day they hadn't dined at home for a month. undine doesn't seem to notice how hard he works." bowen gazed meditatively at the crumbling fire. "no--why should she?" "why should she? really, charles--!" "why should she, when she knows nothing about it?" "she may know nothing about his business; but she must know it's her extravagance that's forced him into it." mrs. fairford looked at bowen reproachfully. "you talk as if you were on her side!" "are there sides already? if so, i want to look down on them impartially from the heights of pure speculation. i want to get a general view of the whole problem of american marriages." mrs. fairford dropped into her arm-chair with a sigh. "if that's what you want you must make haste! most of them don't last long enough to be classified." "i grant you it takes an active mind. but the weak point is so frequently the same that after a time one knows where to look for it." "what do you call the weak point?" he paused. "the fact that the average american looks down on his wife." mrs. fairford was up with a spring. "if that's where paradox lands you!" bowen mildly stood his ground. "well--doesn't he prove it? how much does he let her share in the real business of life? how much does he rely on her judgment and help in the conduct of serious affairs? take ralph for instance--you say his wife's extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that's not what's wrong. it's normal for a man to work hard for a woman--what's abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it." "to tell undine? she'd be bored to death if he did!" "just so; she'd even feel aggrieved. but why? because it's against the custom of the country. and whose fault is that? the man's again--i don't mean ralph i mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, americanus. why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work? simply because we don't take enough interest in them." mrs. fairford, sinking back into her chair, sat gazing at the vertiginous depths above which his thought seemed to dangle her. "you don't? the american man doesn't--the most slaving, self-effacing, self-sacrificing--?" "yes; and the most indifferent: there's the point. the 'slaving's' no argument against the indifference to slave for women is part of the old american tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they've ceased to believe in. then again, in this country the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the american man lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn't know what else to do with it." "then you call it a mere want of imagination for a man to spend his money on his wife?" "not necessarily--but it's a want of imagination to fancy it's all he owes her. look about you and you'll see what i mean. why does the european woman interest herself so much more in what the men are doing? because she's so important to them that they make it worth her while! she's not a parenthesis, as she is here--she's in the very middle of the picture. i'm not implying that ralph isn't interested in his wife--he's a passionate, a pathetic exception. but even he has to conform to an environment where all the romantic values are reversed. where does the real life of most american men lie? in some woman's drawing-room or in their offices? the answer's obvious, isn't it? the emotional centre of gravity's not the same in the two hemispheres. in the effete societies it's love, in our new one it's business. in america the real crime passionnel is a 'big steal'--there's more excitement in wrecking railways than homes." bowen paused to light another cigarette, and then took up his theme. "isn't that the key to our easy divorces? if we cared for women in the old barbarous possessive way do you suppose we'd give them up as readily as we do? the real paradox is the fact that the men who make, materially, the biggest sacrifices for their women, should do least for them ideally and romantically. and what's the result--how do the women avenge themselves? all my sympathy's with them, poor deluded dears, when i see their fallacious little attempt to trick out the leavings tossed them by the preoccupied male--the money and the motors and the clothes--and pretend to themselves and each other that that's what really constitutes life! oh, i know what you're going to say--it's less and less of a pretense with them, i grant you; they're more and more succumbing to the force of the suggestion; but here and there i fancy there's one who still sees through the humbug, and knows that money and motors and clothes are simply the big bribe she's paid for keeping out of some man's way!" mrs. fairford presented an amazed silence to the rush of this tirade; but when she rallied it was to murmur: "and is undine one of the exceptions?" her companion took the shot with a smile. "no--she's a monstrously perfect result of the system: the completest proof of its triumph. it's ralph who's the victim and the exception." "ah, poor ralph!" mrs. fairford raised her head quickly. "i hear him now. i suppose," she added in an undertone, "we can't give him your explanation for his wife's having forgotten to come?" bowen echoed her sigh, and then seemed to toss it from him with his cigarette-end; but he stood in silence while the door opened and ralph marvell entered. "well, laura! hallo, charles--have you been celebrating too?" ralph turned to his sister. "it's outrageous of me to be so late, and i daren't look my son in the face! but i stayed down town to make provision for his future birthdays." he returned mrs. fairford's kiss. "don't tell me the party's over, and the guest of honour gone to bed?" as he stood before them, laughing and a little flushed, the strain of long fatigue sounding through his gaiety and looking out of his anxious eyes, mrs. fairford threw a glance at bowen and then turned away to ring the bell. "sit down, ralph--you look tired. i'll give you some tea." he dropped into an arm-chair. "i did have rather a rush to get here--but hadn't i better join the revellers? where are they?" he walked to the end of the room and threw open the dining-room doors. "hallo--where have they all gone to? what a jolly cake!" he went up to it. "why, it's never even been cut!" mrs. fairford called after him: "come and have your tea first." "no, no--tea afterward, thanks. are they all upstairs with my grandfather? i must make my peace with undine--" his sister put her arm through his, and drew him back to the fire. "undine didn't come." "didn't come? who brought the boy, then?" "he didn't come either. that's why the cake's not cut." ralph frowned. "what's the mystery? is he ill, or what's happened?" "nothing's happened--paul's all right. apparently undine forgot. she never went home for him, and the nurse waited till it was too late to come." she saw his eyes darken; but he merely gave a slight laugh and drew out his cigarette case. "poor little paul--poor chap!" he moved toward the fire. "yes, please--some tea." he dropped back into his chair with a look of weariness, as if some strong stimulant had suddenly ceased to take effect on him; but before the tea-table was brought back he had glanced at his watch and was on his feet again. "but this won't do. i must rush home and see the poor chap before dinner. and my mother--and my grandfather? i want to say a word to them--i must make paul's excuses!" "grandfather's taking his nap. and mother had to rush out for a postponed committee meeting--she left as soon as we heard paul wasn't coming." "ah, i see." he sat down again. "yes, make the strong, please. i've had a beastly fagging sort of day." he leaned back with half-closed eyes, his untouched cup in his hand. bowen took leave, and laura sat silent, watching her brother under lowered lids while she feigned to be busy with the kettle. ralph presently emptied his cup and put it aside; then, sinking into his former attitude, he clasped his hands behind his head and lay staring apathetically into the fire. but suddenly he came to life and started up. a motor-horn had sounded outside, and there was a noise of wheels at the door. "there's undine! i wonder what could have kept her." he jumped up and walked to the door; but it was clare van degen who came in. at sight of him she gave a little murmur of pleasure. "what luck to find you! no, not luck--i came because i knew you'd be here. he never comes near me, laura: i have to hunt him down to get a glimpse of him!" slender and shadowy in her long furs, she bent to kiss mrs. fairford and then turned back to ralph. "yes, i knew i'd catch you here. i knew it was the boy's birthday, and i've brought him a present: a vulgar expensive van degen offering. i've not enough imagination left to find the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. when i look for a present nowadays i never say to the shopman: 'i want this or that'--i simply say: 'give me something that costs so much.'" she drew a parcel from her muff. "where's the victim of my vulgarity? let me crush him under the weight of my gold." mrs. fairford sighed out "clare--clare!" and ralph smiled at his cousin. "i'm sorry; but you'll have to depute me to present it. the birthday's over; you're too late." she looked surprised. "why, i've just left mamie driscoll, and she told me undine was still at popple's studio a few minutes ago: popple's giving a tea to show the picture." "popple's giving a tea?" ralph struck an attitude of mock consternation. "ah, in that case--! in popple's society who wouldn't forget the flight of time?" he had recovered his usual easy tone, and laura sat that mrs. van degen's words had dispelled his preoccupation. he turned to his cousin. "will you trust me with your present for the boy?" clare gave him the parcel. "i'm sorry not to give it myself. i said what i did because i knew what you and laura were thinking--but it's really a battered old dagonet bowl that came down to me from our revered great-grandmother." "what--the heirloom you used to eat your porridge out of?" ralph detained her hand to put a kiss on it. "that's dear of you!" she threw him one of her strange glances. "why not say: 'that's like you?' but you don't remember what i'm like." she turned away to glance at the clock. "it's late, and i must be off. i'm going to a big dinner at the chauncey ellings'--but you must be going there too, ralph? you'd better let me drive you home." in the motor ralph leaned back in silence, while the rug was drawn over their knees, and clare restlessly fingered the row of gold-topped objects in the rack at her elbow. it was restful to be swept through the crowded streets in this smooth fashion, and clare's presence at his side gave him a vague sense of ease. for a long time now feminine nearness had come to mean to him, not this relief from tension, but the ever-renewed dread of small daily deceptions, evasions, subterfuges. the change had come gradually, marked by one disillusionment after another; but there had been one moment that formed the point beyond which there was no returning. it was the moment, a month or two before his boy's birth, when, glancing over a batch of belated paris bills, he had come on one from the jeweller he had once found in private conference with undine. the bill was not large, but two of its items stood out sharply. "resetting pearl and diamond pendant. resetting sapphire and diamond ring." the pearl and diamond pendant was his mother's wedding present; the ring was the one he had given undine on their engagement. that they were both family relics, kept unchanged through several generations, scarcely mattered to him at the time: he felt only the stab of his wife's deception. she had assured him in paris that she had not had her jewels reset. he had noticed, soon after their return to new york, that she had left off her engagement-ring; but the others were soon discarded also, and in answer to his question she had told him that, in her ailing state, rings "worried" her. now he saw she had deceived him, and, forgetting everything else, he went to her, bill in hand. her tears and distress filled him with immediate contrition. was this a time to torment her about trifles? his anger seemed to cause her actual physical fear, and at the sight he abased himself in entreaties for forgiveness. when the scene ended she had pardoned him, and the reset ring was on her finger... soon afterward, the birth of the boy seemed to wipe out these humiliating memories; yet marvell found in time that they were not effaced, but only momentarily crowded out of sight. in reality, the incident had a meaning out of proportion to its apparent seriousness, for it put in his hand a clue to a new side of his wife's character. he no longer minded her having lied about the jeweller; what pained him was that she had been unconscious of the wound she inflicted in destroying the identity of the jewels. he saw that, even after their explanation, she still supposed he was angry only because she had deceived him; and the discovery that she was completely unconscious of states of feeling on which so much of his inner life depended marked a new stage in their relation. he was not thinking of all this as he sat beside clare van degen; but it was part of the chronic disquietude which made him more alive to his cousin's sympathy, her shy unspoken understanding. after all, he and she were of the same blood and had the same traditions. she was light and frivolous, without strength of will or depth of purpose; but she had the frankness of her foibles, and she would never have lied to him or traded on his tenderness. clare's nervousness gradually subsided, and she lapsed into a low-voiced mood which seemed like an answer to his secret thought. but she did not sound the personal note, and they chatted quietly of commonplace things: of the dinner-dance at which they were presently to meet, of the costume she had chosen for the driscoll fancy-ball, the recurring rumours of old driscoll's financial embarrassment, and the mysterious personality of elmer moffatt, on whose movements wall street was beginning to fix a fascinated eye. when ralph, the year after his marriage, had renounced his profession to go into partnership with a firm of real-estate agents, he had come in contact for the first time with the drama of "business," and whenever he could turn his attention from his own tasks he found a certain interest in watching the fierce interplay of its forces. in the down-town world he had heard things of moffatt that seemed to single him out from the common herd of money-makers: anecdotes of his coolness, his lazy good-temper, the humorous detachment he preserved in the heat of conflicting interests; and his figure was enlarged by the mystery that hung about it--the fact that no one seemed to know whence he came, or how he had acquired the information which, for the moment, was making him so formidable. "i should like to see him," ralph said; "he must be a good specimen of the one of the few picturesque types we've got." "yes--it might be amusing to fish him out; but the most picturesque types in wall street are generally the tamest in a drawing-room." clare considered. "but doesn't undine know him? i seem to remember seeing them together." "undine and moffatt? then you know him--you've' met him?" "not actually met him--but he's been pointed out to me. it must have been some years ago. yes--it was one night at the theatre, just after you announced your engagement." he fancied her voice trembled slightly, as though she thought he might notice her way of dating her memories. "you came into our box," she went on, "and i asked you the name of the red-faced man who was sitting in the stall next to undine. you didn't know, but some one told us it was moffatt." marvell was more struck by her tone than by what she was saying. "if undine knows him it's odd she's never mentioned it," he answered indifferently. the motor stopped at his door and clare, as she held out her hand, turned a first full look on him. "why do you never come to see me? i miss you more than ever," she said. he pressed her hand without answering, but after the motor had rolled away he stood for a while on the pavement, looking after it. when he entered the house the hall was still dark and the small over-furnished drawing-room empty. the parlour-maid told him that mrs. marvell had not yet come in, and he went upstairs to the nursery. but on the threshold the nurse met him with the whispered request not to make a noise, as it had been hard to quiet the boy after the afternoon's disappointment, and she had just succeeded in putting him to sleep. ralph went down to his own room and threw himself in the old college arm-chair in which, four years previously, he had sat the night out, dreaming of undine. he had no study of his own, and he had crowded into his narrow bed-room his prints and bookshelves, and the other relics of his youth. as he sat among them now the memory of that other night swept over him--the night when he had heard the "call"! fool as he had been not to recognize its meaning then, he knew himself triply mocked in being, even now, at its mercy. the flame of love that had played about his passion for his wife had died down to its embers; all the transfiguring hopes and illusions were gone, but they had left an unquenchable ache for her nearness, her smile, her touch. his life had come to be nothing but a long effort to win these mercies by one concession after another: the sacrifice of his literary projects, the exchange of his profession for an uncongenial business, and the incessant struggle to make enough money to satisfy her increasing exactions. that was where the "call" had led him... the clock struck eight, but it was useless to begin to dress till undine came in, and he stretched himself out in his chair, reached for a pipe and took up the evening paper. his passing annoyance had died out; he was usually too tired after his day's work for such feelings to keep their edge long. but he was curious--disinterestedly curious--to know what pretext undine would invent for being so late, and what excuse she would have found for forgetting the little boy's birthday. he read on till half-past eight; then he stood up and sauntered to the window. the avenue below it was deserted; not a carriage or motor turned the corner around which he expected undine to appear, and he looked idly in the opposite direction. there too the perspective was nearly empty, so empty that he singled out, a dozen blocks away, the blazing lamps of a large touring-car that was bearing furiously down the avenue from morningside. as it drew nearer its speed slackened, and he saw it hug the curb and stop at his door. by the light of the street lamp he recognized his wife as she sprang out and detected a familiar silhouette in her companion's fur-coated figure. then the motor flew on and undine ran up the steps. ralph went out on the landing. he saw her coming up quickly, as if to reach her room unperceived; but when she caught sight of him she stopped, her head thrown back and the light falling on her blown hair and glowing face. "well?" she said, smiling up at him. "they waited for you all the afternoon in washington square--the boy never had his birthday," he answered. her colour deepened, but she instantly rejoined: "why, what happened? why didn't the nurse take him?" "you said you were coming to fetch him, so she waited." "but i telephoned--" he said to himself: "is that the lie?" and answered: "where from?" "why, the studio, of course--" she flung her cloak open, as if to attest her veracity. "the sitting lasted longer than usual--there was something about the dress he couldn't get--" "but i thought he was giving a tea." "he had tea afterward; he always does. and he asked some people in to see my portrait. that detained me too. i didn't know they were coming, and when they turned up i couldn't rush away. it would have looked as if i didn't like the picture." she paused and they gave each other a searching simultaneous glance. "who told you it was a tea?" she asked. "clare van degen. i saw her at my mother's." "so you weren't unconsoled after all--!" "the nurse didn't get any message. my people were awfully disappointed; and the poor boy has cried his eyes out." "dear me! what a fuss! but i might have known my message wouldn't be delivered. everything always happens to put me in the wrong with your family." with a little air of injured pride she started to go to her room; but he put out a hand to detain her. "you've just come from the studio?" "yes. it is awfully late? i must go and dress. we're dining with the ellings, you know." "i know... how did you come? in a cab?" she faced him limpidly. "no; i couldn't find one that would bring me--so peter gave me a lift, like an angel. i'm blown to bits. he had his open car." her colour was still high, and ralph noticed that her lower lip twitched a little. he had led her to the point they had reached solely to be able to say: "if you're straight from the studio, how was it that i saw you coming down from morningside?" unless he asked her that there would be no point in his cross-questioning, and he would have sacrificed his pride without a purpose. but suddenly, as they stood there face to face, almost touching, she became something immeasurably alien and far off, and the question died on his lips. "is that all?" she asked with a slight smile. "yes; you'd better go and dress," he said, and turned back to his room. xvi the turnings of life seldom show a sign-post; or rather, though the sign is always there, it is usually placed some distance back, like the notices that give warning of a bad hill or a level railway-crossing. ralph marvell, pondering upon this, reflected that for him the sign had been set, more than three years earlier, in an italian ilex-grove. that day his life had brimmed over--so he had put it at the time. he saw now that it had brimmed over indeed: brimmed to the extent of leaving the cup empty, or at least of uncovering the dregs beneath the nectar. he knew now that he should never hereafter look at his wife's hand without remembering something he had read in it that day. its surface-language had been sweet enough, but under the rosy lines he had seen the warning letters. since then he had been walking with a ghost: the miserable ghost of his illusion. only he had somehow vivified, coloured, substantiated it, by the force of his own great need--as a man might breathe a semblance of life into a dear drowned body that he cannot give up for dead. all this came to him with aching distinctness the morning after his talk with his wife on the stairs. he had accused himself, in midnight retrospect, of having failed to press home his conclusion because he dared not face the truth. but he knew this was not the case. it was not the truth he feared, it was another lie. if he had foreseen a chance of her saying: "yes, i was with peter van degen, and for the reason you think," he would have put it to the touch, stood up to the blow like a man; but he knew she would never say that. she would go on eluding and doubling, watching him as he watched her; and at that game she was sure to beat him in the end. on their way home from the elling dinner this certainty had become so insufferable that it nearly escaped him in the cry: "you needn't watch me--i shall never again watch you!" but he had held his peace, knowing she would not understand. how little, indeed, she ever understood, had been made clear to him when, the same night, he had followed her upstairs through the sleeping house. she had gone on ahead while he stayed below to lock doors and put out lights, and he had supposed her to be already in her room when he reached the upper landing; but she stood there waiting in the spot where he had waited for her a few hours earlier. she had shone her vividest at dinner, with revolving brilliancy that collective approval always struck from her; and the glow of it still hung on her as she paused there in the dimness, her shining cloak dropped from her white shoulders. "ralphie--" she began, a soft hand on his arm. he stopped, and she pulled him about so that their faces were close, and he saw her lips curving for a kiss. every line of her face sought him, from the sweep of the narrowed eyelids to the dimples that played away from her smile. his eye received the picture with distinctness; but for the first time it did not pass into his veins. it was as if he had been struck with a subtle blindness that permitted images to give their colour to the eye but communicated nothing to the brain. "good-night," he said, as he passed on. when a man felt in that way about a woman he was surely in a position to deal with his case impartially. this came to ralph as the joyless solace of the morning. at last the bandage was off and he could see. and what did he see? only the uselessness of driving his wife to subterfuges that were no longer necessary. was van degen her lover? probably not--the suspicion died as it rose. she would not take more risks than she could help, and it was admiration, not love, that she wanted. she wanted to enjoy herself, and her conception of enjoyment was publicity, promiscuity--the band, the banners, the crowd, the close contact of covetous impulses, and the sense of walking among them in cool security. any personal entanglement might mean "bother," and bother was the thing she most abhorred. probably, as the queer formula went, his "honour" was safe: he could count on the letter of her fidelity. at moment the conviction meant no more to him than if he had been assured of the honesty of the first strangers he met in the street. a stranger--that was what she had always been to him. so malleable outwardly, she had remained insensible to the touch of the heart. these thoughts accompanied him on his way to business the next morning. then, as the routine took him back, the feeling of strangeness diminished. there he was again at his daily task--nothing tangible was altered. he was there for the same purpose as yesterday: to make money for his wife and child. the woman he had turned from on the stairs a few hours earlier was still his wife and the mother of paul marvell. she was an inherent part of his life; the inner disruption had not resulted in any outward upheaval. and with the sense of inevitableness there came a sudden wave of pity. poor undine! she was what the gods had made her--a creature of skin-deep reactions, a mote in the beam of pleasure. he had no desire to "preach down" such heart as she had--he felt only a stronger wish to reach it, teach it, move it to something of the pity that filled his own. they were fellow-victims in the noyade of marriage, but if they ceased to struggle perhaps the drowning would be easier for both...meanwhile the first of the month was at hand, with its usual batch of bills; and there was no time to think of any struggle less pressing than that connected with paying them... undine had been surprised, and a little disconcerted, at her husband's acceptance of the birthday incident. since the resetting of her bridal ornaments the relations between washington square and west end avenue had been more and more strained; and the silent disapproval of the marvell ladies was more irritating to her than open recrimination. she knew how keenly ralph must feel her last slight to his family, and she had been frightened when she guessed that he had seen her returning with van degen. he must have been watching from the window, since, credulous as he always was, he evidently had a reason for not believing her when she told him she had come from the studio. there was therefore something both puzzling and disturbing in his silence; and she made up her mind that it must be either explained or cajoled away. these thoughts were with her as she dressed; but at the ellings' they fled like ghosts before light and laughter. she had never been more open to the suggestions of immediate enjoyment. at last she had reached the envied situation of the pretty woman with whom society must reckon, and if she had only had the means to live up to her opportunities she would have been perfectly content with life, with herself and her husband. she still thought ralph "sweet" when she was not bored by his good advice or exasperated by his inability to pay her bills. the question of money was what chiefly stood between them; and now that this was momentarily disposed of by van degen's offer she looked at ralph more kindly--she even felt a return of her first impersonal affection for him. everybody could see that clare van degen was "gone" on him, and undine always liked to know that what belonged to her was coveted by others. her reassurance had been fortified by the news she had heard at the elling dinner--the published fact of harmon b. driscoll's unexpected victory. the ararat investigation had been mysteriously stopped--quashed, in the language of the law--and elmer moffatt "turned down," as van degen (who sat next to her) expressed it. "i don't believe we'll ever hear of that gentleman again," he said contemptuously; and their eyes crossed gaily as she exclaimed: "then they'll give the fancy ball after all?" "i should have given you one anyhow--shouldn't you have liked that as well?" "oh, you can give me one too!" she returned; and he bent closer to say: "by jove, i will--and anything else you want." but on the way home her fears revived. ralph's indifference struck her as unnatural. he had not returned to the subject of paul's disappointment, had not even asked her to write a word of excuse to his mother. van degen's way of looking at her at dinner--he was incapable of graduating his glances--had made it plain that the favour she had accepted would necessitate her being more conspicuously in his company (though she was still resolved that it should be on just such terms as she chose); and it would be extremely troublesome if, at this juncture, ralph should suddenly turn suspicious and secretive. undine, hitherto, had found more benefits than drawbacks in her marriage; but now the tie began to gall. it was hard to be criticized for every grasp at opportunity by a man so avowedly unable to do the reaching for her! ralph had gone into business to make more money for her; but it was plain that the "more" would never be much, and that he would not achieve the quick rise to affluence which was man's natural tribute to woman's merits. undine felt herself trapped, deceived; and it was intolerable that the agent of her disillusionment should presume to be the critic of her conduct. her annoyance, however, died out with her fears. ralph, the morning after the elling dinner, went his way as usual, and after nerving herself for the explosion which did not come she set down his indifference to the dulling effect of "business." no wonder poor women whose husbands were always "down-town" had to look elsewhere for sympathy! van degen's cheque helped to calm her, and the weeks whirled on toward the driscoll ball. the ball was as brilliant as she had hoped, and her own part in it as thrilling as a page from one of the "society novels" with which she had cheated the monotony of apex days. she had no time for reading now: every hour was packed with what she would have called life, and the intensity of her sensations culminated on that triumphant evening. what could be more delightful than to feel that, while all the women envied her dress, the men did not so much as look at it? their admiration was all for herself, and her beauty deepened under it as flowers take a warmer colour in the rays of sunset. only van degen's glance weighed on her a little too heavily. was it possible that he might become a "bother" less negligible than those he had relieved her of? undine was not greatly alarmed--she still had full faith in her powers of self-defense; but she disliked to feel the least crease in the smooth surface of existence. she had always been what her parents called "sensitive." as the winter passed, material cares once more assailed her. in the thrill of liberation produced by van degen's gift she had been imprudent--had launched into fresh expenses. not that she accused herself of extravagance: she had done nothing not really necessary. the drawing-room, for instance, cried out to be "done over," and popple, who was an authority on decoration, had shown her, with a few strokes of his pencil how easily it might be transformed into a french "period" room, all curves and cupids: just the setting for a pretty woman and his portrait of her. but undine, still hopeful of leaving west end avenue, had heroically resisted the suggestion, and contented herself with the renewal of the curtains and carpet, and the purchase of some fragile gilt chairs which, as she told ralph, would be "so much to the good" when they moved--the explanation, as she made it, seemed an additional evidence of her thrift. partly as a result of these exertions she had a "nervous breakdown" toward the middle of the winter, and her physician having ordered massage and a daily drive it became necessary to secure mrs. heeny's attendance and to engage a motor by the month. other unforeseen expenses--the bills, that, at such times, seem to run up without visible impulsion--were added to by a severe illness of little paul's: a long costly illness, with three nurses and frequent consultations. during these days ralph's anxiety drove him to what seemed to undine foolish excesses of expenditure and when the boy began to get better the doctors advised country air. ralph at once hired a small house at tuxedo and undine of course accompanied her son to the country; but she spent only the sundays with him, running up to town during the week to be with her husband, as she explained. this necessitated the keeping up of two households, and even for so short a time the strain on ralph's purse was severe. so it came about that the bill for the fancy-dress was still unpaid, and undine left to wonder distractedly what had become of van degen's money. that van degen seemed also to wonder was becoming unpleasantly apparent: his cheque had evidently not brought in the return he expected, and he put his grievance to her frankly one day when he motored down to lunch at tuxedo. they were sitting, after luncheon, in the low-ceilinged drawing-room to which undine had adapted her usual background of cushions, bric-a-brac and flowers--since one must make one's setting "home-like," however little one's habits happened to correspond with that particular effect. undine, conscious of the intimate charm of her mise-en-scene, and of the recovered freshness and bloom which put her in harmony with it, had never been more sure of her power to keep her friend in the desired state of adoring submission. but peter, as he grew more adoring, became less submissive; and there came a moment when she needed all her wits to save the situation. it was easy enough to rebuff him, the easier as his physical proximity always roused in her a vague instinct of resistance; but it was hard so to temper the rebuff with promise that the game of suspense should still delude him. he put it to her at last, standing squarely before her, his batrachian sallowness unpleasantly flushed, and primitive man looking out of the eyes from which a frock-coated gentleman usually pined at her. "look here--the installment plan's all right; but ain't you a bit behind even on that?" (she had brusquely eluded a nearer approach.) "anyhow, i think i'd rather let the interest accumulate for a while. this is good-bye till i get back from europe." the announcement took her by surprise. "europe? why, when are you sailing?" "on the first of april: good day for a fool to acknowledge his folly. i'm beaten, and i'm running away." she sat looking down, her hand absently occupied with the twist of pearls he had given her. in a flash she saw the peril of this departure. once off on the sorceress, he was lost to her--the power of old associations would prevail. yet if she were as "nice" to him as he asked--"nice" enough to keep him--the end might not be much more to her advantage. hitherto she had let herself drift on the current of their adventure, but she now saw what port she had half-unconsciously been trying for. if she had striven so hard to hold him, had "played" him with such patience and such skill, it was for something more than her passing amusement and convenience: for a purpose the more tenaciously cherished that she had not dared name it to herself. in the light of this discovery she saw the need of feigning complete indifference. "ah, you happy man! it's good-bye indeed, then," she threw back at him, lifting a plaintive smile to his frown. "oh, you'll turn up in paris later, i suppose--to get your things for newport." "paris? newport? they're not on my map! when ralph can get away we shall go to the adirondacks for the boy. i hope i shan't need paris clothes there! it doesn't matter, at any rate," she ended, laughing, "because nobody i care about will see me." van degen echoed her laugh. "oh, come--that's rough on ralph!" she looked down with a slight increase of colour. "i oughtn't to have said it, ought i? but the fact is i'm unhappy--and a little hurt--" "unhappy? hurt?" he was at her side again. "why, what's wrong?" she lifted her eyes with a grave look. "i thought you'd be sorrier to leave me." "oh, it won't be for long--it needn't be, you know." he was perceptibly softening. "it's damnable, the way you're tied down. fancy rotting all summer in the adirondacks! why do you stand it? you oughtn't to be bound for life by a girl's mistake." the lashes trembled slightly on her cheek. "aren't we all bound by our mistakes--we women? don't let us talk of such things! ralph would never let me go abroad without him." she paused, and then, with a quick upward sweep of the lids: "after all, it's better it should be good-bye--since i'm paying for another mistake in being so unhappy at your going." "another mistake? why do you call it that?" "because i've misunderstood you--or you me." she continued to smile at him wistfully. "and some things are best mended by a break." he met her smile with a loud sigh--she could feel him in the meshes again. "is it to be a break between us?" "haven't you just said so? anyhow, it might as well be, since we shan't be in the same place again for months." the frock-coated gentleman once more languished from his eyes: she thought she trembled on the edge of victory. "hang it," he broke out, "you ought to have a change--you're looking awfully pulled down. why can't you coax your mother to run over to paris with you? ralph couldn't object to that." she shook her head. "i don't believe she could afford it, even if i could persuade her to leave father. you know father hasn't done very well lately: i shouldn't like to ask him for the money." "you're so confoundedly proud!" he was edging nearer. "it would all be so easy if you'd only be a little fond of me..." she froze to her sofa-end. "we women can't repair our mistakes. don't make me more miserable by reminding me of mine." "oh, nonsense! there's nothing cash won't do. why won't you let me straighten things out for you?" her colour rose again, and she looked him quickly and consciously in the eye. it was time to play her last card. "you seem to forget that i am--married," she said. van degen was silent--for a moment she thought he was swaying to her in the flush of surrender. but he remained doggedly seated, meeting her look with an odd clearing of his heated gaze, as if a shrewd businessman had suddenly replaced the pining gentleman at the window. "hang it--so am i!" he rejoined; and undine saw that in the last issue he was still the stronger of the two. xvii nothing was bitterer to her than to confess to herself the failure of her power; but her last talk with van degen had taught her a lesson almost worth the abasement. she saw the mistake she had made in taking money from him, and understood that if she drifted into repeating that mistake her future would be irretrievably compromised. what she wanted was not a hand-to-mouth existence of precarious intrigue: to one with her gifts the privileges of life should come openly. already in her short experience she had seen enough of the women who sacrifice future security for immediate success, and she meant to lay solid foundations before she began to build up the light super-structure of enjoyment. nevertheless it was galling to see van degen leave, and to know that for the time he had broken away from her. over a nature so insensible to the spells of memory, the visible and tangible would always prevail. if she could have been with him again in paris, where, in the shining spring days, every sight and sound ministered to such influences, she was sure she could have regained her hold. and the sense of frustration was intensified by the fact that every one she knew was to be there: her potential rivals were crowding the east-bound steamers. new york was a desert, and ralph's seeming unconsciousness of the fact increased her resentment. she had had but one chance at europe since her marriage, and that had been wasted through her husband's unaccountable perversity. she knew now with what packed hours of paris and london they had paid for their empty weeks in italy. meanwhile the long months of the new york spring stretched out before her in all their social vacancy to the measureless blank of a summer in the adirondacks. in her girlhood she had plumbed the dim depths of such summers; but then she had been sustained by the hope of bringing some capture to the surface. now she knew better: there were no "finds" for her in that direction. the people she wanted would be at newport or in europe, and she was too resolutely bent on a definite object, too sternly animated by her father's business instinct, to turn aside in quest of casual distractions. the chief difficulty in the way of her attaining any distant end had always been her reluctance to plod through the intervening stretches of dulness and privation. she had begun to see this, but she could not always master the weakness: never had she stood in greater need of mrs. heeny's "go slow. undine!" her imagination was incapable of long flights. she could not cheat her impatience with the mirage of far-off satisfactions, and for the moment present and future seemed equally void. but her desire to go to europe and to rejoin the little new york world that was reforming itself in london and paris was fortified by reasons which seemed urgent enough to justify an appeal to her father. she went down to his office to plead her case, fearing mrs. spragg's intervention. for some time past mr. spragg had been rather continuously overworked, and the strain was beginning to tell on him. he had never quite regained, in new york, the financial security of his apex days. since he had changed his base of operations his affairs had followed an uncertain course, and undine suspected that his breach with his old political ally, the representative rolliver who had seen him through the muddiest reaches of the pure water move, was not unconnected with his failure to get a footing in wall street. but all this was vague and shadowy to her even had "business" been less of a mystery, she was too much absorbed in her own affairs to project herself into her father's case; and she thought she was sacrificing enough to delicacy of feeling in sparing him the "bother" of mrs. spragg's opposition. when she came to him with a grievance he always heard her out with the same mild patience; but the long habit of "managing" him had made her, in his own language, "discount" this tolerance, and when she ceased to speak her heart throbbed with suspense as he leaned back, twirling an invisible toothpick under his sallow moustache. presently he raised a hand to stroke the limp beard in which the moustache was merged; then he groped for the masonic emblem that had lost itself in one of the folds of his depleted waistcoat. he seemed to fish his answer from the same rusty depths, for as his fingers closed about the trinket he said: "yes, the heated term is trying in new york. that's why the fresh air fund pulled my last dollar out of me last week." undine frowned: there was nothing more irritating, in these encounters with her father, than his habit of opening the discussion with a joke. "i wish you'd understand that i'm serious, father. i've never been strong since the baby was born, and i need a change. but it's not only that: there are other reasons for my wanting to go." mr. spragg still held to his mild tone of banter. "i never knew you short on reasons, undie. trouble is you don't always know other people's when you see 'em." his daughter's lips tightened. "i know your reasons when i see them, father: i've heard them often enough. but you can't know mine because i haven't told you--not the real ones." "jehoshaphat! i thought they were all real as long as you had a use for them." experience had taught her that such protracted trifling usually concealed an exceptional vigour of resistance, and the suspense strengthened her determination. "my reasons are all real enough," she answered; "but there's one more serious than the others." mr. spragg's brows began to jut. "more bills?" "no." she stretched out her hand and began to finger the dusty objects on his desk. "i'm unhappy at home." "unhappy--!" his start overturned the gorged waste-paper basket and shot a shower of paper across the rug. he stooped to put the basket back; then he turned his slow fagged eyes on his daughter. "why, he worships the ground you walk on, undie." "that's not always a reason, for a woman--" it was the answer she would have given to popple or van degen, but she saw in an instant the mistake of thinking it would impress her father. in the atmosphere of sentimental casuistry to which she had become accustomed, she had forgotten that mr. spragg's private rule of conduct was as simple as his business morality was complicated. he glowered at her under thrust-out brows. "it isn't a reason, isn't it? i can seem to remember the time when you used to think it was equal to a whole carload of whitewash." she blushed a bright red, and her own brows were levelled at his above her stormy steel-grey eyes. the sense of her blunder made her angrier with him, and more ruthless. "i can't expect you to understand--you never have, you or mother, when it came to my feelings. i suppose some people are born sensitive--i can't imagine anybody'd choose to be so. because i've been too proud to complain you've taken it for granted that i was perfectly happy. but my marriage was a mistake from the beginning; and ralph feels just as i do about it. his people hate me, they've always hated me; and he looks at everything as they do. they've never forgiven me for his having had to go into business--with their aristocratic ideas they look down on a man who works for his living. of course it's all right for you to do it, because you're not a marvell or a dagonet; but they think ralph ought to just lie back and let you support the baby and me." this time she had found the right note: she knew it by the tightening of her father's slack muscles and the sudden straightening of his back. "by george, he pretty near does!" he exclaimed bringing down his fist on the desk. "they haven't been taking it out of you about that, have they?" "they don't fight fair enough to say so. they just egg him on to turn against me. they only consented to his marrying me because they thought you were so crazy about the match you'd give us everything, and he'd have nothing to do but sit at home and write books." mr. spragg emitted a derisive groan. "from what i hear of the amount of business he's doing i guess he could keep the poet's corner going right along. i suppose the old man was right--he hasn't got it in him to make money." "of course not; he wasn't brought up to it, and in his heart of hearts he's ashamed of having to do it. he told me it was killing a little more of him every day." "do they back him up in that kind of talk?" "they back him up in everything. their ideas are all different from ours. they look down on us--can't you see that? can't you guess how they treat me from the way they've acted to you and mother?" he met this with a puzzled stare. "the way they've acted to me and mother? why, we never so much as set eyes on them." "that's just what i mean! i don't believe they've even called on mother this year, have they? last year they just left their cards without asking. and why do you suppose they never invite you to dine? in their set lots of people older than you and mother dine every night of the winter--society's full of them. the marvells are ashamed to have you meet their friends: that's the reason. they're ashamed to have it known that ralph married an apex girl, and that you and mother haven't always had your own servants and carriages; and ralph's ashamed of it too, now he's got over being crazy about me. if he was free i believe he'd turn round to-morrow and marry that ray girl his mother's saving up for him." mr. spragg listened with a heavy brow and pushed-out lip. his daughter's outburst seemed at last to have roused him to a faint resentment. after she had ceased to speak he remained silent, twisting an inky penhandle between his fingers; then he said: "i guess mother and i can worry along without having ralph's relatives drop in; but i'd like to make it clear to them that if you came from apex your income came from there too. i presume they'd be sorry if ralph was left to support you on his." she saw that she had scored in the first part of the argument, but every watchful nerve reminded her that the hardest stage was still ahead. "oh, they're willing enough he should take your money--that's only natural, they think." a chuckle sounded deep down under mr. spragg's loose collar. "there seems to be practical unanimity on that point," he observed. "but i don't see," he continued, jerking round his bushy brows on her, "how going to europe is going to help you out." undine leaned close enough for her lowered voice to reach him. "can't you understand that, knowing how they all feel about me--and how ralph feels--i'd give almost anything to get away?" her father looked at her compassionately. "i guess most of us feel that once in a way when we're youngy, undine. later on you'll see going away ain't much use when you've got to turn round and come back." she nodded at him with close-pressed lips, like a child in possession of some solemn secret. "that's just it--that's the reason i'm so wild to go; because it might mean i wouldn't ever have to come back." "not come back? what on earth are you talking about?" "it might mean that i could get free--begin over again..." he had pushed his seat back with a sudden jerk and cut her short by striking his palm on the arm of the chair. "for the lord's sake. undine--do you know what you're saying?" "oh, yes, i know." she gave him back a confident smile. "if i can get away soon--go straight over to paris...there's some one there who'd do anything... who could do anything...if i was free..." mr. spragg's hands continued to grasp his chair-arms. "good god, undine marvell--are you sitting there in your sane senses and talking to me of what you could do if you were free?" their glances met in an interval of speechless communion; but undine did not shrink from her father's eyes and when she lowered her own it seemed to be only because there was nothing left for them to say. "i know just what i could do if i were free. i could marry the right man," she answered boldly. he met her with a murmur of helpless irony. "the right man? the right man? haven't you had enough of trying for him yet?" as he spoke the door behind them opened, and mr. spragg looked up abruptly. the stenographer stood on the threshold, and above her shoulder undine perceived the ingratiating grin of elmer moffatt. "'a little farther lend thy guiding hand'--but i guess i can go the rest of the way alone," he said, insinuating himself through the doorway with an airy gesture of dismissal; then he turned to mr. spragg and undine. "i agree entirely with mrs. marvell--and i'm happy to have the opportunity of telling her so," he proclaimed, holding his hand out gallantly. undine stood up with a laugh. "it sounded like old times, i suppose--you thought father and i were quarrelling? but we never quarrel any more: he always agrees with me." she smiled at mr. spragg and turned her shining eyes on moffatt. "i wish that treaty had been signed a few years sooner!" the latter rejoined in his usual tone of humorous familiarity. undine had not met him since her marriage, and of late the adverse turn of his fortunes had carried him quite beyond her thoughts. but his actual presence was always stimulating, and even through her self-absorption she was struck by his air of almost defiant prosperity. he did not look like a man who has been beaten; or rather he looked like a man who does not know when he is beaten; and his eye had the gleam of mocking confidence that had carried him unabashed through his lowest hours at apex. "i presume you're here to see me on business?" mr. spragg enquired, rising from his chair with a glance that seemed to ask his daughter's silence. "why, yes. senator," rejoined moffatt, who was given, in playful moments, to the bestowal of titles high-sounding. "at least i'm here to ask you a little question that may lead to business." mr. spragg crossed the office and held open the door. "step this way, please," he said, guiding moffatt out before him, though the latter hung back to exclaim: "no family secrets, mrs. marvell--anybody can turn the fierce white light on me!" with the closing of the door undine's thoughts turned back to her own preoccupations. it had not struck her as incongruous that moffatt should have business dealings with her father: she was even a little surprised that mr. spragg should still treat him so coldly. but she had no time to give to such considerations. her own difficulties were too importunately present to her. she moved restlessly about the office, listening to the rise and fall of the two voices on the other side of the partition without once wondering what they were discussing. what should she say to her father when he came back--what argument was most likely to prevail with him? if he really had no money to give her she was imprisoned fast--van degen was lost to her, and the old life must go on interminably...in her nervous pacings she paused before the blotched looking-glass that hung in a corner of the office under a steel engraving of daniel webster. even that defective surface could not disfigure her, and she drew fresh hope from the sight of her beauty. her few weeks of ill-health had given her cheeks a subtler curve and deepened the shadows beneath her eyes, and she was handsomer than before her marriage. no, van degen was not lost to her even! from narrowed lids to parted lips her face was swept by a smile like retracted sunlight. he was not lost to her while she could smile like that! besides, even if her father had no money, there were always mysterious ways of "raising" it--in the old apex days he had often boasted of such feats. as the hope rose her eyes widened trustfully, and this time the smile that flowed up to them was as limpid as a child's. that was the was her father liked her to look at him... the door opened, and she heard mr. spragg say behind her: "no, sir, i won't--that's final." he came in alone, with a brooding face, and lowered himself heavily into his chair. it was plain that the talk between the two men had had an abrupt ending. undine looked at her father with a passing flicker of curiosity. certainly it was an odd coincidence that moffatt should have called while she was there... "what did he want?" she asked, glancing back toward the door. mr. spragg mumbled his invisible toothpick. "oh, just another of his wild-cat schemes--some real-estate deal he's in." "why did he come to you about it?" he looked away from her, fumbling among the letters on the desk. "guess he'd tried everybody else first. he'd go and ring the devil's front-door bell if he thought he could get anything out of him." "i suppose he did himself a lot of harm by testifying in the ararat investigation?" "yes, sir--he's down and out this time." he uttered the words with a certain satisfaction. his daughter did not answer, and they sat silent, facing each other across the littered desk. under their brief about elmer moffatt currents of rapid intelligence seemed to be flowing between them. suddenly undine leaned over the desk, her eyes widening trustfully, and the limpid smile flowing up to them. "father, i did what you wanted that one time, anyhow--won't you listen to me and help me out now?" xviii undine stood alone on the landing outside her father's office. only once before had she failed to gain her end with him--and there was a peculiar irony in the fact that moffatt's intrusion should have brought before her the providential result of her previous failure. not that she confessed to any real resemblance between the two situations. in the present case she knew well enough what she wanted, and how to get it. but the analogy had served her father's purpose, and moffatt's unlucky entrance had visibly strengthened his resistance. the worst of it was that the obstacles in the way were real enough. mr. spragg had not put her off with vague asseverations--somewhat against her will he had forced his proofs on her, showing her how much above his promised allowance he had contributed in the last three years to the support of her household. since she could not accuse herself of extravagance--having still full faith in her gift of "managing"--she could only conclude that it was impossible to live on what her father and ralph could provide; and this seemed a practical reason for desiring her freedom. if she and ralph parted he would of course return to his family, and mr. spragg would no longer be burdened with a helpless son-in-law. but even this argument did not move him. undine, as soon as she had risked van degen's name, found herself face to face with a code of domestic conduct as rigid as its exponent's business principles were elastic. mr. spragg did not regard divorce as intrinsically wrong or even inexpedient; and of its social disadvantages he had never even heard. lots of women did it, as undine said, and if their reasons were adequate they were justified. if ralph marvell had been a drunkard or "unfaithful" mr. spragg would have approved undine's desire to divorce him; but that it should be prompted by her inclination for another man--and a man with a wife of his own--was as shocking to him as it would have been to the most uncompromising of the dagonets and marvells. such things happened, as mr. spragg knew, but they should not happen to any woman of his name while he had the power to prevent it; and undine recognized that for the moment he had that power. as she emerged from the elevator she was surprised to see moffatt in the vestibule. his presence was an irritating reminder of her failure, and she walked past him with a rapid bow; but he overtook her. "mrs. marvell--i've been waiting to say a word to you." if it had been any one else she would have passed on; but moffatt's voice had always a detaining power. even now that she knew him to be defeated and negligible, the power asserted itself, and she paused to say: "i'm afraid i can't stop--i'm late for an engagement." "i shan't make you much later; but if you'd rather have me call round at your house--" "oh, i'm so seldom in." she turned a wondering look on him. "what is it you wanted to say?" "just two words. i've got an office in this building and the shortest way would be to come up there for a minute." as her look grew distant he added: "i think what i've got to say is worth the trip." his face was serious, without underlying irony: the face he wore when he wanted to be trusted. "very well," she said, turning back. undine, glancing at her watch as she came out of moffatt's office, saw that he had been true to his promise of not keeping her more than ten minutes. the fact was characteristic. under all his incalculableness there had always been a hard foundation of reliability: it seemed to be a matter of choice with him whether he let one feel that solid bottom or not. and in specific matters the same quality showed itself in an accuracy of statement, a precision of conduct, that contrasted curiously with his usual hyperbolic banter and his loose lounging manner. no one could be more elusive yet no one could be firmer to the touch. her face had cleared and she moved more lightly as she left the building. moffatt's communication had not been completely clear to her, but she understood the outline of the plan he had laid before her, and was satisfied with the bargain they had struck. he had begun by reminding her of her promise to introduce him to any friend of hers who might be useful in the way of business. over three years had passed since they had made the pact, and moffatt had kept loyally to his side of it. with the lapse of time the whole matter had become less important to her, but she wanted to prove her good faith, and when he reminded her of her promise she at once admitted it. "well, then--i want you to introduce me to your husband." undine was surprised; but beneath her surprise she felt a quick sense of relief. ralph was easier to manage than so many of her friends--and it was a mark of his present indifference to acquiesce in anything she suggested. "my husband? why, what can he do for you?" moffatt explained at once, in the fewest words, as his way was when it came to business. he was interested in a big "deal" which involved the purchase of a piece of real estate held by a number of wrangling heirs. the real-estate broker with whom ralph marvell was associated represented these heirs, but moffatt had his reasons for not approaching him directly. and he didn't want to go to marvell with a "business proposition"--it would be better to be thrown with him socially as if by accident. it was with that object that moffatt had just appealed to mr. spragg, but mr. spragg, as usual, had "turned him down," without even consenting to look into the case. "he'd rather have you miss a good thing than have it come to you through me. i don't know what on earth he thinks it's in my power to do to you--or ever was, for that matter," he added. "anyhow," he went on to explain, "the power's all on your side now; and i'll show you how little the doing will hurt you as soon as i can have a quiet chat with your husband." he branched off again into technicalities, nebulous projections of capital and interest, taxes and rents, from which she finally extracted, and clung to, the central fact that if the "deal went through" it would mean a commission of forty thousand dollars to marvell's firm, of which something over a fourth would come to ralph. "by jove, that's an amazing fellow!" ralph marvell exclaimed, turning back into the drawing-room, a few evenings later, at the conclusion of one of their little dinners. undine looked up from her seat by the fire. she had had the inspired thought of inviting moffatt to meet clare van degen, mrs. fairford and charles bowen. it had occurred to her that the simplest way of explaining moffatt was to tell ralph that she had unexpectedly discovered an old apex acquaintance in the protagonist of the great ararat trust fight. moffatt's defeat had not wholly divested him of interest. as a factor in affairs he no longer inspired apprehension, but as the man who had dared to defy harmon b. driscoll he was a conspicuous and, to some minds, almost an heroic figure. undine remembered that clare and mrs. fairford had once expressed a wish to see this braver of the olympians, and her suggestion that he should be asked meet them gave ralph evident pleasure. it was long since she had made any conciliatory sign to his family. moffatt's social gifts were hardly of a kind to please the two ladies: he would have shone more brightly in peter van degen's set than in his wife's. but neither clare nor mrs. fairford had expected a man of conventional cut, and moffatt's loud easiness was obviously less disturbing to them than to their hostess. undine felt only his crudeness, and the tacit criticism passed on it by the mere presence of such men as her husband and bowen; but mrs. fairford' seemed to enjoy provoking him to fresh excesses of slang and hyperbole. gradually she drew him into talking of the driscoll campaign, and he became recklessly explicit. he seemed to have nothing to hold back: all the details of the prodigious exploit poured from him with homeric volume. then he broke off abruptly, thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets and shaping his red lips to a whistle which he checked as his glance met undine's. to conceal his embarrassment he leaned back in his chair, looked about the table with complacency, and said "i don't mind if i do" to the servant who approached to re-fill his champagne glass. the men sat long over their cigars; but after an interval undine called charles bowen into the drawing-room to settle some question in dispute between clare and mrs. fairford, and thus gave moffatt a chance to be alone with her husband. now that their guests had gone she was throbbing with anxiety to know what had passed between the two; but when ralph rejoined her in the drawing-room she continued to keep her eyes on the fire and twirl her fan listlessly. "that's an amazing chap," ralph repeated, looking down at her. "where was it you ran across him--out at apex?" as he leaned against the chimney-piece, lighting his cigarette, it struck undine that he looked less fagged and lifeless than usual, and she felt more and more sure that something important had happened during the moment of isolation she had contrived. she opened and shut her fan reflectively. "yes--years ago; father had some business with him and brought him home to dinner one day." "and you've never seen him since?" she waited, as if trying to piece her recollections together. "i suppose i must have; but all that seems so long ago," she said sighing. she had been given, of late, to such plaintive glances toward her happy girlhood but ralph seemed not to notice the allusion. "do you know," he exclaimed after a moment, "i don't believe the fellow's beaten yet." she looked up quickly. "don't you?" "no; and i could see that bowen didn't either. he strikes me as the kind of man who develops slowly, needs a big field, and perhaps makes some big mistakes, but gets where he wants to in the end. jove, i wish i could put him in a book! there's something epic about him--a kind of epic effrontery." undine's pulses beat faster as she listened. was it not what moffatt had always said of himself--that all he needed was time and elbow-room? how odd that ralph, who seemed so dreamy and unobservant, should instantly have reached the same conclusion! but what she wanted to know was the practical result of their meeting. "what did you and he talk about when you were smoking?" "oh, he got on the driscoll fight again--gave us some extraordinary details. the man's a thundering brute, but he's full of observation and humour. then, after bowen joined you, he told me about a new deal he's gone into--rather a promising scheme, but on the same titanic scale. it's just possible, by the way, that we may be able to do something for him: part of the property he's after is held in our office." he paused, knowing undine's indifference to business matters; but the face she turned to him was alive with interest. "you mean you might sell the property to him?" "well, if the thing comes off. there would be a big commission if we did." he glanced down on her half ironically. "you'd like that, wouldn't you?" she answered with a shade of reproach: "why do you say that? i haven't complained." "oh, no; but i know i've been a disappointment as a money-maker." she leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes as if in utter weariness and indifference, and in a moment she felt him bending over her. "what's the matter? don't you feel well?" "i'm a little tired. it's nothing." she pulled her hand away and burst into tears. ralph knelt down by her chair and put his arm about her. it was the first time he had touched her since the night of the boy's birthday, and the sense of her softness woke a momentary warmth in his veins. "what is it, dear? what is it?" without turning her head she sobbed out: "you seem to think i'm too selfish and odious--that i'm just pretending to be ill." "no, no," he assured her, smoothing back her hair. but she continued to sob on in a gradual crescendo of despair, till the vehemence of her weeping began to frighten him, and he drew her to her feet and tried to persuade her to let herself be led upstairs. she yielded to his arm, sobbing in short exhausted gasps, and leaning her whole weight on him as he guided her along the passage to her bedroom. on the lounge to which he lowered her she lay white and still, tears trickling through her lashes and her handkerchief pressed against her lips. he recognized the symptoms with a sinking heart: she was on the verge of a nervous attack such as she had had in the winter, and he foresaw with dismay the disastrous train of consequences, the doctors' and nurses' bills, and all the attendant confusion and expense. if only moffatt's project might be realized--if for once he could feel a round sum in his pocket, and be freed from the perpetual daily strain! the next morning undine, though calmer, was too weak to leave her bed, and her doctor prescribed rest and absence of worry--later, perhaps, a change of scene. he explained to ralph that nothing was so wearing to a high-strung nature as monotony, and that if mrs. marvell were contemplating a newport season it was necessary that she should be fortified to meet it. in such cases he often recommended a dash to paris or london, just to tone up the nervous system. undine regained her strength slowly, and as the days dragged on the suggestion of the european trip recurred with increasing frequency. but it came always from her medical adviser: she herself had grown strangely passive and indifferent. she continued to remain upstairs on her lounge, seeing no one but mrs. heeny, whose daily ministrations had once more been prescribed, and asking only that the noise of paul's play should be kept from her. his scamperings overhead disturbed her sleep, and his bed was moved into the day nursery, above his father's room. the child's early romping did not trouble ralph, since he himself was always awake before daylight. the days were not long enough to hold his cares, and they came and stood by him through the silent hours, when there was no other sound to drown their voices. ralph had not made a success of his business. the real-estate brokers who had taken him into partnership had done so only with the hope of profiting by his social connections; and in this respect the alliance had been a failure. it was in such directions that he most lacked facility, and so far he had been of use to his partners only as an office-drudge. he was resigned to the continuance of such drudgery, though all his powers cried out against it; but even for the routine of business his aptitude was small, and he began to feel that he was not considered an addition to the firm. the difficulty of finding another opening made him fear a break; and his thoughts turned hopefully to elmer moffatt's hint of a "deal." the success of the negotiation might bring advantages beyond the immediate pecuniary profit; and that, at the present juncture, was important enough in itself. moffatt reappeared two days after the dinner, presenting himself in west end avenue in the late afternoon with the explanation that the business in hand necessitated discretion, and that he preferred not to be seen in ralph's office. it was a question of negotiating with the utmost privacy for the purchase of a small strip of land between two large plots already acquired by purchasers cautiously designated by moffatt as his "parties." how far he "stood in" with the parties he left it to ralph to conjecture; but it was plain that he had a large stake in the transaction, and that it offered him his first chance of recovering himself since driscoll had "thrown" him. the owners of the coveted plot did not seem anxious to sell, and there were personal reasons for moffatt's not approaching them through ralph's partners, who were the regular agents of the estate: so that ralph's acquaintance with the conditions, combined with his detachments from the case, marked him out as a useful intermediary. their first talk left ralph with a dazzled sense of moffatt's strength and keenness, but with a vague doubt as to the "straightness" of the proposed transaction. ralph had never seen his way clearly in that dim underworld of affairs where men of the moffatt and driscoll type moved like shadowy destructive monsters beneath the darting small fry of the surface. he knew that "business" has created its own special morality; and his musings on man's relation to his self imposed laws had shown him how little human conduct is generally troubled about its own sanctions. he had a vivid sense of the things a man of his kind didn't do; but his inability to get a mental grasp on large financial problems made it hard to apply to them so simple a measure as this inherited standard. he only knew, as moffatt's plan developed, that it seemed all right while he talked of it with its originator, but vaguely wrong when he thought it over afterward. it occurred to him to consult his grandfather; and if he renounced the idea for the obvious reason that mr. dagonet's ignorance of business was as fathomless as his own, this was not his sole motive. finally it occurred to him to put the case hypothetically to mr. spragg. as far as ralph knew, his father-in-law's business record was unblemished; yet one felt in him an elasticity of adjustment not allowed for in the dagonet code. mr. spragg listened thoughtfully to ralph's statement of the case, growling out here and there a tentative correction, and turning his cigar between his lips as he seemed to turn the problem over in the loose grasp of his mind. "well, what's the trouble with it?" he asked at length, stretching his big square-toed shoes against the grate of his son-in-law's dining-room, where, in the after-dinner privacy of a family evening, ralph had seized the occasion to consult him. "the trouble?" ralph considered. "why, that's just what i should like you to explain to me." mr. spragg threw back his head and stared at the garlanded french clock on the chimney-piece. mrs. spragg was sitting upstairs in her daughter's bedroom, and the silence of the house seemed to hang about the two men like a listening presence. "well, i dunno but what i agree with the doctor who said there warn't any diseases, but only sick people. every case is different, i guess." mr. spragg, munching his cigar, turned a ruminating glance on ralph. "seems to me it all boils down to one thing. was this fellow we're supposing about under any obligation to the other party--the one he was trying to buy the property from?" ralph hesitated. "only the obligation recognized between decent men to deal with each other decently." mr. spragg listened to this with the suffering air of a teacher compelled to simplify upon his simplest questions. "any personal obligation, i meant. had the other fellow done him a good turn any time?" "no--i don't imagine them to have had any previous relations at all." his father-in-law stared. "where's your trouble, then?" he sat for a moment frowning at the embers. "even when it's the other way round it ain't always so easy to decide how far that kind of thing's binding... and they say shipwrecked fellows'll make a meal of friend as quick as they would of a total stranger." he drew himself together with a shake of his shoulders and pulled back his feet from the grate. "but i don't see the conundrum in your case, i guess it's up to both parties to take care of their own skins." he rose from his chair and wandered upstairs to undine. that was the wall street code: it all "boiled down" to the personal obligation, to the salt eaten in the enemy's tent. ralph's fancy wandered off on a long trail of speculation from which he was pulled back with a jerk by the need of immediate action. moffatt's "deal" could not wait: quick decisions were essential to effective action, and brooding over ethical shades of difference might work more ill than good in a world committed to swift adjustments. the arrival of several unforeseen bills confirmed this view, and once ralph had adopted it he began to take a detached interest in the affair. in paris, in his younger days, he had once attended a lesson in acting given at the conservatoire by one of the great lights of the theatre, and had seen an apparently uncomplicated role of the classic repertory, familiar to him through repeated performances, taken to pieces before his eyes, dissolved into its component elements, and built up again with a minuteness of elucidation and a range of reference that made him feel as though he had been let into the secret of some age-long natural process. as he listened to moffatt the remembrance of that lesson came back to him. at the outset the "deal," and his own share in it, had seemed simple enough: he would have put on his hat and gone out on the spot in the full assurance of being able to transact the affair. but as moffatt talked he began to feel as blank and blundering as the class of dramatic students before whom the great actor had analyzed his part. the affair was in fact difficult and complex, and moffatt saw at once just where the difficulties lay and how the personal idiosyncrasies of "the parties" affected them. such insight fascinated ralph, and he strayed off into wondering why it did not qualify every financier to be a novelist, and what intrinsic barrier divided the two arts. both men had strong incentives for hastening the affair; and within a fortnight after moffatt's first advance ralph was able to tell him that his offer was accepted. over and above his personal satisfaction he felt the thrill of the agent whom some powerful negotiator has charged with a delicate mission: he might have been an eager young jesuit carrying compromising papers to his superior. it had been stimulating to work with moffatt, and to study at close range the large powerful instrument of his intelligence. as he came out of moffatt's office at the conclusion of this visit ralph met mr. spragg descending from his eyrie. he stopped short with a backward glance at moffatt's door. "hallo--what were you doing in there with those cut-throats?" ralph judged discretion to be essential. "oh, just a little business for the firm." mr. spragg said no more, but resorted to the soothing labial motion of revolving his phantom toothpick. "how's undie getting along?" he merely asked, as he and his son-in-law descended together in the elevator. "she doesn't seem to feel much stronger. the doctor wants her to run over to europe for a few weeks. she thinks of joining her friends the shallums in paris." mr. spragg was again silent, but he left the building at ralph's side, and the two walked along together toward wall street. presently the older man asked: "how did you get acquainted with moffatt?" "why, by chance--undine ran across him somewhere and asked him to dine the other night." "undine asked him to dine?" "yes: she told me you used to know him out at apex." mr. spragg appeared to search his memory for confirmation of the fact. "i believe he used to be round there at one time. i've never heard any good of him yet." he paused at a crossing and looked probingly at his son-in-law. "is she terribly set on this trip to europe?" ralph smiled. "you know how it is when she takes a fancy to do anything--" mr. spragg, by a slight lift of his brooding brows, seemed to convey a deep if unspoken response. "well, i'd let her do it this time--i'd let her do it," he said as he turned down the steps of the subway. ralph was surprised, for he had gathered from some frightened references of mrs. spragg's that undine's parents had wind of her european plan and were strongly opposed to it. he concluded that mr. spragg had long since measured the extent of profitable resistance, and knew just when it became vain to hold out against his daughter or advise others to do so. ralph, for his own part, had no inclination to resist. as he left moffatt's office his inmost feeling was one of relief. he had reached the point of recognizing that it was best for both that his wife should go. when she returned perhaps their lives would readjust themselves--but for the moment he longed for some kind of benumbing influence, something that should give relief to the dull daily ache of feeling her so near and yet so inaccessible. certainly there were more urgent uses for their brilliant wind-fall: heavy arrears of household debts had to be met, and the summer would bring its own burden. but perhaps another stroke of luck might befall him: he was getting to have the drifting dependence on "luck" of the man conscious of his inability to direct his life. and meanwhile it seemed easier to let undine have what she wanted. undine, on the whole, behaved with discretion. she received the good news languidly and showed no unseemly haste to profit by it. but it was as hard to hide the light in her eyes as to dissemble the fact that she had not only thought out every detail of the trip in advance, but had decided exactly how her husband and son were to be disposed of in her absence. her suggestion that ralph should take paul to his grandparents, and that the west end avenue house should be let for the summer, was too practical not to be acted on; and ralph found she had already put her hand on the harry lipscombs, who, after three years of neglect, were to be dragged back to favour and made to feel, as the first step in their reinstatement, the necessity of hiring for the summer months a cool airy house on the west side. on her return from europe, undine explained, she would of course go straight to ralph and the boy in the adirondacks; and it seemed a foolish extravagance to let the house stand empty when the lipscombs were so eager to take it. as the day of departure approached it became harder for her to temper her beams; but her pleasure showed itself so amiably that ralph began to think she might, after all, miss the boy and himself more than she imagined. she was tenderly preoccupied with paul's welfare, and, to prepare for his translation to his grandparents' she gave the household in washington square more of her time than she had accorded it since her marriage. she explained that she wanted paul to grow used to his new surroundings; and with that object she took him frequently to his grandmother's, and won her way into old mr. dagonet's sympathies by her devotion to the child and her pretty way of joining in his games. undine was not consciously acting a part: this new phase was as natural to her as the other. in the joy of her gratified desires she wanted to make everybody about her happy. if only everyone would do as she wished she would never be unreasonable. she much preferred to see smiling faces about her, and her dread of the reproachful and dissatisfied countenance gave the measure of what she would do to avoid it. these thoughts were in her mind when, a day or two before sailing, she came out of the washington square house with her boy. it was a late spring afternoon, and she and paul had lingered on till long past the hour sacred to his grandfather's nap. now, as she came out into the square she saw that, however well mr. dagonet had borne their protracted romp, it had left his playmate flushed and sleepy; and she lifted paul in her arms to carry him to the nearest cab-stand. as she raised herself she saw a thick-set figure approaching her across the square; and a moment later she was shaking hands with elmer moffatt. in the bright spring air he looked seasonably glossy and prosperous; and she noticed that he wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. his small black eyes twinkled with approval as they rested on her, and undine reflected that, with paul's arms about her neck, and his little flushed face against her own, she must present a not unpleasing image of young motherhood. "that the heir apparent?" moffatt asked; adding "happy to make your acquaintance, sir," as the boy, at undine's bidding, held out a fist sticky with sugarplums. "he's been spending the afternoon with his grandfather, and they played so hard that he's sleepy," she explained. little paul, at that stage in his career, had a peculiar grace of wide-gazing deep-lashed eyes and arched cherubic lips, and undine saw that moffatt was not insensible to the picture she and her son composed. she did not dislike his admiration, for she no longer felt any shrinking from him--she would even have been glad to thank him for the service he had done her husband if she had known how to allude to it without awkwardness. moffatt seemed equally pleased at the meeting, and they looked at each other almost intimately over paul's tumbled curls. "he's a mighty fine fellow and no mistake--but isn't he rather an armful for you?" moffatt asked, his eyes lingering with real kindliness on the child's face. "oh, we haven't far to go. i'll pick up a cab at the corner." "well, let me carry him that far anyhow," said moffatt. undine was glad to be relieved of her burden, for she was unused to the child's weight, and disliked to feel that her skirt was dragging on the pavement. "go to the gentleman, pauly--he'll carry you better than mother," she said. the little boy's first movement was one of recoil from the ruddy sharp-eyed countenance that was so unlike his father's delicate face; but he was an obedient child, and after a moment's hesitation he wound his arms trustfully about the red gentleman's neck. "that's a good fellow--sit tight and i'll give you a ride," moffatt cried, hoisting the boy to his shoulder. paul was not used to being perched at such a height, and his nature was hospitable to new impressions. "oh, i like it up here--you're higher than father!" he exclaimed; and moffatt hugged him with a laugh. "it must feel mighty good to come uptown to a fellow like you in the evenings," he said, addressing the child but looking at undine, who also laughed a little. "oh, they're a dreadful nuisance, you know; but paul's a very good boy." "i wonder if he knows what a friend i've been to him lately," moffatt went on, as they turned into fifth avenue. undine smiled: she was glad he should have given her an opening. "he shall be told as soon as he's old enough to thank you. i'm so glad you came to ralph about that business." "oh i gave him a leg up, and i guess he's given me one too. queer the way things come round--he's fairly put me in the way of a fresh start." their eyes met in a silence which undine was the first to break. "it's been awfully nice of you to do what you've done--right along. and this last thing has made a lot of difference to us." "well, i'm glad you feel that way. i never wanted to be anything but 'nice,' as you call it." moffatt paused a moment and then added: "if you're less scared of me than your father is i'd be glad to call round and see you once in a while." the quick blood rushed to her cheeks. there was nothing challenging, demanding in his tone--she guessed at once that if he made the request it was simply for the pleasure of being with her, and she liked the magnanimity implied. nevertheless she was not sorry to have to answer: "of course i'll always be glad to see you--only, as it happens, i'm just sailing for europe." "for europe?" the word brought moffatt to a stand so abruptly that little paul lurched on his shoulder. "for europe?" he repeated. "why, i thought you said the other evening you expected to stay on in town till july. didn't you think of going to the adirondacks?" flattered by his evident disappointment, she became high and careless in her triumph. "oh, yes,--but that's all changed. ralph and the boy are going, but i sail on saturday to join some friends in paris--and later i may do some motoring in switzerland an italy." she laughed a little in the mere enjoyment of putting her plans into words and moffatt laughed too, but with an edge of sarcasm. "i see--i see: everything's changed, as you say, and your husband can blow you off to the trip. well, i hope you'll have a first-class time." their glances crossed again, and something in his cool scrutiny impelled undine to say, with a burst of candour: "if i do, you know, i shall owe it all to you!" "well, i always told you i meant to act white by you," he answered. they walked on in silence, and presently he began again in his usual joking strain: "see what one of the apex girls has been up to?" apex was too remote for her to understand the reference, and he went on: "why, millard binch's wife--indiana frusk that was. didn't you see in the papers that indiana'd fixed it up with james j. rolliver to marry her? they say it was easy enough squaring millard binch--you'd know it would be--but it cost roliver near a million to mislay mrs. r. and the children. well, indiana's pulled it off, anyhow; she always was a bright girl. but she never came up to you." "oh--" she stammered with a laugh, astonished and agitated by his news. indiana frusk and rolliver! it showed how easily the thing could be done. if only her father had listened to her! if a girl like indiana frusk could gain her end so easily, what might not undine have accomplished? she knew moffatt was right in saying that indiana had never come up to her...she wondered how the marriage would strike van degen... she signalled to a cab and they walked toward it without speaking. undine was recalling with intensity that one of indiana's shoulders was higher than the other, and that people in apex had thought her lucky to catch millard binch, the druggist's clerk, when undine herself had cast him off after a lingering engagement. and now indiana frusk was to be mrs. james j. rolliver! undine got into the cab and bent forward to take little paul. moffatt lowered his charge with exaggerated care, and a "steady there, steady," that made the child laugh; then, stooping over, he put a kiss on paul's lips before handing him over to his mother. xix "the parisian diamond company--anglo-american branch." charles bowen, seated, one rainy evening of the paris season, in a corner of the great nouveau luxe restaurant, was lazily trying to resolve his impressions of the scene into the phrases of a letter to his old friend mrs. henley fairford. the long habit of unwritten communion with this lady--in no way conditioned by the short rare letters they actually exchanged--usually caused his notations, in absence, to fall into such terms when the subject was of a kind to strike an answering flash from her. and who but mrs. fairford would see, from his own precise angle, the fantastic improbability, the layers on layers of unsubstantialness, on which the seemingly solid scene before him rested? the dining-room of the nouveau luxe was at its fullest, and, having contracted on the garden side through stress of weather, had even overflowed to the farther end of the long hall beyond; so that bowen, from his corner, surveyed a seemingly endless perspective of plumed and jewelled heads, of shoulders bare or black-coated, encircling the close-packed tables. he had come half an hour before the time he had named to his expected guest, so that he might have the undisturbed amusement of watching the picture compose itself again before his eyes. during some forty years' perpetual exercise of his perceptions he had never come across anything that gave them the special titillation produced by the sight of the dinner-hour at the nouveau luxe: the same sense of putting his hand on human nature's passion for the factitious, its incorrigible habit of imitating the imitation. as he sat watching the familiar faces swept toward him on the rising tide of arrival--for it was one of the joys of the scene that the type was always the same even when the individual was not--he hailed with renewed appreciation this costly expression of a social ideal. the dining-room at the nouveau luxe represented, on such a spring evening, what unbounded material power had devised for the delusion of its leisure: a phantom "society," with all the rules, smirks, gestures of its model, but evoked out of promiscuity and incoherence while the other had been the product of continuity and choice. and the instinct which had driven a new class of world-compellers to bind themselves to slavish imitation of the superseded, and their prompt and reverent faith in the reality of the sham they had created, seemed to bowen the most satisfying proof of human permanence. with this thought in his mind he looked up to greet his guest. the comte raymond de chelles, straight, slim and gravely smiling, came toward him with frequent pauses of salutation at the crowded tables; saying, as he seated himself and turned his pleasant eyes on the scene: "il n'y a pas à dire, my dear bowen, it's charming and sympathetic and original--we owe america a debt of gratitude for inventing it!" bowen felt a last touch of satisfaction: they were the very words to complete his thought. "my dear fellow, it's really you and your kind who are responsible. it's the direct creation of feudalism, like all the great social upheavals!" raymond de chelles stroked his handsome brown moustache. "i should have said, on the contrary, that one enjoyed it for the contrast. it's such a refreshing change from our institutions--which are, nevertheless, the necessary foundations of society. but just as one may have an infinite admiration for one's wife, and yet occasionally--" he waved a light hand toward the spectacle. "this, in the social order, is the diversion, the permitted diversion, that your original race has devised: a kind of superior bohemia, where one may be respectable without being bored." bowen laughed. "you've put it in a nutshell: the ideal of the american woman is to be respectable without being bored; and from that point of view this world they've invented has more originality than i gave it credit for." chelles thoughtfully unfolded his napkin. "my impression's a superficial one, of course--for as to what goes on underneath--!" he looked across the room. "if i married i shouldn't care to have my wife come here too often." bowen laughed again. "she'd be as safe as in a bank! nothing ever goes on! nothing that ever happens here is real." "ah, quant à cela--" the frenchman murmured, inserting a fork into his melon. bowen looked at him with enjoyment--he was such a precious foot-note to the page! the two men, accidentally thrown together some years previously during a trip up the nile, always met again with pleasure when bowen returned to france. raymond de chelles, who came of a family of moderate fortune, lived for the greater part of the year on his father's estates in burgundy; but he came up every spring to the entresol of the old marquis's hotel for a two months' study of human nature, applying to the pursuit the discriminating taste and transient ardour that give the finest bloom to pleasure. bowen liked him as a companion and admired him as a charming specimen of the frenchman of his class, embodying in his lean, fatigued and finished person that happy mean of simplicity and intelligence of which no other race has found the secret. if raymond de chelles had been english he would have been a mere fox-hunting animal, with appetites but without tastes; but in his lighter gallic clay the wholesome territorial savour, the inherited passion for sport and agriculture, were blent with an openness to finer sensations, a sense of the come-and-go of ideas, under which one felt the tight hold of two or three inherited notions, religious, political, and domestic, in total contradiction to his surface attitude. that the inherited notions would in the end prevail, everything in his appearance declared from the distinguished slant of his nose to the narrow forehead under his thinning hair; he was the kind of man who would inevitably "revert" when he married. but meanwhile the surface he presented to the play of life was broad enough to take in the fantastic spectacle of the nouveau luxe; and to see its gestures reflected in a latin consciousness was an endless entertainment to bowen. the tone of his guest's last words made him take them up. "but is the lady you allude to more than a hypothesis? surely you're not thinking of getting married?" chelles raised his eye-brows ironically. "when hasn't one to think of it, in my situation? one hears of nothing else at home--one knows that, like death, it has to come." his glance, which was still mustering the room, came to a sudden pause and kindled. "who's the lady over there--fair-haired, in white--the one who's just come in with the red-faced man? they seem to be with a party of your compatriots." bowen followed his glance to a neighbouring table, where, at the moment, undine marvell was seating herself at peter van degen's side, in the company of the harvey shallums, the beautiful mrs. beringer and a dozen other new york figures. she was so placed that as she took her seat she recognized bowen and sent him a smile across the tables. she was more simply dressed than usual, and the pink lights, warming her cheeks and striking gleams from her hair, gave her face a dewy freshness that was new to bowen. he had always thought her beauty too obvious, too bathed in the bright publicity of the american air; but to-night she seemed to have been brushed by the wing of poetry, and its shadow lingered in her eyes. chelles' gaze made it evident that he had received the same impression. "one is sometimes inclined to deny your compatriots actual beauty--to charge them with producing the effect without having the features; but in this case--you say you know the lady?" "yes: she's the wife of an old friend." "the wife? she's married? there, again, it's so puzzling! your young girls look so experienced, and your married women sometimes so--unmarried." "well, they often are--in these days of divorce!" the other's interest quickened. "your friend's divorced?" "oh, no; heaven forbid! mrs. marvell hasn't been long married; and it was a love-match of the good old kind." "ah--and the husband? which is he?" "he's not here--he's in new york." "feverishly adding to a fortune already monstrous?" "no; not precisely monstrous. the marvells are not well off," said bowen, amused by his friend's interrogations. "and he allows an exquisite being like that to come to paris without him--and in company with the red-faced gentleman who seems so alive to his advantages?" "we don't 'allow' our women this or that; i don't think we set much store by the compulsory virtues." his companion received this with amusement. "if: you're as detached as that, why does the obsolete institution of marriage survive with you?" "oh, it still has its uses. one couldn't be divorced without it." chelles laughed again; but his straying eye still followed the same direction, and bowen noticed that the fact was not unremarked by the object of his contemplation. undine's party was one of the liveliest in the room: the american laugh rose above the din of the orchestra as the american toilets dominated the less daring effects at the other tables. undine, on entering, had seemed to be in the same mood as her companions; but bowen saw that, as she became conscious of his friend's observation, she isolated herself in a kind of soft abstraction; and he admired the adaptability which enabled her to draw from such surroundings the contrasting graces of reserve. they had greeted each other with all the outer signs of cordiality, but bowen fancied she would not care to have him speak to her. she was evidently dining with van degen, and van degen's proximity was the last fact she would wish to have transmitted to the critics in washington square. bowen was therefore surprised when, as he rose to leave the restaurant, he heard himself hailed by peter. "hallo--hold on! when did you come over? mrs. marvell's dying for the last news about the old homestead." undine's smile confirmed the appeal. she wanted to know how lately bowen had left new york, and pressed him to tell her when he had last seen her boy, how he was looking, and whether ralph had been persuaded to go down to clare's on saturdays and get a little riding and tennis? and dear laura--was she well too, and was paul with her, or still with his grandmother? they were all dreadfully bad correspondents, and so was she. undine laughingly admitted; and when ralph had last written her these questions had still been undecided. as she smiled up at bowen he saw her glance stray to the spot where his companion hovered; and when the diners rose to move toward the garden for coffee she said, with a sweet note and a detaining smile: "do come with us--i haven't half finished." van degen echoed the request, and bowen, amused by undine's arts, was presently introducing chelles, and joining with him in the party's transit to the terrace. the rain had ceased, and under the clear evening sky the restaurant garden opened green depths that skilfully hid its narrow boundaries. van degen's company was large enough to surround two of the tables on the terrace, and bowen noted the skill with which undine, leaving him to mrs. shallum's care, contrived to draw raymond de chelles to the other table. still more noticeable was the effect of this stratagem on van degen, who also found himself relegated to mrs. shallum's group. poor peter's state was betrayed by the irascibility which wreaked itself on a jostling waiter, and found cause for loud remonstrance in the coldness of the coffee and the badness of the cigars; and bowen, with something more than the curiosity of the looker-on, wondered whether this were the real clue to undine's conduct. he had always smiled at mrs. fairford's fears for ralph's domestic peace. he thought undine too clear-headed to forfeit the advantages of her marriage; but it now struck him that she might have had a glimpse of larger opportunities. bowen, at the thought, felt the pang of the sociologist over the individual havoc wrought by every social readjustment: it had so long been clear to him that poor ralph was a survival, and destined, as such, to go down in any conflict with the rising forces. xx some six weeks later. undine marvell stood at the window smiling down on her recovered paris. her hotel sitting-room had, as usual, been flowered, cushioned and lamp-shaded into a delusive semblance of stability; and she had really felt, for the last few weeks, that the life she was leading there must be going to last--it seemed so perfect an answer to all her wants! as she looked out at the thronged street, on which the summer light lay like a blush of pleasure, she felt herself naturally akin to all the bright and careless freedom of the scene. she had been away from paris for two days, and the spectacle before her seemed more rich and suggestive after her brief absence from it. her senses luxuriated in all its material details: the thronging motors, the brilliant shops, the novelty and daring of the women's dresses, the piled-up colours of the ambulant flower-carts, the appetizing expanse of the fruiterers' windows, even the chromatic effects of the petits fours behind the plate-glass of the pastry-cooks: all the surface-sparkle and variety of the inexhaustible streets of paris. the scene before her typified to undine her first real taste of life. how meagre and starved the past appeared in comparison with this abundant present! the noise, the crowd, the promiscuity beneath her eyes symbolized the glare and movement of her life. every moment of her days was packed with excitement and exhilaration. everything amused her: the long hours of bargaining and debate with dress-makers and jewellers, the crowded lunches at fashionable restaurants, the perfunctory dash through a picture-show or the lingering visit to the last new milliner; the afternoon motor-rush to some leafy suburb, where tea and musics and sunset were hastily absorbed on a crowded terrace above the seine; the whirl home through the bois to dress for dinner and start again on the round of evening diversions; the dinner at the nouveau luxe or the café de paris, and the little play at the capucines or the variétés, followed, because the night was "too lovely," and it was a shame to waste it, by a breathless flight back to the bois, with supper in one of its lamp-hung restaurants, or, if the weather forbade, a tumultuous progress through the midnight haunts where "ladies" were not supposed to show themselves, and might consequently taste the thrill of being occasionally taken for their opposites. as the varied vision unrolled itself, undine contrasted it with the pale monotony of her previous summers. the one she most resented was the first after her marriage, the european summer out of whose joys she had been cheated by her own ignorance and ralph's perversity. they had been free then, there had been no child to hamper their movements, their money anxieties had hardly begun, the face of life had been fresh and radiant, and she had been doomed to waste such opportunities on a succession of ill-smelling italian towns. she still felt it to be her deepest grievance against her husband; and now that, after four years of petty household worries, another chance of escape had come, he already wanted to drag her back to bondage! this fit of retrospection had been provoked by two letters which had come that morning. one was from ralph, who began by reminding her that he had not heard from her for weeks, and went on to point out, in his usual tone of good-humoured remonstrance, that since her departure the drain on her letter of credit had been deep and constant. "i wanted you," he wrote, "to get all the fun you could out of the money i made last spring; but i didn't think you'd get through it quite so fast. try to come home without leaving too many bills behind you. your illness and paul's cost more than i expected, and lipscomb has had a bad knock in wall street, and hasn't yet paid his first quarter..." always the same monotonous refrain! was it her fault that she and the boy had been ill? or that harry lipscomb had been "on the wrong side" of wall street? ralph seemed to have money on the brain: his business life had certainly deteriorated him. and, since he hadn't made a success of it after all, why shouldn't he turn back to literature and try to write his novel? undine, the previous winter, had been dazzled by the figures which a well-known magazine editor, whom she had met at dinner had named as within reach of the successful novelist. she perceived for the first time that literature was becoming fashionable, and instantly decided that it would be amusing and original if she and ralph should owe their prosperity to his talent. she already saw herself, as the wife of a celebrated author, wearing "artistic" dresses and doing the drawing-room over with gothic tapestries and dim lights in altar candle-sticks. but when she suggested ralph's taking up his novel he answered with a laugh that his brains were sold to the firm--that when he came back at night the tank was empty...and now he wanted her to sail for home in a week! the other letter excited a deeper resentment. it was an appeal from laura fairford to return and look after ralph. he was overworked and out of spirits, she wrote, and his mother and sister, reluctant as they were to interfere, felt they ought to urge undine to come back to him. details followed, unwelcome and officious. what right had laura fairford to preach to her of wifely obligations? no doubt charles bowen had sent home a highly-coloured report--and there was really a certain irony in mrs. fairford's criticizing her sister-in-law's conduct on information obtained from such a source! undine turned from the window and threw herself down on her deeply cushioned sofa. she was feeling the pleasant fatigue consequent on her trip to the country, whither she and mrs. shallum had gone with raymond de chelles to spend a night at the old marquis's chateau. when her travelling companions, an hour earlier, had left her at her door, she had half-promised to rejoin them for a late dinner in the bois; and as she leaned back among the cushions disturbing thoughts were banished by the urgent necessity of deciding what dress she should wear. these bright weeks of the parisian spring had given her a first real glimpse into the art of living. from the experts who had taught her to subdue the curves of her figure and soften her bright free stare with dusky pencillings, to the skilled purveyors of countless forms of pleasure--the theatres and restaurants, the green and blossoming suburbs, the whole shining shifting spectacle of nights and days--every sight and sound and word had combined to charm her perceptions and refine her taste. and her growing friendship with raymond de chelles had been the most potent of these influences. chelles, at once immensely "taken," had not only shown his eagerness to share in the helter-skelter motions of undine's party, but had given her glimpses of another, still more brilliant existence, that life of the inaccessible "faubourg" of which the first tantalizing hints had but lately reached her. hitherto she had assumed that paris existed for the stranger, that its native life was merely an obscure foundation for the dazzling superstructure of hotels and restaurants in which her compatriots disported themselves. but lately she had begun to hear about other american women, the women who had married into the french aristocracy, and who led, in the high-walled houses beyond the seine which she had once thought so dull and dingy, a life that made her own seem as undistinguished as the social existence of the mealey house. perhaps what most exasperated her was the discovery, in this impenetrable group, of the miss wincher who had poisoned her far-off summer at potash springs. to recognize her old enemy in the marquise de trezac who so frequently figured in the parisian chronicle was the more irritating to undine because her intervening social experiences had caused her to look back on nettie wincher as a frumpy girl who wouldn't have "had a show" in new york. once more all the accepted values were reversed, and it turned out that miss wincher had been in possession of some key to success on which undine had not yet put her hand. to know that others were indifferent to what she had thought important was to cheapen all present pleasure and turn the whole force of her desires in a new direction. what she wanted for the moment was to linger on in paris, prolonging her flirtation with chelles, and profiting by it to detach herself from her compatriots and enter doors closed to their approach. and chelles himself attracted her: she thought him as "sweet" as she had once thought ralph, whose fastidiousness and refinement were blent in him with a delightful foreign vivacity. his chief value, however, lay in his power of exciting van degen's jealousy. she knew enough of french customs to be aware that such devotion as chelles' was not likely to have much practical bearing on her future; but peter had an alarming way of lapsing into security, and as a spur to his ardour she knew the value of other men's attentions. it had become undine's fixed purpose to bring van degen to a definite expression of his intentions. the case of indiana frusk, whose brilliant marriage the journals of two continents had recently chronicled with unprecedented richness of detail, had made less impression on him than she hoped. he treated it as a comic episode without special bearing on their case, and once, when undine cited rolliver's expensive fight for freedom as an instance of the power of love over the most invulnerable natures, had answered carelessly: "oh, his first wife was a laundress, i believe." but all about them couples were unpairing and pairing again with an ease and rapidity that encouraged undine to bide her time. it was simply a question of making van degen want her enough, and of not being obliged to abandon the game before he wanted her as much as she meant he should. this was precisely what would happen if she were compelled to leave paris now. already the event had shown how right she had been to come abroad: the attention she attracted in paris had reawakened van degen's fancy, and her hold over him was stronger than when they had parted in america. but the next step must be taken with coolness and circumspection; and she must not throw away what she had gained by going away at a stage when he was surer of her than she of him. she was still intensely considering these questions when the door behind her opened and he came in. she looked up with a frown and he gave a deprecating laugh. "didn't i knock? don't look so savage! they told me downstairs you'd got back, and i just bolted in without thinking." he had widened and purpled since their first encounter, five years earlier, but his features had not matured. his face was still the face of a covetous bullying boy, with a large appetite for primitive satisfactions and a sturdy belief in his intrinsic right to them. it was all the more satisfying to undine's vanity to see his look change at her tone from command to conciliation, and from conciliation to the entreaty of a capriciously-treated animal. "what a ridiculous hour for a visit!" she exclaimed, ignoring his excuse. "well, if you disappear like that, without a word--" "i told my maid to telephone you i was going away." "you couldn't make time to do it yourself, i suppose?" "we rushed off suddenly; i'd hardly time to get to the station." "you rushed off where, may i ask?" van degen still lowered down on her. "oh didn't i tell you? i've been down staying at chelles' chateau in burgundy." her face lit up and she raised herself eagerly on her elbow. "it's the most wonderful old house you ever saw: a real castle, with towers, and water all round it, and a funny kind of bridge they pull up. chelles said he wanted me to see just how they lived at home, and i did; i saw everything: the tapestries that louis quinze gave them, and the family portraits, and the chapel, where their own priest says mass, and they sit by themselves in a balcony with crowns all over it. the priest was a lovely old man--he said he'd give anything to convert me. do you know, i think there's something very beautiful about the roman catholic religion? i've often felt i might have been happier if i'd had some religious influence in my life." she sighed a little, and turned her head away. she flattered herself that she had learned to strike the right note with van degen. at this crucial stage he needed a taste of his own methods, a glimpse of the fact that there were women in the world who could get on without him. he continued to gaze down at her sulkily. "were the old people there? you never told me you knew his mother." "i don't. they weren't there. but it didn't make a bit of difference, because raymond sent down a cook from the luxe." "oh, lord," van degen groaned, dropping down on the end of the sofa. "was the cook got down to chaperon you?" undine laughed. "you talk like ralph! i had bertha with me." "bertha!" his tone of contempt surprised her. she had supposed that mrs. shallum's presence had made the visit perfectly correct. "you went without knowing his parents, and without their inviting you? don't you know what that sort of thing means out here? chelles did it to brag about you at his club. he wants to compromise you--that's his game!" "do you suppose he does?" a flicker of a smile crossed her lips. "i'm so unconventional: when i like a man i never stop to think about such things. but i ought to, of course--you're quite right." she looked at van degen thoughtfully. "at any rate, he's not a married man." van degen had got to his feet again and was standing accusingly before her; but as she spoke the blood rose to his neck and ears. "what difference does that make?" "it might make a good deal. i see," she added, "how careful i ought to be about going round with you." "with me?" his face fell at the retort; then he broke into a laugh. he adored undine's "smartness," which was of precisely the same quality as his own. "oh, that's another thing: you can always trust me to look after you!" "with your reputation? much obliged!" van degen smiled. she knew he liked such allusions, and was pleased that she thought him compromising. "oh, i'm as good as gold. you've made a new man of me!" "have i?" she considered him in silence for a moment. "i wonder what you've done to me but make a discontented woman of me--discontented with everything i had before i knew you?" the change of tone was thrilling to him. he forgot her mockery, forgot his rival, and sat down at her side, almost in possession of her waist. "look here," he asked, "where are we going to dine to-night?" his nearness was not agreeable to undine, but she liked his free way, his contempt for verbal preliminaries. ralph's reserves and delicacies, his perpetual desire that he and she should be attuned to the same key, had always vaguely bored her; whereas in van degen's manner she felt a hint of the masterful way that had once subdued her in elmer moffatt. but she drew back, releasing herself. "to-night? i can't--i'm engaged." "i know you are: engaged to me! you promised last sunday you'd dine with me out of town to-night." "how can i remember what i promised last sunday? besides, after what you've said, i see i oughtn't to." "what do you mean by what i've said?" "why, that i'm imprudent; that people are talking--" he stood up with an angry laugh. "i suppose you're dining with chelles. is that it?" "is that the way you cross-examine clare?" "i don't care a hang what clare does--i never have." "that must--in some ways--be rather convenient for her!" "glad you think so. are you dining with him?" she slowly turned the wedding-ring upon her finger. "you know i'm not married to you--yet!" he took a random turn through the room; then he came back and planted himself wrathfully before her. "can't you see the man's doing his best to make a fool of you?" she kept her amused gaze on him. "does it strike you that it's such an awfully easy thing to do?" the edges of his ears were purple. "i sometimes think it's easier for these damned little dancing-masters than for one of us." undine was still smiling up at him; but suddenly her grew grave. "what does it matter what i do or don't do, when ralph has ordered me home next week?" "ordered you home?" his face changed. "well, you're not going, are you?" "what's the use of saying such things?" she gave a disenchanted laugh. "i'm a poor man's wife, and can't do the things my friends do. it's not because ralph loves me that he wants me back--it's simply because he can't afford to let me stay!" van degen's perturbation was increasing. "but you mustn't go--it's preposterous! why should a woman like you be sacrificed when a lot of dreary frumps have everything they want? besides, you can't chuck me like this! why, we're all to motor down to aix next week, and perhaps take a dip into italy--" "oh, italy--" she murmured on a note of yearning. he was closer now, and had her hands. "you'd love that, wouldn't you? as far as venice, anyhow; and then in august there's trouville--you've never tried trouville? there's an awfully jolly crowd there--and the motoring's ripping in normandy. if you say so i'll take a villa there instead of going back to newport. and i'll put the sorceress in commission, and you can make up parties and run off whenever you like, to scotland or norway--" he hung above her. "don't dine with chelles to-night! come with me, and we'll talk things over; and next week we'll run down to trouville to choose the villa." undine's heart was beating fast, but she felt within her a strange lucid force of resistance. because of that sense of security she left her hands in van degen's. so mr. spragg might have felt at the tensest hour of the pure water move. she leaned forward, holding her suitor off by the pressure of her bent-back palms. "kiss me good-bye, peter; i sail on wednesday," she said. it was the first time she had permitted him a kiss, and as his face darkened down on her she felt a moment's recoil. but her physical reactions were never very acute: she always vaguely wondered why people made "such a fuss," were so violently for or against such demonstrations. a cool spirit within her seemed to watch over and regulate her sensations, and leave her capable of measuring the intensity of those she provoked. she turned to look at the clock. "you must go now--i shall be hours late for dinner." "go--after that?" he held her fast. "kiss me again," he commanded. it was wonderful how cool she felt--how easily she could slip out of his grasp! any man could be managed like a child if he were really in love with one.... "don't be a goose, peter; do you suppose i'd have kissed you if--" "if what--what--what?" he mimicked her ecstatically, not listening. she saw that if she wished to make him hear her she must put more distance between them, and she rose and moved across the room. from the fireplace she turned to add--"if we hadn't been saying good-bye?" "good-bye--now? what's the use of talking like that?" he jumped up and followed her. "look here, undine--i'll do anything on earth you want; only don't talk of going! if you'll only stay i'll make it all as straight and square as you please. i'll get bertha shallum to stop over with you for the summer; i'll take a house at trouville and make my wife come out there. hang it, she shall, if you say so! only be a little good to me!" still she stood before him without speaking, aware that her implacable brows and narrowed lips would hold him off as long as she chose. "what's the matter. undine? why don't you answer? you know you can't go back to that deadly dry-rot!" she swept about on him with indignant eyes. "i can't go on with my present life either. it's hateful--as hateful as the other. if i don't go home i've got to decide on something different." "what do you mean by 'something different'?" she was silent, and he insisted: "are you really thinking of marrying chelles?" she started as if he had surprised a secret. "i'll never forgive you if you speak of it--" "good lord! good lord!" he groaned. she remained motionless, with lowered lids, and he went up to her and pulled her about so that she faced him. "undine, honour bright--do you think he'll marry you?" she looked at him with a sudden hardness in her eyes. "i really can't discuss such things with you." "oh, for the lord's sake don't take that tone! i don't half know what i'm saying...but you mustn't throw yourself away a second time. i'll do anything you want--i swear i will!" a knock on the door sent them apart, and a servant entered with a telegram. undine turned away to the window with the narrow blue slip. she was glad of the interruption: the sense of what she had at stake made her want to pause a moment and to draw breath. the message was a long cable signed with laura fairford's name. it told her that ralph had been taken suddenly ill with pneumonia, that his condition was serious and that the doctors advised his wife's immediate return. undine had to read the words over two or three times to get them into her crowded mind; and even after she had done so she needed more time to see their bearing on her own situation. if the message had concerned her boy her brain would have acted more quickly. she had never troubled herself over the possibility of paul's falling ill in her absence, but she understood now that if the cable had been about him she would have rushed to the earliest steamer. with ralph it was different. ralph was always perfectly well--she could not picture him as being suddenly at death's door and in need of her. probably his mother and sister had had a panic: they were always full of sentimental terrors. the next moment an angry suspicion flashed across her: what if the cable were a device of the marvell women to bring her back? perhaps it had been sent with ralph's connivance! no doubt bowen had written home about her--washington square had received some monstrous report of her doings!... yes, the cable was clearly an echo of laura's letter--mother and daughter had cooked it up to spoil her pleasure. once the thought had occurred to her it struck root in her mind and began to throw out giant branches. van degen followed her to the window, his face still flushed and working. "what's the matter?" he asked, as she continued to stare silently at the telegram. she crumpled the strip of paper in her hand. if only she had been alone, had had a chance to think out her answers! "what on earth's the matter?" he repeated. "oh, nothing--nothing." "nothing? when you're as white as a sheet?" "am i?" she gave a slight laugh. "it's only a cable from home." "ralph?" she hesitated. "no. laura." "what the devil is she cabling you about?" "she says ralph wants me." "now--at once?" "at once." van degen laughed impatiently. "why don't he tell you so himself? what business is it of laura fairford's?" undine's gesture implied a "what indeed?" "is that all she says?" she hesitated again. "yes--that's all." as she spoke she tossed the telegram into the basket beneath the writing-table. "as if i didn't have to go anyhow?" she exclaimed. with an aching clearness of vision she saw what lay before her--the hurried preparations, the long tedious voyage on a steamer chosen at haphazard, the arrival in the deadly july heat, and the relapse into all the insufferable daily fag of nursery and kitchen--she saw it and her imagination recoiled. van degen's eyes still hung on her: she guessed that he was intensely engaged in trying to follow what was passing through her mind. presently he came up to her again, no longer perilous and importunate, but awkwardly tender, ridiculously moved by her distress. "undine, listen: won't you let me make it all right for you to stay?" her heart began to beat more quickly, and she let him come close, meeting his eyes coldly but without anger. "what do you call 'making it all right'? paying my bills? don't you see that's what i hate, and will never let myself be dragged into again?" she laid her hand on his arm. "the time has come when i must be sensible, peter; that's why we must say good-bye." "do you mean to tell me you're going back to ralph?" she paused a moment; then she murmured between her lips: "i shall never go back to him." "then you do mean to marry chelles?" "i've told you we must say good-bye. i've got to look out for my future." he stood before her, irresolute, tormented, his lazy mind and impatient senses labouring with a problem beyond their power. "ain't i here to look out for your future?" he said at last. "no one shall look out for it in the way you mean. i'd rather never see you again--" he gave her a baffled stare. "oh, damn it--if that's the way you feel!" he turned and flung away toward the door. she stood motionless where he left her, every nerve strung to the highest pitch of watchfulness. as she stood there, the scene about her stamped itself on her brain with the sharpest precision. she was aware of the fading of the summer light outside, of the movements of her maid, who was laying out her dinner-dress in the room beyond, and of the fact that the tea-roses on her writing-table, shaken by van degen's tread, were dropping their petals over ralph's letter, and down on the crumpled telegram which she could see through the trellised sides of the scrap-basket. in another moment van degen would be gone. worse yet, while he wavered in the doorway the shallums and chelles, after vainly awaiting her, might dash back from the bois and break in on them. these and other chances rose before her, urging her to action; but she held fast, immovable, unwavering, a proud yet plaintive image of renunciation. van degen's hand was on the door. he half-opened it and then turned back. "that's all you've got to say, then?" "that's all." he jerked the door open and passed out. she saw him stop in the ante-room to pick up his hat and stick, his heavy figure silhouetted against the glare of the wall-lights. a ray of the same light fell on her where she stood in the unlit sitting-room, and her reflection bloomed out like a flower from the mirror that faced her. she looked at the image and waited. van degen put his hat on his head and slowly opened the door into the outer hall. then he turned abruptly, his bulk eclipsing her reflection as he plunged back into the room and came up to her. "i'll do anything you say. undine; i'll do anything in god's world to keep you!" she turned her eyes from the mirror and let them rest on his face, which looked as small and withered as an old man's, with a lower lip that trembled queerly.... xxi the spring in new york proceeded through more than its usual extremes of temperature to the threshold of a sultry june. ralph marvell, wearily bent to his task, felt the fantastic humours of the weather as only one more incoherence in the general chaos of his case. it was strange enough, after four years of marriage, to find himself again in his old brown room in washington square. it was hardly there that he had expected pegasus to land him; and, like a man returning to the scenes of his childhood, he found everything on a much smaller scale than he had imagined. had the dagonet boundaries really narrowed, or had the breach in the walls of his own life let in a wider vision? certainly there had come to be other differences between his present and his former self than that embodied in the presence of his little boy in the next room. paul, in fact, was now the chief link between ralph and his past. concerning his son he still felt and thought, in a general way, in the terms of the dagonet tradition; he still wanted to implant in paul some of the reserves and discriminations which divided that tradition from the new spirit of limitless concession. but for himself it was different. since his transaction with moffatt he had had the sense of living under a new dispensation. he was not sure that it was any worse than the other; but then he was no longer very sure about anything. perhaps this growing indifference was merely the reaction from a long nervous strain: that his mother and sister thought it so was shown by the way in which they mutely watched and hovered. their discretion was like the hushed tread about a sick-bed. they permitted themselves no criticism of undine; he was asked no awkward questions, subjected to no ill-timed sympathy. they simply took him back, on his own terms, into the life he had left them to; and their silence had none of those subtle implications of disapproval which may be so much more wounding than speech. for a while he received a weekly letter from undine. vague and disappointing though they were, these missives helped him through the days; but he looked forward to them rather as a pretext for replies than for their actual contents. undine was never at a loss for the spoken word: ralph had often wondered at her verbal range and her fluent use of terms outside the current vocabulary. she had certainly not picked these up in books, since she never opened one: they seemed rather like some odd transmission of her preaching grandparent's oratory. but in her brief and colourless letters she repeated the same bald statements in the same few terms. she was well, she had been "round" with bertha shallum, she had dined with the jim driscolls or may beringer or dicky bowles, the weather was too lovely or too awful; such was the gist of her news. on the last page she hoped paul was well and sent him a kiss; but she never made a suggestion concerning his care or asked a question about his pursuits. one could only infer that, knowing in what good hands he was, she judged such solicitude superfluous; and it was thus that ralph put the matter to his mother. "of course she's not worrying about the boy--why should she? she knows that with you and laura he's as happy as a king." to which mrs. marvell would answer gravely: "when you write, be sure to say i shan't put on his thinner flannels as long as this east wind lasts." as for her husband's welfare. undine's sole allusion to it consisted in the invariable expression of the hope that he was getting along all right: the phrase was always the same, and ralph learned to know just how far down the third page to look for it. in a postscript she sometimes asked him to tell her mother about a new way of doing hair or cutting a skirt; and this was usually the most eloquent passage of the letter. what satisfaction he extracted from these communications he would have found it hard to say; yet when they did not come he missed them hardly less than if they had given him all he craved. sometimes the mere act of holding the blue or mauve sheet and breathing its scent was like holding his wife's hand and being enveloped in her fresh young fragrance: the sentimental disappointment vanished in the penetrating physical sensation. in other moods it was enough to trace the letters of the first line and the last for the desert of perfunctory phrases between the two to vanish, leaving him only the vision of their interlaced names, as of a mystic bond which her own hand had tied. or else he saw her, closely, palpably before him, as she sat at her writing-table, frowning and a little flushed, her bent nape showing the light on her hair, her short lip pulled up by the effort of composition; and this picture had the violent reality of dream-images on the verge of waking. at other times, as he read her letter, he felt simply that at least in the moment of writing it she had been with him. but in one of the last she had said (to excuse a bad blot and an incoherent sentence): "everybody's talking to me at once, and i don't know what i'm writing." that letter he had thrown into the fire.... after the first few weeks, the letters came less and less regularly: at the end of two months they ceased. ralph had got into the habit of watching for them on the days when a foreign post was due, and as the weeks went by without a sign he began to invent excuses for leaving the office earlier and hurrying back to washington square to search the letter-box for a big tinted envelope with a straggling blotted superscription. undine's departure had given him a momentary sense of liberation: at that stage in their relations any change would have brought relief. but now that she was gone he knew she could never really go. though his feeling for her had changed, it still ruled his life. if he saw her in her weakness he felt her in her power: the power of youth and physical radiance that clung to his disenchanted memories as the scent she used clung to her letters. looking back at their four years of marriage he began to ask himself if he had done all he could to draw her half-formed spirit from its sleep. had he not expected too much at first, and grown too indifferent in the sequel? after all, she was still in the toy age; and perhaps the very extravagance of his love had retarded her growth, helped to imprison her in a little circle of frivolous illusions. but the last months had made a man of him, and when she came back he would know how to lift her to the height of his experience. so he would reason, day by day, as he hastened back to washington square; but when he opened the door, and his first glance at the hall table showed him there was no letter there, his illusions shrivelled down to their weak roots. she had not written: she did not mean to write. he and the boy were no longer a part of her life. when she came back everything would be as it had been before, with the dreary difference that she had tasted new pleasures and that their absence would take the savour from all he had to give her. then the coming of another foreign mail would lift his hopes, and as he hurried home he would imagine new reasons for expecting a letter.... week after week he swung between the extremes of hope and dejection, and at last, when the strain had become unbearable, he cabled her. the answer ran: "very well best love writing"; but the promised letter never came.... he went on steadily with his work: he even passed through a phase of exaggerated energy. but his baffled youth fought in him for air. was this to be the end? was he to wear his life out in useless drudgery? the plain prose of it, of course, was that the economic situation remained unchanged by the sentimental catastrophe and that he must go on working for his wife and child. but at any rate, as it was mainly for paul that he would henceforth work, it should be on his own terms and according to his inherited notions of "straightness." he would never again engage in any transaction resembling his compact with moffatt. even now he was not sure there had been anything crooked in that; but the fact of his having instinctively referred the point to mr. spragg rather than to his grandfather implied a presumption against it. his partners were quick to profit by his sudden spurt of energy, and his work grew no lighter. he was not only the youngest and most recent member of the firm, but the one who had so far added least to the volume of its business. his hours were the longest, his absences, as summer approached, the least frequent and the most grudgingly accorded. no doubt his associates knew that he was pressed for money and could not risk a break. they "worked" him, and he was aware of it, and submitted because he dared not lose his job. but the long hours of mechanical drudgery were telling on his active body and undisciplined nerves. he had begun too late to subject himself to the persistent mortification of spirit and flesh which is a condition of the average business life; and after the long dull days in the office the evenings at his grandfather's whist-table did not give him the counter-stimulus he needed. almost every one had gone out of town; but now and then miss ray came to dine, and ralph, seated beneath the family portraits and opposite the desiccated harriet, who had already faded to the semblance of one of her own great-aunts, listened languidly to the kind of talk that the originals might have exchanged about the same table when new york gentility centred in the battery and the bowling green. mr. dagonet was always pleasant to see and hear, but his sarcasms were growing faint and recondite: they had as little bearing on life as the humours of a restoration comedy. as for mrs. marvell and miss ray, they seemed to the young man even more spectrally remote: hardly anything that mattered to him existed for them, and their prejudices reminded him of sign-posts warning off trespassers who have long since ceased to intrude. now and then he dined at his club and went on to the theatre with some young men of his own age; but he left them afterward, half vexed with himself for not being in the humour to prolong the adventure. there were moments when he would have liked to affirm his freedom in however commonplace a way: moments when the vulgarest way would have seemed the most satisfying. but he always ended by walking home alone and tip-toeing upstairs through the sleeping house lest he should wake his boy.... on saturday afternoons, when the business world was hurrying to the country for golf and tennis, he stayed in town and took paul to see the spraggs. several times since his wife's departure he had tried to bring about closer relations between his own family and undine's; and the ladies of washington square, in their eagerness to meet his wishes, had made various friendly advances to mrs. spragg. but they were met by a mute resistance which made ralph suspect that undine's strictures on his family had taken root in her mother's brooding mind; and he gave up the struggle to bring together what had been so effectually put asunder. if he regretted his lack of success it was chiefly because he was so sorry for the spraggs. soon after undine's marriage they had abandoned their polychrome suite at the stentorian, and since then their peregrinations had carried them through half the hotels of the metropolis. undine, who had early discovered her mistake in thinking hotel life fashionable, had tried to persuade her parents to take a house of their own; but though they refrained from taxing her with inconsistency they did not act on her suggestion. mrs. spragg seemed to shrink from the thought of "going back to house-keeping," and ralph suspected that she depended on the transit from hotel to hotel as the one element of variety in her life. as for mr. spragg, it was impossible to imagine any one in whom the domestic sentiments were more completely unlocalized and disconnected from any fixed habits; and he was probably aware of his changes of abode chiefly as they obliged him to ascend from the subway, or descend from the "elevated," a few blocks higher up or lower down. neither husband nor wife complained to ralph of their frequent displacements, or assigned to them any cause save the vague one of "guessing they could do better"; but ralph noticed that the decreasing luxury of their life synchronized with undine's growing demands for money. during the last few months they had transferred themselves to the "malibran," a tall narrow structure resembling a grain-elevator divided into cells, where linoleum and lincrusta simulated the stucco and marble of the stentorian, and fagged business men and their families consumed the watery stews dispensed by "coloured help" in the grey twilight of a basement dining-room. mrs. spragg had no sitting-room, and paul and his father had to be received in one of the long public parlours, between ladies seated at rickety desks in the throes of correspondence and groups of listlessly conversing residents and callers. the spraggs were intensely proud of their grandson, and ralph perceived that they would have liked to see paul charging uproariously from group to group, and thrusting his bright curls and cherubic smile upon the general attention. the fact that the boy preferred to stand between his grandfather's knees and play with mr. spragg's masonic emblem, or dangle his legs from the arm of mrs. spragg's chair, seemed to his grandparents evidence of ill-health or undue repression, and he was subjected by mrs. spragg to searching enquiries as to how his food set, and whether he didn't think his popper was too strict with him. a more embarrassing problem was raised by the "surprise" (in the shape of peanut candy or chocolate creams) which he was invited to hunt for in gran'ma's pockets, and which ralph had to confiscate on the way home lest the dietary rules of washington square should be too visibly infringed. sometimes ralph found mrs. heeny, ruddy and jovial, seated in the arm-chair opposite mrs. spragg, and regaling her with selections from a new batch of clippings. during undine's illness of the previous winter mrs. heeny had become a familiar figure to paul, who had learned to expect almost as much from her bag as from his grandmother's pockets; so that the intemperate saturdays at the malibran were usually followed by languid and abstemious sundays in washington square. mrs. heeny, being unaware of this sequel to her bounties, formed the habit of appearing regularly on saturdays, and while she chatted with his grandmother the little boy was encouraged to scatter the grimy carpet with face-creams and bunches of clippings in his thrilling quest for the sweets at the bottom of her bag. "i declare, if he ain't in just as much of a hurry f'r everything as his mother!" she exclaimed one day in her rich rolling voice; and stooping to pick up a long strip of newspaper which paul had flung aside she added, as she smoothed it out: "i guess 'f he was a little mite older he'd be better pleased with this 'n with the candy. it's the very thing i was trying to find for you the other day, mrs. spragg," she went on, holding the bit of paper at arm's length; and she began to read out, with a loudness proportioned to the distance between her eyes and the text: "with two such sprinters as 'pete' van degen and dicky bowles to set the pace, it's no wonder the new york set in paris has struck a livelier gait than ever this spring. it's a high-pressure season and no mistake, and no one lags behind less than the fascinating mrs. ralph marvell, who is to be seen daily and nightly in all the smartest restaurants and naughtiest theatres, with so many devoted swains in attendance that the rival beauties of both worlds are said to be making catty comments. but then mrs. marvell's gowns are almost as good as her looks--and how can you expect the other women to stand for such a monopoly?" to escape the strain of these visits, ralph once or twice tried the experiment of leaving paul with his grand-parents and calling for him in the late afternoon; but one day, on re-entering the malibran, he was met by a small abashed figure clad in a kaleidoscopic tartan and a green velvet cap with a silver thistle. after this experience of the "surprises" of which gran'ma was capable when she had a chance to take paul shopping ralph did not again venture to leave his son, and their subsequent saturdays were passed together in the sultry gloom of the malibran. conversation with the spraggs was almost impossible. ralph could talk with his father-in-law in his office, but in the hotel parlour mr. spragg sat in a ruminating silence broken only by the emission of an occasional "well--well" addressed to his grandson. as for mrs. spragg, her son-in-law could not remember having had a sustained conversation with her since the distant day when he had first called at the stentorian, and had been "entertained," in undine's absence, by her astonished mother. the shock of that encounter had moved mrs. spragg to eloquence; but ralph's entrance into the family, without making him seem less of a stranger, appeared once for all to have relieved her of the obligation of finding something to say to him. the one question she invariably asked: "you heard from undie?" had been relatively easy to answer while his wife's infrequent letters continued to arrive; but a saturday came when he felt the blood rise to his temples as, for the fourth consecutive week, he stammered out, under the snapping eyes of mrs. heeny: "no, not by this post either--i begin to think i must have lost a letter"; and it was then that mr. spragg, who had sat silently looking up at the ceiling, cut short his wife's exclamation by an enquiry about real estate in the bronx. after that, ralph noticed, mrs. spragg never again renewed her question; and he understood that his father-in-law had guessed his embarrassment and wished to spare it. ralph had never thought of looking for any delicacy of feeling under mr. spragg's large lazy irony, and the incident drew the two men nearer together. mrs. spragg, for her part, was certainly not delicate; but she was simple and without malice, and ralph liked her for her silent acceptance of her diminished state. sometimes, as he sat between the lonely primitive old couple, he wondered from what source undine's voracious ambitions had been drawn: all she cared for, and attached importance to, was as remote from her parents' conception of life as her impatient greed from their passive stoicism. one hot afternoon toward the end of june ralph suddenly wondered if clare van degen were still in town. she had dined in washington square some ten days earlier, and he remembered her saying that she had sent the children down to long island, but that she herself meant to stay on in town till the heat grew unbearable. she hated her big showy place on long island, she was tired of the spring trip to london and paris, where one met at every turn the faces one had grown sick of seeing all winter, and she declared that in the early summer new york was the only place in which one could escape from new yorkers... she put the case amusingly, and it was like her to take up any attitude that went against the habits of her set; but she lived at the mercy of her moods, and one could never tell how long any one of them would rule her. as he sat in his office, with the noise and glare of the endless afternoon rising up in hot waves from the street, there wandered into ralph's mind a vision of her shady drawing-room. all day it hung before him like the mirage of a spring before a dusty traveller: he felt a positive thirst for her presence, for the sound of her voice, the wide spaces and luxurious silences surrounding her. it was perhaps because, on that particular day, a spiral pain was twisting around in the back of his head, and digging in a little deeper with each twist, and because the figures on the balance sheet before him were hopping about like black imps in an infernal forward-and-back, that the picture hung there so persistently. it was a long time since he had wanted anything as much as, at that particular moment, he wanted to be with clare and hear her voice; and as soon as he had ground out the day's measure of work he rang up the van degen palace and learned that she was still in town. the lowered awnings of her inner drawing-room cast a luminous shadow on old cabinets and consoles, and on the pale flowers scattered here and there in vases of bronze and porcelain. clare's taste was as capricious as her moods, and the rest of the house was not in harmony with this room. there was, in particular, another drawing-room, which she now described as peter's creation, but which ralph knew to be partly hers: a heavily decorated apartment, where popple's portrait of her throned over a waste of gilt furniture. it was characteristic that to-day she had had ralph shown in by another way; and that, as she had spared him the polyphonic drawing-room, so she had skilfully adapted her own appearance to her soberer background. she sat near the window, reading, in a clear cool dress: and at his entrance she merely slipped a finger between the pages and looked up at him. her way of receiving him made him feel that restlessness and stridency were as unlike her genuine self as the gilded drawing-room, and that this quiet creature was the only real clare, the clare who had once been so nearly his, and who seemed to want him to know that she had never wholly been any one else's. "why didn't you let me know you were still in town?" he asked, as he sat down in the sofa-corner near her chair. her dark smile deepened. "i hoped you'd come and see." "one never knows, with you." he was looking about the room with a kind of confused pleasure in its pale shadows and spots of dark rich colour. the old lacquer screen behind clare's head looked like a lustreless black pool with gold leaves floating on it; and another piece, a little table at her elbow, had the brown bloom and the pear-like curves of an old violin. "i like to be here," ralph said. she did not make the mistake of asking: "then why do you never come?" instead, she turned away and drew an inner curtain across the window to shut out the sunlight which was beginning to slant in under the awning. the mere fact of her not answering, and the final touch of well-being which her gesture gave, reminded him of other summer days they had spent together long rambling boy-and-girl days in the hot woods and fields, when they had never thought of talking to each other unless there was something they particularly wanted to say. his tired fancy strayed off for a second to the thought of what it would have been like come back, at the end of the day, to such a sweet community of silence; but his mind was too crowded with importunate facts for any lasting view of visionary distances. the thought faded, and he merely felt how restful it was to have her near... "i'm glad you stayed in town: you must let me come again," he said. "i suppose you can't always get away," she answered; and she began to listen, with grave intelligent eyes, to his description of his tedious days. with her eyes on him he felt the exquisite relief of talking about himself as he had not dared to talk to any one since his marriage. he would not for the world have confessed his discouragement, his consciousness of incapacity; to undine and in washington square any hint of failure would have been taken as a criticism of what his wife demanded of him. only to clare van degen could he cry out his present despondency and his loathing of the interminable task ahead. "a man doesn't know till he tries it how killing uncongenial work is, and how it destroys the power of doing what one's fit for, even if there's time for both. but there's paul to be looked out for, and i daren't chuck my job--i'm in mortal terror of its chucking me..." little by little he slipped into a detailed recital of all his lesser worries, the most recent of which was his experience with the lipscombs, who, after a two months' tenancy of the west end avenue house, had decamped without paying their rent. clare laughed contemptuously. "yes--i heard he'd come to grief and been suspended from the stock exchange, and i see in the papers that his wife's retort has been to sue for a divorce." ralph knew that, like all their clan, his cousin regarded a divorce-suit as a vulgar and unnecessary way of taking the public into one's confidence. his mind flashed back to the family feast in washington square in celebration of his engagement. he recalled his grandfather's chance allusion to mrs. lipscomb, and undine's answer, fluted out on her highest note: "oh, i guess she'll get a divorce pretty soon. he's been a disappointment to her." ralph could still hear the horrified murmur with which his mother had rebuked his laugh. for he had laughed--had thought undine's speech fresh and natural! now he felt the ironic rebound of her words. heaven knew he had been a disappointment to her; and what was there in her own feeling, or in her inherited prejudices, to prevent her seeking the same redress as mabel lipscomb? he wondered if the same thought were in his cousin's mind... they began to talk of other things: books, pictures, plays; and one by one the closed doors opened and light was let into dusty shuttered places. clare's mind was neither keen nor deep: ralph, in the past, had smiled at her rash ardours and vague intensities. but she had his own range of allusions, and a great gift of momentary understanding; and he had so long beaten his thoughts out against a blank wall of incomprehension that her sympathy seemed full of insight. she began by a question about his writing, but the subject was distasteful to him, and he turned the talk to a new book in which he had been interested. she knew enough of it to slip in the right word here and there; and thence they wandered on to kindred topics. under the warmth of her attention his torpid ideas awoke again, and his eyes took their fill of pleasure as she leaned forward, her thin brown hands clasped on her knees and her eager face reflecting all his feelings. there was a moment when the two currents of sensation were merged in one, and he began to feel confusedly that he was young and she was kind, and that there was nothing he would like better than to go on sitting there, not much caring what she said or how he answered, if only she would let him look at her and give him one of her thin brown hands to hold. then the corkscrew in the back of his head dug into him again with a deeper thrust, and she seemed suddenly to recede to a great distance and be divided from him by a fog of pain. the fog lifted after a minute, but it left him queerly remote from her, from the cool room with its scents and shadows, and from all the objects which, a moment before, had so sharply impinged upon his senses. it was as though he looked at it all through a rain-blurred pane, against which his hand would strike if he held it out to her... that impression passed also, and he found himself thinking how tired he was and how little anything mattered. he recalled the unfinished piece of work on his desk, and for a moment had the odd illusion that it was there before him... she exclaimed: "but are you going?" and her exclamation made him aware that he had left his seat and was standing in front of her... he fancied there was some kind of appeal in her brown eyes; but she was so dim and far off that he couldn't be sure of what she wanted, and the next moment he found himself shaking hands with her, and heard her saying something kind and cold about its having been so nice to see him... half way up the stairs little paul, shining and rosy from supper, lurked in ambush for his evening game. ralph was fond of stooping down to let the boy climb up his outstretched arms to his shoulders, but to-day, as he did so, paul's hug seemed to crush him in a vice, and the shout of welcome that accompanied it racked his ears like an explosion of steam-whistles. the queer distance between himself and the rest of the world was annihilated again: everything stared and glared and clutched him. he tried to turn away his face from the child's hot kisses; and as he did so he caught sight of a mauve envelope among the hats and sticks on the hall table. instantly he passed paul over to his nurse, stammered out a word about being tired, and sprang up the long flights to his study. the pain in his head had stopped, but his hands trembled as he tore open the envelope. within it was a second letter bearing a french stamp and addressed to himself. it looked like a business communication and had apparently been sent to undine's hotel in paris and forwarded to him by her hand. "another bill!" he reflected grimly, as he threw it aside and felt in the outer envelope for her letter. there was nothing there, and after a first sharp pang of disappointment he picked up the enclosure and opened it. inside was a lithographed circular, headed "confidential" and bearing the paris address of a firm of private detectives who undertook, in conditions of attested and inviolable discretion, to investigate "delicate" situations, look up doubtful antecedents, and furnish reliable evidence of misconduct--all on the most reasonable terms. for a long time ralph sat and stared at this document; then he began to laugh and tossed it into the scrap-basket. after that, with a groan, he dropped his head against the edge of his writing table. xxii when he woke, the first thing he remembered was the fact of having cried. he could not think how he had come to be such a fool. he hoped to heaven no one had seen him. he supposed he must have been worrying about the unfinished piece of work at the office: where was it, by the way, he wondered? why--where he had left it the day before, of course! what a ridiculous thing to worry about--but it seemed to follow him about like a dog... he said to himself that he must get up presently and go down to the office. presently--when he could open his eyes. just now there was a dead weight on them; he tried one after another in vain. the effort set him weakly trembling, and he wanted to cry again. nonsense! he must get out of bed. he stretched his arms out, trying to reach something to pull himself up by; but everything slipped away and evaded him. it was like trying to catch at bright short waves. then suddenly his fingers clasped themselves about something firm and warm. a hand: a hand that gave back his pressure! the relief was inexpressible. he lay still and let the hand hold him, while mentally he went through the motions of getting up and beginning to dress. so indistinct were the boundaries between thought and action that he really felt himself moving about the room, in a queer disembodied way, as one treads the air in sleep. then he felt the bedclothes over him and the pillows under his head. "i must get up," he said, and pulled at the hand. it pressed him down again: down into a dim deep pool of sleep. he lay there for a long time, in a silent blackness far below light and sound; then he gradually floated to the surface with the buoyancy of a dead body. but his body had never been more alive. jagged strokes of pain tore through it, hands dragged at it with nails that bit like teeth. they wound thongs about him, bound him, tied weights to him, tried to pull him down with them; but still he floated, floated, danced on the fiery waves of pain, with barbed light pouring down on him from an arrowy sky. charmed intervals of rest, blue sailings on melodious seas, alternated with the anguish. he became a leaf on the air, a feather on a current, a straw on the tide, the spray of the wave spinning itself to sunshine as the wave toppled over into gulfs of blue... he woke on a stony beach, his legs and arms still lashed to his sides and the thongs cutting into him; but the fierce sky was hidden, and hidden by his own languid lids. he felt the ecstasy of decreasing pain, and courage came to him to open his eyes and look about him... the beach was his own bed; the tempered light lay on familiar things, and some one was moving about in a shadowy way between bed and window. he was thirsty and some one gave him a drink. his pillow burned, and some one turned the cool side out. his brain was clear enough now for him to understand that he was ill, and to want to talk about it; but his tongue hung in his throat like a clapper in a bell. he must wait till the rope was pulled... so time and life stole back on him, and his thoughts laboured weakly with dim fears. slowly he cleared a way through them, adjusted himself to his strange state, and found out that he was in his own room, in his grandfather's house, that alternating with the white-capped faces about him were those of his mother and sister, and that in a few days--if he took his beef-tea and didn't fret--paul would be brought up from long island, whither, on account of the great heat, he had been carried off by clare van degen. no one named undine to him, and he did not speak of her. but one day, as he lay in bed in the summer twilight, he had a vision of a moment, a long way behind him--at the beginning of his illness, it must have been--when he had called out for her in his anguish, and some one had said: "she's coming: she'll be here next week." could it be that next week was not yet here? he supposed that illness robbed one of all sense of time, and he lay still, as if in ambush, watching his scattered memories come out one by one and join themselves together. if he watched long enough he was sure he should recognize one that fitted into his picture of the day when he had asked for undine. and at length a face came out of the twilight: a freckled face, benevolently bent over him under a starched cap. he had not seen the face for a long time, but suddenly it took shape and fitted itself into the picture... laura fairford sat near by, a book on her knee. at the sound of his voice she looked up. "what was the name of the first nurse?" "the first--?" "the one that went away." "oh--miss hicks, you mean?" "how long is it since she went?" "it must be three weeks. she had another case." he thought this over carefully; then he spoke again. "call undine." she made no answer, and he repeated irritably: "why don't you call her? i want to speak to her." mrs. fairford laid down her book and came to him. "she's not here--just now." he dealt with this also, laboriously. "you mean she's out--she's not in the house?" "i mean she hasn't come yet." as she spoke ralph felt a sudden strength and hardness in his brain and body. everything in him became as clear as noon. "but it was before miss hicks left that you told me you'd sent for her, and that she'd be here the following week. and you say miss hicks has been gone three weeks." this was what he had worked out in his head, and what he meant to say to his sister; but something seemed to snap shut in his throat, and he closed his eyes without speaking. even when mr. spragg came to see him he said nothing. they talked about his illness, about the hot weather, about the rumours that harmon b. driscoll was again threatened with indictment; and then mr. spragg pulled himself out of his chair and said: "i presume you'll call round at the office before you leave the city." "oh, yes: as soon as i'm up," ralph answered. they understood each other. clare had urged him to come down to long island and complete his convalescence there, but he preferred to stay in washington square till he should be strong enough for the journey to the adirondacks, whither laura had already preceded him with paul. he did not want to see any one but his mother and grandfather till his legs could carry him to mr. spragg's office. it was an oppressive day in mid-august, with a yellow mist of heat in the sky, when at last he entered the big office-building. swirls of dust lay on the mosaic floor, and a stale smell of decayed fruit and salt air and steaming asphalt filled the place like a fog. as he shot up in the elevator some one slapped him on the back, and turning he saw elmer moffatt at his side, smooth and rubicund under a new straw hat. moffatt was loudly glad to see him. "i haven't laid eyes on you for months. at the old stand still?" "so am i," he added, as ralph assented. "hope to see you there again some day. don't forget it's my turn this time: glad if i can be any use to you. so long." ralph's weak bones ached under his handshake. "how's mrs. marvell?" he turned back from his landing to call out; and ralph answered: "thanks; she's very well." mr. spragg sat alone in his murky inner office, the fly-blown engraving of daniel webster above his head and the congested scrap-basket beneath his feet. he looked fagged and sallow, like the day. ralph sat down on the other side of the desk. for a moment his throat contracted as it had when he had tried to question his sister; then he asked: "where's undine?" mr. spragg glanced at the calendar that hung from a hat-peg on the door. then he released the masonic emblem from his grasp, drew out his watch and consulted it critically. "if the train's on time i presume she's somewhere between chicago and omaha round about now." ralph stared at him, wondering if the heat had gone to his head. "i don't understand." "the twentieth century's generally considered the best route to dakota," explained mr. spragg, who pronounced the word rowt. "do you mean to say undine's in the united states?" mr. spragg's lower lip groped for the phantom tooth-pick. "why, let me see: hasn't dakota been a state a year or two now?" "oh, god--" ralph cried, pushing his chair back violently and striding across the narrow room. as he turned, mr. spragg stood up and advanced a few steps. he had given up the quest for the tooth-pick, and his drawn-in lips were no more than a narrow depression in his beard. he stood before ralph, absently shaking the loose change in his trouser-pockets. ralph felt the same hardness and lucidity that had come to him when he had heard his sister's answer. "she's gone, you mean? left me? with another man?" mr. spragg drew himself up with a kind of slouching majesty. "my daughter is not that style. i understand undine thinks there have been mistakes on both sides. she considers the tie was formed too hastily. i believe desertion is the usual plea in such cases." ralph stared about him, hardly listening. he did not resent his father-in-law's tone. in a dim way he guessed that mr. spragg was suffering hardly less than himself. but nothing was clear to him save the monstrous fact suddenly upheaved in his path. his wife had left him, and the plan for her evasion had been made and executed while he lay helpless: she had seized the opportunity of his illness to keep him in ignorance of her design. the humour of it suddenly struck him and he laughed. "do you mean to tell me that undine's divorcing me?" "i presume that's her plan," mr. spragg admitted. "for desertion?" ralph pursued, still laughing. his father-in-law hesitated a moment; then he answered: "you've always done all you could for my daughter. there wasn't any other plea she could think of. she presumed this would be the most agreeable to your family." "it was good of her to think of that!" mr. spragg's only comment was a sigh. "does she imagine i won't fight it?" ralph broke out with sudden passion. his father-in-law looked at him thoughtfully. "i presume you realize it ain't easy to change undine, once she's set on a thing." "perhaps not. but if she really means to apply for a divorce i can make it a little less easy for her to get." "that's so," mr. spragg conceded. he turned back to his revolving chair, and seating himself in it began to drum on the desk with cigar-stained fingers. "and by god, i will!" ralph thundered. anger was the only emotion in him now. he had been fooled, cheated, made a mock of; but the score was not settled yet. he turned back and stood before mr. spragg. "i suppose she's gone with van degen?" "my daughter's gone alone, sir. i saw her off at the station. i understood she was to join a lady friend." at every point ralph felt his hold slip off the surface of his father-in-law's impervious fatalism. "does she suppose van degen's going to marry her?" "undine didn't mention her future plans to me." after a moment mr. spragg appended: "if she had, i should have declined to discuss them with her." ralph looked at him curiously, perceiving that he intended in this negative way to imply his disapproval of his daughter's course. "i shall fight it--i shall fight it!" the young man cried again. "you may tell her i shall fight it to the end!" mr. spragg pressed the nib of his pen against the dust-coated inkstand. "i suppose you would have to engage a lawyer. she'll know it that way," he remarked. "she'll know it--you may count on that!" ralph had begun to laugh again. suddenly he heard his own laugh and it pulled him up. what was he laughing about? what was he talking about? the thing was to act--to hold his tongue and act. there was no use uttering windy threats to this broken-spirited old man. a fury of action burned in ralph, pouring light into his mind and strength into his muscles. he caught up his hat and turned to the door. as he opened it mr. spragg rose again and came forward with his slow shambling step. he laid his hand on ralph's arm. "i'd 'a' given anything--anything short of my girl herself--not to have this happen to you, ralph marvell." "thank you, sir," said ralph. they looked at each other for a moment; then mr. spragg added: "but it has happened, you know. bear that in mind. nothing you can do will change it. time and again, i've found that a good thing to remember." xxiii in the adirondacks ralph marvell sat day after day on the balcony of his little house above the lake, staring at the great white cloud-reflections in the water and at the dark line of trees that closed them in. now and then he got into the canoe and paddled himself through a winding chain of ponds to some lonely clearing in the forest; and there he lay on his back in the pine-needles and watched the great clouds form and dissolve themselves above his head. all his past life seemed to be symbolized by the building-up and breaking-down of those fluctuating shapes, which incalculable wind-currents perpetually shifted and remodelled or swept from the zenith like a pinch of dust. his sister told him that he looked well--better than he had in years; and there were moments when his listlessness, his stony insensibility to the small pricks and frictions of daily life, might have passed for the serenity of recovered health. there was no one with whom he could speak of undine. his family had thrown over the whole subject a pall of silence which even laura fairford shrank from raising. as for his mother, ralph had seen at once that the idea of talking over the situation was positively frightening to her. there was no provision for such emergencies in the moral order of washington square. the affair was a "scandal," and it was not in the dagonet tradition to acknowledge the existence of scandals. ralph recalled a dim memory of his childhood, the tale of a misguided friend of his mother's who had left her husband for a more congenial companion, and who, years later, returning ill and friendless to new york, had appealed for sympathy to mrs. marvell. the latter had not refused to give it; but she had put on her black cashmere and two veils when she went to see her unhappy friend, and had never mentioned these errands of mercy to her husband. ralph suspected that the constraint shown by his mother and sister was partly due to their having but a dim and confused view of what had happened. in their vocabulary the word "divorce" was wrapped in such a dark veil of innuendo as no ladylike hand would care to lift. they had not reached the point of differentiating divorces, but classed them indistinctively as disgraceful incidents, in which the woman was always to blame, but the man, though her innocent victim, was yet inevitably contaminated. the time involved in the "proceedings" was viewed as a penitential season during which it behoved the family of the persons concerned to behave as if they were dead; yet any open allusion to the reason for adopting such an attitude would have been regarded as the height of indelicacy. mr. dagonet's notion of the case was almost as remote from reality. all he asked was that his grandson should "thrash" somebody, and he could not be made to understand that the modern drama of divorce is sometimes cast without a lovelace. "you might as well tell me there was nobody but adam in the garden when eve picked the apple. you say your wife was discontented? no woman ever knows she's discontented till some man tells her so. my god! i've seen smash-ups before now; but i never yet saw a marriage dissolved like a business partnership. divorce without a lover? why, it's--it's as unnatural as getting drunk on lemonade." after this first explosion mr. dagonet also became silent; and ralph perceived that what annoyed him most was the fact of the "scandal's" not being one in any gentlemanly sense of the word. it was like some nasty business mess, about which mr. dagonet couldn't pretend to have an opinion, since such things didn't happen to men of his kind. that such a thing should have happened to his only grandson was probably the bitterest experience of his pleasantly uneventful life; and it added a touch of irony to ralph's unhappiness to know how little, in the whole affair, he was cutting the figure mr. dagonet expected him to cut. at first he had chafed under the taciturnity surrounding him: had passionately longed to cry out his humiliation, his rebellion, his despair. then he began to feel the tonic effect of silence; and the next stage was reached when it became clear to him that there was nothing to say. there were thoughts and thoughts: they bubbled up perpetually from the black springs of his hidden misery, they stole on him in the darkness of night, they blotted out the light of day; but when it came to putting them into words and applying them to the external facts of the case, they seemed totally unrelated to it. one more white and sun-touched glory had gone from his sky; but there seemed no way of connecting that with such practical issues as his being called on to decide whether paul was to be put in knickerbockers or trousers, and whether he should go back to washington square for the winter or hire a small house for himself and his son. the latter question was ultimately decided by his remaining under his grandfather's roof. november found him back in the office again, in fairly good health, with an outer skin of indifference slowly forming over his lacerated soul. there had been a hard minute to live through when he came back to his old brown room in washington square. the walls and tables were covered with photographs of undine: effigies of all shapes and sizes, expressing every possible sentiment dear to the photographic tradition. ralph had gathered them all up when he had moved from west end avenue after undine's departure for europe, and they throned over his other possessions as her image had throned over his future the night he had sat in that very room and dreamed of soaring up with her into the blue... it was impossible to go on living with her photographs about him; and one evening, going up to his room after dinner, he began to unhang them from the walls, and to gather them up from book-shelves and mantel-piece and tables. then he looked about for some place in which to hide them. there were drawers under his book-cases; but they were full of old discarded things, and even if he emptied the drawers, the photographs, in their heavy frames, were almost all too large to fit into them. he turned next to the top shelf of his cupboard; but here the nurse had stored paul's old toys, his sand-pails, shovels and croquet-box. every corner was packed with the vain impedimenta of living, and the mere thought of clearing a space in the chaos was too great an effort. he began to replace the pictures one by one; and the last was still in his hand when he heard his sister's voice outside. he hurriedly put the portrait back in its usual place on his writing-table, and mrs. fairford, who had been dining in washington square, and had come up to bid him good night, flung her arms about him in a quick embrace and went down to her carriage. the next afternoon, when he came home from the office, he did not at first see any change in his room; but when he had lit his pipe and thrown himself into his arm-chair he noticed that the photograph of his wife's picture by popple no longer faced him from the mantel-piece. he turned to his writing-table, but her image had vanished from there too; then his eye, making the circuit of the walls, perceived that they also had been stripped. not a single photograph of undine was left; yet so adroitly had the work of elimination been done, so ingeniously the remaining objects readjusted, that the change attracted no attention. ralph was angry, sore, ashamed. he felt as if laura, whose hand he instantly detected, had taken a cruel pleasure in her work, and for an instant he hated her for it. then a sense of relief stole over him. he was glad he could look about him without meeting undine's eyes, and he understood that what had been done to his room he must do to his memory and his imagination: he must so readjust his mind that, whichever way he turned his thoughts, her face should no longer confront him. but that was a task that laura could not perform for him, a task to be accomplished only by the hard continuous tension of his will. with the setting in of the mood of silence all desire to fight his wife's suit died out. the idea of touching publicly on anything that had passed between himself and undine had become unthinkable. insensibly he had been subdued to the point of view about him, and the idea of calling on the law to repair his shattered happiness struck him as even more grotesque than it was degrading. nevertheless, some contradictory impulse of his divided spirit made him resent, on the part of his mother and sister, a too-ready acceptance of his attitude. there were moments when their tacit assumption that his wife was banished and forgotten irritated him like the hushed tread of sympathizers about the bed of an invalid who will not admit that he suffers. his irritation was aggravated by the discovery that mrs. marvell and laura had already begun to treat paul as if he were an orphan. one day, coming unnoticed into the nursery, ralph heard the boy ask when his mother was coming back; and mrs. fairford, who was with him, answered: "she's not coming back, dearest; and you're not to speak of her to father." ralph, when the boy was out of hearing, rebuked his sister for her answer. "i don't want you to talk of his mother as if she were dead. i don't want you to forbid paul to speak of her." laura, though usually so yielding, defended herself. "what's the use of encouraging him to speak of her when he's never to see her? the sooner he forgets her the better." ralph pondered. "later--if she asks to see him--i shan't refuse." mrs. fairford pressed her lips together to check the answer: "she never will!" ralph heard it, nevertheless, and let it pass. nothing gave him so profound a sense of estrangement from his former life as the conviction that his sister was probably right. he did not really believe that undine would ever ask to see her boy; but if she did he was determined not to refuse her request. time wore on, the christmas holidays came and went, and the winter continued to grind out the weary measure of its days. toward the end of january ralph received a registered letter, addressed to him at his office, and bearing in the corner of the envelope the names of a firm of sioux falls attorneys. he instantly divined that it contained the legal notification of his wife's application for divorce, and as he wrote his name in the postman's book he smiled grimly at the thought that the stroke of his pen was doubtless signing her release. he opened the letter, found it to be what he had expected, and locked it away in his desk without mentioning the matter to any one. he supposed that with the putting away of this document he was thrusting the whole subject out of sight; but not more than a fortnight later, as he sat in the subway on his way down-town, his eye was caught by his own name on the first page of the heavily head-lined paper which the unshaved occupant of the next seat held between grimy fists. the blood rushed to ralph's forehead as he looked over the man's arm and read: "society leader gets decree," and beneath it the subordinate clause: "says husband too absorbed in business to make home happy." for weeks afterward, wherever he went, he felt that blush upon his forehead. for the first time in his life the coarse fingering of public curiosity had touched the secret places of his soul, and nothing that had gone before seemed as humiliating as this trivial comment on his tragedy. the paragraph continued on its way through the press, and whenever he took up a newspaper he seemed to come upon it, slightly modified, variously developed, but always reverting with a kind of unctuous irony to his financial preoccupations and his wife's consequent loneliness. the phrase was even taken up by the paragraph writer, called forth excited letters from similarly situated victims, was commented on in humorous editorials and served as a text for pulpit denunciations of the growing craze for wealth; and finally, at his dentist's, ralph came across it in a family weekly, as one of the "heart problems" propounded to subscribers, with a gramophone, a straight-front corset and a vanity-box among the prizes offered for its solution. xxiv "if you'd only had the sense to come straight to me, undine spragg! there isn't a tip i couldn't have given you--not one!" this speech, in which a faintly contemptuous compassion for her friend's case was blent with the frankest pride in her own, probably represented the nearest approach to "tact" that mrs. james j. rolliver had yet acquired. undine was impartial enough to note in it a distinct advance on the youthful methods of indiana frusk; yet it required a good deal of self-control to take the words to herself with a smile, while they seemed to be laying a visible scarlet welt across the pale face she kept valiantly turned to her friend. the fact that she must permit herself to be pitied by indiana frusk gave her the uttermost measure of the depth to which her fortunes had fallen. this abasement was inflicted on her in the staring gold apartment of the hotel nouveau luxe in which the rollivers had established themselves on their recent arrival in paris. the vast drawing-room, adorned only by two high-shouldered gilt baskets of orchids drooping on their wires, reminded undine of the "looey suite" in which the opening scenes of her own history had been enacted; and the resemblance and the difference were emphasized by the fact that the image of her past self was not inaccurately repeated in the triumphant presence of indiana rolliver. "there isn't a tip i couldn't have given you--not one!" mrs. rolliver reproachfully repeated; and all undine's superiorities and discriminations seemed to shrivel up in the crude blaze of the other's solid achievement. there was little comfort in noting, for one's private delectation, that indiana spoke of her husband as "mr. rolliver," that she twanged a piercing r, that one of her shoulders was still higher than the other, and that her striking dress was totally unsuited to the hour, the place and the occasion. she still did and was all that undine had so sedulously learned not to be and to do; but to dwell on these obstacles to her success was but to be more deeply impressed by the fact that she had nevertheless succeeded. not much more than a year had elapsed since undine marvell, sitting in the drawing-room of another parisian hotel, had heard the immense orchestral murmur of paris rise through the open windows like the ascending movement of her own hopes. the immense murmur still sounded on, deafening and implacable as some elemental force; and the discord in her fate no more disturbed it than the motor wheels rolling by under the windows were disturbed by the particles of dust that they ground to finer powder as they passed. "i could have told you one thing right off," mrs. rolliver went on with her ringing energy. "and that is, to get your divorce first thing. a divorce is always a good thing to have: you never can tell when you may want it. you ought to have attended to that before you even began with peter van degen." undine listened, irresistibly impressed. "did you?" she asked; but mrs. rolliver, at this, grew suddenly veiled and sibylline. she wound her big bejewelled hand through her pearls--there were ropes and ropes of them--and leaned back, modestly sinking her lids. "i'm here, anyhow," she rejoined, with "circumspice!" in look and tone. undine, obedient to the challenge, continued to gaze at the pearls. they were real; there was no doubt about that. and so was indiana's marriage--if she kept out of certain states. "don't you see," mrs. rolliver continued, "that having to leave him when you did, and rush off to dakota for six months, was--was giving him too much time to think; and giving it at the wrong time, too?" "oh, i see. but what could i do? i'm not an immoral woman." "of course not, dearest. you were merely thoughtless that's what i meant by saying you ought to have had your divorce ready." a flicker of self-esteem caused undine to protest. "it wouldn't have made any difference. his wife would never have given him up." "she's so crazy about him?" "no: she hates him so. and she hates me too, because she's in love with my husband." indiana bounced out of her lounging attitude and struck her hands together with a rattle of rings. "in love with your husband? what's the matter, then? why on earth didn't the four of you fix it up together?" "you don't understand." (it was an undoubted relief to be able, at last, to say that to indiana!) "clare van degen thinks divorce wrong--or rather awfully vulgar." "vulgar?" indiana flamed. "if that isn't just too much! a woman who's in love with another woman's husband? what does she think refined, i'd like to know? having a lover, i suppose--like the women in these nasty french plays? i've told mr. rolliver i won't go to the theatre with him again in paris--it's too utterly low. and the swell society's just as bad: it's simply rotten. thank goodness i was brought up in a place where there's some sense of decency left!" she looked compassionately at undine. "it was new york that demoralized you--and i don't blame you for it. out at apex you'd have acted different. you never never would have given way to your feelings before you'd got your divorce." a slow blush rose to undine's forehead. "he seemed so unhappy--" she murmured. "oh, i know!" said indiana in a tone of cold competence. she gave undine an impatient glance. "what was the understanding between you, when you left europe last august to go out to dakota?" "peter was to go to reno in the autumn--so that it wouldn't look too much as if we were acting together. i was to come to chicago to see him on his way out there." "and he never came?" "no." "and he stopped writing?" "oh, he never writes." indiana heaved a deep sigh of intelligence. "there's one perfectly clear rule: never let out of your sight a man who doesn't write." "i know. that's why i stayed with him--those few weeks last summer...." indiana sat thinking, her fine shallow eyes fixed unblinkingly on her friend's embarrassed face. "i suppose there isn't anybody else--?" "anybody--?" "well--now you've got your divorce: anybody else it would come in handy for?" this was harder to bear than anything that had gone before: undine could not have borne it if she had not had a purpose. "mr. van degen owes it to me--" she began with an air of wounded dignity. "yes, yes: i know. but that's just talk. if there is anybody else--" "i can't imagine what you think of me, indiana!" indiana, without appearing to resent this challenge, again lost herself in meditation. "well, i'll tell him he's just got to see you," she finally emerged from it to say. undine gave a quick upward look: this was what she had been waiting for ever since she had read, a few days earlier, in the columns of her morning journal, that mr. peter van degen and mr. and mrs. james j. rolliver had been fellow-passengers on board the semantic. but she did not betray her expectations by as much as the tremor of an eye-lash. she knew her friend well enough to pour out to her the expected tribute of surprise. "why, do you mean to say you know him, indiana?" "mercy, yes! he's round here all the time. he crossed on the steamer with us, and mr. rolliver's taken a fancy to him," indiana explained, in the tone of the absorbed bride to whom her husband's preferences are the sole criterion. undine turned a tear-suffused gaze on her. "oh, indiana, if i could only see him again i know it would be all right! he's awfully, awfully fond of me; but his family have influenced him against me--" "i know what that is!" mrs. rolliver interjected. "but perhaps," undine continued, "it would be better if i could meet him first without his knowing beforehand--without your telling him ... i love him too much to reproach him!" she added nobly. indiana pondered: it was clear that, though the nobility of the sentiment impressed her, she was disinclined to renounce the idea of taking a more active part in her friend's rehabilitation. but undine went on: "of course you've found out by this time that he's just a big spoiled baby. afterward--when i've seen him--if you'd talk to him; or it you'd only just let him be with you, and see how perfectly happy you and mr. rolliver are!" indiana seized on this at once. "you mean that what he wants is the influence of a home like ours? yes, yes, i understand. i tell you what i'll do: i'll just ask him round to dine, and let you know the day, without telling him beforehand that you're coming." "oh, indiana!" undine held her in a close embrace, and then drew away to say: "i'm so glad i found you. you must go round with me everywhere. there are lots of people here i want you to know." mrs. rolliver's expression changed from vague sympathy to concentrated interest. "i suppose it's awfully gay here? do you go round a great deal with the american set?" undine hesitated for a fraction of a moment. "there are a few of them who are rather jolly. but i particularly want you to meet my friend the marquis roviano--he's from rome; and a lovely austrian woman, baroness adelschein." her friend's face was brushed by a shade of distrust. "i don't know as i care much about meeting foreigners," she said indifferently. undine smiled: it was agreeable at last to be able to give indiana a "point" as valuable as any of hers on divorce. "oh, some of them are awfully attractive; and they'll make you meet the americans." indiana caught this on the bound: one began to see why she had got on in spite of everything. "of course i'd love to know your friends," she said, kissing undine; who answered, giving back the kiss: "you know there's nothing on earth i wouldn't do for you." indiana drew back to look at her with a comic grimace under which a shade of anxiety was visible. "well, that's a pretty large order. but there's just one thing you can do, dearest: please to let mr. rolliver alone!" "mr. rolliver, my dear?" undine's laugh showed that she took this for unmixed comedy. "that's a nice way to remind me that you're heaps and heaps better-looking than i am!" indiana gave her an acute glance. "millard binch didn't think so--not even at the very end." "oh, poor millard!" the women's smiles mingled easily over the common reminiscence, and once again, on the threshold. undine enfolded her friend. in the light of the autumn afternoon she paused a moment at the door of the nouveau luxe, and looked aimlessly forth at the brave spectacle in which she seemed no longer to have a stake. many of her old friends had already returned to paris: the harvey shallums, may beringer, dicky bowles and other westward-bound nomads lingering on for a glimpse of the autumn theatres and fashions before hurrying back to inaugurate the new york season. a year ago undine would have had no difficulty in introducing indiana rolliver to this group--a group above which her own aspirations already beat an impatient wing. now her place in it had become too precarious for her to force an entrance for her protectress. her new york friends were at no pains to conceal from her that in their opinion her divorce had been a blunder. their logic was that of apex reversed. since she had not been "sure" of van degen, why in the world, they asked, had she thrown away a position she was sure of? mrs. harvey shallum, in particular, had not scrupled to put the question squarely. "chelles was awfully taken--he would have introduced you everywhere. i thought you were wild to know smart french people; i thought harvey and i weren't good enough for you any longer. and now you've done your best to spoil everything! of course i feel for you tremendously--that's the reason why i'm talking so frankly. you must be horribly depressed. come and dine to-night--or no, if you don't mind i'd rather you chose another evening. i'd forgotten that i'd asked the jim driscolls, and it might be uncomfortable--for you...." in another world she was still welcome, at first perhaps even more so than before: the world, namely, to which she had proposed to present indiana rolliver. roviano, madame adelschein, and a few of the freer spirits of her old st. moritz band, reappearing in paris with the close of the watering-place season, had quickly discovered her and shown a keen interest in her liberation. it appeared in some mysterious way to make her more available for their purpose, and she found that, in the character of the last american divorcee, she was even regarded as eligible to the small and intimate inner circle of their loosely-knit association. at first she could not make out what had entitled her to this privilege, and increasing enlightenment produced a revolt of the apex puritanism which, despite some odd accommodations and compliances, still carried its head so high in her. undine had been perfectly sincere in telling indiana rolliver that she was not "an immoral woman." the pleasures for which her sex took such risks had never attracted her, and she did not even crave the excitement of having it thought that they did. she wanted, passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability; and despite her surface-sophistication her notion of amusement was hardly less innocent than when she had hung on the plumber's fence with indiana frusk. it gave her, therefore, no satisfaction to find herself included among madame adelschein's intimates. it embarrassed her to feel that she was expected to be "queer" and "different," to respond to pass-words and talk in innuendo, to associate with the equivocal and the subterranean and affect to despise the ingenuous daylight joys which really satisfied her soul. but the business shrewdness which was never quite dormant in her suggested that this was not the moment for such scruples. she must make the best of what she could get and wait her chance of getting something better; and meanwhile the most practical use to which she could put her shady friends was to flash their authentic nobility in the dazzled eyes of mrs. rolliver. with this object in view she made haste, in a fashionable tea-room of the rue de rivoli, to group about indiana the most titled members of the band; and the felicity of the occasion would have been unmarred had she not suddenly caught sight of raymond de chelles sitting on the other side of the room. she had not seen chelles since her return to paris. it had seemed preferable to leave their meeting to chance and the present chance might have served as well as another but for the fact that among his companions were two or three of the most eminent ladies of the proud quarter beyond the seine. it was what undine, in moments of discouragement, characterized as "her luck" that one of these should be the hated miss wincher of potash springs, who had now become the marquise de trezac. undine knew that chelles and his compatriots, however scandalized at her european companions, would be completely indifferent to mrs. rolliver's appearance; but one gesture of madame de trezac's eye-glass would wave indiana to her place and thus brand the whole party as "wrong." all this passed through undine's mind in the very moment of her noting the change of expression with which chelles had signalled his recognition. if their encounter could have occurred in happier conditions it might have had far-reaching results. as it was, the crowded state of the tea-room, and the distance between their tables, sufficiently excused his restricting his greeting to an eager bow; and undine went home heavy-hearted from this first attempt to reconstruct her past. her spirits were not lightened by the developments of the next few days. she kept herself well in the foreground of indiana's life, and cultivated toward the rarely-visible rolliver a manner in which impersonal admiration for the statesman was tempered with the politest indifference to the man. indiana seemed to do justice to her efforts and to be reassured by the result; but still there came no hint of a reward. for a time undine restrained the question on her lips; but one afternoon, when she had inducted indiana into the deepest mysteries of parisian complexion-making, the importance of the service and the confidential mood it engendered seemed to warrant a discreet allusion to their bargain. indiana leaned back among her cushions with an embarrassed laugh. "oh, my dear, i've been meaning to tell you--it's off, i'm afraid. the dinner is, i mean. you see, mr. van degen has seen you 'round with me, and the very minute i asked him to come and dine he guessed--" "he guessed--and he wouldn't?" "well, no. he wouldn't. i hate to tell you." "oh--" undine threw off a vague laugh. "since you're intimate enough for him to tell you that he must, have told you more--told you something to justify his behaviour. he couldn't--even peter van degen couldn't--just simply have said to you: 'i wont see her.'" mrs. rolliver hesitated, visibly troubled to the point of regretting her intervention. "he did say more?" undine insisted. "he gave you a reason? "he said you'd know." "oh how base--how base!" undine was trembling with one of her little-girl rages, the storms of destructive fury before which mr. and mrs. spragg had cowered when she was a charming golden-curled cherub. but life had administered some of the discipline which her parents had spared her, and she pulled herself together with a gasp of pain. "of course he's been turned against me. his wife has the whole of new york behind her, and i've no one; but i know it would be all right if i could only see him." her friend made no answer, and undine pursued, with an irrepressible outbreak of her old vehemence: "indiana rolliver, if you won't do it for me i'll go straight off to his hotel this very minute. i'll wait there in the hall till he sees me!" indiana lifted a protesting hand. "don't, undine--not that!" "why not?" "well--i wouldn't, that's all." "you wouldn't? why wouldn't you? you must have a reason." undine faced her with levelled brows. "without a reason you can't have changed so utterly since our last talk. you were positive enough then that i had a right to make him see me." somewhat to her surprise, indiana made no effort to elude the challenge. "yes, i did think so then. but i know now that it wouldn't do you the least bit of good." "have they turned him so completely against me? i don't care if they have! i know him--i can get him back." "that's the trouble." indiana shed on her a gaze of cold compassion. "it's not that any one has turned him against you. it's worse than that--" "what can be?" "you'll hate me if i tell you." "then you'd better make him tell me himself!" "i can't. i tried to. the trouble is that it was you--something you did, i mean. something he found out about you--" undine, to restrain a spring of anger, had to clutch both arms of her chair. "about me? how fearfully false! why, i've never even looked at anybody--!" "it's nothing of that kind." indiana's mournful head-shake seemed to deplore, in undine, an unsuspected moral obtuseness. "it's the way you acted to your own husband." "i--my--to ralph? he reproaches me for that? peter van degen does?" "well, for one particular thing. he says that the very day you went off with him last year you got a cable from new york telling you to come back at once to mr. marvell, who was desperately ill." "how on earth did he know?" the cry escaped undine before she could repress it. "it's true, then?" indiana exclaimed. "oh, undine--" undine sat speechless and motionless, the anger frozen to terror on her lips. mrs. rolliver turned on her the reproachful gaze of the deceived benefactress. "i didn't believe it when he told me; i'd never have thought it of you. before you'd even applied for your divorce!" undine made no attempt to deny the charge or to defend herself. for a moment she was lost in the pursuit of an unseizable clue--the explanation of this monstrous last perversity of fate. suddenly she rose to her feet with a set face. "the marvells must have told him--the beasts!" it relieved her to be able to cry it out. "it was your husband's sister--what did you say her name was? when you didn't answer her cable, she cabled mr. van degen to find out where you were and tell you to come straight back." undine stared. "he never did!" "no." "doesn't that show you the story's all trumped up?" indiana shook her head. "he said nothing to you about it because he was with you when you received the first cable, and you told him it was from your sister-in-law, just worrying you as usual to go home; and when he asked if there was anything else in it you said there wasn't another thing." undine, intently following her, caught at this with a spring. "then he knew it all along--he admits that? and it made no earthly difference to him at the time?" she turned almost victoriously on her friend. "did he happen to explain that, i wonder?" "yes." indiana's longanimity grew almost solemn. "it came over him gradually, he said. one day when he wasn't feeling very well he thought to himself: 'would she act like that to me if i was dying?' and after that he never felt the same to you." indiana lowered her empurpled lids. "men have their feelings too--even when they're carried away by passion." after a pause she added: "i don't know as i can blame him. undine. you see, you were his ideal." xxv undine marvell, for the next few months, tasted all the accumulated bitterness of failure. after january the drifting hordes of her compatriots had scattered to the four quarters of the globe, leaving paris to resume, under its low grey sky, its compacter winter personality. noting, from her more and more deserted corner, each least sign of the social revival, undine felt herself as stranded and baffled as after the ineffectual summers of her girlhood. she was not without possible alternatives; but the sense of what she had lost took the savour from all that was left. she might have attached herself to some migratory group winged for italy or egypt; but the prospect of travel did not in itself appeal to her, and she was doubtful of its social benefit. she lacked the adventurous curiosity which seeks its occasion in the unknown; and though she could work doggedly for a given object the obstacles to be overcome had to be as distinct as the prize. her one desire was to get back an equivalent of the precise value she had lost in ceasing to be ralph marvell's wife. her new visiting-card, bearing her christian name in place of her husband's, was like the coin of a debased currency testifying to her diminished trading capacity. her restricted means, her vacant days, all the minor irritations of her life, were as nothing compared to this sense of a lost advantage. even in the narrowed field of a parisian winter she might have made herself a place in some more or less extra-social world; but her experiments in this line gave her no pleasure proportioned to the possible derogation. she feared to be associated with "the wrong people," and scented a shade of disrespect in every amicable advance. the more pressing attentions of one or two men she had formerly known filled her with a glow of outraged pride, and for the first time in her life she felt that even solitude might be preferable to certain kinds of society. since ill health was the most plausible pretext for seclusion, it was almost a relief to find that she was really growing "nervous" and sleeping badly. the doctor she summoned advised her trying a small quiet place on the riviera, not too near the sea; and thither in the early days of december, she transported herself with her maid and an omnibus-load of luggage. the place disconcerted her by being really small and quiet, and for a few days she struggled against the desire for flight. she had never before known a world as colourless and negative as that of the large white hotel where everybody went to bed at nine, and donkey-rides over stony hills were the only alternative to slow drives along dusty roads. many of the dwellers in this temple of repose found even these exercises too stimulating, and preferred to sit for hours under the palms in the garden, playing patience, embroidering, or reading odd volumes of tauchnitz. undine, driven by despair to an inspection of the hotel book-shelves, discovered that scarcely any work they contained was complete; but this did not seem to trouble the readers, who continued to feed their leisure with mutilated fiction, from which they occasionally raised their eyes to glance mistrustfully at the new arrival sweeping the garden gravel with her frivolous draperies. the inmates of the hotel were of different nationalities, but their racial differences were levelled by the stamp of a common mediocrity. all differences of tongue, of custom, of physiognomy, disappeared in this deep community of insignificance, which was like some secret bond, with the manifold signs and pass-words of its ignorances and its imperceptions. it was not the heterogeneous mediocrity of the american summer hotel where the lack of any standard is the nearest approach to a tie, but an organized codified dulness, in conscious possession of its rights, and strong in the voluntary ignorance of any others. it took undine a long time to accustom herself to such an atmosphere, and meanwhile she fretted, fumed and flaunted, or abandoned herself to long periods of fruitless brooding. sometimes a flame of anger shot up in her, dismally illuminating the path she had travelled and the blank wall to which it led. at other moments past and present were enveloped in a dull fog of rancour which distorted and faded even the image she presented to her morning mirror. there were days when every young face she saw left in her a taste of poison. but when she compared herself with the specimens of her sex who plied their languid industries under the palms, or looked away as she passed them in hall or staircase, her spirits rose, and she rang for her maid and dressed herself in her newest and vividest. these were unprofitable triumphs, however. she never made one of her attacks on the organized disapproval of the community without feeling she had lost ground by it; and the next day she would lie in bed and send down capricious orders for food, which her maid would presently remove untouched, with instructions to transmit her complaints to the landlord. sometimes the events of the past year, ceaselessly revolving through her brain, became no longer a subject for criticism or justification but simply a series of pictures monotonously unrolled. hour by hour, in such moods, she re-lived the incidents of her flight with peter van degen: the part of her career that, since it had proved a failure, seemed least like herself and most difficult to justify. she had gone away with him, and had lived with him for two months: she, undine marvell, to whom respectability was the breath of life, to whom such follies had always been unintelligible and therefore inexcusable.--she had done this incredible thing, and she had done it from a motive that seemed, at the time, as clear, as logical, as free from the distorting mists of sentimentality, as any of her father's financial enterprises. it had been a bold move, but it had been as carefully calculated as the happiest wall street "stroke." she had gone away with peter because, after the decisive scene in which she had put her power to the test, to yield to him seemed the surest means of victory. even to her practical intelligence it was clear that an immediate dash to dakota might look too calculated; and she had preserved her self-respect by telling herself that she was really his wife, and in no way to blame if the law delayed to ratify the bond. she was still persuaded of the justness of her reasoning; but she now saw that it had left certain risks out of account. her life with van degen had taught her many things. the two had wandered from place to place, spending a great deal of money, always more and more money; for the first time in her life she had been able to buy everything she wanted. for a while this had kept her amused and busy; but presently she began to perceive that her companion's view of their relation was not the same as hers. she saw that he had always meant it to be an unavowed tie, screened by mrs. shallum's companionship and clare's careless tolerance; and that on those terms he would have been ready to shed on their adventure the brightest blaze of notoriety. but since undine had insisted on being carried off like a sentimental school-girl he meant to shroud the affair in mystery, and was as zealous in concealing their relation as she was bent on proclaiming it. in the "powerful" novels which popple was fond of lending her she had met with increasing frequency the type of heroine who scorns to love clandestinely, and proclaims the sanctity of passion and the moral duty of obeying its call. undine had been struck by these arguments as justifying and even ennobling her course, and had let peter understand that she had been actuated by the highest motives in openly associating her life with his; but he had opposed a placid insensibility to these allusions, and had persisted in treating her as though their journey were the kind of escapade that a man of the world is bound to hide. she had expected him to take her to all the showy places where couples like themselves are relieved from a too sustained contemplation of nature by the distractions of the restaurant and the gaming-table; but he had carried her from one obscure corner of europe to another, shunning fashionable hotels and crowded watering-places, and displaying an ingenuity in the discovery of the unvisited and the out-of-season that gave their journey an odd resemblance to her melancholy wedding-tour. she had never for a moment ceased to remember that the dakota divorce-court was the objective point of this later honeymoon, and her allusions to the fact were as frequent as prudence permitted. peter seemed in no way disturbed by them. he responded with expressions of increasing tenderness, or the purchase of another piece of jewelry; and though undine could not remember his ever voluntarily bringing the subject of their marriage he did not shrink from her recurring mention of it. he seemed merely too steeped in present well-being to think of the future, and she ascribed this to the fact that his faculty of enjoyment could not project itself beyond the moment. her business was to make each of their days so agreeable that when the last came he should be conscious of a void to be bridged over as rapidly as possible and when she thought this point had been reached she packed her trunks and started for dakota. the next picture to follow was that of the dull months in the western divorce-town, where, to escape loneliness and avoid comment, she had cast in her lot with mabel lipscomb, who had lately arrived there on the same errand. undine, at the outset, had been sorry for the friend whose new venture seemed likely to result so much less brilliantly than her own; but compassion had been replaced by irritation as mabel's unpruned vulgarities, her enormous encroaching satisfaction with herself and her surroundings, began to pervade every corner of their provisional household. undine, during the first months of her exile, had been sustained by the fullest confidence in her future. when she had parted from van degen she had felt sure he meant to marry her, and the fact that mrs. lipscomb was fortified by no similar hope made her easier to bear with. undine was almost ashamed that the unwooed mabel should be the witness of her own felicity, and planned to send her off on a trip to denver when peter should announce his arrival; but the weeks passed, and peter did not come. mabel, on the whole, behaved well in this contingency. undine, in her first exultation, had confided all her hopes and plans to her friend, but mabel took no undue advantage of the confidence. she was even tactful in her loud fond clumsy way, with a tact that insistently boomed and buzzed about its victim's head. but one day she mentioned that she had asked to dinner a gentleman from little rock who had come to dakota with the same object as themselves, and whose acquaintance she had made through her lawyer. the gentleman from little rock came to dine, and within a week undine understood that mabel's future was assured. if van degen had been at hand undine would have smiled with him at poor mabel's infatuation and her suitor's crudeness. but van degen was not there. he made no sign, he sent no excuse; he simply continued to absent himself; and it was undine who, in due course, had to make way for mrs. lipscomb's caller, and sit upstairs with a novel while the drawing-room below was given up to the enacting of an actual love-story. even then, even to the end, undine had to admit that mabel had behaved "beautifully." but it is comparatively easy to behave beautifully when one is getting what one wants, and when some one else, who has not always been altogether kind, is not. the net result of mrs. lipscomb's magnanimity was that when, on the day of parting, she drew undine to her bosom with the hand on which her new engagement-ring blazed, undine hated her as she hated everything else connected with her vain exile in the wilderness. xxvi the next phase in the unrolling vision was the episode of her return to new york. she had gone to the malibran, to her parents--for it was a moment in her career when she clung passionately to the conformities, and when the fact of being able to say: "i'm here with my father and mother" was worth paying for even in the discomfort of that grim abode. nevertheless, it was another thorn in her pride that her parents could not--for the meanest of material reasons--transfer themselves at her coming to one of the big fifth avenue hotels. when she had suggested it mr. spragg had briefly replied that, owing to the heavy expenses of her divorce suit, he couldn't for the moment afford anything better; and this announcement cast a deeper gloom over the future. it was not an occasion for being "nervous," however; she had learned too many hard facts in the last few months to think of having recourse to her youthful methods. and something told her that if she made the attempt it would be useless. her father and mother seemed much older, seemed tired and defeated, like herself. parents and daughter bore their common failure in a common silence, broken only by mrs. spragg's occasional tentative allusions to her grandson. but her anecdotes of paul left a deeper silence behind them. undine did not want to talk of her boy. she could forget him when, as she put it, things were "going her way," but in moments of discouragement the thought of him was an added bitterness, subtly different from her other bitter thoughts, and harder to quiet. it had not occurred to her to try to gain possession of the child. she was vaguely aware that the courts had given her his custody; but she had never seriously thought of asserting this claim. her parents' diminished means and her own uncertain future made her regard the care of paul as an additional burden, and she quieted her scruples by thinking of him as "better off" with ralph's family, and of herself as rather touchingly disinterested in putting his welfare before her own. poor mrs. spragg was pining for him, but undine rejected her artless suggestion that mrs. heeny should be sent to "bring him round." "i wouldn't ask them a favour for the world--they're just waiting for a chance to be hateful to me," she scornfully declared; but it pained her that her boy, should be so near, yet inaccessible, and for the first time she was visited by unwonted questionings as to her share in the misfortunes that had befallen her. she had voluntarily stepped out of her social frame, and the only person on whom she could with any satisfaction have laid the blame was the person to whom her mind now turned with a belated tenderness. it was thus, in fact, that she thought of ralph. his pride, his reserve, all the secret expressions of his devotion, the tones of his voice, his quiet manner, even his disconcerting irony: these seemed, in contrast to what she had since known, the qualities essential to her happiness. she could console herself only by regarding it as part of her sad lot that poverty and the relentless animosity of his family, should have put an end to so perfect a union: she gradually began to look on herself and ralph as the victims of dark machinations, and when she mentioned him she spoke forgivingly, and implied that "everything might have been different" if "people" had not "come between" them. she had arrived in new york in midseason, and the dread of seeing familiar faces kept her shut up in her room at the malibran, reading novels and brooding over possibilities of escape. she tried to avoid the daily papers, but they formed the staple diet of her parents, and now and then she could not help taking one up and turning to the "society column." its perusal produced the impression that the season must be the gayest new york had ever known. the harmon b. driscolls, young jim and his wife, the thurber van degens, the chauncey ellings, and all the other fifth avenue potentates, seemed to have their doors perpetually open to a stream of feasters among whom the familiar presences of grace beringer, bertha shallum, dicky bowles and claud walsingham popple came and went with the irritating sameness of the figures in a stage-procession. among them also peter van degen presently appeared. he had been on a tour around the world, and undine could not look at a newspaper without seeing some allusion to his progress. after his return she noticed that his name was usually coupled with his wife's: he and clare seemed to be celebrating his home-coming in a series of festivities, and undine guessed that he had reasons for wishing to keep before the world the evidences of his conjugal accord. mrs. heeny's clippings supplied her with such items as her own reading missed; and one day the masseuse appeared with a long article from the leading journal of little rock, describing the brilliant nuptials of mabel lipscomb--now mrs. homer branney--and her departure for "the coast" in the bridegroom's private car. this put the last touch to undine's irritation, and the next morning she got up earlier than usual, put on her most effective dress, went for a quick walk around the park, and told her father when she came in that she wanted him to take her to the opera that evening. mr. spragg stared and frowned. "you mean you want me to go round and hire a box for you?" "oh, no." undine coloured at the infelicitous allusion: besides, she knew now that the smart people who were "musical" went in stalls. "i only want two good seats. i don't see why i should stay shut up. i want you to go with me," she added. her father received the latter part of the request without comment: he seemed to have gone beyond surprise. but he appeared that evening at dinner in a creased and loosely fitting dress-suit which he had probably not put on since the last time he had dined with his son-in-law, and he and undine drove off together, leaving mrs. spragg to gaze after them with the pale stare of hecuba. their stalls were in the middle of the house, and around them swept the great curve of boxes at which undine had so often looked up in the remote stentorian days. then all had been one indistinguishable glitter, now the scene was full of familiar details: the house was thronged with people she knew, and every box seemed to contain a parcel of her past. at first she had shrunk from recognition; but gradually, as she perceived that no one noticed her, that she was merely part of the invisible crowd out of range of the exploring opera glasses, she felt a defiant desire to make herself seen. when the performance was over her father wanted to leave the house by the door at which they had entered, but she guided him toward the stockholders' entrance, and pressed her way among the furred and jewelled ladies waiting for their motors. "oh, it's the wrong door--never mind, we'll walk to the corner and get a cab," she exclaimed, speaking loudly enough to be overheard. two or three heads turned, and she met dicky bowles's glance, and returned his laughing bow. the woman talking to him looked around, coloured slightly, and made a barely perceptible motion of her head. just beyond her, mrs. chauncey elling, plumed and purple, stared, parted her lips, and turned to say something important to young jim driscoll, who looked up involuntarily and then squared his shoulders and gazed fixedly at a distant point, as people do at a funeral. behind them undine caught sight of clare van degen; she stood alone, and her face was pale and listless. "shall i go up and speak to her?" undine wondered. some intuition told her that, alone of all the women present, clare might have greeted her kindly; but she hung back, and mrs. harmon driscoll surged by on popple's arm. popple crimsoned, coughed, and signalled despotically to mrs. driscoll's footman. over his shoulder undine received a bow from charles bowen, and behind bowen she saw two or three other men she knew, and read in their faces surprise, curiosity, and the wish to show their pleasure at seeing her. but she grasped her father's arm and drew him out among the entangled motors and vociferating policemen. neither she nor mr. spragg spoke a word on the way home; but when they reached the malibran her father followed her up to her room. she had dropped her cloak and stood before the wardrobe mirror studying her reflection when he came up behind her and she saw that he was looking at it too. "where did that necklace come from?" undine's neck grew pink under the shining circlet. it was the first time since her return to new york that she had put on a low dress and thus uncovered the string of pearls she always wore. she made no answer, and mr. spragg continued: "did your husband give them to you?" "ralph!" she could not restrain a laugh. "who did, then?" undine remained silent. she really had not thought about the pearls, except in so far as she consciously enjoyed the pleasure of possessing them; and her father, habitually so unobservant, had seemed the last person likely to raise the awkward question of their origin. "why--" she began, without knowing what she meant to say. "i guess you better send 'em back to the party they belong to," mr. spragg continued, in a voice she did not know. "they belong to me!" she flamed up. he looked at her as if she had grown suddenly small and insignificant. "you better send 'em back to peter van degen the first thing to-morrow morning," he said as he went out of the room. as far as undine could remember, it was the first time in her life that he had ever ordered her to do anything; and when the door closed on him she had the distinct sense that the question had closed with it, and that she would have to obey. she took the pearls off and threw them from her angrily. the humiliation her father had inflicted on her was merged with the humiliation to which she had subjected herself in going to the opera, and she had never before hated her life as she hated it then. all night she lay sleepless, wondering miserably what to do; and out of her hatred of her life, and her hatred of peter van degen, there gradually grew a loathing of van degen's pearls. how could she have kept them; how have continued to wear them about her neck! only her absorption in other cares could have kept her from feeling the humiliation of carrying about with her the price of her shame. her novel-reading had filled her mind with the vocabulary of outraged virtue, and with pathetic allusions to woman's frailty, and while she pitied herself she thought her father heroic. she was proud to think that she had such a man to defend her, and rejoiced that it was in her power to express her scorn of van degen by sending back his jewels. but her righteous ardour gradually cooled, and she was left once more to face the dreary problem of the future. her evening at the opera had shown her the impossibility of remaining in new york. she had neither the skill nor the power to fight the forces of indifference leagued against her: she must get away at once, and try to make a fresh start. but, as usual, the lack of money hampered her. mr. spragg could no longer afford to make her the allowance she had intermittently received from him during the first years of her marriage, and since she was now without child or household she could hardly make it a grievance that he had reduced her income. but what he allowed her, even with the addition of her alimony, was absurdly insufficient. not that she looked far ahead; she had always felt herself predestined to ease and luxury, and the possibility of a future adapted to her present budget did not occur to her. but she desperately wanted enough money to carry her without anxiety through the coming year. when her breakfast tray was brought in she sent it away untouched and continued to lie in her darkened room. she knew that when she got up she must send back the pearls; but there was no longer any satisfaction in the thought, and she lay listlessly wondering how she could best transmit them to van degen. as she lay there she heard mrs. heeny's voice in the passage. hitherto she had avoided the masseuse, as she did every one else associated with her past. mrs. heeny had behaved with extreme discretion, refraining from all direct allusions to undine's misadventure; but her silence was obviously the criticism of a superior mind. once again undine had disregarded her injunction to "go slow," with results that justified the warning. mrs. heeny's very reserve, however, now marked her as a safe adviser; and undine sprang up and called her in. "my sakes. undine! you look's if you'd been setting up all night with a remains!" the masseuse exclaimed in her round rich tones. undine, without answering, caught up the pearls and thrust them into mrs. heeny's hands. "good land alive!" the masseuse dropped into a chair and let the twist slip through her fat flexible fingers. "well, you got a fortune right round your neck whenever you wear them, undine spragg." undine murmured something indistinguishable. "i want you to take them--" she began. "take 'em? where to?" "why, to--" she was checked by the wondering simplicity of mrs. heeny's stare. the masseuse must know where the pearls had come from, yet it had evidently not occurred to her that mrs. marvell was about to ask her to return them to their donor. in the light of mrs. heeny's unclouded gaze the whole episode took on a different aspect, and undine began to be vaguely astonished at her immediate submission to her father's will. the pearls were hers, after all! "to be re-strung?" mrs. heeny placidly suggested. "why, you'd oughter to have it done right here before your eyes, with pearls that are worth what these are." as undine listened, a new thought shaped itself. she could not continue to wear the pearls: the idea had become intolerable. but for the first time she saw what they might be converted into, and what they might rescue her from; and suddenly she brought out: "do you suppose i could get anything for them?" "get anything? why, what--" "anything like what they're worth, i mean. they cost a lot of money: they came from the biggest place in paris." under mrs. heeny's simplifying eye it was comparatively easy to make these explanations. "i want you to try and sell them for me--i want you to do the best you can with them. i can't do it myself--but you must swear you'll never tell a soul," she pressed on breathlessly. "why, you poor child--it ain't the first time," said mrs. heeny, coiling the pearls in her big palm. "it's a pity too: they're such beauties. but you'll get others," she added, as the necklace vanished into her bag. a few days later there appeared from the same receptacle a bundle of banknotes considerable enough to quiet undine's last scruples. she no longer understood why she had hesitated. why should she have thought it necessary to give back the pearls to van degen? his obligation to her represented far more than the relatively small sum she had been able to realize on the necklace. she hid the money in her dress, and when mrs. heeny had gone on to mrs. spragg's room she drew the packet out, and counting the bills over, murmured to herself: "now i can get away!" her one thought was to return to europe; but she did not want to go alone. the vision of her solitary figure adrift in the spring mob of trans-atlantic pleasure-seekers depressed and mortified her. she would be sure to run across acquaintances, and they would infer that she was in quest of a new opportunity, a fresh start, and would suspect her of trying to use them for the purpose. the thought was repugnant to her newly awakened pride, and she decided that if she went to europe her father and mother must go with her. the project was a bold one, and when she broached it she had to run the whole gamut of mr. spragg's irony. he wanted to know what she expected to do with him when she got him there; whether she meant to introduce him to "all those old kings," how she thought he and her mother would look in court dress, and how she supposed he was going to get on without his new york paper. but undine had been aware of having what he himself would have called "a pull" over her father since, the day after their visit to the opera, he had taken her aside to ask: "you sent back those pearls?" and she had answered coldly: "mrs. heeny's taken them." after a moment of half-bewildered resistance her parents, perhaps secretly flattered by this first expression of her need for them, had yielded to her entreaty, packed their trunks, and stoically set out for the unknown. neither mr. spragg nor his wife had ever before been out of their country; and undine had not understood, till they stood beside her tongue-tied and helpless on the dock at cherbourg, the task she had undertaken in uprooting them. mr. spragg had never been physically active, but on foreign shores he was seized by a strange restlessness, and a helpless dependence on his daughter. mrs. spragg's long habit of apathy was overcome by her dread of being left alone when her husband and undine went out, and she delayed and impeded their expeditions by insisting on accompanying them; so that, much as undine disliked sightseeing, there seemed no alternative between "going round" with her parents and shutting herself up with them in the crowded hotels to which she successively transported them. the hotels were the only european institutions that really interested mr. spragg. he considered them manifestly inferior to those at home; but he was haunted by a statistical curiosity as to their size, their number, their cost and their capacity for housing and feeding the incalculable hordes of his countrymen. he went through galleries, churches and museums in a stolid silence like his daughter's; but in the hotels he never ceased to enquire and investigate, questioning every one who could speak english, comparing bills, collecting prospectuses and computing the cost of construction and the probable return on the investment. he regarded the non-existence of the cold-storage system as one more proof of european inferiority, and no longer wondered, in the absence of the room-to-room telephone, that foreigners hadn't yet mastered the first principles of time-saving. after a few weeks it became evident to both parents and daughter that their unnatural association could not continue much longer. mrs. spragg's shrinking from everything new and unfamiliar had developed into a kind of settled terror, and mr. spragg had begun to be depressed by the incredible number of the hotels and their simply incalculable housing capacity. "it ain't that they're any great shakes in themselves, any one of 'em; but there's such a darned lot of 'em: they're as thick as mosquitoes, every place you go." and he began to reckon up, on slips of paper, on the backs of bills and the margins of old newspapers, the number of travellers who could be simultaneously lodged, bathed and boarded on the continent of europe. "five hundred bedrooms--three hundred bathrooms--no; three hundred and fifty bathrooms, that one has: that makes, supposing two-thirds of 'em double up--do you s'pose as many as that do, undie? that porter at lucerne told me the germans slept three in a room--well, call it eight hundred people; and three meals a day per head; no, four meals, with that afternoon tea they take; and the last place we were at--'way up on that mountain there--why, there were seventy-five hotels in that one spot alone, and all jam full--well, it beats me to know where all the people come from..." he had gone on in this fashion for what seemed to his daughter an endless length of days; and then suddenly he had roused himself to say: "see here, undie, i got to go back and make the money to pay for all this." there had been no question on the part of any of the three of undine's returning with them; and after she had conveyed them to their steamer, and seen their vaguely relieved faces merged in the handkerchief-waving throng along the taffrail, she had returned alone to paris and made her unsuccessful attempt to enlist the aid of indiana rolliver. xxvii she was still brooding over this last failure when one afternoon, as she loitered on the hotel terrace, she was approached by a young woman whom she had seen sitting near the wheeled chair of an old lady wearing a crumpled black bonnet under a funny fringed parasol with a jointed handle. the young woman, who was small, slight and brown, was dressed with a disregard of the fashion which contrasted oddly with the mauve powder on her face and the traces of artificial colour in her dark untidy hair. she looked as if she might have several different personalities, and as if the one of the moment had been hanging up a long time in her wardrobe and been hurriedly taken down as probably good enough for the present occasion. with her hands in her jacket pockets, and an agreeable smile on her boyish face, she strolled up to undine and asked, in a pretty variety of parisian english, if she had the pleasure of speaking to mrs. marvell. on undine's assenting, the smile grew more alert and the lady continued: "i think you know my friend sacha adelschein?" no question could have been less welcome to undine. if there was one point on which she was doggedly and puritanically resolved, it was that no extremes of social adversity should ever again draw her into the group of people among whom madame adelschein too conspicuously figured. since her unsuccessful attempt to win over indiana by introducing her to that group, undine had been righteously resolved to remain aloof from it; and she was drawing herself up to her loftiest height of disapproval when the stranger, as if unconscious of it, went on: "sacha speaks of you so often--she admires you so much.--i think you know also my cousin chelles," she added, looking into undine's eyes. "i am the princess estradina. i've come here with my mother for the air." the murmur of negation died on undine's lips. she found herself grappling with a new social riddle, and such surprises were always stimulating. the name of the untidy-looking young woman she had been about to repel was one of the most eminent in the impregnable quarter beyond the seine. no one figured more largely in the parisian chronicle than the princess estradina, and no name more impressively headed the list at every marriage, funeral and philanthropic entertainment of the faubourg saint germain than that of her mother, the duchesse de dordogne, who must be no other than the old woman sitting in the bath-chair with the crumpled bonnet and the ridiculous sunshade. but it was not the appearance of the two ladies that surprised undine. she knew that social gold does not always glitter, and that the lady she had heard spoken of as lili estradina was notoriously careless of the conventions; but that she should boast of her intimacy with madame adelschein, and use it as a pretext for naming herself, overthrew all undine's hierarchies. "yes--it's hideously dull here, and i'm dying of it. do come over and speak to my mother. she's dying of it too; but don't tell her so, because she hasn't found it out. there were so many things our mothers never found out," the princess rambled on, with her half-mocking half-intimate smile; and in another moment undine, thrilled at having mrs. spragg thus coupled with a duchess, found herself seated between mother and daughter, and responding by a radiant blush to the elder lady's amiable opening: "you know my nephew raymond--he's your great admirer." how had it happened, whither would it lead, how long could it last? the questions raced through undine's brain as she sat listening to her new friends--they seemed already too friendly to be called acquaintances!--replying to their enquiries, and trying to think far enough ahead to guess what they would expect her to say, and what tone it would be well to take. she was used to such feats of mental agility, and it was instinctive with her to become, for the moment, the person she thought her interlocutors expected her to be; but she had never had quite so new a part to play at such short notice. she took her cue, however, from the fact that the princess estradina, in her mother's presence, made no farther allusion to her dear friend sacha, and seemed somehow, though she continued to chat on in the same easy strain, to look differently and throw out different implications. all these shades of demeanour were immediately perceptible to undine, who tried to adapt herself to them by combining in her manner a mixture of apex dash and new york dignity; and the result was so successful that when she rose to go the princess, with a hand on her arm, said almost wistfully: "you're staying on too? then do take pity on us! we might go on some trips together; and in the evenings we could make a bridge." a new life began for undine. the princess, chained her mother's side, and frankly restive under her filial duty, clung to her new acquaintance with a persistence too flattering to be analyzed. "my dear, i was on the brink of suicide when i saw your name in the visitors' list," she explained; and undine felt like answering that she had nearly reached the same pass when the princess's thin little hand had been held out to her. for the moment she was dizzy with the effect of that random gesture. here she was, at the lowest ebb of her fortunes, miraculously rehabilitated, reinstated, and restored to the old victorious sense of her youth and her power! her sole graces, her unaided personality, had worked the miracle; how should she not trust in them hereafter? aside from her feeling of concrete attainment. undine was deeply interested in her new friends. the princess and her mother, in their different ways, were different from any one else she had known. the princess, who might have been of any age between twenty and forty, had a small triangular face with caressing impudent eyes, a smile like a silent whistle and the gait of a baker's boy balancing his basket. she wore either baggy shabby clothes like a man's, or rich draperies that looked as if they had been rained on; and she seemed equally at ease in either style of dress, and carelessly unconscious of both. she was extremely familiar and unblushingly inquisitive, but she never gave undine the time to ask her any questions or the opportunity to venture on any freedom with her. nevertheless she did not scruple to talk of her sentimental experiences, and seemed surprised, and rather disappointed, that undine had so few to relate in return. she playfully accused her beautiful new friend of being cachottiere, and at the sight of undine's blush cried out: "ah, you funny americans! why do you all behave as if love were a secret infirmity?" the old duchess was even more impressive, because she fitted better into undine's preconceived picture of the faubourg saint germain, and was more like the people with whom she pictured the former nettie wincher as living in privileged intimacy. the duchess was, indeed, more amiable and accessible than undine's conception of a duchess, and displayed a curiosity as great as her daughter's, and much more puerile, concerning her new friend's history and habits. but through her mild prattle, and in spite of her limited perceptions. undine felt in her the same clear impenetrable barrier that she ran against occasionally in the princess; and she was beginning to understand that this barrier represented a number of things about which she herself had yet to learn. she would not have known this a few years earlier, nor would she have seen in the duchess anything but the ruin of an ugly woman, dressed in clothes that mrs. spragg wouldn't have touched. the duchess certainly looked like a ruin; but undine now saw that she looked like the ruin of a castle. the princess, who was unofficially separated from her husband, had with her her two little girls. she seemed extremely attached to both--though avowing for the younger a preference she frankly ascribed to the interesting accident of its parentage--and she could not understand that undine, as to whose domestic difficulties she minutely informed herself, should have consented to leave her child to strangers. "for, to one's child every one but one's self is a stranger; and whatever your egarements--" she began, breaking off with a stare when undine interrupted her to explain that the courts had ascribed all the wrongs in the case to her husband. "but then--but then--" murmured the princess, turning away from the subject as if checked by too deep an abyss of difference. the incident had embarrassed undine, and though she tried to justify herself by allusions to her boy's dependence on his father's family, and to the duty of not standing in his way, she saw that she made no impression. "whatever one's errors, one's child belongs to one," her hearer continued to repeat; and undine, who was frequently scandalized by the princess's conversation, now found herself in the odd position of having to set a watch upon her own in order not to scandalize the princess. each day, nevertheless, strengthened her hold on her new friends. after her first flush of triumph she began indeed to suspect that she had been a slight disappointment to the princess, had not completely justified the hopes raised by the doubtful honour of being one of sacha adelschein's intimates. undine guessed that the princess had expected to find her more amusing, "queerer," more startling in speech and conduct. though by instinct she was none of these things, she was eager to go as far as was expected; but she felt that her audacities were on lines too normal to be interesting, and that the princess thought her rather school-girlish and old-fashioned. still, they had in common their youth, their boredom, their high spirits and their hunger for amusement; and undine was making the most of these ties when one day, coming back from a trip to monte-carlo with the princess, she was brought up short by the sight of a lady--evidently a new arrival--who was seated in an attitude of respectful intimacy beside the old duchess's chair. undine, advancing unheard over the fine gravel of the garden path, recognized at a glance the marquise de trezac's drooping nose and disdainful back, and at the same moment heard her say: "--and her husband?" "her husband? but she's an american--she's divorced," the duchess replied, as if she were merely stating the same fact in two different ways; and undine stopped short with a pang of apprehension. the princess came up behind her. "who's the solemn person with mamma? ah, that old bore of a trezac!" she dropped her long eye-glass with a laugh. "well, she'll be useful--she'll stick to mamma like a leech and we shall get away oftener. come, let's go and be charming to her." she approached madame de trezac effusively, and after an interchange of exclamations undine heard her say "you know my friend mrs. marvell? no? how odd! where do you manage to hide yourself, chere madame? undine, here's a compatriot who hasn't the pleasure--" "i'm such a hermit, dear mrs. marvell--the princess shows me what i miss," the marquise de trezac murmured, rising to give her hand to undine, and speaking in a voice so different from that of the supercilious miss wincher that only her facial angle and the droop of her nose linked her to the hated vision of potash springs. undine felt herself dancing on a flood-tide of security. for the first time the memory of potash springs became a thing to smile at, and with the princess's arm through hers she shone back triumphantly on madame de trezac, who seemed to have grown suddenly obsequious and insignificant, as though the waving of the princess's wand had stripped her of all her false advantages. but upstairs, in her own room. undine's courage fell. madame de trezac had been civil, effusive even, because for the moment she had been taken off her guard by finding mrs. marvell on terms of intimacy with the princess estradina and her mother. but the force of facts would reassert itself. far from continuing to see undine through her french friends' eyes she would probably invite them to view her compatriot through the searching lens of her own ampler information. "the old hypocrite--she'll tell them everything," undine murmured, wincing at the recollection of the dentist's assistant from deposit, and staring miserably at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. of what use were youth and grace and good looks, if one drop of poison distilled from the envy of a narrow-minded woman was enough to paralyze them? of course madame de trezac knew and remembered, and, secure in her own impregnable position, would never rest till she had driven out the intruder. xxviii "what do you say to nice to-morrow, dearest?" the princess suggested a few evenings later as she followed undine upstairs after a languid evening at bridge with the duchess and madame de trezac. half-way down the passage she stopped to open a door and, putting her finger to her lip, signed to undine to enter. in the taper-lit dimness stood two small white beds, each surmounted by a crucifix and a palm branch, and each containing a small brown sleeping child with a mop of hair and a curiously finished little face. as the princess stood gazing on their innocent slumbers she seemed for a moment like a third little girl scarcely bigger and browner than the others; and the smile with which she watched them was as clear as theirs. "ah, si seulement je pouvais choisir leurs amants!" she sighed as she turned away. "--nice to-morrow," she repeated, as she and undine walked on to their rooms with linked arms. "we may as well make hay while the trezac shines. she bores mamma frightfully, but mamma won't admit it because they belong to the same oeuvres. shall it be the eleven train, dear? we can lunch at the royal and look in the shops--we may meet somebody amusing. anyhow, it's better than staying here!" undine was sure the trip to nice would be delightful. their previous expeditions had shown her the princess's faculty for organizing such adventures. at monte-carlo, a few days before, they had run across two or three amusing but unassorted people, and the princess, having fused them in a jolly lunch, had followed it up by a bout at baccarat, and, finally hunting down an eminent composer who had just arrived to rehearse a new production, had insisted on his asking the party to tea, and treating them to fragments of his opera. a few days earlier, undine's hope of renewing such pleasures would have been clouded by the dread of leaving madame de trezac alone with the duchess. but she had no longer any fear of madame de trezac. she had discovered that her old rival of potash springs was in actual dread of her disfavour, and nervously anxious to conciliate her, and the discovery gave her such a sense of the heights she had scaled, and the security of her footing, that all her troubled past began to seem like the result of some providential "design," and vague impulses of piety stirred in her as she and the princess whirled toward nice through the blue and gold glitter of the morning. they wandered about the lively streets, they gazed into the beguiling shops, the princess tried on hats and undine bought them, and they lunched at the royal on all sorts of succulent dishes prepared under the head-waiter's special supervision. but as they were savouring their "double" coffee and liqueurs, and undine was wondering what her companion would devise for the afternoon, the princess clapped her hands together and cried out: "dearest, i'd forgotten! i must desert you." she explained that she'd promised the duchess to look up a friend who was ill--a poor wretch who'd been sent to cimiez for her lungs--and that she must rush off at once, and would be back as soon as possible--well, if not in an hour, then in two at latest. she was full of compunction, but she knew undine would forgive her, and find something amusing to fill up the time: she advised her to go back and buy the black hat with the osprey, and try on the crepe de chine they'd thought so smart: for any one as good-looking as herself the woman would probably alter it for nothing; and they could meet again at the palace tea-rooms at four. she whirled away in a cloud of explanations, and undine, left alone, sat down on the promenade des anglais. she did not believe a word the princess had said. she had seen in a flash why she was being left, and why the plan had not been divulged to her before-hand; and she quivered with resentment and humiliation. "that's what she's wanted me for...that's why she made up to me. she's trying it to-day, and after this it'll happen regularly...she'll drag me over here every day or two...at least she thinks she will!" a sincere disgust was undine's uppermost sensation. she was as much ashamed as mrs. spragg might have been at finding herself used to screen a clandestine adventure. "i'll let her see... i'll make her understand," she repeated angrily; and for a moment she was half-disposed to drive to the station and take the first train back. but the sense of her precarious situation withheld her; and presently, with bitterness in her heart, she got up and began to stroll toward the shops. to show that she was not a dupe, she arrived at the designated meeting-place nearly an hour later than the time appointed; but when she entered the tea-rooms the princess was nowhere to be seen. the rooms were crowded, and undine was guided toward a small inner apartment where isolated couples were absorbing refreshments in an atmosphere of intimacy that made it seem incongruous to be alone. she glanced about for a face she knew, but none was visible, and she was just giving up the search when she beheld elmer moffatt shouldering his way through the crowd. the sight was so surprising that she sat gazing with unconscious fixity at the round black head and glossy reddish face which kept appearing and disappearing through the intervening jungle of aigrettes. it was long since she had either heard of moffatt or thought about him, and now, in her loneliness and exasperation, she took comfort in the sight of his confident capable face, and felt a longing to hear his voice and unbosom her woes to him. she had half risen to attract his attention when she saw him turn back and make way for a companion, who was cautiously steering her huge feathered hat between the tea-tables. the woman was of the vulgarest type; everything about her was cheap and gaudy. but moffatt was obviously elated: he stood aside with a flourish to usher her in, and as he followed he shot out a pink shirt-cuff with jewelled links, and gave his moustache a gallant twist. undine felt an unreasoning irritation: she was vexed with him both for not being alone and for being so vulgarly accompanied. as the couple seated themselves she caught moffatt's glance and saw him redden to the edge of his white forehead; but he elaborately avoided her eye--he evidently wanted her to see him do it--and proceeded to minister to his companion's wants with an air of experienced gallantry. the incident, trifling as it was, filled up the measure of undine's bitterness. she thought moffatt pitiably ridiculous, and she hated him for showing himself in such a light at that particular moment. her mind turned back to her own grievance, and she was just saying to herself that nothing on earth should prevent her letting the princess know what she thought of her, when the lady in question at last appeared. she came hurriedly forward and behind her undine perceived the figure of a slight quietly dressed man, as to whom her immediate impression was that he made every one else in the room look as common as moffatt. an instant later the colour had flown to her face and her hand was in raymond de chelles, while the princess, murmuring: "cimiez's such a long way off; but you will forgive me?" looked into her eyes with a smile that added: "see how i pay for what i get!" her first glance showed undine how glad raymond de chelles was to see her. since their last meeting his admiration for her seemed not only to have increased but to have acquired a different character. undine, at an earlier stage in her career, might not have known exactly what the difference signified; but it was as clear to her now as if the princess had said--what her beaming eyes seemed, in fact, to convey--"i'm only too glad to do my cousin the same kind of turn you're doing me." but undine's increased experience, if it had made her more vigilant, had also given her a clearer measure of her power. she saw at once that chelles, in seeking to meet her again, was not in quest of a mere passing adventure. he was evidently deeply drawn to her, and her present situation, if it made it natural to regard her as more accessible, had not altered the nature of his feeling. she saw and weighed all this in the first five minutes during which, over tea and muffins, the princess descanted on her luck in happening to run across her cousin, and chelles, his enchanted eyes on undine, expressed his sense of his good fortune. he was staying, it appeared, with friends at beaulieu, and had run over to nice that afternoon by the merest chance: he added that, having just learned of his aunt's presence in the neighbourhood, he had already planned to present his homage to her. "oh, don't come to us--we're too dull!" the princess exclaimed. "let us run over occasionally and call on you: we're dying for a pretext, aren't we?" she added, smiling at undine. the latter smiled back vaguely, and looked across the room. moffatt, looking flushed and foolish, was just pushing back his chair. to carry off his embarrassment he put an additional touch of importance; and as he swaggered out behind his companion, undine said to herself, with a shiver: "if he'd been alone they would have found me taking tea with him." undine, during the ensuing weeks, returned several times to nice with the princess; but, to the latter's surprise, she absolutely refused to have raymond de chelles included in their luncheon-parties, or even apprised in advance of their expeditions. the princess, always impatient of unnecessary dissimulation, had not attempted to keep up the feint of the interesting invalid at cimiez. she confessed to undine that she was drawn to nice by the presence there of the person without whom, for the moment, she found life intolerable, and whom she could not well receive under the same roof with her little girls and her mother. she appealed to undine's sisterly heart to feel for her in her difficulty, and implied that--as her conduct had already proved--she would always be ready to render her friend a like service. it was at this point that undine checked her by a decided word. "i understand your position, and i'm very sorry for you, of course," she began (the princess stared at the "sorry"). "your secret's perfectly safe with me, and i'll do anything i can for you...but if i go to nice with you again you must promise not to ask your cousin to meet us." the princess's face expressed the most genuine astonishment. "oh, my dear, do forgive me if i've been stupid! he admires you so tremendously; and i thought--" "you'll do as i ask, please--won't you?" undine went on, ignoring the interruption and looking straight at her under level brows; and the princess, with a shrug, merely murmured: "what a pity! i fancied you liked him." xxix the early spring found undine once more in paris. she had every reason to be satisfied with the result of the course she had pursued since she had pronounced her ultimatum on the subject of raymond de chelles. she had continued to remain on the best of terms with the princess, to rise in the estimation of the old duchess, and to measure the rapidity of her ascent in the upward gaze of madame de trezac; and she had given chelles to understand that, if he wished to renew their acquaintance, he must do so in the shelter of his venerable aunt's protection. to the princess she was careful to make her attitude equally clear. "i like your cousin very much--he's delightful, and if i'm in paris this spring i hope i shall see a great deal of him. but i know how easy it is for a woman in my position to get talked about--and i have my little boy to consider." nevertheless, whenever chelles came over from beaulieu to spend a day with his aunt and cousin--an excursion he not infrequently repeated--undine was at no pains to conceal her pleasure. nor was there anything calculated in her attitude. chelles seemed to her more charming than ever, and the warmth of his wooing was in flattering contrast to the cool reserve of his manners. at last she felt herself alive and young again, and it became a joy to look in her glass and to try on her new hats and dresses... the only menace ahead was the usual one of the want of money. while she had travelled with her parents she had been at relatively small expense, and since their return to america mr. spragg had sent her allowance regularly; yet almost all the money she had received for the pearls was already gone, and she knew her paris season would be far more expensive than the quiet weeks on the riviera. meanwhile the sense of reviving popularity, and the charm of chelles' devotion, had almost effaced the ugly memories of failure, and refurbished that image of herself in other minds which was her only notion of self-seeing. under the guidance of madame de trezac she had found a prettily furnished apartment in a not too inaccessible quarter, and in its light bright drawing-room she sat one june afternoon listening, with all the forbearance of which she was capable, to the counsels of her newly-acquired guide. "everything but marriage--" madame de trezac was repeating, her long head slightly tilted, her features wearing the rapt look of an adept reciting a hallowed formula. raymond de chelles had not been mentioned by either of the ladies, and the former miss wincher was merely imparting to her young friend one of the fundamental dogmas of her social creed; but undine was conscious that the air between them vibrated with an unspoken name. she made no immediate answer, but her glance, passing by madame de trezac's dull countenance, sought her own reflection in the mirror behind her visitor's chair. a beam of spring sunlight touched the living masses of her hair and made the face beneath as radiant as a girl's. undine smiled faintly at the promise her own eyes gave her, and then turned them back to her friend. "what can such women know about anything?" she thought compassionately. "there's everything against it," madame de trezac continued in a tone of patient exposition. she seemed to be doing her best to make the matter clear. "in the first place, between people in society a religious marriage is necessary; and, since the church doesn't recognize divorce, that's obviously out of the question. in france, a man of position who goes through the form of civil marriage with a divorced woman is simply ruining himself and her. they might much better--from her point of view as well as his--be 'friends,' as it's called over here: such arrangements are understood and allowed for. but when a frenchman marries he wants to marry as his people always have. he knows there are traditions he can't fight against--and in his heart he's glad there are." "oh, i know: they've so much religious feeling. i admire that in them: their religion's so beautiful." undine looked thoughtfully at her visitor. "i suppose even money--a great deal of money--wouldn't make the least bit of difference?" "none whatever, except to make matters worse," madame de trezac decisively rejoined. she returned undine's look with something of miss wincher's contemptuous authority. "but," she added, softening to a smile, "between ourselves--i can say it, since we're neither of us children--a woman with tact, who's not in a position to remarry, will find society extremely indulgent... provided, of course, she keeps up appearances..." undine turned to her with the frown of a startled diana. "we don't look at things that way out at apex," she said coldly; and the blood rose in madame de trezac's sallow cheek. "oh, my dear, it's so refreshing to hear you talk like that! personally, of course, i've never quite got used to the french view--" "i hope no american woman ever does," said undine. she had been in paris for about two months when this conversation took place, and in spite of her reviving self-confidence she was beginning to recognize the strength of the forces opposed to her. it had taken a long time to convince her that even money could not prevail against them; and, in the intervals of expressing her admiration for the catholic creed, she now had violent reactions of militant protestantism, during which she talked of the tyranny of rome and recalled school stories of immoral popes and persecuting jesuits. meanwhile her demeanour to chelles was that of the incorruptible but fearless american woman, who cannot even conceive of love outside of marriage, but is ready to give her devoted friendship to the man on whom, in happier circumstances, she might have bestowed her hand. this attitude was provocative of many scenes, during which her suitor's unfailing powers of expression--his gift of looking and saying all the desperate and devoted things a pretty woman likes to think she inspires--gave undine the thrilling sense of breathing the very air of french fiction. but she was aware that too prolonged tension of these cords usually ends in their snapping, and that chelles' patience was probably in inverse ratio to his ardour. when madame de trezac had left her these thoughts remained in her mind. she understood exactly what each of her new friends wanted of her. the princess, who was fond of her cousin, and had the french sense of family solidarity, would have liked to see chelles happy in what seemed to her the only imaginable way. madame de trezac would have liked to do what she could to second the princess's efforts in this or any other line; and even the old duchess--though piously desirous of seeing her favourite nephew married--would have thought it not only natural but inevitable that, while awaiting that happy event, he should try to induce an amiable young woman to mitigate the drawbacks of celibacy. meanwhile, they might one and all weary of her if chelles did; and a persistent rejection of his suit would probably imperil her scarcely-gained footing among his friends. all this was clear to her, yet it did not shake her resolve. she was determined to give up chelles unless he was willing to marry her; and the thought of her renunciation moved her to a kind of wistful melancholy. in this mood her mind reverted to a letter she had just received from her mother. mrs. spragg wrote more fully than usual, and the unwonted flow of her pen had been occasioned by an event for which she had long yearned. for months she had pined for a sight of her grandson, had tried to screw up her courage to write and ask permission to visit him, and, finally breaking through her sedentary habits, had begun to haunt the neighbourhood of washington square, with the result that one afternoon she had had the luck to meet the little boy coming out of the house with his nurse. she had spoken to him, and he had remembered her and called her "granny"; and the next day she had received a note from mrs. fairford saying that ralph would be glad to send paul to see her. mrs. spragg enlarged on the delights of the visit and the growing beauty and cleverness of her grandson. she described to undine exactly how paul was dressed, how he looked and what he said, and told her how he had examined everything in the room, and, finally coming upon his mother's photograph, had asked who the lady was; and, on being told, had wanted to know if she was a very long way off, and when granny thought she would come back. as undine re-read her mother's pages, she felt an unusual tightness in her throat and two tears rose to her eyes. it was dreadful that her little boy should be growing up far away from her, perhaps dressed in clothes she would have hated; and wicked and unnatural that when he saw her picture he should have to be told who she was. "if i could only meet some good man who would give me a home and be a father to him," she thought--and the tears overflowed and ran down. even as they fell, the door was thrown open to admit raymond de chelles, and the consciousness of the moisture still glistening on her cheeks perhaps strengthened her resolve to resist him, and thus made her more imperiously to be desired. certain it is that on that day her suitor first alluded to a possibility which madame de trezac had prudently refrained from suggesting, there fell upon undine's attentive ears the magic phrase "annulment of marriage." her alert intelligence immediately set to work in this new direction; but almost at the same moment she became aware of a subtle change of tone in the princess and her mother, a change reflected in the corresponding decline of madame de trezac's cordiality. undine, since her arrival in paris, had necessarily been less in the princess's company, but when they met she had found her as friendly as ever. it was manifestly not a failing of the princess's to forget past favours, and though increasingly absorbed by the demands of town life she treated her new friend with the same affectionate frankness, and undine was given frequent opportunities to enlarge her parisian acquaintance, not only in the princess's intimate circle but in the majestic drawing-rooms of the hotel de dordogne. now, however, there was a perceptible decline in these signs of hospitality, and undine, on calling one day on the duchess, noticed that her appearance sent a visible flutter of discomfort through the circle about her hostess's chair. two or three of the ladies present looked away from the new-comer and at each other, and several of them seemed spontaneously to encircle without approaching her, while another--grey-haired, elderly and slightly frightened--with an "adieu, ma bonne tante" to the duchess, was hastily aided in her retreat down the long line of old gilded rooms. the incident was too mute and rapid to have been noticeable had it not been followed by the duchess's resuming her conversation with the ladies nearest her as though undine had just gone out of the room instead of entering it. the sense of having been thus rendered invisible filled undine with a vehement desire to make herself seen, and an equally strong sense that all attempts to do so would be vain; and when, a few minutes later, she issued from the portals of the hotel de dordogne it was with the fixed resolve not to enter them again till she had had an explanation with the princess. she was spared the trouble of seeking one by the arrival, early the next morning, of madame de trezac, who, entering almost with the breakfast tray, mysteriously asked to be allowed to communicate something of importance. "you'll understand, i know, the princess's not coming herself--" madame de trezac began, sitting up very straight on the edge of the arm-chair over which undine's lace dressing-gown hung. "if there's anything she wants to say to me, i don't," undine answered, leaning back among her rosy pillows, and reflecting compassionately that the face opposite her was just the colour of the café au lait she was pouring out. "there are things that are...that might seem too pointed...if one said them one's self," madame de trezac continued. "our dear lili's so good-natured... she so hates to do anything unfriendly; but she naturally thinks first of her mother..." "her mother? what's the matter with her mother?" "i told her i knew you didn't understand. i was sure you'd take it in good part..." undine raised herself on her elbow. "what did lili tell you to tell me?" "oh, not to tell you...simply to ask if, just for the present, you'd mind avoiding the duchess's thursdays ...calling on any other day, that is." "any other day? she's not at home on any other. do you mean she doesn't want me to call?" "well--not while the marquise de chelles is in paris. she's the duchess's favourite niece--and of course they all hang together. that kind of family feeling is something you naturally don't--" undine had a sudden glimpse of hidden intricacies. "that was raymond de chelles' mother i saw there yesterday? the one they hurried out when i came in?" "it seems she was very much upset. she somehow heard your name." "why shouldn't she have heard my name? and why in the world should it upset her?" madame de trezac heaved a hesitating sigh. "isn't it better to be frank? she thinks she has reason to feel badly--they all do." "to feel badly? because her son wants to marry me?" "of course they know that's impossible." madame de trezac smiled compassionately. "but they're afraid of your spoiling his other chances." undine paused a moment before answering, "it won't be impossible when my marriage is annulled," she said. the effect of this statement was less electrifying than she had hoped. her visitor simply broke into a laugh. "my dear child! your marriage annulled? who can have put such a mad idea into your head?" undine's gaze followed the pattern she was tracing with a lustrous nail on her embroidered bedspread. "raymond himself," she let fall. this time there was no mistaking the effect she produced. madame de trezac, with a murmured "oh," sat gazing before her as if she had lost the thread of her argument; and it was only after a considerable interval that she recovered it sufficiently to exclaim: "they'll never hear of it--absolutely never!" "but they can't prevent it, can they?" "they can prevent its being of any use to you." "i see," undine pensively assented. she knew the tone she had taken was virtually a declaration of war; but she was in a mood when the act of defiance, apart from its strategic value, was a satisfaction in itself. moreover, if she could not gain her end without a fight it was better that the battle should be engaged while raymond's ardour was at its height. to provoke immediate hostilities she sent for him the same afternoon, and related, quietly and without comment, the incident of her visit to the duchess, and the mission with which madame de trezac had been charged. in the circumstances, she went on to explain, it was manifestly impossible that she should continue to receive his visits; and she met his wrathful comments on his relatives by the gently but firmly expressed resolve not to be the cause of any disagreement between himself and his family. xxx a few days after her decisive conversation with raymond de chelles, undine, emerging from the doors of the nouveau luxe, where she had been to call on the newly-arrived mrs. homer branney, once more found herself face to face with elmer moffatt. this time there was no mistaking his eagerness to be recognized. he stopped short as they met, and she read such pleasure in his eyes that she too stopped, holding out her hand. "i'm glad you're going to speak to me," she said, and moffatt reddened at the allusion. "well, i very nearly didn't. i didn't know you. you look about as old as you did when i first landed at apex--remember?" he turned back and began to walk at her side in the direction of the champs elysees. "say--this is all right!" he exclaimed; and she saw that his glance had left her and was ranging across the wide silvery square ahead of them to the congregated domes and spires beyond the river. "do you like paris?" she asked, wondering what theatres he had been to. "it beats everything." he seemed to be breathing in deeply the impression of fountains, sculpture, leafy' avenues and long-drawn architectural distances fading into the afternoon haze. "i suppose you've been to that old church over there?" he went on, his gold-topped stick pointing toward the towers of notre dame. "oh, of course; when i used to sightsee. have you never been to paris before?" "no, this is my first look-round. i came across in march." "in march?" she echoed inattentively. it never occurred to her that other people's lives went on when they were out of her range of vision, and she tried in vain to remember what she had last heard of moffatt. "wasn't that a bad time to leave wall street?" "well, so-so. fact is, i was played out: needed a change." nothing in his robust mien confirmed the statement, and he did not seem inclined to develop it. "i presume you're settled here now?" he went on. "i saw by the papers--" "yes," she interrupted; adding, after a moment: "it was all a mistake from the first." "well, i never thought he was your form," said moffatt. his eyes had come back to her, and the look in them struck her as something she might use to her advantage; but the next moment he had glanced away with a furrowed brow, and she felt she had not wholly fixed his attention. "i live at the other end of paris. why not come back and have tea with me?" she suggested, half moved by a desire to know more of his affairs, and half by the thought that a talk with him might help to shed some light on hers. in the open taxi-cab he seemed to recover his sense of well-being, and leaned back, his hands on the knob of his stick, with the air of a man pleasantly aware of his privileges. "this paris is a thundering good place," he repeated once or twice as they rolled on through the crush and glitter of the afternoon; and when they had descended at undine's door, and he stood in her drawing-room, and looked out on the horse-chestnut trees rounding their green domes under the balcony, his satisfaction culminated in the comment: "i guess this lays out west end avenue!" his eyes met undine's with their old twinkle, and their expression encouraged her to murmur: "of course there are times when i'm very lonely." she sat down behind the tea-table, and he stood at a little distance, watching her pull off her gloves with a queer comic twitch of his elastic mouth. "well, i guess it's only when you want to be," he said, grasping a lyre-backed chair by its gilt cords, and sitting down astride of it, his light grey trousers stretching too tightly over his plump thighs. undine was perfectly aware that he was a vulgar over-dressed man, with a red crease of fat above his collar and an impudent swaggering eye; yet she liked to see him there, and was conscious that he stirred the fibres of a self she had forgotten but had not ceased to understand. she had fancied her avowal of loneliness might call forth some sentimental phrase; but though moffatt was clearly pleased to be with her she saw that she was not the centre of his thoughts, and the discovery irritated her. "i don't suppose you've known what it is to be lonely since you've been in europe?" she continued as she held out his tea-cup. "oh," he said jocosely, "i don't always go round with a guide"; and she rejoined on the same note: "then perhaps i shall see something of you." "why, there's nothing would suit me better; but the fact is, i'm probably sailing next week." "oh, are you? i'm sorry." there was nothing feigned in her regret. "anything i can do for you across the pond?" she hesitated. "there's something you can do for me right off." he looked at her more attentively, as if his practised eve had passed through the surface of her beauty to what might be going on behind it. "do you want my blessing again?" he asked with sudden irony. undine opened her eyes with a trustful look. "yes--i do." "well--i'll be damned!" said moffatt gaily. "you've always been so awfully nice," she began; and he leaned back, grasping both sides of the chair-back, and shaking it a little with his laugh. he kept the same attitude while she proceeded to unfold her case, listening to her with the air of sober concentration that his frivolous face took on at any serious demand on his attention. when she had ended he kept the same look during an interval of silent pondering. "is it the fellow who was over at nice with you that day?" she looked at him with surprise. "how did you know?" "why, i liked his looks," said moffatt simply. he got up and strolled toward the window. on the way he stopped before a table covered with showy trifles, and after looking at them for a moment singled out a dim old brown and golden book which chelles had given her. he examined it lingeringly, as though it touched the spring of some choked-up sensibility for which he had no language. "say--" he began: it was the usual prelude to his enthusiasms; but he laid the book down and turned back. "then you think if you had the cash you could fix it up all right with the pope?" her heart began to beat. she remembered that he had once put a job in ralph's way, and had let her understand that he had done it partly for her sake. "well," he continued, relapsing into hyperbole, "i wish i could send the old gentleman my cheque to-morrow morning: but the fact is i'm high and dry." he looked at her with a sudden odd intensity. "if i wasn't, i dunno but what--" the phrase was lost in his familiar whistle. "that's an awfully fetching way you do your hair," he said. it was a disappointment to undine to hear that his affairs were not prospering, for she knew that in his world "pull" and solvency were closely related, and that such support as she had hoped he might give her would be contingent on his own situation. but she had again a fleeting sense of his mysterious power of accomplishing things in the teeth of adversity; and she answered: "what i want is your advice." he turned away and wandered across the room, his hands in his pockets. on her ornate writing desk he saw a photograph of paul, bright-curled and sturdy-legged, in a manly reefer, and bent over it with a murmur of approval. "say--what a fellow! got him with you?" undine coloured. "no--" she began; and seeing his look of surprise, she embarked on her usual explanation. "i can't tell you how i miss him," she ended, with a ring of truth that carried conviction to her own ears if not to moffatt's. "why don't you get him back, then?" "why, i--" moffatt had picked up the frame and was looking at the photograph more closely. "pants!" he chuckled. "i declare!" he turned back to undine. "who does he belong to, anyhow?" "belong to?" "who got him when you were divorced? did you?" "oh, i got everything," she said, her instinct of self-defense on the alert. "so i thought." he stood before her, stoutly planted on his short legs, and speaking with an aggressive energy. "well, i know what i'd do if he was mine." "if he was yours?" "and you tried to get him away from me. fight you to a finish! if it cost me down to my last dollar i would." the conversation seemed to be wandering from the point, and she answered, with a touch of impatience: "it wouldn't cost you anything like that. i haven't got a dollar to fight back with." "well, you ain't got to fight. your decree gave him to you, didn't it? why don't you send right over and get him? that's what i'd do if i was you." undine looked up. "but i'm awfully poor; i can't afford to have him here." "you couldn't, up to now; but now you're going to get married. you're going to be able to give him a home and a father's care--and the foreign languages. that's what i'd say if i was you...his father takes considerable stock in him, don't he?" she coloured, a denial on her lips; but she could not shape it. "we're both awfully fond of him, of course... his father'd never give him up!" "just so." moffatt's face had grown as sharp as glass. "you've got the marvells running. all you've got to do's to sit tight and wait for their cheque." he dropped back to his equestrian seat on the lyre-backed chair. undine stood up and moved uneasily toward the window. she seemed to see her little boy as though he were in the room with her; she did not understand how she could have lived so long without him...she stood for a long time without speaking, feeling behind her the concentrated irony of moffatt's gaze. "you couldn't lend me the money--manage to borrow it for me, i mean?" she finally turned back to ask. he laughed. "if i could manage to borrow any money at this particular minute--well, i'd have to lend every dollar of it to elmer moffatt, esquire. i'm stone-broke, if you want to know. and wanted for an investigation too. that's why i'm over here improving my mind." "why, i thought you were going home next week?" he grinned. "i am, because i've found out there's a party wants me to stay away worse than the courts want me back. making the trip just for my private satisfaction--there won't be any money in it, i'm afraid." leaden disappointment descended on undine. she had felt almost sure of moffatt's helping her, and for an instant she wondered if some long-smouldering jealousy had flamed up under its cold cinders. but another look at his face denied her this solace; and his evident indifference was the last blow to her pride. the twinge it gave her prompted her to ask: "don't you ever mean to get married?" moffatt gave her a quick look. "why, i shouldn't wonder--one of these days. millionaires always collect something; but i've got to collect my millions first." he spoke coolly and half-humorously, and before he had ended she had lost all interest in his reply. he seemed aware of the fact, for he stood up and held out his hand. "well, so long, mrs. marvell. it's been uncommonly pleasant to see you; and you'd better think over what i've said." she laid her hand sadly in his. "you've never had a child," she replied. xxxi nearly two years had passed since ralph marvell, waking from his long sleep in the hot summer light of washington square, had found that the face of life was changed for him. in the interval he had gradually adapted himself to the new order of things; but the months of adaptation had been a time of such darkness and confusion that, from the vantage-ground of his recovered lucidity, he could not yet distinguish the stages by which he had worked his way out; and even now his footing was not secure. his first effort had been to readjust his values--to take an inventory of them, and reclassify them, so that one at least might be made to appear as important as those he had lost; otherwise there could be no reason why he should go on living. he applied himself doggedly to this attempt; but whenever he thought he had found a reason that his mind could rest in, it gave way under him, and the old struggle for a foothold began again. his two objects in life were his boy and his book. the boy was incomparably the stronger argument, yet the less serviceable in filling the void. ralph felt his son all the while, and all through his other feelings; but he could not think about him actively and continuously, could not forever exercise his eager empty dissatisfied mind on the relatively simple problem of clothing, educating and amusing a little boy of six. yet paul's existence was the all-sufficient reason for his own; and he turned again, with a kind of cold fervour, to his abandoned literary dream. material needs obliged him to go on with his regular business; but, the day's work over, he was possessed of a leisure as bare and as blank as an unfurnished house, yet that was at least his own to furnish as he pleased. meanwhile he was beginning to show a presentable face to the world, and to be once more treated like a man in whose case no one is particularly interested. his men friends ceased to say: "hallo, old chap, i never saw you looking fitter!" and elderly ladies no longer told him they were sure he kept too much to himself, and urged him to drop in any afternoon for a quiet talk. people left him to his sorrow as a man is left to an incurable habit, an unfortunate tie: they ignored it, or looked over its head if they happened to catch a glimpse of it at his elbow. these glimpses were given to them more and more rarely. the smothered springs of life were bubbling up in ralph, and there were days when he was glad to wake and see the sun in his window, and when he began to plan his book, and to fancy that the planning really interested him. he could even maintain the delusion for several days--for intervals each time appreciably longer--before it shrivelled up again in a scorching blast of disenchantment. the worst of it was that he could never tell when these hot gusts of anguish would overtake him. they came sometimes just when he felt most secure, when he was saying to himself: "after all, things are really worth while--" sometimes even when he was sitting with clare van degen, listening to her voice, watching her hands, and turning over in his mind the opening chapters of his book. "you ought to write"; they had one and all said it to him from the first; and he fancied he might have begun sooner if he had not been urged on by their watchful fondness. everybody wanted him to write--everybody had decided that he ought to, that he would, that he must be persuaded to; and the incessant imperceptible pressure of encouragement--the assumption of those about him that because it would be good for him to write he must naturally be able to--acted on his restive nerves as a stronger deterrent than disapproval. even clare had fallen into the same mistake; and one day, as he sat talking with her on the verandah of laura fairford's house on the sound--where they now most frequently met--ralph had half-impatiently rejoined: "oh, if you think it's literature i need--!" instantly he had seen her face change, and the speaking hands tremble on her knee. but she achieved the feat of not answering him, or turning her steady eyes from the dancing mid-summer water at the foot of laura's lawn. ralph leaned a little nearer, and for an instant his hand imagined the flutter of hers. but instead of clasping it he drew back, and rising from his chair wandered away to the other end of the verandah...no, he didn't feel as clare felt. if he loved her--as he sometimes thought he did--it was not in the same way. he had a great tenderness for her, he was more nearly happy with her than with any one else; he liked to sit and talk with her, and watch her face and her hands, and he wished there were some way--some different way--of letting her know it; but he could not conceive that tenderness and desire could ever again be one for him: such a notion as that seemed part of the monstrous sentimental muddle on which his life had gone aground. "i shall write--of course i shall write some day," he said, turning back to his seat. "i've had a novel in the back of my head for years; and now's the time to pull it out." he hardly knew what he was saying; but before the end of the sentence he saw that clare had understood what he meant to convey, and henceforth he felt committed to letting her talk to him as much as she pleased about his book. he himself, in consequence, took to thinking about it more consecutively; and just as his friends ceased to urge him to write, he sat down in earnest to begin. the vision that had come to him had no likeness to any of his earlier imaginings. two or three subjects had haunted him, pleading for expression, during the first years of his marriage; but these now seemed either too lyrical or too tragic. he no longer saw life on the heroic scale: he wanted to do something in which men should look no bigger than the insects they were. he contrived in the course of time to reduce one of his old subjects to these dimensions, and after nights of brooding he made a dash at it, and wrote an opening chapter that struck him as not too bad. in the exhilaration of this first attempt he spent some pleasant evenings revising and polishing his work; and gradually a feeling of authority and importance developed in him. in the morning, when he woke, instead of his habitual sense of lassitude, he felt an eagerness to be up and doing, and a conviction that his individual task was a necessary part of the world's machinery. he kept his secret with the beginner's deadly fear of losing his hold on his half-real creations if he let in any outer light on them; but he went about with a more assured step, shrank less from meeting his friends, and even began to dine out again, and to laugh at some of the jokes he heard. laura fairford, to get paul away from town, had gone early to the country; and ralph, who went down to her every saturday, usually found clare van degen there. since his divorce he had never entered his cousin's pinnacled palace; and clare had never asked him why he stayed away. this mutual silence had been their sole allusion to van degen's share in the catastrophe, though ralph had spoken frankly of its other aspects. they talked, however, most often of impersonal subjects--books, pictures, plays, or whatever the world that interested them was doing--and she showed no desire to draw him back to his own affairs. she was again staying late in town--to have a pretext, as he guessed, for coming down on sundays to the fairfords'--and they often made the trip together in her motor; but he had not yet spoken to her of having begun his book. one may evening, however, as they sat alone in the verandah, he suddenly told her that he was writing. as he spoke his heart beat like a boy's; but once the words were out they gave him a feeling of self-confidence, and he began to sketch his plan, and then to go into its details. clare listened devoutly, her eyes burning on him through the dusk like the stars deepening above the garden; and when she got up to go in he followed her with a new sense of reassurance. the dinner that evening was unusually pleasant. charles bowen, just back from his usual spring travels, had come straight down to his friends from the steamer; and the fund of impressions he brought with him gave ralph a desire to be up and wandering. and why not--when the book was done? he smiled across the table at clare. "next summer you'll have to charter a yacht, and take us all off to the aegean. we can't have charles condescending to us about the out-of-the-way places he's been seeing." was it really he who was speaking, and his cousin who was sending him back her dusky smile? well--why not, again? the seasons renewed themselves, and he too was putting out a new growth. "my book--my book--my book," kept repeating itself under all his thoughts, as undine's name had once perpetually murmured there. that night as he went up to bed he said to himself that he was actually ceasing to think about his wife... as he passed laura's door she called him in, and put her arms about him. "you look so well, dear!" "but why shouldn't i?" he answered gaily, as if ridiculing the fancy that he had ever looked otherwise. paul was sleeping behind the next door, and the sense of the boy's nearness gave him a warmer glow. his little world was rounding itself out again, and once more he felt safe and at peace in its circle. his sister looked as if she had something more to say; but she merely kissed him good night, and he went up whistling to his room. the next morning he was to take a walk with clare, and while he lounged about the drawing-room, waiting for her to come down, a servant came in with the sunday papers. ralph picked one up, and was absently unfolding it when his eye fell on his own name: a sight he had been spared since the last echoes of his divorce had subsided. his impulse was to fling the paper down, to hurl it as far from him as he could; but a grim fascination tightened his hold and drew his eyes back to the hated head-line. new york beauty weds french nobleman mrs. undine marvell confident pope will annul previous marriage mrs. marvell talks about her case there it was before him in all its long-drawn horror--an "interview"--an "interview" of undine's about her coming marriage! ah, she talked about her case indeed! her confidences filled the greater part of a column, and the only detail she seemed to have omitted was the name of her future husband, who was referred to by herself as "my fiancé" and by the interviewer as "the count" or "a prominent scion of the french nobility." ralph heard laura's step behind him. he threw the paper aside and their eyes met. "is this what you wanted to tell me last night?" "last night?--is it in the papers?" "who told you? bowen? what else has he heard?" "oh, ralph, what does it matter--what can it matter?" "who's the man? did he tell you that?" ralph insisted. he saw her growing agitation. "why can't you answer? is it any one i know?" "he was told in paris it was his friend raymond de chelles." ralph laughed, and his laugh sounded in his own ears like an echo of the dreary mirth with which he had filled mr. spragg's office the day he had learned that undine intended to divorce him. but now his wrath was seasoned with a wholesome irony. the fact of his wife's having reached another stage in her ascent fell into its place as a part of the huge human buffoonery. "besides," laura went on, "it's all perfect nonsense, of course. how in the world can she have her marriage annulled?" ralph pondered: this put the matter in another light. "with a great deal of money i suppose she might." "well, she certainly won't get that from chelles. he's far from rich, charles tells me." laura waited, watching him, before she risked: "that's what convinces me she wouldn't have him if she could." ralph shrugged. "there may be other inducements. but she won't be able to manage it." he heard himself speaking quite collectedly. had undine at last lost her power of wounding him? clare came in, dressed for their walk, and under laura's anxious eyes he picked up the newspaper and held it out with a careless: "look at this!" his cousin's glance flew down the column, and he saw the tremor of her lashes as she read. then she lifted her head. "but you'll be free!" her face was as vivid as a flower. "free? i'm free now, as far as that goes!" "oh, but it will go so much farther when she has another name--when she's a different person altogether! then you'll really have paul to yourself." "paul?" laura intervened with a nervous laugh. "but there's never been the least doubt about his having paul!" they heard the boy's laughter on the lawn, and she went out to join him. ralph was still looking at his cousin. "you're glad, then?" came from him involuntarily; and she startled him by bursting into tears. he bent over and kissed her on the cheek. xxxii ralph, as the days passed, felt that clare was right: if undine married again he would possess himself more completely, be more definitely rid of his past. and he did not doubt that she would gain her end: he knew her violent desires and her cold tenacity. if she had failed to capture van degen it was probably because she lacked experience of that particular type of man, of his huge immediate wants and feeble vacillating purposes; most of all, because she had not yet measured the strength of the social considerations that restrained him. it was a mistake she was not likely to repeat, and her failure had probably been a useful preliminary to success. it was a long time since ralph had allowed himself to think of her, and as he did so the overwhelming fact of her beauty became present to him again, no longer as an element of his being but as a power dispassionately estimated. he said to himself: "any man who can feel at all will feel it as i did"; and the conviction grew in him that raymond de chelles, of whom he had formed an idea through bowen's talk, was not the man to give her up, even if she failed to obtain the release his religion exacted. meanwhile ralph was gradually beginning to feel himself freer and lighter. undine's act, by cutting the last link between them, seemed to have given him back to himself; and the mere fact that he could consider his case in all its bearings, impartially and ironically, showed him the distance he had travelled, the extent to which he had renewed himself. he had been moved, too, by clare's cry of joy at his release. though the nature of his feeling for her had not changed he was aware of a new quality in their friendship. when he went back to his book again his sense of power had lost its asperity, and the spectacle of life seemed less like a witless dangling of limp dolls. he was well on in his second chapter now. this lightness of mood was still on him when, returning one afternoon to washington square, full of projects for a long evening's work, he found his mother awaiting him with a strange face. he followed her into the drawing-room, and she explained that there had been a telephone message she didn't understand--something perfectly crazy about paul--of course it was all a mistake... ralph's first thought was of an accident, and his heart contracted. "did laura telephone?" "no, no; not laura. it seemed to be a message from mrs. spragg: something about sending some one here to fetch him--a queer name like heeny--to fetch him to a steamer on saturday. i was to be sure to have his things packed...but of course it's a misunderstanding..." she gave an uncertain laugh, and looked up at ralph as though entreating him to return the reassurance she had given him. "of course, of course," he echoed. he made his mother repeat her statement; but the unforeseen always flurried her, and she was confused and inaccurate. she didn't actually know who had telephoned: the voice hadn't sounded like mrs. spragg's... a woman's voice; yes--oh, not a lady's! and there was certainly something about a steamer...but he knew how the telephone bewildered her...and she was sure she was getting a little deaf. hadn't he better call up the malibran? of course it was all a mistake--but... well, perhaps he had better go there himself... as he reached the front door a letter clinked in the box, and he saw his name on an ordinary looking business envelope. he turned the door-handle, paused again, and stooped to take out the letter. it bore the address of the firm of lawyers who had represented undine in the divorce proceedings and as he tore open the envelope paul's name started out at him. mrs. marvell had followed him into the hall, and her cry broke the silence. "ralph--ralph--is it anything she's done?" "nothing--it's nothing." he stared at her. "what's the day of the week?" "wednesday. why, what--?" she suddenly seemed to understand. "she's not going to take him away from us?" ralph dropped into a chair, crumpling the letter in his hand. he had been in a dream, poor fool that he was--a dream about his child! he sat gazing at the type-written phrases that spun themselves out before him. "my client's circumstances now happily permitting... at last in a position to offer her son a home...long separation...a mother's feelings...every social and educational advantage"...and then, at the end, the poisoned dart that struck him speechless: "the courts having awarded her the sole custody..." the sole custody! but that meant that paul was hers, hers only, hers for always: that his father had no more claim on him than any casual stranger in the street! and he, ralph marvell, a sane man, young, able-bodied, in full possession of his wits, had assisted at the perpetration of this abominable wrong, had passively forfeited his right to the flesh of his body, the blood of his being! but it couldn't be--of course it couldn't be. the preposterousness of it proved that it wasn't true. there was a mistake somewhere; a mistake his own lawyer would instantly rectify. if a hammer hadn't been drumming in his head he could have recalled the terms of the decree--but for the moment all the details of the agonizing episode were lost in a blur of uncertainty. to escape his mother's silent anguish of interrogation he stood up and said: "i'll see mr. spragg--of course it's a mistake." but as he spoke he retravelled the hateful months during the divorce proceedings, remembering his incomprehensible lassitude, his acquiescence in his family's determination to ignore the whole episode, and his gradual lapse into the same state of apathy. he recalled all the old family catchwords, the full and elaborate vocabulary of evasion: "delicacy," "pride," "personal dignity," "preferring not to know about such things"; mrs. marvell's: "all i ask is that you won't mention the subject to your grandfather," mr. dagonet's: "spare your mother, ralph, whatever happens," and even laura's terrified: "of course, for paul's sake, there must be no scandal." for paul's sake! and it was because, for paul's sake, there must be no scandal, that he, paul's father, had tamely abstained from defending his rights and contesting his wife's charges, and had thus handed the child over to her keeping! as his cab whirled him up fifth avenue, ralph's whole body throbbed with rage against the influences that had reduced him to such weakness. then, gradually, he saw that the weakness was innate in him. he had been eloquent enough, in his free youth, against the conventions of his class; yet when the moment came to show his contempt for them they had mysteriously mastered him, deflecting his course like some hidden hereditary failing. as he looked back it seemed as though even his great disaster had been conventionalized and sentimentalized by this inherited attitude: that the thoughts he had thought about it were only those of generations of dagonets, and that there had been nothing real and his own in his life but the foolish passion he had been trying so hard to think out of existence. halfway to the malibran he changed his direction, and drove to the house of the lawyer he had consulted at the time of his divorce. the lawyer had not yet come up town, and ralph had a half hour of bitter meditation before the sound of a latch-key brought him to his feet. the visit did not last long. his host, after an affable greeting, listened without surprise to what he had to say, and when he had ended reminded him with somewhat ironic precision that, at the time of the divorce, he had asked for neither advice nor information--had simply declared that he wanted to "turn his back on the whole business" (ralph recognized the phrase as one of his grandfather's), and, on hearing that in that case he had only to abstain from action, and was in no need of legal services, had gone away without farther enquiries. "you led me to infer you had your reasons--" the slighted counsellor concluded; and, in reply to ralph's breathless question, he subjoined, "why, you see, the case is closed, and i don't exactly know on what ground you can re-open it--unless, of course, you can bring evidence showing that the irregularity of the mother's life is such..." "she's going to marry again," ralph threw in. "indeed? well, that in itself can hardly be described as irregular. in fact, in certain circumstances it might be construed as an advantage to the child." "then i'm powerless?" "why--unless there's an ulterior motive--through which pressure might be brought to bear." "you mean that the first thing to do is to find out what she's up to?" "precisely. of course, if it should prove to be a genuine case of maternal feeling, i won't conceal from you that the outlook's bad. at most, you could probably arrange to see your boy at stated intervals." to see his boy at stated intervals! ralph wondered how a sane man could sit there, looking responsible and efficient, and talk such rubbish...as he got up to go the lawyer detained him to add: "of course there's no immediate cause for alarm. it will take time to enforce the provision of the dakota decree in new york, and till it's done your son can't be taken from you. but there's sure to be a lot of nasty talk in the papers; and you're bound to lose in the end." ralph thanked him and left. he sped northward to the malibran, where he learned that mr. and mrs. spragg were at dinner. he sent his name down to the subterranean restaurant, and mr. spragg presently appeared between the limp portieres of the "adam" writing-room. he had grown older and heavier, as if illness instead of health had put more flesh on his bones, and there were greyish tints in the hollows of his face. "what's this about paul?" ralph exclaimed. "my mother's had a message we can't make out." mr. spragg sat down, with the effect of immersing his spinal column in the depths of the arm-chair he selected. he crossed his legs, and swung one foot to and fro in its high wrinkled boot with elastic sides. "didn't you get a letter?" he asked. "from my--from undine's lawyers? yes." ralph held it out. "it's queer reading. she hasn't hitherto been very keen to have paul with her." mr. spragg, adjusting his glasses, read the letter slowly, restored it to the envelope and gave it back. "my daughter has intimated that she wishes these gentlemen to act for her. i haven't received any additional instructions from her," he said, with none of the curtness of tone that his stiff legal vocabulary implied. "but the first communication i received was from you--at least from mrs. spragg." mr. spragg drew his beard through his hand. "the ladies are apt to be a trifle hasty. i believe mrs. spragg had a letter yesterday instructing her to select a reliable escort for paul; and i suppose she thought--" "oh, this is all too preposterous!" ralph burst out, springing from his seat. "you don't for a moment imagine, do you--any of you--that i'm going to deliver up my son like a bale of goods in answer to any instructions in god's world?--oh, yes, i know--i let him go--i abandoned my right to him...but i didn't know what i was doing...i was sick with grief and misery. my people were awfully broken up over the whole business, and i wanted to spare them. i wanted, above all, to spare my boy when he grew up. if i'd contested the case you know what the result would have been. i let it go by default--i made no conditions all i wanted was to keep paul, and never to let him hear a word against his mother!" mr. spragg received this passionate appeal in a silence that implied not so much disdain or indifference, as the total inability to deal verbally with emotional crises. at length, he said, a slight unsteadiness in his usually calm tones: "i presume at the time it was optional with you to demand paul's custody." "oh, yes--it was optional," ralph sneered. mr. spragg looked at him compassionately. "i'm sorry you didn't do it," he said. xxxiii the upshot of ralph's visit was that mr. spragg, after considerable deliberation, agreed, pending farther negotiations between the opposing lawyers, to undertake that no attempt should be made to remove paul from his father's custody. nevertheless, he seemed to think it quite natural that undine, on the point of making a marriage which would put it in her power to give her child a suitable home, should assert her claim on him. it was more disconcerting to ralph to learn that mrs. spragg, for once departing from her attitude of passive impartiality, had eagerly abetted her daughter's move; he had somehow felt that undine's desertion of the child had established a kind of mute understanding between himself and his mother-in-law. "i thought mrs. spragg would know there's no earthly use trying to take paul from me," he said with a desperate awkwardness of entreaty, and mr. spragg startled him by replying: "i presume his grandma thinks he'll belong to her more if we keep him in the family." ralph, abruptly awakened from his dream of recovered peace, found himself confronted on every side by. indifference or hostility: it was as though the june fields in which his boy was playing had suddenly opened to engulph him. mrs. marvell's fears and tremors were almost harder to bear than the spraggs' antagonism; and for the next few days ralph wandered about miserably, dreading some fresh communication from undine's lawyers, yet racked by the strain of hearing nothing more from them. mr. spragg had agreed to cable his daughter asking her to await a letter before enforcing her demands; but on the fourth day after ralph's visit to the malibran a telephone message summoned him to his father-in-law's office. half an hour later their talk was over and he stood once more on the landing outside mr. spragg's door. undine's answer had come and paul's fate was sealed. his mother refused to give him up, refused to await the arrival of her lawyer's letter, and reiterated, in more peremptory language, her demand that the child should be sent immediately to paris in mrs. heeny's care. mr. spragg, in face of ralph's entreaties, remained pacific but remote. it was evident that, though he had no wish to quarrel with ralph, he saw no reason for resisting undine. "i guess she's got the law on her side," he said; and in response to ralph's passionate remonstrances he added fatalistically: "i presume you'll have to leave the matter to my daughter." ralph had gone to the office resolved to control his temper and keep on the watch for any shred of information he might glean; but it soon became clear that mr. spragg knew as little as himself of undine's projects, or of the stage her plans had reached. all she had apparently vouchsafed her parent was the statement that she intended to re-marry, and the command to send paul over; and ralph reflected that his own betrothal to her had probably been announced to mr. spragg in the same curt fashion. the thought brought back an overwhelming sense of the past. one by one the details of that incredible moment revived, and he felt in his veins the glow of rapture with which he had first approached the dingy threshold he was now leaving. there came back to him with peculiar vividness the memory of his rushing up to mr. spragg's office to consult him about a necklace for undine. ralph recalled the incident because his eager appeal for advice had been received by mr. spragg with the very phrase he had just used: "i presume you'll have to leave the matter to my daughter." ralph saw him slouching in his chair, swung sideways from the untidy desk, his legs stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his jaws engaged on the phantom tooth-pick; and, in a corner of the office, the figure of a middle-sized red-faced young man who seemed to have been interrupted in the act of saying something disagreeable. "why, it must have been then that i first saw moffatt," ralph reflected; and the thought suggested the memory of other, subsequent meetings in the same building, and of frequent ascents to moffatt's office during the ardent weeks of their mysterious and remunerative "deal." ralph wondered if moffatt's office were still in the ararat; and on the way out he paused before the black tablet affixed to the wall of the vestibule and sought and found the name in its familiar place. the next moment he was again absorbed in his own cares. now that he had learned the imminence of paul's danger, and the futility of pleading for delay, a thousand fantastic projects were contending in his head. to get the boy away--that seemed the first thing to do: to put him out of reach, and then invoke the law, get the case re-opened, and carry the fight from court to court till his rights should be recognized. it would cost a lot of money--well, the money would have to be found. the first step was to secure the boy's temporary safety; after that, the question of ways and means would have to be considered...had there ever been a time, ralph wondered, when that question hadn't been at the root of all the others? he had promised to let clare van degen know the result of his visit, and half an hour later he was in her drawing-room. it was the first time he had entered it since his divorce; but van degen was tarpon-fishing in california--and besides, he had to see clare. his one relief was in talking to her, in feverishly turning over with her every possibility of delay and obstruction; and he marvelled at the intelligence and energy she brought to the discussion of these questions. it was as if she had never before felt strongly enough about anything to put her heart or her brains into it; but now everything in her was at work for him. she listened intently to what he told her; then she said: "you tell me it will cost a great deal; but why take it to the courts at all? why not give the money to undine instead of to your lawyers?" ralph looked at her in surprise, and she continued: "why do you suppose she's suddenly made up her mind she must have paul?" "that's comprehensible enough to any one who knows her. she wants him because he'll give her the appearance of respectability. having him with her will prove, as no mere assertions can, that all the rights are on her side and the 'wrongs' on mine." clare considered. "yes; that's the obvious answer. but shall i tell you what i think, my dear? you and i are both completely out-of-date. i don't believe undine cares a straw for 'the appearance of respectability.' what she wants is the money for her annulment." ralph uttered an incredulous exclamation. "but don't you see?" she hurried on. "it's her only hope--her last chance. she's much too clever to burden herself with the child merely to annoy you. what she wants is to make you buy him back from her." she stood up and came to him with outstretched hands. "perhaps i can be of use to you at last!" "you?" he summoned up a haggard smile. "as if you weren't always--letting me load you with all my bothers!" "oh, if only i've hit on the way out of this one! then there wouldn't be any others left!" her eyes followed him intently as he turned away to the window and stood staring down at the sultry prospect of fifth avenue. as he turned over her conjecture its probability became more and more apparent. it put into logical relation all the incoherencies of undine's recent conduct, completed and defined her anew as if a sharp line had been drawn about her fading image. "if it's that, i shall soon know," he said, turning back into the room. his course had instantly become plain. he had only to resist and undine would have to show her hand. simultaneously with this thought there sprang up in his mind the remembrance of the autumn afternoon in paris when he had come home and found her, among her half-packed finery, desperately bewailing her coming motherhood. clare's touch was on his arm. "if i'm right--you will let me help?" he laid his hand on hers without speaking, and she went on: "it will take a lot of money: all these law-suits do. besides, she'd be ashamed to sell him cheap. you must be ready to give her anything she wants. and i've got a lot saved up--money of my own, i mean..." "your own?" as he looked at her the rare blush rose under her brown skin. "my very own. why shouldn't you believe me? i've been hoarding up my scrap of an income for years, thinking that some day i'd find i couldn't stand this any longer..." her gesture embraced their sumptuous setting. "but now i know i shall never budge. there are the children; and besides, things are easier for me since--" she paused, embarrassed. "yes, yes; i know." he felt like completing her phrase: "since my wife has furnished you with the means of putting pressure on your husband--" but he simply repeated: "i know." "and you will let me help?" "oh, we must get at the facts first." he caught her hands in his with sudden energy. "as you say, when paul's safe there won't be another bother left!" xxxiv the means of raising the requisite amount of money became, during the next few weeks, the anxious theme of all ralph's thoughts. his lawyers' enquiries soon brought the confirmation of clare's surmise, and it became clear that--for reasons swathed in all the ingenuities of legal verbiage--undine might, in return for a substantial consideration, be prevailed on to admit that it was for her son's advantage to remain with his father. the day this admission was communicated to ralph his first impulse was to carry the news to his cousin. his mood was one of pure exaltation; he seemed to be hugging his boy to him as he walked. paul and he were to belong to each other forever: no mysterious threat of separation could ever menace them again! he had the blissful sense of relief that the child himself might have had on waking out of a frightened dream and finding the jolly daylight in his room. clare at once renewed her entreaty to be allowed to aid in ransoming her little cousin, but ralph tried to put her off by explaining that he meant to "look about." "look where? in the dagonet coffers? oh, ralph, what's the use of pretending? tell me what you've got to give her." it was amazing how his cousin suddenly dominated him. but as yet he couldn't go into the details of the bargain. that the reckoning between himself and undine should be settled in dollars and cents seemed the last bitterest satire on his dreams: he felt himself miserably diminished by the smallness of what had filled his world. nevertheless, the looking about had to be done; and a day came when he found himself once more at the door of elmer moffatt's office. his thoughts had been drawn back to moffatt by the insistence with which the latter's name had lately been put forward by the press in connection with a revival of the ararat investigation. moffatt, it appeared, had been regarded as one of the most valuable witnesses for the state; his return from europe had been anxiously awaited, his unreadiness to testify caustically criticized; then at last he had arrived, had gone on to washington--and had apparently had nothing to tell. ralph was too deep in his own troubles to waste any wonder over this anticlimax; but the frequent appearance of moffatt's name in the morning papers acted as an unconscious suggestion. besides, to whom else could he look for help? the sum his wife demanded could be acquired only by "a quick turn," and the fact that ralph had once rendered the same kind of service to moffatt made it natural to appeal to him now. the market, moreover, happened to be booming, and it seemed not unlikely that so experienced a speculator might have a "good thing" up his sleeve. moffatt's office had been transformed since ralph's last visit. paint, varnish and brass railings gave an air of opulence to the outer precincts, and the inner room, with its mahogany bookcases containing morocco-bound "sets" and its wide blue leather arm-chairs, lacked only a palm or two to resemble the lounge of a fashionable hotel. moffatt himself, as he came forward, gave ralph the impression of having been done over by the same hand: he was smoother, broader, more supremely tailored, and his whole person exhaled the faintest whiff of an expensive scent. he installed his visitor in one of the blue arm-chairs, and sitting opposite, an elbow on his impressive "washington" desk, listened attentively while ralph made his request. "you want to be put onto something good in a damned hurry?" moffatt twisted his moustache between two plump square-tipped fingers with a little black growth on their lower joints. "i don't suppose," he remarked, "there's a sane man between here and san francisco who isn't consumed by that yearning." having permitted himself this pleasantry he passed on to business. "yes--it's a first-rate time to buy: no doubt of that. but you say you want to make a quick turn-over? heard of a soft thing that won't wait, i presume? that's apt to be the way with soft things--all kinds of 'em. there's always other fellows after them." moffatt's smile was playful. "well, i'd go considerably out of my way to do you a good turn, because you did me one when i needed it mighty bad. 'in youth you sheltered me.' yes, sir, that's the kind i am." he stood up, sauntered to the other side of the room, and took a small object from the top of the bookcase. "fond of these pink crystals?" he held the oriental toy against the light. "oh, i ain't a judge--but now and then i like to pick up a pretty thing." ralph noticed that his eyes caressed it. "well--now let's talk. you say you've got to have the funds for your--your investment within three weeks. that's quick work. and you want a hundred thousand. can you put up fifty?" ralph had been prepared for the question, but when it came he felt a moment's tremor. he knew he could count on half the amount from his grandfather; could possibly ask fairford for a small additional loan--but what of the rest? well, there was clare. he had always known there would be no other way. and after all, the money was clare's--it was dagonet money. at least she said it was. all the misery of his predicament was distilled into the short silence that preceded his answer: "yes--i think so." "well, i guess i can double it for you." moffatt spoke with an air of olympian modesty. "anyhow, i'll try. only don't tell the other girls!" he proceeded to develop his plan to ears which ralph tried to make alert and attentive, but in which perpetually, through the intricate concert of facts and figures, there broke the shout of a small boy racing across a suburban lawn. "when i pick him up to-night he'll be mine for good!" ralph thought as moffatt summed up: "there's the whole scheme in a nut-shell; but you'd better think it over. i don't want to let you in for anything you ain't quite sure about." "oh, if you're sure--" ralph was already calculating the time it would take to dash up to clare van degen's on his way to catch the train for the fairfords'. his impatience made it hard to pay due regard to moffatt's parting civilities. "glad to have seen you," he heard the latter assuring him with a final hand-grasp. "wish you'd dine with me some evening at my club"; and, as ralph murmured a vague acceptance: "how's that boy of yours, by the way?" moffatt continued. "he was a stunning chap last time i saw him.--excuse me if i've put my foot in it; but i understood you kept him with you...? yes: that's what i thought.... well, so long." clare's inner sitting-room was empty; but the servant, presently returning, led ralph into the gilded and tapestried wilderness where she occasionally chose to receive her visitors. there, under popple's effigy of herself, she sat, small and alone, on a monumental sofa behind a tea-table laden with gold plate; while from his lofty frame, on the opposite wall van degen, portrayed by a "powerful" artist, cast on her the satisfied eye of proprietorship. ralph, swept forward on the blast of his excitement, felt as in a dream the frivolous perversity of her receiving him in such a setting instead of in their usual quiet corner; but there was no room in his mind for anything but the cry that broke from him: "i believe i've done it!" he sat down and explained to her by what means, trying, as best he could, to restate the particulars of moffatt's deal; and her manifest ignorance of business methods had the effect of making his vagueness appear less vague. "anyhow, he seems to be sure it's a safe thing. i understand he's in with rolliver now, and rolliver practically controls apex. this is some kind of a scheme to buy up all the works of public utility at apex. they're practically sure of their charter, and moffatt tells me i can count on doubling my investment within a few weeks. of course i'll go into the details if you like--" "oh, no; you've made it all so clear to me!" she really made him feel he had. "and besides, what on earth does it matter? the great thing is that it's done." she lifted her sparkling eyes. "and now--my share--you haven't told me..." he explained that mr. dagonet, to whom he had already named the amount demanded, had at once promised him twenty-five thousand dollars, to be eventually deducted from his share of the estate. his mother had something put by that she insisted on contributing; and henley fairford, of his own accord, had come forward with ten thousand: it was awfully decent of henley... "even henley!" clare sighed. "then i'm the only one left out?" ralph felt the colour in his face. "well, you see, i shall need as much as fifty--" her hands flew together joyfully. "but then you've got to let me help! oh, i'm so glad--so glad! i've twenty thousand waiting." he looked about the room, checked anew by all its oppressive implications. "you're a darling...but i couldn't take it." "i've told you it's mine, every penny of it!" "yes; but supposing things went wrong?" "nothing can--if you'll only take it..." "i may lose it--" "_i_ sha'n't, if i've given it to you!" her look followed his about the room and then came back to him. "can't you imagine all it will make up for?" the rapture of the cry caught him up with it. ah, yes, he could imagine it all! he stooped his head above her hands. "i accept," he said; and they stood and looked at each other like radiant children. she followed him to the door, and as he turned to leave he broke into a laugh. "it's queer, though, its happening in this room!" she was close beside him, her hand on the heavy tapestry curtaining the door; and her glance shot past him to her husband's portrait. ralph caught the look, and a flood of old tendernesses and hates welled up in him. he drew her under the portrait and kissed her vehemently. xxxv within forty-eight hours ralph's money was in moffatt's hands, and the interval of suspense had begun. the transaction over, he felt the deceptive buoyancy that follows on periods of painful indecision. it seemed to him that now at last life had freed him from all trammelling delusions, leaving him only the best thing in its gift--his boy. the things he meant paul to do and to be filled his fancy with happy pictures. the child was growing more and more interesting--throwing out countless tendrils of feeling and perception that delighted ralph but preoccupied the watchful laura. "he's going to be exactly like you, ralph--" she paused and then risked it: "for his own sake, i wish there were just a drop or two of spragg in him." ralph laughed, understanding her. "oh, the plodding citizen i've become will keep him from taking after the lyric idiot who begot him. paul and i, between us, are going to turn out something first-rate." his book too was spreading and throwing out tendrils, and he worked at it in the white heat of energy which his factitious exhilaration produced. for a few weeks everything he did and said seemed as easy and unconditioned as the actions in a dream. clare van degen, in the light of this mood, became again the comrade of his boyhood. he did not see her often, for she had gone down to the country with her children, but they communicated daily by letter or telephone, and now and then she came over to the fairfords' for a night. there they renewed the long rambles of their youth, and once more the summer fields and woods seemed full of magic presences. clare was no more intelligent, she followed him no farther in his flights; but some of the qualities that had become most precious to him were as native to her as its perfume to a flower. so, through the long june afternoons, they ranged together over many themes; and if her answers sometimes missed the mark it did not matter, because her silences never did. meanwhile ralph, from various sources, continued to pick up a good deal of more or less contradictory information about elmer moffatt. it seemed to be generally understood that moffatt had come back from europe with the intention of testifying in the ararat investigation, and that his former patron, the great harmon b. driscoll, had managed to silence him; and it was implied that the price of this silence, which was set at a considerable figure, had been turned to account in a series of speculations likely to lift moffatt to permanent eminence among the rulers of wall street. the stories as to his latest achievement, and the theories as to the man himself, varied with the visual angle of each reporter: and whenever any attempt was made to focus his hard sharp personality some guardian divinity seemed to throw a veil of mystery over him. his detractors, however, were the first to own that there was "something about him"; it was felt that he had passed beyond the meteoric stage, and the business world was unanimous in recognizing that he had "come to stay." a dawning sense of his stability was even beginning to make itself felt in fifth avenue. it was said that he had bought a house in seventy-second street, then that he meant to build near the park; one or two people (always "taken by a friend") had been to his flat in the pactolus, to see his chinese porcelains and persian rugs; now and then he had a few important men to dine at a fifth avenue restaurant; his name began to appear in philanthropic reports and on municipal committees (there were even rumours of its having been put up at a well-known club); and the rector of a wealthy parish, who was raising funds for a chantry, was known to have met him at dinner and to have stated afterward that "the man was not wholly a materialist." all these converging proofs of moffatt's solidity strengthened ralph's faith in his venture. he remembered with what astuteness and authority moffatt had conducted their real estate transaction--how far off and unreal it all seemed!--and awaited events with the passive faith of a sufferer in the hands of a skilful surgeon. the days moved on toward the end of june, and each morning ralph opened his newspaper with a keener thrill of expectation. any day now he might read of the granting of the apex charter: moffatt had assured him it would "go through" before the close of the month. but the announcement did not appear, and after what seemed to ralph a decent lapse of time he telephoned to ask for news. moffatt was away, and when he came back a few days later he answered ralph's enquiries evasively, with an edge of irritation in his voice. the same day ralph received a letter from his lawyer, who had been reminded by mrs. marvell's representatives that the latest date agreed on for the execution of the financial agreement was the end of the following week. ralph, alarmed, betook himself at once to the ararat, and his first glimpse of moffatt's round common face and fastidiously dressed person gave him an immediate sense of reassurance. he felt that under the circle of baldness on top of that carefully brushed head lay the solution of every monetary problem that could beset the soul of man. moffatt's voice had recovered its usual cordial note, and the warmth of his welcome dispelled ralph's last apprehension. "why, yes, everything's going along first-rate. they thought they'd hung us up last week--but they haven't. there may be another week's delay; but we ought to be opening a bottle of wine on it by the fourth." an office-boy came in with a name on a slip of paper, and moffatt looked at his watch and held out a hearty hand. "glad you came. of course i'll keep you posted...no, this way...look in again..." and he steered ralph out by another door. july came, and passed into its second week. ralph's lawyer had obtained a postponement from the other side, but undine's representatives had given him to understand that the transaction must be closed before the first of august. ralph telephoned once or twice to moffatt, receiving genially-worded assurances that everything was "going their way"; but he felt a certain embarrassment in returning again to the office, and let himself drift through the days in a state of hungry apprehension. finally one afternoon henley fairford, coming back from town (which ralph had left in the morning to join his boy over sunday), brought word that the apex consolidation scheme had failed to get its charter. it was useless to attempt to reach moffatt on sunday, and ralph wore on as he could through the succeeding twenty-four hours. clare van degen had come down to stay with her youngest boy, and in the afternoon she and ralph took the two children for a sail. a light breeze brightened the waters of the sound, and they ran down the shore before it and then tacked out toward the sunset, coming back at last, under a failing breeze, as the summer sky passed from blue to a translucid green and then into the accumulating greys of twilight. as they left the landing and walked up behind the children across the darkening lawn, a sense of security descended again on ralph. he could not believe that such a scene and such a mood could be the disguise of any impending evil, and all his doubts and anxieties fell away from him. the next morning, he and clare travelled up to town together, and at the station he put her in the motor which was to take her to long island, and hastened down to moffatt's office. when he arrived he was told that moffatt was "engaged," and he had to wait for nearly half an hour in the outer office, where, to the steady click of the type-writer and the spasmodic buzzing of the telephone, his thoughts again began their restless circlings. finally the inner door opened, and he found himself in the sanctuary. moffatt was seated behind his desk, examining another little crystal vase somewhat like the one he had shown ralph a few weeks earlier. as his visitor entered, he held it up against the light, revealing on its dewy sides an incised design as frail as the shadow of grass-blades on water. "ain't she a peach?" he put the toy down and reached across the desk to shake hands. "well, well," he went on, leaning back in his chair, and pushing out his lower lip in a half-comic pout, "they've got us in the neck this time and no mistake. seen this morning's radiator? i don't know how the thing leaked out--but the reformers somehow got a smell of the scheme, and whenever they get swishing round something's bound to get spilt." he talked gaily, genially, in his roundest tones and with his easiest gestures; never had he conveyed a completer sense of unhurried power; but ralph noticed for the first time the crow's-feet about his eyes, and the sharpness of the contrast between the white of his forehead and the redness of the fold of neck above his collar. "do you mean to say it's not going through?" "not this time, anyhow. we're high and dry." something seemed to snap in ralph's head, and he sat down in the nearest chair. "has the common stock dropped a lot?" "well, you've got to lean over to see it." moffatt pressed his finger-tips together and added thoughtfully: "but it's there all right. we're bound to get our charter in the end." "what do you call the end?" "oh, before the day of judgment, sure: next year, i guess." "next year?" ralph flushed. "what earthly good will that do me?" "i don't say it's as pleasant as driving your best girl home by moonlight. but that's how it is. and the stuff's safe enough any way--i've told you that right along." "but you've told me all along i could count on a rise before august. you knew i had to have the money now." "i knew you wanted to have the money now; and so did i, and several of my friends. i put you onto it because it was the only thing in sight likely to give you the return you wanted." "you ought at least to have warned me of the risk!" "risk? i don't call it much of a risk to lie back in your chair and wait another few months for fifty thousand to drop into your lap. i tell you the thing's as safe as a bank." "how do i know it is? you've misled me about it from the first." moffatt's face grew dark red to the forehead: for the first time in their acquaintance ralph saw him on the verge of anger. "well, if you get stuck so do i. i'm in it a good deal deeper than you. that's about the best guarantee i can give; unless you won't take my word for that either." to control himself moffatt spoke with extreme deliberation, separating his syllables like a machine cutting something into even lengths. ralph listened through a cloud of confusion; but he saw the madness of offending moffatt, and tried to take a more conciliatory tone. "of course i take your word for it. but i can't--i simply can't afford to lose..." "you ain't going to lose: i don't believe you'll even have to put up any margin. it's there safe enough, i tell you..." "yes, yes; i understand. i'm sure you wouldn't have advised me--" ralph's tongue seemed swollen, and he had difficulty in bringing out the words. "only, you see--i can't wait; it's not possible; and i want to know if there isn't a way--" moffatt looked at him with a sort of resigned compassion, as a doctor looks at a despairing mother who will not understand what he has tried to imply without uttering the word she dreads. ralph understood the look, but hurried on. "you'll think i'm mad, or an ass, to talk like this; but the fact is, i must have the money." he waited and drew a hard breath. "i must have it: that's all. perhaps i'd better tell you--" moffatt, who had risen, as if assuming that the interview was over, sat down again and turned an attentive look on him. "go ahead," he said, more humanly than he had hitherto spoken. "my boy...you spoke of him the other day... i'm awfully fond of him--" ralph broke off, deterred by the impossibility of confiding his feeling for paul to this coarse-grained man with whom he hadn't a sentiment in common. moffatt was still looking at him. "i should say you would be! he's as smart a little chap as i ever saw; and i guess he's the kind that gets better every day." ralph had collected himself, and went on with sudden resolution: "well, you see--when my wife and i separated, i never dreamed she'd want the boy: the question never came up. if it had, of course--but she'd left him with me when she went away two years before, and at the time of the divorce i was a fool...i didn't take the proper steps..." "you mean she's got sole custody?" ralph made a sign of assent, and moffatt pondered. "that's bad--bad." "and now i understand she's going to marry again--and of course i can't give up my son." "she wants you to, eh?" ralph again assented. moffatt swung his chair about and leaned back in it, stretching out his plump legs and contemplating the tips of his varnished boots. he hummed a low tune behind inscrutable lips. "that's what you want the money for?" he finally raised his head to ask. the word came out of the depths of ralph's anguish: "yes." "and why you want it in such a hurry. i see." moffatt reverted to the study of his boots. "it's a lot of money." "yes. that's the difficulty. and i...she..." ralph's tongue was again too thick for his mouth. "i'm afraid she won't wait...or take less..." moffatt, abandoning the boots, was scrutinizing him through half-shut lids. "no," he said slowly, "i don't believe undine spragg'll take a single cent less." ralph felt himself whiten. was it insolence or ignorance that had prompted moffatt's speech? nothing in his voice or face showed the sense of any shades of expression or of feeling: he seemed to apply to everything the measure of the same crude flippancy. but such considerations could not curb ralph now. he said to himself "keep your temper--keep your temper--" and his anger suddenly boiled over. "look here, moffatt," he said, getting to his feet, "the fact that i've been divorced from mrs. marvell doesn't authorize any one to take that tone to me in speaking of her." moffatt met the challenge with a calm stare under which there were dawning signs of surprise and interest. "that so? well, if that's the case i presume i ought to feel the same way: i've been divorced from her myself." for an instant the words conveyed no meaning to ralph; then they surged up into his brain and flung him forward with half-raised arm. but he felt the grotesqueness of the gesture and his arm dropped back to his side. a series of unimportant and irrelevant things raced through his mind; then obscurity settled down on it. "this man...this man..." was the one fiery point in his darkened consciousness.... "what on earth are you talking about?" he brought out. "why, facts," said moffatt, in a cool half-humorous voice. "you didn't know? i understood from mrs. marvell your folks had a prejudice against divorce, so i suppose she kept quiet about that early episode. the truth is," he continued amicably, "i wouldn't have alluded to it now if you hadn't taken rather a high tone with me about our little venture; but now it's out i guess you may as well hear the whole story. it's mighty wholesome for a man to have a round now and then with a few facts. shall i go on?" ralph had stood listening without a sign, but as moffatt ended he made a slight motion of acquiescence. he did not otherwise change his attitude, except to grasp with one hand the back of the chair that moffatt pushed toward him. "rather stand?..." moffatt himself dropped back into his seat and took the pose of easy narrative. "well, it was this way. undine spragg and i were made one at opake, nebraska, just nine years ago last month. my! she was a beauty then. nothing much had happened to her before but being engaged for a year or two to a soft called millard binch; the same she passed on to indiana rolliver; and--well, i guess she liked the change. we didn't have what you'd called a society wedding: no best man or bridesmaids or voice that breathed o'er eden. fact is, pa and ma didn't know about it till it was over. but it was a marriage fast enough, as they found out when they tried to undo it. trouble was, they caught on too soon; we only had a fortnight. then they hauled undine back to apex, and--well, i hadn't the cash or the pull to fight 'em. uncle abner was a pretty big man out there then; and he had james j. rolliver behind him. i always know when i'm licked; and i was licked that time. so we unlooped the loop, and they fixed it up for me to make a trip to alaska. let me see--that was the year before they moved over to new york. next time i saw undine i sat alongside of her at the theatre the day your engagement was announced." he still kept to his half-humorous minor key, as though he were in the first stages of an after-dinner speech; but as he went on his bodily presence, which hitherto had seemed to ralph the mere average garment of vulgarity, began to loom, huge and portentous as some monster released from a magician's bottle. his redness, his glossiness, his baldness, and the carefully brushed ring of hair encircling it; the square line of his shoulders, the too careful fit of his clothes, the prominent lustre of his scarf-pin, the growth of short black hair on his manicured hands, even the tiny cracks and crows'-feet beginning to show in the hard close surface of his complexion: all these solid witnesses to his reality and his proximity pressed on ralph with the mounting pang of physical nausea. "this man...this man..." he couldn't get beyond the thought: whichever way he turned his haggard thought, there was moffatt bodily blocking the perspective...ralph's eyes roamed toward the crystal toy that stood on the desk beside moffatt's hand. faugh! that such a hand should have touched it! suddenly he heard himself speaking. "before my marriage--did you know they hadn't told me?" "why, i understood as much..." ralph pushed on: "you knew it the day i met you in mr. spragg's office?" moffatt considered a moment, as if the incident had escaped him. "did we meet there?" he seemed benevolently ready for enlightenment. but ralph had been assailed by another memory; he recalled that moffatt had dined one night in his house, that he and the man who now faced him had sat at the same table, their wife between them... he was seized with another dumb gust of fury; but it died out and left him face to face with the uselessness, the irrelevance of all the old attitudes of appropriation and defiance. he seemed to be stumbling about in his inherited prejudices like a modern man in mediaeval armour... moffatt still sat at his desk, unmoved and apparently uncomprehending. "he doesn't even know what i'm feeling," flashed through ralph; and the whole archaic structure of his rites and sanctions tumbled down about him. through the noise of the crash he heard moffatt's voice going on without perceptible change of tone: "about that other matter now...you can't feel any meaner about it than i do, i can tell you that... but all we've got to do is to sit tight..." ralph turned from the voice, and found himself outside on the landing, and then in the street below. xxxvi he stood at the corner of wall street, looking up and down its hot summer perspective. he noticed the swirls of dust in the cracks of the pavement, the rubbish in the gutters, the ceaseless stream of perspiring faces that poured by under tilted hats. he found himself, next, slipping northward between the glazed walls of the subway, another languid crowd in the seats about him and the nasal yelp of the stations ringing through the car like some repeated ritual wail. the blindness within him seemed to have intensified his physical perceptions, his sensitiveness to the heat, the noise, the smells of the dishevelled midsummer city; but combined with the acuter perception of these offenses was a complete indifference to them, as though he were some vivisected animal deprived of the power of discrimination. now he had turned into waverly place, and was walking westward toward washington square. at the corner he pulled himself up, saying half-aloud: "the office--i ought to be at the office." he drew out his watch and stared at it blankly. what the devil had he taken it out for? he had to go through a laborious process of readjustment to find out what it had to say.... twelve o'clock.... should he turn back to the office? it seemed easier to cross the square, go up the steps of the old house and slip his key into the door.... the house was empty. his mother, a few days previously, had departed with mr. dagonet for their usual two months on the maine coast, where ralph was to join them with his boy.... the blinds were all drawn down, and the freshness and silence of the marble-paved hall laid soothing hands on him.... he said to himself: "i'll jump into a cab presently, and go and lunch at the club--" he laid down his hat and stick and climbed the carpetless stairs to his room. when he entered it he had the shock of feeling himself in a strange place: it did not seem like anything he had ever seen before. then, one by one, all the old stale usual things in it confronted him, and he longed with a sick intensity to be in a place that was really strange. "how on earth can i go on living here?" he wondered. a careless servant had left the outer shutters open, and the sun was beating on the window-panes. ralph pushed open the windows, shut the shutters, and wandered toward his arm-chair. beads of perspiration stood on his forehead: the temperature of the room reminded him of the heat under the ilexes of the sienese villa where he and undine had sat through a long july afternoon. he saw her before him, leaning against the tree-trunk in her white dress, limpid and inscrutable.... "we were made one at opake, nebraska...." had she been thinking of it that afternoon at siena, he wondered? did she ever think of it at all?... it was she who had asked moffatt to dine. she had said: "father brought him home one day at apex.... i don't remember ever having seen him since"--and the man she spoke of had had her in his arms ... and perhaps it was really all she remembered! she had lied to him--lied to him from the first ... there hadn't been a moment when she hadn't lied to him, deliberately, ingeniously and inventively. as he thought of it, there came to him, for the first time in months, that overwhelming sense of her physical nearness which had once so haunted and tortured him. her freshness, her fragrance, the luminous haze of her youth, filled the room with a mocking glory; and he dropped his head on his hands to shut it out.... the vision was swept away by another wave of hurrying thoughts. he felt it was intensely important that he should keep the thread of every one of them, that they all represented things to be said or done, or guarded against; and his mind, with the unwondering versatility and tireless haste of the dreamer's brain, seemed to be pursuing them all simultaneously. then they became as unreal and meaningless as the red specks dancing behind the lids against which he had pressed his fists clenched, and he had the feeling that if he opened his eyes they would vanish, and the familiar daylight look in on him.... a knock disturbed him. the old parlour-maid who was always left in charge of the house had come up to ask if he wasn't well, and if there was anything she could do for him. he told her no ... he was perfectly well ... or, rather, no, he wasn't ... he supposed it must be the heat; and he began to scold her for having forgotten to close the shutters. it wasn't her fault, it appeared, but eliza's: her tone implied that he knew what one had to expect of eliza ... and wouldn't he go down to the nice cool shady dining-room, and let her make him an iced drink and a few sandwiches? "i've always told mrs. marvell i couldn't turn my back for a second but what eliza'd find a way to make trouble," the old woman continued, evidently glad of the chance to air a perennial grievance. "it's not only the things she forgets to do," she added significantly; and it dawned on ralph that she was making an appeal to him, expecting him to take sides with her in the chronic conflict between herself and eliza. he said to himself that perhaps she was right ... that perhaps there was something he ought to do ... that his mother was old, and didn't always see things; and for a while his mind revolved this problem with feverish intensity.... "then you'll come down, sir?" "yes." the door closed, and he heard her heavy heels along the passage. "but the money--where's the money to come from?" the question sprang out from some denser fold of the fog in his brain. the money--how on earth was he to pay it back? how could he have wasted his time in thinking of anything else while that central difficulty existed? "but i can't ... i can't ... it's gone ... and even if it weren't...." he dropped back in his chair and took his head between his hands. he had forgotten what he wanted the money for. he made a great effort to regain hold of the idea, but all the whirring, shuttling, flying had abruptly ceased in his brain, and he sat with his eyes shut, staring straight into darkness.... the clock struck, and he remembered that he had said he would go down to the dining-room. "if i don't she'll come up--" he raised his head and sat listening for the sound of the old woman's step: it seemed to him perfectly intolerable that any one should cross the threshold of the room again. "why can't they leave me alone?" he groaned.... at length through the silence of the empty house, he fancied he heard a door opening and closing far below; and he said to himself: "she's coming." he got to his feet and went to the door. he didn't feel anything now except the insane dread of hearing the woman's steps come nearer. he bolted the door and stood looking about the room. for a moment he was conscious of seeing it in every detail with a distinctness he had never before known; then everything in it vanished but the single narrow panel of a drawer under one of the bookcases. he went up to the drawer, knelt down and slipped his hand into it. as he raised himself he listened again, and this time he distinctly heard the old servant's steps on the stairs. he passed his left hand over the side of his head, and down the curve of the skull behind the ear. he said to himself: "my wife ... this will make it all right for her...." and a last flash of irony twitched through him. then he felt again, more deliberately, for the spot he wanted, and put the muzzle of his revolver against it. xxxvii in a drawing-room hung with portraits of high-nosed personages in perukes and orders, a circle of ladies and gentlemen, looking not unlike every-day versions of the official figures above their heads, sat examining with friendly interest a little boy in mourning. the boy was slim, fair and shy, and his small black figure, islanded in the middle of the wide lustrous floor, looked curiously lonely and remote. this effect of remoteness seemed to strike his mother as something intentional, and almost naughty, for after having launched him from the door, and waited to judge of the impression he produced, she came forward and, giving him a slight push, said impatiently: "paul! why don't you go and kiss your new granny?" the boy, without turning to her, or moving, sent his blue glance gravely about the circle. "does she want me to?" he asked, in a tone of evident apprehension; and on his mother's answering: "of course, you silly!" he added earnestly: "how many more do you think there'll be?" undine blushed to the ripples of her brilliant hair. "i never knew such a child! they've turned him into a perfect little savage!" raymond de chelles advanced from behind his mother's chair. "he won't be a savage long with me," he said, stooping down so that his fatigued finely-drawn face was close to paul's. their eyes met and the boy smiled. "come along, old chap," chelles continued in english, drawing the little boy after him. "il est bien beau," the marquise de chelles observed, her eyes turning from paul's grave face to her daughter-in-law's vivid countenance. "do be nice, darling! say, 'bonjour, madame,'" undine urged. an odd mingling of emotions stirred in her while she stood watching paul make the round of the family group under her husband's guidance. it was "lovely" to have the child back, and to find him, after their three years' separation, grown into so endearing a figure: her first glimpse of him when, in mrs. heeny's arms, he had emerged that morning from the steamer train, had shown what an acquisition he would be. if she had had any lingering doubts on the point, the impression produced on her husband would have dispelled them. chelles had been instantly charmed, and paul, in a shy confused way, was already responding to his advances. the count and countess raymond had returned but a few weeks before from their protracted wedding journey, and were staying--as they were apparently to do whenever they came to paris--with the old marquis, raymond's father, who had amicably proposed that little paul marvell should also share the hospitality of the hotel de chelles. undine, at first, was somewhat dismayed to find that she was expected to fit the boy and his nurse into a corner of her contracted entresol. but the possibility of a mother's not finding room for her son, however cramped her own quarters, seemed not to have occurred to her new relations, and the preparing of her dressing-room and boudoir for paul's occupancy was carried on by the household with a zeal which obliged her to dissemble her lukewarmness. undine had supposed that on her marriage one of the great suites of the hotel de chelles would be emptied of its tenants and put at her husband's disposal; but she had since learned that, even had such a plan occurred to her parents-in-law, considerations of economy would have hindered it. the old marquis and his wife, who were content, when they came up from burgundy in the spring, with a modest set of rooms looking out on the court of their ancestral residence, expected their son and his wife to fit themselves into the still smaller apartment which had served as raymond's bachelor lodging. the rest of the fine old mouldering house--the tall-windowed premier on the garden, and the whole of the floor above--had been let for years to old fashioned tenants who would have been more surprised than their landlord had he suddenly proposed to dispossess them. undine, at first, had regarded these arrangements as merely provisional. she was persuaded that, under her influence, raymond would soon convert his parents to more modern ideas, and meanwhile she was still in the flush of a completer well-being than she had ever known, and disposed, for the moment, to make light of any inconveniences connected with it. the three months since her marriage had been more nearly like what she had dreamed of than any of her previous experiments in happiness. at last she had what she wanted, and for the first time the glow of triumph was warmed by a deeper feeling. her husband was really charming (it was odd how he reminded her of ralph!), and after her bitter two years of loneliness and humiliation it was delicious to find herself once more adored and protected. the very fact that raymond was more jealous of her than ralph had ever been--or at any rate less reluctant to show it--gave her a keener sense of recovered power. none of the men who had been in love with her before had been so frankly possessive, or so eager for reciprocal assurances of constancy. she knew that ralph had suffered deeply from her intimacy with van degen, but he had betrayed his feeling only by a more studied detachment; and van degen, from the first, had been contemptuously indifferent to what she did or felt when she was out of his sight. as to her earlier experiences, she had frankly forgotten them: her sentimental memories went back no farther than the beginning of her new york career. raymond seemed to attach more importance to love, in all its manifestations, than was usual or convenient in a husband; and she gradually began to be aware that her domination over him involved a corresponding loss of independence. since their return to paris she had found that she was expected to give a circumstantial report of every hour she spent away from him. she had nothing to hide, and no designs against his peace of mind except those connected with her frequent and costly sessions at the dress-makers'; but she had never before been called upon to account to any one for the use of her time, and after the first amused surprise at raymond's always wanting to know where she had been and whom she had seen she began to be oppressed by so exacting a devotion. her parents, from her tenderest youth, had tacitly recognized her inalienable right to "go round," and ralph--though from motives which she divined to be different--had shown the same respect for her freedom. it was therefore disconcerting to find that raymond expected her to choose her friends, and even her acquaintances, in conformity not only with his personal tastes but with a definite and complicated code of family prejudices and traditions; and she was especially surprised to discover that he viewed with disapproval her intimacy with the princess estradina. "my cousin's extremely amusing, of course, but utterly mad and very mal entourée. most of the people she has about her ought to be in prison or bedlam: especially that unspeakable madame adelschein, who's a candidate for both. my aunt's an angel, but she's been weak enough to let lili turn the hotel de dordogne into an annex of montmartre. of course you'll have to show yourself there now and then: in these days families like ours must hold together. but go to the reunions de famille rather than to lili's intimate parties; go with me, or with my mother; don't let yourself be seen there alone. you're too young and good-looking to be mixed up with that crew. a woman's classed--or rather unclassed--by being known as one of lili's set." agreeable as it was to undine that an appeal to her discretion should be based on the ground of her youth and good-looks, she was dismayed to find herself cut off from the very circle she had meant them to establish her in. before she had become raymond's wife there had been a moment of sharp tension in her relations with the princess estradina and the old duchess. they had done their best to prevent her marrying their cousin, and had gone so far as openly to accuse her of being the cause of a breach between themselves and his parents. but ralph marvell's death had brought about a sudden change in her situation. she was now no longer a divorced woman struggling to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for her remarriage, but a widow whose conspicuous beauty and independent situation made her the object of lawful aspirations. the first person to seize on this distinction and make the most of it was her old enemy the marquise de trezac. the latter, who had been loudly charged by the house of chelles with furthering her beautiful compatriot's designs, had instantly seen a chance of vindicating herself by taking the widowed mrs. marvell under her wing and favouring the attentions of other suitors. these were not lacking, and the expected result had followed. raymond de chelles, more than ever infatuated as attainment became less certain, had claimed a definite promise from undine, and his family, discouraged by his persistent bachelorhood, and their failure to fix his attention on any of the amiable maidens obviously designed to continue the race, had ended by withdrawing their opposition and discovering in mrs. marvell the moral and financial merits necessary to justify their change of front. "a good match? if she isn't, i should like to know what the chelles call one!" madame de trezac went about indefatigably proclaiming. "related to the best people in new york--well, by marriage, that is; and her husband left much more money than was expected. it goes to the boy, of course; but as the boy is with his mother she naturally enjoys the income. and her father's a rich man--much richer than is generally known; i mean what we call rich in america, you understand!" madame de trezac had lately discovered that the proper attitude for the american married abroad was that of a militant patriotism; and she flaunted undine marvell in the face of the faubourg like a particularly showy specimen of her national banner. the success of the experiment emboldened her to throw off the most sacred observances of her past. she took up madame adelschein, she entertained the james j. rollivers, she resuscitated creole dishes, she patronized negro melodists, she abandoned her weekly teas for impromptu afternoon dances, and the prim drawing-room in which dowagers had droned echoed with a cosmopolitan hubbub. even when the period of tension was over, and undine had been officially received into the family of her betrothed, madame de trezac did not at once surrender. she laughingly professed to have had enough of the proprieties, and declared herself bored by the social rites she had hitherto so piously performed. "you'll always find a corner of home here, dearest, when you get tired of their ceremonies and solemnities," she said as she embraced the bride after the wedding breakfast; and undine hoped that the devoted nettie would in fact provide a refuge from the extreme domesticity of her new state. but since her return to paris, and her taking up her domicile in the hotel de chelles, she had found madame de trezac less and less disposed to abet her in any assertion of independence. "my dear, a woman must adopt her husband's nationality whether she wants to or not. it's the law, and it's the custom besides. if you wanted to amuse yourself with your nouveau luxe friends you oughtn't to have married raymond--but of course i say that only in joke. as if any woman would have hesitated who'd had your chance! take my advice--keep out of lili's set just at first. later ... well, perhaps raymond won't be so particular; but meanwhile you'd make a great mistake to go against his people--" and madame de trezac, with a "chere madame," swept forward from her tea-table to receive the first of the returning dowagers. it was about this time that mrs. heeny arrived with paul; and for a while undine was pleasantly absorbed in her boy. she kept mrs. heeny in paris for a fortnight, and between her more pressing occupations it amused her to listen to the masseuse's new york gossip and her comments on the social organization of the old world. it was mrs. heeny's first visit to europe, and she confessed to undine that she had always wanted to "see something of the aristocracy"--using the phrase as a naturalist might, with no hint of personal pretensions. mrs. heeny's democratic ease was combined with the strictest professional discretion, and it would never have occurred to her to regard herself, or to wish others to regard her, as anything but a manipulator of muscles; but in that character she felt herself entitled to admission to the highest circles. "they certainly do things with style over here--but it's kinder one-horse after new york, ain't it? is this what they call their season? why, you dined home two nights last week. they ought to come over to new york and see!" and she poured into undine's half-envious ear a list of the entertainments which had illuminated the last weeks of the new york winter. "i suppose you'll begin to give parties as soon as ever you get into a house of your own. you're not going to have one? oh, well, then you'll give a lot of big week-ends at your place down in the shatter-country--that's where the swells all go to in the summer time, ain't it? but i dunno what your ma would say if she knew you were going to live on with his folks after you're done honey-mooning. why, we read in the papers you were going to live in some grand hotel or other--oh, they call their houses hotels, do they? that's funny: i suppose it's because they let out part of 'em. well, you look handsomer than ever. undine; i'll take that back to your mother, anyhow. and he's dead in love, i can see that; reminds me of the way--" but she broke off suddenly, as if something in undine's look had silenced her. even to herself. undine did not like to call up the image of ralph marvell; and any mention of his name gave her a vague sense of distress. his death had released her, had given her what she wanted; yet she could honestly say to herself that she had not wanted him to die--at least not to die like that.... people said at the time that it was the hot weather--his own family had said so: he had never quite got over his attack of pneumonia, and the sudden rise of temperature--one of the fierce "heat-waves" that devastate new york in summer--had probably affected his brain: the doctors said such cases were not uncommon.... she had worn black for a few weeks--not quite mourning, but something decently regretful (the dress-makers were beginning to provide a special garb for such cases); and even since her remarriage, and the lapse of a year, she continued to wish that she could have got what she wanted without having had to pay that particular price for it. this feeling was intensified by an incident--in itself far from unwelcome--which had occurred about three months after ralph's death. her lawyers had written to say that the sum of a hundred thousand dollars had been paid over to marvell's estate by the apex consolidation company; and as marvell had left a will bequeathing everything he possessed to his son, this unexpected windfall handsomely increased paul's patrimony. undine had never relinquished her claim on her child; she had merely, by the advice of her lawyers, waived the assertion of her right for a few months after marvell's death, with the express stipulation that her doing so was only a temporary concession to the feelings of her husband's family; and she had held out against all attempts to induce her to surrender paul permanently. before her marriage she had somewhat conspicuously adopted her husband's creed, and the dagonets, picturing paul as the prey of the jesuits, had made the mistake of appealing to the courts for his custody. this had confirmed undine's resistance, and her determination to keep the child. the case had been decided in her favour, and she had thereupon demanded, and obtained, an allowance of five thousand dollars, to be devoted to the bringing up and education of her son. this sum, added to what mr. spragg had agreed to give her, made up an income which had appreciably bettered her position, and justified madame de trezac's discreet allusions to her wealth. nevertheless, it was one of the facts about which she least liked to think when any chance allusion evoked ralph's image. the money was hers, of course; she had a right to it, and she was an ardent believer in "rights." but she wished she could have got it in some other way--she hated the thought of it as one more instance of the perverseness with which things she was entitled to always came to her as if they had been stolen. the approach of summer, and the culmination of the paris season, swept aside such thoughts. the countess raymond de chelles, contrasting her situation with that of mrs. undine marvell, and the fulness and animation of her new life with the vacant dissatisfied days which had followed on her return from dakota, forgot the smallness of her apartment, the inconvenient proximity of paul and his nurse, the interminable round of visits with her mother-in-law, and the long dinners in the solemn hotels of all the family connection. the world was radiant, the lights were lit, the music playing; she was still young, and better-looking than ever, with a countess's coronet, a famous chateau and a handsome and popular husband who adored her. and then suddenly the lights went out and the music stopped when one day raymond, putting his arm about her, said in his tenderest tones: "and now, my dear, the world's had you long enough and it's my turn. what do you say to going down to saint desert?" xxxviii in a window of the long gallery of the chateau de saint desert the new marquise de chelles stood looking down the poplar avenue into the november rain. it had been raining heavily and persistently for a longer time than she could remember. day after day the hills beyond the park had been curtained by motionless clouds, the gutters of the long steep roofs had gurgled with a perpetual overflow, the opaque surface of the moat been peppered by a continuous pelting of big drops. the water lay in glassy stretches under the trees and along the sodden edges of the garden-paths, it rose in a white mist from the fields beyond, it exuded in a chill moisture from the brick flooring of the passages and from the walls of the rooms on the lower floor. everything in the great empty house smelt of dampness: the stuffing of the chairs, the threadbare folds of the faded curtains, the splendid tapestries, that were fading too, on the walls of the room in which undine stood, and the wide bands of crape which her husband had insisted on her keeping on her black dresses till the last hour of her mourning for the old marquis. the summer had been more than usually inclement, and since her first coming to the country undine had lived through many periods of rainy weather; but none which had gone before had so completely epitomized, so summed up in one vast monotonous blur, the image of her long months at saint desert. when, the year before, she had reluctantly suffered herself to be torn from the joys of paris, she had been sustained by the belief that her exile would not be of long duration. once paris was out of sight, she had even found a certain lazy charm in the long warm days at saint desert. her parents-in-law had remained in town, and she enjoyed being alone with her husband, exploring and appraising the treasures of the great half abandoned house, and watching her boy scamper over the june meadows or trot about the gardens on the poney his stepfather had given him. paul, after mrs. heeny's departure, had grown fretful and restive, and undine had found it more and more difficult to fit his small exacting personality into her cramped rooms and crowded life. he irritated her by pining for his aunt laura, his marvell granny, and old mr. dagonet's funny stories about gods and fairies; and his wistful allusions to his games with clare's children sounded like a lesson he might have been drilled in to make her feel how little he belonged to her. but once released from paris, and blessed with rabbits, a poney and the freedom of the fields, he became again all that a charming child should be, and for a time it amused her to share in his romps and rambles. raymond seemed enchanted at the picture they made, and the quiet weeks of fresh air and outdoor activity gave her back a bloom that reflected itself in her tranquillized mood. she was the more resigned to this interlude because she was so sure of its not lasting. before they left paris a doctor had been found to say that paul--who was certainly looking pale and pulled-down--was in urgent need of sea air, and undine had nearly convinced her husband of the expediency of hiring a chalet at deauville for july and august, when this plan, and with it every other prospect of escape, was dashed by the sudden death of the old marquis. undine, at first, had supposed that the resulting change could not be other than favourable. she had been on too formal terms with her father-in-law--a remote and ceremonious old gentleman to whom her own personality was evidently an insoluble enigma--to feel more than the merest conventional pang at his death; and it was certainly "more fun" to be a marchioness than a countess, and to know that one's husband was the head of the house. besides, now they would have the chateau to themselves--or at least the old marquise, when she came, would be there as a guest and not a ruler--and visions of smart house-parties and big shoots lit up the first weeks of undine's enforced seclusion. then, by degrees, the inexorable conditions of french mourning closed in on her. immediately after the long-drawn funeral observances the bereaved family--mother, daughters, sons and sons-in-law--came down to seclude themselves at saint desert; and undine, through the slow hot crape-smelling months, lived encircled by shrouded images of woe in which the only live points were the eyes constantly fixed on her least movements. the hope of escaping to the seaside with paul vanished in the pained stare with which her mother-in-law received the suggestion. undine learned the next day that it had cost the old marquise a sleepless night, and might have had more distressing results had it not been explained as a harmless instance of transatlantic oddness. raymond entreated his wife to atone for her involuntary legereté by submitting with a good grace to the usages of her adopted country; and he seemed to regard the remaining months of the summer as hardly long enough for this act of expiation. as undine looked back on them, they appeared to have been composed of an interminable succession of identical days, in which attendance at early mass (in the coroneted gallery she had once so glowingly depicted to van degen) was followed by a great deal of conversational sitting about, a great deal of excellent eating, an occasional drive to the nearest town behind a pair of heavy draft horses, and long evenings in a lamp-heated drawing-room with all the windows shut, and the stout cure making an asthmatic fourth at the marquise's card-table. still, even these conditions were not permanent, and the discipline of the last years had trained undine to wait and dissemble. the summer over, it was decided--after a protracted family conclave--that the state of the old marquise's health made it advisable for her to spend the winter with the married daughter who lived near pau. the other members of the family returned to their respective estates, and undine once more found herself alone with her husband. but she knew by this time that there was to be no thought of paris that winter, or even the next spring. worse still, she was presently to discover that raymond's accession of rank brought with it no financial advantages. having but the vaguest notion of french testamentary law, she was dismayed to learn that the compulsory division of property made it impossible for a father to benefit his eldest son at the expense of the others. raymond was therefore little richer than before, and with the debts of honour of a troublesome younger brother to settle, and saint desert to keep up, his available income was actually reduced. he held out, indeed, the hope of eventual improvement, since the old marquis had managed his estates with a lofty contempt for modern methods, and the application of new principles of agriculture and forestry were certain to yield profitable results. but for a year or two, at any rate, this very change of treatment would necessitate the owner's continual supervision, and would not in the meanwhile produce any increase of income. to faire valoir the family acres had always, it appeared, been raymond's deepest-seated purpose, and all his frivolities dropped from him with the prospect of putting his hand to the plough. he was not, indeed, inhuman enough to condemn his wife to perpetual exile. he meant, he assured her, that she should have her annual spring visit to paris--but he stared in dismay at her suggestion that they should take possession of the coveted premier of the hotel de chelles. he was gallant enough to express the wish that it were in his power to house her on such a scale; but he could not conceal his surprise that she had ever seriously expected it. she was beginning to see that he felt her constitutional inability to understand anything about money as the deepest difference between them. it was a proficiency no one had ever expected her to acquire, and the lack of which she had even been encouraged to regard as a grace and to use as a pretext. during the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them; and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanished underground but was sure to bubble up again at one's feet. now, however, she found herself in a world where it represented not the means of individual gratification but the substance binding together whole groups of interests, and where the uses to which it might be put in twenty years were considered before the reasons for spending it on the spot. at first she was sure she could laugh raymond out of his prudence or coax him round to her point of view. she did not understand how a man so romantically in love could be so unpersuadable on certain points. hitherto she had had to contend with personal moods, now she was arguing against a policy; and she was gradually to learn that it was as natural to raymond de chelles to adore her and resist her as it had been to ralph marvell to adore her and let her have her way. at first, indeed, he appealed to her good sense, using arguments evidently drawn from accumulations of hereditary experience. but his economic plea was as unintelligible to her as the silly problems about pen-knives and apples in the "mental arithmetic" of her infancy; and when he struck a tenderer note and spoke of the duty of providing for the son he hoped for, she put her arms about him to whisper: "but then i oughtn't to be worried..." after that, she noticed, though he was as charming as ever, he behaved as if the case were closed. he had apparently decided that his arguments were unintelligible to her, and under all his ardour she felt the difference made by the discovery. it did not make him less kind, but it evidently made her less important; and she had the half-frightened sense that the day she ceased to please him she would cease to exist for him. that day was a long way off, of course, but the chill of it had brushed her face; and she was no longer heedless of such signs. she resolved to cultivate all the arts of patience and compliance, and habit might have helped them to take root if they had not been nipped by a new cataclysm. it was barely a week ago that her husband had been called to paris to straighten out a fresh tangle in the affairs of the troublesome brother whose difficulties were apparently a part of the family tradition. raymond's letters had been hurried, his telegrams brief and contradictory, and now, as undine stood watching for the brougham that was to bring him from the station, she had the sense that with his arrival all her vague fears would be confirmed. there would be more money to pay out, of course--since the funds that could not be found for her just needs were apparently always forthcoming to settle hubert's scandalous prodigalities--and that meant a longer perspective of solitude at saint desert, and a fresh pretext for postponing the hospitalities that were to follow on their period of mourning. the brougham--a vehicle as massive and lumbering as the pair that drew it--presently rolled into the court, and raymond's sable figure (she had never before seen a man travel in such black clothes) sprang up the steps to the door. whenever undine saw him after an absence she had a curious sense of his coming back from unknown distances and not belonging to her or to any state of things she understood. then habit reasserted itself, and she began to think of him again with a querulous familiarity. but she had learned to hide her feelings, and as he came in she put up her face for a kiss. "yes--everything's settled--" his embrace expressed the satisfaction of the man returning from an accomplished task to the joys of his fireside. "settled?" her face kindled. "without your having to pay?" he looked at her with a shrug. "of course i've had to pay. did you suppose hubert's creditors would be put off with vanilla eclairs?" "oh, if that's what you mean--if hubert has only to wire you at any time to be sure of his affairs being settled--!" she saw his lips narrow and a line come out between his eyes. "wouldn't it be a happy thought to tell them to bring tea?" he suggested. "in the library, then. it's so cold here--and the tapestries smell so of rain." he paused a moment to scrutinize the long walls, on which the fabulous blues and pinks of the great boucher series looked as livid as withered roses. "i suppose they ought to be taken down and aired," he said. she thought: "in this air--much good it would do them!" but she had already repented her outbreak about hubert, and she followed her husband into the library with the resolve not to let him see her annoyance. compared with the long grey gallery the library, with its brown walls of books, looked warm and home-like, and raymond seemed to feel the influence of the softer atmosphere. he turned to his wife and put his arm about her. "i know it's been a trial to you, dearest; but this is the last time i shall have to pull the poor boy out." in spite of herself she laughed incredulously: hubert's "last times" were a household word. but when tea had been brought, and they were alone over the fire, raymond unfolded the amazing sequel. hubert had found an heiress, hubert was to be married, and henceforth the business of paying his debts (which might be counted on to recur as inevitably as the changes of the seasons) would devolve on his american bride--the charming miss looty arlington, whom raymond had remained over in paris to meet. "an american? he's marrying an american?" undine wavered between wrath and satisfaction. she felt a flash of resentment at any other intruder's venturing upon her territory--("looty arlington? who is she? what a name!")--but it was quickly superseded by the relief of knowing that henceforth, as raymond said, hubert's debts would be some one else's business. then a third consideration prevailed. "but if he's engaged to a rich girl, why on earth do we have to pull him out?" her husband explained that no other course was possible. though general arlington was immensely wealthy, ("her father's a general--a general manager, whatever that may be,") he had exacted what he called "a clean slate" from his future son-in-law, and hubert's creditors (the boy was such a donkey!) had in their possession certain papers that made it possible for them to press for immediate payment. "your compatriots' views on such matters are so rigid--and it's all to their credit--that the marriage would have fallen through at once if the least hint of hubert's mess had got out--and then we should have had him on our hands for life." yes--from that point of view it was doubtless best to pay up; but undine obscurely wished that their doing so had not incidentally helped an unknown compatriot to what the american papers were no doubt already announcing as "another brilliant foreign alliance." "where on earth did your brother pick up anybody respectable? do you know where her people come from? i suppose she's perfectly awful," she broke out with a sudden escape of irritation. "i believe hubert made her acquaintance at a skating rink. they come from some new state--the general apologized for its not yet being on the map, but seemed surprised i hadn't heard of it. he said it was already known as one of 'the divorce states,' and the principal city had, in consequence, a very agreeable society. la petite n'est vraiment pas trop mal." "i daresay not! we're all good-looking. but she must be horribly common." raymond seemed sincerely unable to formulate a judgment. "my dear, you have your own customs..." "oh, i know we're all alike to you!" it was one of her grievances that he never attempted to discriminate between americans. "you see no difference between me and a girl one gets engaged to at a skating rink!" he evaded the challenge by rejoining: "miss arlington's burning to know you. she says she's heard a great deal about you, and hubert wants to bring her down next week. i think we'd better do what we can." "of course." but undine was still absorbed in the economic aspect of the case. "if they're as rich as you say, i suppose hubert means to pay you back by and bye?" "naturally. it's all arranged. he's given me a paper." he drew her hands into his. "you see we've every reason to be kind to miss arlington." "oh, i'll be as kind as you like!" she brightened at the prospect of repayment. yes, they would ask the girl down... she leaned a little nearer to her husband. "but then after a while we shall be a good deal better off--especially, as you say, with no more of hubert's debts to worry us." and leaning back far enough to give her upward smile, she renewed her plea for the premier in the hotel de chelles: "because, really, you know, as the head of the house you ought to--" "ah, my dear, as the head of the house i've so many obligations; and one of them is not to miss a good stroke of business when it comes my way." her hands slipped from his shoulders and she drew back. "what do you mean by a good stroke of business? "why, an incredible piece of luck--it's what kept me on so long in paris. miss arlington's father was looking for an apartment for the young couple, and i've let him the premier for twelve years on the understanding that he puts electric light and heating into the whole hotel. it's a wonderful chance, for of course we all benefit by it as much as hubert." "a wonderful chance... benefit by it as much as hubert!" he seemed to be speaking a strange language in which familiar-sounding syllables meant something totally unknown. did he really think she was going to coop herself up again in their cramped quarters while hubert and his skating-rink bride luxuriated overhead in the coveted premier? all the resentments that had been accumulating in her during the long baffled months since her marriage broke into speech. "it's extraordinary of you to do such a thing without consulting me!" "without consulting you? but, my dear child, you've always professed the most complete indifference to business matters--you've frequently begged me not to bore you with them. you may be sure i've acted on the best advice; and my mother, whose head is as good as a man's, thinks i've made a remarkably good arrangement." "i daresay--but i'm not always thinking about money, as you are." as she spoke she had an ominous sense of impending peril; but she was too angry to avoid even the risks she saw. to her surprise raymond put his arm about her with a smile. "there are many reasons why i have to think about money. one is that you don't; and another is that i must look out for the future of our son." undine flushed to the forehead. she had grown accustomed to such allusions and the thought of having a child no longer filled her with the resentful terror she had felt before paul's birth. she had been insensibly influenced by a different point of view, perhaps also by a difference in her own feeling; and the vision of herself as the mother of the future marquis de chelles was softened to happiness by the thought of giving raymond a son. but all these lightly-rooted sentiments went down in the rush of her resentment, and she freed herself with a petulant movement. "oh, my dear, you'd better leave it to your brother to perpetuate the race. there'll be more room for nurseries in their apartment!" she waited a moment, quivering with the expectation of her husband's answer; then, as none came except the silent darkening of his face, she walked to the door and turned round to fling back: "of course you can do what you like with your own house, and make any arrangements that suit your family, without consulting me; but you needn't think i'm ever going back to live in that stuffy little hole, with hubert and his wife splurging round on top of our heads!" "ah--" said raymond de chelles in a low voice. xxxix undine did not fulfil her threat. the month of may saw her back in the rooms she had declared she would never set foot in, and after her long sojourn among the echoing vistas of saint desert the exiguity of her paris quarters seemed like cosiness. in the interval many things had happened. hubert, permitted by his anxious relatives to anticipate the term of the family mourning, had been showily and expensively united to his heiress; the hotel de chelles had been piped, heated and illuminated in accordance with the bride's requirements; and the young couple, not content with these utilitarian changes had moved doors, opened windows, torn down partitions, and given over the great trophied and pilastered dining-room to a decorative painter with a new theory of the human anatomy. undine had silently assisted at this spectacle, and at the sight of the old marquise's abject acquiescence; she had seen the duchesse de dordogne and the princesse estradina go past her door to visit hubert's premier and marvel at the american bath-tubs and the annamite bric-a-brac; and she had been present, with her husband, at the banquet at which hubert had revealed to the astonished faubourg the prehistoric episodes depicted on his dining-room walls. she had accepted all these necessities with the stoicism which the last months had developed in her; for more and more, as the days passed, she felt herself in the grasp of circumstances stronger than any effort she could oppose to them. the very absence of external pressure, of any tactless assertion of authority on her husband's part, intensified the sense of her helplessness. he simply left it to her to infer that, important as she might be to him in certain ways, there were others in which she did not weigh a feather. their outward relations had not changed since her outburst on the subject of hubert's marriage. that incident had left her half-ashamed, half-frightened at her behaviour, and she had tried to atone for it by the indirect arts that were her nearest approach to acknowledging herself in the wrong. raymond met her advances with a good grace, and they lived through the rest of the winter on terms of apparent understanding. when the spring approached it was he who suggested that, since his mother had consented to hubert's marrying before the year of mourning was over, there was really no reason why they should not go up to paris as usual; and she was surprised at the readiness with which he prepared to accompany her. a year earlier she would have regarded this as another proof of her power; but she now drew her inferences less quickly. raymond was as "lovely" to her as ever; but more than once, during their months in the country, she had had a startled sense of not giving him all he expected of her. she had admired him, before their marriage, as a model of social distinction; during the honeymoon he had been the most ardent of lovers; and with their settling down at saint desert she had prepared to resign herself to the society of a country gentleman absorbed in sport and agriculture. but raymond, to her surprise, had again developed a disturbing resemblance to his predecessor. during the long winter afternoons, after he had gone over his accounts with the bailiff, or written his business letters, he took to dabbling with a paint-box, or picking out new scores at the piano; after dinner, when they went to the library, he seemed to expect to read aloud to her from the reviews and papers he was always receiving; and when he had discovered her inability to fix her attention he fell into the way of absorbing himself in one of the old brown books with which the room was lined. at first he tried--as ralph had done--to tell her about what he was reading or what was happening in the world; but her sense of inadequacy made her slip away to other subjects, and little by little their talk died down to monosyllables. was it possible that, in spite of his books, the evenings seemed as long to raymond as to her, and that he had suggested going back to paris because he was bored at saint desert? bored as she was herself, she resented his not finding her company all-sufficient, and was mortified by the discovery that there were regions of his life she could not enter. but once back in paris she had less time for introspection, and raymond less for books. they resumed their dispersed and busy life, and in spite of hubert's ostentatious vicinity, of the perpetual lack of money, and of paul's innocent encroachments on her freedom, undine, once more in her element, ceased to brood upon her grievances. she enjoyed going about with her husband, whose presence at her side was distinctly ornamental. he seemed to have grown suddenly younger and more animated, and when she saw other women looking at him she remembered how distinguished he was. it amused her to have him in her train, and driving about with him to dinners and dances, waiting for him on flower-decked landings, or pushing at his side through blazing theatre-lobbies, answered to her inmost ideal of domestic intimacy. he seemed disposed to allow her more liberty than before, and it was only now and then that he let drop a brief reminder of the conditions on which it was accorded. she was to keep certain people at a distance, she was not to cheapen herself by being seen at vulgar restaurants and tea-rooms, she was to join with him in fulfilling certain family obligations (going to a good many dull dinners among the number); but in other respects she was free to fill her days as she pleased. "not that it leaves me much time," she admitted to madame de trezac; "what with going to see his mother every day, and never missing one of his sisters' jours, and showing myself at the hotel de dordogne whenever the duchess gives a pay-up party to the stuffy people lili estradina won't be bothered with, there are days when i never lay eyes on paul, and barely have time to be waved and manicured; but, apart from that, raymond's really much nicer and less fussy than he was." undine, as she grew older, had developed her mother's craving for a confidante, and madame de trezac had succeeded in that capacity to mabel lipscomb and bertha shallum. "less fussy?" madame de trezac's long nose lengthened thoughtfully. "h'm--are you sure that's a good sign?" undine stared and laughed. "oh, my dear, you're so quaint! why, nobody's jealous any more." "no; that's the worst of it." madame de trezac pondered. "it's a thousand pities you haven't got a son." "yes; i wish we had." undine stood up, impatient to end the conversation. since she had learned that her continued childlessness was regarded by every one about her as not only unfortunate but somehow vaguely derogatory to her, she had genuinely begun to regret it; and any allusion to the subject disturbed her. "especially," madame de trezac continued, "as hubert's wife--" "oh, if that's all they want, it's a pity raymond didn't marry hubert's wife," undine flung back; and on the stairs she murmured to herself: "nettie has been talking to my mother-in-law." but this explanation did not quiet her, and that evening, as she and raymond drove back together from a party, she felt a sudden impulse to speak. sitting close to him in the darkness of the carriage, it ought to have been easy for her to find the needed word; but the barrier of his indifference hung between them, and street after street slipped by, and the spangled blackness of the river unrolled itself beneath their wheels, before she leaned over to touch his hand. "what is it, my dear?" she had not yet found the word, and already his tone told her she was too late. a year ago, if she had slipped her hand in his, she would not have had that answer. "your mother blames me for our not having a child. everybody thinks it's my fault." he paused before answering, and she sat watching his shadowy profile against the passing lamps. "my mother's ideas are old-fashioned; and i don't know that it's anybody's business but yours and mine." "yes, but--" "here we are." the brougham was turning under the archway of the hotel, and the light of hubert's tall windows fell across the dusky court. raymond helped her out, and they mounted to their door by the stairs which hubert had recarpeted in velvet, with a marble nymph lurking in the azaleas on the landing. in the antechamber raymond paused to take her cloak from her shoulders, and his eyes rested on her with a faint smile of approval. "you never looked better; your dress is extremely becoming. good-night, my dear," he said, kissing her hand as he turned away. undine kept this incident to herself: her wounded pride made her shrink from confessing it even to madame de trezac. she was sure raymond would "come back"; ralph always had, to the last. during their remaining weeks in paris she reassured herself with the thought that once they were back at saint desert she would easily regain her lost hold; and when raymond suggested their leaving paris she acquiesced without a protest. but at saint desert she seemed no nearer to him than in paris. he continued to treat her with unvarying amiability, but he seemed wholly absorbed in the management of the estate, in his books, his sketching and his music. he had begun to interest himself in politics and had been urged to stand for his department. this necessitated frequent displacements: trips to beaune or dijon and occasional absences in paris. undine, when he was away, was not left alone, for the dowager marquise had established herself at saint desert for the summer, and relays of brothers and sisters-in-law, aunts, cousins and ecclesiastical friends and connections succeeded each other under its capacious roof. only hubert and his wife were absent. they had taken a villa at deauville, and in the morning papers undine followed the chronicle of hubert's polo scores and of the countess hubert's racing toilets. the days crawled on with a benumbing sameness. the old marquise and the other ladies of the party sat on the terrace with their needle-work, the cure or one of the visiting uncles read aloud the journal des debats and prognosticated dark things of the republic, paul scoured the park and despoiled the kitchen-garden with the other children of the family, the inhabitants of the adjacent chateaux drove over to call, and occasionally the ponderous pair were harnessed to a landau as lumbering as the brougham, and the ladies of saint desert measured the dusty kilometres between themselves and their neighbours. it was the first time that undine had seriously paused to consider the conditions of her new life, and as the days passed she began to understand that so they would continue to succeed each other till the end. every one about her took it for granted that as long as she lived she would spend ten months of every year at saint desert and the remaining two in paris. of course, if health required it, she might go to les eaux with her husband; but the old marquise was very doubtful as to the benefit of a course of waters, and her uncle the duke and her cousin the canon shared her view. in the case of young married women, especially, the unwholesome excitement of the modern watering-place was more than likely to do away with the possible benefit of the treatment. as to travel--had not raymond and his wife been to egypt and asia minor on their wedding-journey? such reckless enterprise was unheard of in the annals of the house! had they not spent days and days in the saddle, and slept in tents among the arabs? (who could tell, indeed, whether these imprudences were not the cause of the disappointment which it had pleased heaven to inflict on the young couple?) no one in the family had ever taken so long a wedding-journey. one bride had gone to england (even that was considered extreme), and another--the artistic daughter--had spent a week in venice; which certainly showed that they were not behind the times, and had no old-fashioned prejudices. since wedding-journeys were the fashion, they had taken them; but who had ever heard of travelling afterward? what could be the possible object of leaving one's family, one's habits, one's friends? it was natural that the americans, who had no homes, who were born and died in hotels, should have contracted nomadic habits: but the new marquise de chelles was no longer an american, and she had saint desert and the hotel de chelles to live in, as generations of ladies of her name had done before her. thus undine beheld her future laid out for her, not directly and in blunt words, but obliquely and affably, in the allusions, the assumptions, the insinuations of the amiable women among whom her days were spent. their interminable conversations were carried on to the click of knitting-needles and the rise and fall of industrious fingers above embroidery-frames; and as undine sat staring at the lustrous nails of her idle hands she felt that her inability to occupy them was regarded as one of the chief causes of her restlessness. the innumerable rooms of saint desert were furnished with the embroidered hangings and tapestry chairs produced by generations of diligent chatelaines, and the untiring needles of the old marquise, her daughters and dependents were still steadily increasing the provision. it struck undine as curious that they should be willing to go on making chair-coverings and bed-curtains for a house that didn't really belong to them, and that she had a right to pull about and rearrange as she chose; but then that was only a part of their whole incomprehensible way of regarding themselves (in spite of their acute personal and parochial absorptions) as minor members of a powerful and indivisible whole, the huge voracious fetish they called the family. notwithstanding their very definite theories as to what americans were and were not, they were evidently bewildered at finding no corresponding sense of solidarity in undine; and little paul's rootlessness, his lack of all local and linear ties, made them (for all the charm he exercised) regard him with something of the shyness of pious christians toward an elfin child. but though mother and child gave them a sense of insuperable strangeness, it plainly never occurred to them that both would not be gradually subdued to the customs of saint desert. dynasties had fallen, institutions changed, manners and morals, alas, deplorably declined; but as far back as memory went, the ladies of the line of chelles had always sat at their needle-work on the terrace of saint desert, while the men of the house lamented the corruption of the government and the cure ascribed the unhappy state of the country to the decline of religious feeling and the rise in the cost of living. it was inevitable that, in the course of time, the new marquise should come to understand the fundamental necessity of these things being as they were; and meanwhile the forbearance of her husband's family exercised itself, with the smiling discretion of their race, through the long succession of uneventful days. once, in september, this routine was broken in upon by the unannounced descent of a flock of motors bearing the princess estradina and a chosen band from one watering-place to another. raymond was away at the time, but family loyalty constrained the old marquise to welcome her kinswoman and the latter's friends; and undine once more found herself immersed in the world from which her marriage had removed her. the princess, at first, seemed totally to have forgotten their former intimacy, and undine was made to feel that in a life so variously agitated the episode could hardly have left a trace. but the night before her departure the incalculable lili, with one of her sudden changes of humour, drew her former friend into her bedroom and plunged into an exchange of confidences. she naturally unfolded her own history first, and it was so packed with incident that the courtyard clock had struck two before she turned her attention to undine. "my dear, you're handsomer than ever; only perhaps a shade too stout. domestic bliss, i suppose? take care! you need an emotion, a drama... you americans are really extraordinary. you appear to live on change and excitement; and then suddenly a man comes along and claps a ring on your finger, and you never look through it to see what's going on outside. aren't you ever the least bit bored? why do i never see anything of you any more? i suppose it's the fault of my venerable aunt--she's never forgiven me for having a better time than her daughters. how can i help it if i don't look like the cure's umbrella? i daresay she owes you the same grudge. but why do you let her coop you up here? it's a thousand pities you haven't had a child. they'd all treat you differently if you had." it was the same perpetually reiterated condolence; and undine flushed with anger as she listened. why indeed had she let herself be cooped up? she could not have answered the princess's question: she merely felt the impossibility of breaking through the mysterious web of traditions, conventions, prohibitions that enclosed her in their impenetrable net-work. but her vanity suggested the obvious pretext, and she murmured with a laugh: "i didn't know raymond was going to be so jealous--" the princess stared. "is it raymond who keeps you shut up here? and what about his trips to dijon? and what do you suppose he does with himself when he runs up to paris? politics?" she shrugged ironically. "politics don't occupy a man after midnight. raymond jealous of you? ah, merci! my dear, it's what i always say when people talk to me about fast americans: you're the only innocent women left in the world..." xl after the princess estradina's departure, the days at saint desert succeeded each other indistinguishably; and more and more, as they passed, undine felt herself drawn into the slow strong current already fed by so many tributary lives. some spell she could not have named seemed to emanate from the old house which had so long been the custodian of an unbroken tradition: things had happened there in the same way for so many generations that to try to alter them seemed as vain as to contend with the elements. winter came and went, and once more the calendar marked the first days of spring; but though the horse-chestnuts of the champs elysees were budding snow still lingered in the grass drives of saint desert and along the ridges of the hills beyond the park. sometimes, as undine looked out of the windows of the boucher gallery, she felt as if her eyes had never rested on any other scene. even her occasional brief trips to paris left no lasting trace: the life of the vivid streets faded to a shadow as soon as the black and white horizon of saint desert closed in on her again. though the afternoons were still cold she had lately taken to sitting in the gallery. the smiling scenes on its walls and the tall screens which broke its length made it more habitable than the drawing-rooms beyond; but her chief reason for preferring it was the satisfaction she found in having fires lit in both the monumental chimneys that faced each other down its long perspective. this satisfaction had its source in the old marquise's disapproval. never before in the history of saint desert had the consumption of firewood exceeded a certain carefully-calculated measure; but since undine had been in authority this allowance had been doubled. if any one had told her, a year earlier, that one of the chief distractions of her new life would be to invent ways of annoying her mother-in-law, she would have laughed at the idea of wasting her time on such trifles. but she found herself with a great deal of time to waste, and with a fierce desire to spend it in upsetting the immemorial customs of saint desert. her husband had mastered her in essentials, but she had discovered innumerable small ways of irritating and hurting him, and one--and not the least effectual--was to do anything that went counter to his mother's prejudices. it was not that he always shared her views, or was a particularly subservient son; but it seemed to be one of his fundamental principles that a man should respect his mother's wishes, and see to it that his household respected them. all frenchmen of his class appeared to share this view, and to regard it as beyond discussion: it was based on something so much more immutable than personal feeling that one might even hate one's mother and yet insist that her ideas as to the consumption of fire-wood should be regarded. the old marquise, during the cold weather, always sat in her bedroom; and there, between the tapestried four-poster and the fireplace, the family grouped itself around the ground-glass of her single carcel lamp. in the evening, if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library; otherwise the family again sat about the marquise's lamp till the footman came in at ten with tisane and biscuits de reims; after which every one bade the dowager good night and scattered down the corridors to chill distances marked by tapers floating in cups of oil. since undine's coming the library fire had never been allowed to go out; and of late, after experimenting with the two drawing-rooms and the so-called "study" where raymond kept his guns and saw the bailiff, she had selected the gallery as the most suitable place for the new and unfamiliar ceremony of afternoon tea. afternoon refreshments had never before been served at saint desert except when company was expected; when they had invariably consisted in a decanter of sweet port and a plate of small dry cakes--the kind that kept. that the complicated rites of the tea-urn, with its offering-up of perishable delicacies, should be enacted for the sole enjoyment of the family, was a thing so unheard of that for a while undine found sufficient amusement in elaborating the ceremonial, and in making the ancestral plate groan under more varied viands; and when this palled she devised the plan of performing the office in the gallery and lighting sacrificial fires in both chimneys. she had said to raymond, at first: "it's ridiculous that your mother should sit in her bedroom all day. she says she does it to save fires; but if we have a fire downstairs why can't she let hers go out, and come down? i don't see why i should spend my life in your mother's bedroom." raymond made no answer, and the marquise did, in fact, let her fire go out. but she did not come down--she simply continued to sit upstairs without a fire. at first this also amused undine; then the tacit criticism implied began to irritate her. she hoped raymond would speak of his mother's attitude: she had her answer ready if he did! but he made no comment, he took no notice; her impulses of retaliation spent themselves against the blank surface of his indifference. he was as amiable, as considerate as ever; as ready, within reason, to accede to her wishes and gratify her whims. once or twice, when she suggested running up to paris to take paul to the dentist, or to look for a servant, he agreed to the necessity and went up with her. but instead of going to an hotel they went to their apartment, where carpets were up and curtains down, and a care-taker prepared primitive food at uncertain hours; and undine's first glimpse of hubert's illuminated windows deepened her rancour and her sense of helplessness. as madame de trezac had predicted, raymond's vigilance gradually relaxed, and during their excursions to the capital undine came and went as she pleased. but her visits were too short to permit of her falling in with the social pace, and when she showed herself among her friends she felt countrified and out-of-place, as if even her clothes had come from saint desert. nevertheless her dresses were more than ever her chief preoccupation: in paris she spent hours at the dressmaker's, and in the country the arrival of a box of new gowns was the chief event of the vacant days. but there was more bitterness than joy in the unpacking, and the dresses hung in her wardrobe like so many unfulfilled promises of pleasure, reminding her of the days at the stentorian when she had reviewed other finery with the same cheated eyes. in spite of this, she multiplied her orders, writing up to the dress-makers for patterns, and to the milliners for boxes of hats which she tried on, and kept for days, without being able to make a choice. now and then she even sent her maid up to paris to bring back great assortments of veils, gloves, flowers and laces; and after periods of painful indecision she ended by keeping the greater number, lest those she sent back should turn out to be the ones that were worn in paris. she knew she was spending too much money, and she had lost her youthful faith in providential solutions; but she had always had the habit of going out to buy something when she was bored, and never had she been in greater need of such solace. the dulness of her life seemed to have passed into her blood: her complexion was less animated, her hair less shining. the change in her looks alarmed her, and she scanned the fashion-papers for new scents and powders, and experimented in facial bandaging, electric massage and other processes of renovation. odd atavisms woke in her, and she began to pore over patent medicine advertisements, to send stamped envelopes to beauty doctors and professors of physical development, and to brood on the advantage of consulting faith-healers, mind-readers and their kindred adepts. she even wrote to her mother for the receipts of some of her grandfather's forgotten nostrums, and modified her daily life, and her hours of sleeping, eating and exercise, in accordance with each new experiment. her constitutional restlessness lapsed into an apathy like mrs. spragg's, and the least demand on her activity irritated her. but she was beset by endless annoyances: bickerings with discontented maids, the difficulty of finding a tutor for paul, and the problem of keeping him amused and occupied without having him too much on her hands. a great liking had sprung up between raymond and the little boy, and during the summer paul was perpetually at his step-father's side in the stables and the park. but with the coming of winter raymond was oftener away, and paul developed a persistent cold that kept him frequently indoors. the confinement made him fretful and exacting, and the old marquise ascribed the change in his behaviour to the deplorable influence of his tutor, a "laic" recommended by one of raymond's old professors. raymond himself would have preferred an abbé: it was in the tradition of the house, and though paul was not of the house it seemed fitting that he should conform to its ways. moreover, when the married sisters came to stay they objected to having their children exposed to the tutor's influence, and even implied that paul's society might be contaminating. but undine, though she had so readily embraced her husband's faith, stubbornly resisted the suggestion that she should hand over her son to the church. the tutor therefore remained; but the friction caused by his presence was so irritating to undine that she began to consider the alternative of sending paul to school. he was still small and tender for the experiment; but she persuaded herself that what he needed was "hardening," and having heard of a school where fashionable infancy was subjected to this process, she entered into correspondence with the master. his first letter convinced her that his establishment was just the place for paul; but the second contained the price-list, and after comparing it with the tutor's keep and salary she wrote to say that she feared her little boy was too young to be sent away from home. her husband, for some time past, had ceased to make any comment on her expenditure. she knew he thought her too extravagant, and felt sure he was minutely aware of what she spent; for saint desert projected on economic details a light as different as might be from the haze that veiled them in west end avenue. she therefore concluded that raymond's silence was intentional, and ascribed it to his having shortcomings of his own to conceal. the princess estradina's pleasantry had reached its mark. undine did not believe that her husband was seriously in love with another woman--she could not conceive that any one could tire of her of whom she had not first tired--but she was humiliated by his indifference, and it was easier to ascribe it to the arts of a rival than to any deficiency in herself. it exasperated her to think that he might have consolations for the outward monotony of his life, and she resolved that when they returned to paris he should see that she was not without similar opportunities. march, meanwhile, was verging on april, and still he did not speak of leaving. undine had learned that he expected to have such decisions left to him, and she hid her impatience lest her showing it should incline him to delay. but one day, as she sat at tea in the gallery, he came in in his riding-clothes and said: "i've been over to the other side of the mountain. the february rains have weakened the dam of the alette, and the vineyards will be in danger if we don't rebuild at once." she suppressed a yawn, thinking, as she did so, how dull he always looked when he talked of agriculture. it made him seem years older, and she reflected with a shiver that listening to him probably gave her the same look. he went on, as she handed him his tea: "i'm sorry it should happen just now. i'm afraid i shall have to ask you to give up your spring in paris." "oh, no--no!" she broke out. a throng of half-subdued grievances choked in her: she wanted to burst into sobs like a child. "i know it's a disappointment. but our expenses have been unusually heavy this year." "it seems to me they always are. i don't see why we should give up paris because you've got to make repairs to a dam. isn't hubert ever going to pay back that money?" he looked at her with a mild surprise. "but surely you understood at the time that it won't be possible till his wife inherits?" "till general arlington dies, you mean? he doesn't look much older than you!" "you may remember that i showed you hubert's note. he has paid the interest quite regularly." "that's kind of him!" she stood up, flaming with rebellion. "you can do as you please; but i mean to go to paris." "my mother is not going. i didn't intend to open our apartment." "i understand. but i shall open it--that's all!" he had risen too, and she saw his face whiten. "i prefer that you shouldn't go without me." "then i shall go and stay at the nouveau luxe with my american friends." "that never!" "why not?" "i consider it unsuitable." "your considering it so doesn't prove it." they stood facing each other, quivering with an equal anger; then he controlled himself and said in a more conciliatory tone: "you never seem to see that there are necessities--" "oh, neither do you--that's the trouble. you can't keep me shut up here all my life, and interfere with everything i want to do, just by saying it's unsuitable." "i've never interfered with your spending your money as you please." it was her turn to stare, sincerely wondering. "mercy, i should hope not, when you've always grudged me every penny of yours!" "you know it's not because i grudge it. i would gladly take you to paris if i had the money." "you can always find the money to spend on this place. why don't you sell it if it's so fearfully expensive?" "sell it? sell saint desert?" the suggestion seemed to strike him as something monstrously, almost fiendishly significant: as if her random word had at last thrust into his hand the clue to their whole unhappy difference. without understanding this, she guessed it from the change in his face: it was as if a deadly solvent had suddenly decomposed its familiar lines. "well, why not?" his horror spurred her on. "you might sell some of the things in it anyhow. in america we're not ashamed to sell what we can't afford to keep." her eyes fell on the storied hangings at his back. "why, there's a fortune in this one room: you could get anything you chose for those tapestries. and you stand here and tell me you're a pauper!" his glance followed hers to the tapestries, and then returned to her face. "ah, you don't understand," he said. "i understand that you care for all this old stuff more than you do for me, and that you'd rather see me unhappy and miserable than touch one of your great-grandfather's arm-chairs." the colour came slowly back to his face, but it hardened into lines she had never seen. he looked at her as though the place where she stood were empty. "you don't understand," he said again. xli the incident left undine with the baffled feeling of not being able to count on any of her old weapons of aggression. in all her struggles for authority her sense of the rightfulness of her cause had been measured by her power of making people do as she pleased. raymond's firmness shook her faith in her own claims, and a blind desire to wound and destroy replaced her usual business-like intentness on gaining her end. but her ironies were as ineffectual as her arguments, and his imperviousness was the more exasperating because she divined that some of the things she said would have hurt him if any one else had said them: it was the fact of their coming from her that made them innocuous. even when, at the close of their talk, she had burst out: "if you grudge me everything i care about we'd better separate," he had merely answered with a shrug: "it's one of the things we don't do--" and the answer had been like the slamming of an iron door in her face. an interval of silent brooding had resulted in a reaction of rebellion. she dared not carry out her threat of joining her compatriots at the nouveau luxe: she had too clear a memory of the results of her former revolt. but neither could she submit to her present fate without attempting to make raymond understand his selfish folly. she had failed to prove it by argument, but she had an inherited faith in the value of practical demonstration. if he could be made to see how easily he could give her what she wanted perhaps he might come round to her view. with this idea in mind, she had gone up to paris for twenty-four hours, on the pretext of finding a new nurse for paul; and the steps then taken had enabled her, on the first occasion, to set her plan in motion. the occasion was furnished by raymond's next trip to beaune. he went off early one morning, leaving word that he should not be back till night; and on the afternoon of the same day she stood at her usual post in the gallery, scanning the long perspective of the poplar avenue. she had not stood there long before a black speck at the end of the avenue expanded into a motor that was presently throbbing at the entrance. undine, at its approach, turned from the window, and as she moved down the gallery her glance rested on the great tapestries, with their ineffable minglings of blue and rose, as complacently as though they had been mirrors reflecting her own image. she was still looking at them when the door opened and a servant ushered in a small swarthy man who, in spite of his conspicuously london-made clothes, had an odd exotic air, as if he had worn rings in his ears or left a bale of spices at the door. he bowed to undine, cast a rapid eye up and down the room, and then, with his back to the windows, stood intensely contemplating the wall that faced them. undine's heart was beating excitedly. she knew the old marquise was taking her afternoon nap in her room, yet each sound in the silent house seemed to be that of her heels on the stairs. "ah--" said the visitor. he had begun to pace slowly down the gallery, keeping his face to the tapestries, like an actor playing to the footlights. "ah--" he said again. to ease the tension of her nerves undine began: "they were given by louis the fifteenth to the marquis de chelles who--" "their history has been published," the visitor briefly interposed; and she coloured at her blunder. the swarthy stranger, fitting a pair of eye-glasses to a nose that was like an instrument of precision, had begun a closer and more detailed inspection of the tapestries. he seemed totally unmindful of her presence, and his air of lofty indifference was beginning to make her wish she had not sent for him. his manner in paris had been so different! suddenly he turned and took off the glasses, which sprang back into a fold of his clothing like retracted feelers. "yes." he stood and looked at her without seeing her. "very well. i have brought down a gentleman." "a gentleman--?" "the greatest american collector--he buys only the best. he will not be long in paris, and it was his only chance of coming down." undine drew herself up. "i don't understand--i never said the tapestries were for sale." "precisely. but this gentleman buys only this that are not for sale." it sounded dazzling and she wavered. "i don't know--you were only to put a price on them--" "let me see him look at them first; then i'll put a price on them," he chuckled; and without waiting for her answer he went to the door and opened it. the gesture revealed the fur-coated back of a gentleman who stood at the opposite end of the hall examining the bust of a seventeenth century field-marshal. the dealer addressed the back respectfully. "mr. moffatt!" moffatt, who appeared to be interested in the bust, glanced over his shoulder without moving. "see here--" his glance took in undine, widened to astonishment and passed into apostrophe. "well, if this ain't the damnedest--!" he came forward and took her by both hands. "why, what on earth are you doing down here?" she laughed and blushed, in a tremor at the odd turn of the adventure. "i live here. didn't you know?" "not a word--never thought of asking the party's name." he turned jovially to the bowing dealer. "say--i told you those tapestries'd have to be out and outers to make up for the trip; but now i see i was mistaken." undine looked at him curiously. his physical appearance was unchanged: he was as compact and ruddy as ever, with the same astute eyes under the same guileless brow; but his self-confidence had become less aggressive, and she had never seen him so gallantly at ease. "i didn't know you'd become a great collector." "the greatest! didn't he tell you so? i thought that was why i was allowed to come." she hesitated. "of course, you know, the tapestries are not for sale--" "that so? i thought that was only his dodge to get me down. well, i'm glad they ain't: it'll give us more time to talk." watch in hand, the dealer intervened. "if, nevertheless, you would first take a glance. our train--" "it ain't mine!" moffatt interrupted; "at least not if there's a later one." undine's presence of mind had returned. "of course there is," she said gaily. she led the way back into the gallery, half hoping the dealer would allege a pressing reason for departure. she was excited and amused at moffatt's unexpected appearance, but humiliated that he should suspect her of being in financial straits. she never wanted to see moffatt except when she was happy and triumphant. the dealer had followed the other two into the gallery, and there was a moment's pause while they all stood silently before the tapestries. "by george!" moffatt finally brought out. "they're historical, you know: the king gave them to raymond's great-great-grandfather. the other day when i was in paris," undine hurried on, "i asked mr. fleischhauer to come down some time and tell us what they're worth ... and he seems to have misunderstood ... to have thought we meant to sell them." she addressed herself more pointedly to the dealer. "i'm sorry you've had the trip for nothing." mr. fleischhauer inclined himself eloquently. "it is not nothing to have seen such beauty." moffatt gave him a humorous look. "i'd hate to see mr. fleischhauer miss his train--" "i shall not miss it: i miss nothing," said mr. fleischhauer. he bowed to undine and backed toward the door. "see here," moffatt called to him as he reached the threshold, "you let the motor take you to the station, and charge up this trip to me." when the door closed he turned to undine with a laugh. "well, this beats the band. i thought of course you were living up in paris." again she felt a twinge of embarrassment. "oh, french people--i mean my husband's kind--always spend a part of the year on their estates." "but not this part, do they? why, everything's humming up there now. i was dining at the nouveau luxe last night with the driscolls and shallums and mrs. rolliver, and all your old crowd were there whooping things up." the driscolls and shallums and mrs. rolliver! how carelessly he reeled off their names! one could see from his tone that he was one of them and wanted her to know it. and nothing could have given her a completer sense of his achievement--of the number of millions he must be worth. it must have come about very recently, yet he was already at ease in his new honours--he had the metropolitan tone. while she examined him with these thoughts in her mind she was aware of his giving her as close a scrutiny. "but i suppose you've got your own crowd now," he continued; "you always were a lap ahead of me." he sent his glance down the lordly length of the room. "it's sorter funny to see you in this kind of place; but you look it--you always do look it!" she laughed. "so do you--i was just thinking it!" their eyes met. "i suppose you must be awfully rich." he laughed too, holding her eyes. "oh, out of sight! the consolidation set me on my feet. i own pretty near the whole of apex. i came down to buy these tapestries for my private car." the familiar accent of hyperbole exhilarated her. "i don't suppose i could stop you if you really wanted them!" "nobody can stop me now if i want anything." they were looking at each other with challenge and complicity in their eyes. his voice, his look, all the loud confident vigorous things he embodied and expressed, set her blood beating with curiosity. "i didn't know you and rolliver were friends," she said. "oh jim--" his accent verged on the protective. "old jim's all right. he's in congress now. i've got to have somebody up in washington." he had thrust his hands in his pockets, and with his head thrown back and his lips shaped to the familiar noiseless whistle, was looking slowly and discerningly about him. presently his eyes reverted to her face. "so this is what i helped you to get," he said. "i've always meant to run over some day and take a look. what is it they call you--a marquise?" she paled a little, and then flushed again. "what made you do it?" she broke out abruptly. "i've often wondered." he laughed. "what--lend you a hand? why, my business instinct, i suppose. i saw you were in a tight place that time i ran across you in paris--and i hadn't any grudge against you. fact is, i've never had the time to nurse old scores, and if you neglect 'em they die off like gold-fish." he was still composedly regarding her. "it's funny to think of your having settled down to this kind of life; i hope you've got what you wanted. this is a great place you live in." "yes; but i see a little too much of it. we live here most of the year." she had meant to give him the illusion of success, but some underlying community of instinct drew the confession from her lips. "that so? why on earth don't you cut it and come up to paris?" "oh, raymond's absorbed in the estates--and we haven't got the money. this place eats it all up." "well, that sounds aristocratic; but ain't it rather out of date? when the swells are hard-up nowadays they generally chip off an heirloom." he wheeled round again to the tapestries. "there are a good many paris seasons hanging right here on this wall." "yes--i know." she tried to check herself, to summon up a glittering equivocation; but his face, his voice, the very words he used, were like so many hammer-strokes demolishing the unrealities that imprisoned her. here was some one who spoke her language, who knew her meanings, who understood instinctively all the deep-seated wants for which her acquired vocabulary had no terms; and as she talked she once more seemed to herself intelligent, eloquent and interesting. "of course it's frightfully lonely down here," she began; and through the opening made by the admission the whole flood of her grievances poured forth. she tried to let him see that she had not sacrificed herself for nothing; she touched on the superiorities of her situation, she gilded the circumstances of which she called herself the victim, and let titles, offices and attributes shed their utmost lustre on her tale; but what she had to boast of seemed small and tinkling compared with the evidences of his power. "well, it's a downright shame you don't go round more," he kept saying; and she felt ashamed of her tame acceptance of her fate. when she had told her story she asked for his; and for the first time she listened to it with interest. he had what he wanted at last. the apex consolidation scheme, after a long interval of suspense, had obtained its charter and shot out huge ramifications. rolliver had "stood in" with him at the critical moment, and between them they had "chucked out" old harmon b. driscoll bag and baggage, and got the whole town in their control. absorbed in his theme, and forgetting her inability to follow him, moffatt launched out on an epic recital of plot and counterplot, and she hung, a new desdemona, on his conflict with the new anthropophagi. it was of no consequence that the details and the technicalities escaped her: she knew their meaningless syllables stood for success, and what that meant was as clear as day to her. every wall street term had its equivalent in the language of fifth avenue, and while he talked of building up railways she was building up palaces, and picturing all the multiple lives he would lead in them. to have things had always seemed to her the first essential of existence, and as she listened to him the vision of the things he could have unrolled itself before her like the long triumph of an asiatic conqueror. "and what are you going to do next?" she asked, almost breathlessly, when he had ended. "oh, there's always a lot to do next. business never goes to sleep." "yes; but i mean besides business." "why--everything i can, i guess." he leaned back in his chair with an air of placid power, as if he were so sure of getting what he wanted that there was no longer any use in hurrying, huge as his vistas had become. she continued to question him, and he began to talk of his growing passion for pictures and furniture, and of his desire to form a collection which should be a great representative assemblage of unmatched specimens. as he spoke she saw his expression change, and his eyes grow younger, almost boyish, with a concentrated look in them that reminded her of long-forgotten things. "i mean to have the best, you know; not just to get ahead of the other fellows, but because i know it when i see it. i guess that's the only good reason," he concluded; and he added, looking at her with a smile: "it was what you were always after, wasn't it?" xlii undine had gained her point, and the entresol of the hotel de chelles reopened its doors for the season. hubert and his wife, in expectation of the birth of an heir, had withdrawn to the sumptuous chateau which general arlington had hired for them near compiegne, and undine was at least spared the sight of their bright windows and animated stairway. but she had to take her share of the felicitations which the whole far-reaching circle of friends and relations distributed to every member of hubert's family on the approach of the happy event. nor was this the hardest of her trials. raymond had done what she asked--he had stood out against his mother's protests, set aside considerations of prudence, and consented to go up to paris for two months; but he had done so on the understanding that during their stay they should exercise the most unremitting economy. as dinner-giving put the heaviest strain on their budget, all hospitality was suspended; and when undine attempted to invite a few friends informally she was warned that she could not do so without causing the gravest offense to the many others genealogically entitled to the same attention. raymond's insistence on this rule was simply part of an elaborate and inveterate system of "relations" (the whole of french social life seemed to depend on the exact interpretation of that word), and undine felt the uselessness of struggling against such mysterious inhibitions. he reminded her, however, that their inability to receive would give them all the more opportunity for going out, and he showed himself more socially disposed than in the past. but his concession did not result as she had hoped. they were asked out as much as ever, but they were asked to big dinners, to impersonal crushes, to the kind of entertainment it is a slight to be omitted from but no compliment to be included in. nothing could have been more galling to undine, and she frankly bewailed the fact to madame de trezac. "of course it's what was sure to come of being mewed up for months and months in the country. we're out of everything, and the people who are having a good time are simply too busy to remember us. we're only asked to the things that are made up from visiting-lists." madame de trezac listened sympathetically, but did not suppress a candid answer. "it's not altogether that, my dear; raymond's not a man his friends forget. it's rather more, if you'll excuse my saying so, the fact of your being--you personally--in the wrong set." "the wrong set? why, i'm in his set--the one that thinks itself too good for all the others. that's what you've always told me when i've said it bored me." "well, that's what i mean--" madame de trezac took the plunge. "it's not a question of your being bored." undine coloured; but she could take the hardest thrusts where her personal interest was involved. "you mean that i'm the bore, then?" "well, you don't work hard enough--you don't keep up. it's not that they don't admire you--your looks, i mean; they think you beautiful; they're delighted to bring you out at their big dinners, with the sevres and the plate. but a woman has got to be something more than good-looking to have a chance to be intimate with them: she's got to know what's being said about things. i watched you the other night at the duchess's, and half the time you hadn't an idea what they were talking about. i haven't always, either; but then i have to put up with the big dinners." undine winced under the criticism; but she had never lacked insight into the cause of her own failures, and she had already had premonitions of what madame de trezac so bluntly phrased. when raymond ceased to be interested in her conversation she had concluded it was the way of husbands; but since then it had been slowly dawning on her that she produced the same effect on others. her entrances were always triumphs; but they had no sequel. as soon as people began to talk they ceased to see her. any sense of insufficiency exasperated her, and she had vague thoughts of cultivating herself, and went so far as to spend a morning in the louvre and go to one or two lectures by a fashionable philosopher. but though she returned from these expeditions charged with opinions, their expression did not excite the interest she had hoped. her views, if abundant, were confused, and the more she said the more nebulous they seemed to grow. she was disconcerted, moreover, by finding that everybody appeared to know about the things she thought she had discovered, and her comments clearly produced more bewilderment than interest. remembering the attention she had attracted on her first appearance in raymond's world she concluded that she had "gone off" or grown dowdy, and instead of wasting more time in museums and lecture-halls she prolonged her hours at the dress-maker's and gave up the rest of the day to the scientific cultivation of her beauty. "i suppose i've turned into a perfect frump down there in that wilderness," she lamented to madame de trezac, who replied inexorably: "oh, no, you're as handsome as ever; but people here don't go on looking at each other forever as they do in london." meanwhile financial cares became more pressing. a dunning letter from one of her tradesmen fell into raymond's hands, and the talk it led to ended in his making it clear to her that she must settle her personal debts without his aid. all the "scenes" about money which had disturbed her past had ended in some mysterious solution of her difficulty. disagreeable as they were, she had always, vulgarly speaking, found they paid; but now it was she who was expected to pay. raymond took his stand without ill-temper or apology: he simply argued from inveterate precedent. but it was impossible for undine to understand a social organization which did not regard the indulging of woman as its first purpose, or to believe that any one taking another view was not moved by avarice or malice; and the discussion ended in mutual acrimony. the morning afterward, raymond came into her room with a letter in his hand. "is this your doing?" he asked. his look and voice expressed something she had never known before: the disciplined anger of a man trained to keep his emotions in fixed channels, but knowing how to fill them to the brim. the letter was from mr. fleischhauer, who begged to transmit to the marquis de chelles an offer for his boucher tapestries from a client prepared to pay the large sum named on condition that it was accepted before his approaching departure for america. "what does it mean?" raymond continued, as she did not speak. "how should i know? it's a lot of money," she stammered, shaken out of her self-possession. she had not expected so prompt a sequel to the dealer's visit, and she was vexed with him for writing to raymond without consulting her. but she recognized moffatt's high-handed way, and her fears faded in the great blaze of the sum he offered. her husband was still looking at her. "it was fleischhauer who brought a man down to see the tapestries one day when i was away at beaune?" he had known, then--everything was known at saint desert! she wavered a moment and then gave him back his look. "yes--it was fleischhauer; and i sent for him." "you sent for him?" he spoke in a voice so veiled and repressed that he seemed to be consciously saving it for some premeditated outbreak. undine felt its menace, but the thought of moffatt sent a flame through her, and the words he would have spoken seemed to fly to her lips. "why shouldn't i? something had to be done. we can't go on as we are. i've tried my best to economize--i've scraped and scrimped, and gone without heaps of things i've always had. i've moped for months and months at saint desert, and given up sending paul to school because it was too expensive, and asking my friends to dine because we couldn't afford it. and you expect me to go on living like this for the rest of my life, when all you've got to do is to hold out your hand and have two million francs drop into it!" her husband stood looking at her coldly and curiously, as though she were some alien apparition his eyes had never before beheld. "ah, that's your answer--that's all you feel when you lay hands on things that are sacred to us!" he stopped a moment, and then let his voice break out with the volume she had felt it to be gathering. "and you're all alike," he exclaimed, "every one of you. you come among us from a country we don't know, and can't imagine, a country you care for so little that before you've been a day in ours you've forgotten the very house you were born in--if it wasn't torn down before you knew it! you come among us speaking our language and not knowing what we mean; wanting the things we want, and not knowing why we want them; aping our weaknesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or ridiculing all we care about--you come from hotels as big as towns, and from towns as flimsy as paper, where the streets haven't had time to be named, and the buildings are demolished before they're dry, and the people are as proud of changing as we are of holding to what we have--and we're fools enough to imagine that because you copy our ways and pick up our slang you understand anything about the things that make life decent and honourable for us!" he stopped again, his white face and drawn nostrils giving him so much the look of an extremely distinguished actor in a fine part that, in spite of the vehemence of his emotion, his silence might have been the deliberate pause for a replique. undine kept him waiting long enough to give the effect of having lost her cue--then she brought out, with a little soft stare of incredulity: "do you mean to say you're going to refuse such an offer?" "ah--!" he turned back from the door, and picking up the letter that lay on the table between them, tore it in pieces and tossed the pieces on the floor. "that's how i refuse it!" the violence of his tone and gesture made her feel as though the fluttering strips were so many lashes laid across her face, and a rage that was half fear possessed her. "how dare you speak to me like that? nobody's ever dared to before. is talking to a woman in that way one of the things you call decent and honourable? now that i know what you feel about me i don't want to stay in your house another day. and i don't mean to--i mean to walk out of it this very hour!" for a moment they stood face to face, the depths of their mutual incomprehension at last bared to each other's angry eyes; then raymond, his glance travelling past her, pointed to the fragments of paper on the floor. "if you're capable of that you're capable of anything!" he said as he went out of the room. xliii she watched him go in a kind of stupour, knowing that when they next met he would be as courteous and self-possessed as if nothing had happened, but that everything would nevertheless go on in the same way--in his way--and that there was no more hope of shaking his resolve or altering his point of view than there would have been of transporting the deep-rooted masonry of saint desert by means of the wheeled supports on which apex architecture performed its easy transits. one of her childish rages possessed her, sweeping away every feeling save the primitive impulse to hurt and destroy; but search as she would she could not find a crack in the strong armour of her husband's habits and prejudices. for a long time she continued to sit where he had left her, staring at the portraits on the walls as though they had joined hands to imprison her. hitherto she had almost always felt herself a match for circumstances, but now the very dead were leagued to defeat her: people she had never seen and whose names she couldn't even remember seemed to be plotting and contriving against her under the escutcheoned grave-stones of saint desert. her eyes turned to the old warm-toned furniture beneath the pictures, and to her own idle image in the mirror above the mantelpiece. even in that one small room there were enough things of price to buy a release from her most pressing cares; and the great house, in which the room was a mere cell, and the other greater house in burgundy, held treasures to deplete even such a purse as moffatt's. she liked to see such things about her--without any real sense of their meaning she felt them to be the appropriate setting of a pretty woman, to embody something of the rareness and distinction she had always considered she possessed; and she reflected that if she had still been moffatt's wife he would have given her just such a setting, and the power to live in it as became her. the thought sent her memory flying back to things she had turned it from for years. for the first time since their far-off weeks together she let herself relive the brief adventure. she had been drawn to elmer moffatt from the first--from the day when ben frusk, indiana's brother, had brought him to a church picnic at mulvey's grove, and he had taken instant possession of undine, sitting in the big "stage" beside her on the "ride" to the grove, supplanting millard binch (to whom she was still, though intermittently and incompletely, engaged), swinging her between the trees, rowing her on the lake, catching and kissing her in "forfeits," awarding her the first prize in the beauty show he hilariously organized and gallantly carried out, and finally (no one knew how) contriving to borrow a buggy and a fast colt from old mulvey, and driving off with her at a two-forty gait while millard and the others took their dust in the crawling stage. no one in apex knew where young moffatt had come from, and he offered no information on the subject. he simply appeared one day behind the counter in luckaback's dollar shoe-store, drifted thence to the office of semple and binch, the coal-merchants, reappeared as the stenographer of the police court, and finally edged his way into the power-house of the apex water-works. he boarded with old mrs. flynn, down in north fifth street, on the edge of the red-light slum, he never went to church or attended lectures, or showed any desire to improve or refine himself; but he managed to get himself invited to all the picnics and lodge sociables, and at a supper of the phi upsilon society, to which he had contrived to affiliate himself, he made the best speech that had been heard there since young jim rolliver's first flights. the brothers of undine's friends all pronounced him "great," though he had fits of uncouthness that made the young women slower in admitting him to favour. but at the mulvey's grove picnic he suddenly seemed to dominate them all, and undine, as she drove away with him, tasted the public triumph which was necessary to her personal enjoyment. after that he became a leading figure in the youthful world of apex, and no one was surprised when the sons of jonadab, (the local temperance society) invited him to deliver their fourth of july oration. the ceremony took place, as usual, in the baptist church, and undine, all in white, with a red rose in her breast, sat just beneath the platform, with indiana jealously glaring at her from a less privileged seat, and poor millard's long neck craning over the row of prominent citizens behind the orator. elmer moffatt had been magnificent, rolling out his alternating effects of humour and pathos, stirring his audience by moving references to the blue and the gray, convulsing them by a new version of washington and the cherry tree (in which the infant patriot was depicted as having cut down the tree to check the deleterious spread of cherry bounce), dazzling them by his erudite allusions and apt quotations (he confessed to undine that he had sat up half the night over bartlett), and winding up with a peroration that drew tears from the grand army pensioners in the front row and caused the minister's wife to say that many a sermon from that platform had been less uplifting. an ice-cream supper always followed the "exercises," and as repairs were being made in the church basement, which was the usual scene of the festivity, the minister had offered the use of his house. the long table ran through the doorway between parlour and study, and another was set in the passage outside, with one end under the stairs. the stair-rail was wreathed in fire-weed and early golden-rod, and temperance texts in smilax decked the walls. when the first course had been despatched the young ladies, gallantly seconded by the younger of the "sons," helped to ladle out and carry in the ice-cream, which stood in great pails on the larder floor, and to replenish the jugs of lemonade and coffee. elmer moffatt was indefatigable in performing these services, and when the minister's wife pressed him to sit down and take a mouthful himself he modestly declined the place reserved for him among the dignitaries of the evening, and withdrew with a few chosen spirits to the dim table-end beneath the stairs. explosions of hilarity came from this corner with increasing frequency, and now and then tumultuous rappings and howls of "song! song!" followed by adjurations to "cough it up" and "let her go," drowned the conversational efforts at the other table. at length the noise subsided, and the group was ceasing to attract attention when, toward the end of the evening, the upper table, drooping under the lengthy elucubrations of the minister and the president of the temperance society, called on the orator of the day for a few remarks. there was an interval of scuffling and laughter beneath the stairs, and then the minister's lifted hand enjoined silence and elmer moffatt got to his feet. "step out where the ladies can hear you better, mr. moffatt!" the minister called. moffatt did so, steadying himself against the table and twisting his head about as if his collar had grown too tight. but if his bearing was vacillating his smile was unabashed, and there was no lack of confidence in the glance he threw at undine spragg as he began: "ladies and gentlemen, if there's one thing i like better than another about getting drunk--and i like most everything about it except the next morning--it's the opportunity you've given me of doing it right here, in the presence of this society, which, as i gather from its literature, knows more about the subject than anybody else. ladies and gentlemen"--he straightened himself, and the table-cloth slid toward him--"ever since you honoured me with an invitation to address you from the temperance platform i've been assiduously studying that literature; and i've gathered from your own evidence--what i'd strongly suspected before--that all your converted drunkards had a hell of a good time before you got at 'em, and that... and that a good many of 'em have gone on having it since..." at this point he broke off, swept the audience with his confident smile, and then, collapsing, tried to sit down on a chair that didn't happen to be there, and disappeared among his agitated supporters. there was a night-mare moment during which undine, through the doorway, saw ben frusk and the others close about the fallen orator to the crash of crockery and tumbling chairs; then some one jumped up and shut the parlour door, and a long-necked sunday school teacher, who had been nervously waiting his chance, and had almost given it up, rose from his feet and recited high tide at gettysburg amid hysterical applause. the scandal was considerable, but moffatt, though he vanished from the social horizon, managed to keep his place in the power-house till he went off for a week and turned up again without being able to give a satisfactory reason for his absence. after that he drifted from one job to another, now extolled for his "smartness" and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. his head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in. sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable; sometimes he wore out their patience or was thought to be a dangerous dreamer. whenever he found there was no hope of his ideas being adopted he lost interest in his work, came late and left early, or disappeared for two or three days at a time without troubling himself to account for his absences. at last even those who had been cynical enough to smile over his disgrace at the temperance supper began to speak of him as a hopeless failure, and he lost the support of the feminine community when one sunday morning, just as the baptist and methodist churches were releasing their congregations, he walked up eubaw avenue with a young woman less known to those sacred edifices than to the saloons of north fifth street. undine's estimate of people had always been based on their apparent power of getting what they wanted--provided it came under the category of things she understood wanting. success was beauty and romance to her; yet it was at the moment when elmer moffatt's failure was most complete and flagrant that she suddenly felt the extent of his power. after the eubaw avenue scandal he had been asked not to return to the surveyor's office to which ben frusk had managed to get him admitted; and on the day of his dismissal he met undine in main street, at the shopping hour, and, sauntering up cheerfully, invited her to take a walk with him. she was about to refuse when she saw millard binch's mother looking at her disapprovingly from the opposite street-corner. "oh, well, i will--" she said; and they walked the length of main street and out to the immature park in which it ended. she was in a mood of aimless discontent and unrest, tired of her engagement to millard binch, disappointed with moffatt, half-ashamed of being seen with him, and yet not sorry to have it known that she was independent enough to choose her companions without regard to the apex verdict. "well, i suppose you know i'm down and out," he began; and she responded virtuously: "you must have wanted to be, or you wouldn't have behaved the way you did last sunday." "oh, shucks!" he sneered. "what do i care, in a one-horse place like this? if it hadn't been for you i'd have got a move on long ago." she did not remember afterward what else he said: she recalled only the expression of a great sweeping scorn of apex, into which her own disdain of it was absorbed like a drop in the sea, and the affirmation of a soaring self-confidence that seemed to lift her on wings. all her own attempts to get what she wanted had come to nothing; but she had always attributed her lack of success to the fact that she had had no one to second her. it was strange that elmer moffatt, a shiftless out-cast from even the small world she despised, should give her, in the very moment of his downfall, the sense of being able to succeed where she had failed. it was a feeling she never had in his absence, but that his nearness always instantly revived; and he seemed nearer to her now than he had ever been. they wandered on to the edge of the vague park, and sat down on a bench behind the empty band-stand. "i went with that girl on purpose, and you know it," he broke out abruptly. "it makes me too damned sick to see millard binch going round looking as if he'd patented you." "you've got no right--" she interrupted; and suddenly she was in his arms, and feeling that no one had ever kissed her before.... the week that followed was a big bright blur--the wildest vividest moment of her life. and it was only eight days later that they were in the train together, apex and all her plans and promises behind them, and a bigger and brighter blur ahead, into which they were plunging as the "limited" plunged into the sunset.... undine stood up, looking about her with vague eyes, as if she had come back from a long distance. elmer moffatt was still in paris--he was in reach, within telephone-call. she stood hesitating a moment; then she went into her dressing-room, and turning over the pages of the telephone book, looked out the number of the nouveau luxe.... xliv undine had been right in supposing that her husband would expect their life to go on as before. there was no appreciable change in the situation save that he was more often absent-finding abundant reasons, agricultural and political, for frequent trips to saint desert--and that, when in paris, he no longer showed any curiosity concerning her occupations and engagements. they lived as much apart is if their cramped domicile had been a palace; and when undine--as she now frequently did--joined the shallums or rollivers for a dinner at the nouveau luxe, or a party at a petit theatre, she was not put to the trouble of prevaricating. her first impulse, after her scene with raymond, had been to ring up indiana rolliver and invite herself to dine. it chanced that indiana (who was now in full social progress, and had "run over" for a few weeks to get her dresses for newport) had organized for the same evening a showy cosmopolitan banquet in which she was enchanted to include the marquise de chelles; and undine, as she had hoped, found elmer moffatt of the party. when she drove up to the nouveau luxe she had not fixed on any plan of action; but once she had crossed its magic threshold her energies revived like plants in water. at last she was in her native air again, among associations she shared and conventions she understood; and all her self-confidence returned as the familiar accents uttered the accustomed things. save for an occasional perfunctory call, she had hitherto made no effort to see her compatriots, and she noticed that mrs. jim driscoll and bertha shallum received her with a touch of constraint; but it vanished when they remarked the cordiality of moffatt's greeting. her seat was at his side, and her old sense of triumph returned as she perceived the importance his notice conferred, not only in the eyes of her own party but of the other diners. moffatt was evidently a notable figure in all the worlds represented about the crowded tables, and undine saw that many people who seemed personally unacquainted with him were recognizing and pointing him out. she was conscious of receiving a large share of the attention he attracted, and, bathed again in the bright air of publicity, she remembered the evening when raymond de chelles' first admiring glance had given her the same sense of triumph. this inopportune memory did not trouble her: she was almost grateful to raymond for giving her the touch of superiority her compatriots clearly felt in her. it was not merely her title and her "situation," but the experiences she had gained through them, that gave her this advantage over the loud vague company. she had learned things they did not guess: shades of conduct, turns of speech, tricks of attitude--and easy and free and enviable as she thought them, she would not for the world have been back among them at the cost of knowing no more than they. moffatt made no allusion to his visit to saint desert; but when the party had re-grouped itself about coffee and liqueurs on the terrace, he bent over to ask confidentially: "what about my tapestries?" she replied in the same tone: "you oughtn't to have let fleischhauer write that letter. my husband's furious." he seemed honestly surprised. "why? didn't i offer him enough?" "he's furious that any one should offer anything. i thought when he found out what they were worth he might be tempted; but he'd rather see me starve than part with one of his grand-father's snuff-boxes." "well, he knows now what the tapestries are worth. i offered more than fleischhauer advised." "yes; but you were in too much of a hurry." "i've got to be; i'm going back next week." she felt her eyes cloud with disappointment. "oh, why do you? i hoped you might stay on." they looked at each other uncertainly a moment; then he dropped his voice to say: "even if i did, i probably shouldn't see anything of you." "why not? why won't you come and see me? i've always wanted to be friends." he came the next day and found in her drawing-room two ladies whom she introduced as her sisters-in-law. the ladies lingered on for a long time, sipping their tea stiffly and exchanging low-voiced remarks while undine talked with moffatt; and when they left, with small sidelong bows in his direction. undine exclaimed: "now you see how they all watch me!" she began to go into the details of her married life, drawing on the experiences of the first months for instances that scarcely applied to her present liberated state. she could thus, without great exaggeration, picture herself as entrapped into a bondage hardly conceivable to moffatt, and she saw him redden with excitement as he listened. "i call it darned low--darned low--" he broke in at intervals. "of course i go round more now," she concluded. "i mean to see my friends--i don't care what he says." "what can he say?" "oh, he despises americans--they all do." "well, i guess we can still sit up and take nourishment." they laughed and slipped back to talking of earlier things. she urged him to put off his sailing--there were so many things they might do together: sight-seeing and excursions--and she could perhaps show him some of the private collections he hadn't seen, the ones it was hard to get admitted to. this instantly roused his attention, and after naming one or two collections he had already seen she hit on one he had found inaccessible and was particularly anxious to visit. "there's an ingres there that's one of the things i came over to have a look at; but i was told there was no use trying." "oh, i can easily manage it: the duke's raymond's uncle." it gave her a peculiar satisfaction to say it: she felt as though she were taking a surreptitious revenge on her husband. "but he's down in the country this week," she continued, "and no one--not even the family--is allowed to see the pictures when he's away. of course his ingres are the finest in france." she ran it off glibly, though a year ago she had never heard of the painter, and did not, even now, remember whether he was an old master or one of the very new ones whose names one hadn't had time to learn. moffatt put off sailing, saw the duke's ingres under her guidance, and accompanied her to various other private galleries inaccessible to strangers. she had lived in almost total ignorance of such opportunities, but now that she could use them to advantage she showed a surprising quickness in picking up "tips," ferreting out rare things and getting a sight of hidden treasures. she even acquired as much of the jargon as a pretty woman needs to produce the impression of being well-informed; and moffatt's sailing was more than once postponed. they saw each other almost daily, for she continued to come and go as she pleased, and raymond showed neither surprise nor disapproval. when they were asked to family dinners she usually excused herself at the last moment on the plea of a headache and, calling up indiana or bertha shallum, improvised a little party at the nouveau luxe; and on other occasions she accepted such invitations as she chose, without mentioning to her husband where she was going. in this world of lavish pleasures she lost what little prudence the discipline of saint desert had inculcated. she could never be with people who had all the things she envied without being hypnotized into the belief that she had only to put her hand out to obtain them, and all the unassuaged rancours and hungers of her early days in west end avenue came back with increased acuity. she knew her wants so much better now, and was so much more worthy of the things she wanted! she had given up hoping that her father might make another hit in wall street. mrs. spragg's letters gave the impression that the days of big strokes were over for her husband, that he had gone down in the conflict with forces beyond his measure. if he had remained in apex the tide of its new prosperity might have carried him to wealth; but new york's huge waves of success had submerged instead of floating him, and rolliver's enmity was a hand perpetually stretched out to strike him lower. at most, mr. spragg's tenacity would keep him at the level he now held, and though he and his wife had still further simplified their way of living undine understood that their self-denial would not increase her opportunities. she felt no compunction in continuing to accept an undiminished allowance: it was the hereditary habit of the parent animal to despoil himself for his progeny. but this conviction did not seem incompatible with a sentimental pity for her parents. aside from all interested motives, she wished for their own sakes that they were better off. their personal requirements were pathetically limited, but renewed prosperity would at least have procured them the happiness of giving her what she wanted. moffatt lingered on; but he began to speak more definitely of sailing, and undine foresaw the day when, strong as her attraction was, stronger influences would snap it like a thread. she knew she interested and amused him, and that it flattered his vanity to be seen with her, and to hear that rumour coupled their names; but he gave her, more than any one she had ever known, the sense of being detached from his life, in control of it, and able, without weakness or uncertainty, to choose which of its calls he should obey. if the call were that of business--of any of the great perilous affairs he handled like a snake-charmer spinning the deadly reptiles about his head--she knew she would drop from his life like a loosened leaf. these anxieties sharpened the intensity of her enjoyment, and made the contrast keener between her crowded sparkling hours and the vacant months at saint desert. little as she understood of the qualities that made moffatt what he was, the results were of the kind most palpable to her. he used life exactly as she would have used it in his place. some of his enjoyments were beyond her range, but even these appealed to her because of the money that was required to gratify them. when she took him to see some inaccessible picture, or went with him to inspect the treasures of a famous dealer, she saw that the things he looked at moved him in a way she could not understand, and that the actual touching of rare textures--bronze or marble, or velvets flushed with the bloom of age--gave him sensations like those her own beauty had once roused in him. but the next moment he was laughing over some commonplace joke, or absorbed in a long cipher cable handed to him as they re-entered the nouveau luxe for tea, and his aesthetic emotions had been thrust back into their own compartment of the great steel strong-box of his mind. her new life went on without comment or interference from her husband, and she saw that he had accepted their altered relation, and intended merely to keep up an external semblance of harmony. to that semblance she knew he attached intense importance: it was an article of his complicated social creed that a man of his class should appear to live on good terms with his wife. for different reasons it was scarcely less important to undine: she had no wish to affront again the social reprobation that had so nearly wrecked her. but she could not keep up the life she was leading without more money, a great deal more money; and the thought of contracting her expenditure was no longer tolerable. one afternoon, several weeks later, she came in to find a tradesman's representative waiting with a bill. there was a noisy scene in the anteroom before the man threateningly withdrew--a scene witnessed by the servants, and overheard by her mother-in-law, whom she found seated in the drawing-room when she entered. the old marquise's visits to her daughter-in-law were made at long intervals but with ritual regularity; she called every other friday at five, and undine had forgotten that she was due that day. this did not make for greater cordiality between them, and the altercation in the anteroom had been too loud for concealment. the marquise was on her feet when her daughter-in-law came in, and instantly said with lowered eyes: "it would perhaps be best for me to go." "oh, i don't care. you're welcome to tell raymond you've heard me insulted because i'm too poor to pay my bills--he knows it well enough already!" the words broke from undine unguardedly, but once spoken they nourished her defiance. "i'm sure my son has frequently recommended greater prudence--" the marquise murmured. "yes! it's a pity he didn't recommend it to your other son instead! all the money i was entitled to has gone to pay hubert's debts." "raymond has told me that there are certain things you fail to understand--i have no wish whatever to discuss them." the marquise had gone toward the door; with her hand on it she paused to add: "i shall say nothing whatever of what has happened." her icy magnanimity added the last touch to undine's wrath. they knew her extremity, one and all, and it did not move them. at most, they would join in concealing it like a blot on their honour. and the menace grew and mounted, and not a hand was stretched to help her.... hardly a half-hour earlier moffatt, with whom she had been visiting a "private view," had sent her home in his motor with the excuse that he must hurry back to the nouveau luxe to meet his stenographer and sign a batch of letters for the new york mail. it was therefore probable that he was still at home--that she should find him if she hastened there at once. an overwhelming desire to cry out her wrath and wretchedness brought her to her feet and sent her down to hail a passing cab. as it whirled her through the bright streets powdered with amber sunlight her brain throbbed with confused intentions. she did not think of moffatt as a power she could use, but simply as some one who knew her and understood her grievance. it was essential to her at that moment to be told that she was right and that every one opposed to her was wrong. at the hotel she asked his number and was carried up in the lift. on the landing she paused a moment, disconcerted--it had occurred to her that he might not be alone. but she walked on quickly, found the number and knocked.... moffatt opened the door, and she glanced beyond him and saw that the big bright sitting-room was empty. "hullo!" he exclaimed, surprised; and as he stood aside to let her enter she saw him draw out his watch and glance at it surreptitiously. he was expecting someone, or he had an engagement elsewhere--something claimed him from which she was excluded. the thought flushed her with sudden resolution. she knew now what she had come for--to keep him from every one else, to keep him for herself alone. "don't send me away!" she said, and laid her hand on his beseechingly. xlv she advanced into the room and slowly looked about her. the big vulgar writing-table wreathed in bronze was heaped with letters and papers. among them stood a lapis bowl in a renaissance mounting of enamel and a vase of phenician glass that was like a bit of rainbow caught in cobwebs. on a table against the window a little greek marble lifted its pure lines. on every side some rare and sensitive object seemed to be shrinking back from the false colours and crude contours of the hotel furniture. there were no books in the room, but the florid console under the mirror was stacked with old numbers of town talk and the new york radiator. undine recalled the dingy hall-room that moffatt had lodged in at mrs. flynn's, over hober's livery stable, and her heart beat at the signs of his altered state. when her eyes came back to him their lids were moist. "don't send me away," she repeated. he looked at her and smiled. "what is it? what's the matter?" "i don't know--but i had to come. to-day, when you spoke again of sailing, i felt as if i couldn't stand it." she lifted her eyes and looked in his profoundly. he reddened a little under her gaze, but she could detect no softening or confusion in the shrewd steady glance he gave her back. "things going wrong again--is that the trouble?" he merely asked with a comforting inflexion. "they always are wrong; it's all been an awful mistake. but i shouldn't care if you were here and i could see you sometimes. you're so strong: that's what i feel about you, elmer. i was the only one to feel it that time they all turned against you out at apex.... do you remember the afternoon i met you down on main street, and we walked out together to the park? i knew then that you were stronger than any of them...." she had never spoken more sincerely. for the moment all thought of self-interest was in abeyance, and she felt again, as she had felt that day, the instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with his. something in her voice must have attested it, for she saw a change in his face. "you're not the beauty you were," he said irrelevantly; "but you're a lot more fetching." the oddly qualified praise made her laugh with mingled pleasure and annoyance. "i suppose i must be dreadfully changed--" "you're all right!--but i've got to go back home," he broke off abruptly. "i've put it off too long." she paled and looked away, helpless in her sudden disappointment. "i knew you'd say that.... and i shall just be left here...." she sat down on the sofa near which they had been standing, and two tears formed on her lashes and fell. moffatt sat down beside her, and both were silent. she had never seen him at a loss before. she made no attempt to draw nearer, or to use any of the arts of cajolery; but presently she said, without rising: "i saw you look at your watch when i came in. i suppose somebody else is waiting for you." "it don't matter." "some other woman?" "it don't matter." "i've wondered so often--but of course i've got no right to ask." she stood up slowly, understanding that he meant to let her go. "just tell me one thing--did you never miss me?" "oh, damnably!" he brought out with sudden bitterness. she came nearer, sinking her voice to a low whisper. "it's the only time i ever really cared--all through!" he had risen too, and they stood intensely gazing at each other. moffatt's face was fixed and grave, as she had seen it in hours she now found herself rapidly reliving. "i believe you did," he said. "oh, elmer--if i'd known--if i'd only known!" he made no answer, and she turned away, touching with an unconscious hand the edge of the lapis bowl among his papers. "elmer, if you're going away it can't do any harm to tell me--is there any one else?" he gave a laugh that seemed to shake him free. "in that kind of way? lord, no! too busy!" she came close again and laid a hand on his shoulder. "then why not--why shouldn't we--?" she leaned her head back so that her gaze slanted up through her wet lashes. "i can do as i please--my husband does. they think so differently about marriage over here: it's just a business contract. as long as a woman doesn't make a show of herself no one cares." she put her other hand up, so that she held him facing her. "i've always felt, all through everything, that i belonged to you." moffatt left her hands on his shoulders, but did not lift his own to clasp them. for a moment she thought she had mistaken him, and a leaden sense of shame descended on her. then he asked: "you say your husband goes with other women?" lili estradina's taunt flashed through her and she seized on it. "people have told me so--his own relations have. i've never stooped to spy on him...." "and the women in your set--i suppose it's taken for granted they all do the same?" she laughed. "everything fixed up for them, same as it is for the husbands, eh? nobody meddles or makes trouble if you know the ropes?" "no, nobody ... it's all quite easy...." she stopped, her faint smile checked, as his backward movement made her hands drop from his shoulders. "and that's what you're proposing to me? that you and i should do like the rest of 'em?" his face had lost its comic roundness and grown harsh and dark, as it had when her father had taken her away from him at opake. he turned on his heel, walked the length of the room and halted with his back to her in the embrasure of the window. there he paused a full minute, his hands in his pockets, staring out at the perpetual interweaving of motors in the luminous setting of the square. then he turned and spoke from where he stood. "look here. undine, if i'm to have you again i don't want to have you that way. that time out in apex, when everybody in the place was against me, and i was down and out, you stood up to them and stuck by me. remember that walk down main street? don't i!--and the way the people glared and hurried by; and how you kept on alongside of me, talking and laughing, and looking your sunday best. when abner spragg came out to opake after us and pulled you back i was pretty sore at your deserting; but i came to see it was natural enough. you were only a spoilt girl, used to having everything you wanted; and i couldn't give you a thing then, and the folks you'd been taught to believe in all told you i never would. well, i did look like a back number, and no blame to you for thinking so. i used to say it to myself over and over again, laying awake nights and totting up my mistakes ... and then there were days when the wind set another way, and i knew i'd pull it off yet, and i thought you might have held on...." he stopped, his head a little lowered, his concentrated gaze on her flushed face. "well, anyhow," he broke out, "you were my wife once, and you were my wife first--and if you want to come back you've got to come that way: not slink through the back way when there's no one watching, but walk in by the front door, with your head up, and your main street look." since the days when he had poured out to her his great fortune-building projects she had never heard him make so long a speech; and her heart, as she listened, beat with a new joy and terror. it seemed to her that the great moment of her life had come at last--the moment all her minor failures and successes had been building up with blind indefatigable hands. "elmer--elmer--" she sobbed out. she expected to find herself in his arms, shut in and shielded from all her troubles; but he stood his ground across the room, immovable. "is it yes?" she faltered the word after him: "yes--?" "are you going to marry me?" she stared, bewildered. "why, elmer--marry you? you forget!" "forget what? that you don't want to give up what you've got?" "how can i? such things are not done out here. why, i'm a catholic; and the catholic church--" she broke off, reading the end in his face. "but later, perhaps ... things might change. oh, elmer, if only you'd stay over here and let me see you sometimes!" "yes--the way your friends see each other. we're differently made out in apex. when i want that sort of thing i go down to north fifth street for it." she paled under the retort, but her heart beat high with it. what he asked was impossible--and she gloried in his asking it. feeling her power, she tried to temporize. "at least if you stayed we could be friends--i shouldn't feel so terribly alone." he laughed impatiently. "don't talk magazine stuff to me, undine spragg. i guess we want each other the same way. only our ideas are different. you've got all muddled, living out here among a lot of loafers who call it a career to run round after every petticoat. i've got my job out at home, and i belong where my job is." "are you going to be tied to business all your life?" her smile was faintly depreciatory. "i guess business is tied to me: wall street acts as if it couldn't get along without me." he gave his shoulders a shake and moved a few steps nearer. "see here, undine--you're the one that don't understand. if i was to sell out to-morrow, and spend the rest of my life reading art magazines in a pink villa, i wouldn't do what you're asking me. and i've about as much idea of dropping business as you have of taking to district nursing. there are things a man doesn't do. i understand why your husband won't sell those tapestries--till he's got to. his ancestors are his business: wall street's mine." he paused, and they silently faced each other. undine made no attempt to approach him: she understood that if he yielded it would be only to recover his advantage and deepen her feeling of defeat. she put out her hand and took up the sunshade she had dropped on entering. "i suppose it's good-bye then," she said. "you haven't got the nerve?" "the nerve for what?" "to come where you belong: with me." she laughed a little and then sighed. she wished he would come nearer, or look at her differently: she felt, under his cool eye, no more compelling than a woman of wax in a show-case. "how could i get a divorce? with my religion--" "why, you were born a baptist, weren't you? that's where you used to attend church when i waited round the corner, sunday mornings, with one of old hober's buggies." they both laughed, and he went on: "if you'll come along home with me i'll see you get your divorce all right. who cares what they do over here? you're an american, ain't you? what you want is the home-made article." she listened, discouraged yet fascinated by his sturdy inaccessibility to all her arguments and objections. he knew what he wanted, saw his road before him, and acknowledged no obstacles. her defense was drawn from reasons he did not understand, or based on difficulties that did not exist for him; and gradually she felt herself yielding to the steady pressure of his will. yet the reasons he brushed away came back with redoubled tenacity whenever he paused long enough for her to picture the consequences of what he exacted. "you don't know--you don't understand--" she kept repeating; but she knew that his ignorance was part of his terrible power, and that it was hopeless to try to make him feel the value of what he was asking her to give up. "see here, undine," he said slowly, as if he measured her resistance though he couldn't fathom it, "i guess it had better be yes or no right here. it ain't going to do either of us any good to drag this thing out. if you want to come back to me, come--if you don't, we'll shake hands on it now. i'm due in apex for a directors' meeting on the twentieth, and as it is i'll have to cable for a special to get me out there. no, no, don't cry--it ain't that kind of a story ... but i'll have a deck suite for you on the semantic if you'll sail with me the day after to-morrow." xlvi in the great high-ceilinged library of a private hotel overlooking one of the new quarters of paris, paul marvell stood listlessly gazing out into the twilight. the trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below; and paul, looking down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron gates with gilt ornaments, the marble curb of a semi-circular drive, and bands of spring flowers set in turf. he was now a big boy of nearly nine, who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home that day for the easter holidays. he had not been back since christmas, and it was the first time he had seen the new hotel which his step-father had bought, and in which mr. and mrs. moffatt had hastily established themselves, a few weeks earlier, on their return from a flying trip to america. they were always coming and going; during the two years since their marriage they had been perpetually dashing over to new york and back, or rushing down to rome or up to the engadine: paul never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they were going somewhere else. he did not even know that there was any method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity: "oh yes--i got a telegram last week." he had been almost sure--as sure as he ever was of anything--that he should find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn't had time to telegraph) apprised him that she and mr. moffatt had run down to deauville to look at a house they thought of hiring for the summer; they were taking an early train back, and would be at home for dinner--were in fact having a lot of people to dine. it was just what he ought to have expected, and had been used to ever since he could remember; and generally he didn't much mind, especially since his mother had become mrs. moffatt, and the father he had been most used to, and liked best, had abruptly disappeared from his life. but the new hotel was big and strange, and his own room, in which there was not a toy or a book, or one of his dear battered relics (none of the new servants--they were always new--could find his things, or think where they had been put), seemed the loneliest spot in the whole house. he had gone up there after his solitary luncheon, served in the immense marble dining-room by a footman on the same scale, and had tried to occupy himself with pasting post-cards into his album; but the newness and sumptuousness of the room embarrassed him--the white fur rugs and brocade chairs seemed maliciously on the watch for smears and ink-spots--and after a while he pushed the album aside and began to roam through the house. he went to all the rooms in turn: his mother's first, the wonderful lacy bedroom, all pale silks and velvets, artful mirrors and veiled lamps, and the boudoir as big as a drawing-room, with pictures he would have liked to know about, and tables and cabinets holding things he was afraid to touch. mr. moffatt's rooms came next. they were soberer and darker, but as big and splendid; and in the bedroom, on the brown wall, hung a single picture--the portrait of a boy in grey velvet--that interested paul most of all. the boy's hand rested on the head of a big dog, and he looked infinitely noble and charming, and yet (in spite of the dog) so sad and lonely that he too might have come home that very day to a strange house in which none of his old things could be found. from these rooms paul wandered downstairs again. the library attracted him most: there were rows and rows of books, bound in dim browns and golds, and old faded reds as rich as velvet: they all looked as if they might have had stories in them as splendid as their bindings. but the bookcases were closed with gilt trellising, and when paul reached up to open one, a servant told him that mr. moffatt's secretary kept them locked because the books were too valuable to be taken down. this seemed to make the library as strange as the rest of the house, and he passed on to the ballroom at the back. through its closed doors he heard a sound of hammering, and when he tried the door-handle a servant passing with a tray-full of glasses told him that "they" hadn't finished, and wouldn't let anybody in. the mysterious pronoun somehow increased paul's sense of isolation, and he went on to the drawing-rooms, steering his way prudently between the gold arm-chairs and shining tables, and wondering whether the wigged and corseleted heroes on the walls represented mr. moffatt's ancestors, and why, if they did, he looked so little like them. the dining-room beyond was more amusing, because busy servants were already laying the long table. it was too early for the florist, and the centre of the table was empty, but down the sides were gold baskets heaped with pulpy summer fruits-figs, strawberries and big blushing nectarines. between them stood crystal decanters with red and yellow wine, and little dishes full of sweets; and against the walls were sideboards with great pieces of gold and silver, ewers and urns and branching candelabra, which sprinkled the green marble walls with starlike reflections. after a while he grew tired of watching the coming and going of white-sleeved footmen, and of listening to the butler's vociferated orders, and strayed back into the library. the habit of solitude had given him a passion for the printed page, and if he could have found a book anywhere--any kind of a book--he would have forgotten the long hours and the empty house. but the tables in the library held only massive unused inkstands and immense immaculate blotters; not a single volume had slipped its golden prison. his loneliness had grown overwhelming, and he suddenly thought of mrs. heeny's clippings. his mother, alarmed by an insidious gain in weight, had brought the masseuse back from new york with her, and mrs. heeny, with her old black bag and waterproof, was established in one of the grand bedrooms lined with mirrors. she had been loud in her joy at seeing her little friend that morning, but four years had passed since their last parting, and her personality had grown remote to him. he saw too many people, and they too often disappeared and were replaced by others: his scattered affections had ended by concentrating themselves on the charming image of the gentleman he called his french father; and since his french father had vanished no one else seemed to matter much to him. "oh, well," mrs. heeny had said, discerning the reluctance under his civil greeting, "i guess you're as strange here as i am, and we're both pretty strange to each other. you just go and look round, and see what a lovely home your ma's got to live in; and when you get tired of that, come up here to me and i'll give you a look at my clippings." the word woke a train of dormant associations, and paul saw himself seated on a dingy carpet, between two familiar taciturn old presences, while he rummaged in the depths of a bag stuffed with strips of newspaper. he found mrs. heeny sitting in a pink arm-chair, her bonnet perched on a pink-shaded electric lamp and her numerous implements spread out on an immense pink toilet-table. vague as his recollection of her was, she gave him at once a sense of reassurance that nothing else in the house conveyed, and after he had examined all her scissors and pastes and nail-polishers he turned to the bag, which stood on the carpet at her feet as if she were waiting for a train. "my, my!" she said, "do you want to get into that again? how you used to hunt in it for taffy, to be sure, when your pa brought you up to grandma spragg's o' saturdays! well, i'm afraid there ain't any taffy in it now; but there's piles and piles of lovely new clippings you ain't seen." "my papa?" he paused, his hand among the strips of newspaper. "my papa never saw my grandma spragg. he never went to america." "never went to america? your pa never--? why, land alive!" mrs. heeny gasped, a blush empurpling her large warm face. "why, paul marvell, don't you remember your own father, you that bear his name?" she exclaimed. the boy blushed also, conscious that it must have been wrong to forget, and yet not seeing how he was to blame. "that one died a long long time ago, didn't he? i was thinking of my french father," he explained. "oh, mercy," ejaculated mrs. heeny; and as if to cut the conversation short she stooped over, creaking like a ship, and thrust her plump strong hand into the bag. "here, now, just you look at these clippings--i guess you'll find a lot in them about your ma.--where do they come from? why, out of the papers, of course," she added, in response to paul's enquiry. "you'd oughter start a scrap-book yourself--you're plenty old enough. you could make a beauty just about your ma, with her picture pasted in the front--and another about mr. moffatt and his collections. there's one i cut out the other day that says he's the greatest collector in america." paul listened, fascinated. he had the feeling that mrs. heeny's clippings, aside from their great intrinsic interest, might furnish him the clue to many things he didn't understand, and that nobody had ever had time to explain to him. his mother's marriages, for instance: he was sure there was a great deal to find out about them. but she always said: "i'll tell you all about it when i come back"--and when she came back it was invariably to rush off somewhere else. so he had remained without a key to her transitions, and had had to take for granted numberless things that seemed to have no parallel in the experience of the other boys he knew. "here--here it is," said mrs. heeny, adjusting the big tortoiseshell spectacles she had taken to wearing, and reading out in a slow chant that seemed to paul to come out of some lost remoteness of his infancy. "'it is reported in london that the price paid by mr. elmer moffatt for the celebrated grey boy is the largest sum ever given for a vandyck. since mr. moffatt began to buy extensively it is estimated in art circles that values have gone up at least seventy-five per cent.'" but the price of the grey boy did not interest paul, and he said a little impatiently: "i'd rather hear about my mother." "to be sure you would! you wait now." mrs. heeny made another dive, and again began to spread her clippings on her lap like cards on a big black table. "here's one about her last portrait--no, here's a better one about her pearl necklace, the one mr. moffatt gave her last christmas. 'the necklace, which was formerly the property of an austrian archduchess, is composed of five hundred perfectly matched pearls that took thirty years to collect. it is estimated among dealers in precious stones that since mr. moffatt began to buy the price of pearls has gone up over fifty per cent.'" even this did not fix paul's attention. he wanted to hear about his mother and mr. moffatt, and not about their things; and he didn't quite know how to frame his question. but mrs. heeny looked kindly at him and he tried. "why is mother married to mr. moffatt now?" "why, you must know that much, paul." mrs. heeny again looked warm and worried. "she's married to him because she got a divorce--that's why." and suddenly she had another inspiration. "didn't she ever send you over any of those splendid clippings that came out the time they were married? why, i declare, that's a shame; but i must have some of 'em right here." she dived again, shuffled, sorted, and pulled out a long discoloured strip. "i've carried this round with me ever since, and so many's wanted to read it, it's all torn." she smoothed out the paper and began: "'divorce and remarriage of mrs. undine spragg-de chelles. american marquise renounces ancient french title to wed railroad king. quick work untying and tying. boy and girl romance renewed. "'reno, november d. the marquise de chelles, of paris, france, formerly mrs. undine spragg marvell, of apex city and new york, got a decree of divorce at a special session of the court last night, and was remarried fifteen minutes later to mr. elmer moffatt, the billionaire railroad king, who was the marquise's first husband. "'no case has ever been railroaded through the divorce courts of this state at a higher rate of speed: as mr. moffatt said last night, before he and his bride jumped onto their east-bound special, every record has been broken. it was just six months ago yesterday that the present mrs. moffatt came to reno to look for her divorce. owing to a delayed train, her counsel was late yesterday in receiving some necessary papers, and it was feared the decision would have to be held over; but judge toomey, who is a personal friend of mr. moffatt's, held a night session and rushed it through so that the happy couple could have the knot tied and board their special in time for mrs. moffatt to spend thanksgiving in new york with her aged parents. the hearing began at seven ten p. m. and at eight o'clock the bridal couple were steaming out of the station. "'at the trial mrs. spragg-de chelles, who wore copper velvet and sables, gave evidence as to the brutality of her french husband, but she had to talk fast as time pressed, and judge toomey wrote the entry at top speed, and then jumped into a motor with the happy couple and drove to the justice of the peace, where he acted as best man to the bridegroom. the latter is said to be one of the six wealthiest men east of the rockies. his gifts to the bride are a necklace and tiara of pigeon-blood rubies belonging to queen marie antoinette, a million dollar cheque and a house in new york. the happy pair will pass the honeymoon in mrs. moffatt's new home, fifth avenue, which is an exact copy of the pitti palace, florence. they plan to spend their springs in france.'" mrs. heeny drew a long breath, folded the paper and took off her spectacles. "there," she said, with a benignant smile and a tap on paul's cheek, "now you see how it all happened...." paul was not sure he did; but he made no answer. his mind was too full of troubled thoughts. in the dazzling description of his mother's latest nuptials one fact alone stood out for him--that she had said things that weren't true of his french father. something he had half-guessed in her, and averted his frightened thoughts from, took his little heart in an iron grasp. she said things that weren't true.... that was what he had always feared to find out.... she had got up and said before a lot of people things that were awfully false about his dear french father.... the sound of a motor turning in at the gates made mrs. heeny exclaim "here they are!" and a moment later paul heard his mother calling to him. he got up reluctantly, and stood wavering till he felt mrs. heeny's astonished eye upon him. then he heard mr. moffatt's jovial shout of "paul marvell, ahoy there!" and roused himself to run downstairs. as he reached the landing he saw that the ballroom doors were open and all the lustres lit. his mother and mr. moffatt stood in the middle of the shining floor, looking up at the walls; and paul's heart gave a wondering bound, for there, set in great gilt panels, were the tapestries that had always hung in the gallery at saint desert. "well, senator, it feels good to shake your fist again!" his step-father said, taking him in a friendly grasp; and his mother, who looked handsomer and taller and more splendidly dressed than ever, exclaimed: "mercy! how they've cut his hair!" before she bent to kiss him. "oh, mother, mother!" he burst out, feeling, between his mother's face and the others, hardly less familiar, on the walls, that he was really at home again, and not in a strange house. "gracious, how you squeeze!" she protested, loosening his arms. "but you look splendidly--and how you've grown!" she turned away from him and began to inspect the tapestries critically. "somehow they look smaller here," she said with a tinge of disappointment. mr. moffatt gave a slight laugh and walked slowly down the room, as if to study its effect. as he turned back his wife said: "i didn't think you'd ever get them." he laughed again, more complacently. "well, i don't know as i ever should have, if general arlington hadn't happened to bust up." they both smiled, and paul, seeing his mother's softened face, stole his hand in hers and began: "mother, i took a prize in composition--" "did you? you must tell me about it to-morrow. no, i really must rush off now and dress--i haven't even placed the dinner-cards." she freed her hand, and as she turned to go paul heard mr. moffatt say: "can't you ever give him a minute's time, undine?" she made no answer, but sailed through the door with her head high, as she did when anything annoyed her; and paul and his step-father stood alone in the illuminated ball-room. mr. moffatt smiled good-naturedly at the little boy and then turned back to the contemplation of the hangings. "i guess you know where those come from, don't you?" he asked in a tone of satisfaction. "oh, yes," paul answered eagerly, with a hope he dared not utter that, since the tapestries were there, his french father might be coming too. "you're a smart boy to remember them. i don't suppose you ever thought you'd see them here?" "i don't know," said paul, embarrassed. "well, i guess you wouldn't have if their owner hadn't been in a pretty tight place. it was like drawing teeth for him to let them go." paul flushed up, and again the iron grasp was on his heart. he hadn't, hitherto, actually disliked mr. moffatt, who was always in a good humour, and seemed less busy and absent-minded than his mother; but at that instant he felt a rage of hate for him. he turned away and burst into tears. "why, hullo, old chap--why, what's up?" mr. moffatt was on his knees beside the boy, and the arms embracing him were firm and friendly. but paul, for the life of him, couldn't answer: he could only sob and sob as the great surges of loneliness broke over him. "is it because your mother hadn't time for you? well, she's like that, you know; and you and i have got to lump it," mr. moffatt continued, getting to his feet. he stood looking down at the boy with a queer smile. "if we two chaps stick together it won't be so bad--we can keep each other warm, don't you see? i like you first rate, you know; when you're big enough i mean to put you in my business. and it looks as if one of these days you'd be the richest boy in america...." the lamps were lit, the vases full of flowers, the foot-men assembled on the landing and in the vestibule below, when undine descended to the drawing-room. as she passed the ballroom door she glanced in approvingly at the tapestries. they really looked better than she had been willing to admit: they made her ballroom the handsomest in paris. but something had put her out on the way up from deauville, and the simplest way of easing her nerves had been to affect indifference to the tapestries. now she had quite recovered her good humour, and as she glanced down the list of guests she was awaiting she said to herself, with a sigh of satisfaction, that she was glad she had put on her rubies. for the first time since her marriage to moffatt she was about to receive in her house the people she most wished to see there. the beginnings had been a little difficult; their first attempt in new york was so unpromising that she feared they might not be able to live down the sensational details of their reunion, and had insisted on her husband's taking her back to paris. but her apprehensions were unfounded. it was only necessary to give people the time to pretend they had forgotten; and already they were all pretending beautifully. the french world had of course held out longest; it had strongholds she might never capture. but already seceders were beginning to show themselves, and her dinner-list that evening was graced with the names of an authentic duke and a not too-damaged countess. in addition, of course, she had the shallums, the chauncey ellings, may beringer, dicky bowles, walsingham popple, and the rest of the new york frequenters of the nouveau luxe; she had even, at the last minute, had the amusement of adding peter van degen to their number. in the evening there were to be spanish dancing and russian singing; and dicky bowles had promised her a grand duke for her next dinner, if she could secure the new tenor who always refused to sing in private houses. even now, however, she was not always happy. she had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them. and there had been moments lately when she had had to confess to herself that moffatt did not fit into the picture. at first she had been dazzled by his success and subdued by his authority. he had given her all she had ever wished for, and more than she had ever dreamed of having: he had made up to her for all her failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exulted in it. but there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had developed in her unawares. now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors--who were gradually becoming merged in her memory--would have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise in such and such a case. and the comparison was almost always to moffatt's disadvantage. this evening, however, she thought of him indulgently. she was pleased with his clever stroke in capturing the saint desert tapestries, which general arlington's sudden bankruptcy, and a fresh gambling scandal of hubert's, had compelled their owner to part with. she knew that raymond de chelles had told the dealers he would sell his tapestries to anyone but mr. elmer moffatt, or a buyer acting for him; and it amused her to think that, thanks to elmer's astuteness, they were under her roof after all, and that raymond and all his clan were by this time aware of it. these facts disposed her favourably toward her husband, and deepened the sense of well-being with which--according to her invariable habit--she walked up to the mirror above the mantelpiece and studied the image it reflected. she was still lost in this pleasing contemplation when her husband entered, looking stouter and redder than ever, in evening clothes that were a little too tight. his shirt front was as glossy as his baldness, and in his buttonhole he wore the red ribbon bestowed on him for waiving his claim to a velasquez that was wanted for the louvre. he carried a newspaper in his hand, and stood looking about the room with a complacent eye. "well, i guess this is all right," he said, and she answered briefly: "don't forget you're to take down madame de follerive; and for goodness' sake don't call her 'countess.'" "why, she is one, ain't she?" he returned good-humouredly. "i wish you'd put that newspaper away," she continued; his habit of leaving old newspapers about the drawing-room annoyed her. "oh, that reminds me--" instead of obeying her he unfolded the paper. "i brought it in to show you something. jim driscoll's been appointed ambassador to england." "jim driscoll--!" she caught up the paper and stared at the paragraph he pointed to. jim driscoll--that pitiful nonentity, with his stout mistrustful commonplace wife! it seemed extraordinary that the government should have hunted up such insignificant people. and immediately she had a great vague vision of the splendours they were going to--all the banquets and ceremonies and precedences.... "i shouldn't say she'd want to, with so few jewels--" she dropped the paper and turned to her husband. "if you had a spark of ambition, that's the kind of thing you'd try for. you could have got it just as easily as not!" he laughed and thrust his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes with the gesture she disliked. "as it happens, it's about the one thing i couldn't." "you couldn't? why not?" "because you're divorced. they won't have divorced ambassadresses." "they won't? why not, i'd like to know?" "well, i guess the court ladies are afraid there'd be too many pretty women in the embassies," he answered jocularly. she burst into an angry laugh, and the blood flamed up into her face. "i never heard of anything so insulting!" she cried, as if the rule had been invented to humiliate her. there was a noise of motors backing and advancing in the court, and she heard the first voices on the stairs. she turned to give herself a last look in the glass, saw the blaze of her rubies, the glitter of her hair, and remembered the brilliant names on her list. but under all the dazzle a tiny black cloud remained. she had learned that there was something she could never get, something that neither beauty nor influence nor millions could ever buy for her. she could never be an ambassador's wife; and as she advanced to welcome her first guests she said to herself that it was the one part she was really made for. the end distributed proofreaders miss lulu bett by zona gale contents chapter i. april ii. may iii. june iv. july v. august vi. september i april the deacons were at supper. in the middle of the table was a small, appealing tulip plant, looking as anything would look whose sun was a gas jet. this gas jet was high above the table and flared, with a sound. "better turn down the gas jest a little," mr. deacon said, and stretched up to do so. he made this joke almost every night. he seldom spoke as a man speaks who has something to say, but as a man who makes something to say. "well, what have we on the festive board to-night?" he questioned, eyeing it. "festive" was his favourite adjective. "beautiful," too. in october he might be heard asking: "where's my beautiful fall coat?" "we have creamed salmon," replied mrs. deacon gently. "on toast," she added, with a scrupulous regard for the whole truth. why she should say this so gently no one can tell. she says everything gently. her "could you leave me another bottle of milk this morning?" would wring a milkman's heart. "well, now, let us see," said mr. deacon, and attacked the principal dish benignly. "_let_ us see," he added, as he served. "i don't want any," said monona. the child monona was seated upon a book and a cushion, so that her little triangle of nose rose adultly above her plate. her remark produced precisely the effect for which she had passionately hoped. "_what's_ this?" cried mr. deacon. "_no_ salmon?" "no," said monona, inflected up, chin pertly pointed. she felt her power, discarded her "sir." "oh now, pet!" from mrs. deacon, on three notes. "you liked it before." "i don't want any," said monona, in precisely her original tone. "just a little? a very little?" mr. deacon persuaded, spoon dripping; the child monona made her lips thin and straight and shook her head until her straight hair flapped in her eyes on either side. mr. deacon's eyes anxiously consulted his wife's eyes. what is this? their progeny will not eat? what can be supplied? "some bread and milk!" cried mrs. deacon brightly, exploding on "bread." one wondered how she thought of it. "no," said monona, inflection up, chin the same. she was affecting indifference to this scene, in which her soul delighted. she twisted her head, bit her lips unconcernedly, and turned her eyes to the remote. there emerged from the fringe of things, where she perpetually hovered, mrs. deacon's older sister, lulu bett, who was "making her home with us." and that was precisely the case. _they_ were not making her a home, goodness knows. lulu was the family beast of burden. "can't i make her a little milk toast?" she asked mrs. deacon. mrs. deacon hesitated, not with compunction at accepting lulu's offer, not diplomatically to lure monona. but she hesitated habitually, by nature, as another is by nature vivacious or brunette. "yes!" shouted the child monona. the tension relaxed. mrs. deacon assented. lulu went to the kitchen. mr. deacon served on. something of this scene was enacted every day. for monona the drama never lost its zest. it never occurred to the others to let her sit without eating, once, as a cure-all. the deacons were devoted parents and the child monona was delicate. she had a white, grave face, white hair, white eyebrows, white lashes. she was sullen, anaemic. they let her wear rings. she "toed in." the poor child was the late birth of a late marriage and the principal joy which she had provided them thus far was the pleased reflection that they had produced her at all. "where's your mother, ina?" mr. deacon inquired. "isn't she coming to her supper?" "tantrim," said mrs. deacon, softly. "oh, ho," said he, and said no more. the temper of mrs. bett, who also lived with them, had days of high vibration when she absented herself from the table as a kind of self-indulgence, and no one could persuade her to food. "tantrims," they called these occasions. "baked potatoes," said mr. deacon. "that's good--that's good. the baked potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared in any other way. the nourishment is next to the skin. roasting retains it." "that's what i always think," said his wife pleasantly. for fifteen years they had agreed about this. they ate, in the indecent silence of first savouring food. a delicate crunching of crust, an odour of baked-potato shells, the slip and touch of the silver. "num, num, nummy-num!" sang the child monona loudly, and was hushed by both parents in simultaneous exclamation which rivalled this lyric outburst. they were alone at table. di, daughter of a wife early lost to mr. deacon, was not there. di was hardly ever there. she was at that age. that age, in warbleton. a clock struck the half hour. "it's curious," mr. deacon observed, "how that clock loses. it must be fully quarter to." he consulted his watch. "it is quarter to!" he exclaimed with satisfaction. "i'm pretty good at guessing time." "i've noticed that!" cried his ina. "last night, it was only twenty-three to, when the half hour struck," he reminded her. "twenty-one, i thought." she was tentative, regarded him with arched eyebrows, mastication suspended. this point was never to be settled. the colloquy was interrupted by the child monona, whining for her toast. and the doorbell rang. "dear me!" said mr. deacon. "what can anybody be thinking of to call just at meal-time?" he trod the hall, flung open the street door. mrs. deacon listened. lulu, coming in with the toast, was warned to silence by an uplifted finger. she deposited the toast, tiptoed to her chair. a withered baked potato and cold creamed salmon were on her plate. the child monona ate with shocking appreciation. nothing could be made of the voices in the hall. but mrs. bett's door was heard softly to unlatch. she, too, was listening. a ripple of excitement was caused in the dining-room when mr. deacon was divined to usher some one to the parlour. mr. deacon would speak with this visitor in a few moments, and now returned to his table. it was notable how slight a thing would give him a sense of self-importance. now he felt himself a man of affairs, could not even have a quiet supper with his family without the outside world demanding him. he waved his hand to indicate it was nothing which they would know anything about, resumed his seat, served himself to a second spoon of salmon and remarked, "more roast duck, anybody?" in a loud voice and with a slow wink at his wife. that lady at first looked blank, as she always did in the presence of any humour couched with the least indirection, and then drew back her chin and caught her lower lip in her gold-filled teeth. this was her conjugal rebuking. swedenborg always uses "conjugial." and really this sounds more married. it should be used with reference to the deacons. no one was ever more married than they--at least than mr. deacon. he made little conjugal jokes in the presence of lulu who, now completely unnerved by the habit, suspected them where they did not exist, feared lurking _entendre_ in the most innocent comments, and became more tense every hour of her life. and now the eye of the master of the house fell for the first time upon the yellow tulip in the centre of his table. "well, _well_!" he said. "what's this?" ina deacon produced, fleetly, an unlooked-for dimple. "have you been buying flowers?" the master inquired. "ask lulu," said mrs. deacon. he turned his attention full upon lulu. "suitors?" he inquired, and his lips left their places to form a sort of ruff about the word. lulu flushed, and her eyes and their very brows appealed. "it was a quarter," she said. "there'll be five flowers." "you _bought_ it?" "yes. there'll be five--that's a nickel apiece." his tone was as methodical as if he had been talking about the bread. "yet we give you a home on the supposition that you have no money to spend, even for the necessities." his voice, without resonance, cleft air, thought, spirit, and even flesh. mrs. deacon, indeterminately feeling her guilt in having let loose the dogs of her husband upon lulu, interposed: "well, but, herbert--lulu isn't strong enough to work. what's the use...." she dwindled. for years the fiction had been sustained that lulu, the family beast of burden, was not strong enough to work anywhere else. "the justice business--" said dwight herbert deacon--he was a justice of the peace--"and the dental profession--" he was also a dentist--"do not warrant the purchase of spring flowers in my home." "well, but, herbert--" it was his wife again. "no more," he cried briefly, with a slight bend of his head. "lulu meant no harm," he added, and smiled at lulu. there was a moment's silence into which monona injected a loud "num, num, num-my-num," as if she were the burden of an elizabethan lyric. she seemed to close the incident. but the burden was cut off untimely. there was, her father reminded her portentously, company in the parlour. "when the bell rang, i was so afraid something had happened to di," said ina sighing. "let's see," said di's father. "where is little daughter to-night?" he must have known that she was at jenny plow's at a tea party, for at noon they had talked of nothing else; but this was his way. and ina played his game, always. she informed him, dutifully. "oh, _ho_," said he, absently. how could he be expected to keep his mind on these domestic trifles. "we told you that this noon," said lulu. he frowned, disregarded her. lulu had no delicacy. "how much is salmon the can now?" he inquired abruptly--this was one of his forms of speech, the can, the pound, the cord. his partner supplied this information with admirable promptness. large size, small size, present price, former price--she had them all. "dear me," said mr. deacon. "that is very nearly salmoney, isn't it?" "herbert!" his ina admonished, in gentle, gentle reproach. mr. deacon punned, organically. in talk he often fell silent and then asked some question, schemed to permit his vice to flourish. mrs. deacon's return was always automatic: "_her_bert!" "whose bert?" he said to this. "i thought i was your bert." she shook her little head. "you are a case," she told him. he beamed upon her. it was his intention to be a case. lulu ventured in upon this pleasantry, and cleared her throat. she was not hoarse, but she was always clearing her throat. "the butter is about all gone," she observed. "shall i wait for the butter-woman or get some creamery?" mr. deacon now felt his little jocularities lost before a wall of the matter of fact. he was not pleased. he saw himself as the light of his home, bringer of brightness, lightener of dull hours. it was a pretty rôle. he insisted upon it. to maintain it intact, it was necessary to turn upon their sister with concentrated irritation. "kindly settle these matters without bringing them to my attention at meal-time," he said icily. lulu flushed and was silent. she was an olive woman, once handsome, now with flat, bluish shadows under her wistful eyes. and if only she would look at her brother herbert and say something. but she looked in her plate. "i want some honey," shouted the child, monona. "there isn't any, pet," said lulu. "i want some," said monona, eyeing her stonily. but she found that her hair-ribbon could be pulled forward to meet her lips, and she embarked on the biting of an end. lulu departed for some sauce and cake. it was apple sauce. mr. deacon remarked that the apples were almost as good as if he had stolen them. he was giving the impression that he was an irrepressible fellow. he was eating very slowly. it added pleasantly to his sense of importance to feel that some one, there in the parlour, was waiting his motion. at length they rose. monona flung herself upon her father. he put her aside firmly, every inch the father. no, no. father was occupied now. mrs. deacon coaxed her away. monona encircled her mother's waist, lifted her own feet from the floor and hung upon her. "she's such an active child," lulu ventured brightly. "not unduly active, i think," her brother-in-law observed. he turned upon lulu his bright smile, lifted his eyebrows, dropped his lids, stood for a moment contemplating the yellow tulip, and so left the room. lulu cleared the table. mrs. deacon essayed to wind the clock. well now. did herbert say it was twenty-three to-night when it struck the half hour and twenty-one last night, or twenty-one to-night and last night twenty-three? she talked of it as they cleared the table, but lulu did not talk. "can't you remember?" mrs. deacon said at last. "i should think you might be useful." lulu was lifting the yellow tulip to set it on the sill. she changed her mind. she took the plant to the wood-shed and tumbled it with force upon the chip-pile. the dining-room table was laid for breakfast. the two women brought their work and sat there. the child monona hung miserably about, watching the clock. right or wrong, she was put to bed by it. she had eight minutes more--seven--six--five-- lulu laid down her sewing and left the room. she went to the wood-shed, groped about in the dark, found the stalk of the one tulip flower in its heap on the chip-pile. the tulip she fastened in her gown on her flat chest. outside were to be seen the early stars. it is said that if our sun were as near to arcturus as we are near to our sun, the great arcturus would burn our sun to nothingness. * * * * * in the deacons' parlour sat bobby larkin, eighteen. he was in pain all over. he was come on an errand which civilisation has contrived to make an ordeal. before him on the table stood a photograph of diana deacon, also eighteen. he hated her with passion. at school she mocked him, aped him, whispered about him, tortured him. for two years he had hated her. nights he fell asleep planning to build a great house and engage her as its servant. yet, as he waited, he could not keep his eyes from this photograph. it was di at her curliest, at her fluffiest, di conscious of her bracelet, di smiling. bobby gazed, his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a most reluctant pleasure. he hoped that he would not see her, and he listened for her voice. mr. deacon descended upon him with an air carried from his supper hour, bland, dispensing. well! let us have it. "what did you wish to see me about?"--with a use of the past tense as connoting something of indirection and hence of delicacy--a nicety customary, yet unconscious. bobby had arrived in his best clothes and with an air of such formality that mr. deacon had instinctively suspected him of wanting to join the church, and, to treat the time with due solemnity, had put him in the parlour until he could attend at leisure. confronted thus by di's father, the speech which bobby had planned deserted him. "i thought if you would give me a job," he said defencelessly. "so that's it!" mr. deacon, who always awaited but a touch to be either irritable or facetious, inclined now to be facetious. "filling teeth?" he would know. "marrying folks, then?" assistant justice or assistant dentist--which? bobby blushed. no, no, but in that big building of mr. deacon's where his office was, wasn't there something ... it faded from him, sounded ridiculous. of course there was nothing. he saw it now. there was nothing. mr. deacon confirmed him. but mr. deacon had an idea. hold on, he said--hold on. the grass. would bobby consider taking charge of the grass? though mr. deacon was of the type which cuts its own grass and glories in its vigour and its energy, yet in the time after that which he called "dental hours" mr. deacon wished to work in his garden. his grass, growing in late april rains, would need attention early next month ... he owned two lots--"of course property _is_ a burden." if bobby would care to keep the grass down and raked ... bobby would care, accepted this business opportunity, figures and all, thanked mr. deacon with earnestness. bobby's aversion to di, it seemed, should not stand in the way of his advancement. "then that is checked off," said mr. deacon heartily. bobby wavered toward the door, emerged on the porch, and ran almost upon di returning from her tea-party at jenny plow's. "oh, bobby! you came to see me?" she was as fluffy, as curly, as smiling as her picture. she was carrying pink, gauzy favours and a spear of flowers. undeniably in her voice there was pleasure. her glance was startled but already complacent. she paused on the steps, a lovely figure. but one would say that nothing but the truth dwelt in bobby. "oh, hullo," said he. "no. i came to see your father." he marched by her. his hair stuck up at the back. his coat was hunched about his shoulders. his insufficient nose, abundant, loose-lipped mouth and brown eyes were completely expressionless. he marched by her without a glance. she flushed with vexation. mr. deacon, as one would expect, laughed loudly, took the situation in his elephantine grasp and pawed at it. "mamma! mamma! what do you s'pose? di thought she had a beau----" "oh, papa!" said di. "why, i just hate bobby larkin and the whole _school_ knows it." mr. deacon returned to the dining-room, humming in his throat. he entered upon a pretty scene. his ina was darning. four minutes of grace remaining to the child monona, she was spinning on one toe with some bacchanalian idea of making the most of the present. di dominated, her ruffles, her blue hose, her bracelet, her ring. "oh, and mamma," she said, "the sweetest party and the dearest supper and the darlingest decorations and the gorgeousest----" "grammar, grammar," spoke dwight herbert deacon. he was not sure what he meant, but the good fellow felt some violence done somewhere or other. "well," said di positively, "they _were_. papa, see my favour." she showed him a sugar dove, and he clucked at it. ina glanced at them fondly, her face assuming its loveliest light. she was often ridiculous, but always she was the happy wife and mother, and her rôle reduced her individual absurdities at least to its own. the door to the bedroom now opened and mrs. bett appeared. "well, mother!" cried herbert, the "well" curving like an arm, the "mother" descending like a brisk slap. "hungry _now?_" mrs. bett was hungry now. she had emerged intending to pass through the room without speaking and find food in the pantry. by obscure processes her son-in-law's tone inhibited all this. "no," she said. "i'm not hungry." now that she was there, she seemed uncertain what to do. she looked from one to another a bit hopelessly, somehow foiled in her dignity. she brushed at her skirt, the veins of her long, wrinkled hands catching an intenser blue from the dark cloth. she put her hair behind her ears. "we put a potato in the oven for you," said ina. she had never learned quite how to treat these periodic refusals of her mother to eat, but she never had ceased to resent them. "no, thank you," said mrs. bett. evidently she rather enjoyed the situation, creating for herself a spot-light much in the manner of monona. "mother," said lulu, "let me make you some toast and tea." mrs. bett turned her gentle, bloodless face toward her daughter, and her eyes warmed. "after a little, maybe," she said. "i think i'll run over to see grandma gates now," she added, and went toward the door. "tell her," cried dwight, "tell her she's my best girl." grandma gates was a rheumatic cripple who lived next door, and whenever the deacons or mrs. bett were angry or hurt or wished to escape the house for some reason, they stalked over to grandma gates--in lieu of, say, slamming a door. these visits radiated an almost daily friendliness which lifted and tempered the old invalid's lot and life. di flashed out at the door again, on some trivial permission. "a good many of mamma's stitches in that dress to keep clean," ina called after. "early, darling, early!" her father reminded her. a faint regurgitation of his was somehow invested with the paternal. "what's this?" cried dwight herbert deacon abruptly. on the clock shelf lay a letter. "oh, dwight!" ina was all compunction. "it came this morning. i forgot." "i forgot it too! and i laid it up there." lulu was eager for her share of the blame. "isn't it understood that my mail can't wait like this?" dwight's sense of importance was now being fed in gulps. "i know. i'm awfully sorry," lulu said, "but you hardly ever get a letter----" this might have made things worse, but it provided dwight with a greater importance. "of course, pressing matter goes to my office," he admitted it. "still, my mail should have more careful----" he read, frowning. he replaced the letter, and they hung upon his motions as he tapped the envelope and regarded them. "now!" said he. "what do you think i have to tell you?" "something nice," ina was sure. "something surprising," dwight said portentously. "but, dwight--is it _nice?_" from his ina. "that depends. i like it. so'll lulu." he leered at her. "it's company." "oh, dwight," said ina. "who?" "from oregon," he said, toying with his suspense. "your brother!" cried ina. "is he coming?" "yes. ninian's coming, so he says." "ninian!" cried ina again. she was excited, round-eyed, her moist lips parted. dwight's brother ninian. how long was it? nineteen years. south america, central america, mexico, panama "and all." when was he coming and what was he coming for? "to see me," said dwight. "to meet you. some day next week. he don't know what a charmer lulu is, or he'd come quicker." lulu flushed terribly. not from the implication. but from the knowledge that she was not a charmer. the clock struck. the child monona uttered a cutting shriek. herbert's eyes flew not only to the child but to his wife. what was this, was their progeny hurt? "bedtime," his wife elucidated, and added: "lulu, will you take her to bed? i'm pretty tired." lulu rose and took monona by the hand, the child hanging back and shaking her straight hair in an unconvincing negative. as they crossed the room, dwight herbert deacon, strolling about and snapping his fingers, halted and cried out sharply: "lulu. one moment!" he approached her. a finger was extended, his lips were parted, on his forehead was a frown. "you _picked_ the flower on the plant?" he asked incredulously. lulu made no reply. but the child monona felt herself lifted and borne to the stairway and the door was shut with violence. on the dark stairway lulu's arms closed about her in an embrace which left her breathless and squeaking. and yet lulu was not really fond of the child monona, either. this was a discharge of emotion akin, say, to slamming the door. ii may lulu was dusting the parlour. the parlour was rarely used, but every morning it was dusted. by lulu. she dusted the black walnut centre table which was of ina's choosing, and looked like ina, shining, complacent, abundantly curved. the leather rocker, too, looked like ina, brown, plumply upholstered, tipping back a bit. really, the davenport looked like ina, for its chintz pattern seemed to bear a design of lifted eyebrows and arch, reproachful eyes. lulu dusted the upright piano, and that was like dwight--in a perpetual attitude of rearing back, with paws out, playful, but capable, too, of roaring a ready bass. and the black fireplace--there was mrs. bett to the life. colourless, fireless, and with a dust of ashes. in the midst of all was lulu herself reflected in the narrow pier glass, bodiless-looking in her blue gingham gown, but somehow alive. natural. this pier glass lulu approached with expectation, not because of herself but because of the photograph on its low marble shelf. a large photograph on a little shelf-easel. a photograph of a man with evident eyes, evident lips, evident cheeks--and each of the six were rounded and convex. you could construct the rest of him. down there under the glass you could imagine him extending, rounded and convex, with plump hands and curly thumbs and snug clothes. it was ninian deacon, dwight's brother. every day since his coming had been announced lulu, dusting the parlour, had seen the photograph looking at her with its eyes somehow new. or were her own eyes new? she dusted this photograph with a difference, lifted, dusted, set it back, less as a process than as an experience. as she dusted the mirror and saw his trim semblance over against her own bodiless reflection, she hurried away. but the eyes of the picture followed her, and she liked it. she dusted the south window-sill and saw bobby larkin come round the house and go to the wood-shed for the lawn mower. she heard the smooth blur of the cutter. not six times had bobby traversed the lawn when lulu saw di emerge from the house. di had been caring for her canary and she carried her bird-bath and went to the well, and lulu divined that di had deliberately disregarded the handy kitchen taps. lulu dusted the south window and watched, and in her watching was no quality of spying or of criticism. nor did she watch wistfully. rather, she looked out on something in which she had never shared, could not by any chance imagine herself sharing. the south windows were open. airs of may bore the soft talking. "oh, bobby, will you pump while i hold this?" and again: "now wait till i rinse." and again: "you needn't be so glum"--the village salutation signifying kindly attention. bobby now first spoke: "who's glum?" he countered gloomily. the iron of those days when she had laughed at him was deep within him, and this she now divined, and said absently: "i used to think you were pretty nice. but i don't like you any more." "yes, you used to!" bobby repeated derisively. "is that why you made fun of me all the time?" at this di coloured and tapped her foot on the well-curb. he seemed to have her now, and enjoyed his triumph. but di looked up at him shyly and looked down. "i had to," she admitted. "they were all teasing me about you." "they were?" this was a new thought to him. teasing her about him, were they? he straightened. "huh!" he said, in magnificent evasion. "i had to make them stop, so i teased you. i--i never wanted to." again the upward look. "well!" bobby stared at her. "i never thought it was anything like that." "of course you didn't." she tossed back her bright hair, met his eyes full. "and you never came where i could tell you. i wanted to tell you." she ran into the house. lulu lowered her eyes. it was as if she had witnessed the exercise of some secret gift, had seen a cocoon open or an egg hatch. she was thinking: "how easy she done it. got him right over. but _how_ did she do that?" dusting the dwight-like piano, lulu looked over-shoulder, with a manner of speculation, at the photograph of ninian. bobby mowed and pondered. the magnificent conceit of the male in his understanding of the female character was sufficiently developed to cause him to welcome the improvisation which he had just heard. perhaps that was the way it had been. of course that was the way it had been. what a fool he had been not to understand. he cast his eyes repeatedly toward the house. he managed to make the job last over so that he could return in the afternoon. he was not conscious of planning this, but it was in some manner contrived for him by forces of his own with which he seemed to be coöperating without his conscious will. continually he glanced toward the house. these glances lulu saw. she was a woman of thirty-four and di and bobby were eighteen, but lulu felt for them no adult indulgence. she felt that sweetness of attention which we bestow upon may robins. she felt more. she cut a fresh cake, filled a plate, called to di, saying: "take some out to that bobby larkin, why don't you?" it was lulu's way of participating. it was her vicarious thrill. after supper dwight and ina took their books and departed to the chautauqua circle. to these meetings lulu never went. the reason seemed to be that she never went anywhere. when they were gone lulu felt an instant liberation. she turned aimlessly to the garden and dug round things with her finger. and she thought about the brightness of that chautauqua scene to which ina and dwight had gone. lulu thought about such gatherings in somewhat the way that a futurist receives the subjects of his art--forms not vague, but heightened to intolerable definiteness, acute colour, and always motion--motion as an integral part of the desirable. but a factor of all was that lulu herself was the participant, not the onlooker. the perfection of her dream was not impaired by any longing. she had her dream as a saint her sense of heaven. "lulie!" her mother called. "you come out of that damp." she obeyed, as she had obeyed that voice all her life. but she took one last look down the dim street. she had not known it, but superimposed on her chautauqua thoughts had been her faint hope that it would be to-night, while she was in the garden alone, that ninian deacon would arrive. and she had on her wool chally, her coral beads, her cameo pin.... she went into the lighted dining-room. monona was in bed. di was not there. mrs. bett was in dwight herbert's leather chair and she lolled at her ease. it was strange to see this woman, usually so erect and tense, now actually lolling, as if lolling were the positive, the vital, and her ordinary rigidity a negation of her. in some corresponding orgy of leisure and liberation, lulu sat down with no needle. "inie ought to make over her delaine," mrs. bett comfortably began. they talked of this, devised a mode, recalled other delaines. "dear, dear," said mrs. bett, "i had on a delaine when i met your father." she described it. both women talked freely, with animation. they were individuals and alive. to the two pallid beings accessory to the deacons' presence, mrs. bett and her daughter lulu now bore no relationship. they emerged, had opinions, contradicted, their eyes were bright. toward nine o'clock mrs. bett announced that she thought she should have a lunch. this was debauchery. she brought in bread-and-butter, and a dish of cold canned peas. she was committing all the excesses that she knew--offering opinions, laughing, eating. it was to be seen that this woman had an immense store of vitality, perpetually submerged. when she had eaten she grew sleepy--rather cross at the last and inclined to hold up her sister's excellencies to lulu; and, at lulu's defence, lifted an ancient weapon. "what's the use of finding fault with inie? where'd you been if she hadn't married?" lulu said nothing. "what say?" mrs. bett demanded shrilly. she was enjoying it. lulu said no more. after a long time: "you always was jealous of inie," said mrs. bett, and went to her bed. as soon as her mother's door had closed, lulu took the lamp from its bracket, stretching up her long body and her long arms until her skirt lifted to show her really slim and pretty feet. lulu's feet gave news of some other lulu, but slightly incarnate. perhaps, so far, incarnate only in her feet and her long hair. she took the lamp to the parlour and stood before the photograph of ninian deacon, and looked her fill. she did not admire the photograph, but she wanted to look at it. the house was still, there was no possibility of interruption. the occasion became sensation, which she made no effort to quench. she held a rendezvous with she knew not what. in the early hours of the next afternoon with the sun shining across the threshold, lulu was paring something at the kitchen table. mrs. bett was asleep. ("i don't blame you a bit, mother," lulu had said, as her mother named the intention.) ina was asleep. (but ina always took off the curse by calling it her "si-esta," long _i_.) monona was playing with a neighbour's child--you heard their shrill yet lovely laughter as they obeyed the adult law that motion is pleasure. di was not there. a man came round the house and stood tying a puppy to the porch post. a long shadow fell through the west doorway, the puppy whined. "oh," said this man. "i didn't mean to arrive at the back door, but since i'm here--" he lifted a suitcase to the porch, entered, and filled the kitchen. "it's ina, isn't it?" he said. "i'm her sister," said lulu, and understood that he was here at last. "well, i'm bert's brother," said ninian. "so i can come in, can't i?" he did so, turned round like a dog before his chair and sat down heavily, forcing his fingers through heavy, upspringing brown hair. "oh, yes," said lulu. "i'll call ina. she's asleep." "don't call her, then," said ninian. "let's you and i get acquainted." he said it absently, hardly looking at her. "i'll get the pup a drink if you can spare me a basin," he added. lulu brought the basin, and while he went to the dog she ran tiptoeing to the dining-room china closet and brought a cut-glass tumbler, as heavy, as ungainly as a stone crock. this she filled with milk. "i thought maybe ..." said she, and offered it. "thank _you_!" said ninian, and drained it. "making pies, as i live," he observed, and brought his chair nearer to the table. "i didn't know ina had a sister," he went on. "i remember now bert said he had two of her relatives----" lulu flushed and glanced at him pitifully. "he has," she said. "it's my mother and me. but we do quite a good deal of the work." "i'll bet you do," said ninian, and did not perceive that anything had been violated. "what's your name?" he bethought. she was in an immense and obscure excitement. her manner was serene, her hands as they went on with the peeling did not tremble; her replies were given with sufficient quiet. but she told him her name as one tells something of another and more remote creature. she felt as one may feel in catastrophe--no sharp understanding but merely the sense that the thing cannot possibly be happening. "you folks expect me?" he went on. "oh, yes," she cried, almost with vehemence. "why, we've looked for you every day." "'see," he said, "how long have they been married?" lulu flushed as she answered: "fifteen years." "and a year before that the first one died--and two years they were married," he computed. "i never met that one. then it's close to twenty years since bert and i have seen each other." "how awful," lulu said, and flushed again. "why?" "to be that long away from your folks." suddenly she found herself facing this honestly, as if the immensity of her present experience were clarifying her understanding: would it be so awful to be away from bert and monona and di--yes, and ina, for twenty years? "you think that?" he laughed. "a man don't know what he's like till he's roamed around on his own." he liked the sound of it. "roamed around on his own," he repeated, and laughed again. "course a woman don't know that." "why don't she?" asked lulu. she balanced a pie on her hand and carved the crust. she was stupefied to hear her own question. "why don't she?" "maybe she does. do you?" "yes," said lulu. "good enough!" he applauded noiselessly, with fat hands. his diamond ring sparkled, his even white teeth flashed. "i've had twenty years of galloping about," he informed her, unable, after all, to transfer his interests from himself to her. "where?" she asked, although she knew. "south america. central america. mexico. panama." he searched his memory. "colombo," he superadded. "my!" said lulu. she had probably never in her life had the least desire to see any of these places. she did not want to see them now. but she wanted passionately to meet her companion's mind. "it's the life," he informed her. "must be," lulu breathed. "i----" she tried, and gave it up. "where you been mostly?" he asked at last. by this unprecedented interest in her doings she was thrown into a passion of excitement. "here," she said. "i've always been here. fifteen years with ina. before that we lived in the country." he listened sympathetically now, his head well on one side. he watched her veined hands pinch at the pies. "poor old girl," he was thinking. "is it miss lulu bett?" he abruptly inquired. "or mrs.?" lulu flushed in anguish. "miss," she said low, as one who confesses the extremity of failure. then from unplumbed depths another lulu abruptly spoke up. "from choice," she said. he shouted with laughter. "you bet! oh, you bet!" he cried. "never doubted it." he made his palms taut and drummed on the table. "say!" he said. lulu glowed, quickened, smiled. her face was another face. "which kind of a mr. are you?" she heard herself ask, and his shoutings redoubled. well! who would have thought it of her? "never give myself away," he assured her. "say, by george, i never thought of that before! there's no telling whether a man's married or not, by his name!" "it don't matter," said lulu. "why not?" "not so many people want to know." again he laughed. this laughter was intoxicating to lulu. no one ever laughed at what she said save herbert, who laughed at _her_. "go it, old girl!" ninian was thinking, but this did not appear. the child monona now arrived, banging the front gate and hurling herself round the house on the board walk, catching the toe of one foot in the heel of the other and blundering forward, head down, her short, straight hair flapping over her face. she landed flat-footed on the porch. she began to speak, using a ridiculous perversion of words, scarcely articulate, then in vogue in her group. and, "whose dog?" she shrieked. ninian looked over his shoulder, held out his hand, finished something that he was saying to lulu. monona came to him readily enough, staring, loose-lipped. "i'll bet i'm your uncle," said ninian. relationship being her highest known form of romance, monona was thrilled by this intelligence. "give us a kiss," said ninian, finding in the plural some vague mitigation for some vague offence. monona, looking silly, complied. and her uncle said my stars, such a great big tall girl--they would have to put a board on her head. "what's that?" inquired monona. she had spied his great diamond ring. "this," said her uncle, "was brought to me by santa claus, who keeps a jewellery shop in heaven." the precision and speed of his improvisation revealed him. he had twenty other diamonds like this one. he kept them for those sundays when the sun comes up in the west. of course--often! some day he was going to melt a diamond and eat it. then you sparkled all over in the dark, ever after. another diamond he was going to plant. they say----he did it all gravely, absorbedly. about it he was as conscienceless as a savage. this was no fancy spun to pleasure a child. this was like lying, for its own sake. he went on talking with lulu, and now again he was the tease, the braggart, the unbridled, unmodified male. monona stood in the circle of his arm. the little being was attentive, softened, subdued. some pretty, faint light visited her. in her listening look, she showed herself a charming child. "it strikes me," said ninian to lulu, "that you're going to do something mighty interesting before you die." it was the clear conversational impulse, born of the need to keep something going, but lulu was all faith. she closed the oven door on her pies and stood brushing flour from her fingers. he was looking away from her, and she looked at him. he was completely like his picture. she felt as if she were looking at his picture and she was abashed and turned away. "well, i hope so," she said, which had certainly never been true, for her old formless dreams were no intention--nothing but a mush of discontent. "i hope i can do something that's nice before i quit," she said. nor was this hope now independently true, but only this surprising longing to appear interesting in his eyes. to dance before him. "what would the folks think of me, going on so?" she suddenly said. her mild sense of disloyalty was delicious. so was his understanding glance. "you're the stuff," he remarked absently. she laughed happily. the door opened. ina appeared. "well!" said ina. it was her remotest tone. she took this man to be a pedlar, beheld her child in his clasp, made a quick, forward step, chin lifted. she had time for a very javelin of a look at lulu. "hello!" said ninian. he had the one formula. "i believe i'm your husband's brother. ain't this ina?" it had not crossed the mind of lulu to present him. beautiful it was to see ina relax, soften, warm, transform, humanise. it gave one hope for the whole species. "ninian!" she cried. she lent a faint impression of the double _e_ to the initial vowel. she slurred the rest, until the _y_ sound squinted in. not neenyun, but nearly neenyun. he kissed her. "since dwight isn't here!" she cried, and shook her finger at him. ina's conception of hostess-ship was definite: a volley of questions--was his train on time? he had found the house all right? of course! any one could direct him, she should hope. and he hadn't seen dwight? she must telephone him. but then she arrested herself with a sharp, curved fling of her starched skirts. no! they would surprise him at tea--she stood taut, lips compressed. oh, the plows were coming to tea. how unfortunate, she thought. how fortunate, she said. the child monona made her knees and elbows stiff and danced up and down. she must, she must participate. "aunt lulu made three pies!" she screamed, and shook her straight hair. "gracious sakes," said ninian. "i brought her a pup, and if i didn't forget to give it to her." they adjourned to the porch--ninian, ina, monona. the puppy was presented, and yawned. the party kept on about "the place." ina delightedly exhibited the tomatoes, the two apple trees, the new shed, the bird bath. ninian said the un-spellable "m--m," rising inflection, and the "i see," prolonging the verb as was expected of him. ina said that they meant to build a summer-house, only, dear me, when you have a family--but there, he didn't know anything about that. ina was using her eyes, she was arch, she was coquettish, she was flirtatious, and she believed herself to be merely matronly, sisterly, womanly ... she screamed. dwight was at the gate. now the meeting, exclamation, banality, guffaw ... good will. and lulu, peeping through the blind. when "tea" had been experienced that evening, it was found that a light rain was falling and the deacons and their guests, the plows, were constrained to remain in the parlour. the plows were gentle, faintly lustrous folk, sketched into life rather lightly, as if they were, say, looking in from some other level. "the only thing," said dwight herbert, "that reconciles me to rain is that i'm let off croquet." he rolled his r's, a favourite device of his to induce humour. he called it "croquette." he had never been more irrepressible. the advent of his brother was partly accountable, the need to show himself a fine family man and host in a prosperous little home--simple and pathetic desire. "tell you what we'll do!" said dwight. "nin and i'll reminisce a little." "do!" cried mr. plow. this gentle fellow was always excited by life, so faintly excited by him, and enjoyed its presentation in any real form. ninian had unerringly selected a dwarf rocker, and he was overflowing it and rocking. "take this chair, do!" ina begged. "a big chair for a big man." she spoke as if he were about the age of monona. ninian refused, insisted on his refusal. a few years more, and human relationships would have spread sanity even to ina's estate and she would have told him why he should exchange chairs. as it was she forbore, and kept glancing anxiously at the over-burdened little beast beneath him. the child monona entered the room. she had been driven down by di and jenny plow, who had vanished upstairs and, through the ventilator, might be heard in a lift and fall of giggling. monona had also been driven from the kitchen where lulu was, for some reason, hurrying through the dishes. monona now ran to mrs. bett, stood beside her and stared about resentfully. mrs. bett was in best black and ruches, and she seized upon monona and patted her, as her own form of social expression; and monona wriggled like a puppy, as hers. "quiet, pettie," said ina, eyebrows up. she caught her lower lip in her teeth. "well, sir," said dwight, "you wouldn't think it to look at us, but mother had her hands pretty full, bringing us up." into dwight's face came another look. it was always so, when he spoke of this foster-mother who had taken these two boys and seen them through the graded schools. this woman dwight adored, and when he spoke of her he became his inner self. "we must run up-state and see her while you're here, nin," he said. to this ninian gave a casual assent, lacking his brother's really tender ardour. "little," dwight pursued, "little did she think i'd settle down into a nice, quiet, married dentist and magistrate in my town. and nin into--say, nin, what are you, anyway?" they laughed. "that's the question," said ninian. they laughed. "maybe," ina ventured, "maybe ninian will tell us something about his travels. he is quite a traveller, you know," she said to the plows. "a regular gulliver." they laughed respectfully. "how we should love it, mr. deacon," mrs. plow said. "you know we've never seen _very_ much." goaded on, ninian launched upon his foreign countries as he had seen them: population, exports, imports, soil, irrigation, business. for the populations ninian had no respect. crops could not touch ours. soil mighty poor pickings. and the business--say! those fellows don't know--and, say, the hotels! don't say foreign hotel to ninian. he regarded all the alien earth as barbarian, and he stoned it. he was equipped for absolutely no intensive observation. his contacts were negligible. mrs. plow was more excited by the deacons' party than ninian had been wrought upon by all his voyaging. "tell you," said dwight. "when we ran away that time and went to the state fair, little did we think--" he told about running away to the state fair. "i thought," he wound up, irrelevantly, "ina and i might get over to the other side this year, but i guess not. i guess not." the words give no conception of their effect, spoken thus. for there in warbleton these words are not commonplace. in warbleton, europe is never so casually spoken. "take a trip abroad" is the phrase, or "go to europe" at the very least, and both with empressement. dwight had somewhere noted and deliberately picked up that "other side" effect, and his ina knew this, and was proud. her covert glance about pensively covered her soft triumph. mrs. bett, her arm still circling the child monona, now made her first observation. "pity not to have went while the going was good," she said, and said no more. nobody knew quite what she meant, and everybody hoped for the best. but ina frowned. mamma did these things occasionally when there was company, and she dared. she never sauced dwight in private. and it wasn't fair, it wasn't _fair_-- abruptly ninian rose and left the room. * * * * * the dishes were washed. lulu had washed them at break-neck speed--she could not, or would not, have told why. but no sooner were they finished and set away than lulu had been attacked by an unconquerable inhibition. and instead of going to the parlour, she sat down by the kitchen window. she was in her chally gown, with her cameo pin and her string of coral. laughter from the parlour mingled with the laughter of di and jenny upstairs. lulu was now rather shy of di. a night or two before, coming home with "extra" cream, she had gone round to the side-door and had come full upon di and bobby, seated on the steps. and di was saying: "well, if i marry you, you've simply got to be a great man. i could never marry just anybody. i'd _smother_." lulu had heard, stricken. she passed them by, responding only faintly to their greeting. di was far less taken aback than lulu. later di had said to lulu: "i s'pose you heard what we were saying." lulu, much shaken, had withdrawn from the whole matter by a flat "no." "because," she said to herself, "i couldn't have heard right." but since then she had looked at di as if di were some one else. had not lulu taught her to make buttonholes and to hem--oh, no! lulu could not have heard properly. "everybody's got somebody to be nice to them," she thought now, sitting by the kitchen window, adult yet cinderella. she thought that some one would come for her. her mother or even ina. perhaps they would send monona. she waited at first hopefully, then resentfully. the grey rain wrapped the air. "nobody cares what becomes of me after they're fed," she thought, and derived an obscure satisfaction from her phrasing, and thought it again. ninian deacon came into the kitchen. her first impression was that he had come to see whether the dog had been fed. "i fed him," she said, and wished that she had been busy when ninian entered. "who, me?" he asked. "you did that all right. say, why in time don't you come in the other room?" "oh, i don't know." "well, neither do i. i've kept thinking, 'why don't she come along.' then i remembered the dishes." he glanced about. "i come to help wipe dishes." "oh!" she laughed so delicately, so delightfully, one wondered where she got it. "they're washed----" she caught herself at "long ago." "well then, what are you doing here?" "resting." "rest in there." he bowed, crooked his arm. "señora," he said,--his spanish matched his other assimilations of travel-- "señora. allow me." lulu rose. on his arm she entered the parlour. dwight was narrating and did not observe that entrance. to the plows it was sufficiently normal. but ina looked up and said: "well!"--in two notes, descending, curving. lulu did not look at her. lulu sat in a low rocker. her starched white skirt, throwing her chally in ugly lines, revealed a peeping rim of white embroidery. her lace front wrinkled when she sat, and perpetually she adjusted it. she curled her feet sidewise beneath her chair, her long wrists and veined hands lay along her lap in no relation to her. she was tense. she rocked. when dwight had finished his narration, there was a pause, broken at last by mrs. bett: "you tell that better than you used to when you started in telling it," she observed. "you got in some things i guess you used to clean forget about. monona, get off my rocker." monona made a little whimpering sound, in pretence to tears. ina said "darling--quiet!"--chin a little lifted, lower lip revealing lower teeth for the word's completion; and she held it. the plows were asking something about mexico. dwight was wondering if it would let up raining _at all_. di and jenny came whispering into the room. but all these distractions ninian deacon swept aside. "miss lulu," he said, "i wanted you to hear about my trip up the amazon, because i knew how interested you are in travels." he talked, according to his lights, about the amazon. but the person who most enjoyed the recital could not afterward have told two words that he said. lulu kept the position which she had taken at first, and she dare not change. she saw the blood in the veins of her hands and wanted to hide them. she wondered if she might fold her arms, or have one hand to support her chin, gave it all up and sat motionless, save for the rocking. then she forgot everything. for the first time in years some one was talking and looking not only at ina and dwight and their guests, but at her. iii june on a june morning dwight herbert deacon looked at the sky, and said with his manner of originating it: "how about a picnic this afternoon?" ina, with her blank, upward look, exclaimed: "to-_day?_" "first class day, it looks like to me." come to think of it, ina didn't know that there was anything to prevent, but mercy, herbert was so sudden. lulu began to recite the resources of the house for a lunch. meanwhile, since the first mention of picnic, the child monona had been dancing stiffly about the room, knees stiff, elbows stiff, shoulders immovable, her straight hair flapping about her face. the sad dance of the child who cannot dance because she never has danced. di gave a conservative assent--she was at that age--and then took advantage of the family softness incident to a guest and demanded that bobby go too. ina hesitated, partly because she always hesitated, partly because she was tribal in the extreme. "just our little family and uncle ninian would have been so nice," she sighed, with her consent. when, at six o'clock, ina and dwight and ninian assembled on the porch and lulu came out with the basket, it was seen that she was in a blue-cotton house-gown. "look here," said ninian, "aren't you going?" "me?" said lulu. "oh, no." "why not?" "oh, i haven't been to a picnic since i can remember." "but why not?" "oh, i never think of such a thing." ninian waited for the family to speak. they did speak. dwight said: "lulu's a regular home body." and ina advanced kindly with: "come with us, lulu, if you like." "no," said lulu, and flushed. "thank you," she added, formally. mrs. bett's voice shrilled from within the house, startlingly close--just beyond the blind, in fact: "go on, lulie. it'll do you good. you mind me and go on." "well," said ninian, "that's what i say. you hustle for your hat and you come along." for the first time this course presented itself to lulu as a possibility. she stared up at ninian. "you can slip on my linen duster, over," ina said graciously. "your new one?" dwight incredulously wished to know. "oh, no!" ina laughed at the idea. "the old one." they were having to wait for di in any case--they always had to wait for di--and at last, hardly believing in her own motions, lulu was running to make ready. mrs. bett hurried to help her, but she took down the wrong things and they were both irritated. lulu reappeared in the linen duster and a wide hat. there had been no time to "tighten up" her hair; she was flushed at the adventure; she had never looked so well. they started. lulu, falling in with monona, heard for the first time in her life, the step of the pursuing male, choosing to walk beside her and the little girl. oh, would ina like that? and what did lulu care what ina liked? monona, making a silly, semi-articulate observation, was enchanted to have lulu burst into laughter and squeeze her hand. di contributed her bright presence, and bobby larkin appeared from nowhere, running, with a gigantic bag of fruit. "bullylujah!" he shouted, and lulu could have shouted with him. she sought for some utterance. she wanted to talk with ninian. "i do hope we've brought sandwiches enough," was all that she could get to say. they chose a spot, that is to say dwight herbert chose a spot, across the river and up the shore where there was at that season a strip of warm beach. dwight herbert declared himself the builder of incomparable fires, and made a bad smudge. ninian, who was a camper neither by birth nor by adoption, kept offering brightly to help, could think of nothing to do, and presently, bethinking himself of skipping stones, went and tried to skip them on the flowing river. ina cut her hand opening the condensed milk and was obliged to sit under a tree and nurse the wound. monona spilled all the salt and sought diligently to recover it. so lulu did all the work. as for di and bobby, they had taken the pail and gone for water, discouraging monona from accompanying them, discouraging her to the point of tears. but the two were gone for so long that on their return dwight was hungry and cross and majestic. "those who disregard the comfort of other people," he enunciated, "can not expect consideration for themselves in the future." he did not say on what ethical tenet this dictum was based, but he delivered it with extreme authority. ina caught her lower lip with her teeth, dipped her head, and looked at di. and monona laughed like a little demon. as soon as lulu had all in readiness, and cold corned beef and salad had begun their orderly progression, dwight became the immemorial dweller in green fastnesses. he began: "this is ideal. i tell you, people don't half know life if they don't get out and eat in the open. it's better than any tonic at a dollar the bottle. nature's tonic--eh? free as the air. look at that sky. see that water. could anything be more pleasant?" he smiled at his wife. this man's face was glowing with simple pleasure. he loved the out-of-doors with a love which could not explain itself. but he now lost a definite climax when his wife's comment was heard to be: "monona! now it's all over both ruffles. and mamma does try so hard...." after supper some boys arrived with a boat which they beached, and dwight, with enthusiasm, gave the boys ten cents for a half hour's use of that boat and invited to the waters his wife, his brother and his younger daughter. ina was timid----not because she was afraid but because she was congenitally timid--with her this was not a belief or an emotion, it was a disease. "dwight darling, are you sure there's no danger?" why, none. none in the world. whoever heard of drowning in a river. "but you're not so very used----" oh, wasn't he? who was it that had lived in a boat throughout youth if not he? ninian refused out-of-hand, lighted a cigar, and sat on a log in a permanent fashion. ina's plump figure was fitted in the stern, the child monona affixed, and the boat put off, bow well out of water. on this pleasure ride the face of the wife was as the face of the damned. it was true that she revered her husband's opinions above those of all other men. in politics, in science, in religion, in dentistry she looked up to his dicta as to revelation. and was he not a magistrate? but let him take oars in hand, or shake lines or a whip above the back of any horse, and this woman would trust any other woman's husband by preference. it was a phenomenon. lulu was making the work last, so that she should be out of everybody's way. when the boat put off without ninian, she felt a kind of terror and wished that he had gone. he had sat down near her, and she pretended not to see. at last lulu understood that ninian was deliberately choosing to remain with her. the languor of his bulk after the evening meal made no explanation for lulu. she asked for no explanation. he had stayed. and they were alone. for di, on a pretext of examining the flocks and herds, was leading bobby away to the pastures, a little at a time. the sun, now fallen, had left an even, waxen sky. leaves and ferns appeared drenched with the light just withdrawn. the hush, the warmth, the colour, were charged with some influence. the air of the time communicated itself to lulu as intense and quiet happiness. she had not yet felt quiet with ninian. for the first time her blind excitement in his presence ceased, and she felt curiously accustomed to him. to him the air of the time imparted itself in a deepening of his facile sympathy. "do you know something?" he began. "i think you have it pretty hard around here." "i?" lulu was genuinely astonished. "yes, sir. do you have to work like this all the time? i guess you won't mind my asking." "well, i ought to work. i have a home with them. mother too." "yes, but glory. you ought to have some kind of a life of your own. you want it, too. you told me you did--that first day." she was silent. again he was investing her with a longing which she had never really had, until he had planted that longing. she had wanted she knew not what. now she accepted the dim, the romantic interest of this rôle. "i guess you don't see how it seems," he said, "to me, coming along--a stranger so. i don't like it." he frowned, regarded the river, flicked away ashes, his diamond obediently shining. lulu's look, her head drooping, had the liquid air of the look of a young girl. for the first time in her life she was feeling her helplessness. it intoxicated her. "they're very good to me," she said. he turned. "do you know why you think that? because you've never had anybody really good to you. that's why." "but they treat me good." "they make a slave of you. regular slave." he puffed, frowning. "damned shame, _i_ call it," he said. her loyalty stirred lulu. "we have our whole living----" "and you earn it. i been watching you since i been here. don't you ever go anywheres?" she said: "this is the first place in--in years." "lord. don't you want to? of course you do!" "not so much places like this----" "i see. what you want is to get away--like you'd ought to." he regarded her. "you've been a blamed fine-looking woman," he said. she did not flush, but that faint, unsuspected lulu spoke for her: "you must have been a good-looking man once yourself." his laugh went ringing across the water. "you're pretty good," he said. he regarded her approvingly. "i don't see how you do it," he mused, "blamed if i do." "how i do what?" "why come back, quick like that, with what you say." lulu's heart was beating painfully. the effort to hold her own in talk like this was terrifying. she had never talked in this fashion to any one. it was as if some matter of life or death hung on her ability to speak an alien tongue. and yet, when she was most at loss, that other lulu, whom she had never known anything about, seemed suddenly to speak for her. as now: "it's my grand education," she said. she sat humped on the log, her beautiful hair shining in the light of the warm sky. she had thrown off her hat and the linen duster, and was in her blue gingham gown against the sky and leaves. but she sat stiffly, her feet carefully covered, her hands ill at ease, her eyes rather piteous in their hope somehow to hold her vague own. yet from her came these sufficient, insouciant replies. "education," he said laughing heartily. "that's mine, too." he spoke a creed. "i ain't never had it and i ain't never missed it." "most folks are happy without an education," said lulu. "you're not very happy, though." "oh, no," she said. "well, sir," said ninian, "i'll tell you what we'll do. while i'm here i'm going to take you and ina and dwight up to the city." "to the city?" "to a show. dinner and a show. i'll give you _one_ good time." "oh!" lulu leaned forward. "ina and dwight go sometimes. i never been." "well, just you come with me. i'll look up what's good. you tell me just what you like to eat, and we'll get it----" she said: "i haven't had anything to eat in years that i haven't cooked myself." he planned for that time to come, and lulu listened as one intensely experiencing every word that he uttered. yet it was not in that future merry-making that she found her joy, but in the consciousness that he--some one--any one--was planning like this for her. meanwhile di and bobby had rounded the corner by an old hop-house and kept on down the levee. now that the presence of the others was withdrawn, the two looked about them differently and began themselves to give off an influence instead of being pressed upon by overpowering personalities. frogs were chorusing in the near swamp, and bobby wanted one. he was off after it. but di eventually drew him back, reluctant, frogless. he entered upon an exhaustive account of the use of frogs for bait, and as he talked he constantly flung stones. di grew restless. there was, she had found, a certain amount of this to be gone through before bobby would focus on the personal. at length she was obliged to say, "like me to-day?" and then he entered upon personal talk with the same zest with which he had discussed bait. "bobby," said di, "sometimes i think we might be married, and not wait for any old money." they had now come that far. it was partly an authentic attraction, grown from out the old repulsion, and partly it was that they both--and especially di--so much wanted the experiences of attraction that they assumed its ways. and then each cared enough to assume the pretty rôle required by the other, and by the occasion, and by the air of the time. "would you?" asked bobby--but in the subjunctive. she said: "yes. i will." "it would mean running away, wouldn't it?" said bobby, still subjunctive. "i suppose so. mamma and papa are so unreasonable." "di," said bobby, "i don't believe you could ever be happy with me." "the idea! i can too. you're going to be a great man--you know you are." bobby was silent. of course he knew it--but he passed it over. "wouldn't it be fun to elope and surprise the whole school?" said di, sparkling. bobby grinned appreciatively. he was good to look at, with his big frame, his head of rough dark hair, the sky warm upon his clear skin and full mouth. di suddenly announced that she would be willing to elope _now_. "i've planned eloping lots of times," she said ambiguously. it flashed across the mind of bobby that in these plans of hers he may not always have been the principal, and he could not be sure ... but she talked in nothings, and he answered her so. soft cries sounded in the centre of the stream. the boat, well out of the strong current, was seen to have its oars shipped; and there sat dwight herbert gently rocking the boat. dwight herbert would. "bertie, bertie--please!" you heard his ina say. monona began to cry, and her father was irritated, felt that it would be ignominious to desist, and did not know that he felt this. but he knew that he was annoyed, and he took refuge in this, and picked up the oars with: "some folks never can enjoy anything without spoiling it." "that's what i was thinking," said ina, with a flash of anger. they glided toward the shore in a huff. monona found that she enjoyed crying across the water and kept it up. it was almost as good as an echo. ina, stepping safe to the sands, cried ungratefully that this was the last time that she would ever, ever go with her husband anywhere. ever. dwight herbert, recovering, gauged the moment to require of him humour, and observed that his wedded wife was as skittish as a colt. ina kept silence, head poised so that her full little chin showed double. monona, who had previously hidden a cooky in her frock, now remembered it and crunched sidewise, the eyes ruminant. moving toward them, with di, bobby was suddenly overtaken by the sense of disliking them all. he never had liked dwight herbert, his employer. mrs. deacon seemed to him so overwhelmingly mature that he had no idea how to treat her. and the child monona he would like to roll in the river. even di ... he fell silent, was silent on the walk home which was the signal for di to tease him steadily. the little being was afraid of silence. it was too vast for her. she was like a butterfly in a dome. but against that background of ruined occasion, lulu walked homeward beside ninian. and all that night, beside her mother who groaned in her sleep, lulu lay tense and awake. he had walked home with her. he had told ina and herbert about going to the city. what did it mean? suppose ... oh no; oh no! "either lay still or get up and set up," mrs. bett directed her at length. iv july when, on a warm evening a fortnight later, lulu descended the stairs dressed for her incredible trip to the city, she wore the white waist which she had often thought they would "use" for her if she died. and really, the waist looked as if it had been planned for the purpose, and its wide, upstanding plaited lace at throat and wrist made her neck look thinner, her forearm sharp and veined. her hair she had "crimped" and parted in the middle, puffed high--it was so that hair had been worn in lulu's girlhood. "_well_!" said ina, when she saw this coiffure, and frankly examined it, head well back, tongue meditatively teasing at her lower lip. for travel lulu was again wearing ina's linen duster--the old one. ninian appeared, in a sack coat--and his diamond. his distinctly convex face, its thick, rosy flesh, thick mouth and cleft chin gave lulu once more that bold sense of looking--not at him, for then she was shy and averted her eyes--but at his photograph at which she could gaze as much as she would. she looked up at him openly, fell in step beside him. was he not taking her to the city? ina and dwight themselves were going because she, lulu, had brought about this party. "act as good as you look, lulie," mrs. bett called after them. she gave no instructions to ina who was married and able to shine in her conduct, it seemed. dwight was cross. on the way to the station he might have been heard to take it up again, whatever it was, and his ina unmistakably said: "well, now don't keep it going all the way there"; and turned back to the others with some elaborate comment about the dust, thus cutting off her so-called lord from his legitimate retort. a mean advantage. the city was two hours' distant, and they were to spend the night. on the train, in the double seat, ninian beside her among the bags, lulu sat in the simple consciousness that the people all knew that she too had been chosen. a man and a woman were opposite, with their little boy between them. lulu felt this woman's superiority of experience over her own, and smiled at her from a world of fellowship. but the woman lifted her eyebrows and stared and turned away, with slow and insolent winking. ninian had a boyish pride in his knowledge of places to eat in many cities--as if he were leading certain of the tribe to a deer-run in a strange wood. ninian took his party to a downtown café, then popular among business and newspaper men. the place was below the sidewalk, was reached by a dozen marble steps, and the odour of its griddle-cakes took the air of the street. ninian made a great show of selecting a table, changed once, called the waiter "my man" and rubbed soft hands on "what do you say? shall it be lobster?" he ordered the dinner, instructing the waiter with painstaking gruffness. "not that they can touch _your_ cooking here, miss lulu," he said, settling himself to wait, and crumbling a crust. dwight, expanding a bit in the aura of the food, observed that lulu was a regular chef, that was what lulu was. he still would not look at his wife, who now remarked: "sheff, dwightie. not cheff." this was a mean advantage, which he pretended not to hear--another mean advantage. "ina," said lulu, "your hat's just a little mite--no, over the other way." "was there anything to prevent your speaking of that before?" ina inquired acidly. "i started to and then somebody always said something," said lulu humbly. nothing could so much as cloud lulu's hour. she was proof against any shadow. "say, but you look tremendous to-night," dwight observed to her. understanding perfectly that this was said to tease his wife, lulu yet flushed with pleasure. she saw two women watching, and she thought: "they're feeling sorry for ina--nobody talking to her." she laughed at everything that the men said. she passionately wanted to talk herself. "how many folks keep going past," she said, many times. at length, having noted the details of all the clothes in range, ina's isolation palled upon her and she set herself to take ninian's attention. she therefore talked with him about himself. "curious you've never married, nin," she said. "don't say it like that," he begged. "i might yet." ina laughed enjoyably. "yes, you might!" she met this. "she wants everybody to get married, but she wishes i hadn't," dwight threw in with exceeding rancour. they developed this theme exhaustively, dwight usually speaking in the third person and always with his shoulder turned a bit from his wife. it was inconceivable, the gusto with which they proceeded. ina had assumed for the purpose an air distrait, casual, attentive to the scene about them. but gradually her cheeks began to burn. "she'll cry," lulu thought in alarm, and said at random: "ina, that hat is so pretty--ever so much prettier than the old one." but ina said frostily that she never saw anything the matter with the old one. "let us talk," said ninian low, to lulu. "then they'll simmer down." he went on, in an undertone, about nothing in particular. lulu hardly heard what he said, it was so pleasant to have him talking to her in this confidential fashion; and she was pleasantly aware that his manner was open to misinterpretation. in the nick of time, the lobster was served. * * * * * dinner and the play--the show, as ninian called it. this show was "peter pan," chosen by ninian because the seats cost the most of those at any theatre. it was almost indecent to see how dwight herbert, the immortal soul, had warmed and melted at these contacts. by the time that all was over, and they were at the hotel for supper, such was his pleasurable excitation that he was once more playful, teasing, once more the irrepressible. but now his ina was to be won back, made it evident that she was not one lightly to overlook, and a fine firmness sat upon the little doubling chin. they discussed the play. not one of them had understood the story. the dog-kennel part--wasn't that the queerest thing? nothing to do with the rest of the play. "i was for the pirates. the one with the hook--he was my style," said dwight. "well, there it is again," ina cried. "they didn't belong to the real play, either." "oh, well," ninian said, "they have to put in parts, i suppose, to catch everybody. instead of a song and dance, they do that." "and i didn't understand," said ina, "why they all clapped when the principal character ran down front and said something to the audience that time. but they all did." ninian thought this might have been out of compliment. ina wished that monona might have seen, confessed that the last part was so pretty that she herself would not look; and into ina's eyes came their loveliest light. lulu sat there, hearing the talk about the play. "why couldn't i have said that?" she thought as the others spoke. all that they said seemed to her apropos, but she could think of nothing to add. the evening had been to her a light from heaven--how could she find anything to say? she sat in a daze of happiness, her mind hardly operative, her look moving from one to another. at last ninian looked at her. "sure you liked it, miss lulu?" "oh, yes! i think they all took their parts real well." it was not enough. she looked at them appealingly, knowing that she had not said enough. "you could hear everything they said," she added. "it was--" she dwindled to silence. dwight herbert savoured his rarebit with a great show of long wrinkled dimples. "excellent sauces they make here--excellent," he said, with the frown of an epicure. "a tiny wee bit more athabasca," he added, and they all laughed and told him that athabasca was a lake, of course. of course he meant tobasco, ina said. their entertainment and their talk was of this sort, for an hour. "well, now," said dwight herbert when it was finished, "somebody dance on the table." "dwightie!" "got to amuse ourselves somehow. come, liven up. they'll begin to read the funeral service over us." "why not say the wedding service?" asked ninian. in the mention of wedlock there was always something stimulating to dwight, something of overwhelming humour. he shouted a derisive endorsement of this proposal. "i shouldn't object," said ninian. "should you, miss lulu?" lulu now burned the slow red of her torture. they were all looking at her. she made an anguished effort to defend herself. "i don't know it," she said, "so i can't say it." ninian leaned toward her. "i, ninian, take thee, lulu, to be my wedded wife," he pronounced. "that's the way it goes!" "lulu daren't say it!" cried dwight. he laughed so loudly that those at the near tables turned. and, from the fastness of her wifehood and motherhood, ina laughed. really, it was ridiculous to think of lulu that way.... ninian laughed too. "course she don't dare say it," he challenged. from within lulu, that strange lulu, that other lulu who sometimes fought her battles, suddenly spoke out: "i, lulu, take thee, ninian, to be my wedded husband." "you will?" ninian cried. "i will," she said, laughing tremulously, to prove that she too could join in, could be as merry as the rest. "and i will. there, by jove, now have we entertained you, or haven't we?" ninian laughed and pounded his soft fist on the table. "oh, say, honestly!" ina was shocked. "i don't think you ought to--holy things----what's the _matter_, dwightie?" dwight herbert deacon's eyes were staring and his face was scarlet. "say, by george," he said, "a civil wedding is binding in this state." "a civil wedding? oh, well--" ninian dismissed it. "but i," said dwight, "happen to be a magistrate." they looked at one another foolishly. dwight sprang up with the indeterminate idea of inquiring something of some one, circled about and returned. ina had taken his chair and sat clasping lulu's hand. ninian continued to laugh. "i never saw one done so offhand," said dwight. "but what you've said is all you have to say according to law. and there don't have to be witnesses ... say!" he said, and sat down again. above that shroud-like plaited lace, the veins of lulu's throat showed dark as she swallowed, cleared her throat, swallowed again. "don't you let dwight scare you," she besought ninian. "scare me!" cried ninian. "why, i think it's a good job done, if you ask me." lulu's eyes flew to his face. as he laughed, he was looking at her, and now he nodded and shut and opened his eyes several times very fast. their points of light flickered. with a pang of wonder which pierced her and left her shaken, lulu looked. his eyes continued to meet her own. it was exactly like looking at his photograph. dwight had recovered his authentic air. "oh, well," he said, "we can inquire at our leisure. if it is necessary, i should say we can have it set aside quietly up here in the city--no one'll be the wiser." "set aside nothing!" said ninian. "i'd like to see it stand." "are you serious, nin?" "sure i'm serious." ina jerked gently at her sister's arm. "lulu! you hear him? what you going to say to that?" lulu shook her head. "he isn't in earnest," she said. "i am in earnest--hope to die," ninian declared. he was on two legs of his chair and was slightly tilting, so that the effect of his earnestness was impaired. but he was obviously in earnest. they were looking at lulu again. and now she looked at ninian, and there was something terrible in that look which tried to ask him, alone, about this thing. dwight exploded. "there was a fellow i know there in the theatre," he cried. "i'll get him on the line. he could tell me if there's any way--" and was off. ina inexplicably began touching away tears. "oh," she said, "what will mamma say?" lulu hardly heard her. mrs. bett was incalculably distant. "you sure?" lulu said low to ninian. for the first time, something in her exceeding isolation really touched him. "say," he said, "you come on with me. we'll have it done over again somewhere, if you say so." "oh," said lulu, "if i thought--" he leaned and patted her hand. "good girl," he said. they sat silent, ninian padding on the cloth with the flat of his plump hands. dwight returned. "it's a go all right," he said. he sat down, laughed weakly, rubbed at his face. "you two are tied as tight as the church could tie you." "good enough," said ninian. "eh, lulu?" "it's--it's all right, i guess," lulu said. "well, i'll be dished," said dwight. "sister!" said ina. ninian meditated, his lips set tight and high. it is impossible to trace the processes of this man. perhaps they were all compact of the devil-may-care attitude engendered in any persistent traveller. perhaps the incomparable cookery of lulu played its part. "i was going to make a trip south this month," he said, "on my way home from here. suppose we get married again by somebody or other, and start right off. you'd like that, wouldn't you--going south?" "yes," said lulu only. "it's july," said ina, with her sense of fitness, but no one heard. it was arranged that their trunks should follow them--ina would see to that, though she was scandalised that they were not first to return to warbleton for the blessing of mrs. bett. "mamma won't mind," said lulu. "mamma can't stand a fuss any more." they left the table. the men and women still sitting at the other tables saw nothing unusual about these four, indifferently dressed, indifferently conditioned. the hotel orchestra, playing ragtime in deafening concord, made lulu's wedding march. * * * * * it was still early next day--a hot sunday--when ina and dwight reached home. mrs. bett was standing on the porch. "where's lulie?" asked mrs. bett. they told. mrs. bett took it in, a bit at a time. her pale eyes searched their faces, she shook her head, heard it again, grasped it. her first question was: "who's going to do your work?" ina had thought of that, and this was manifest. "oh," she said, "you and i'll have to manage." mrs. bett meditated, frowning. "i left the bacon for her to cook for your breakfasts," she said. "i can't cook bacon fit to eat. neither can you." "we've had our breakfasts," ina escaped from this dilemma. "had it up in the city, on expense?" "well, we didn't have much." in mrs. bett's eyes tears gathered, but they were not for lulu. "i should think," she said, "i should think lulie might have had a little more gratitude to her than this." on their way to church ina and dwight encountered di, who had left the house some time earlier, stepping sedately to church in company with bobby larkin. di was in white, and her face was the face of an angel, so young, so questioning, so utterly devoid of her sophistication. "that child," said ina, "_must_ not see so much of that larkin boy. she's just a little, little girl." "of course she mustn't," said dwight sharply, "and if _i_ was her mother--" "oh stop that!" said ina, sotto voce, at the church steps. to every one with whom they spoke in the aisle after church, ina announced their news: had they heard? lulu married dwight's brother ninian in the city yesterday. oh, sudden, yes! and ro_man_tic ... spoken with that upward inflection to which ina was a prey. v august mrs. bett had been having a "tantrim," brought on by nothing definable. abruptly as she and ina were getting supper, mrs. bett had fallen silent, had in fact refused to reply when addressed. when all was ready and dwight was entering, hair wetly brushed, she had withdrawn from the room and closed her bedroom door until it echoed. "she's got one again," said ina, grieving; "dwight, you go." he went, showing no sign of annoyance, and stood outside his mother-in-law's door and knocked. no answer. "mother, come and have some supper." no answer. "looks to me like your muffins was just about the best ever." no answer. "come on--i had something funny to tell you and ina." he retreated, knowing nothing of the admirable control exercised by this woman for her own passionate satisfaction in sliding him away unsatisfied. he showed nothing but anxious concern, touched with regret, at his failure. ina, too, returned from that door discomfited. dwight made a gallant effort to retrieve the fallen fortunes of their evening meal, and turned upon di, who had just entered, and with exceeding facetiousness inquired how bobby was. di looked hunted. she could never tell whether her parents were going to tease her about bobby, or rebuke her for being seen with him. it depended on mood, and this mood di had not the experience to gauge. she now groped for some neutral fact, and mentioned that he was going to take her and jenny for ice cream that night. ina's irritation found just expression in office of motherhood. "i won't have you downtown in the evening," she said. "but you let me go last night." "all the better reason why you should not go to-night." "i tell you," cried dwight. "why not all walk down? why not all have ice cream...." he was all gentleness and propitiation, the reconciling element in his home. "me too?" monona's ardent hope, her terrible fear were in her eyebrows, her parted lips. "you too, certainly." dwight could not do enough for every one. monona clapped her hands. "goody! goody! last time you wouldn't let me go." "that's why papa's going to take you this time," ina said. these ethical balances having been nicely struck, ina proposed another: "but," she said, "but, you must eat more supper or you can _not_ go." "i don't want any more." monona's look was honest and piteous. "makes no difference. you must eat or you'll get sick." "no!" "very well, then. no ice cream soda for such a little girl." monona began to cry quietly. but she passed her plate. she ate, chewing high, and slowly. "see? she can eat if she will eat," ina said to dwight. "the only trouble is, she will _not_ take the time." "she don't put her mind on her meals," dwight herbert diagnosed it. "oh, bigger bites than that!" he encouraged his little daughter. di's mind had been proceeding along its own paths. "are you going to take jenny and bobby too?" she inquired. "certainly. the whole party." "bobby'll want to pay for jenny and i." "me, darling," said ina patiently, punctiliously--and less punctiliously added: "nonsense. this is going to be papa's little party." "but we had the engagement with bobby. it was an engagement." "well," said ina, "i think we'll just set that aside--that important engagement. i think we just will." "papa! bobby'll want to be the one to pay for jenny and i--" "di!" ina's voice dominated all. "will you be more careful of your grammar or shall i speak to you again?" "well, i'd rather use bad grammar than--than--than--" she looked resentfully at her mother, her father. their moral defection was evident to her, but it was indefinable. they told her that she ought to be ashamed when papa wanted to give them all a treat. she sat silent, frowning, put-upon. "look, mamma!" cried monona, swallowing a third of an egg at one impulse. ina saw only the empty plate. "mamma's nice little girl!" cried she, shining upon her child. the rules of the ordinary sports of the playground, scrupulously applied, would have clarified the ethical atmosphere of this little family. but there was no one to apply them. * * * * * when di and monona had been excused, dwight asked: "nothing new from the bride and groom?" "no. and, dwight, it's been a week since the last." "see--where were they then?" he knew perfectly well that they were in savannah, georgia, but ina played his game, told him, and retold bits that the letter had said. "i don't understand," she added, "why they should go straight to oregon without coming here first." dwight hazarded that nin probably had to get back, and shone pleasantly in the reflected importance of a brother filled with affairs. "i don't know what to make of lulu's letters," ina proceeded. "they're so--so--" "you haven't had but two, have you?" "that's all--well, of course it's only been a month. but both letters have been so--" ina was never really articulate. whatever corner of her brain had the blood in it at the moment seemed to be operative, and she let the matter go at that. "i don't think it's fair to mamma--going off that way. leaving her own mother. why, she may never see mamma again--" ina's breath caught. into her face came something of the lovely tenderness with which she sometimes looked at monona and di. she sprang up. she had forgotten to put some supper to warm for mamma. the lovely light was still in her face as she bustled about against the time of mamma's recovery from her tantrim. dwight's face was like this when he spoke of his foster-mother. in both these beings there was something which functioned as pure love. mamma had recovered and was eating cold scrambled eggs on the corner of the kitchen table when the ice cream soda party was ready to set out. dwight threw her a casual "better come, too, mother bett," but she shook her head. she wished to go, wished it with violence, but she contrived to give to her arbitrary refusal a quality of contempt. when jenny arrived with bobby, she had brought a sheaf of gladioli for mrs. bett, and took them to her in the kitchen, and as she laid the flowers beside her, the young girl stopped and kissed her. "you little darling!" cried mrs. bett, and clung to her, her lifted eyes lit by something intense and living. but when the ice cream party had set off at last, mrs. bett left her supper, gathered up the flowers, and crossed the lawn to the old cripple, grandma gates. "inie sha'n't have 'em," the old woman thought. and then it was quite beautiful to watch her with grandma gates, whom she tended and petted, to whose complainings she listened, and to whom she tried to tell the small events of her day. when her neighbour had gone, grandma gates said that it was as good as a dose of medicine to have her come in. mrs. bett sat on the porch restored and pleasant when the family returned. di and bobby had walked home with jenny. "look here," said dwight herbert, "who is it sits home and has _ice_ cream put in her lap, like a queen?" "vanilly or chocolate?" mrs. bett demanded. "chocolate, mammal" ina cried, with the breeze in her voice. "vanilly sets better," mrs. bett said. they sat with her on the porch while she ate. ina rocked on a creaking board. dwight swung a leg over the railing. monona sat pulling her skirt over her feet, and humming all on one note. there was no moon, but the warm dusk had a quality of transparency as if it were lit in all its particles. the gate opened, and some one came up the walk. they looked, and it was lulu. * * * * * "well, if it ain't miss lulu bett!" dwight cried involuntarily, and ina cried out something. "how did you know?" lulu asked. "know! know what?" "that it ain't lulu deacon. hello, mamma." she passed the others, and kissed her mother. "say," said mrs. bett placidly. "and i just ate up the last spoonful o' cream." "ain't lulu deacon!" ina's voice rose and swelled richly. "what you talking?" "didn't he write to you?" lulu asked. "not a word." dwight answered this. "all we've had we had from you--the last from savannah, georgia." "savannah, georgia," said lulu, and laughed. they could see that she was dressed well, in dark red cloth, with a little tilting hat and a drooping veil. she did not seem in any wise upset, nor, save for that nervous laughter, did she show her excitement. "well, but he's here with you, isn't he?" dwight demanded. "isn't he here? where is he?" "must be 'most to oregon by this time," lulu said. "oregon!" "you see," said lulu, "he had another wife." "why, he had not!" exclaimed dwight absurdly. "yes. he hasn't seen her for fifteen years and he thinks she's dead. but he isn't sure." "nonsense," said dwight. "why, of course she's dead if he thinks so." "i had to be sure," said lulu. at first dumb before this, ina now cried out: "monona! go upstairs to bed at once." "it's only quarter to," said monona, with assurance. "do as mamma tells you." "but--" "monona!" she went, kissing them all good-night and taking her time about it. everything was suspended while she kissed them and departed, walking slowly backward. "married?" said mrs. bett with tardy apprehension. "lulie, was your husband married?" "yes," lulu said, "my husband was married, mother." "mercy," said ina. "think of anything like that in our family." "well, go on--go on!" dwight cried. "tell us about it." lulu spoke in a monotone, with her old manner of hesitation: "we were going to oregon. first down to new orleans and then out to california and up the coast." on this she paused and sighed. "well, then at savannah, georgia, he said he thought i better know, first. so he told me." "yes--well, what did he _say_?" dwight demanded irritably. "cora waters," said lulu. "cora waters. she married him down in san diego, eighteen years ago. she went to south america with him." "well, he never let us know of it, if she did," said dwight. "no. she married him just before he went. then in south america, after two years, she ran away again. that's all he knows." "that's a pretty story," said dwight contemptuously. "he says if she'd been alive, she'd been after him for a divorce. and she never has been, so he thinks she must be dead. the trouble is," lulu said again, "he wasn't sure. and i had to be sure." "well, but mercy," said ina, "couldn't he find out now?" "it might take a long time," said lulu simply, "and i didn't want to stay and not know." "well, then, why didn't he say so here?" ina's indignation mounted. "he would have. but you know how sudden everything was. he said he thought about telling us right there in the restaurant, but of course that'd been hard--wouldn't it? and then he felt so sure she was dead." "why did he tell you at all, then?" demanded ina, whose processes were simple. "yes. well! why indeed?" dwight herbert brought out these words with a curious emphasis. "i thought that, just at first," lulu said, "but only just at first. of course that wouldn't have been right. and then, you see, he gave me my choice." "gave you your choice?" dwight echoed. "yes. about going on and taking the chances. he gave me my choice when he told me, there in savannah, georgia." "what made him conclude, by then, that you ought to be told?" dwight asked. "why, he'd got to thinking about it," she answered. a silence fell. lulu sat looking out toward the street. "the only thing," she said, "as long as it happened, i kind of wish he hadn't told me till we got to oregon." "lulu!" said ina. ina began to cry. "you poor thing!" she said. her tears were a signal to mrs. bett, who had been striving to understand all. now she too wept, tossing up her hands and rocking her body. her saucer and spoon clattered on her knee. "he felt bad too," lulu said. "he!" said dwight. "he must have." "it's you," ina sobbed. "it's you. _my_ sister!" "well," said lulu, "but i never thought of it making you both feel bad, or i wouldn't have come home. i knew," she added, "it'd make dwight feel bad. i mean, it was his brother--" "thank goodness," ina broke in, "nobody need know about it." lulu regarded her, without change. "oh, yes," she said in her monotone. "people will have to know." "i do not see the necessity." dwight's voice was an edge. then too he said "do not," always with dwight betokening the finalities. "why, what would they think?" lulu asked, troubled. "what difference does it make what they think?". "why," said lulu slowly, "i shouldn't like--you see they might--why, dwight, i think we'll have to tell them." "you do! you think the disgrace of bigamy in this family is something the whole town will have to know about?" lulu looked at him with parted lips. "say," she said, "i never thought about it being that." dwight laughed. "what did you think it was? and whose disgrace is it, pray?" "ninian's," said lulu. "ninian's! well, he's gone. but you're here. and i'm here. folks'll feel sorry for you. but the disgrace--that'd reflect on me. see?" "but if we don't tell, what'll they think then?" said dwight: "they'll think what they always think when a wife leaves her husband. they'll think you couldn't get along. that's all." "i should hate that," said lulu. "well, i should hate the other, let me tell you." "dwight, dwight," said ina. "let's go in the house. i'm afraid they'll hear--" as they rose, mrs. bett plucked at her returned daughter's sleeve. "lulie," she said, "was his other wife--was she _there_?" "no, no, mother. she wasn't there." mrs. bett's lips moved, repeating the words. "then that ain't so bad," she said. "i was afraid maybe she turned you out." "no," lulu said, "it wasn't that bad, mother." mrs. bett brightened. in little matters, she quarrelled and resented, but the large issues left her blank. through some indeterminate sense of the importance due this crisis, the deacons entered their parlour. dwight lighted that high, central burner and faced about, saying: "in fact, i simply will not have it, lulu! you expect, i take it, to make your home with us in the future, on the old terms." "well--" "i mean, did ninian give you any money?" "no. he didn't give me any money--only enough to get home on. and i kept my suit--why!" she flung her head back, "i wouldn't have taken any money!" "that means," said dwight, "that you will have to continue to live here--on the old terms, and of course i'm quite willing that you should. let me tell you, however, that this is on condition--on condition that this disgraceful business is kept to ourselves." she made no attempt to combat him now. she looked back at him, quivering, and in a great surprise, but she said nothing. "truly, lulu," said ina, "wouldn't that be best? they'll talk anyway. but this way they'll only talk about you, and the other way it'd be about all of us." lulu said only: "but the other way would be the truth." dwight's eyes narrowed: "my dear lulu," he said, "are you _sure_ of that?" "sure?" "yes. did he give you any proofs?" "proofs?" "letters--documents of any sort? any sort of assurance that he was speaking the truth?" "why, no," said lulu. "proofs--no. he told me." "he told you!" "why, that was hard enough to have to do. it was terrible for him to have to do. what proofs--" she stopped, puzzled. "didn't it occur to you," said dwight, "that he might have told you that because he didn't want to have to go on with it?" as she met his look, some power seemed to go from lulu. she sat down, looked weakly at them, and within her closed lips her jaw was slightly fallen. she said nothing. and seeing on her skirt a spot of dust she began to rub at that. "why, dwight!" ina cried, and moved to her sister's side. "i may as well tell you," he said, "that i myself have no idea that ninian told you the truth. he was always imagining things--you saw that. i know him pretty well--have been more or less in touch with him the whole time. in short, i haven't the least idea he was ever married before." lulu continued to rub at her skirt. "i never thought of that," she said. "look here," dwight went on persuasively, "hadn't you and he had some little tiff when he told you?" "no--no! why, not once. why, we weren't a bit like you and ina." she spoke simply and from her heart and without guile. "evidently not," dwight said drily. lulu went on: "he was very good to me. this dress--and my shoes--and my hat. and another dress, too." she found the pins and took off her hat. "he liked the red wing," she said. "i wanted black--oh, dwight! he did tell me the truth!" it was as if the red wing had abruptly borne mute witness. dwight's tone now mounted. his manner, it mounted too. "even if it is true," said he, "i desire that you should keep silent and protect my family from this scandal. i merely mention my doubts to you for your own profit." "my own profit!" she said no more, but rose and moved to the door. "lulu--you see! with di and all!" ina begged. "we just couldn't have this known--even if it was so." "you have it in your hands," said dwight, "to repay me, lulu, for anything that you feel i may have done for you in the past. you also have it in your hands to decide whether your home here continues. that is not a pleasant position for me to find myself in. it is distinctly unpleasant, i may say. but you see for yourself." lulu went on, into the passage. "wasn't she married when she thought she was?" mrs. bett cried shrilly. "mamma," said ina. "do, please, remember monona. yes--dwight thinks she's married all right now--and that it's all right, all the time." "well, i hope so, for pity sakes," said mrs. bett, and left the room with her daughter. hearing the stir, monona upstairs lifted her voice: "mamma! come on and hear my prayers, why don't you?" * * * * * when they came downstairs next morning, lulu had breakfast ready. "well!" cried ina in her curving tone, "if this isn't like old times." lulu said yes, that it was like old times, and brought the bacon to the table. "lulu's the only one in _this_ house can cook the bacon so's it'll chew," mrs. bett volunteered. she was wholly affable, and held contentedly to ina's last word that dwight thought now it was all right. "ho!" said dwight. "the happy family, once more about the festive toaster." he gauged the moment to call for good cheer. ina, too, became breezy, blithe. monona caught their spirit and laughed, head thrown well back and gently shaken. di came in. she had been told that auntie lulu was at home, and that she, di, wasn't to say anything to her about anything, nor anything to anybody else about auntie lulu being back. under these prohibitions, which loosed a thousand speculations, di was very nearly paralysed. she stared at her aunt lulu incessantly. not one of them had even a talent for the casual, save lulu herself. lulu was amazingly herself. she took her old place, assumed her old offices. when monona declared against bacon, it was lulu who suggested milk toast and went to make it. "mamma," di whispered then, like escaping steam, "isn't uncle ninian coming too?" "hush. no. now don't ask any more questions." "well, can't i tell bobby and jenny she's here?" "_no_. don't say anything at all about her." "but, mamma. what has she done?" "di! do as mamma tells you. don't you think mamma knows best?" di of course did not think so, had not thought so for a long time. but now dwight said: "daughter! are you a little girl or are you our grown-up young lady?" "i don't know," said di reasonably, "but i think you're treating me like a little girl now." "shame, di," said ina, unabashed by the accident of reason being on the side of di. "i'm eighteen," di reminded them forlornly, "and through high school." "then act so," boomed her father. baffled, thwarted, bewildered, di went over to jenny plow's and there imparted understanding by the simple process of letting jenny guess, to questions skilfully shaped. when dwight said, "look at my beautiful handkerchief," displayed a hole, sent his ina for a better, lulu, with a manner of haste, addressed him: "dwight. it's a funny thing, but i haven't ninian's oregon address." "well?" "well, i wish you'd give it to me." dwight tightened and lifted his lips. "it would seem," he said, "that you have no real use for that particular address, lulu." "yes, i have. i want it. you have it, haven't you, dwight?" "certainly i have it." "won't you please write it down for me?" she had ready a bit of paper and a pencil stump. "my dear lulu, now why revive anything? why not be sensible and leave this alone? no good can come by--" "but why shouldn't i have his address?" "if everything is over between you, why should you?" "but you say he's still my husband." dwight flushed. "if my brother has shown his inclination as plainly as i judge that he has, it is certainly not my place to put you in touch with him again." "you won't give it to me?" "my dear lulu, in all kindness--no." his ina came running back, bearing handkerchiefs with different coloured borders for him to choose from. he chose the initial that she had embroidered, and had not the good taste not to kiss her. * * * * * they were all on the porch that evening, when lulu came downstairs. "_where_ are you going?" ina demanded, sisterly. and on hearing that lulu had an errand, added still more sisterly; "well, but mercy, what you so dressed up for?" lulu was in a thin black and white gown which they had never seen, and wore the tilting hat with the red wing. "ninian bought me this," said lulu only. "but, lulu, don't you think it might be better to keep, well--out of sight for a few days?" ina's lifted look besought her. "why?" lulu asked. "why set people wondering till we have to?" "they don't have to wonder, far as i'm concerned," said lulu, and went down the walk. ina looked at dwight. "she never spoke to me like that in her life before," she said. she watched her sister's black and white figure going erectly down the street. "that gives me the funniest feeling," said ina, "as if lulu had on clothes bought for her by some one that wasn't--that was--" "by her husband who has left her," said dwight sadly. "is that what it is, papa?" di asked alertly. for a wonder, she was there; had been there the greater part of the day--most of the time staring, fascinated, at her aunt lulu. "that's what it is, my little girl," said dwight, and shook his head. "well, i think it's a shame," said di stoutly. "and i think uncle ninian is a slunge." "di!" "i do. and i'd be ashamed to think anything else. i'd like to tell everybody." "there is," said dwight, "no need for secrecy--now." "dwight!" said ina--ina's eyes always remained expressionless, but it must have been her lashes that looked so startled. "no need whatever for secrecy," he repeated with firmness. "the truth is, lulu's husband has tired of her and sent her home. we must face it." "but, dwight--how awful for lulu...." "lulu," said dwight, "has us to stand by her." lulu, walking down the main street, thought: "now mis' chambers is seeing me. now mis' curtis. there's somebody behind the vines at mis' martin's. here comes mis' grove and i've got to speak to her...." one and another and another met her, and every one cried out at her some version of: "lulu bett!" or, "w-well, it _isn't_ lulu bett any more, is it? well, what are you doing here? i thought...." "i'm back to stay," she said. "the idea! well, where you hiding that handsome husband of yours? say, but we were surprised! you're the sly one--" "my--mr. deacon isn't here." "oh." "no. he's west." "oh, i see." having no arts, she must needs let the conversation die like this, could invent nothing concealing or gracious on which to move away. she went to the post-office. it was early, there were few at the post-office--with only one or two there had she to go through her examination. then she went to the general delivery window, tense for a new ordeal. to her relief, the face which was shown there was one strange to her, a slim youth, reading a letter of his own, and smiling. "excuse me," said lulu faintly. the youth looked up, with eyes warmed by the words on the pink paper which he held. "could you give me the address of mr. ninian deacon?" "let's see--you mean dwight deacon, i guess?" "no. it's his brother. he's been here. from oregon. i thought he might have given you his address--" she dwindled away. "wait a minute," said the youth. "nope. no address here. say, why don't you send it to his brother? he'd know. dwight deacon, the dentist." "i'll do that," lulu said absurdly, and turned away. she went back up the street, walking fast now to get away from them all. once or twice she pretended not to see a familiar face. but when she passed the mirror in an insurance office window, she saw her reflection and at its appearance she felt surprise and pleasure. "well!" she thought, almost in ina's own manner. abruptly her confidence rose. something of this confidence was still upon her when she returned. they were in the dining-room now, all save di, who was on the porch with bobby, and monona, who was in bed and might be heard extravagantly singing. lulu sat down with her hat on. when dwight inquired playfully, "don't we look like company?" she did not reply. he looked at her speculatively. where had she gone, with whom had she talked, what had she told? ina looked at her rather fearfully. but mrs. bett rocked contentedly and ate cardamom seeds. "whom did you see?" ina asked. lulu named them. "see them to talk to?" from dwight. oh, yes. they had all stopped. "what did they say?" ina burst out. they had inquired for ninian, lulu said; and said no more. dwight mulled this. lulu might have told every one of these women that cock-and-bull story with which she had come home. it might be all over town. of course, in that case he could turn lulu out--should do so, in fact. still the story would be all over town. "dwight," said lulu, "i want ninian's address." "going to write to him!" ina cried incredulously. "i want to ask him for the proofs that dwight wanted." "my dear lulu," dwight said impatiently, "you are not the one to write. have you no delicacy?" lulu smiled--a strange smile, originating and dying in one corner of her mouth. "yes," she said. "so much delicacy that i want to be sure whether i'm married or not." dwight cleared his throat with a movement which seemed to use his shoulders for the purpose. "i myself will take this up with my brother," he said. "i will write to him about it." lulu sprang to her feet. "write to him _now_!" she cried. "really," said dwight, lifting his brows. "now--now!" lulu said. she moved about, collecting writing materials from their casual lodgments on shelf and table. she set all before him and stood by him. "write to him now," she said again. "my dear lulu, don't be absurd." she said: "ina. help me. if it was dwight--and they didn't know whether he had another wife, or not, and you wanted to ask him--oh, don't you see? help me." ina was not yet the woman to cry for justice for its own sake, nor even to stand by another woman. she was primitive, and her instinct was to look to her own male merely. "well," she said, "of course. but why not let dwight do it in his own way? wouldn't that be better?" she put it to her sister fairly: now, no matter what dwight's way was, wouldn't that be better? "mother!" said lulu. she looked irresolutely toward her mother. but mrs. bett was eating cardamom seeds with exceeding gusto, and lulu looked away. caught by the gesture, mrs. bett voiced her grievance. "lulie," she said, "set down. take off your hat, why don't you?" lulu turned upon dwight a quiet face which he had never seen before. "you write that letter to ninian," she said, "and you make him tell you so you'll understand. _i_ know he spoke the truth. but i want you to know." "m--m," said dwight. "and then i suppose you're going to tell it all over town--as soon as you have the proofs." "i'm going to tell it all over town," said lulu, "just as it is--unless you write to him now." "lulu!" cried ina. "oh, you wouldn't." "i would," said lulu. "i will." dwight was sobered. this unimagined lulu looked capable of it. but then he sneered. "and get turned out of this house, as you would be?" "dwight!" cried his ina. "oh, you wouldn't!" "i would," said dwight. "i will. lulu knows it." "i shall tell what i know and then leave your house anyway," said lulu, "unless you get ninian's word. and i want you should write him now." "leave your mother? and ina?" he asked. "leave everything," said lulu. "oh, dwight," said ina, "we can't get along without lulu." she did not say in what particulars, but dwight knew. dwight looked at lulu, an upward, sidewise look, with a manner of peering out to see if she meant it. and he saw. he shrugged, pursed his lips crookedly, rolled his head to signify the inexpressible. "isn't that like a woman?" he demanded. he rose. "rather than let you in for a show of temper," he said grandly, "i'd do anything." he wrote the letter, addressed it, his hand elaborately curved in secrecy about the envelope, pocketed it. "ina and i'll walk down with you to mail it," said lulu. dwight hesitated, frowned. his ina watched him with consulting brows. "i was going," said dwight, "to propose a little stroll before bedtime." he roved about the room. "where's my beautiful straw hat? there's nothing like a brisk walk to induce sound, restful sleep," he told them. he hummed a bar. "you'll be all right, mother?" lulu asked. mrs. bett did not look up. "these cardamon hev got a little mite too dry," she said. * * * * * in their room, ina and dwight discussed the incredible actions of lulu. "i saw," said dwight, "i saw she wasn't herself. i'd do anything to avoid having a scene--you know that." his glance swept a little anxiously his ina. "you know that, don't you?" he sharply inquired. "but i really think you ought to have written to ninian about it," she now dared to say. "it's--it's not a nice position for lulu." "nice? well, but whom has she got to blame for it?" "why, ninian," said ina. dwight threw out his hands. "herself," he said. "to tell you the truth, i was perfectly amazed at the way she snapped him up there in that restaurant." "why, but, dwight--" "brazen," he said. "oh, it was brazen." "it was just fun, in the first place." "but no really nice woman--" he shook his head. "dwight! lulu _is_ nice. the idea!" he regarded her. "would you have done that?" he would know. under his fond look, she softened, took his homage, accepted everything, was silent. "certainly not," he said. "lulu's tastes are not fine like yours. i should never think of you as sisters." "she's awfully good," ina said feebly. fifteen years of married life behind her--but this was sweet and she could not resist. "she has excellent qualities." he admitted it. "but look at the position she's in--married to a man who tells her he has another wife in order to get free. now, no really nice woman--" "no really nice man--" ina did say that much. "ah," said dwight, "but _you_ could never be in such a position. no, no. lulu is sadly lacking somewhere." ina sighed, threw back her head, caught her lower lip with her upper, as might be in a hem. "what if it was di?" she supposed. "di!" dwight's look rebuked his wife. "di," he said, "was born with ladylike feelings." it was not yet ten o'clock. bobby larkin was permitted to stay until ten. from the veranda came the indistinguishable murmur of those young voices. "bobby," di was saying within that murmur, "bobby, you don't kiss me as if you really wanted to kiss me, to-night." vi september the office of dwight herbert deacon, dentist, gold work a speciality (sic) in black lettering, and justice of the peace in gold, was above a store which had been occupied by one unlucky tenant after another, and had suffered long periods of vacancy when ladies' aid societies served lunches there, under great white signs, badly lettered. some months of disuse were now broken by the news that the store had been let to a music man. a music man, what on earth was that, warbleton inquired. the music man arrived, installed three pianos, and filled his window with sheet music, as sung by many ladies who swung in hammocks or kissed their hands on the music covers. while he was still moving in, dwight herbert deacon wandered downstairs and stood informally in the door of the new store. the music man, a pleasant-faced chap of thirty-odd, was rubbing at the face of a piano. "hello, there!" he said. "can i sell you an upright?" "if i can take it out in pulling your teeth, you can," dwight replied. "or," said he, "i might marry you free, either one." on this their friendship began. thenceforth, when business was dull, the idle hours of both men were beguiled with idle gossip. "how the dickens did you think of pianos for a line?" dwight asked him once. "now, my father was a dentist, so i came by it natural--never entered my head to be anything else. but _pianos_--" the music man--his name was neil cornish--threw up his chin in a boyish fashion, and said he'd be jiggered if he knew. all up and down the warbleton main street, the chances are that the answer would sound the same. "i'm studying law when i get the chance," said cornish, as one who makes a bid to be thought of more highly. "i see," said dwight, respectfully dwelling on the verb. later on cornish confided more to dwight: he was to come by a little inheritance some day--not much, but something. yes, it made a man feel a certain confidence.... "_don't_ it?" said dwight heartily, as if he knew. every one liked cornish. he told funny stories, and he never compared warbleton save to its advantage. so at last dwight said tentatively at lunch: "what if i brought that neil cornish up for supper, one of these nights?" "oh, dwightie, do," said ina. "if there's a man in town, let's know it." "what if i brought him up to-night?" up went ina's eyebrows. _to-night_? "'scalloped potatoes and meat loaf and sauce and bread and butter," lulu contributed. cornish came to supper. he was what is known in warbleton as dapper. this ina saw as she emerged on the veranda in response to dwight's informal halloo on his way upstairs. she herself was in white muslin, now much too snug, and a blue ribbon. to her greeting their guest replied in that engaging shyness which is not awkwardness. he moved in some pleasant web of gentleness and friendliness. they asked him the usual questions, and he replied, rocking all the time with a faint undulating motion of head and shoulders: warbleton was one of the prettiest little towns that he had ever seen. he liked the people--they seemed different. he was sure to like the place, already liked it. lulu came to the door in ninian's thin black-and-white gown. she shook hands with the stranger, not looking at him, and said, "come to supper, all." monona was already in her place, singing under-breath. mrs. bett, after hovering in the kitchen door, entered; but they forgot to introduce her. "where's di?" asked ina. "i declare that daughter of mine is never anywhere." a brief silence ensued as they were seated. there being a guest, grace was to come, and dwight said unintelligibly and like lightning a generic appeal to bless this food, forgive all our sins and finally save us. and there was something tremendous, in this ancient form whereby all stages of men bow in some now unrecognized recognition of the ceremonial of taking food to nourish life--and more. at "amen" di flashed in, her offices at the mirror fresh upon her--perfect hair, silk dress turned up at the hem. she met cornish, crimsoned, fluttered to her seat, joggled the table and, "oh, dear," she said audibly to her mother, "i forgot my ring." the talk was saved alive by a frank effort. dwight served, making jests about everybody coming back for more. they went on with warbleton happenings, improvements and openings; and the runaway. cornish tried hard to make himself agreeable, not ingratiatingly but good-naturedly. he wished profoundly that before coming he had looked up some more stories in the back of the musical gazettes. lulu surreptitiously pinched off an ant that was running at large upon the cloth and thereafter kept her eyes steadfastly on the sugar-bowl to see if it could be from _that_. dwight pretended that those whom he was helping a second time were getting more than their share and facetiously landed on di about eating so much that she would grow up and be married, first thing she knew. at the word "married" di turned scarlet, laughed heartily and lifted her glass of water. "and what instruments do you play?" ina asked cornish, in an unrelated effort to lift the talk to musical levels. "well, do you know," said the music man, "i can't play a thing. don't know a black note from a white one." "you don't? why, di plays very prettily," said di's mother. "but then how can you tell what songs to order?" ina cried. "oh, by the music houses. you go by the sales." for the first time it occurred to cornish that this was ridiculous. "you know, i'm really studying law," he said, shyly and proudly. law! how very interesting, from ina. oh, but won't he bring up some songs some evening, for them to try over? her and di? at this di laughed and said that she was out of practice and lifted her glass of water. in the presence of adults di made one weep, she was so slender, so young, so without defences, so intolerably sensitive to every contact, so in agony lest she be found wanting. it was amazing how unlike was this di to the di who had ensnared bobby larkin. what was one to think? cornish paid very little attention to her. to lulu he said kindly, "don't you play, miss--?" he had not caught her name--no stranger ever did catch it. but dwight now supplied it: "miss lulu bett," he explained with loud emphasis, and lulu burned her slow red. this question lulu had usually answered by telling how a felon had interrupted her lessons and she had stopped "taking"--a participle sacred to music, in warbleton. this vignette had been a kind of epitome of lulu's biography. but now lulu was heard to say serenely: "no, but i'm quite fond of it. i went to a lovely concert--two weeks ago." they all listened. strange indeed to think of lulu as having had experiences of which they did not know. "yes," she said. "it was in savannah, georgia." she flushed, and lifted her eyes in a manner of faint defiance. "of course," she said, "i don't know the names of all the different instruments they played, but there were a good many." she laughed pleasantly as a part of her sentence. "they had some lovely tunes," she said. she knew that the subject was not exhausted and she hurried on. "the hall was real large," she superadded, "and there were quite a good many people there. and it was too warm." "i see," said cornish, and said what he had been waiting to say: that he too had been in savannah, georgia. lulu lit with pleasure. "well!" she said. and her mind worked and she caught at the moment before it had escaped. "isn't it a pretty city?" she asked. and cornish assented with the intense heartiness of the provincial. he, too, it seemed, had a conversational appearance to maintain by its own effort. he said that he had enjoyed being in that town and that he was there for two hours. "i was there for a week." lulu's superiority was really pretty. "have good weather?" cornish selected next. oh, yes. and they saw all the different buildings--but at her "we" she flushed and was silenced. she was colouring and breathing quickly. this was the first bit of conversation of this sort of lulu's life. after supper ina inevitably proposed croquet, dwight pretended to try to escape and, with his irrepressible mien, talked about ina, elaborate in his insistence on the third person--"she loves it, we have to humour her, you know how it is. or no! you don't know! but you will"--and more of the same sort, everybody laughing heartily, save lulu, who looked uncomfortable and wished that dwight wouldn't, and mrs. bett, who paid no attention to anybody that night, not because she had not been introduced, an omission, which she had not even noticed, but merely as another form of "tantrim." a self-indulgence. they emerged for croquet. and there on the porch sat jenny plow and bobby, waiting for di to keep an old engagement, which di pretended to have forgotten, and to be frightfully annoyed to have to keep. she met the objections of her parents with all the batteries of her coquetry, set for both bobby and cornish and, bold in the presence of "company," at last went laughing away. and in the minute areas of her consciousness she said to herself that bobby would be more in love with her than ever because she had risked all to go with him; and that cornish ought to be distinctly attracted to her because she had not stayed. she was as primitive as pollen. ina was vexed. she said so, pouting in a fashion which she should have outgrown with white muslin and blue ribbons, and she had outgrown none of these things. "that just spoils croquet," she said. "i'm vexed. now we can't have a real game." from the side-door, where she must have been lingering among the waterproofs, lulu stepped forth. "i'll play a game," she said. * * * * * when cornish actually proposed to bring some music to the deacons', ina turned toward dwight herbert all the facets of her responsibility. and ina's sense of responsibility toward di was enormous, oppressive, primitive, amounting, in fact, toward this daughter of dwight herbert's late wife, to an ability to compress the offices of stepmotherhood into the functions of the lecture platform. ina was a fountain of admonition. her idea of a daughter, step or not, was that of a manufactured product, strictly, which you constantly pinched and moulded. she thought that a moral preceptor had the right to secrete precepts. di got them all. but of course the crest of ina's responsibility was to marry di. this verb should be transitive only when lovers are speaking of each other, or the minister or magistrate is speaking of lovers. it should never be transitive when predicated of parents or any other third party. but it is. ina was quite agitated by its transitiveness as she took to her husband her incredible responsibility. "you know, herbert," said ina, "if this mr. cornish comes here _very_ much, what we may expect." "what may we expect?" demanded dwight herbert, crisply. ina always played his games, answered what he expected her to answer, pretended to be intuitive when she was not so, said "i know" when she didn't know at all. dwight herbert, on the other hand, did not even play her games when he knew perfectly what she meant, but pretended not to understand, made her repeat, made her explain. it was as if ina _had_ to please him for, say, a living; but as for that dentist, he had to please nobody. in the conversations of dwight and ina you saw the historical home forming in clots in the fluid wash of the community. "he'll fall in love with di," said ina. "and what of that? little daughter will have many a man fall in love with her, _i_ should say." "yes, but, dwight, what do you think of him?" "what do i think of him? my dear ina, i have other things to think of." "but we don't know anything about him, dwight--a stranger so." "on the other hand," said dwight with dignity, "i know a good deal about him." with a great air of having done the fatherly and found out about this stranger before bringing him into the home, dwight now related a number of stray circumstances dropped by cornish in their chance talks. "he has a little inheritance coming to him--shortly," dwight wound up. "an inheritance--really? how much, dwight?" "now isn't that like a woman. isn't it?" "i _thought_ he was from a good family," said ina. "my mercenary little pussy!" "well," she said with a sigh, "i shouldn't be surprised if di did really accept him. a young girl is awfully flattered when a good-looking older man pays her attention. haven't you noticed that?" dwight informed her, with an air of immense abstraction, that he left all such matters to her. being married to dwight was like a perpetual rehearsal, with dwight's self-importance for audience. a few evenings later, cornish brought up the music. there was something overpowering in this brown-haired chap against the background of his negligible little shop, his whole capital in his few pianos. for he looked hopefully ahead, woke with plans, regarded the children in the street as if, conceivably, children might come within the confines of his life as he imagined it. a preposterous little man. and a preposterous store, empty, echoing, bare of wall, the three pianos near the front, the remainder of the floor stretching away like the corridors of the lost. he was going to get a dark curtain, he explained, and furnish the back part of the store as his own room. what dignity in phrasing, but how mean that little room would look--cot bed, washbowl and pitcher, and little mirror--almost certainly a mirror with a wavy surface, almost certainly that. "and then, you know," he always added, "i'm reading law." the plows had been asked in that evening. bobby was there. they were, dwight herbert said, going to have a sing. di was to play. and di was now embarked on the most difficult feat of her emotional life, the feat of remaining to bobby larkin the lure, the beloved lure, the while to cornish she instinctively played the rôle of womanly little girl. "up by the festive lamp, everybody!" dwight herbert cried. as they gathered about the upright piano, that startled, dwightish instrument, standing in its attitude of unrest, lulu came in with another lamp. "do you need this?" she asked. they did not need it, there was, in fact, no place to set it, and this lulu must have known. but dwight found a place. he swept ninian's photograph from the marble shelf of the mirror, and when lulu had placed the lamp there, dwight thrust the photograph into her hands. "you take care of that," he said, with a droop of lid discernible only to those who--presumably--loved him. his old attitude toward lulu had shown a terrible sharpening in these ten days since her return. she stood uncertainly, in the thin black and white gown which ninian had bought for her, and held ninian's photograph and looked helplessly about. she was moving toward the door when cornish called: "see here! aren't _you_ going to sing?" "what?" dwight used the falsetto. "lulu sing? _lulu_?" she stood awkwardly. she had a piteous recrudescence of her old agony at being spoken to in the presence of others. but di had opened the "album of old favourites," which cornish had elected to bring, and now she struck the opening chords of "bonny eloise." lulu stood still, looking rather piteously at cornish. dwight offered his arm, absurdly crooked. the plows and ina and di began to sing. lulu moved forward, and stood a little away from them, and sang, too. she was still holding ninian's picture. dwight did not sing. he lifted his shoulders and his eyebrows and watched lulu. when they had finished, "lulu the mocking bird!" dwight cried. he said "ba-ird." "fine!" cried cornish. "why, miss lulu, you have a good voice!" "miss lulu bett, the mocking ba-ird!" dwight insisted. lulu was excited, and in some accession of faint power. she turned to him now, quietly, and with a look of appraisal. "lulu the dove," she then surprisingly said, "to put up with you." it was her first bit of conscious repartee to her brother-in-law. cornish was bending over di. "what next do you say?" he asked. she lifted her eyes, met his own, held them. "there's such a lovely, lovely sacred song here," she suggested, and looked down. "you like sacred music?" she turned to him her pure profile, her eyelids fluttering up, and said: "i love it." "that's it. so do i. nothing like a nice sacred piece," cornish declared. bobby larkin, at the end of the piano, looked directly into di's face. "give _me_ ragtime," he said now, with the effect of bursting out of somewhere. "don't you like ragtime?" he put it to her directly. di's eyes danced into his, they sparkled for him, her smile was a smile for him alone, all their store of common memories was in their look. "let's try 'my rock, my refuge,'" cornish suggested. "that's got up real attractive." di's profile again, and her pleased voice saying that this was the very one she had been hoping to hear him sing. they gathered for "my rock, my refuge." "oh," cried ina, at the conclusion of this number, "i'm having such a perfectly beautiful time. isn't everybody?" everybody's hostess put it. "lulu is," said dwight, and added softly to lulu: "she don't have to hear herself sing." it was incredible. he was like a bad boy with a frog. about that photograph of ninian he found a dozen ways to torture her, called attention to it, showed it to cornish, set it on the piano facing them all. everybody must have understood--excepting the plows. these two gentle souls sang placidly through the album of old favourites, and at the melodies smiled happily upon each other with an air from another world. always it was as if the plows walked some fair, inter-penetrating plane, from which they looked out as do other things not quite of earth, say, flowers and fire and music. strolling home that night, the plows were overtaken by some one who ran badly, and as if she were unaccustomed to running. "mis' plow, mis' plow!" this one called, and lulu stood beside them. "say!" she said. "do you know of any job that i could get me? i mean that i'd know how to do? a job for money.... i mean a job...." she burst into passionate crying. they drew her home with them. * * * * * lying awake sometime after midnight, lulu heard the telephone ring. she heard dwight's concerned "is that so?" and his cheerful "be right there." grandma gates was sick, she heard him tell ina. in a few moments he ran down the stairs. next day they told how dwight had sat for hours that night, holding grandma gates so that her back would rest easily and she could fight for her faint breath. the kind fellow had only about two hours of sleep the whole night long. next day there came a message from that woman who had brought up dwight--"made him what he was," he often complacently accused her. it was a note on a postal card--she had often written a few lines on a postal card to say that she had sent the maple sugar, or could ina get her some samples. now she wrote a few lines on a postal card to say that she was going to die with cancer. could dwight and ina come to her while she was still able to visit? if he was not too busy.... nobody saw the pity and the terror of that postal card. they stuck it up by the kitchen clock to read over from time to time, and before they left, dwight lifted the griddle of the cooking-stove and burned the postal card. and before they left lulu said: "dwight--you can't tell how long you'll be gone?" "of course not. how should i tell?" "no. and that letter might come while you're away." "conceivably. letters do come while a man's away!" "dwight--i thought if you wouldn't mind if i opened it--" "opened it?" "yes. you see, it'll be about me mostly--" "i should have said that it'll be about my brother mostly." "but you know what i mean. you wouldn't mind if i did open it?" "but you say you know what'll be in it." "so i did know--till you--i've got to see that letter, dwight." "and so you shall. but not till i show it to you. my dear lulu, you know how i hate having my mail interfered with." she might have said: "small souls always make a point of that." she said nothing. she watched them set off, and kept her mind on ina's thousand injunctions. "don't let di see much of bobby larkin. and, lulu--if it occurs to her to have mr. cornish come up to sing, of course you ask him. you might ask him to supper. and don't let mother overdo. and, lulu, now do watch monona's handkerchief--the child will never take a clean one if i'm not here to tell her...." she breathed injunctions to the very step of the 'bus. in the 'bus dwight leaned forward: "see that you play post-office squarely, lulu!" he called, and threw back his head and lifted his eyebrows. in the train he turned tragic eyes to his wife. "ina," he said. "it's _ma_. and she's going to die. it can't be...." ina said: "but you're going to help her, dwight, just being there with her." it was true that the mere presence of the man would bring a kind of fresh life to that worn frame. tact and wisdom and love would speak through him and minister. toward the end of their week's absence the letter from ninian came. lulu took it from the post-office when she went for the mail that evening, dressed in her dark red gown. there was no other letter, and she carried that one letter in her hand all through the streets. she passed those who were surmising what her story might be, who were telling one another what they had heard. but she knew hardly more than they. she passed cornish in the doorway of his little music shop, and spoke with him; and there was the letter. it was so that dwight's foster mother's postal card might have looked on its way to be mailed. cornish stepped down and overtook her. "oh, miss lulu. i've got a new song or two--" she said abstractedly: "do. any night. to-morrow night--could you--" it was as if lulu were too preoccupied to remember to be ill at ease. cornish flushed with pleasure, said that he could indeed. "come for supper," lulu said. oh, could he? wouldn't that be.... well, say! such was his acceptance. he came for supper. and di was not at home. she had gone off in the country with jenny and bobby, and they merely did not return. mrs. bett and lulu and cornish and monona supped alone. all were at ease, now that they were alone. especially mrs. bett was at ease. it became one of her young nights, her alive and lucid nights. she was _there_. she sat in dwight's chair and lulu sat in ina's chair. lulu had picked flowers for the table--a task coveted by her but usually performed by ina. lulu had now picked sweet william and had filled a vase of silver gilt taken from the parlour. also, lulu had made ice-cream. "i don't see what di can be thinking of," lulu said. "it seems like asking you under false--" she was afraid of "pretences" and ended without it. cornish savoured his steaming beef pie, with sage. "oh, well!" he said contentedly. "kind of a relief, _i_ think, to have her gone," said mrs. bett, from the fulness of something or other. "mother!" lulu said, twisting her smile. "why, my land, i love her," mrs. bett explained, "but she wiggles and chitters." cornish never made the slightest effort, at any time, to keep a straight face. the honest fellow now laughed loudly. "well!" lulu thought. "he can't be so _very_ much in love." and again she thought: "he doesn't know anything about the letter. he thinks ninian got tired of me." deep in her heart there abode her certainty that this was not so. by some etiquette of consent, mrs. bett cleared the table and lulu and cornish went into the parlour. there lay the letter on the drop-leaf side-table, among the shells. lulu had carried it there, where she need not see it at her work. the letter looked no more than the advertisement of dental office furniture beneath it. monona stood indifferently fingering both. "monona," lulu said sharply, "leave them be!" cornish was displaying his music. "got up quite attractive," he said--it was his formula of praise for his music. "but we can't try it over," lulu said, "if di doesn't come." "well, say," said cornish shyly, "you know i left that album of old favourites here. some of them we know by heart." lulu looked. "i'll tell you something," she said, "there's some of these i can play with one hand--by ear. maybe--" "why sure!" said cornish. lulu sat at the piano. she had on the wool chally, long sacred to the nights when she must combine her servant's estate with the quality of being ina's sister. she wore her coral beads and her cameo cross. in her absence she had caught the trick of dressing her hair so that it looked even more abundant--but she had not dared to try it so until to-night, when dwight was gone. her long wrist was curved high, her thin hand pressed and fingered awkwardly, and at her mistakes her head dipped and strove to make all right. her foot continuously touched the loud pedal--the blurred sound seemed to accomplish more. so she played "how can i leave thee," and they managed to sing it. so she played "long, long ago," and "little nell of narragansett bay." beyond open doors, mrs. bett listened, sang, it may be, with them; for when the singers ceased, her voice might be heard still humming a loud closing bar. "well!" cornish cried to lulu; and then, in the formal village phrase: "you're quite a musician." "oh, no!" lulu disclaimed it. she looked up, flushed, smiling. "i've never done this in front of anybody," she owned. "i don't know what dwight and ina'd say...." she drooped. they rested, and, miraculously, the air of the place had stirred and quickened, as if the crippled, halting melody had some power of its own, and poured this forth, even thus trampled. "i guess you could do 'most anything you set your hand to," said cornish. "oh, no," lulu said again. "sing and play and cook--" "but i can't earn anything. i'd like to earn something." but this she had not meant to say. she stopped, rather frightened. "you would! why, you have it fine here, i thought." "oh, fine, yes. dwight gives me what i have. and i do their work." "i see," said cornish. "i never thought of that," he added. she caught his speculative look--he had heard a tale or two concerning her return, as who in warbleton had not heard? "you're wondering why i didn't stay with him!" lulu said recklessly. this was no less than wrung from her, but its utterance occasioned in her an unspeakable relief. "oh, no," cornish disclaimed, and coloured and rocked. "yes, you are," she swept on. "the whole town's wondering. well, i'd like 'em to know, but dwight won't let me tell." cornish frowned, trying to understand. "'won't let you!'" he repeated. "i should say that was your own affair." "no. not when dwight gives me all i have." "oh, that--" said cornish. "that's not right." "no. but there it is. it puts me--you see what it does to me. they think--they all think my--husband left me." it was curious to hear her bring out that word--tentatively, deprecatingly, like some one daring a foreign phrase without warrant. cornish said feebly: "oh, well...." before she willed it, she was telling him: "he didn't. he didn't leave me," she cried with passion. "he had another wife." incredibly it was as if she were defending both him and herself. "lord sakes!" said cornish. she poured it out, in her passion to tell some one, to share her news of her state where there would be neither hardness nor censure. "we were in savannah, georgia," she said. "we were going to leave for oregon--going to go through california. we were in the hotel, and he was going out to get the tickets. he started to go. then he came back. i was sitting the same as there. he opened the door again--the same as here. i saw he looked different--and he said quick: 'there's something you'd ought to know before we go.' and of course i said, 'what?' and he said it right out--how he was married eighteen years ago and in two years she ran away and she must be dead but he wasn't sure. he hadn't the proofs. so of course i came home. but it wasn't him left me." "no, no. of course he didn't," cornish said earnestly. "but lord sakes--" he said again. he rose to walk about, found it impracticable and sat down. "that's what dwight don't want me to tell--he thinks it isn't true. he thinks--he didn't have any other wife. he thinks he wanted--" lulu looked up at him. "you see," she said, "dwight thinks he didn't want me." "but why don't you make your--husband--i mean, why doesn't he write to mr. deacon here, and tell him the truth--" cornish burst out. under this implied belief, she relaxed and into her face came its rare sweetness. "he has written," she said. "the letter's there." he followed her look, scowled at the two letters. "what'd he say?" "dwight don't like me to touch his mail. i'll have to wait till he comes back." "lord sakes!" said cornish. this time he did rise and walk about. he wanted to say something, wanted it with passion. he paused beside lulu and stammered: "you--you--you're too nice a girl to get a deal like this. darned if you aren't." to her own complete surprise lulu's eyes filled with tears, and she could not speak. she was by no means above self-sympathy. "and there ain't," said cornish sorrowfully, "there ain't a thing i can do." and yet he was doing much. he was gentle, he was listening, and on his face a frown of concern. his face continually surprised her, it was so fine and alive and near, by comparison with ninian's loose-lipped, ruddy, impersonal look and dwight's thin, high-boned hardness. all the time cornish gave her something, instead of drawing upon her. above all, he was there, and she could talk to him. "it's--it's funny," lulu said. "i'd be awful glad if i just _could_ know for sure that the other woman was alive--if i couldn't know she's dead." this surprising admission cornish seemed to understand. "sure you would," he said briefly. "cora waters," lulu said. "cora waters, of san diego, california. and she never heard of me." "no," cornish admitted. they stared at each other as across some abyss. in the doorway mrs. bett appeared. "i scraped up everything," she remarked, "and left the dishes set." "that's right, mamma," lulu said. "come and sit down." mrs. bett entered with a leisurely air of doing the thing next expected of her. "i don't hear any more playin' and singin'," she remarked. "it sounded real nice." "we--we sung all i knew how to play, i guess, mamma." "i use' to play on the melodeon," mrs. bett volunteered, and spread and examined her right hand. "well!" said cornish. she now told them about her log-house in a new england clearing, when she was a bride. all her store of drama and life came from her. she rehearsed it with far eyes. she laughed at old delights, drooped at old fears. she told about her little daughter who had died at sixteen--a tragedy such as once would have been renewed in a vital ballad. at the end she yawned frankly as if, in some terrible sophistication, she had been telling the story of some one else. "give us one more piece," she said. "can we?" cornish asked. "i can play 'i think when i read that sweet story of old,'" lulu said. "that's the ticket!" cried cornish. they sang it, to lulu's right hand. "that's the one you picked out when you was a little girl, lulie," cried, mrs. bett. lulu had played it now as she must have played it then. half after nine and di had not returned. but nobody thought of di. cornish rose to go. "what's them?" mrs. bett demanded. "dwight's letters, mamma. you mustn't touch them!" lulu's voice was sharp. "say!" cornish, at the door, dropped his voice. "if there was anything i could do at any time, you'd let me know, wouldn't you?" that past tense, those subjunctives, unconsciously called upon her to feel no intrusion. "oh, thank you," she said. "you don't know how good it is to feel--" "of course it is," said cornish heartily. they stood for a moment on the porch. the night was one of low clamour from the grass, tiny voices, insisting. "of course," said lulu, "of course you won't--you wouldn't--" "say anything?" he divined. "not for dollars. not," he repeated, "for dollars." "but i knew you wouldn't," she told him. he took her hand. "good-night," he said. "i've had an awful nice time singing and listening to you talk--well, of course--i mean," he cried, "the supper was just fine. and so was the music." "oh, no," she said. mrs. bett came into the hall. "lulie," she said, "i guess you didn't notice--this one's from ninian." "mother--" "i opened it--why, of course i did. it's from ninian." mrs. bett held out the opened envelope, the unfolded letter, and a yellowed newspaper clipping. "see," said the old woman, "says, 'corie waters, music hall singer--married last night to ninian deacon--' say, lulie, that must be her...." lulu threw out her hands. "there!" she cried triumphantly. "he _was_ married to her, just like he said!" * * * * * the plows were at breakfast next morning when lulu came in casually at the side-door. yes, she said, she had had breakfast. she merely wanted to see them about something. then she said nothing, but sat looking with a troubled frown at jenny. jenny's hair was about her neck, like the hair of a little girl, a south window poured light upon her, the fruit and honey upon the table seemed her only possible food. "you look troubled, lulu," mrs. plow said. "is it about getting work?" "no," said lulu, "no. i've been places to ask--quite a lot of places. i guess the bakery is going to let me make cake." "i knew it would come to you," mrs. plow said, and lulu thought that this was a strange way to speak, when she herself had gone after the cakes. but she kept on looking about the room. it was so bright and quiet. as she came in, mr. plow had been reading from a book. dwight never read from a book at table. "i wish----" said lulu, as she looked at them. but she did not know what she wished. certainly it was for no moral excellence, for she perceived none. "what is it, lulu?" mr. plow asked, and he was bright and quiet too, lulu thought. "well," said lulu, "it's not much. but i wanted jenny to tell me about last night." "last night?" "yes. would you----" hesitation was her only way of apology. "where did you go?" she turned to jenny. jenny looked up in her clear and ardent fashion: "we went across the river and carried supper and then we came home." "what time did you get home?" "oh, it was still light. long before eight, it was." lulu hesitated and flushed, asked how long di and bobby had stayed there at jenny's; whereupon she heard that di had to be home early on account of mr. cornish, so that she and bobby had not stayed at all. to which lulu said an "of course," but first she stared at jenny and so impaired the strength of her assent. almost at once she rose to go. "nothing else?" said mrs. plow, catching that look of hers. lulu wanted to say: "my husband _was_ married before, just as he said he was." but she said nothing more, and went home. there she put it to di, and with her terrible bluntness reviewed to di the testimony. "you were not with jenny after eight o'clock. where were you?" lulu spoke formally and her rehearsals were evident. di said: "when mamma comes home, i'll tell her." with this lulu had no idea how to deal, and merely looked at her helplessly. mrs. bett, who was lacing her shoes, now said casually: "no need to wait till then. her and bobby were out in the side yard sitting in the hammock till all hours." di had no answer save her furious flush, and mrs. bett went on: "didn't i tell you? i knew it before the company left, but i didn't say a word. thinks i, 'she's wiggles and chitters.' so i left her stay where she was." "but, mother!" lulu cried. "you didn't even tell me after he'd gone." "i forgot it," mrs. bett said, "finding ninian's letter and all--" she talked of ninian's letter. di was bright and alert and firm of flesh and erect before lulu's softness and laxness. "i don't know what your mother'll say," said lulu, "and i don't know what people'll think." "they won't think bobby and i are tired of each other, anyway," said di, and left the room. through the day lulu tried to think what she must do. about di she was anxious and felt without power. she thought of the indignation of dwight and ina that di had not been more scrupulously guarded. she thought of di's girlish folly, her irritating independence--"and there," lulu thought, "just the other day i was teaching her to sew." her mind dwelt too on dwight's furious anger at the opening of ninian's letter. but when all this had spent itself, what was she herself to do? she must leave his house before he ordered her to do so, when she told him that she had confided in cornish, as tell she must. but what was she to _do_? the bakery cake-making would not give her a roof. stepping about the kitchen in her blue cotton gown, her hair tight and flat as seemed proper when one was not dressed, she thought about these things. and it was strange: lulu bore no physical appearance of one in distress or any anxiety. her head was erect, her movements were strong and swift, her eyes were interested. she was no drooping lulu with dragging step. she was more intent, she was somehow more operative than she had ever been. mrs. bett was working contentedly beside her, and now and then humming an air of that music of the night before. the sun surged through the kitchen door and east window, a returned oriole swung and fluted on the elm above the gable. wagons clattered by over the rattling wooden block pavement. "ain't it nice with nobody home?" mrs. bett remarked at intervals, like the burden of a comic song. "hush, mother," lulu said, troubled, her ethical refinements conflicting with her honesty. "speak the truth and shame the devil," mrs. bett contended. when dinner was ready at noon, di did not appear. a little earlier lulu had heard her moving about her room, and she served her in expectation that she would join them. "di must be having the 'tantrim' this time," she thought, and for a time said nothing. but at length she did say: "why doesn't di come? i'd better put her plate in the oven." rising to do so, she was arrested by her mother. mrs. bett was eating a baked potato, holding her fork close to the tines, and presenting a profile of passionate absorption. "why, di went off," she said. "went off!" "down the walk. down the sidewalk." "she must have gone to jenny's," said lulu. "i wish she wouldn't do that without telling me." monona laughed out and shook her straight hair. "she'll catch it!" she cried in sisterly enjoyment. it was when lulu had come back from the kitchen and was seated at the table that mrs. bett observed: "i didn't think inie'd want her to take her nice new satchel." "her satchel?" "yes. inie wouldn't take it north herself, but di had it." "mother," said lulu, "when di went away just now, was she carrying a satchel?" "didn't i just tell you?" mrs. bett demanded, aggrieved. "i said i didn't think inie--" "mother! which way did she go?" monona pointed with her spoon. "she went that way," she said. "i seen her." lulu looked at the clock. for monona had pointed toward the railway station. the twelve-thirty train, which every one took to the city for shopping, would be just about leaving. "monona," said lulu, "don't you go out of the yard while i'm gone. mother, you keep her--" lulu ran from the house and up the street. she was in her blue cotton dress, her old shoes, she was hatless and without money. when she was still two or three blocks from the station, she heard the twelve-thirty "pulling out." she ran badly, her ankles in their low, loose shoes continually turning, her arms held taut at her sides. so she came down the platform, and to the ticket window. the contained ticket man, wonted to lost trains and perturbed faces, yet actually ceased counting when he saw her: "lenny! did di deacon take that train?" "sure she did," said lenny. "and bobby larkin?" lulu cared nothing for appearances now. "he went in on the local," said lenny, and his eyes widened. "where?" "see." lenny thought it through. "millton," he said. "yes, sure. millton. both of 'em." "how long till another train?" "well, sir," said the ticket man, "you're in luck, if you was goin' too. seventeen was late this morning--she'll be along, jerk of a lamb's tail." "then," said lulu, "you got to give me a ticket to millton, without me paying till after--and you got to lend me two dollars." "sure thing," said lenny, with a manner of laying the entire railway system at her feet. "seventeen" would rather not have stopped at warbleton, but lenny's signal was law on the time card, and the magnificent yellow express slowed down for lulu. hatless and in her blue cotton gown, she climbed aboard. then her old inefficiency seized upon her. what was she going to do? millton! she had been there but once, years ago--how could she ever find anybody? why had she not stayed in warbleton and asked the sheriff or somebody--no, not the sheriff. cornish, perhaps. oh, and dwight and ina were going to be angry now! and di--little di. as lulu thought of her she began to cry. she said to herself that she had taught di to sew. in sight of millton, lulu was seized with trembling and physical nausea. she had never been alone in any unfamiliar town. she put her hands to her hair and for the first time realized her rolled-up sleeves. she was pulling down these sleeves when the conductor came through the train. "could you tell me," she said timidly, "the name of the principal hotel in millton?" ninian had asked this as they neared savannah, georgia. the conductor looked curiously at her. "why, the hess house," he said. "wasn't you expecting anybody to meet you?" he asked, kindly. "no," said lulu, "but i'm going to find my folks--" her voice trailed away. "beats all," thought the conductor, using his utility formula for the universe. in millton lulu's inquiry for the hess house produced no consternation. nobody paid any attention to her. she was almost certainly taken to be a new servant there. "you stop feeling so!" she said to herself angrily at the lobby entrance. "ain't you been to that big hotel in savannah, georgia?" the hess house, millton, had a tradition of its own to maintain, it seemed, and they sent her to the rear basement door. she obeyed meekly, but she lost a good deal of time before she found herself at the end of the office desk. it was still longer before any one attended her. "please, sir!" she burst out. "see if di deacon has put her name on your book." her appeal was tremendous, compelling. the young clerk listened to her, showed her where to look in the register. when only strange names and strange writing presented themselves there, he said: "tried the parlour?" and directed her kindly and with his thumb, and in the other hand a pen divorced from his ear for the express purpose. in crossing the lobby in the hotel at savannah, georgia, lulu's most pressing problem had been to know where to look. but now the idlers in the hess house lobby did not exist. in time she found the door of the intensely rose-coloured reception room. there, in a fat, rose-coloured chair, beside a cataract of lace curtain, sat di, alone. lulu entered. she had no idea what to say. when di looked up, started up, frowned, lulu felt as if she herself were the culprit. she said the first thing that occurred to her: "i don't believe mamma'll like your taking her nice satchel." "well!" said di, exactly as if she had been at home. and superadded: "my goodness!" and then cried rudely: "what are you here for?" "for you," said lulu. "you--you--you'd ought not to be here, di." "what's that to you?" di cried. "why, di, you're just a little girl----" lulu saw that this was all wrong, and stopped miserably. how was she to go on? "di," she said, "if you and bobby want to get married, why not let us get you up a nice wedding at home?" and she saw that this sounded as if she were talking about a tea-party. "who said we wanted to be married?" "well, he's here." "who said he's here?" "isn't he?" di sprang up. "aunt lulu," she said, "you're a funny person to be telling _me_ what to do." lulu said, flushing: "i love you just the same as if i was married happy, in a home." "well, you aren't!" cried di cruelly, "and i'm going to do just as i think best." lulu thought this over, her look grave and sad. she tried to find something to say. "what do people say to people," she wondered, "when it's like this?" "getting married is for your whole life," was all that came to her. "yours wasn't," di flashed at her. lulu's colour deepened, but there seemed to be no resentment in her. she must deal with this right--that was what her manner seemed to say. and how should she deal? "di," she cried, "come back with me--and wait till mamma and papa get home." "that's likely. they say i'm not to be married till i'm twenty-one." "well, but how young that is!" "it is to you." "di! this is wrong--it _is_ wrong." "there's nothing wrong about getting married--if you stay married." "well, then it can't be wrong to let them know." "it isn't. but they'd treat me wrong. they'd make me stay at home. and i won't stay at home--i won't stay there. they act as if i was ten years old." abruptly in lulu's face there came a light of understanding. "why, di," she said, "do you feel that way too?" di missed this. she went on: "i'm grown up. i feel just as grown up as they do. and i'm not allowed to do a thing i feel. i want to be away--i will be away!" "i know about that part," lulu said. she now looked at di with attention. was it possible that di was suffering in the air of that home as she herself suffered? she had not thought of that. there di had seemed so young, so dependent, so--asquirm. here, by herself, waiting for bobby, in the hess house at millton, she was curiously adult. would she be adult if she were let alone? "you don't know what it's like," di cried, "to be hushed up and laughed at and paid no attention to, everything you say." "don't i?" said lulu. "don't i?" she was breathing quickly and looking at di. if _this_ was why di was leaving home.... "but, di," she cried, "do you love bobby larkin?" by this di was embarrassed. "i've got to marry somebody," she said, "and it might as well be him." "but is it him?" "yes, it is," said di. "but," she added, "i know i could love almost anybody real nice that was nice to me." and this she said, not in her own right, but either she had picked it up somewhere and adopted it, or else the terrible modernity and honesty of her day somehow spoke through her, for its own. but to lulu it was as if something familiar turned its face to be recognised. "di!" she cried. "it's true. you ought to know that." she waited for a moment. "you did it," she added. "mamma said so." at this onslaught lulu was stupefied. for she began to perceive its truth. "i know what i want to do, i guess," di muttered, as if to try to cover what she had said. up to that moment, lulu had been feeling intensely that she understood di, but that di did not know this. now lulu felt that she and di actually shared some unsuspected sisterhood. it was not only that they were both badgered by dwight. it was more than that. they were two women. and she must make di know that she understood her. "di," lulu said, breathing hard, "what you just said is true, i guess. don't you think i don't know. and now i'm going to tell you--" she might have poured it all out, claimed her kinship with di by virtue of that which had happened in savannah, georgia. but di said: "here come some ladies. and goodness, look at the way you look!" lulu glanced down. "i know," she said, "but i guess you'll have to put up with me." the two women entered, looked about with the complaisance of those who examine a hotel property, find criticism incumbent, and have no errand. these two women had outdressed their occasion. in their presence di kept silence, turned away her head, gave them to know that she had nothing to do with this blue cotton person beside her. when they had gone on, "what do you mean by my having to put up with you?" di asked sharply. "i mean i'm going to stay with you." di laughed scornfully--she was again the rebellious child. "i guess bobby'll have something to say about that," she said insolently. "they left you in my charge." "but i'm not a baby--the idea, aunt lulu!" "i'm going to stay right with you," said lulu. she wondered what she should do if di suddenly marched away from her, through that bright lobby and into the street. she thought miserably that she must follow. and then her whole concern for the ethics of di's course was lost in her agonised memory of her terrible, broken shoes. di did not march away. she turned her back squarely upon lulu, and looked out of the window. for her life lulu could think of nothing more to say. she was now feeling miserably on the defensive. they were sitting in silence when bobby larkin came into the room. four bobby larkins there were, in immediate succession. the bobby who had just come down the street was distinctly perturbed, came hurrying, now and then turned to the left when he met folk, glanced sidewise here and there, was altogether anxious and ill at ease. the bobby who came through the hotel was a bobby who had on an importance assumed for the crisis of threading the lobby--a bobby who wished it to be understood that here he was, a man among men, in the hess house at millton. the bobby who entered the little rose room was the bobby who was no less than overwhelmed with the stupendous character of the adventure upon which he found himself. the bobby who incredibly came face to face with lulu was the real bobby into whose eyes leaped instant, unmistakable relief. di flew to meet him. she assumed all the pretty agitations of her rôle, ignored lulu. "bobby! is it all right?" bobby looked over her head. "miss lulu," he said fatuously. "if it ain't miss lulu." he looked from her to di, and did not take in di's resigned shrug. "bobby," said di, "she's come to stop us getting married, but she can't. i've told her so." "she don't have to stop us," quoth bobby gloomily, "we're stopped." "what do you mean?" di laid one hand flatly along her cheek, instinctive in her melodrama. bobby drew down his brows, set his hand on his leg, elbow out. "we're minors," said he. "well, gracious, you didn't have to tell them that." "no. they knew _i_ was." "but, silly! why didn't you tell them you're not?" "but i am." di stared. "for pity sakes," she said, "don't you know how to do anything?" "what would you have me do?" he inquired indignantly, with his head held very stiff, and with a boyish, admirable lift of chin. "why, tell them we're both twenty-one. we look it. we know we're responsible--that's all they care for. well, you are a funny...." "you wanted me to lie?" he said. "oh, don't make out you never told a fib." "well, but this--" he stared at her. "i never heard of such a thing," di cried accusingly. "anyhow," he said, "there's nothing to do now. the cat's out. i've told our ages. we've got to have our folks in on it." "is that all you can think of?" she demanded. "what else?" "why, come on to bainbridge or holt, and tell them we're of age, and be married there." "di," said bobby, "why, that'd be a rotten go." di said, oh very well, if he didn't want to marry her. he replied stonily that of course he wanted to marry her. di stuck out her little hand. she was at a disadvantage. she could use no arts, with lulu sitting there, looking on. "well, then, come on to bainbridge," di cried, and rose. lulu was thinking: "what shall i say? i don't know what to say. i don't know what i can say." now she also rose, and laughed awkwardly. "i've told di," she said to bobby, "that wherever you two go, i'm going too. di's folks left her in my care, you know. so you'll have to take me along, i guess." she spoke in a manner of distinct apology. at this bobby had no idea what to reply. he looked down miserably at the carpet. his whole manner was a mute testimony to his participation in the eternal query: how did i get into it? "bobby," said di, "are you going to let her lead you home?" this of course nettled him, but not in the manner on which di had counted. he said loudly: "i'm not going to bainbridge or holt or any town and lie, to get you or any other girl." di's head lifted, tossed, turned from him. "you're about as much like a man in a story," she said, "as--as papa is." the two idly inspecting women again entered the rose room, this time to stay. they inspected lulu too. and lulu rose and stood between the lovers. "hadn't we all better get the four-thirty to warbleton?" she said, and swallowed. "oh, if bobby wants to back out--" said di. "i don't want to back out," bobby contended furiously, "b-b-but i won't--" "come on, aunt lulu," said di grandly. bobby led the way through the lobby, di followed, and lulu brought up the rear. she walked awkwardly, eyes down, her hands stiffly held. heads turned to look at her. they passed into the street. "you two go ahead," said lulu, "so they won't think--" they did so, and she followed, and did not know where to look, and thought of her broken shoes. at the station, bobby put them on the train and stepped back. he had, he said, something to see to there in millton. di did not look at him. and lulu's good-bye spoke her genuine regret for all. "aunt lulu," said di, "you needn't think i'm going to sit with you. you look as if you were crazy. i'll sit back here." "all right, di," said lulu humbly. * * * * * it was nearly six o'clock when they arrived at the deacons'. mrs. bett stood on the porch, her hands rolled in her apron. "surprise for you!" she called brightly. before they had reached the door, ina bounded from the hall. "darling!" she seized upon di, kissed her loudly, drew back from her, saw the travelling bag. "my new bag!" she cried. "di! what have you got that for?" in any embarrassment di's instinctive defence was hearty laughter. she now laughed heartily, kissed her mother again, and ran up the stairs. lulu slipped by her sister, and into the kitchen. "well, where have _you_ been?" cried ina. "i declare, i never saw such a family. mamma don't know anything and neither of you will tell anything." "mamma knows a-plenty," snapped mrs. bett. monona, who was eating a sticky gift, jumped stiffly up and down. "you'll catch it--you'll catch it!" she sent out her shrill general warning. mrs. bett followed lulu to the kitchen; "i didn't tell inie about her bag and now she says i don't know nothing," she complained. "there i knew about the bag the hull time, but i wasn't going to tell her and spoil her gettin' home." she banged the stove-griddle. "i've a good notion not to eat a mouthful o' supper," she announced. "mother, please!" said lulu passionately. "stay here. help me. i've got enough to get through to-night." dwight had come home. lulu could hear ina pouring out to him the mysterious circumstance of the bag, could hear the exaggerated air of the casual with which he always received the excitement of another, and especially of his ina. then she heard ina's feet padding up the stairs, and after that di's shrill, nervous laughter. lulu felt a pang of pity for di, as if she herself were about to face them. there was not time both to prepare supper and to change the blue cotton dress. in that dress lulu was pouring water when dwight entered the dining-room. "ah!" said he. "our festive ball-gown." she gave him her hand, with her peculiar sweetness of expression--almost as if she were sorry for him or were bidding him good-bye. "_that_ shows who you dress for!" he cried. "you dress for me; ina, aren't you jealous? lulu dresses for me!" ina had come in with di, and both were excited, and ina's head was moving stiffly, as in all her indignations. mrs. bett had thought better of it and had given her presence. already monona was singing. "lulu," said dwight, "really? can't you run up and slip on another dress?" lulu sat down in her place. "no," she said. "i'm too tired. i'm sorry, dwight." "it seems to me--" he began. "i don't want any," said monona. but no one noticed monona, and ina did not defer even to dwight. she, who measured delicate, troy occasions by avoirdupois, said brightly: "now, di. you must tell us all about it. where had you and aunt lulu been with mamma's new bag?" "aunt lulu!" cried dwight. "a-ha! so aunt lulu was along. well now, that alters it." "how does it?" asked his ina crossly. "why, when aunt lulu goes on a jaunt," said dwight herbert, "events begin to event." "come, di, let's hear," said ina. "ina," said lulu, "first can't we hear something about your visit? how is----" her eyes consulted dwight. his features dropped, the lines of his face dropped, its muscles seemed to sag. a look of suffering was in his eyes. "she'll never be any better," he said. "i know we've said good-bye to her for the last time." "oh, dwight!" said lulu. "she knew it too," he said. "it--it put me out of business, i can tell you. she gave me my start--she took all the care of me--taught me to read--she's the only mother i ever knew----" he stopped, and opened his eyes wide on account of their dimness. "they said she was like another person while dwight was there," said ina, and entered upon a length of particulars, and details of the journey. these details dwight interrupted: couldn't lulu remember that he liked sage on the chops? he could hardly taste it. he had, he said, told her this thirty-seven times. and when she said that she was sorry, "perhaps you think i'm sage enough," said the witty fellow. "dwightie!" said ina. "mercy." she shook her head at him. "now, di," she went on, keeping the thread all this time. "tell us your story. about the bag." "oh, mamma," said di, "let me eat my supper." "and so you shall, darling. tell it in your own way. tell us first what you've done since we've been away. did mr. cornish come to see you?" "yes," said di, and flashed a look at lulu. but eventually they were back again before that new black bag. and di would say nothing. she laughed, squirmed, grew irritable, laughed again. "lulu!" ina demanded. "you were with her--where in the world had you been? why, but you couldn't have been with her--in that dress. and yet i saw you come in the gate together." "what!" cried dwight herbert, drawing down his brows. "you certainly did not so far forget us, lulu, as to go on the street in that dress?" "it's a good dress," mrs. bett now said positively. "of course it's a good dress. lulie wore it on the street--of course she did. she was gone a long time. i made me a cup o' tea, and _then_ she hadn't come." "well," said ina, "i never heard anything like this before. where were you both?" one would say that ina had entered into the family and been born again, identified with each one. nothing escaped her. dwight, too, his intimacy was incredible. "put an end to this, lulu," he commanded. "where were you two--since you make such a mystery?" di's look at lulu was piteous, terrified. di's fear of her father was now clear to lulu. and lulu feared him too. abruptly she heard herself temporising, for the moment making common cause with di. "oh," she said, "we have a little secret. can't we have a secret if we want one?" "upon my word," dwight commented, "she has a beautiful secret. i don't know about your secrets, lulu." every time that he did this, that fleet, lifted look of lulu's seemed to bleed. "i'm glad for my dinner," remarked monona at last. "please excuse me." on that they all rose. lulu stayed in the kitchen and did her best to make her tasks indefinitely last. she had nearly finished when di burst in. "aunt lulu, aunt lulu!" she cried. "come in there--come. i can't stand it. what am i going to do?" "di, dear," said lulu. "tell your mother--you must tell her." "she'll cry," di sobbed. "then she'll tell papa--and he'll never stop talking about it. i know him--every day he'll keep it going. after he scolds me it'll be a joke for months. i'll die--i'll die, aunt lulu." ina's voice sounded in the kitchen. "what are you two whispering about? i declare, mamma's hurt, di, at the way you're acting...." "let's go out on the porch," said lulu, and when di would have escaped, ina drew her with them, and handled the situation in the only way that she knew how to handle it, by complaining: well, but what in this world.... lulu threw a white shawl about her blue cotton dress. "a bridal robe," said dwight. "how's that, lulu--what are _you_ wearing a bridal robe for--eh?" she smiled dutifully. there was no need to make him angry, she reflected, before she must. he had not yet gone into the parlour--had not yet asked for his mail. it was a warm dusk, moonless, windless. the sounds of the village street came in--laughter, a touch at a piano, a chiming clock. lights starred and quickened in the blurred houses. footsteps echoed on the board walks. the gate opened. the gloom yielded up cornish. lulu was inordinately glad to see him. to have the strain of the time broken by him was like hearing, on a lonely whiter wakening, the clock strike reassuring dawn. "lulu," said dwight low, "your dress. do go!" lulu laughed. "the bridal shawl takes off the curse," she said. cornish, in his gentle way, asked about the journey, about the sick woman--and dwight talked of her again, and this time his voice broke. di was curiously silent. when cornish addressed her, she replied simply and directly--the rarest of di's manners, in fact not di's manner at all. lulu spoke not at all--it was enough to have this respite. after a little the gate opened again. it was bobby. in the besetting fear that he was leaving di to face something alone, bobby had arrived. and now di's spirits rose. to her his presence meant repentance, recapitulation. her laugh rang out, her replies came archly. but bobby was plainly not playing up. bobby was, in fact, hardly less than glum. it was dwight, the irrepressible fellow, who kept the talk going. and it was no less than deft, his continuously displayed ability playfully to pierce lulu. some one had "married at the drop of the hat. you know the kind of girl?" and some one "made up a likely story to soothe her own pride--you know how they do that?" "well," said ina, "my part, i think _the_ most awful thing is to have somebody one loves keep secrets from one. no wonder folks get crabbed and spiteful with such treatment." "mamma!" monona shouted from her room. "come and hear me say my prayers!" monona entered this request with precision on ina's nastiest moments, but she always rose, unabashed, and went, motherly and dutiful, to hear devotions, as if that function and the process of living ran their two divided channels. she had dispatched this errand and was returning when mrs. bett crossed the lawn from grandma gates's, where the old lady had taken comfort in mrs. bett's ministrations for an hour. "don't you help me," mrs. bett warned them away sharply. "i guess i can help myself yet awhile." she gained her chair. and still in her momentary rule of attention, she said clearly: "i got a joke. grandma gates says it's all over town di and bobby larkin eloped off together to-day. _he_!" the last was a single note of laughter, high and brief. the silence fell. "what nonsense!" dwight herbert said angrily. but ina said tensely: "_is_ it nonsense? haven't i been trying and trying to find out where the black satchel went? di!" di's laughter rose, but it sounded thin and false. "listen to that, bobby," she said. "listen!" "that won't do, di," said ina. "you can't deceive mamma and don't you try!" her voice trembled, she was frantic with loving and authentic anxiety, but she was without power, she overshadowed the real gravity of the moment by her indignation. "mrs. deacon----" began bobby, and stood up, very straight and manly before them all. but dwight intervened, dwight, the father, the master of his house. here was something requiring him to act. so the father set his face like a mask and brought down his hand on the rail of the porch. it was as if the sound shattered a thousand filaments--where? "diana!" his voice was terrible, demanded a response, ravened among them. "yes, papa," said di, very small. "answer your mother. answer _me_. is there anything to this absurd tale?" "no, papa," said di, trembling. "nothing whatever?" "nothing whatever." "can you imagine how such a ridiculous report started?" "no, papa." "very well. now we know where we are. if anyone hears this report repeated, send them to _me_." "well, but that satchel--" said ina, to whom an idea manifested less as a function than as a leech. "one moment," said dwight. "lulu will of course verify what the child has said." there had never been an adult moment until that day when lulu had not instinctively taken the part of the parents, of all parents. now she saw dwight's cruelty to her as his cruelty to di; she saw ina, herself a child in maternity, as ignorant of how to deal with the moment as was dwight. she saw di's falseness partly parented by these parents. she burned at the enormity of dwight's appeal to her for verification. she threw up her head and no one had ever seen lulu look like this. "if you cannot settle this with di," said lulu, "you cannot settle it with me." "a shifty answer," said dwight. "you have a genius at misrepresenting facts, you know, lulu." "bobby wanted to say something," said ina, still troubled. "no, mrs. deacon," said bobby, low. "i have nothing--more to say." in a little while, when bobby went away, di walked with him to the gate. it was as if, the worst having happened to her, she dared everything now. "bobby," she said, "you hate a lie. but what else could i do?" he could not see her, could see only the little moon of her face, blurring. "and anyhow," said di, "it wasn't a lie. we _didn't_ elope, did we?" "what do you think i came for to-night?" asked bobby. the day had aged him; he spoke like a man. his very voice came gruffly. but she saw nothing, softened to him, yielded, was ready to take his regret that they had not gone on. "well, i came for one thing," said bobby, "to tell you that i couldn't stand for your wanting me to lie to-day. why, di--i hate a lie. and now to-night--" he spoke his code almost beautifully. "i'd rather," he said, "they had never let us see each other again than to lose you the way i've lost you now." "bobby!" "it's true. we mustn't talk about it." "bobby! i'll go back and tell them all." "you can't go back," said bobby. "not out of a thing like that." she stood staring after him. she heard some one coming and she turned toward the house, and met cornish leaving. "miss di," he cried, "if you're going to elope with anybody, remember it's with me!" her defence was ready--her laughter rang out so that the departing bobby might hear. she came back to the steps and mounted slowly in the lamplight, a little white thing with whom birth had taken exquisite pains. "if," she said, "if you have any fear that i may ever elope with bobby larkin, let it rest. i shall never marry him if he asks me fifty times a day." "really, darling?" cried ina. "really and truly," said di, "and he knows it, too." lulu listened and read all. "i wondered," said ina pensively, "i wondered if you wouldn't see that bobby isn't much beside that nice mr. cornish!" when di had gone upstairs, ina said to lulu in a manner of cajoling confidence: "sister----" she rarely called her that, "_why_ did you and di have the black bag?" so that after all it was a relief to lulu to hear dwight ask casually: "by the way, lulu, haven't i got some mail somewhere about?" "there are two letters on the parlour table," lulu answered. to ina she added: "let's go in the parlour." as they passed through the hall, mrs. bett was going up the stairs to bed--when she mounted stairs she stooped her shoulders, bunched her extremities, and bent her head. lulu looked after her, as if she were half minded to claim the protection so long lost. dwight lighted the gas. "better turn down the gas jest a little," said he, tirelessly. lulu handed him the two letters. he saw ninian's writing and looked up, said "a-ha!" and held it while he leisurely read the advertisement of dental furniture, his ina reading over his shoulder. "a-ha!" he said again, and with designed deliberation turned to ninian's letter. "an epistle from my dear brother ninian." the words failed, as he saw the unsealed flap. "you opened the letter?" he inquired incredulously. fortunately he had no climaxes of furious calm for high occasions. all had been used on small occasions. "you opened the letter" came in a tone of no deeper horror than "you picked the flower"--once put to lulu. she said nothing. as it is impossible to continue looking indignantly at some one who is not looking at you, dwight turned to ina, who was horror and sympathy, a nice half and half. "your sister has been opening my mail," he said. "but, dwight, if it's from ninian--" "it is _my_ mail," he reminded her. "she had asked me if she might open it. of course i told her no." "well," said ina practically, "what does he say?" "i shall open the letter in my own time. my present concern is this disregard of my wishes." his self-control was perfect, ridiculous, devilish. he was self-controlled because thus he could be more effectively cruel than in temper. "what excuse have you to offer?" lulu was not looking at him. "none," she said--not defiantly, or ingratiatingly, or fearfully. merely, "none." "why did you do it?" she smiled faintly and shook her head. "dwight," said ina, reasonably, "she knows what's in it and we don't. hurry up." "she is," said dwight, after a pause, "an ungrateful woman." he opened the letter, saw the clipping, the avowal, with its facts. "a-ha!" said he. "so after having been absent with my brother for a month, you find that you were _not_ married to him." lulu spoke her exceeding triumph. "you see, dwight," she said, "he told the truth. he had another wife. he didn't just leave me." dwight instantly cried: "but this seems to me to make you considerably worse off than if he had." "oh, no," lulu said serenely. "no. why," she said, "you know how it all came about. he--he was used to thinking of his wife as dead. if he hadn't--hadn't liked me, he wouldn't have told me. you see that, don't you?" dwight laughed. "that your apology?" he asked. she said nothing. "look here, lulu," he went on, "this is a bad business. the less you say about it the better, for all our sakes--_you_ see that, don't you?" "see that? why, no. i wanted you to write to him so i could tell the truth. you said i mustn't tell the truth till i had the proofs ..." "tell who?" "tell everybody. i want them to know." "then you care nothing for our feelings in this matter?" she looked at him now. "your feeling?" "it's nothing to you that we have a brother who's a bigamist?" "but it's me--it's me." "you! you're completely out of it. just let it rest as it is and it'll drop." "i want the people to know the truth," lulu said. "but it's nobody's business but our business! i take it you don't intend to sue ninian?" "sue him? oh no!" "then, for all our sakes, let's drop the matter." lulu had fallen in one of her old attitudes, tense, awkward, her hands awkwardly placed, her feet twisted. she kept putting a lock back of her ear, she kept swallowing. "tell you, lulu," said dwight. "here are three of us. our interests are the same in this thing--only ninian is our relative and he's nothing to you now. is he?" "why, no," said lulu in surprise. "very well. let's have a vote. your snap judgment is to tell this disgraceful fact broadcast. mine is, least said, soonest mended. what do you say, ina--considering di and all?" "oh, goodness," said ina, "if we get mixed up with bigamy, we'll never get away from it. why, i wouldn't have it told for worlds." still in that twisted position, lulu looked up at her. her straying hair, her parted lips, her lifted eyes were singularly pathetic. "my poor, poor sister!" ina said. she struck together her little plump hands. "oh, dwight--when i think of it: what have i done--what have _we_ done that i should have a good, kind, loving husband--be so protected, so loved, when other women.... darling!" she sobbed, and drew near to lulu. "you _know_ how sorry i am--we all are...." lulu stood up. the white shawl slipped to the floor. her hands were stiffly joined. "then," she said, "give me the only thing i've got--that's my pride. my pride--that he didn't want to get rid of me." they stared at her. "what about _my_ pride?" dwight called to her, as across great distances. "do you think i want everybody to know my brother did a thing like that?" "you can't help that," said lulu. "but i want you to help it. i want you to promise me that you won't shame us like this before all our friends." "you want me to promise what?" "i want you--i ask you," dwight said with an effort, "to promise me that you will keep this, with us--a family secret." "no!" lulu cried. "no. i won't do it! i won't do it! i won't do it!" it was like some crude chant, knowing only two tones. she threw out her hands, her wrists long and dark on her blue skirt. "can't you understand anything?" she asked. "i've lived here all my life--on your money. i've not been strong enough to work, they say--well, but i've been strong enough to be a hired girl in your house--and i've been glad to pay for my keep.... but there wasn't anything about it i liked. nothing about being here that i liked.... well, then i got a little something, same as other folks. i thought i was married and i went off on the train and he bought me things and i saw the different towns. and then it was all a mistake. i didn't have any of it. i came back here and went into your kitchen again--i don't know why i came back. i s'pose because i'm most thirty-four and new things ain't so easy any more--but what have i got or what'll i ever have? and now you want to put on to me having folks look at me and think he run off and left me, and having 'em all wonder.... i can't stand it. i can't stand it. i can't...." "you'd rather they'd know he fooled you, when he had another wife?" dwight sneered. "yes! because he wanted me. how do i know--maybe he wanted me only just because he was lonesome, the way i was. i don't care why! and i won't have folks think he went and left me." "that," said dwight, "is a wicked vanity." "that's the truth. well, why can't they know the truth?" "and bring disgrace on us all." "it's me--it's me----" lulu's individualism strove against that terrible tribal sense, was shattered by it. "it's all of us!" dwight boomed. "it's di." "_di?_" he had lulu's eyes now. "why, it's chiefly on di's account that i'm talking," said dwight. "how would it hurt di?" "to have a thing like that in the family? well, can't you see how it'd hurt her?" "would it, ina? would it hurt di?" "why, it would shame her--embarrass her--make people wonder what kind of stock she came from--oh," ina sobbed, "my pure little girl!" "hurt her prospects, of course," said dwight. "anybody could see that." "i s'pose it would," said lulu. she clasped her arms tightly, awkwardly, and stepped about the floor, her broken shoes showing beneath her cotton skirt. "when a family once gets talked about for any reason----" said ina and shuddered. "i'm talked about now!" "but nothing that you could help. if he got tired of you, you couldn't help that." this misstep was dwight's. "no," lulu said, "i couldn't help that. and i couldn't help his other wife, either." "bigamy," said dwight, "that's a crime." "i've done no crime," said lulu. "bigamy," said dwight, "disgraces everybody it touches." "even di," lulu said. "lulu," said dwight, "on di's account will you promise us to let this thing rest with us three?" "i s'pose so," said lulu quietly. "you will?" "i s'pose so." ina sobbed: "thank you, thank you, lulu. this makes up for everything." lulu was thinking: "di has a hard enough time as it is." aloud she said: "i told mr. cornish, but he won't tell." "i'll see to that," dwight graciously offered. "goodness," ina said, "so he knows. well, that settles----" she said no more. "you'll be happy to think you've done this for us, lulu," said dwight. "i s'pose so," said lulu. ina, pink from her little gust of sobbing, went to her, kissed her, her trim tan tailor suit against lulu's blue cotton. "my sweet, self-sacrificing sister," she murmured. "oh stop that!" lulu said. dwight took her hand, lying limply in his. "i can now," he said, "overlook the matter of the letter." lulu drew back. she put her hair behind her ears, swallowed, and cried out. "don't you go around pitying me! i'll have you know i'm glad the whole thing happened!" * * * * * cornish had ordered six new copies of a popular song. he knew that it was popular because it was called so in a chicago paper. when the six copies arrived with a danseuse on the covers he read the "words," looked wistfully at the symbols which shut him out, and felt well pleased. "got up quite attractive," he thought, and fastened the six copies in the window of his music store. it was not yet nine o'clock of a vivid morning. cornish had his floor and sidewalk sprinkled, his red and blue plush piano spreads dusted. he sat at a folding table well back in the store, and opened a law book. for half an hour he read. then he found himself looking off the page, stabbed by a reflection which always stabbed him anew: was he really getting anywhere with his law? and where did he really hope to get? of late when he awoke at night this question had stood by the cot, waiting. the cot had appeared there in the back of the music-store, behind a dark sateen curtain with too few rings on the wire. how little else was in there, nobody knew. but those passing in the late evening saw the blur of his kerosene lamp behind that curtain and were smitten by a realistic illusion of personal loneliness. it was behind that curtain that these unreasoning questions usually attacked him, when his giant, wavering shadow had died upon the wall and the faint smell of the extinguished lamp went with him to his bed; or when he waked before any sign of dawn. in the mornings all was cheerful and wonted--the question had not before attacked him among his red and blue plush spreads, his golden oak and ebony cases, of a sunshiny morning. a step at his door set him flying. he wanted passionately to sell a piano. "well!" he cried, when he saw his visitor. it was lulu, in her dark red suit and her tilted hat. "well!" she also said, and seemed to have no idea of saying anything else. her excitement was so obscure that he did not discern it. "you're out early," said he, participating in the village chorus of this bright challenge at this hour. "oh, no," said lulu. he looked out the window, pretending to be caught by something passing, leaned to see it the better. "oh, how'd you get along last night?" he asked, and wondered why he had not thought to say it before. "all right, thank you," said lulu. "was he--about the letter, you know?" "yes," she said, "but that didn't matter. you'll be sure," she added, "not to say anything about what was in the letter?" "why, not till you tell me i can," said cornish, "but won't everybody know now?" "no," lulu said. at this he had no more to say, and feeling his speculation in his eyes, dropped them to a piano scarf from which he began flicking invisible specks. "i came to tell you good-bye," lulu said. "_good-bye!_" "yes. i'm going off--for a while. my satchel's in the bakery--i had my breakfast in the bakery." "say!" cornish cried warmly, "then everything _wasn't_ all right last night?" "as right as it can ever be with me," she told him. "oh, yes. dwight forgave me." "forgave you!" she smiled, and trembled. "look here," said cornish, "you come here and sit down and tell me about this." he led her to the folding table, as the only social spot in that vast area of his, seated her in the one chair, and for himself brought up a piano stool. but after all she told him nothing. she merely took the comfort of his kindly indignation. "it came out all right," she said only. "but i won't stay there any more. i can't do that." "then what are you going to do?" "in millton yesterday," she said, "i saw an advertisement in the hotel--they wanted a chambermaid." "oh, miss bett!" he cried. at that name she flushed. "why," said cornish, "you must have been coming from millton yesterday when i saw you. i noticed miss di had her bag--" he stopped, stared. "you brought her back!" he deduced everything. "oh!" said lulu. "oh, no--i mean--" "i heard about the eloping again this morning," he said. "that's just what you did--you brought her back." "you mustn't tell that! you won't? you won't!" "no. 'course not." he mulled it. "you tell me this: do they know? i mean about your going after her?" "no." "you never told!" "they don't know she went." "that's a funny thing," he blurted out, "for you not to tell her folks--i mean, right off. before last night...." "you don't know them. dwight'd never let up on that--he'd _joke_ her about it after a while." "but it seems--" "ina'd talk about disgracing _her_. they wouldn't know what to do. there's no sense in telling them. they aren't a mother and father," lulu said. cornish was not accustomed to deal with so much reality. but lulu's reality he could grasp. "you're a trump anyhow," he affirmed. "oh, no," said lulu modestly. yes, she was. he insisted upon it. "by george," he exclaimed, "you don't find very many _married_ women with as good sense as you've got." at this, just as he was agonising because he had seemed to refer to the truth that she was, after all, not married, at this lulu laughed in some amusement, and said nothing. "you've been a jewel in their home all right," said cornish. "i bet they'll miss you if you do go." "they'll miss my cooking," lulu said without bitterness. "they'll miss more than that, i know. i've often watched you there--" "you have?" it was not so much pleasure as passionate gratitude which lighted her eyes. "you made the whole place," said cornish. "you don't mean just the cooking?" "no, no. i mean--well, that first night when you played croquet. i felt at home when you came out." that look of hers, rarely seen, which was no less than a look of loveliness, came now to lulu's face. after a pause she said: "i never had but one compliment before that wasn't for my cooking." she seemed to feel that she must confess to that one. "he told me i done my hair up nice." she added conscientiously: "that was after i took notice how the ladies in savannah, georgia, done up theirs." "well, well," said cornish only. "well," said lulu, "i must be going now. i wanted to say good-bye to you--and there's one or two other places...." "i hate to have you go," said cornish, and tried to add something. "i hate to have you go," was all that he could find to add. lulu rose. "oh, well," was all that she could find. they shook hands, lulu laughing a little. cornish followed her to the door. he had begun on "look here, i wish ..." when lulu said "good-bye," and paused, wishing intensely to know what he would have said. but all that he said was: "good-bye. i wish you weren't going." "so do i," said lulu, and went, still laughing. cornish saw her red dress vanish from his door, flash by his window, her head averted. and there settled upon him a depression out of all proportion to the slow depression of his days. this was more--it assailed him, absorbed him. he stood staring out the window. some one passed with a greeting of which he was conscious too late to return. he wandered back down the store and his pianos looked back at him like strangers. down there was the green curtain which screened his home life. he suddenly hated that green curtain. he hated this whole place. for the first time it occurred to him that he hated warbleton. he came back to his table, and sat down before his lawbook. but he sat, chin on chest, regarding it. no ... no escape that way.... a step at the door and he sprang up. it was lulu, coming toward him, her face unsmiling but somehow quite lighted. in her hand was a letter. "see," she said. "at the office was this...." she thrust in his hand the single sheet. he read: " ... just wanted you to know you're actually rid of me. i've heard from her, in brazil. she ran out of money and thought of me, and her lawyer wrote to me.... i've never been any good--dwight would tell you that if his pride would let him tell the truth once in a while. but there ain't anything in my life makes me feel as bad as this.... i s'pose you couldn't understand and i don't myself.... only the sixteen years keeping still made me think she was gone sure ... but you were so downright good, that's what was the worst ... do you see what i want to say ..." cornish read it all and looked at lulu. she was grave and in her eyes there was a look of dignity such as he had never seen them wear. incredible dignity. "he didn't lie to get rid of me--and she was alive, just as he thought she might be," she said. "i'm glad," said cornish. "yes," said lulu. "he isn't quite so bad as dwight tried to make him out." it was not of this that cornish had been thinking. "now you're free," he said. "oh, that ..." said lulu. she replaced her letter in its envelope. "now i'm really going," she said. "good-bye for sure this time...." her words trailed away. cornish had laid his hand on her arm. "don't say good-bye," he said. "it's late," she said, "i--" "don't you go," said cornish. she looked at him mutely. "do you think you could possibly stay here with me?" "oh!" said lulu, like no word. he went on, not looking at her. "i haven't got anything. i guess maybe you've heard something about a little something i'm supposed to inherit. well, it's only five hundred dollars." his look searched her face, but she hardly heard what he was saying. "that little warden house--it don't cost much--you'd be surprised. rent, i mean. i can get it now. i went and looked at it the other day, but then i didn't think--" he caught himself on that. "it don't cost near as much as this store. we could furnish up the parlour with pianos--" he was startled by that "we," and began again: "that is, if you could ever think of such a thing as marrying me." "but," said lulu. "you _know_! why, don't the disgrace--" "what disgrace?" asked cornish. "oh," she said, "you--you----" "there's only this about that," said he. "of course, if you loved him very much, then i'd ought not to be talking this way to you. but i didn't think--" "you didn't think what?" "that you did care so very much--about him. i don't know why." she said: "i wanted somebody of my own. that's the reason i done what i done. i know that now." "i figured that way," said cornish. they dismissed it. but now he brought to bear something which he saw that she should know. "look here," he said, "i'd ought to tell you. i'm--i'm awful lonesome myself. this is no place to live. and i guess living so is one reason why i want to get married. i want some kind of a home." he said it as a confession. she accepted it as a reason. "of course," she said. "i ain't never lived what you might say private," said cornish. "i've lived too private," lulu said. "then there's another thing." this was harder to tell her. "i--i don't believe i'm ever going to be able to do a thing with law." "i don't see," said lulu, "how anybody does." "i'm not much good in a business way," he owned, with a faint laugh. "sometimes i think," he drew down his brows, "that i may never be able to make any money." she said: "lots of men don't." "could you risk it with me?" cornish asked her. "there's nobody i've seen," he went on gently, "that i like as much as i do you. i--i was engaged to a girl once, but we didn't get along. i guess if you'd be willing to try me, we would get along." lulu said: "i thought it was di that you--" "miss di? why," said cornish, "she's a little kid. and," he added, "she's a little liar." "but i'm going on thirty-four." "so am i!" "isn't there somebody--" "look here. do you like me?" "oh, yes!" "well enough--" "it's you i was thinking of," said lulu. "i'd be all right." "then!" cornish cried, and he kissed her. * * * * * "and now," said dwight, "nobody must mind if i hurry a little wee bit. i've got something on." he and ina and monona were at dinner. mrs. bett was in her room. di was not there. "anything about lulu?" ina asked. "lulu?" dwight stared. "why should i have anything to do about lulu?" "well, but, dwight--we've got to do something." "as i told you this morning," he observed, "we shall do nothing. your sister is of age--i don't know about the sound mind, but she is certainly of age. if she chooses to go away, she is free to go where she will." "yes, but, dwight, where has she gone? where could she go? where--" "you are a question-box," said dwight playfully. "a question-box." ina had burned her plump wrist on the oven. she lifted her arm and nursed it. "i'm certainly going to miss her if she stays away very long," she remarked. "you should be sufficient unto your little self," said dwight. "that's all right," said ina, "except when you're getting dinner." "i want some crust coffee," announced monona firmly. "you'll have nothing of the sort," said ina. "drink your milk." "as i remarked," dwight went on, "i'm in a tiny wee bit of a hurry." "well, why don't you say what for?" his ina asked. she knew that he wanted to be asked, and she was sufficiently willing to play his games, and besides she wanted to know. but she _was_ hot. "i am going," said dwight, "to take grandma gates out in a wheel-chair, for an hour." "where did you get a wheel-chair, for mercy sakes?" "borrowed it from the railroad company," said dwight, with the triumph peculiar to the resourceful man. "why i never did it before, i can't imagine. there that chair's been in the depot ever since i can remember--saw it every time i took the train--and yet i never once thought of grandma." "my, dwight," said ina, "how good you are!" "nonsense!" said he. "well, you are. why don't i send her over a baked apple? monona, you take grandma gates a baked apple--no. you shan't go till you drink your milk." "i don't want it." "drink it or mamma won't let you go." monona drank it, made a piteous face, took the baked apple, ran. "the apple isn't very good," said ina, "but it shows my good will." "also," said dwight, "it teaches monona a life of thoughtfulness for others." "that's what i always think," his ina said. "can't you get mother to come out?" dwight inquired. "i had so much to do getting dinner onto the table, i didn't try," ina confessed. "you didn't have to try," mrs. bett's voice sounded. "i was coming when i got rested up." she entered, looking vaguely about. "i want lulie," she said, and the corners of her mouth drew down. she ate her dinner cold, appeased in vague areas by such martyrdom. they were still at table when the front door opened. "monona hadn't ought to use the front door so common," mrs. bett complained. but it was not monona. it was lulu and cornish. "well!" said dwight, tone curving downward. "well!" said ina, in replica. "lulie!" said mrs. bett, and left her dinner, and went to her daughter and put her hands upon her. "we wanted to tell you first," cornish said. "we've just got married." "for _ever_ more!" said ina. "what's this?" dwight sprang to his feet. "you're joking!" he cried with hope. "no," cornish said soberly. "we're married--just now. methodist parsonage. we've had our dinner," he added hastily. "where'd you have it?" ina demanded, for no known reason. "the bakery," cornish replied, and flushed. "in the dining-room part," lulu added. dwight's sole emotion was his indignation. "what on earth did you do it for?" he put it to them. "married in a bakery--" no, no. they explained it again. neither of them, they said, wanted the fuss of a wedding. dwight recovered himself in a measure. "i'm not surprised, after all," he said. "lulu usually marries in this way." mrs. bett patted her daughter's arm. "lulie," she said, "why, lulie. you ain't been and got married twice, have you? after waitin' so long?" "don't be disturbed, mother bett," dwight cried. "she wasn't married that first time, if you remember. no marriage about it!" ina's little shriek sounded. "dwight!" she cried. "now everybody'll have to know that. you'll have to tell about ninian now--and his other wife!" standing between her mother and cornish, an arm of each about her, lulu looked across at ina and dwight, and they all saw in her face a horrified realisation. "ina!" she said. "dwight! you _will_ have to tell now, won't you? why i never thought of that." at this dwight sneered, was sneering still as he went to give grandma gates her ride in the wheel-chair and as he stooped with patient kindness to tuck her in. the street door was closed. if mrs. bett was peeping through the blind, no one saw her. in the pleasant mid-day light under the maples, mr. and mrs. neil cornish were hurrying toward the railway station. (images generously made available by the bodleian library in oxford) the law inevitable by louis couperus translated by alexander teixeira de mattos thornton butterworth, limited bedford street, london, w.c. chapter i the marchesa belloni's boarding-house was situated in one of the healthiest, if not one of the most romantic quarters of rome. one half of the house had formed part of a _villino_ of the old ludovisi gardens, those beautiful old gardens regretted by everybody who knew them before the new barrack-quarters were built on the site of the old roman park, with its border of villas. the entrance to the _pension_ was in the via lombardia. the older or _villino_ portion of the house retained a certain antique charm for the marchesa's boarders, while the new premises built on to it offered the advantages of spacious rooms, modern sanitation and electric light. the _pension_ boasted a certain reputation for comfort, cheapness and a pleasant situation: it stood at a few minutes' walk from the pincio, on high ground, and there was no need to fear malaria; and the price charged for a long stay, amounting to hardly more than eight lire a day, was exceptionally low for rome, which was known to be more expensive than any other town in italy. the boarding-house therefore was generally full. the visitors began to arrive as soon as october: those who came earliest in the season paid least; and, with the exception of a few hurrying tourists, they nearly all remained until easter, going south-ward to naples after the great church festivals. some english travelling-acquaintances had strongly recommended the _pension_ to cornélie de retz van loo, who was travelling in italy by herself; and she had written to the marchesa belloni from florence. it was her first visit to italy; it was the first time that she had alighted at the great cavernous station near the baths of diocletian; and, standing in the square, in the golden roman sunlight, while the great fountain of the acqua marcia gushed and rippled and the cab-drivers clicked with their whips and their tongues to attract her attention, she was conscious of her "nice italian sensation," as she called it, and felt glad to be in rome. she saw a little old man limping towards her with the instinct of a veteran porter who recognizes his travellers at once; and she read "hotel belloni" on his cap and beckoned to him with a smile. he saluted her with respectful familiarity, as though she were an old acquaintance and he glad to see her; asked if she had had a pleasant journey, if she was not over-tired; led her to the victoria; put in her rug and her handbag; asked for the tickets of her trunks; and said that she had better go on ahead: he would follow in ten minutes with the luggage. she received an impression of cosiness, of being well cared for by the little old lame man; and she gave him a friendly nod as the coachman drove away. she felt happy and careless, though she had just the faintest foreboding of something unhappy and unknown that was going to come to her; and she looked to right and left to take in the streets of rome. but she saw only houses upon houses, like so many barracks; then a great white palace, the new palazzo piombino, which she knew to contain the juno ludovisi; and then the _vettura_ stopped and a boy in buttons came out to meet her. he showed her into the drawing-room, a gloomy apartment, in the middle of which was a table covered with periodicals, arranged in a regular and unbroken circle. two ladies, obviously english and of the æsthetic type, with loose-fitting blouses and grimy hair, sat in a corner studying their baedekers before going out. cornélie bowed slightly, but received no bow in return; she did not take offence, being familiar with the manners of the travelling briton. she sat down at the table and took up the roman _herald_, the paper which appears once a fortnight and tells you what there is to do in rome during the next two weeks. thereupon one of the ladies asked her, from the corner, in an aggressive tone: "i beg your pardon, but would you please not take the _herald_ to your room?" cornélie raised her head very haughtily and languidly in the direction where the ladies were sitting, looked vaguely above their grimy heads, said nothing and glanced down at the _herald_ again; and she thought herself a very experienced traveller and smiled inwardly because she knew how to deal with that type of englishwoman. the marchesa entered and welcomed cornélie in italian and french. she was a large, fat matron, vulgarly fat; her ample bosom was contained in a silk cuirass or spencer, shiny at the seams and bursting under the arms; her grey frizzled hair gave her a somewhat leonine appearance; her great yellow and blue eyes, with bistre shadows beneath them, wore a strained expression, the pupils unnaturally dilated by belladonna; a pair of immense crystals sparkled in her ears; and her fat, greasy fingers were covered with nameless jewels. she talked very fast; and cornélie thought her sentences as pleasant and homely as the welcome of the lame porter in the square outside the station. the marchesa led her to the hydraulic lift and stepped in with her; the lift, a railed-in cage, running up the well of the staircase, rose solemnly and suddenly stopped, motionless, between the second and the third floor. "third floor!" cried the marchesa to some one below. "non c'e acqua!" the boy in buttons calmly called back, meaning thereby to convey that--as seemed natural--there was not enough water to move the lift. the marchesa screamed out some orders in a shrill voice; two _facchini_ came running up and hung on to the cable of the lift, together with the ostensibly zealous boy in buttons; and by fits and starts the cage rose higher and higher, until at last it almost reached the third storey. "a little higher!" ordered the marchesa. but the _facchini_ strained their muscles in vain: the lift refused to stir. "we can manage!" said the marchesa. "wait a bit." taking a great stride, which revealed the enormous white-stockinged calf of her leg, she stepped on to the floor, smiled and gave her hand to cornélie, who imitated her gymnastics. "here we are!" sighed the marchesa, with a smile of satisfaction. "this is your room." she opened a door and showed cornélie a bedroom. though the sun was shining brightly out of doors, the room was as damp and chilly as a cellar. "marchesa," cornélie said, without hesitation, "i wrote to you for two rooms facing south." "did you?" asked the marchesa, plausibly and ingeniously. "i really didn't remember. yes, that is one of those foreigners' ideas: rooms facing south.... this is really a beautiful room." "i'm sorry, but i can't accept this room, marchesa." la belloni grumbled a bit, went down the corridor and opened the door of another room: "and this one, signora?... how do you like this?" "is it south?" "almost." "i want it full south." "this looks west: you see the most splendid sunsets from your window." "i absolutely must have a south room, marchesa." "i also have the most charming little apartments looking east: you get the most picturesque sunrises there." "no, marchesa." "don't you appreciate the beauties of nature?" "just a little, but i put my health first." "i sleep in a north room myself." "you are an italian, marchesa, and you're used to it." "i'm very sorry, but i have no rooms facing south." "then i'm sorry too, marchesa, but i must look out somewhere else." cornélie turned as though to go away. the choice of a room sometimes means the choice of a life. the marchesa caught hold of her hand and smiled. she had abandoned her cool tone and her voice was all honey: "_davvero_, that's one of those foreigners' ideas: rooms facing south! but i have two little kennels left. here...." and she quickly opened two doors, two snug little cupboards of rooms, displaying through the open casements a lofty and spacious view of the sky, out-spread above the streets and roofs below, with the blue dome of st. peter's in the distance. "these are the only rooms i have left facing south," said the marchesa, plaintively. "i shall be glad to have these, marchesa." "sixteen lire," smiled la belloni. "ten, as you wrote." "i could put two persons in here." "i shall stay all the winter, if i am satisfied." "you must have your way!" the marchesa exclaimed, suddenly, in her sweetest voice, a voice of graceful surrender. "you shall have the rooms for twelve lire. don't let us discuss it any more. the rooms are yours. you are dutch, are you not? we have a dutch family staying here: a mother with two daughters and a son. would you like to sit next to them at table?" "no, i'd rather you put me somewhere else; i don't care for my fellow-countrymen when travelling." the marchesa left cornélie to herself. she looked out of the window, absent-mindedly, glad to be in rome, yet faintly conscious of the something unhappy and unknown that was about to come. there was a tap at her door; the men carried in her luggage. she saw that it was eleven o'clock and began to unpack. one of her rooms was a small sitting-room, like a bird-cage in the air, looking out over rome. she altered the position of the furniture, draped the faded sofa with a shawl from the abruzzi and fixed a few portraits and photographs with drawing-pins to the wall, whose white-washed surface was broken up by rudely-painted arabesques. and she smiled at the border of purple hearts transfixed with arrows, which surrounded the decorated panels of the wall. after an hour's work, her sitting-room was settled: she had a home of her own, with a few of her own shawls and rugs, a screen here, a little table there, cushions on the sofa, books within easy reach. when she had finished and had sat down and looked around her, she suddenly felt very lonely. she began to think of the hague and of what she had left behind her. but she did not want to think and picked up her baedeker and read about the vatican. she was unable to concentrate her thoughts and turned to hare's _walks in rome_. a bell sounded. she was tired and her nerves were on edge. she looked in the glass, saw that her hair was out of curl, her blouse soiled with coal and dust, unlocked a second trunk and changed her things. she cried and sobbed while she was curling her hair. the second bell rang; and, after powdering her face, she went downstairs. she expected to be late, but there was no one in the dining-room and she had to wait before she was served. she resolved not to come down so very punctually in future. a few boarders looked in through the open door, saw that there was no one sitting at table yet, except a new lady, and disappeared again. cornélie looked around her and waited. the dining-room was the original dining-room of the old villa, with a ceiling by guercina. the waiters loitered about. an old grey major-domo cast a distant glance over the table, to see if everything was in order. he grew impatient when nobody came and told them to serve the macaroni to cornélie. it struck cornélie that he too limped with one leg, like the porter. but the waiters were very young, hardly more than sixteen to eighteen, and lacked the usual self-possession of the waiter. a stout gentleman, vivacious, consequential, pock-marked, ill-shaven, in a shabby black coat which showed but little linen, entered, rubbing his hands, and took his seat opposite cornélie. he bowed politely and began to eat his macaroni. and this seemed to be the signal for the others to begin eating, for a number of boarders, mostly ladies, now came in, sat down and helped themselves to the macaroni, which was handed round by the youthful waiters under the watchful eye of the grey-haired major-domo. cornélie smiled at the oddity of these travelling types; and, when she involuntarily glanced at the pock-marked gentleman opposite, she saw that he too was smiling. he hurriedly mopped up his tornato-sauce with his bread, bent a little way across the table and almost whispered, in french: "it's amusing, isn't it?" cornélie raised her eyebrows: "what do you mean?" "a cosmopolitan company like this." "oh, yes!" "you are dutch?" "how do you know?" "i saw your name in the visitors' book, with '_la haye_' after it." "i am dutch, yes." "there are some more dutch ladies here, sitting over there: they are charming." cornélie asked the major-domo for some _vin ordinaire._ "the wine is no good," said the stout gentleman, vivaciously. "this is genzano," pointing to his _fiasco_. "i pay a small corkage and drink my own wine." the major-domo put a pint bottle in front of cornélie: it was included in her _pension_ without extra charge. "if you like, i will give you the address where i get my wine. via della croce, ." cornélie thanked him. the pock-marked gentleman's uncommon ease and vivacity diverted her. "you're looking at the major-domo?" he asked. "you are a keen observer," she smiled in reply. "he's a type, our major-domo, giuseppe. he used to be major-domo in the palace of an austrian archduke. he did i don't know what. stole something, perhaps. or was impertinent. or dropped a spoon on the floor. he has come down in the world. now you behold him in the pension belloni. but the dignity of the man!" he leant forward: "the marchesa is economical. all the servants here are either old or very young. it's cheaper." he bowed to two german ladies, a mother and daughter, who had come in and sat down beside him: "i have the permit which i promised you, to see the palazzo rospigliosi and guido reni's _aurora_," he said, speaking in german. "is the prince back then?" "no, the prince is in paris. the palace is not open to visitors, except yourselves." this was said with a gallant bow. the german ladies exclaimed how kind he was, how he was able to do anything, to find a way out of every difficulty. they had taken endless trouble to bribe the rospigliosi porter and they had not succeeded. a little thin englishwoman had taken her seat beside cornélie. "and for you, miss taylor, i have a card for a low mass in his holiness' private chapel." miss taylor was radiant with delight. "have you been sight-seeing again?" the pock-marked gentleman continued. "yes, museo kircheriano," said miss taylor. "but i am tired out. it was most exquisite." "my prescription, miss taylor, is that you stay at home this afternoon and rest." "i have an engagement to go to the aventino...." "you mustn't. you're tired. you look worse every day and you're losing flesh. you must rest, or you sha'n't have the card for the low mass." the german ladies laughed. miss taylor, flattered, in an ecstasy of delight, gave her promise. she looked at the pock-marked gentleman as though she expected to hear the judgement of solomon fall from his lips. lunch was over: the rump-steak, the pudding, the dried figs. cornélie rose: "may i give you a glass out of my bottle?" asked the stout gentleman. "do taste my wine and tell me if you like it. if so, i'll order a _fiasco_ for you in the via della croce." cornélie did not like to refuse. she sipped the wine. it was deliciously pure. she reflected that it would be a good thing to drink a pure wine in rome; and, as she did so, the stout gentleman seemed to read her quick thought: "it is a good thing," he said, "to drink a strengthening wine while you are in rome, where life is so tiring." cornélie agreed. "this is genzano, at two lire seventy-five the _fiasco_. it will last you a long time: the wine keeps. so i'll order you a _fiasco_." he bowed to the ladies around and left the room. the german ladies bowed to cornélie: "such an amiable man, that mr. rudyard!" "what can he be?" cornélie wondered. "french, german, english, american?" chapter ii she had hired a victoria after lunch and had driven through rome, to make her first acquaintance with the city for which she had longed so eagerly. this first impression was a great disappointment. her unspoiled imagination, her reading, even the photographs which she had bought in florence and studied with the affection of an inexperienced tourist had given her the illusion of a city of an ideal antiquity, an ideal renascence; and she had forgotten that, especially in rome, life has progressed pitilessly and that the ages are not visible, in buildings and ruins, as distinct periods, but that each period is closely connected with the next by the passing days and years. thus she had thought the dome of st. peter's small, the corso narrow and trajan's column a column like any other; she had not noticed the forum as she drove past it; and she had been unable to think of a single emperor when she was at the palatine. now she was home again, tired, and was resting a little and meditating; she felt depressed, yet she enjoyed her vague reflections and the silence about her in the big house, to which most of the boarders had not yet returned. she thought of the hague, of her big family, her father, mother, brothers and sisters, of whom she had taken leave for a long time to go abroad. her father, a retired colonel of hussars living on his pension, with no great private means, had been unable to contribute anything to the fulfilment of her caprice, as he called it; and she would not have been able to satisfy that caprice, of beginning a new life, but for the small legacy which she had inherited some years ago from a godmother. she was glad to be more or less independent, though she felt the selfishness of her independence. but what could she have done for her family-circle, after the scandal of her divorce? she was weak and selfish, she knew it; but she had received a blow under which she had at first expected to succumb. and, when she found herself surviving it, she had mustered such energy as she possessed and said to herself that she could not go on existing in that same narrow circle of her sisters and her girl friends; and she had forced her life into a different path. she had always had the knack of creating an apparently new frock out of an old dress, transforming a last year's hat into one of the latest fashion. even so she had now done with her distraught and wretched life, all battered and broken as it was; she had gathered together, as in a fit of economy, all that was left, all that was still serviceable; and out of those remnants she had made herself a new existence. but this new life was unable to breathe in the old atmosphere: it felt aimless in it and estranged; and she had managed to force it into a different path, in spite of all the opposition of her family and friends. perhaps she would not have succeeded so readily if she had not been so completely shattered. perhaps she would not have felt this energy if she had suffered only a little. she had her strength and she had her weakness; she was very simple and yet she was very variable; and it was perhaps just this complexity that had been the saving of her youth. besides, she was actually very young, only twenty-three; and in youth one possesses an unconscious vitality, notwithstanding any apparent weakness. and her contradictory qualities gave her equilibrium and saved her from falling over into the abyss.... all this passed vaguely through her mind as clouds pass before the eyes, not with the conciseness of words but with the misty in definiteness of a dreamy fatigue. as she lay there, she did not look as if she had ever exerted the strength to give a new path to her life: a pale, delicate woman, slender, with drooping movements, lying on a sofa in her not very fresh dressing-gown, with its faded pink and its rumpled lace. and yet there was a certain poetical fragrance about her personality, despite her weary eyes and the limp outlines of her attire, despite the boarding-house room, with its air of quickly improvised comfort, a comfort which was a matter of tact rather than reality and could be packed away in a single trunk. her frail figure, her pale and delicate rather than beautiful features were surrounded, as by an aura, by that atmosphere of personal poetry which she unconsciously radiated, which she shed from her eyes upon the things which she beheld, from her fingers upon the things which she touched. to those who did not like her, this peculiar atmosphere, this unusualness, this eccentricity, this unlikeness to the typical young woman of the hague, was the very thing with which they reproached her. to those who liked her, it was partly talent, partly soul; something peculiar to her which seemed almost genius; yet it was perturbing. it invested her with a great charm; it gave pause for thought and it promised much: more, perhaps, than could be realized. and this woman was the child of her time but especially of her environment and therefore so unfinished, revealing disparity against disparity, in an equilibrium of opposing forces, which might be her undoing or her salvation, but were in either case her fate. she felt lonely in italy. she had stayed for weeks at florence, where she tried to lead a full life, enriched by art and history. there, it was true, she forgot herself to a great extent, but she still felt lonely. she had spent a fortnight at siena, but siena had depressed her, with its sombre streets, its dead palaces and she had yearned for rome. but she had not found rome yet that afternoon. and, though she felt tired, she felt above all things lonely, terribly lonely and useless in a great world, in a great town, a town in which one feels the greatness, uselessness and vast antiquity of things more perhaps than anywhere else. she felt like a little atom of suffering, like an insect, an ant, half-trodden, half-crushed, among the immense domes of rome, of whose presence out of doors she was subtly conscious. and her hand wandered vacantly over her books, which she had stacked punctiliously and conscientiously on a little table: some translations of the classics, ovid, tacitus, together with dante, petrarch, tasso. it was growing dusk in her room, there was no light to read by, she was too much enervated to ring for a lamp; a chilliness hovered in her little room, now that the sun had quite gone down, and she had forgotten to ask for a fire on that first day. loneliness was all about her, her suffering pained her; her soul craved for a fellow-soul, but her mouth craved for a kiss, her arms for _him_, once her husband; and, turning on her cushions and wringing her hands, she prayed deep down in herself: "o god, tell me what to do!" chapter iii at dinner there was a buzz of voices; the three or four long tables were all full; the marchesa sat at the head of the centre table. now and then she beckoned impatiently to giuseppe, the old major-domo, who had dropped a spoon in an archducal court; and the unfledged little waiters rushed about breathlessly. cornélie found the obliging stout gentleman, whom the german ladies called mr. rudyard, sitting opposite her and her _fiasco_ of genzano beside her plate. she thanked mr. rudyard with a smile and made the usual remarks: how she had been for a drive that afternoon and had made her first acquaintance with rome, the forum, the pincio. she talked to the german ladies and to the english one, who was always so tired with her sight-seeing; and the germans, a _baronin_ and the _baronesse_ her daughter, laughed with her at the two æsthetes whom cornélie had come upon that morning in the drawing-room. the two were sitting some distance away, lank and angular, grimy-haired, in curiously cut evening-dress, which showed the breast and arms warmly covered with a jaeger under-vest, on which, in their turn, lay strings of large blue beads. their eyes browsed over the long table, as though they were pitying everybody who had come to rome to learn about art, because they two alone knew what art was. while eating, which they did unpleasantly, almost with their fingers, they read æsthetic books, wrinkling their brows and now and then looking up angrily, because the people about them were talking. with their self-conceit, their impossible manners, their worse than tasteless dress and their great air of superiority, they represented types of travelling englishwomen that are never met except in italy. they were unanimously criticized at the table. they came to the pension belloni every winter and made drawings in water-colours in the forum or the via appia. and they were so remarkable in their unprecedented originality, in their grimy angularity, with their evening-dresses, their jaegers, their strings of blue beads, their æsthetic books and their meat-picking fingers, that all eyes were constantly wandering in their direction, as though under the influence of a medusa spell. the young baroness, a type out of the _fliegende blatter_, witty and quick, with her little round, german face and arched, pencilled eyebrows, was laughing with cornélie and showing her a thumb-nail caricature which she had made of the two æsthetic ladies in her sketch-book, when giuseppe conducted a young lady to the end of the table where cornélie and rudyard sat opposite each other. she had evidently just arrived, said "'evening" to everybody near her and sat clown with a great rustling. it was at once apparent that she was an american, almost too good-looking, too young, to be travelling alone like that, with a smiling self-possession, as if she were at home: a very white complexion, very fine dark eyes, teeth like a dentist's advertisement, her full breast moulded in mauve cloth plentifully decorated with braid, on her heavily-waved hair a large mauve hat with a cascade of black ostrich-feathers, fastened by an over-large paste buckle. at every movement the silk of her petticoat rustled, the feathers nodded, the paste buckle gleamed. and, notwithstanding all this showiness, she was child-like: she was perhaps just twenty, with an ingenuous expression in her eyes. she at once spoke to cornélie, to rudyard; said that she was tired, that she had come from naples, that she had been dancing last night at prince cibo's, that her name was miss urania hope, that her father lived in chicago, that she had two brothers who, in spite of her father's money, were working on a farm in the far west, but that she had been brought up as a spoilt child by her father, who, however, wanted her to be able to stand on her own feet and was therefore making her travel by herself in the old world, in dear old italy. she was delighted to hear that cornélie was also travelling alone; and rudyard chaffed the ladies about their modern views, but the baronin and the baronesse applauded them. miss hope at once took a liking to her dutch fellow-traveller and wanted to arrange joint excursions; but cornélie, withdrawing into herself, made a tactful excuse, said that her time was fully engaged, that she wanted to study in the museums. "so serious?" asked miss hope, respectfully. and the petticoat rustled, the plumes nodded, the paste buckle gleamed. she made on cornélie the impression of a gaudy butterfly, which, sportive and unthinking, might easily one day dash itself to pieces against the hot-house windows of our cabined existence. she felt no attraction towards this strange, pretty little creature, who looked like a child and a _cocotte_ in one; but she felt sorry for her, she did not know why. after dinner, rudyard proposed to take the two german ladies for a little walk. the younger baroness came to cornélie and asked if she would come too, to see rome by moonlight, quite close, from the villa medici. she felt grateful for the kindly suggestion and was just going to put on her hat, when miss hope ran after her: "stay and sit with me in the drawing-room." "i am going for a walk with the baronin," cornélie replied. "that german lady?" "yes." "is she a noblewoman?" "i presume so." "are there many titled people in the house?" asked miss hope, eagerly. cornélie laughed: "i don't know. i only arrived this morning." "i believe there are. i heard that there were many titled people here. are you one?" "i was!" cornélie laughed. "but i had to give up my title." "what a shame!" miss hope exclaimed. "i love titles. do you know what i've got? an album with the coats of arms of all sorts of families and another album with patterns of silk and brocade from each of the queen of italy's ball-dresses. would you care to see it?" "very much indeed!" cornélie laughed. "but i must put on my hat now." she went and returned in a hat and cloak; the german ladies and rudyard were waiting in the hall and asked what she was laughing at. she caused great merriment by telling them about the album with the patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. "who is he?" she asked the baronin, as she walked in front with her, along the via sistina, while the baronesse and rudyard followed. she thought the baronin a charming person, but she was surprised to find, in this german woman, who belonged to the titled military class, a coldly cynical view of life which was not exactly that of her berlin environment. "i don't know," the baronin answered, with an air of indifference. "we travel a great deal. we have no house in berlin at present. we want to make the most of our stay abroad. mr. rudyard is very pleasant. he helps us in all sorts of ways: tickets for a papal mass, introductions here, invitations there. he seems to have plenty of influence. what do i care who or what he is! else agrees with me. i accept what he gives us and for the rest i don't try to fathom him." they walked on. the baronin took cornélie's arm. "my dear child, don't think us more cynical than we are. i hardly know you, but i've felt somehow drawn towards you. strange, isn't it, when one's abroad like this and has one's first talk at a _table-d'hôte_, over a skinny chicken? don't think us shabby or cynical. oh dear, perhaps we are! our cosmopolitan, irresponsible, unsettled life makes us ungenerous, cynical and selfish. very selfish. rudyard shows us many kindnesses. why should i not accept them? i don't care who or what he is. i am not committing myself in any way." cornélie looked round involuntarily. in the nearly dark street she saw rudyard and the young baronesse, almost whispering and mysteriously intimate: "and does your daughter think so too?" "oh, yes! we are not committing ourselves in any way. we do not even particularly like him, with his pock-marked face and his dirty finger-nails. we merely accept his introductions. do as we do. or ... don't. perhaps it will be better form if you don't. i ... i have become a great egoist, through travelling. what do i care?..." the dark street seemed to invite confidences; and cornélie to some extent understood this cynical indifference, particularly in a woman reared in narrow principles of duty and morality. it was certainly not good form; but was it not weariness brought about by the wear and tear of life? in any case she vaguely understood it: that tone of indifference, that careless shrugging of the shoulders.... they turned the corner of the hôtel massier and approached the villa medici. the full moon was pouring down its flood of white radiance and rome lay in the flawless blue glamour of the night. over-flowing the brimming basin of the fountain, beneath the black ilexes, whose leafage held the picture of rome in an ebony frame, the waste water splashed and clattered. "rome must be very beautiful," said cornélie, softly. rudyard and the baronesse had come nearer and heard what she said: "rome _is_ beautiful," he said, earnestly. "and rome is more. rome is a great consolation to many people." his words, spoken in the blue moonlit night, impressed her. the city seemed to lie in mystical billows at her feet. she looked at him, as he stood before her in his black coat, showing but little linen, the same stout, civil gentleman. his voice was very penetrating, with a rich note of conviction in it. she looked at him long, uncertain of herself and vaguely conscious of an approaching intimation, but still antipathetic. then he added, as though he did not wish her to meditate too deeply the words which he had uttered: "a great consolation to many ... because beauty consoles." and she thought his last words an æsthetic commonplace; but he had meant her to think so. chapter iv those first days in rome tired cornélie greatly. she did too much, as every one does who has just arrived in rome; she wanted to take in the whole city at once; and the distances, although covered in a carriage, and the endless galleries in the museums resulted in producing physical exhaustion. moreover she was constantly experiencing disappointments, in respect of pictures, statues or buildings. at first she dared not own to these disappointments; but one afternoon, feeling dead-tired, after she had been painfully disappointed in the sistine chapel, she owned up to herself. everything that she saw that was already known to her from her previous studies disappointed her. then she resolved to give sight-seeing a rest. and, after those fatiguing days, when every morning and every afternoon was spent out of doors, it was a luxury to surrender herself to the unconscious current of daily life. she remained at home in the mornings, wrapped in a tea-gown, in her cosy little bird-cage of a sitting-room, writing letters, dreaming a little, with her arms folded behind her head; she read ovid and petrarch, or listened to a couple of street-musicians, who, with their quavering tenors, to the shrill whining of their guitars, filled the silent street with a sobbing passion of music. at lunch she considered that she had been lucky in her _pension_, in her little corner at the table. she was interested in baronin von rothkirch, with her indifferent, aristocratic condescension towards rudyard, because she saw how residence abroad can draw a person out of the narrow ring of caste principles. the young baronesse, who cared nothing about life and merely sketched and painted, interested her because of her whispering intimacy with rudyard, which she failed to understand. miss hope was so ingenuous, so childishly irrational, that cornélie could not imagine how old hope, the rich stockinet-manufacturer over in chicago, allowed this child to travel about alone, with her far too generous monthly allowance and her total ignorance of the world and people; and rudyard himself, though she sometimes felt an aversion for him, attracted her in spite of that aversion. although she had so far formed no deeper friendship with any of her fellow-boarders, at any rate they were people to whom she was able to talk; and the conversation at table was a diversion amid the solitude of the rest of the day. for, in the afternoons, during this period of fatigue and disappointment, she would merely go for a short walk by herself down the corso or on the pincio and then return home, make her own tea in her little silver tea-pot and sit dreaming by the log fire, in the dusk, until it was time to dress for dinner. and the brightly-lit dining-room with the guercino ceiling was gay and cheerful. the _pension_ was crammed: the marchesa had given up her own room and was sleeping in the bath-room. a hum of voices buzzed around the tables; the waiters rushed to and fro; spoons and forks clattered. there was none of the melancholy spirit of so many _tables-d'hôte_. the people knew one another; and the excitement of roman life, the oxygen in the roman air seemed to lend an added vivacity to the gestures and conversation. amidst this vivacity the two grimy æsthetic ladies attracted attention by their unvarying pose, with their eternal evening-dress, their jaegers, their beads, the fat books which they read, their angry looks because people were talking. after dinner they sat in the drawing-room or in the hall, made friends here and there and talked of rome, rome, rome. there was always a great fuss about the music in the different churches: they consulted the _herald_; they asked rudyard, who knew everything, and gathered round him; and he, fat and polite as ever, smiled and distributed tickets and named the day and hour at which an important service would be held in this church or that. to english ladies, who were not fully informed, he would now and then, as it were casually, impart details about the complexities of catholic ritual and the catholic hierarchy; he explained the nationalities denoted by the various colours of the seminarists whom you met in shoals of an afternoon on the pincio, staring at st. peter's, in ecstasy over st. peter's, the mighty symbol of their mighty religion; he set forth the distinction between a church and a basilica; he related anecdotes of the private life of leo xiii. his manner of speaking of all these things possessed an insinuating charm: the english ladies, greedy for information, hung on his lips, thought him _too_ awfully nice, asked him for a thousand particulars. these days were a great rest for cornélie. she recovered from her fatigue and felt indifferent towards rome. but she did not think of leaving any the sooner. whether she was here or elsewhere was all the same to her: she had to be somewhere. besides, the _pension_ was good, her fellow-boarders pleasant and cheerful. she no longer read hare's _walks in rome_ or ovid's _metamorphoses_, but she read ouida's _ariadne_ over again. she did not care for the book as much as she had done three years before, at the hague; and, after that, she read nothing. but she amused herself with the von rothkirch ladies for a whole evening, looking over miss hope's album of seals and collection of patterns. how mad these americans were on titles and royalties! the baronin good-naturedly contributed an impression of her own arms to the album. and the patterns were greatly admired: gold brocades; silks heavily interwoven with silver; spangled tulles. miss hope related how she had come by them: she knew one of the queen's waiting-women, who had formerly been in service with an american; and this waiting-woman was now able to procure the patterns for her at a high price: a precious bit of material picked up while the queen was trying on, or sometimes even cut out of a broad seam. the child was prouder of her collection of patterns than an italian prince of his paintings, said baronin von rothkirch. but, notwithstanding this absurdity, this vanity, cornélie came to like the pretty american girl because of her candid and unsophisticated nature. she looked most attractive in the evening, in a black low-cut dress, or in a rose chiffon blouse. for that matter, it was a different frock every night. she possessed a kaleidoscopic collection of dresses, blouses and jewels. she would walk through the ruins of the forum in a tailor-made suit of cream cloth, lined with orange silk; and her white lace petticoat flitted airily over the foundations of the basilica julia or the temple of vesta. her gaily-trimmed hats introduced patches of colour from regent street or the avenue de l'opéra into the tragic seriousness of the colosseum or the ruined palace of the palatine. the young baronesse teased her about her orange silk lining, so in harmony with the forum, about her hats, so in keeping with the seriousness of a place of christian martyrdom, but she was never angry: "it's a nice hat anyway!" she would say, in her yankee drawl, which always afforded a good view of her pretty teeth, but made her strain her mouth as though she were cracking filberts. and the child enjoyed everything, enjoyed the baronin and the baronesse, enjoyed being at a _pension_ kept by a decayed italian marchioness. and, as soon as she caught sight of the marchesa belloni's grey, leonine head, she would make a rush for her--because a marchioness is higher than a baroness, said mrs. von rothkirch--drag her into a corner and, if possible, monopolize her throughout the evening. rudyard would then join them; and cornélie, seeing this, wondered what rudyard was, who he was and what he was about. but this did not interest the baronin, who had just received a card for a mass in the papal chapel; and the young baronesse merely said that he told legends of the saints so nicely, when explaining the pictures to her in the doria and the corsini. chapter v one evening cornélie made the acquaintance of the dutch family beside whom the marchesa had first wished to place her at the table: mrs. van der staal and her two daughters. they too were spending the whole winter in rome: they had friends there and went out visiting. the conversation flowed smoothly; and mevrouw invited cornélie to come and have a chat in her sitting-room. next day she accompanied her new acquaintances to the vatican and heard that mevrouw was expecting her son, who was coming to rome from florence to continue his archæological studies. cornélie was glad to meet at the hotel a dutch element that was not repellant. she thought it pleasant to talk dutch again and she confessed as much. in a day or two she had become intimate with mrs. van der staal and the two girls; and on the evening when young van der staal arrived she opened her heart more than she had ever thought that she could do to strangers whom she had known for barely a few days. they were sitting in the van der staals' sitting-room, cornélie in a low chair by the blazing log-fire, for the evening was chilly. they had been talking about the hague, about her divorce; and she was now speaking of italy, of herself: "i no longer see-anything," she confessed. "rome has quite bewildered me. i can't distinguish a colour, an outline. i don't recognize people. they all seem to whirl round me. sometimes i feel a need to sit alone for hours in my bird-cage upstairs, to recollect myself. this morning, in the vatican, i don't know: i remember nothing. it is all grey and fuzzy around me. then the people in the boarding-house: the same faces every day. i see them and yet i don't see them. i see ... i see madame von rothkirch and her daughter, i see the fair urania ... and rudyard ... and the little englishwoman, miss taylor, who is always so tired with sight-seeing and who thinks everything most exquisite. but my memory is so bad that, when i am alone, i have to think to myself: mrs. von rothkirch is tall and stately, with the smile of the german empress--she _is_ rather like her--talking fast and yet with indifference, as though the words just fell indifferently from her lips...." "you're a good observer," said van der staal. "oh, don't say that!" said cornélie, almost vexed. "i see nothing and i can't remember. i receive no impressions. everything around me is colourless. i really don't know why i have come abroad.... when i'm alone, i think of the people i meet. i know madame von rothkirch now and i know else. such a round merry face, with arched eyebrows, and always a joke or a witticism: i find it tiring sometimes, she makes me laugh so. still, they are very nice. and the fair urania. she tells me everything. she is as communicative ... as i am at this moment. and rudyard: i see him before me too." "rudyard!" smiled mevrouw and the girls. "what is he?" cornélie asked, inquisitively. "he is so civil, he ordered my wine for me, he can always get one all sorts of cards." "don't you know what rudyard is?" asked mrs van der staal. "no; and mrs. von rothkirch doesn't know either." "then you had better be careful," laughed the girls. "are you a catholic?" asked mevrouw. "no." "nor the fair urania either? nor mrs. von rothkirch?" "no." "well, that is why la belloni put rudyard at your table. rudyard is a jesuit. every _pension_ in rome has a jesuit who lives there free of charge, if the proprietor is a good friend of the church, and who tries to win souls by making himself especially agreeable." cornélie refused to believe it. "you can take my word for it," mevrouw continued, "that in a _pension_ like this, a first-class _pension_, a _pension_ with a reputation, a great deal of intrigue goes on." "la belloni?" cornélie enquired. "our marchesa is a thorough-paced _intrigante_. last winter, three english sisters were converted here." "by rudyard?" "no, by another priest. rudyard is here for the first time this winter." "rudyard walked quite a long way with me in the street this morning," said young van der staal. "i let him talk, i heard all he had to say." cornélie fell back in her chair: "i am tired of people," she said, with the strange sincerity which was hers. "i should like to sleep for a month, without seeing anybody." and, after a short pause, she got up, said good-night and went to bed, while everything swam before her eyes. chapter vi she remained indoors for a day or two and had her meals served in her room. one morning, however, she was going for a stroll in the villa borghese, when she met young van der staal, on his bicycle. "don't you ride?" he asked, jumping off. "no." "why not?" "it is an exercise which doesn't suit my style," cornélie replied, vexed at meeting any one who disturbed the solitude of her stroll. "may i walk with you?" "certainly." he gave his machine into the charge of the porter at the gate and walked on with her, quite naturally, without saying very much: "it's beautiful here," he remarked. his words seemed to convey a simple meaning. she looked at him, for the first time, attentively: "you're an archæologist?" she asked. "no," he said, deprecatingly. "what are you, then?" "nothing. mamma says that, just to excuse me. i'm nothing and a very useless member of society at that. and i'm not even well off." "but you are studying, aren't you?" "no. i do a little casual reading. my sisters call it studying." "do you like going about, as your sisters do?" "no, i hate it. i never go with them." "don't you like meeting and studying people?" "no. i like pictures, statues and trees." "a poet?" "no. nothing. i am nothing, really." she looked at him, with increased attention. he was walking very simply by her side, a tall, thin fellow of perhaps twenty-six, more of a boy than a man in face and figure, but endowed with a certain assurance and restfulness that made him seem older than his years. he was pale; he had dark, cool, almost reproachful eyes; and his long, lean figure, in his badly-kept cycling-suit, betrayed a slight indifference, as though he did not care what his arms and legs looked like. he said nothing but walked on pleasantly, unembarrassed, without finding it necessary to talk. cornélie, however, grew fidgety and sought for words: "it is beautiful here," she stammered. "oh, it's very beautiful!" he replied, calmly, without seeing that she was constrained. "so green, so spacious, so peaceful: those long avenues, those vistas of avenues, like an antique arch, over yonder; and, far away in the distance, look, st. peter's, always st. peter's. it's a pity about those queer things lower down: that restaurant, that milk-tent. people spoil everything nowadays.... let us sit down here: it is so lovely here." they sat down on a bench. "it is such a joy when a thing is beautiful," he continued. "people are never beautiful. things are beautiful: statues and paintings. and then trees and clouds!" "do you paint?" "sometimes," he confessed, grudgingly. "a little. but really everything has been painted already; and i can't say that i paint." "perhaps you write too?" "there has been even more written than painted, much more. perhaps everything has not yet been painted, but everything has certainly been written. every new book that is not of absolute scientific importance is superfluous. all the poetry has been written and every novel too." "do you read much?" "hardly at all. i sometimes dip into an old author." "but what do you do then?" she asked, suddenly, querulously. "nothing," he answered, calmly, with a glance of humility. "i do nothing, i exist." "do you think that a good mode of life?" "no." "then why don't you adopt another?" "as i might buy a new coat or a new bicycle?" "you're not speaking seriously," she said, crossly. "why are you so vexed with me?" "because you annoy me," she said, irritably. he rose, bowed civilly and said: "then i had better go for a turn on my bicycle." and he walked slowly away. "what a stupid fellow!" she thought, peevishly. but she thought it tiresome that she had wrangled with him, because of his mother and sisters. chapter vii at the hotel, however, he spoke to cornélie politely, as though there had been no embarrassment, no wrangling interchange of words between them, and he even asked her quite simply--because his mother and sisters had some calls to pay that afternoon--whether they should go to the palatine together. "i passed it the other day," she said, indifferently. "and don't you intend to see the ruins?" "no." "why not?" "they don't interest me. i can't see the past in them. i merely see ruins." "but then why did you come to rome?" he asked, irritably. she looked at him and could have burst into sobs: "i don't know," she said, meekly. "i might just as well have gone somewhere else. but i had formed a great idea of rome; and rome disappoints me." "how so?" "i find it hard and inexorable and devoid of feeling. i don't know why, but that's the impression it makes upon me. and i am in a mood at present which somehow makes me want something less insensible and imperturbable." he smiled: "come along," he said. "come with me to the palatine. i must show you rome. it is so beautiful." she felt too much depressed to remain alone; and she put on her things and left the hotel with him. the cabmen outside cracked their whips: "_vole? vole?_" they shouted. he picked out one: "this is gaetano," he said. "i always take him. he knows me, don't you, gaetano?" "_si, signorino. cavallo di sangue, signorina!_" said gaetano, pointing to his horse. they drove away. "i am always frightened of these cabmen," said cornélie. "you don't know them," he answered, smiling. "i like them. i like the people. they're nice people." "you approve of everything in rome." "and you submit without reserve to a mistaken impression." "why mistaken?" "because that first impression of rome, as hard and unfeeling, is always the same and always mistaken." "yes, it's that. look, we are driving by the forum. whenever i see the forum, i think of miss hope and her orange lining." he felt annoyed and did not answer. "this is the palatine." they alighted and passed through the entrance. "this wooden staircase takes us to the palace of tiberius. above the palace, on the top of the arches, is a garden from which we look down on the forum." "tell me about tiberius. i know that there were good and bad emperors. we were taught that at school. tiberius was a bad emperor, wasn't he?" "he was a gloomy brute. but why do you want me to tell you about him?" "because otherwise i can take no interest in those arches and chambers." "then let us go up to the top and sit in the garden." they did so. "don't you feel rome here?" he asked. "i feel the same everywhere," she replied. but he seemed not to hear her: "it's the atmosphere around you," he continued. "you should try to forget our hotel, to forget belloni and all our fellow-visitors and yourself. when anybody first arrives here, he has all the usual trouble about the hotel, his rooms, the _table-d'hôte_, the vaguely likable or dislikable people. you've got over that now. clear your mind of it. and try to feel only the atmosphere of rome. it's as if the atmosphere had remained the same, notwithstanding that the centuries lie piled up one above the other. first the middle ages covered the antiquity of the forum and now it's hidden everywhere by our nineteenth-century craze for travel. there you have miss hope's orange lining. but the atmosphere has always remained the same. unless i imagine it...." she was silent. "perhaps i do," he continued. "but what does that matter to me? our whole life is imagination; and imagination is a beautiful thing. the beauty of our imagination is the consolation of our lives, to those of us who are not men of action. the past is beauty. the present is not, does not exist. and the future does not interest me." "do you ever think about modern problems?" she asked. "the woman question? socialism? peace?" "well, yes, for instance." "no," he smiled. "i think of them sometimes, but not about them." "how do you mean?" "i get no further. that is my nature. i am a dreamer by nature; and my dream is the past." "don't you dream of yourself?" "no. of my soul, my inner self? no. it interests me very little." "have you ever suffered?" "suffered? yes, no. i don't know. i feel sorry for my utter uselessness as a human being, as a son, as a man; but, when i dream, i am happy." "how do you come to speak to me so openly?" he looked at her in surprise: "why should i be reticent about myself?" he asked. "i either don't talk or i talk as i am doing now. perhaps it is a little odd." "do you talk to every one so intimately?" "no, hardly to anybody. i once had a friend ... but he's dead. tell me, i suppose you consider me morbid?" "no, i don't think so." "i shouldn't mind if you did. oh, how beautiful it is here! are you drinking rome in with your very breath?" "which rome?" "the rome of antiquity. under where we are sitting is the palace of tiberius. i see him walking about there, with his tall, strong figure, with his large, searching eyes: he was very strong, he was very gloomy and he was a brute. he had no ideals. farther down, over there, is the palace of caligula, a madman of genius. he built a bridge across the forum to speak to jupiter in the capitol. that's a thing one couldn't do nowadays. he was a genius and a madman. when a man's like that, there's a good deal about him to admire." "how can you admire an age of emperors who were brutes and mad?" "because i see their age before my eyes, in the past, like a dream." "how is it possible that you don't see the present before you, with the problems of our own time, especially the eternal problem of poverty?" he looked at her: "yes," he said, "i know. that is my sin, my wickedness. the eternal problem of poverty doesn't affect me." she looked at him contemptuously: "you don't belong to your period," she said, coldly. "no." "have you ever felt hungry?" he laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "have you ever pictured yourself leading the life of a labourer, of a factory-girl who works until she's worn out and old and half-dead for a bare crust of bread?" "oh, those things are so horrible and so ugly: don't talk about them!" he entreated. the expression of her eyes was cold; the corners of her lips were depressed as though by a sense of disgust; and she rose from her seat. "are you angry?" he asked, humbly. "no," she said, gently, "i am not angry." "but you despise me, because you consider me a useless creature, an æsthete and a dreamer?" "no. what am i myself, that i should reproach you with your uselessness?" "oh, if we could only find something!" he exclaimed, almost in ecstasy. "what?" "an aim. but mine would always remain beauty. and the past." "and, if _i_ had the strength of mind to devote myself to an aim, it would above all be this: bread for the future." "how abominable that sounds!" he said, rudely but sincerely. "why didn't you go to london, or manchester, or one of those black manufacturing towns?" "because i hadn't the strength of mind and because i think too much of myself and of a sorrow that i have had lately. and i expected to find distraction in italy." "and that is where your disappointment lies. but perhaps you will gradually acquire greater strength and then devote yourself to your aim: bread for the future. i sha'n't envy you, however: bread for the future!..." she was silent. then she said, coldly: "it is getting late. let us go home...." chapter viii duco van der staal had taken a large, vault-like studio, with a chilly north light, up three flights of stairs in the via del babuino. here he painted, modelled and studied and here he dragged all the beautiful and antique objects that he succeeded in picking up in the little shops along the tiber or in the mercato dei fiori. that was his passion: to hunt through rome for a panel of an old triptych or a fragment of ancient sculpture. in this way his studio had not remained the large, chilly, vault-like workroom bearing witness to zealous and serious study, but had become a refuge for dim-coloured remnants of antiquity and ancient art, a museum for his dreaming spirit. already as a child, as a boy, he had felt that passion for antiquity developing; he learnt how to rummage through the stocks of old jewish dealers; he taught himself to haggle when his purse was not full; and he collected first rubbish and afterwards, gradually, objects of artistic and financial value. and it was his great hobby, his one vice: he spent all his pocket-money on it and, later, without reserve, the little that he was able to earn. for sometimes, very seldom, he would finish something and sell it. but generally he was too ill-satisfied with himself to finish anything; and his modest notion was that everything had already been created and that _his_ art was useless. this idea sometimes paralysed him for months together, without making him unhappy. when he had the money to keep himself going--and his personal needs were very small--he felt rich and was content in his studio, or would wander, perfectly content, through the streets of rome. his long, careless, lean, slender body was at such times clad in his oldest suit, which afforded an unostentatious glimpse of an untidy shirt with a soft collar and a bit of string instead of a tie; and his favourite headgear was a faded hat, battered out of shape by the rain. his mother and sisters as a rule found him unpresentable, but had given up trying to transform him into the well-groomed son and brother whom they would have liked to take to the drawing-rooms of their roman friends. happy to breathe the atmosphere of rome, he would wander for hours through the ruins and see, in a dazzling vision of phantom columns, ethereal temples and translucent marble palaces looming up in a shimmering sunlit twilight; and the tourists going by with their baedekers, who passed this long, lean young man seated carelessly on the foundations of the temple of saturn, would never have believed in his architectural illusions of harmonious ascending lines, crowned by an array of statues in noble and god-like attitudes, high in the blue sky. but he saw them before him. he raised the shafts of the pillars, he fluted the severe doric columns, he bent and curved the cushioned ionic capitals and unfurled the leaves of the corinthian acanthuses; the temples rose in the twinkling of an eye, the basilicas shot up as by magic, the graven images stood white against the elusive depths of the sky and the via sacra became alive. he, in his admiration, lived his dream, his past. it was as though he had known preexistence in ancient rome; and the modern houses, the modern capitol and all that stood around the tomb of his forum were invisible to his eyes. he would sit like this for hours, or wander about and sit down again and be happy. in the intensity of his imagination, he conjured up history from the clouds of the past, first of all as a mist, a miraculous haze, whence the figures stepped out against the marble background of ancient rome. the gigantic dramas were enacted before his dreaming eyes as on an ideal stage which stretched from the forum to the hazy, sun-shot azure of the campagna, with slips that lost themselves in the depths of the sky. roman life came into being, with a toga'd gesture, a line of horace, a sudden vision of an emperor's murder or a contest of gladiators in the arena. and suddenly also the vision paled and he saw the ruins, the ruins only, as the tangible shadow of his unreal illusion: he saw the ruins as they were, brown and grey, eaten up with age, crumbled, martyred mutilated with hammers, till only a few occasional pillars lifted and bore a trembling architrave, that threatened to come crashing to the ground. and the browns and greys were so richly and nobly gilded by splashes of sunlight, the ruins were so exquisitely beautiful in decay, so melancholy in their unwitting fortuitousness of broken lines, of shattered arches and mutilated sculpture, that it was as though he himself, after his airy vision of radiant dream-architecture, had tortured and mutilated them with an artist's hand and caused them to burst asunder and shake and tremble, for the sake of their wistful aftermath of beauty. then his eyes grew moist, his heart became more full than he could bear and he went away, through the arch of titus by the colosseum, through the arch of constantine, on and on, and hurried past the lateran to the via appia and the campagna, where his smarting eyes drank in the blue of the distant alban hills, as though that would cure them of their excessive gazing and dreaming.... neither in his mother nor in his sisters did he find a strain that sympathized with his eccentric tendencies; and, since that one friend who died, he had never found another and had always been lonely, within and without, as though the victim of a predestination which would not allow him to meet with sympathy. but he had peopled his loneliness so densely with his dreams that he had never felt unhappy because of it; and, even as he loved roaming alone among the ruins and along the country-roads, so he cherished the privacy of his lonely studio, with the many silent figures on an old panel of some triptych, on a tapestry, or on the many closely hung sketches all around him, all with the charm of their lines and colours, all with the silent gesture of their movement and emotion and all blending together in twilit corners or a shadowy antique cabinet. and in between all this lived his china and bronze and old silver, while the faded gold embroidery of an ecclesiastical vestment gleamed faintly and the old leather bindings of his books stood in comfortable brown tows, ready to give forth, when his hands opened them, images which mistily drifted upwards, living their loves and their sorrows in the tempered browns and reds and golds of the soundless atmosphere of the studio. such was his simple life, without much inward doubting, because he made no great demands upon himself, and without the modern artist's melancholy, because he was happy in his dreams. he had never, despite his hotel life with his mother and sisters--he slept and took his meals at belloni's--met many people or concerned himself with strangers, being by nature a little shy of baedekered tourists, of short-skirted english ladies, with their persistent little exclamations of uniform admiration, and feeling entirely impossible in the half-italian, half-cosmopolitan set of his rather worldly mother and smart little sisters, who spent their time dancing and cycling with young italian princes and dukes. and, now that he had met cornélie de retz, he had to confess to himself that he possessed but little knowledge of human nature and that he had never learnt to believe in the reality of such a woman, who might have existed in books, but not in actual life. her very appearance--her pallor, her drooping charm, her weariness--had astonished him; and her conversation astonished him even more: her positiveness mingled with hesitation; her artistic feeling modified by the endeavour to take part in her period, a period which he failed to appreciate as artistic, enamoured as he was of rome and of the past. and her conversation astonished him, attractive though the sound of it was and offended as he often was by a recurrent bitterness and irony, followed again by depression and discouragement, until he thought it over again and again, until in his musing he seemed to hear it once more on her own lips, until she joined the busts and torsos in his studio and appeared before him in the lily-like frailness of her visible actuality, against the preraphaelite stiffness of line and the byzantine gold and colour of the angels and madonnas on canvas and tapestry. his soul had never known love; and he had always looked on love as imagination and poetry. his life had never known more than the natural virile impulse and the ordinary little love-affair with a model. and his ideals on love swayed in a too wide and unreal balance between a woman who showed herself in the nude for a few lire and petrarch's laura; between the desire roused by a beautiful body and the exaltation inspired by dante's beatrice; between the flesh and the dream. he had never contemplated an encounter of kindred souls, never longed for sympathy, for love in the full and pregnant sense of the word. and, when he began to think and to think long and often of cornélie de retz, he could not understand it. he had pondered and dreamed for days, for a week, about a woman in a poem about a woman in real life never. and that he, irritated by some of her sayings, had nevertheless seen her stand with her lily-like outline against his byzantine triptych, like a wraith in his lonely dreams, almost frightened him, because it had made him lose his peace of mind. chapter ix it was christmas day, on which occasion the marchesa belloni entertained her boarders with a christmas-tree in the drawing-room, followed by a dance in the old guercino dining-room. to give a ball and a christmas-tree was a custom with many hotel-keepers; and the _pensions_ that gave no dance or christmas-tree were known and numbered and were greatly blamed by the foreigners for this breach of tradition. there were instances of very excellent _pensions_ to which many travellers, especially ladies, never went, because there was neither a dance nor a christmas-tree at christmas. the marchesa realized that her tree was expensive and that her dance cost money too and she would gladly have found an excuse for avoiding both, but she dared not: the reputation of her _pension_, as it happened, depended on its worldliness and smartness, on the _table-d'hôte_ in the handsome dining-room, where people dressed for dinner, and also on the brilliant party given at christmas. and it was amusing to see how keen all the ladies were to receive gratis in their bill for a whole winter's stay a trashy christmas present and the opportunity of dancing without having to pay for a glass of _orgeade_ and a bit of pastry, a sandwich and a cup of soup. giuseppe, the old nodding major-domo, looked down contemptuously on this festivity: he remembered the gala pomp of his archducal evenings and considered the dance inferior and the tree paltry. antonio, the limping porter, accustomed to his comparatively quiet life--fetching a visitor or taking him to the station; sorting the post twice a day at his ease; and, for the rest, pottering around his lodge and the lift--hated the dance, because of all the guests of the boarders, each of whom was entitled to invite two or three friends, and because of all that tiring fuss with carriages, when a good many of the visitors skipped into their _vettura_ without tipping him. round about christmas, therefore, relations between the marchesa and her two principal dignitaries became far from harmonious; and a hail of orders and abuse would patter down on the backs of the old _cameriere_, crawling wearily up and down stairs with their hot-water cans in their trembling hands, and of the young greenhorns of waiters, colliding with one another in their undisciplined zeal and smashing the plates. and it was only now, when the whole staff was put to work, that people saw how old the _cameriere_ were and how young the waiters and qualified as disgraceful and shocking the thrifty method of the marchesa in employing none but wrecks and infants in her service. the one muscular _facchino_, who was essential for hauling the luggage, cut an unexpected figure of virile maturity and robustness. but above everything the visitors detested the marchesa because of the great number of her servants, reflecting that now, at christmas time, they would have to tip every one of them. no, they never imagined that the staff was so large! quite unnecessarily large too! why couldn't the marchesa engage a couple of strong young maids and waiters instead of all those old women and little boys? and there was much hushed plotting and confabulating in the corners of the passages and at meals, to decide on the tips to be given: they didn't want to spoil the servants, but still they were staying all the winter; and therefore one lira was hardly enough and they hesitated between one lira twenty-five and one lira fifty. but, when they counted on their fingers that there were fully five-and-twenty servants and that therefore they were close on forty lire out of pocket, they thought it an awful lot and they got up subscription-lists. two lists went round, one of one lira and one of twelve lire a visitor, the latter subscription covering the whole staff. on this second list some, who had arrived a month before and who had arranged to leave, entered their names for ten lire and some for six lire. five lire was by general consent considered too little; and, when it became known that the grimy æsthetic ladies intended to give five lire, they were regarded with the greatest contempt. it all meant a lot of trouble and excitement. as christmas drew nearer, people streamed to the _presepii_ set up by painters in the palazzo borghese: a panorama of jerusalem and the shepherds, the angels, the magi and mary and the child in the manger with the ox and the ass. they listened in the ara coeli to the preaching of little boys and girls, who by turns climbed the platform and told the story of the nativity, some shyly reciting a little poem, prompted by an anxious mother; others, girls especially, declaiming and rolling their eyes with the dramatic fervour of little italian actresses and ending up with a religious moral. the people and countless tourists stood and listened to the preaching; a pleasant spirit prevailed in the church, where the shrill young children's voices were lifted up in oratory; there was laughter at a gesture or a point driven home; and the priests strolling round the church wore an unctuous smile because it was all so pretty and so satisfactory. and in the chapel of the santo bambino the miraculous wooden doll was bright with gold and jewels; and the close-packed multitude thronged to gaze at it. all the visitors at belloni's bought bunches of holly in the piazza di spagna to adorn their rooms with; and some, such as the baronin van rothkirch, set up a private christmas-tree in their own rooms. on the evening before the great party, one and all went to admire these private trees, going in and out of one another's rooms; and all the boarders wore a kind, festive smile and welcomed everybody, however much at other times they might quarrel and intrigue against one another. it was universally agreed that the baronin had taken great pains and that her tree was magnificent. her bedroom had been cleverly metamorphosed into a boudoir, the beds draped to look like divans, the wash-hand-stands concealed; and the tree was radiant with candles and tinsel. and the baronin, a little sentimentally inclined, for the season reminded her of berlin and her lost domesticity, opened her doors wide to everybody and was even offering the two æsthetic ladies sweets, when the marchesa, also smiling, appeared at the door, with her bosom moulded in sky-blue satin and with even larger crystals than usual in her ears. the room was full: there were the van der staals, cornélie, rudyard, urania hope and other guests going in and out, so that it became impossible to move and they stood packed together or sat on the draped beds of the mother and daughter. the marchesa led in beside her a young man whom the others had not seen before, short, slender, with a pale olive complexion and dark, bright, witty, lively eyes. he was in dress-clothes and displayed the vague good manners of a pampered and careless _viveur_, distinguished and yet conceited. and she proudly went up to the baronin, who kept prettily wiping her moist eyes, and with a certain arrogance presented: "my nephew, duca di san stefano, principe di forte-braccio...." the well-known italian name sounded from her lips in the small, crowded room with deliberate distinctness; and all eyes went to the young man, who bowed low before the baronin and then looked round the room with a vague, ironical glance. the marchesa's nephew had not yet been seen at the hotel that winter, but everybody knew that the young duke of san stefano, prince of forte-braccio, was a nephew of the marchesa's and one of the advertisements for her _pension_. and, while the prince talked to the baronin and her daughter, urania hope stared at him as a miraculous being from another world. she clung tight to cornélie's arm, as though she were in danger of fainting at the sight of so much italian nobility and greatness. she thought him very good-looking, very imposing, short and slender and pale, with his carbuncle eyes and his weary distinction and the white orchid in his button-hole. she would have loved to ask the marchioness to introduce her to her _chic_ nephew, but she dared not, for she remembered her father's stockinet-factory at chicago. the christmas-tree party and the dance took place the following night. it became known that the marchesa's nephew was coming that evening too; and a great excitement reigned throughout the day. the prince arrived after the presents had been taken down from the tree and distributed and made a sort of state entry by the side of his aunt, the marchesa, into the drawing-room, where the dancing had not yet begun, though the guests were sitting about the room, all fixing their eyes on the ducal and princely apparition. cornélie was strolling with duco van der staal, who to his mother's and sisters' great surprise had fished out his dress-clothes and appeared in the big hall; and they both observed the triumphant entry of la belloni and her nephew and laughed at the fanatically upturned eyes of the english and american ladies. they, cornélie and duco, sat down in the hall on two chairs, in front of a clump of palms, which concealed one of the doors of the drawing-room, while the dance began inside. they were talking of the statues in the vatican, which they had been to see two days before, when they heard, as though close to their ears, a voice which they recognized as the marchesa's commanding organ, vainly striving to sink into a whisper. they looked round in surprise and perceived the hidden door, which was partly open, and through the open space they faintly distinguished the slim hand and black sleeve of the prince and a piece of the blue bosom of la belloni, both seated on a sofa in the drawing-room. they were therefore back to back, separated by the half-open door. they listened for fun to the marchesa's italian; the prince's answers were lisped so softly that they could scarcely catch them. and of what the marchesa said they heard only a few words and scraps of sentences. they were listening quite involuntarily, when they heard rudyard's name clearly pronounced by the marchesa. "and who besides?" asked the prince, softly. "an english miss," said the marchesa. "miss taylor: she's sitting over there, by herself in the corner. a simple little soul.... the baronin and her daughter.... the dutchwoman: a _divorcée_.... and the pretty american." "and those two very attractive dutch girls?" asked the prince. the music boom-boomed louder; and cornélie and duco did not catch the reply. "and the divorced dutchwoman?" the prince asked next. "no money," the marchesa answered, curtly. "and the young baroness?" "no money," la belloni repeated. "so there's no one except the stocking-merchant?" asked the prince, wearily. la belloni became cross, but cornélie and duco could not understand the sentences which she rattled out through the boom-booming music. then, during a lull, they heard the marchesa say: "she is very pretty. she has tons and tons of money. she could have gone to a first-class hotel but preferred to come here because, as a young girl travelling by herself, she was recommended to me and finds it pleasanter here. she has the big sitting-room to herself and pays fifty lire a day for her two rooms. she does not care about money. she pays three times as much as the others for her wood; and i also charge her for the wine." "she sells stockings," muttered the prince, obstinately. "nonsense!" said the marchesa. "remember that there's nobody at the moment. last winter we had rich english titled people with a daughter, but you thought her too tall. you're always discovering some objection. you mustn't be so difficult." "i think those two little dutch dolls attractive." "they have no money. you're always thinking what you have no business to think." "how much did papa promise you if you...." the music boomed louder. "... makes no difference.... if rudyard talks to her.... miss taylor is easy.... miss hope...." "i don't want so many stockings as all that." "... very witty, i dare say.... if you don't care to...." "no." "... then i retire.... i'll tell rudyard.... how much?" "sixty or seventy thousand: exactly." "are they urgent?" "debts are never urgent!" "do you agree?" "very well. but mind, i won't sell myself for less than ten millions.... and then you get...." they both laughed; and again the names of rudyard and urania were pronounced. "urania?" he asked. "yes, urania," replied la belloni. "those little americans are very tactful. look at the comtesse de castellane and the duchess of marlborough: how well they bear their husbands' honours! they cut an excellent figure. they are mentioned in every society column and always with respect." "... all right then. i am tired of these wasted winters. but not less then ten millions." "five." "no, ten." the prince and the marchesa had stood up to go. cornélie looked at duco. he laughed: "i don't quite understand them," he said. "it's a joke, of course." cornélie was startled: "a joke, you think, mr. van der staal?" "yes, they're humbugging." "i don't believe it." "i do." "have you any knowledge of human nature?" "oh, no, none at all!" "i'm getting it, gradually. i believe that rome can be dangerous and that an hotel-keeping marchesa, a prince and a jesuit...." "what about them?" "can be dangerous, if not to your sisters, because they have no money, but at any rate to urania hope." "i don't believe it for a moment. it was all chaff. and it doesn't interest me. what do you think of praxiteles' _eros_? i think it the most divine statue that i ever saw. oh, the _eros_, the _eros_! that is love, the real love, the predestined, fatal love, begging forgiveness for the suffering which it causes." "have you ever been in love?" "no. i have no knowledge of human nature and i have never been in love. you are always so definite. dreams are beautiful, statues are delightful and poetry is everything. the _eros_ expresses love completely. the love of the _eros_ is so beautiful! i could never love so beautifully as that.... no, it does not interest me to understand human nature; and a dream by praxiteles, lingering in a mutilated marble torso, is nobler than anything that the world calls love." she knitted her brows; her eyes were sombre. "let us go to the dancers," she said. "we are so out of it all here." chapter x the day after the dance, at table, cornélie received a strange impression: suddenly, as she sipped her delicious genzano, ordered for her by rudyard, she became aware that it was not by accident that she was sitting with the baronin and her daughter, with urania and miss taylor; she saw that the marchesa had an intention behind this arrangement. rudyard, always civil, polite, thoughtful, always full of attentions, his pockets always filled with cards of introduction very difficult to obtain--or so at least he contended--talked without ceasing, lately more particularly to miss taylor, who went faithfully to hear all the best church music and always returned home in ecstasy. the pale, simple, thin little englishwoman, who at first used to go into raptures over museums, ruins and the sunsets on the aventine or the monte mario and who was tired by her rambles through rome, now devoted herself exclusively to the hundreds of churches, visited and studied them all and above all faithfully attended the musical services and spoke ecstatically of the choir in the sistine chapel and the quavering _glorias_ of the male _soprani_. cornélie spoke to mrs. van der staal and the baronin von rothkirch of the conversation between the marchesa and her nephew which she had heard through the half-open door; but neither of them, though interested and curious, took the marchesa's words seriously, regarding them only as so much thoughtless talk between a foolish, match-making aunt and an unwilling nephew. cornélie was struck by seeing how unable people are to take things seriously; but the baronin was quite indifferent, saying that rudyard could do her no harm and was still supplying her with tickets; and mrs. van der staal, who had been in rome a long time and was accustomed to little boarding-house conspiracies, considered that cornélie was making herself too uneasy about the fair urania's fate. suddenly, however, miss taylor disappeared from the table. they thought that she was ill, until it came to light that she had left the pension belloni. rudyard said nothing; but, a few days later, the whole _pension_ knew that miss taylor had been converted to the catholic faith and had moved to a _pension_ recommended by rudyard, a _pension_ frequented by _monsignori_ and noted for its religious tone. her disappearance produced a certain constraint in the conversation between rudyard, the german ladies and cornélie; and the latter, in the course of a week which the baronin was spending at naples, changed her seat and joined her fellow-countrywomen the van der staals. the von rothkirches also changed, because of the draught, said the baronin; their seats were taken by new arrivals; and urania was left alone with rudyard at lunch and dinner, amid those foreign elements. cornélie reproached herself and one day spoke seriously to the american girl and warned her. but she dared not repeat what she had overheard at the dance; and her warning made no impression on urania. and, when rudyard had obtained for miss hope the privilege of a private audience of the pope, urania would not hear a word against rudyard and considered him the kindest man whom she had ever met, jesuit or no jesuit. but rudyard continued to appear through a haze of mystery; and people were not agreed as to whether he was a priest or a layman. chapter xi "what do those strangers matter to you?" asked duco. they were sitting in his studio: mrs. van der staal, cornélie and the girls, annie and emilie. annie was pouring out the tea; and they were discussing miss taylor and urania. "i am a stranger to you too!" said cornélie. "you are not a stranger to me, to us. but miss taylor and urania don't matter. hundreds of shadows pass through our lives: i don't see them and don't feel them." "i have talked to you too much in the borghese and on the palatine to look upon you as a shadow." "rudyard is a dangerous shadow," said annie. "he has no hold over us," duco replied. mrs. van der staal looked at cornélie. she understood the enquiring glance and said, laughing: "no, he has no hold over me either. still, if i felt the need of a religion, i mean an ecclesiastical religion, i would rather be a roman catholic than a protestant. but, as things are...." she did not complete her sentence. she felt safe in this studio, in this soft, many-coloured profusion of beautiful things, in the affection of her friends; she felt in harmony with them all: with the worldly charm of that somewhat superficial mother and her two pretty girls, a little doll-like and vaguely cosmopolitan and a trifle vain of the little marquises with whom they danced and bicycled; and with that son, that brother, so very different from the three of them and yet obviously related to them, as a movement, a gesture, a single word would show. it also struck cornélie that they accepted each other affectionately as they were: duco, his mother and sisters, with their stories about the princesses colonna and odescalchi; mevrouw and the girls, him, with his worn jacket and his unkempt hair. and, when he began to speak, especially about rome, when he put his dream into words, in almost bookish sentences, which however flowed easily and naturally from his lips, cornélie felt in harmony with her surroundings, secure and interested and to some extent lost that longing to contradict him which his artistic indolence sometimes aroused in her. and, besides, his indolence suddenly seemed to her merely apparent and perhaps an affectation, for he showed her sketches and water-colour drawings, not one of them finished, but every water-colour alive with light before all things, alive with all that light of italy: the pearl sunsets over the molten emerald of venice; the _campanili_ of florence drawn vaguely and dreamily across tender tea-rose skies; siena fortress-like, blue-black in the bluish moonlight; the blazing sunshine behind st. peter's; and, above all, the ruins, in every kind of light: the forum in the bright sunlight, the palatine by twilight, the colosseum mysterious in the night; and then the campagna: all the dream-like skies and luminous haze of the glad and sad campagna, with pale-pink mauves, dewy blues, dusky violets or the swaggering ochres of pyro-technical sunsets and clouds flaring like the crimson pinions of the phoenix. and, when cornélie asked him why nothing was finished off, he answered that nothing was right. he saw the skies as dreams, visions and apotheoses; and on his paper they became water and paint; and paint was not a thing to be finished off. besides, he lacked the self-confidence. and then he laid his skies aside, he said, and sat down to copy byzantine madonnas. when he saw that his water-colours interested her nevertheless, he went on talking about himself: how he had at first raved over the noble and ingenuous primitives, giotto and especially lippo memmi; how, after that, spending a year in paris, he had found nothing that excelled forain: cold, dry satire in two or three lines; how, next, in the louvre, rubens had become revealed to him, rubens whose own talent and whose own brush he used to trace amid all the prentice-work and imitations of his pupils, until he was able to tell which cherub was by rubens himself in a sky full of cherubs painted by four or five disciples. and then, he said, he would pass weeks without giving a thought to painting or taking up a brush and would go daily to the vatican, lost in contemplation of the magnificent marbles. once he had sat dreaming a whole morning in front of the _eros_; once he had dreamt a poem there, to a very gentle, melodious, monotonous accompaniment, like an inward incantation. on coming home he had tried to put both poem and music on paper, but he had failed. now he could no longer look at forain, thought rubens coarse and disgusting, but remained faithful to the primitives: "and suppose for a moment that i painted a lot and sent a lot of pictures to exhibitions? should i be any the happier? should i feel satisfied in having done something? i doubt it. sometimes i do finish a water-colour and sell it; and then i can go on living for a month without troubling mamma. money i don't care about. ambition is quite foreign to my nature.... but don't let us talk about myself. do you still think of the future and ... bread?" "perhaps," she said, with a melancholy laugh, while the studio around her grew dusk and dim and the figures of his mother and sisters, sitting silent, languid and uninterested in their easy chairs, gradually faded away and every colour slowly paled. "but i am so weak-minded. you say that you are not an artist; and i ... i am not an apostle." "to give one's life a course: that is the difficulty. every life has a line, an appointed course, a road, a path: life has to flow along that line to death and what comes after death; and that line is difficult to find. i shall never find my line." "i don't see my line before me either." "do you know, a restlessness has come over me. mamma, listen, a restlessness has come over me. i used to dream in the forum, i was happy and didn't think about my line, my appointed course. mamma, do you think about your line? do you, girls?" his sisters giggled in the dark, sunk in their low chairs, like two pussy-cats. mamma got up: "duco dear, you know i can't follow you. i admire cornélie for liking your water-colours and understanding what you mean by that line. my line is to go home at once, for it's very late." "that's the line of the next two seconds. but there is a restlessness about my line that affects it for days and weeks to come. i am not leading the right life. the past is very beautiful and so peaceful, because it once was. but i have lost that peace. the present is very small. but the future!... oh, if we could only find an aim ... for the future!" they no longer listened; they went down the dark stairs, groping their way. "bread?" he asked himself, wonderingly.... chapter xii one morning when cornélie stayed indoors she went through the books that lay scattered about her room. and she found that it was useless for her to read ovid, in order to study something of roman manners, some of which had alarmed and shocked her; she found that dante and petrarch were too difficult to learn italian from, whereas she had only to pick up a word or two in order to make herself understood in a shop or by the servants; she found hare's _walks_ a too wearisome guide, because every cobble-stone in rome did not inspire her with the same interest that hare evidently derived from it. then she confessed to herself that she could never see italy and rome as duco van der staal did. she never saw the light of the skies or the drifting of the clouds as he had seen them in his unfinished water-colour sketches. she had never seen the ruins transfigured in glory as he did in his hours of dreaming on the palatine or in the forum. she saw a picture merely with a layman's eye; a byzantine madonna made no appeal to her. she was very fond of statues; but to fall head over cars in love with a mutilated marble torso, in the spirit in which he loved the _eros_, seemed to her sickly ... and yet it seemed to be the right spirit in which to see the _eros_. well, not sickly, she admitted ... but morbid: the word, though she herself smiled at it, expressed her opinion better; not sickly, but morbid. and she looked upon an olive as a tree rather like a willow, whereas duco had told her that an olive was the most beautiful tree in the world. she did not agree with him, either about the olive or about the _eros_; and yet she felt that he was right from a certain mysterious standpoint on which there was no room for her, because it was like a mystic eminence amid impassable sensitive spheres which were not hers, even as the eminence was to her an unknown vantage-point of sensitiveness and vision. she did not agree with him and yet she was convinced of his greater rightness, his truer view, his nobler insight, his deeper feeling; and she was certain that her way of seeing italy, in the disappointment of her disillusion, in the grey light of a growing indifference, was neither noble nor good; and she knew that the beauty of italy escaped her, whereas to him it was like a tangible and comprehensible vision. and she cleared away ovid and petrarch and hare's guide-book and locked them up in her trunk and took out the novels and pamphlets which had appeared that year about the woman movement in holland. she took an interest in the problem and thought that it made her more modern than duco, who suddenly seemed to her to belong to a bygone age, not modern, not modern. she repeated the words with enjoyment and suddenly felt herself stronger. to be modern: that should be her strength. one phrase of duco's had struck her immensely, that exclamation: "oh, if we could only find an aim! our life has a line, a path, which it must follow...." to be modern: was that not a line? to find the solution of a modern problem: was that not an aim in life? he was quite right, from his point of view, from which he saw italy; but was not the whole of italy a past, a dream ... at least that italy which duco saw, a dreamy paradise of nothing but art? it could not be right to stand like that, to see like that a dream like that. the present was here: on the grey horizon muttered an approaching storm; and the latter-day problems flashed like lightning. was that not what she had to live for? she felt for the woman, she felt for the girl: she herself had been the girl, brought up only as a social ornament, to shine, to be pretty and attractive and then of course to get married; she had shone and she had married; and now she was three-and-twenty, divorced from the husband who at one time had been her only aim and, for her sake, the aim of her parents; now she was alone, astray, desperate and utterly disconsolate: she had nothing to cling to and she suffered. she still loved him, cad and scoundrel though he was; and she had thought that she was doing something very clever, when she went abroad, to italy, to study art. but she did not understand art, she did not feel italy. oh, how clearly she saw it, after those talks with duco, that she would never understand art, even though she used to sketch a bit, even though she used to have a biscuit-group after canova in her boudoir, _cupid and psyche_: so nice for a young girl! and with what certainty she now knew that she would never grasp italy, because she did not think an olive-tree so very beautiful and had never seen the sky of the campagna as a fluttering phoenix-wing! no, italy would never be the consolation of her life.... but what then? she had been through much, but she was alive and very young. and once again, at the sight of those pamphlets, at the sight of that novel, the desire arose in her soul: to be modern, to be modern! and to take part in the problem of to-day! to live for the future! to live for her fellow-women, married or unmarried!... she dared not look deep down into herself, lest she should waver. to live for the future!... it separated her a little more from duco, that new ideal. did she mind? was she in love with him? no, she thought not. she had been in love with her husband and did not want to fall in love at once with the first agreeable young man whom she chanced to meet in rome.... and she read the pamphlets, about the feminine problem and love. then she thought of her husband, then of duco. and wearily she dropped the pamphlets and reflected how sad it all was: people, women, girls. she, a woman, a young woman, an aimless woman: how sad her life was! and duco: he was happy. and yet he was seeking the line of his life, yet he was looking out for his aim. a new restlessness had entered into him. and she wept a little and anxiously twisted herself on her cushions and clasped her hands and prayed, unconsciously, without knowing to whom she was praying: "o god, tell me what to do!" chapter xiii it was then, after a few days, that cornélie conceived the idea of leaving the boarding-house and going to live in rooms. the hotel-life disturbed her budding thoughts, like a wind of vanity that was constantly blighting very vague and fragile blossoms; and, despite a torrent of abuse from the marchesa, who reproached her with having engaged to stay the whole winter, she moved into the rooms which she had found with duco van der staal, after much hunting and stair-climbing. they were in the via dei serpenti, up any number of stairs: a set of two roomy, but almost entirely unfurnished apartments, containing only the absolute essentials; and, though the view extended far and wide above the house-tops of rome to the circular ruin of the colosseum, the rooms were rough and uncomfortable, bare and uninviting. duco had not approved of them and said that they made him shiver, although they faced the sun; but there was something about the ruggedness of the place that harmonized with cornélie's new mood. when they parted that day, he thought how inartistic she was and she how unmodern he was. they did not meet again for several days; and cornélie was very lonely, but did not feel her loneliness, because she was writing a pamphlet on the social position of divorced women. the idea was suggested to her by a few sentences in a tract on the feminist problem; and at once, without wasting much time in thought, she flung off her sentences in a succession of impulses and intuitions, rough-hewn, cold and clear; she wrote in an epistolary style, without literary art, as though to warn girls against cherishing too many illusions about marriage. she had not made her rooms comfortable; she sat there, high up over rome, with her view across the house-tops to the colosseum, writing, writing and writing, absorbed in her sorrow, uttering herself in her stubborn sentences, feeling intensely bitter, but pouring the wormwood of her soul into her pamphlet. mrs. van der staal and the girls, who came to see her, were surprised by her untidy appearance, her rough-looking rooms, with a dying fire in the little grate and with no flowers, no books, no tea and no cushions; and, when they went away after fifteen minutes, pleading urgent errands, they looked at one another, tripping down the endless stairs, with eyes of amazement, utterly at a loss to understand this transformation of an interesting, elegant little woman, surrounded by an aura of poetry and a tragic past, into an "independent woman," working furiously at a pamphlet full of bitter invective against society. and, when duco looked her up again in a week's time and came to sit with her a little, he remained silent, stiff and upright in his chair, without speaking, while cornélie read the beginning of her pamphlet to him. he was touched by the glimpses which it revealed to him of personal suffering and experience, but he was irritated by a certain discord between that slender, lily-like woman, with her drooping movements, and the surroundings in which she now felt at her ease, entirely absorbed in her hatred for the society--hague society--which had become hostile to her because she refused to go on living with a cad who ill-treated her. and, while she was reading, duco thought: she would not write like that if she were not writing it all down from her own suffering. why doesn't she make a novel of it? why generalize from one's personal sorrows and why that bitter, warning voice?... he did not like it. he thought the sound of that voice was hard, those truths so personal, that bitterness unattractive and that hatred of convention so small. and, when she put a question to him, he did not say much, nodded his head in vague approval and remained sitting in his stiff, uncomfortable attitude. he did not know what to answer, he was unable to admire, he thought her inartistic. and yet a great compassion welled up within him when he saw, in spite of it all, how charming she would be and what charm and womanly dignity would be hers could she find the line of her life and move harmoniously along that line with the music of her own movement. he now saw her taking a wrong road, a path pointed out to her by the fingers of others and not entered upon from the impulse of her own soul. and he felt the deepest pity for her. he, an artist, but above all a dreamer, sometimes saw vividly, despite his dreaming, despite his sometimes all-embracing love of line and colour and atmosphere; he, the artist and dreamer, sometimes very clearly saw the emotion looming through the outward actions of his fellow-creatures, saw it like light shining through alabaster; and he suddenly saw her lost, seeking, straying: seeking she herself knew not what, straying she herself knew not through what labyrinth, far from her line, the line of her life and the course of her soul's journey, which she had never yet found. she sat before him excitedly. she had read her last pages with a flushed face, in a resonant voice, her whole being in a fever. she looked as if she would have liked to fling those bitter pages at the feet of her dutch sisters, at the feet of all women. he, absorbed in his speculations, melancholy in his pity for her, had scarcely listened, nodding his head in vague approval. and suddenly she began to speak of herself, revealed herself wholly, told him her life: her existence as a young girl at the hague, her education with a view to shining a little and being attractive and pretty, with not one serious glance at her future, only waiting for a good match, with a flirtation here and a little love-affair there, until she was married: a good match, in her own circle; her husband a first lieutenant of hussars, a fine, handsome fellow, of a good, distinguished family, with a little money. she had fallen in love with him for his handsome face and his fine figure, which his uniform showed to advantage, and he with her as he might have done with any other girl who had a pretty face. then came the revelation of those very early days: the discord between their characters manifesting itself luridly at once. she, spoilt at home, dainty, delicate, fastidious, but selfishly fastidious and flying out against any offence to her own spoilt little _ego_; he no longer the lover but immediately and brutally the man with rights to this and rights to that, with an oath here and a roar there; she with neither the tact nor the patience to make of their foundering lives what could still be made of them, nervous, quick-tempered, quick to resent coarseness, which made his savagery flare up so violently that he ill-treated her, swore at her, struck her, shook her and banged her against the wall. the divorce followed. he had not consented at first, content, in spite of all, to have a house and in that house a wife, female to him, the male, and declining to return to the discomfort of life in chambers, until she simply ran away, first to her parents, then to friends in the country, protesting loudly against the law, which was so unjust to women. he had yielded at last and allowed himself to be accused of infidelity, which was not beside the truth. she was now free, but stood as it were alone, looked at askance by all her acquaintances, refusing to yield to their conventional demand for that sort of half-mourning which, according to their conventional ideas, should surround a divorced woman and at once returning to her former life, the gay life of an unmarried girl. but she had felt that this could not go on, both because of her acquaintances and because of herself: her acquaintances looking at her askance and she loathing her acquaintances, loathing their parties and dinners, until she felt profoundly unhappy, lonely and forlorn, without anything or anybody to cling to, and experienced all the depression that weighs down on the divorced woman. sometimes, in her heart of hearts, she reflected that by dint of great patience and great tact she might have managed that man, that he was not wicked, only coarse, that she was still fond of him, or at least of his handsome face and his sturdy figure. love, no, it was not love; but had she ever thought of love as she now sometimes pictured it? and did not nearly everybody live more or less so-so, with a good deal of give and take? but this regret she hardly confessed to herself, did not now confess to duco; and what she did confess was her bitterness, her hatred of her husband, of marriage, of convention, of people, of the world, of all the great generalities, generalizing her own feelings into one great curse against life. he listened to her with pity. he felt that there was something noble in her, which, however, had been stifled from, the beginning. he forgave her for not being artistic, but he was sorry that she had never found herself, that she did not know what she was, who she was, what her life should be, or where the line of her life wound, the only path which she ought to tread, as every life follows one path. oh, how often, if a person would let herself go, like a flower, like a bird, like a cloud, like a star which so obediently ran its course, she would find her happiness and her life, even as the flower or the bird finds them, even as the cloud drifts before the sun, even as the star follows its course through the heavens! but he told her nothing of his thoughts, knowing that, especially in her present mood of bitterness, she would not understand them and could derive no comfort from them, because they would be too vague for her and too far removed from her own manner of thinking. she thought of herself, but imagined that she was thinking of women and girls and their movement towards the future. women's lines ... but had not every woman a line of her own? only, how few of them knew it: their direction, their path, their line of life, their wavering course in the twilight of the future. and perhaps, because they did not know it for themselves, they were now all seeking together a broad path, a main road, along which they would march in troops, in a threatening multitude of women, in regiments of women, with banners and mottoes and war-cries, a broad path, parallel with the movement of the men, until the two paths would melt into one, until the troops of women would mingle with the troops of men, with equal rights and equal fullness of life.... he said nothing to her. she noticed his silence and did not see how much was going on within him, how earnestly he was thinking of her, how profoundly he pitied her. she thought that she had bored him. and suddenly, around her, she saw the dim, barren room, saw that the fire was out; and her zeal subsided, her fever cooled and she thought her pamphlet bad, lacking strength and conviction. what would she not have given for a word from him! but he sat silent, seemed to take no interest, probably did not admire her style of writing. and she felt sad, deserted, lonely, estranged from him and bitter because of the estrangement; she felt ready to weep, to sob; and, strange to say, in her bitterness she thought of _him_, of her husband, with his handsome face. she could not restrain herself, she wept. duco came up to her, put his hand on her shoulder. then she felt something of what was going on within him and that his silence was not due to coldness. she told him that she could not remain alone that evening: she was too wretched, too wretched. he comforted her, said that there was much that was good, much that was true in her pamphlet; that he was not a good judge of these modern questions; that he was never clever except when he talked about italy; that he felt so little for people and so much for statues, so little for what was newly building for a coming century and so much for what lay in ruins and remained over from earlier centuries. he said it as though apologizing. she smiled through her tears but repeated that she could not stay alone that evening and that she was coming with him to belloni's, to his mother and sisters. and they went together, they walked round together; and, to divert her mind, he spoke to her of his own thoughts, told her anecdotes of the renascence masters. she did not hear what he said, but his voice was sweet to her ears. there was something so gentle about his indifference to the modern things that interested her, he had so much calmness, healing as balsam, in the restfulness of his soul, which allowed itself to move along the golden thread of his dreams, as though that thread was the line of his life, so much calmness and gentleness that she too grew calmer and gentler and looked up to him with a smile. and, however far removed they might be from each other--he going along a dreamy path, she lost in an obscure maze--they nevertheless felt each other approaching, felt their souls drawing nearer to each other, while their bodies moved beside each other in the actual street, through rome, in the evening. he put his arm through hers to guide her steps. and, when they came in sight of belloni's, she thanked him, she did not know exactly for what: for the look in his eyes, for his voice, for the walk, for the consolation which she felt inexplicably yet clearly radiating from him; and she was glad to have come with him this evening and to feel the distraction of the belloni _table-d'hôte_ around her. but at night, alone, alone in her bare rooms, she was overcome by her wretchedness as by a sea of blackness; and, looking out at the colosseum, which showed faintly as a black arc in the black night, she sobbed until she felt herself sinking to the point of death, derelict, lonely and forlorn, high up above rome, above the roofs, above the pale lights of rome by night, under the clouds of the black night, sinking and derelict, as though she were drifting, a ship-wrecked waif on an ocean which drowned the world and roared its plaint to the inexorable heavens. chapter xiv nevertheless cornélie recovered her calmness when her pamphlet was finished. she unpacked her trunks, arranged her rooms a little more snugly and, now more at her ease, rewrote the pamphlet and, in the revision, improved her style and even her ideas. when she had done working in the morning, she usually lunched at a small _osteria_, where she nearly always met duco van der staal and had her meal with him at a little table. as a rule she dined at belloni's, beside the van der staals, in order to obtain a little diversion. the marchesa had not bowed to her at first, though she suffered her to attend her _table-d'hôte_, at three lire an evening; but after a time she bowed to cornélie again, with a bitter-sweet little smile, for she had relet her two rooms at a higher price. and cornélie, in her calmer mood, found it pleasant to change in the evening, to see mrs. van der staal and the girls, to listen to their little stories about the roman _salons_ and to cast a glance over the long tables. and they saw that the guests were ever again different, as in a kaleidoscope of fleeting personalities. rudyard had disappeared, owing money to the marchesa, no one knew whither; the von rothkirches had gone to greece; but urania hope was still there and sat next to the marchesa belloni. on her other side was the nephew, the prince of forte-braccio, duke of san stefano, who dined at belloni's every night. and cornélie saw that a sort of conspiracy was in progress, the marchesa and the prince laying siege to the vain little american from either side. and next day she saw two _monsignori_ seated in eager conversation with urania at the marchesa's table, while the marchesa and the prince nodded their heads. all the visitors commented on it, every eye was turned in that direction, everybody watched the manoeuvres and delighted in the romance. cornélie was the only one who was not amused. she would have liked to warn urania against the marchesa, the prince and the _monsignori_ who had taken rudyard's place, but especially against marriage, even marriage with a prince and duke. and, growing excited, she spoke to mrs. van der staal and the girls, repeating phrases out of her pamphlet, glowing with her red young hatred against society and people and the world. dinner was over; and, still eagerly talking, she went with the van der staals--mevrouw and the girls and duco--to the drawing-room, sat down in a corner, resumed her conversation, flew out at mevrouw, who had contradicted her, and then suddenly saw a fat lady--the girls had already nicknamed her the satin frigate--come towards her with a smile and say, while still at some distance: "i beg your pardon, but there's something i want to say. look here, i have been to belloni's regularly every winter for the last ten years, from january to easter; and every evening after dinner--but _only_ after dinner--i sit in _this_ corner, at _this_ table, on _this_ sofa. i hope you won't mind, but i should be glad to have my own seat now." and the satin frigate smiled amiably; but, when the van der staals and cornélie rose in mute amazement, she dumped herself down with a rustle on the sofa, bobbed up and down for a moment on the springs, laid her crochet-work on the table with a gesture as though she were planting the union jack in a new colony and said, with her most amiable smile: "very much obliged. so many thanks." duco roared, the girls giggled, but the satin frigate merely nodded to them good-humouredly. and, not even yet realizing what had happened, astounded but gay, they sat down in another comer, the girls still seized with an irrepressible giggle. the two æsthetic ladies, in the evening-dress and the jaegers, who sat reading at the table in the middle of the room, closed their two books with one slam, rose and indignantly went away, because people were laughing and talking in the drawing-room: "it's a shame!" they said, aloud. and, angular, arrogant and grimy, they stalked out through the door. "what strange people!" thought duco, smiling. "shadows of people!... their lines curl like arabesque through ours. why do they cross our lines with their petty movements and why are ours never crossed by those which perhaps would be dearest to our souls?..." he always took cornélie back to the via dei serpenti. they walked slowly through the silent, deserted streets. sometimes it was late in the evening, but sometimes it was immediately after dinner and then they would go through the corso and he would generally ask her to come and sit at aragno's for a little. she agreed and they drank their coffee amid the gaiety of the brightly-lit café, watching the bustle on the pavement outside. they exchanged few words, distracted by the passers-by and the visitors to the café; but they both enjoyed this moment and felt at one with each other. duco evidently did not give a thought to the unconventionality of their behaviour; but cornélie thought of mrs. van der staal and that she would not approve of it or consent to it in one of her daughters, sitting alone with a gentleman in a café in the evening. and cornélie also remembered the hague and smiled at the thought of her hague friends. and she looked at duco, who sat quietly, pleased to be sitting with her, and drank his coffee and spoke a word now and again or pointed to a queer type or a pretty woman passing.... one evening, after dinner, he suggested that they should all go to the ruins. it was full moon, a wonderful sight. but mevrouw was afraid of malaria, the girls of foot-pads; and duco and cornélie went by themselves. the streets were quite empty, the colosseum rose menacingly like a fortress in the night; but they went in and the moonlight blue of the night shone through the open arches: the round pit of the arena was black on one side with shadow, while the stream of moonlight poured in on the other side, like a white flood, like a cascade; and it was as though the night were haunted, as though the colosseum were haunted by all the dead past of rome, emperors, gladiators and martyrs; shadows prowled like lurking wild animals, a patch of light suggested a naked woman and the galleries seemed to rustle with the sound of the multitude. and yet there was nothing and duco and cornélie were alone, in the depths of the huge, colossal ruin, half in shadow and half in light; and, though she was not afraid, she was obsessed by that awful haunting of the past and pushed closer to him and clutched his arm and felt very, very small. he just pressed her hand, with his simple ease of manner, to reassure her. and the night oppressed her, the ghostliness of it all suffocated her, the moon seemed to whirl giddily in the sky and to expand to a gigantic size and spin round like a silver wheel. he said nothing, he was in one of his dreams, seeing the past before him. and silently they went away and he led her through the arch of titus into the forum. on the left rose the ruins of the imperial palaces; and all around them stood the black fragments, with a few pillars soaring on high and the white moonlight pouring down like a ghostly sea out of the night. they met no one, but she was frightened and clung tighter to his arm. when they sat down for a moment on a fragment of the foundation of some ancient building, she shivered with cold. he started up, said that she must be careful not to catch a chill; and they walked on and left the forum. he took her home and she went upstairs alone, striking a match to see her way up the dark staircase. once in her room, she perceived that it was dangerous to wander about the ruins at night. she reflected how little duco had spoken, not thinking of danger, lost in his nocturnal dream, peering into the awful ghostliness. why ... why had he not gone alone? why had he asked her to go with him? she fell asleep after a chaos of whirling thoughts: the prince and urania, the fat satin lady, the colosseum and the martyrs and duco and mrs. van der staal. his mother was so ordinary, his sisters charming but commonplace and he ... so strange! so simple, so unaffected, so unreserved; and for that very reason so strange. he would be impossible at the hague, among her friends. and she smiled as she thought of what he had said and how he had said it and how he could sit quietly silent, for minutes on end, with a smile about his lips, as though thinking of something beautiful.... but she must warn urania.... and she wearily fell asleep. chapter xv cornélie's premonition regarding mrs. van der staal's opinion of her intercourse with duco was confirmed: mevrouw spoke to her seriously, saying that she would compromise herself if she went on like that and adding that she had spoken to duco in the same sense. but cornélie answered rather haughtily and nonchalantly, declared that, after always minding the conventions and becoming very unhappy in spite of it, she had resolved to mind them no longer, that she valued duco's conversation and that she was not going to be deprived of it because of what people thought or said. and then, she asked mrs. van der staal, who were "people?" their three or four acquaintances at belloni's? who knew her besides? where else did she go? why should she care about the hague? and she gave a scornful laugh, loftily parrying mrs. van der staal's arguments. the conversation caused a coolness between them. wounded in her touchy over-sensitiveness, she did not come to dinner at belloni's that evening. next day, meeting duco at their little table in the _osteria_, she asked him what he thought of his mother's rebuke. he smiled vaguely, raising his eyebrows, obviously nut realizing the commonplace truth of his mother's words, saying that those were just mamma's ideas, which, of course, were all very well and current in the set in which mamma and his sisters lived, but which he didn't enter into or bother about, unless cornélie thought that mamma was right. and cornélie blazed out contemptuously, shrugged her shoulders, asked who or what there was for whose sake she should allow herself to break off their friendly intercourse. they ordered a _mezzo-fiasco_ between them and had a long, chatty lunch like two comrades, like two students. he said that he had been thinking over her pamphlet; he talked, to please her, about the modern woman, modern marriage, the modern girl. she condemned the way in which mrs. van der staal was bringing up her daughters, that light, frivolous education and that endless going about on the look for a husband. she said that she spoke from experience. they walked along the via appia that afternoon and went to the catacombs, where a trappist showed them round. when cornélie returned home she felt pleasantly light and cheerful. she did not go out again; she piled up the logs on her fire against the evening, which was turning chilly, and supped off a little bread and jelly, so as not to go out for her dinner. sitting in her tea-gown, with her hands folded over her head, she stared into the briskly burning logs and let the evening speed past her. she was satisfied with her life, so free, independent of everything and everybody. she had a little money, she could go on living like this. she had no great needs. her life in rooms, in little restaurants was not expensive. she wanted no clothes. she felt satisfied. duco was an agreeable friend: how lonely she would be without him! only her life must acquire some aim. what aim? the feminist movement? but how, abroad? it was such a different movement to work at.... she would send her pamphlet now to a newly founded women's paper. but then? she wasn't in holland and she didn't want to go to holland; and yet there would certainly be more scope there for her activity, for exchanging views with others. whereas here, in rome.... an indolence overcame her, in the drowsiness of her cosy room. he certainly was a cultivated fellow, even though he was not modern. what a lot he knew about history, about italy; and how cleverly he told it all! the way he explained italy to her, she was interested in the country after all. only, he wasn't modern. he had no insight into italian politics, into the struggle between the quirinal and the vatican, into anarchism, which was showing its head at milan, into the riots in sicily.... an aim in life: what a difficult thing it was! and, in her evening drowsiness after a pleasant day, she did not feel the absence of an aim and enjoyed the soft luxury of letting her thoughts glide on in unison with the sleepy evening hours, in a voluptuous self-indulgence. she looked at the sheets of her pamphlet, scattered over her big writing-table, a real table to work at: they lay yellow under the light of her reading-lamp; they had not all been recopied, but she was not in the mood now; she threw a log into the little grate and the fire smoked and blazed. so pleasant, that foreign habit of burning wood instead of coal.... and she thought of her husband. she missed him sometimes. could she not have managed him, with a little tact and patience? after all, he was very nice during the period of their engagement. he was rough, but not bad. he might have sworn at her sometimes, but perhaps he did not mean any great harm. he waltzed divinely, he swung you round so firmly.... he was good-looking and, she had to confess, she was in love with him, if only for his handsome face, his handsome figure. there was something about his eyes and mouth that she was never able to resist. when he spoke, she had to look at his mouth. however, that was all over and done with.... after all, perhaps the life of the hague was too monotonous for her temperament. she liked travelling, seeing new people, developing new ideas; and she had never been able to settle down in her little set. and now she was free, independent of all ties, of all people. if mrs. van der staal was angry, she didn't care.... and, all the same, duco _was_ rather modern, in his indifference to convention. or was it merely the artistic side of him? or was he, as a man who was not modern, indifferent to it even as she, a modern woman, was? a man could allow himself greater licence. a man was not so easily compromised.... a modern woman. she repeated the words proudly. she drew herself up, stretching out her arms, looked at herself in the glass: her slender figure, her delicate little face, a trifle pale, with the eyes big and grey and bright under their remarkably long lashes, her light-brown hair in a loose, tangled coil, the lines of her figure, like those of a drooping lily, very winsome in the creased folds of her old tea-gown, pale-pink and faded.... what was her path in life? she felt herself to be something more than a worker and a fighter, to be very complex, felt that she was a woman too, felt a great womanliness inside her, like a weakness which would hamper her energy. and she wandered through the room, unable to make up her mind to go to bed, and, staring into the gloomy ashes of the expiring fire, she thought of her future, of what she would become and how, of how she would go and whither, along which curve of life, wandering through what forests, winding through what alleys, crossing which other curves of which other, seeking souls.... chapter xvi the idea had long fixed itself in cornélie's mind that she must speak to urania hope; and one morning she sent her a note asking for an appointment that afternoon. miss hope wrote back assenting; and at five o'clock cornélie found her at home in her handsome and expensive sitting-room at belloni's: many lights, many flowers; urania hammering on the piano in an indoor gown of venetian lace; the table decked with a rich tea, with cut bread-and-butter, cakes and sweets. cornélie had said that she wanted to see miss hope alone, on a matter of importance, and at once asked if she would be alone, feeling a doubt about it, now that urania was receiving her so formally. but urania reassured her: she had said that she was at home to no one but mrs. de retz and was very curious to know what cornélie had come to talk about. cornélie reminded urania of her former warning and, when urania laughed, she took her hand and looked at her with such serious eyes that she made an impression of the american girl's frivolous nature and urania became puzzled. urania now suddenly thought it very momentous--a secret, an intrigue, a danger, in rome!--and they whispered together. and cornélie, no longer feeling anxious amid this increasing intimacy, confessed to urania what she had heard through the half-open door: the marchesa's machinations with her nephew, whom she was absolutely bent on marrying to a rich heiress at the behest of the prince's father, who seemed to have promised her so much for putting the match through. then she spoke of miss taylor's conversion, effected by rudyard: rudyard, who did not seem able to achieve his purpose with urania, failing to obtain a hold on her confiding but frivolous, butterfly nature, and who, as cornélie suspected, had for that reason incurred the disfavour of his ecclesiastical superiors and vanished without settling his debt to the marchesa. his place appeared to have been taken by the two _monsignori_, who looked more dignified and worldly and displayed greater unctuousness, and were more lavish in smiles. and urania, staring at this danger, at these pit-falls under her feet which cornélie had suddenly revealed to her, now became really frightened, turned pale and promised to be on her guard. really she would have liked to tell her maid to pack up at once, so flat they might leave rome as soon as possible, for another town, another _pension_, one with lots of titled people: she adored titles! and cornélie, seeing that she had made an impression, continued, spoke of herself, spoke of marriage in general, said that she had written a pamphlet against marriage and on _the social_ _position of divorced women_. and she spoke of the suffering which she had been through and of the feminist movement in holland. and, once in the vein, she abandoned all restraint and talked more and more emphatically, until urania thought her exceedingly clever, a very clever girl, to be able to argue and write like that on a _question brulante_, laying a fine stress on the first syllables of the french words. she admitted that she would like to have the vote and, as she said this, spread out the long train of her lace tea-gown. cornélie spoke of the injustice of the law which leaves the wife nothing, takes everything from her and forces her entirely into her husband's power; and urania agreed with her and passed the little dish of chocolate-creams. and, to the accompaniment of a second cup of tea, they talked excitedly, both speaking at once, neither listening to what the other was saying; and urania said that it was a shame. from the general discussion they relapsed to the consideration of their particular interests: cornélie depicted the character of her husband, unable, in the coarseness of his nature, to understand a woman or to consent that a woman should stand beside him and not beneath him. and she once more returned to the jesuits, to the danger of rome for rich girls travelling alone, to that virago of a marchesa and to the prince, that titled bait which the jesuits flung to win a soul and to improve the finances of an impoverished italian house which had remained faithful to the pope and refused to serve the king. and both of them were so vehement and excited that they did not hear the knock and looked up only when the door slowly opened. they started, glanced round and both turned pale when they saw the prince of forte-braccio enter the room. he apologized with a smile, said that he had seen a light in miss urania's sitting-room, that the porter had told him she was engaged, but that he had ventured to disobey her orders. and he sat down; and, in spite of all that they had been saying, urania thought it delightful to have the prince sitting there and accepting a cup of tea at her hands and graciously consenting to eat a piece of cake. and urania showed her album of coats of arms--the prince had already contributed an impression of his--and next the album with patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. then the prince laughed and felt in his pocket for an envelope; he opened it and carefully produced a cutting of blue brocade embroidered with silver and seed-pearls. "what is it?" asked urania, in ecstasy. and he said that he had brought her a pattern of her majesty's last dress; his cousin--not a black, like himself, but a white, belonging not to the papal but to the court party and a lady-in-waiting to the queen--had procured this cutting for him for urania's album. urania would see it herself: the queen would wear the dress at next week's court ball. he was not going, he did not even go to his cousin's officially, not to her parties; but he saw her sometimes, because of the family relationship, out of friendship. and he begged urania not to give him away: it might injure him in his career--"what career?" cornélie wondered to herself--if people knew that he saw much of his cousin; but he had called on her pretty often lately, for urania's sake, to get her that pattern. and urania was so grateful that she forgot all about the social position of girls and women, married and unmarried, and would gladly have sacrificed her right to the franchise for such a charming italian prince. cornélie became vexed, rose, bowed coldly to the prince and drew urania with her to the door: "don't forget what we have been saying," she warned her. "be on your guard." and she saw the prince look at her sarcastically as they whispered together, suspecting that she was talking about him, but proud of the power of his personality and title and attentions over the daughter of an american stockinet-manufacturer. chapter xvii a coolness had arisen between mrs. van der staal and cornélie; and cornélie no longer went to dine at belloni's. she did not see mevrouw and the girls again for weeks; but she saw duco daily. notwithstanding the essential differences in their characters, they had grown so accustomed to being together that they missed each other if a day passed without their meeting; and so they had gradually come to lunch and dine together every day, almost as a matter of course: in the morning at the _osteria_ and in the evening at some small restaurant or other, usually very simply. to avoid dividing the bill, duco would pay one time and cornélie the next. generally they had much to talk about: he taught her rome, took her after lunch to all manner of churches and museums; and under his guidance she began to understand, appreciate and admire. by unconscious suggestion he inspired her with some of his ideas. she found painting very difficult, but understood sculpture much more readily. and she began to look upon him as not merely morbid; she looked up to him, he spoke quite simply to her, as from his exalted standpoint of feeling and knowledge and understanding, of very exalted matters which she, as a girl and later as a young married woman, had never seen in the glorious apotheosis which he caused to rise before her like the first gleam of a dawn, of a new day in which she beheld new types of life, created of all that was noblest in the artist's soul. he regretted that he could not show her giotto in the santa croce at florence and the primitives in the uffizi and that he had to teach her rome straight away; but lie introduced her to all the exuberant art-life of the papal renascence, until, under the influence of his speech, she shared that life for a single intense second and until michael angelo and raphael stood out before her, also living. after a day like this, he would think that, after all, she was not so hopelessly inartistic; and she thought of him with respect, even after the suggestion was interrupted and when she reflected on what she had seen and heard and really, deep down in herself, no longer understood things so well as she had that morning, because she was lacking in love for them. but so much glamour of colour arid of the past remained whirling before her eyes in the evening that it made her pamphlet seem drab and dull; and the feminist movement ceased to interest her and she did not care about urania hope. he admitted to himself that he had quite lost his peace of mind, that cornélie stood before him in his thoughts, between him and his old triptychs, that his lonely, friendless, ingenuous, simple life, content with wandering through and outside rome, with reading, dreaming and now and then painting a little, had changed entirely in habit and in line, now that the line of his life had joined that of hers and they both seemed to be going one way, he did not really know why. love was not exactly the word for the feeling that drew him towards her. and just very vaguely, inwardly and unconsciously he suspected, though he never actually said or even thought as much, that it was the line of her figure, which was marked by something almost byzantine, the slenderness of the frame, the long arms, the drooping lily-line of the woman who suffered, with the melancholy in her grey eyes, overshadowed by their almost too-long lashes; that it was the noble shape of her hand, small and pretty for a tall woman; that it was a movement of her neck, as of a swaying stalk, or a tired swan trying to glance backwards. he had never met many women and those whom he had met had always seemed very ordinary; but she was unreal to him, in the contradictions of her character, in its vagueness and intangibility, in all the half-tints which escaped his eye, accustomed to half-tints though it was.... what was she like? what he had always seen in her character was a woman in a novel, a heroine in a poem. what was she as a living woman of flesh and blood? she was not artistic and she was not inartistic; she had no energy and yet she did not lack energy; she was not precisely cultivated and yet, obeying her impulse and her intuition, she wrote a pamphlet on one of the most modern questions and worked at it and revised and copied it, till it became a piece of writing no worse than another. she had a spacious way of thinking, loathing all the pettiness of the cliques, no longer feeling at home, after her suffering, in her little hague set; and here, in rome, at a dance, she listened behind a door to a nonsensical conspiracy, hardly worthy of the name, he thought, and had gone to urania hope to mingle with the confused curves of smaller lives, curves without importance, of people whom he despised for their lack of line, of colour, of vision, of haze, of everything that was dear as life to him and made up life for him.... what was she like? he did not understand her. but her curve was of importance to him. she was not without a line: a line of art and line of life; she moved in the dream of her own indefiniteness before his gazing eyes; and she loomed up out of the haze, as out of the twilight of his studio atmosphere, and stood before him like a phantom. he would not call that love; but she was dear to him like a revelation that was constantly veiling itself in secrecy. and his life as a lonely wanderer was, it was true, changed; but she had introduced no inharmonious habit into his life: he enjoyed taking his meals in a little café or _osteria_; and she took them with him easily and simply, not squalidly but pleasantly and harmoniously, with an adaptability and with just as much natural grace as when she used to dine of an evening at the _table-d'hôte_ at belloni's. all this--that contradictory admixture of unreality, of inconsistency; that living vision of indefiniteness; that intangibility of her individual essence; that self-concealment of the soul; that blending of her essential characteristics--had become a charm to him: a restlessness, a need, a nervous want in his life, otherwise so restful, so easily contented and calm, but above all a charm, an indispensable everyday charm. and, without troubling about what people might think, about what mrs. van der staal thought, they would one day go to tivoli together, or another day walk from castel gandolfo to albano and drive to the lago di nemi and picnic at the villa sforza-cesarini, with the broken capital of a classic pillar for a table. they rested side by side in the shadow of the trees, admired the camellias, silently contemplated the glassy clearness of the lake, diana's looking-glass, and drove back over frascati. they were silent in the carriage; and he smiled as he reflected how they had been taken everywhere that day for man and wife. she also thought of their increasing intimacy and at the same time thought that she would never marry again. and she thought of her husband and compared him with duco, so young in the face but with eyes full of depth and soul, a voice so calm and even, with everything that he said so much to the point, so accurately informed; and then his calmness, his simplicity, his lack of passion, as though his nerves had schooled themselves only to feel the calmness of art in the dreamy mist of his life. and she confessed to herself, there, in the carriage beside him, amid the softly shelving hills, purpling away in the evening, while before her faded the rose-mallow of a pale gold sunset, that he was dear to her because of that cleverness, that absence of passion, that simplicity and that accuracy of information--a clear voice sounding up out of the dreamy twilight--and that she was happy to be sitting beside him, to hear that voice and by chance to feel his hand, happy in that her line of life had crossed his, in that their two lines seemed to form a path towards the increasing brightness, the gradual daily elucidation of their immediate future.... chapter xviii cornélie now saw no one except duco. mrs. van der staal had broken with her and would not allow her daughters to have any further intercourse with her. a coolness had arisen even between the mother and the son. cornélie saw no one now except duco and, at times, urania hope. the american girl came to her pretty often and told her about belloni's, where the people talked about cornélie and duco and commented on their relations. urania was glad to think herself above that hotel gossip, but still she wanted to warn cornélie. her words displayed a simple spontaneity of friendship that appealed to cornélie. when cornélie, however, asked after the prince, she became silent and confused and evidently did not wish to say much. then, after the court ball, at which the queen had really worn the dress embroidered with seed-pearls, urania came and looked cornélie up again and admitted, over a cup of tea, that she had that morning promised to go and see the prince at his own place. she said this quite simply, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. cornélie was horrified and asked her how she could have promised such a thing. "why not?" urania replied. "what is there in it? i receive his visits. if he asks me to come and see his rooms--he lives in the palazzo ruspoli and wants to show me his pictures and miniatures and old lace--why should i refuse to go? why should i make a fuss about it? i am above any such narrow-mindedness. we american girls go about freely with our men friends. and what about yourself? you go for walks with mr. van der staal, you lunch with him, you go for trips with him, you go to his studio...." "i have been married," said cornélie. "i am responsible to no one. you have your parents. what you are thinking of doing is imprudent and high-handed. tell me, does the prince think of ... marrying you?" "if i become a catholic." "and...?" "i think ... i shall. i have written to chicago," she said, hesitatingly. she closed her beautiful eyes for a second and went pale, because the title of princess and duchess flashed before her sight: "only...." she began. "only what?" "i sha'n't have a cheerful life. the prince belongs to the blacks. they are always in mourning because of the pope. they have hardly anything in their set: no dances, no parties. if we got married, i should like him to come to america with me. their home in the abruzzi is a lonely, tumble-down castle. his father is a very proud, stand-offish, silent person. i have been told so by ever so many people. what am i to do, cornélie? i'm very fond of gilio: his name is virgilio. and then, you know, the title is an old italian title: principe di forte-braccio, duca di san stefano.... but then, you see, that's all there is to it. san stefano is a hole. that's where his papa lives. they sell wine and live on that. and olive-oil; but they don't make any money. my father manufactures stockinet; but he has grown rich on it. they haven't many family-jewels. i have made enquiries.... his cousin, the contessa di rosavilla, the lady-in-waiting to the queen, is nice ... but we shouldn't see her officially. i shouldn't be able to go anywhere. it does strike me as rather boring." cornélie spoke vehemently, blazed out and repeated her phrases: against marriage in general and now against this marriage in particular, merely for the sake of a title. urania assented: it was merely for the title; but then there was gilio too, of course: he was so nice and she was fond of him. but cornélie didn't believe a word of it and told her so straight out. urania began to cry: she did not know what to do. "and when were you to go to the prince?" "this evening." "don't go." "no, no, you're right, i sha'n't go." "do you promise me?" "yes, yes." "don't go, urania." "no, i sha'n't go. you're a dear girl. you're quite right: i won't go. i swear to you i won't." chapter xix the undertaking which urania had given was so vague, however, that cornélie felt uneasy and spoke of it to duco that evening, when she met him at the restaurant. but he was not interested in urania, in what she did or didn't do; and he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. cornélie, on the other hand, was silent and absent-minded and did not listen to what he was talking about: a side-panel of a triptych, undoubtedly by lippo memmi, which he had discovered in a little shop by the tiber; the angel of the annunciation, almost as beautiful as the one in the uffizi, kneeling with the stir of his last flight yet about him, with the lily-stem in his hands. but the dealer asked two hundred lire for it and he did not want to give more than fifty. and yet the dealer had not mentioned memmi's name, did not suspect that the angel was by memmi. cornélie was not listening; and suddenly she said: "i am going to the palazzo ruspoli." he looked up in surprise: "what for?" "to ask for miss hope." he was dumb with amazement and stared at her open-mouthed. "if she's not there," cornélie went on, "it's all right. if she is, if she has gone after all, i'll ask to speak to her on urgent business." he did not know what to say, thinking her sudden idea so strange, so eccentric, thinking it so unnecessary that her curve should cross the curves of insignificant, indifferent people, that he did not know how to choose his words. cornélie glanced at her watch: "it's past half-past nine. if she does go, she will go about this time." she called the waiter and paid the bill. and she buttoned her coat and stood up. he followed after her: "cornélie," he began, "isn't what you are doing rather strange? it'll mean all sorts of worries for you." "if one always objected to being worried, one would never do a good action." they walked on in silence, he moving irritably by her side. they did not speak: he thought her intention simply crazy; she thought him wanting in chivalry, not to wish to protect urania. she was thinking of her pamphlet, of her fellow-women; and she wanted to protect urania from marriage, from that prince. and they walked through the corso to the palazzo ruspoli. he became nervous, made another attempt to restrain her; but she had already asked the porter: "is _il signore principe_ at home?" the man looked at her suspiciously: "no," he said, curtly. "i believe he is. if so, ask if miss hope is with his excellency. miss hope was not at home; i believe that she was coming to see the prince this evening; and i want to speak to her urgently ... on a matter which will not brook delay. here: la signora de retz...." she handed him her card. she spoke with the greatest self-possession and referred to urania's visit calmly and simply, as though it were an everyday occurrence for american girls to call on italian princes in the evening and as though she were persuaded that the porter knew of this custom. the man was disconcerted by her attitude, bowed, took the card and went away. cornélie and duco waited in the portico. he admired her calmness. he considered her behaviour eccentric; but she carried out her eccentricity with a self-assurance which once more showed her in a new light. would he never understand her, would he never grasp anything or know anything for certain of that changeful and intangible vagueness of hers? he could never have spoken those few words to that porter in just that tone! where had she got that tact from, that dignified, serious attitude towards that imposing janitor, with his long cane and his cocked hat? she did it all as easily as she ordered their simple dinner, with a pleasant familiarity, of the waiter at their little restaurant. the porter returned: "miss hope and his excellency beg that you will come upstairs." she looked at duco with a triumphant smile, amused at his confusion: "will you come, too?" "why, no," he stammered. "i can wait for you here." she followed the footman up the stairs. the wide corridor was hung with family-portraits. the drawing-room-door was open and the prince came out to meet her. "please forgive me, prince," she said, calmly, putting out her hand. his eyes were small and pinched and gleamed like carbuncles; he was white with rage; but he controlled himself and pressed his lips to the hand which she gave him. "forgive me," she went on. "i want to speak to miss hope on an urgent matter." she entered the drawing-room; urania was there, blushing and embarrassed. "you understand," cornélie said, with a smile, "that i would not have disturbed you if it had not been important. a question between women ... and still important!" she continued, jestingly and the prince made an insipid, gallant reply. "may i speak to miss hope alone for a moment?" the prince looked at her. he suspected unfriendliness in her and more, hostility. but he bowed, with his insipid smile, and said that he would leave the ladies to themselves. he went to another room. "what is it, cornélie?" asked urania, in agitation. she took cornélie's two hands and looked at her anxiously. "nothing," said cornélie, severely. "i have nothing to say to you. only i had my suspicions and felt sure that you would not keep your promise. i wanted to make certain if you were here. why did you come?" urania began to weep. "don't cry!" whispered cornélie, mercilessly. "for god's sake don't start crying! you've done the most thoughtless thing imaginable...." "i know i have!" urania confessed, nervously, drying her tears. "then why did you do it?" "i couldn't help it." "alone, with him, in the evening! a man well-known to be a bad lot." "i know." "what do you see in him?" "i'm fond of him." "you only want to marry him for his title. for the sake of his title you're compromising yourself. what if he doesn't respect you this evening as his future wife? what if he compels you to be his mistress?" "cornélie! don't!" "you're a child, a thoughtless child. and your father lets you travel by yourself ... to see 'dear old italy!' you're an american and broad-minded: that's all right; to travel through the world pluckily on your own is all right; but you're not a woman, you're a baby!" "cornélie...." "come away with me; say that you're going with me ... for an urgent reason. or no ... better say nothing. stay. but i'll stay too." "yes, you stay too." "we'll send for him now." "yes." cornélie rang the bell. a footman appeared. "tell his excellency that we are ready." the man went away. in a little while the prince entered. he had never been treated like this in his own house. he was seething with rage, but he remained very polite and outwardly calm: "is the important matter settled?" he asked, with his small eyes and his hypocritical smile. "yes; thank you very much for your discretion in leaving us to ourselves," said cornélie. "now that i have spoken to miss hope, i am greatly relieved by what she has told me. aha, you would like to know what we were talking about!" the prince raised his eyebrows. cornélie had spoken archly, holding up her finger as though in threat, smiling; and the prince looked at her and saw that she was handsome. not with the striking beauty and freshness of urania hope, but with a more complex attractiveness, that of a married woman, divorced, but very young; that of a _fin-de-siècle_ woman, with a faintly perverse expression in her deep grey eyes, moving under very long lashes; that of a woman of peculiar grace in the drooping lines of her tired, lax, morbid charm: a woman who knew life; a woman who saw through him: he was certain of it; a woman who, though disliking him, nevertheless spoke to him coquettishly in order to attract him, to win him, unconsciously, from sheer womanly perversity. and he saw her, in her perverse beauty, and admired her, sensitive as he was to various types of women. he suddenly thought her handsomer and less commonplace than urania and much more distinguished and not so ingenuously susceptible to his title, a thing which he thought so silly in urania. he was suddenly at his ease with her, his anger subsided: he thought it fun to have two good-looking women with him instead of one; and he jested in return, saying that he was consumed with curiosity, that he had been listening at the door, but had been unable to catch a word, alas! cornélie laughed with coquettish gaiety and looked at her watch. she said something about going, but sat down at the same time, unbuttoned her coat and said to the prince: "i have heard so much about your miniatures. now that i have the chance, may i see them?" the prince was willing, charmed by the look in her eyes, by her voice; he was all fire and flame in a second. "but," said cornélie, "my escort is waiting outside in the portico. he would not come up: he doesn't know you. it is mr. van der staal." the prince laughed as he glanced at her. he knew of the gossip at belloni's. he did not for a moment doubt the existence of a _liaison_ between van der staal and signora de retz. he knew that they did not care for the proprieties. and he began to like cornélie very much. "but i will send to mr. van der staal at once to ask him to come up." "he is waiting in the portico," said cornélie. "he won't like to...." "i'll go myself," said the prince, with obliging vivacity. he left the room. the ladies stayed behind. cornélie took off her coat, but kept on her hat, because her hair was sure to be untidy. she looked into the glass: "have you your powder on you?" she asked urania. urania took her little ivory powder-box from her bag and handed it to cornélie. and, while cornélie powdered her face, urania looked at her friend and did not understand. she remembered the impression of seriousness which cornélie had made on her at their first meeting: studying rome; afterwards, writing a pamphlet on the woman question and the position of divorced women. then her warnings against marriage and the prince. and now she suddenly saw her as a most attractive, frivolous woman, irresistibly charming, even more bewitching than actually beautiful, full of coquetry in the depths of her grey eyes, which glanced up and down under the curling lashes, simply dressed in a dark silk blouse and a cloth skirt, but with so much distinction and so much coquetry, with so much dignity and yet with a touch of yielding winsomeness, that she hardly knew her. but the prince had returned, bringing duco with him. duco was nervously reluctant, not knowing what had happened, not grasping how cornélie had acted. he saw her sitting quietly, smiling; and she at once explained that the prince was going to show her his miniatures. duco declared flatly that he did not care for miniatures. the prince suspected from his irritable tone that he was jealous. and this suspicion incited the prince to pay attentions to cornélie. and he behaved as though he were showing his miniatures only to _her_, as though he were showing _her_ his old lace. she admired the lace in particular and rolled it between her delicate fingers. she asked him to tell her about his grandmothers, who used to wear the lace: had they had any adventures? he told her one which made her laugh very much; then he told an anecdote or two, vivaciously, flaming up under her glance, and she laughed. amid the atmosphere of that big drawing-room, his study--it contained his writing-table--with the candles lighted and flowers everywhere for urania, a certain perverse gaiety began to reign, a frivolous _joie de vivre_. but only between cornélie and the prince. urania had fallen silent; and duco did not speak a word. cornélie was a revelation to him also. he had never seen her like that: not at the dance on christmas day, nor at the _table-d'hôte_, nor in his studio, nor on their excursions, nor in their restaurant. was she a woman, or was she ten women? and he confessed to himself that he loved her, that he loved her more at each revelation, more with each woman that he saw in her, like a new facet which she made to gleam and glitter. but he could not speak, could not join in their pleasantry, feeling strange in that atmosphere, strange in that atmosphere of buoyant animal spirits, caused by nothing but aimless words, as though the french and italian which they mixed up together were dropping so many pearls, as though their jests shone like so much tinsel, as though their equivocal playing upon words had the iridescence of a rainbow.... the prince regretted that his tea was no longer fit to drink, but he rang for some champagne. he thought that his plans had partly failed that evening, for, fearing to lose urania, he had intended to compel her; seeing her hesitation, he had resolved to force the irreparable. but his nature was so devoid of seriousness--he was marrying to please his father and the marchesa belloni rather than himself; he enjoyed his life quite as well with a load of debts and no wife as he could hope to do with a wife and millions of money--that he began to consider the failure of his plans highly amusing and had to laugh within himself when he thought of his father, of his aunt the marchesa and of their machinations, which had no effect on urania, because a pretty, flirtatious woman had objected. "why did she object?" he wondered, as he poured out the foaming monopole, spilling it over the glasses. "why does she put herself between me and the american stocking-seller? is she herself in italy to hunt for a title?" but he did not care: he thought the intruder charming, pretty, very pretty, coquettish, seductive, bewitching. he fussed around her, neglecting urania, almost forgetting to fill her glass. and, when it grew late and cornélie at last rose to go and drew urania's arm through hers and looked at the prince with a glance of triumph which they mutually understood, he whispered in her ear: "i am ever so grateful to you for visiting me in my humble abode. you have defeated me: i acknowledge myself defeated." the words appeared to be merely an allusion to their jesting discussion about nothing; but, uttered between him and her, between the prince and cornélie, they sounded full of meaning; and he saw the smile of victory in her eyes.... he stayed behind in his room and poured himself out what remained of the champagne. and, as he raised the glass to his lips, he said, aloud: "_o, che occhi! che belli occhi!... che belli occhi!..._" chapter xx next day, when duco met cornélie at the _osteria_, she was very cheerful and excited. she told him that she had already received a reply from the woman's paper to which she had sent her pamphlet the week before and that her work was not only accepted but would be paid for. she was so proud at earning money for the first time that she was as merry as a little child. she did not speak of the previous evening, seemed to have forgotten urania, but felt an exuberant need to talk. she formed all sorts of great plans: to travel about as a journalist, to fling herself into the movement of the great cities, to pursue every reality, to have herself sent by some paper as a delegate to congresses and festivals. the few guilders which she was earning already made her intoxicated with zeal; and she would like to make a lot of money and do a great deal and consider no fatigue. he thought her simply adorable: in the half light of the _osteria_, as she sat at the little table eating her _gnocchi_, with in front of her the _mezzo-fiasco_ of pale-yellow wine of the country, her usual languor acquired a new vivacity which astonished him; her outline, half-dark on the left, lighted on the right by the sunshine in the street, acquired a modern grace of drawing which reminded him of the french draughtsmen: the rather pale face with the delicate features, lit up by her smile, faintly indicated under the sailor hat, which slanted over her eyes; the hair, touched with gold, or a dark light-brown; the white veil raised into a rumpled mist above; her figure, slender and gracious in the simple, unbuttoned coat, with a bunch of violets in her blouse. the manner in which she helped herself to wine, in which she addressed the _cameriere_--the only one, who knew them well, from seeing them daily--with a pleasant familiarity; the vivacity replacing her languor; her great plans, her gay phrases: all this seemed to shine upon him, unconstrained and yet distinguished, free and yet womanly and, above all, easy, as she was at her ease everywhere, with an assimilative tact which for him constituted a peculiar harmony. he thought of the evening before, but she did not speak of it. he thought of that revelation of her coquetry, but she was not thinking of coquetry. she was never coquettish with him. she looked up to him, regarded him as clever and exceptional, though not belonging to his time; she respected him for the things which he said and thought; and she was as matter-of-fact towards him as one chum towards another, who happened to be older and cleverer. she felt for him a sincere friendship, an indescribable something that implied the need of being together, of living together, as though the lines of their two lives should form one line. it was not a sisterly feeling and it was not passion and to her mind it was not love; but it was a great sense of respectful tenderness, of longing admiration and of affectionate delight at having met him. if she never saw him again, she would miss him as she would never miss any one in her life. and that he took no interest in modern questions did not lower him in the eyes of this young modern amazon, who was about to wave her first banner. it might vex her for an instant, but it did not carry weight in her estimation of him. and he saw that, with him, she was simply affectionate, without coquetry. yet he would never forget what she had been like yesterday, with the prince. he had felt jealousy and noticed it in urania also. but she herself had acted so spontaneously in harmony with her nature that she no longer thought of that evening, of the prince, of urania, of her own coquettishness or of any possible jealousy on their side. he paid the bill--it was his turn--and she gaily took his arm and said that she had a surprise in store for him, with which he would be very pleased. she wanted to give him something, a handsome, a very handsome keepsake. she wanted to spend on it the money she was going to receive for her article. but she hadn't got it yet. as though that mattered! it would come in due time. and she wanted to give him his present now. he laughed and asked what it could be. she hailed a carriage and whispered an address to the driver. duco did not hear. what could it be? but she refused to tell him yet. the _vetturino_ drove them through the borgo to the tiber and stopped outside a dark little old-curiosity-shop, where the wares lay heaped up right out into the street. "cornélie!" duco exclaimed, guessing. "your lippo memmi angel. i'm getting it for you. not a word!" the tears came to his eyes. they entered the shop. "ask him how much he wants for it." he was too much moved to speak; and cornélie had to ask the price and bargain. she did not bargain long: she bought the panel for a hundred and twenty lire. she herself carried it to the victoria. and they drove back to his studio. they carried the angel up the stairs together, as though they were bearing an unsullied happiness into his home. in the studio they placed the angel on a chair. of a noble aspect, of a somewhat mongolian type, with long, almond-shaped eyes, the angel had just knelt down in the last stir of his flight; and the gold scarf of his gold-and-purple cloak fluttered in the air while his long wings quivered straight above him. duco stared at his memmi, filled with a twofold emotion, because of the angel and because of her. and with a natural gesture he spread out his arms: "may i thank you, cornélie?" and he embraced her; and she returned his kiss. chapter xxi when she came home she found the prince's card. it was an ordinary civility after yesterday evening, her unexpected visit to the palazzo ruspoli, and she did not give it a second thought. she was in a pleasant frame of mind, pleased with herself, glad that her work would appear first as an article in _het recht der vrouw_[ ]--she would publish it as a pamphlet afterwards--and glad that she had made duco happy with the memmi. she changed into her tea-gown and sat down by the fire in her musing attitude and thought of how she could carry out her great plans. to whom ought she to apply? there was an international women's congress sitting in london; and _het recht der vrouw_ had sent her a prospectus. she turned over the pages. different feminist leaders were to speak; there would be numbers of social questions discussed: the psychology of the child; the responsibility of the parents; the influence on domestic life of women's admission to all the professions; women in art, women in medicine; the fashionable woman; the woman at home, on the stage; marriage- and divorce-laws. in addition, the prospectus gave concise biographies of the speakers, with their portraits. there were american, russian, english, swedish, danish women; nearly every nationality was represented. there were old women and young women: some pretty, some ugly; some masculine, some womanly; some hard and energetic, with sexless boys' faces: one or two only were elegant, with low-cut dresses and waved hair. it was not easy to divide them into groups. what impulse in their lives had prompted them to join in the struggle for women's rights? in some, no doubt, inclination, nature; in an occasional case, vocation; in another, the desire to be in the fashion. and, in her own case, what was the impulse?... she dropped the prospectus in her lap and stared into the fire and reflected. her drawing-room education passed before her once more, followed by her marriage, by her divorce.... what was the impulse? what was the inducement?... she had come to it gradually, to go abroad, to extend her sphere of vision, to reflect, to learn about art, about the modern life of women. she had glided gradually along the line of her life, with no great effort of will or striving, without even thinking much or feeling much.... she glanced into herself, as though she were reading a modern novel, the psychology of a woman. sometimes she seemed to will things, to wish to strive, as just now, to pursue her great plans. sometimes she would sit thinking, as she often did in these days, beside her cosy fire. sometimes she felt, as she now did, for duco. but mostly her life had been a gradual gliding along the line which she had to follow, urged by the gentle pressure of the finger of fate.... for a moment she saw it clearly. there was a great sincerity in her: she never posed either to herself or to others. there were contradictions in her, but she recognized them all, in so far as she could see herself. but the open landscape of her soul became clear to her at that moment. she saw the complexity of her being gleam with its many facets.... she had taken to writing, out of impulse and intuition; but was her writing any good? a doubt rose in her mind. a copy of the code lay on her table, a survival of the days of her divorce; but had she understood the law correctly? her article was accepted; but was the judgement of the editress to be trusted? as her eyes wandered once again over those women's portraits and biographies, she became afraid that her work would not be good, would be too superficial, and that her ideas were not directed by study and knowledge. but she could also imagine her own photograph appearing in that prospectus, with her name under it and a brief comment: writer of _the social position of divorced women_, with the name of the paper, the date and so on. and she smiled: how highly convincing it sounded! but how difficult it was to study, to work and understand and act and move in the modern movement of life! she was now in rome: she would have liked to be in london. but it did not suit her at the moment to make the journey. she had felt rich when she bought duco's memmi, thinking of the payment for her article; and now she felt poor. she would much have liked to go to london. but then she would have missed duco. and the congress lasted only a week. she was pretty well at home here now, was beginning to love rome, her rooms, the colosseum lying yonder like a dark oval, like a sombre wing at the end of the city, with the hazy-blue mountains behind it. then the prince came into her mind and for the first time she thought of yesterday, saw that evening again, an evening of jesting and champagne: duco silent and sulky, urania depressed and the prince small, lively, slender, roused from his slackness as an aristocratic man-about-town and with his narrow carbuncle eyes. she thought him really pleasant; once in a way she liked that atmosphere of coquetry and flirtation; and the prince had understood her. she had saved urania, she was sure of that; and she felt the content of her good action.... she was too lazy to dress and go to the restaurant. she was not very hungry and would stay at home and sup on what was in her cupboard: a couple of eggs, bread, some fruit. but she remembered duco and that he would certainly be waiting for her at their little table and she wrote him a note and sent it by the hall-porter's boy.... duco was just coming down, on his way out to the restaurant, when he met the little fellow on the stairs. he read the note and felt as if he was suffering a grievous disappointment. he felt small and unhappy, like a child. and he went back to his studio, lit a single lamp, threw himself on a broad couch and lay staring in the dusk at memmi's angel, who, still standing on the chair, glimmered vaguely gold in the middle of the room, sweet as comfort, with his gesture of annunciation, as though he sought to announce all the mystery that was about to be fulfilled.... [ ] women's rights. chapter xxii a few days later, cornélie was expecting a visit from the prince, who had asked her for an appointment. she was sitting at her writing-table, correcting the proofs of her article. a lamp on the writing-table cast a soft glow over her through a yellow silk shade; and she wore her tea-gown of white _crêpe de chine_, with a bunch of violets at her breast. another lamp, on a pedestal, cast a second gleam from a corner; and the room flickered in cosy intimacy with the third light from the log-fire, falling over water-colours by duco, sketches and photographs, white anenomes in vases, violets everywhere and one tall palm. the writing-table was littered with books and printed sheets, bearing witness to her work. there was a knock at the door; and, at her "come in," the prince entered. she remained seated for a moment, laid down her pen and rose. she went up to him with a smile and held out her hand. he kissed it. he was very smartly dressed in a frock-coat, with a silk hat and pale-grey gloves; he wore a pearl pin in his tie. they sat down by the fire and he paid her compliments in quick succession, on her sitting-room, her dress and her eyes. she made a jesting reply, and he asked if he was disturbing her: "perhaps you were writing an interesting letter to some one near your heart?" "no, i was revising some proofs." "proofs?" "yes." "do you write?" "i have just begun to." "a story?" "no, an article." "an article? what about?" she gave him the long title. he looked at her open-mouthed. she laughed gaily: "you would never have believed it, would you?" "santa maria!" he murmured in surprise, unaccustomed in his own world to "modern" women, taking part in a feminist movement. "dutch?" "yes, dutch." "write in french next time: then i can read it." she laughed and gave her promise, poured him out a cup of tea, handed the chocolates. he nibbled at them: "are you so serious? have you always been? you were not serious the other day." "sometimes i am very serious." "so am i." "i gathered that. if i had not come that time, you might have become very serious." he gave a fatuous laugh and looked at her knowingly: "you are a wonderful woman!" he said. "very interesting and very clever. what you want to happen happens." "sometimes." "sometimes what i want also. sometimes i also am very clever. when i want a thing. but generally i don't want it." "you did the other day." he laughed: "yes! you were cleverer than i then. to morrow perhaps i shall be cleverer than you." "who knows!" they both laughed. he nibbled the chocolates in the dish, one after the other, and asked if he might have a glass of port instead of tea. she poured him out a glass. "may i give you something?" "what?" "a souvenir of our first acquaintance." "it is very charming of you. what is it to be?" he took something, wrapped in tissue-paper, from his pocket and handed it to her. she opened the little parcel and saw a strip of old venetian lace, worked in the shape of a flounce, for a low bodice. "do accept it," he besought her. "it is a lovely piece. it is such a pleasure to me to give it to you." she looked at him with all her coquetry in her eyes, as though she were trying to see through him. "you must wear it like this." he stood up, took the lace and draped it over her white tea-gown from shoulder to shoulder. his fingers fumbled with the folds, his lips just touched her hair. she thanked him for his gift. he sat down again: "i am glad that you will accept it." "have you given miss hope something too?" he laughed, with his little laugh of conquest: "patterns are all she wants, patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. i wouldn't dare to give you patterns. to you i give old lace." "but you nearly ruined your career for the sake of that pattern?" "oh, well!" he laughed. "which career?" "oh, don't!" he said, evasively. "tell me, what do you advise me to do?" "what do you mean?" "shall i marry her?" "i am against all marriage, between cultivated people." she wanted to repeat some of her phrases, but thought to herself, why? he would not understand them. he looked at her profoundly, with his carbuncle eyes: "so you are in favour of free love?" "sometimes. not always. between cultivated people." he was certain now, had any doubt still lingered in his mind, that a _liaison_ existed between her and van der staal. "and do you think me ... cultivated?" she laughed provocatively, with a touch of scorn in her voice: "listen. shall i speak to you seriously?" "i wish you would." "i consider neither you nor miss hope suited for free love." "so i am not cultivated?" "i don't mean it in the sense of being civilized. i mean modern culture." "so i am not modern?" "no," she said, slightly irritated. "teach me to be modern." she gave a nervous laugh: "oh, don't let us talk like this! you want to know my advice. i advise you _not_ to marry urania." "why not?" "because you would both of you have a wretched life. she is a dear little american _parvenue_...." "i am offering her what i possess; she is offering me what she possesses...." he nibbled at the chocolates. she shrugged her shoulders: "then marry her," she said, with indifference. "tell me that you don't want me to and i won't." "and your father? and the marchesa?" "what do you know about them?" "oh ... everything and nothing!" "you are a demon!" he exclaimed. "an angel and a demon! tell me, what do you know about my father and the marchesa?" "for how much are you selling yourself to urania? for not less than ten millions?" he looked at her in bewilderment. "but the marchesa thinks five enough. and a very handsome sum it is: five millions. which is it, dollars or lire?" he clapped his hands together: "you are a devil!" he cried. "you are an angel and a devil! how do you know? how _do_ you know? do you know everything?" she flung herself back in her chair and laughed: "everything." "but how?" she looked at him and shook her head tantalizingly. "tell me." "no. it's my secret." "and you think that i ought not to sell myself?" "i dare not advise you as regards your own interest." "and as regards urania?" "i advise her not to do it." "have you done so already?" "once in a way." "so you are my enemy?" he exclaimed, angrily. "no," she said, gently, wishing to conciliate him. "i am a friend." "a friend? to what length?" "to the length to which _i_ wish to go." "not the length to which _i_ wish?" "oh, no, never!" "but perhaps we both wish to go to the same length?" he had stood up, with his blood on fire. she remained seated calmly, almost languidly, with her head thrown back. she did not reply. he fell on his knees, seized her hand and was kissing it before she could prevent him: "oh, angel, angel! oh, demon!" he muttered, between his kisses. she now withdrew her hand, pushed him away from her gently and said: "how quick an italian is with his kisses!" she laughed at him. he rose from his knees: "teach me what dutchwomen are like, though they are slower than we." she pointed to his chair, with an imperious gesture: "sit down," she said. "i am not a typical dutchwoman. if i were, i should not have come to rome. i pride myself on being a cosmopolitan. but we were not discussing that, we were speaking of urania. are you thinking seriously of marrying her?" "what can i do, if you thwart me? why not be on my side, like a dear friend?" she hesitated. neither of these two, urania nor he, was ripe for her ideas. she despised them both. very well, let them get married: he in order to be rich; she to become a princess and duchess. "listen to me," she said, bending towards him. "you want to marry her for the sake of her millions. but your marriage will be unhappy from the beginning. she is a frivolous little thing; she will want to cut a dash ... and you belong to the blacks." "we can live at nice: then she can do as she pleases. we will come to rome now and again, go to san stefano now and again. and, as for unhappiness," he continued, pulling a tragic face, "what do i care? i am not happy as it is. i shall try to make urania happy. but my heart ... will be elsewhere." "where?" "with the feminist movement." she laughed: "well, shall i be nice to you?" "yes." "and promise to help you?" what did she care, when all was said? "oh, angel, demon!" he cried. he nibbled at a chocolate. "and what does mr. van der staal think of it?" he asked, mischievously. she raised her eyebrows: "he doesn't think about it. he thinks only of his art." "and of you." she looked at him and bowed her head in queenly assent: "and of me." "you often dine with him." "yes." "come and dine with me one day." "i shall be delighted." "to-morrow evening? and where?" "wherever you like." "in the grand-hôtel?" "ask urania to come too." "why not you and i alone?" "i think it better that you should invite your future wife. i will chaperon her." "you are right. you are quite right. and will you ask mr. van der staal also to give me the pleasure of his company?" "i will." "until to-morrow then, at half-past eight?" "until half-past eight to-morrow." he rose to take his leave: "propriety demands that i should go," he said. "really i should prefer to stay." "well, then stay ... or stay another time, if you have to go now." "you are so cold." "and you don't think enough of urania." "i think of the feminist movement." he sat down. "i'm afraid you must go," she said, laughing with her eyes. "i have to dress ... to go and dine with mr. van der staal." he kissed her hand: "you are an angel and a demon. you know everything. you can do anything. you are the most interesting woman i ever met." "because i correct proofs." "because you are what you are." and, very seriously, still holding her hand, he said, almost threateningly: "i shall never be able to forget you." and he went away. as soon as she was alone, she opened all her windows. she realized, it was true, that she was something of a coquette, but that lay in her nature: she was like that involuntarily, to some men. certainly not to all. never to duco. never to men whom she respected. whereas she despised that little prince, with his blazing eyes and his habit of kissing people.... but he served to amuse her.... and she dressed and went out and reached the restaurant long after the appointed hour; found duco waiting for her at their little table, with his head in his hands, and at once told him that the prince had detained her. chapter xxiii duco had at first wished to decline the invitation, but cornélie said that she would think it pleasanter if he came. and it was an exquisite dinner in the restaurant of the grand-hôtel and cornélie had enjoyed herself exceedingly and looked most charming in an old yellow ball-dress, dating back to the first days of her marriage, which she had altered quickly here and there and draped with the prince's old lace. urania had looked very handsome, with her clear, fresh complexion, her shining eyes and gleaming teeth, clad in a close-fitting frock in the latest fashion, blue-black spangles on black tulle, as though she were moulded in a cuirass: the prince said, a siren with a mermaid's tail. and the people at the other tables had stared across at theirs, for everybody knew virgilio di forte-braccio; everybody knew that he was going to marry a rich american heiress; and everybody had noticed that he was paying great attention to the slender, fair-haired woman whom nobody knew. she had been married, they thought; she was chaperoning the future princess; and she was very intimate with that young man, a dutch painter, who was studying art in italy. they had soon found out all that there was to know. cornélie had thought it pleasant that they all looked at her; and she had flirted so obviously with the prince that urania had become angry. and early next morning, while cornélie was still in bed, no longer thinking of last night but pondering over a sentence in her pamphlet, the maid knocked, brought in her breakfast and letters and said that miss hope was asking to speak to her. cornélie had urania shown in, while she remained in bed and drank her chocolate. and she looked up in surprise when urania at once overwhelmed her with reproaches, burst into sobs, scolded and raved, made a violent scene, said that she now saw through her and admitted that the marchesa had urged her to be careful of cornélie, whom she described as a dangerous woman. cornélie waited until she had had her say and replied coolly that she had nothing on her conscience, that on the contrary she had saved urania and been of service to her as a chaperon, though she did not tell her that the prince had wanted her, cornélie, to dine with him alone. but urania refused to listen and went on ranting. cornélie looked at her and thought her vulgar in that rage of hers, talking her american english, as though she were chewing filberts and at last she answered, calmly: "my dear girl, you're upsetting yourself about nothing. but, if you like, i will write to the prince that he must pay me no more attentions." "no, no, don't do that: it'll make gilio think i'm jealous!" "and aren't you?" "why do you monopolize gilio? why do you flirt with him? why do you make yourself conspicuous with him, as you did yesterday, in a restaurant full of people?" "well, if you dislike it, i won't flirt with gilio again or make myself conspicuous with him again. i don't care twopence about your prince." "that's an extra reason." "very well, dear, that's settled." her coolness calmed urania, who asked: "and do we remain good friends?" "why, of course, my dear girl. is there any occasion for us to quarrel? i don't see it." both of them, the prince and urania, were quite indifferent to her. true, she had preached to urania in the beginning, but about a general idea: when afterwards she perceived urania's insignificance, she withdrew the interest which she took in her. and, if the girl was offended by a little gaiety and innocent flirtation, very well, them should be no more of it. her thoughts were more with the proofs which the post had brought her. she got out of bed and stretched herself: "go into the sitting-room, urania dear, and just let me have my bath." presently, all fresh and smiling, she joined urania in the sitting-room. urania was crying. "my dear child, why are you upsetting yourself like this? you've achieved your ideal. your marriage is as good as certain. you're waiting for an answer from chicago? you're impatient? then cable out. i should have cabled at once in your place. you don't imagine, do you, that your father has any objection to your becoming duchess di san stefano?" "i don't know yet what i myself want," said urania, weeping. "i don't know, i don't know." cornélie shrugged her shoulders: "you're more sensible than i thought," she said. "are you really my friend? can i trust you? can i trust your advice?" "i won't advise you again. i have advised you. you must know your own mind." urania took her hand: "which would you prefer, that i accepted gilio ... or not?" cornélie looked her straight in the eyes: "you're making yourself unhappy about nothing. you think--and the marchesa probably thinks with you--that i want to take gilio from you? no, darling, i wouldn't marry gilio if he were king and emperor. i have a bit of the socialist in me: i don't marry for the sake of a title." "no more would i." "of course, darling, no more would you. i never dreamt of suggesting that you would. but you ask _me_ which i should prefer. well, i tell you in all sincerity: i don't prefer either. the whole business leaves me cold." "and you call yourself my friend!" "so i am, dear, and i will remain your friend. only don't come overwhelming me with reproaches on an empty stomach!" "you're a flirt." "sometimes. it comes natural to me. but, honestly, i won't be so again with gilio." "do you mean it?" "yes, of course. what do i care? he amuses me; but, if it offends you, i'll gladly sacrifice my amusement for your sake. i don't value it so much." "are you fond of mr. van der staal?" "very." "are you going to marry him, cornélie?" "no, dear. i sha'n't marry again. i know what marriage means. are you coming for a little walk with me? it's a fine day; and you have upset me so with your little troubles that i can't do any work this morning. it's lovely weather: come along and buy some flowers in the piazza di spagna." they went and bought the flowers. cornélie took urania back to belloni's. as she walked away, on the road to the _osteria_ for lunch, she heard somebody following her. it was the prince. "i caught sight of you from the corner of the via aurora," he said "urania was just going home." "prince," she said at once, "there must be no more of it." "of what?" "no more visits, no more joking, no more presents, no more dinners at the grand-hôtel, no more champagne." "why not?" "the future princess won't have it." "is she jealous?" cornélie described the scene to him: "and you mayn't even walk with me." "yes, i may." "no, no." "i shall, for all that." "by the right of the man, of the strongest?" "exactly." "my vocation is to fight against it. but to-day i am untrue to my vocation." "you are charming ... as always." "you mustn't say that any more." "urania's a bore.... tell me, what do you advise me to do? shall i marry her?" cornélie gave a peal of laughter: "you both of you keep asking _my_ advice!" "yes, yes, what do you think?" "marry her by all means!" he did not observe her contempt. "exchange your escutcheon for her purse," she continued and laughed and laughed. he now perceived it: "you despise me, perhaps both of us." "oh, no!" "tell me that you don't despise me." "you ask me my opinion, urania is a very sweet, dear child, but she ought not to travel by herself. and you...." "and i?" "you are a delightful boy. buy me those violets, will you?" "_subito, subito!_" he bought her the bunch of violets: "you're crazy over violets, aren't you?" "yes. this must be your second ... and your last present. and here we say good-bye." "no, i shall take you home." "i'm not going home." "where are you going?" "to the _osteria_. mr van der staal is waiting for me." "he's a lucky man! "why?" "he needs must be!" "i don't see why. good-bye, prince." "ask me to come too," he entreated. "let me lunch with you." "no," she said, seriously. "really not. it's better not. i believe...." "what?" "that duco is just like urania." "jealous?... when shall i see you again?" "really, believe me, it's better not.... goodbye, prince. and thank you ... for the violets." he bent over her hand. she went into the _osteria_ and saw that duco had witnessed their leave-taking through the window. chapter xxiv duco was silent and nervous at table. he played with his bread; and his fingers trembled. she felt that he had something on his mind: "what is it?" she asked, kindly. "cornélie," he said, excitedly, "i want to speak to you." "what about?" "you're not behaving properly." "in what respect?" "with the prince. you've seen through him and yet ... yet you go on putting up with him, yet you're always meeting him. let me finish," he said, looking around him: there was no one in the restaurant save two italians, sitting at the far table, and they could speak without being overheard. "let me finish," he repeated, when she tried to interrupt him. "let me say what i have to say. you of course are free to act as you please. but i am your friend and i want to advise you. what you are doing is not right. the prince is a cad, a low, common cad. how can you accept presents from him and invitations? why did you compel me to come yesterday? the dinner was one long torture to me. you know how fond i am of you: why shouldn't i confess it? you know how high i hold you. i can't bear to see you lowering yourself with him. let me speak. lowering, i say. he is not worthy to tie your shoe-strings. and you play with him, you jest with him, you flirt--let me speak--you flirt with him. what can he be to you, a coxcomb like that? what part can he play in your life? let him marry miss hope: what do you care about either of them? what do inferior people matter to you, cornélie? i despise them and so do you. i know you do. then why do you cross their lives? let them live in the vanity of their titles and money: what is it all to you? i don't understand you. oh, i know, you're not to be understood, all the woman part of you! and i love everything that i see of you: i love you in everything. it doesn't matter whether i understand you. but i do feel that _this_ isn't right. i ask you not to see the prince any more. have nothing more to do with him. cut him.... that dinner, last night, was a torture to me...." "my poor boy," she said, gently, filling his glass from their _fiasco_, "but why?" "why? why? because you're lowering yourself." "i do not stand so high. no, let _me_ speak now. i do not stand high. because i have a few modern ideas and a few others which are broader-minded than those of most women? apart from that i am an ordinary woman. when a man is cheerful and witty, it amuses me. no, duco, i'm speaking now. i don't consider the prince a cad. i may think him a coxcomb, but i think him cheerful and witty. you know that i too am very fond of you, but you are neither cheerful nor witty. now don't get angry. you are much more than that. i'm not even comparing _il nostro gilio_ with you. i won't say anything more about you, or you will become conceited, but cheerful and witty you are not. and my poor nature sometimes feels a need for these qualities. what have i in my life? nothing but you, you alone. i am very glad to possess your friendship, very happy in having met you. but why may i not sometimes be cheerful? really, there is a little light-heartedness in me, a little frivolity even. am i bound to fight against it? duco, am i wicked?" he smiled sadly; there was a moist light in his eyes; and he did not answer. "i can fight, if necessary," she resumed. "but is this a thing to fight against? it is a passing bubble, nothing more. i forget it the next minute. i forget the prince the next minute. and you i do not forget." he was looking at her radiantly. "do you understand that? do you understand that i don't flirt and fence with you? shake hands and stop being angry." she gave him her hand across the table and he pressed her fingers: "cornélie," he said, softly. "yes, i feel that you are loyal. cornélie, will you be my wife?" she looked straight in front of her and drooped her head a little and stared before her earnestly. they were no longer eating. the two italians stood up, bowed and went away. they were alone. the waiter set some fruit before them and withdrew. they both sat silent for a moment. then she spoke in a gentle voice; and her whole being displayed so tender a melancholy that he could have burst into sobs and worshipped her where she sat. "i knew of course that you would ask me that some day. it was in the nature of things. a great friendship like ours was bound to lead to that question. but it can't be, dearest duco. it can't be, my dear, dear boy. i have my own ideas ... but it's not that. i am against marriage ... but it's not that. in some cases a woman is unfaithful to all her ideas in a single second.... then what _is_ it?..." she stared wide-eyed and passed her hand over her forehead, as though she did not see clearly. then she continued: "it is this, that i am afraid of marriage. i have been through it, i know what it means.... i see my husband before me now. i see that habit, that groove before me, in which the subtler individual characteristics are effaced. that is what marriage is: a habit, a groove. and i tell you candidly: i think marriage loathsome. i think passion beautiful, but marriage is not passion. passion can be noble and superhuman, but marriage is a human institution based upon our petty human morality and calculation. and i have become frightened of those prudent moral ties. i promised myself--and i believe that i shall keep my promise--never to marry again. my whole nature has become unfitted for it. i am no longer the hague girl going to parties and dinners and looking out for a husband, together with her parents.... my love for _him_ was passion. and in my marriage he wanted to restrict that passion to a groove and a custom. then i rebelled.... i'd rather not talk about it. passion lasts too short a time to fill a married life.... mutual esteem to follow, _etcetera_? one needn't marry for that. i can feel esteem just as well without being married. of course there is the question of the children, there _are_ many difficulties. i can't think it all out now. i merely feel now, very seriously and calmly, that i am not fit to marry and that i never will marry again. i should not make you happy.... don't be sad, duco. i am fond of you, i love you. and perhaps ... had i met you at the right moment, had i met you before, in my hague life ... you would certainly have stood too high for me. i could not have grown fond of you. now i can understand you, respect you and look up to you. i tell you this quite simply, that i love you and look up to you, look up to you, in spite of all your gentleness, as i never looked up to my husband, however much he made his manly privilege prevail. and you are to believe that, very firmly and with great certainty, and you must believe that i am true. i am coquettish ... only with gilio." he looked at her through his silent tears. he stood up, called the waiter, paid the bill absent-mindedly, while everything swam and flashed before his eyes. they went out of the door and she hailed a carriage and told the man to drive to the villa doria-pamphili. she remembered that the gardens were open. they drove there in silence, steeped in their thoughts of the future that was opening tremulously before them. sometimes he heaved a deep breath and quivered all over his body. once she fervently squeezed his hand. at the gate of the villa they alighted and walked up the majestic avenues. rome lay in the depths below; and they suddenly saw st. peter's. but they did not speak; and she suddenly sat down on an ancient bench and began to weep softly and feebly. he put his arm round her and comforted her. she dried her tears, smiled and embraced him and returned his kiss.... twilight fell; and they went back. he gave the address of his studio. she accompanied him. and she gave herself to him, in all her truthful sincerity and with a love so violent and so great that she thought she would swoon in his arms. chapter xxv they did not alter their mode of life. duco, however, after a scene with his mother, no longer slept at belloni's but in a little room, adjoining his studio, originally filled with trunks and lumber. cornélie was sorry about the scene: she had always had a liking for mrs. van der staal and the girls. but a certain pride arose in her; and cornélie despised mrs. van der staal because she was unable to understand either her or duco. still, she would have been pleased to prevent this coolness. at her advice duco went to see his mother again, but she remained cool and sent him away. thereupon cornélie and duco went to naples. they did not do this by way of an elopement, they did it quite simply: cornélie told urania and the prince that she was going to naples for a little while and that van der staal would probably follow her. she did not know naples and would appreciate it greatly if van der staal showed her the town and the surrounding country. cornélie kept on her rooms in rome. and they spent a fortnight of sheer, careless and immense happiness. their love grew spacious and blossoming in the golden sunlight of naples, on the blue gulfs of amalfi, sorrento, capri and castellamare, simply, irresistibly and restfully. they glided gradually along the purple thread of their lives, they walked hand in hand down their lines now fused into one path, heedless of the laws and ideas of men; and their attitude was so lofty, their action so serene and so certain of their happiness, that their relations did not degenerate into insolence, although within themselves they despised the world. but this happiness softened all that pride in their soaring souls, as if their happiness were strewing blossoms all around it. they lived in a dream, first among the marbles in the museum, then on the flower-strewn cliffs of amalfi, on the beach of capri or on the terrace of the hotel at sorrento, with the sea roaring at their feet and, in a pearly haze, yonder, vaguely white, as though drawn in white chalk, castellamare and naples and the ghost of vesuvius, with its hazy plume of smoke. they held aloof from everybody, from all the people and excursionists; they had their meals at a small table; and it was generally thought that they were newly married. if others looked up their names in the visitors' book, they read two names and made whispered comments. but the lovers did not hear, did not see; they lived their dream, looking into each other's eyes or at the opal sky, the pearly sea and the hazy, white mountain-vistas, studded with villages like little specks of chalk. when their money was almost exhausted, they smiled and went back to rome and resumed their former lives: she in her rooms and he, now, in his studio; and they took their meals together. but they pursued their dreams among the ruins in the via appia, around and near frascati, beyond the ponte molle, on the slopes of the monte mario and in the gardens of the villas, among the statues and paintings, mingling their happiness with the roman atmosphere: he interweaving his new-found love with his love for rome; she growing to love rome because of him. and because of that charm they were surrounded by a sort of aura, through which they did not see ordinary life or meet ordinary people. at last, one afternoon, urania found them both at home, in cornélie's room, the fire lighted, she smiling and gazing into the fire, he sitting at her feet and she with her arm round his neck. and they were evidently thinking of so little besides their own love that neither of them heard her knock and both suddenly saw her standing before them, like an unexpected reality. their dream was over for that day. urania laughed, cornélie laughed and duco pushed an easy chair closer. and urania, blithe, beautiful and brilliant, told them that she was engaged. where on earth had they been hiding, she asked, inquisitively. she was engaged. she had been to san stefano, she had seen the old prince. and everything was lovely and good and dear: the old castle a dear old house, the old man a dear old man. she saw everything through the glitter of her future princess' title. princess and duchess! the wedding-day was fixed: immediately after easter, in a little more than three months therefore. it was to be celebrated at san carlo, with all the splendour of a great wedding. her father was coming over for it with her youngest brother. she was obviously not looking forward to their arrival. and she never finished talking: she gave a thousand details about her bridal outfit, with which the marchesa was helping her. they were going to live at nice, in a large flat. she raved about nice: that was a first-rate idea of gilio's. and incidentally she remembered and told them that she had become a catholic. that was a great nuisance! but the _monsignori_ saw to everything and she allowed herself to be guided by them. and the pope was to receive her in private audience, together with gilio. the difficulty was what to wear at the audience: black, of course, but ... velvet, satin? what did cornélie advise her? she had such excellent taste. and a black-lace veil on her head, with brilliants. she was going to nice next day, with the marchesa and gilio, to see their flat. when she was gone after begging cornélie to come and admire her _trousseau_, cornélie said, with a smile: "she is happy. after all, happiness is something different for everybody, a _trousseau_ and a title would not make me happy." "these are the small people," he said, "who cross our lives now and again. i prefer to get out of their way." and they did not say so, but they both thought--with their fingers interlaced, her eyes gazing into his--that they also were happy, but with a loftier, better and nobler happiness; and pride arose within them; and they beheld as in a vision the line of their life winding up a steep hill. but happiness snowed blossoms down upon it; and amid the snowing blossoms, holding high their proud heads, with smiles and eyes of love, they walked on in their dream remote from mankind and reality. chapter xxvi the months dreamed past. and their happiness caused such a summer to bloom in them that she ripened in beauty and be in talent; the pride in them broke into expression: in her it was the blossoming of her being, in him it was energy; her languid charm became transformed into a proud slenderness; her contour increased in fullness; a light illumined her eyes, a gladness shone about her mouth. his hands quivered with nervous emotion when he took up his brushes; and the skies of italy arched firmaments before his eyes like a canopy of love and fervid colour. he drew and completed a series of water-colours: hazes of dreamy atmosphere which suggested turner's noblest creations; natural monuments of sheer haze; all the milky blue and pearly mistiness of the bay of naples, like a goblet filled with light in which a turquoise is melted into water; and he sent them to holland, to london, found that he had suddenly discovered his vocation, his work and his fame: courage, strength, aim and conquest. she too achieved a certain success with her article: it was discussed, contested; her name was mentioned. but she felt a certain indifference when she read her name in connection with the feminist movement. she preferred to live with him his life of observation and emotion; and she often imparted to all the haze of his vision, to the excessive haziness of his colour-dream, a lustre of light, a definite horizon, a streak of actuality which gave realism to the mist of his ideal. she learnt with him to distinguish and to feel nature, art, all rome; and, when a symbolic impulse overmastered him, she surrendered herself to it entirely. he planned a large sketch of a procession of women, mounting along a line of life that wound up a hill: they seemed to be moving out of a crumbling city of antiquity, whose pillars, joined by a single architrave, quivered on high in a violet haze of evening dusk; they seemed to be releasing themselves from the shadow of the ruins fading away on the horizon into the void of night; and they thronged upwards, calling to one another aloud, beckoning to one another with great waving streamers and pennants; they grasped hammer and pick-axe with sinewy arms; and the throng of them moved up and up, along the line, where the light grew whiter and whiter, until in the hazy air there dimly showed the distant vista of a new city, whose iron buildings, like central stations and eiffel towers in the white glimmer of the distance, gleamed up very faintly with a reflection of glass arches and glass roofs and, high in the air, the musical staves of the threads of sound and accompaniment.... and to so great an extent did their influences work upon each other's souls that she learnt to see and he learnt to think: she saw beauty, art, nature, haze and emotion and no longer imagined them but felt them; he, as in his sketch, a very vague, modern city of glass and iron, saw a modern city rising out of his dream-haze and thought of a modern question, in accordance with his own nature and aptitudes. she learnt above all to see and feel like a woman in love, with the eyes and heart of the man she loves; he thought out the question plastically. but whatever the imperfection in the absoluteness of their new spheres of feeling and thought, the reciprocal influence, through their love, gave them a happiness so great, so united, that at that moment they could not contemplate it or apprehend it: it was almost ecstasy, a faint unreality, in which they dreamed, whereas it was all pure truth and tangible actuality. their manner of thinking, feeling and living was an ideal of reality, an ideal entered and attained, along the gradual line of their life, along the golden thread of their love; and they scarcely apprehended or contemplated it, because the everyday life still clung to them. but only to the smallest, inevitable extent. they lived apart; but in the morning she went to him and found him working at his sketch; and she sat down beside him and leant her head on his shoulder; and they thought it out together. he sketched each figure in his procession of women separately and sought for the features and the modelling of the figures: some had the mongolian aspect of memmes angel of the annunciation, others cornélie's slenderness and her later, fuller wholesomeness; he sought for the folds of the costumes: the women escaped from the violet dusk of the ruined city in pleated pepli; and farther on their garments altered as in a masquerade of the ages: the long trains of the medieval ladies, the veils of the sultanas, the homespun of the workwomen, the caps of the nursing sisters, the attire becoming more modern as the wearer personified a more modern age. and in this grouping the draughtsmanship was so unsubstantial and sober, the transition from drooping folds to practical stiffness so careful and so gradual, that cornélie hardly perceived the transition, that she appeared to be contemplating one style, one fashion in dress, whereas each figure nevertheless was clad in a different stuff, of different cut, falling into different lines.... the drawing displayed an old-mastery purity, a simplicity of outline, which was nevertheless modern, nervous and morbid, but without the conventional ideal of symbolical human forms; the grouping showed a raphaelite harmony, the water-colour tints of the first studies the haze of italy the ruined city loomed in the dusk as he saw the forum looming; the city of iron and glass gleamed up with its architecture of light, such as he had seen from sorrento shining around naples. she felt that he was creating a great work and had never taken so lively an interest in anything as she now did in his idea and his sketches. she sat behind him silent and still and followed his drawing of the waving banners and fluttering pennants; and she did not breathe when she saw him, with a few dabs of white and touches of light--as though light were one of the colours on his palette--make the glass city emerge as from a dream on the horizon. then he would ask her something about one of the figures and put his arm around her and draw her to him; and they would long sit scrutinizing and thinking out lines and ideas, until evening fell and the evening chill shuddered through the studio and they rose slowly from their seats. then they went out and in the corso they returned to real life: silently, sitting at aragno's, they watched the bustle outside; and in their little restaurant, with their eyes absorbing each other's glance, they ate their simple dinner and looked so obviously and harmoniously happy that the italians, the two who also always sat at the far table, at that same hour, smiled as they bowed to them on entering.... chapter xxvii at the same time duco developed great powers of work: so much thought dimly took shape before him that he was constantly discovering another motive and symbolizing it in another figure. he sketched a life-size woman walking, with that admixture of child, woman and goddess which characterized his figures, and she walked slowly down a descending line towards a sombre depth, without seeing or understanding; her eyes towards the abyss in magnetic attraction; vague hands hovered around her like a cloud and softly pushed and guided her; on the hill-top, on high rocks, in the bright light, other figures, holding harps, called to her; but she went towards the depth, pushed by hands; in the abyss blossomed strange purple orchids, like mouths of love.... when cornélie came to his studio one morning, he had suddenly sketched this idea. it came upon her as a surprise, for he had not mentioned it to her: the idea had sprung up suddenly; the quick, spontaneous execution had not taken him an hour. he was almost apologizing to her when he saw her surprise. she certainly admired it, but shuddered at it and preferred _the banners_, the great water-colour, the procession of the women marching to the battle of life. and to please her he put the straying woman aside and worked on solely at the striving women. but constantly a fresh thought came and disturbed him in his work; and in her absence he would sketch some new symbol, until the sketches accumulated and lay spread on every side. she put them away in portfolios; she removed them from easel and board; she saved him from wandering too far from _the banners_; and this was the one thing that he completed. thus smoothly did their life seem willing to run, along a gracious line, in one golden direction, while his symbols blossomed like flowers on either side, while the azure of their love seemed to form the sky overhead; but she plucked away the superfluous flowers and only _the banners_ waved above their path, in the firmament of their ecstasy, even as they waved above the militant women. they had but one distraction, the wedding of the prince and urania: a dinner, a ball and the ceremony at san carlo, attended by all the roman aristocracy, who however welcomed the wealthy american bride with a certain reserve. but, when the prince and princess di forte-braccio left for nice, all distraction was at an end; and the days once more glided along the same gracious golden line. and cornélie retained only one unpleasant recollection: her meeting during those festive days with mrs. van der staal, who cut her persistently, turned her back on her and succeeded in conveying to her that the friendship was over. she had accepted the position; she had realized how difficult it was--even if mrs. van der staal had been willing to speak to her--to explain to a woman like this, rooted in her social and worldly conventions, her own proud ideas of freedom, independence and happiness. and she had avoided the girls also, understanding that mrs. van der staal wished it. she was not angry at all this nor hurt; she could understand it in duco's mother: she was only a little sad about it, because she liked mrs. van der staal and liked the two girls. but she quite understood: it had to be so; mrs. van der staal knew or suspected everything. duco's mother could not act differently, though the prince and urania, for friendship's sake, overlooked any _liaison_ between duco and cornélie; though the roman world during the wedding-festivities accepted them simply as friends, as acquaintances, as fellow-countrymen, whatever they might whisper, smiling, behind their fans. but now those festivities were over, now they had passed that point of contact with the world and people, now their golden line once more sloped gently and evenly before them.... then cornélie, not thinking of the hague at all, received a letter from the hague. the letter was from her father and consisted of several sheets, which surprised her, for he never wrote. what she read startled her greatly, but did not at first dishearten her altogether, perhaps because she did not realize the full import of her father's news. he implored her forgiveness. he had long been in financial difficulties. he had lost a great deal of money. they would have to move into a smaller house. the atmosphere at home was unpleasant: mamma cried all day; the sisters quarrelled; the family proffered advice; the acquaintances were disagreeable. and he implored her forgiveness. he had speculated and lost. and he had also lost her own little capital, which he managed for her, her godmother's legacy. he asked her not to think too hardly of him. things might have turned out differently; and then she would have been three times as well off. he admitted it, he had done wrong; but still he was her father and he asked her, his child, to forgive him and requested her to come home. she was at first greatly startled, but soon recovered her calmness. she was in too happy a mood of vital harmony to be depressed by the news. she received the letter in bed, did not get up at once, reflected a little, then dressed, breakfasted as usual and went to duco. he received her with enthusiasm and showed her three new sketches. she reproached him gently for allowing himself to be distracted from his main idea, said that these distractions would exhaust his activity, his perseverance. she urged him to keep on working at _the banners_. and she inspected the great water-colour intently, with the ancient, crumbling forum-like city and the procession of the women towards the metropolis of the future, standing high in the dawn. and suddenly it was borne in upon her that her future also had fallen into ruins and that its crumbling arches hung menacingly over her head. then she gave him her father's letter to read. he read it twice, looked at her aghast and asked what she proposed to do. she said that she had already thought it over, but so far decided only upon the most immediate thing to be done: to give up her rooms and come to him in his studio. she had just enough left to pay the rent of her rooms. but, after that, she had no money, no money at all. she had never consented to accept alimony from her husband. all that was still due to her was the payment for her article. he at once put out his hands to her, kissed her and said that this had been also his idea at once, that she should come to him and live with him. he had enough: a tiny patrimony; he made a little money in addition: there would be enough for the two of them. and they laughed and kissed and glanced round the studio. duco slept in a small adjoining den, a sort of long wall-cupboard. and they glanced round to see what they could do. cornélie knew: here, a curtain draped over a cord, with her washhand-stand behind it. that was all she needed, only that little corner: otherwise duco would not have a good light. they were very merry and thought it a jolly, a capital idea. they went out at once, bought a little iron bedstead and a dressing-table and themselves hung up the curtain. then they both went to pack the trunks in the via di serpenti ... and dined at the _osteria_. cornélie suggested that they should dine at home now and then: it was cheaper. when they returned home, she was enchanted that her installation took up so little room, hardly six feet by six, with that little bed behind the curtain. they were very cheerful that evening. the bohemianism of it all amused them. they were in italy, the land of sunshine, of beauty, of _lazzaroni_, of beggars who slept on the steps of a cathedral; and they felt akin to that sunny poverty. they were happy, they wanted for nothing. they would live on nothing, or at any rate on very little. and they saw the future bright, shining. they were closer together now, they would live more closely linked together. they loved each other and were happy in a land of beauty, in an ideal of noble symbolism and life-embracing art. next morning he worked zealously, without a word, absorbed in his dream, in his work; and she, likewise, silent, contented, happy, examined her blouses and skirts attentively and reflected that she would need nothing more for quite another year and that her old clothes were amply sufficient for their life of happiness and simplicity. and she answered her father's letter very briefly, saying that she forgave him, that she was sorry for all of them, but that she was not coming back to the hague. she would provide for her own maintenance, by writing. italy was cheap. that was all she wrote. she did not mention duco. she cut herself off from her family, in thought and in fact. she had met with no sympathy from any of them during her unhappy marriage, during the painful days of her divorce; and now, in her turn, she felt no affection for them. and her happiness made her partial and selfish. she wanted nothing but duco, nothing but their harmonious life in common. he sat working, laughing to her now and then as she lay on the couch and reflected. she looked at the women marching to battle; she too could not remain lying on a couch, she too would have to sally forth and fight. she foresaw that she would have to fight ... for him. he was at present in the first fine frenzy of his art; but, if this slackened, momentarily, after a result of some kind, after a success for himself and the world, that would be commonplace and logical; and then _she_ would have to fight. he was the noble element in their two lives; his art could never become her bread-winner. his little fortune amounted to hardly anything. she would have liked to work and make money for both of them, so that he need not depart from the pure principle of his art. but how was she to strive, how to work for their lives and their bread? what could she do? write? it brought in so little. what else? she was overcome by a slight melancholy, because she could do so little. she possessed minor talents and accomplishments: she wrote a good style, she sang, she played the piano, she could make a blouse and she knew something about cooking. she would herself do the cooking now and then and would make her own clothes. but that was all so small, so little. strive? work? in what way? however, she would do what she could. and suddenly she took up a baedeker, turned over the pages and sat down to write at duco's writing-table. she thought for a moment and began a casual article, a travel-picture for a newspaper, about the environs of naples that was easier than at once beginning about rome. and in the studio, filled with a faint warmth of the fire, because the room faced north and was chilly, everything became still and silent, save for the occasional scratching of her pen or the noise made by him when fumbling among his chalks and paint-brushes. she wrote a few pages but could not hit upon an ending. then she got up; he turned round and smiled at her, with his smile of friendly happiness. and she read to him what she had written. it was not in the style of her pamphlet. it contained no invective; it was a pleasant traveller's sketch. he thought it very nice, but nothing out of the way. but that wasn't necessary, she said, defending herself. and he kissed her, for her industry and her pluck. it was raining that day and they did not go out for their lunch; there were eggs and tomatoes and she made an omelette on an oil-stove. they drank water, ate quantities of bread. and, while the rain outside lashed the great curtainless window of the studio, they enjoyed their repast, sitting like two birds that huddle side by side, against each other, so as not to get wet. chapter xxviii it was a couple of months after easter, in the spring days of may. the-flood of tourists had ebbed away immediately after the great church festivities; and rome was already very hot and growing very quiet. one morning, when cornélie was crossing the piazza di spagna, where the sunshine streamed along the cream-coloured front of the trinita de' monti and down the monumental staircase, where only a few beggars and the very last flower-boy sat dreaming with blinking eye-lids in a shady corner, she saw the prince coming towards her. he bowed to her with a smile of gladness and hastened up to speak to her: "how glad i am to meet you! i am in rome for a day or two, on my way to san stefano, to see my father on business. business is always a bore; and this is more so than usual. urania is at nice. but it is too hot there and we are going away. we have just returned from a trip on the mediterranean. four weeks on board a friend's yacht. it was delightful! why did you never come to see us at nice, as urania asked you to?" "i really wasn't able to come." "i went to call on you yesterday in the via dei serpenti. they told me you had moved." he looked at her with a touch of mocking laughter in his small, glittering eyes. she did not speak. "after that i did not like to commit a further indiscretion," he said, meaningly. "where are you going?" "to the post-office." "may i come with you? isn't it too hot for walking?" "oh, no, i love the heat! come by all means, if you like. how is urania?" "very well, capital. she's capital. she's splendid, simply splendid. i should never have thought it. i should never have dared to think it. she plays her part to perfection. so far as she is concerned, i don't regret my marriage. but, for the rest, _gesu mio_, what a disappointment, what a disillusion!" "why?" "you knew, did you not--i even now don't know how--you knew for how many millions i sold myself? not five millions but ten millions. ah, _signora mia_, what a take-in you saw my father-in-law at the time of our wedding. what a yankee, what a stocking-merchant and what a tradesman! we're no match for him: i, papa, or the marchesa. first promises, contracts: oh, rather! but then haggling here, haggling here. we're no good at that: neither papa nor i. aunt alone was able to haggle. but she was no match for the stocking-merchant. she had not learnt that, in all the years for which she kept a boarding-house. ten millions? five millions? not three millions! or yes, perhaps we did get something like that, _pus_ a heap of promises, for our children's children, when everybody's dead. ah, signora, signora, i was better off before i was married! true, i had debts then and not now. but urania is so economical, so practical! i should never have thought it of her. it has been a disappointment to everybody: papa, my aunt, the _monsignori_. you should have seen them together. they could have scratched one another's eyes out. papa almost had a stroke, my aunt nearly came to blows with the _monsignori_.... ah, signora, signora, i don't like it! i am a victim. winter after winter, they angled with me. but i didn't want to be the bait, i struggled, i wouldn't let the fish bite. and then this came of it. not three millions. lire, not dollars. i was so stupid, i thought at first it would be dollars. and urania's economy! she doles out my pocket-money. she controls everything, does everything. she knows exactly how much i lose at the club. yes, you may laugh, but it's sad. don't you see that i sometimes feel as if i could cry? and she has such queer notions. for instance, we have a flat at nice and we keep on my rooms in the palazzo ruspoli, as a _pied-à-terre_ in rome. that's enough: we don't come often to rome, because we are 'black' and urania thinks it dull. in the summer, we were to go here or there, to some watering-place. that was all right, that was settled. but now urania suddenly conceives the notion, of selecting san. stefano as a summer residence. san stefano! i ask you! i shall never be able to stand it. true, it's high up, it's cool: it's a pleasant climate, good, fresh mountain air. but i need more in my life than mountain air. i can't live on mountain air. oh, you wouldn't know urania! she can be so awfully obstinate. it's settled now, beyond recall: in. the summer, san stefano. and the worst of it is that she has won papa's heart by it. i have to suffer. they're two to one against me. and the worst of it is that urania says we shall have to be very economical, in order to do san stefano up a bit. it's a famous historical place, but fallen into grisly disrepair. it's not our fault: we never had any luck. there was once a forte-braccio pope; after that our star declined and we never had another stroke of luck again. san stefano is the type of ruined greatness. you ought to see the place. to economize, to renovate san stefano that's urania's ideal. she has taken it into her head to do that honour to our ancestral abode. however, she has won papa's heart by it and he has recovered from his stroke. but can you understand now that _il povero_ _gilio_ is poorer than he was before he acquired shares in a chicago stocking-factory?" there was no checking his flow of words. he felt profoundly unhappy, small, beaten, tamed, conquered, destroyed and he had a need to ease his heart. they had passed the post-office and now retraced their steps. he looked for sympathy from cornélie and found it in the smiling attention with which she listened to his grievances. she replied that, after all, it showed that urania had a real feeling for san stefano. "oh, yes!" he admitted, humbly. "she is very good. i should never have thought it. she is every inch a princess and duchess. it's splendid. but the ten millions: gone, an illusion!... but tell me: how well you're looking! each time i see you, you've grown lovelier and lovelier. do you know that you're a very lovely woman? you must be very happy, i'm certain! you're an exceptional woman, i always said so. i don't understand you.... may i speak frankly? are we good friends, you and i? i don't understand. i think what you have done such a terrible thing. i have never heard of anything like it in our world." "i don't live in your world, prince." "very well, but all the same your world must have much the same ideas about it. and the calmness, the pride, the happiness with which you do, just quietly, as you please! i think it perfectly awful. i stand aghast at it.... and yet ... it's a pity. people in my world are very easy-going. but that sort of thing is not allowed!" "prince, once more, i have no world. my world is my own sphere." "i don't understand that. tell me, how am i to tell urania? for i should think it delightful if you would come and stay at san stefano. oh, do come, do: come to keep us company! i entreat you. be charitable, do a good work.... but first tell me, how shall i tell urania?" she laughed: "what?" "what they told me in the via dei serpenti, that your address was now signor van der staal's studio, via del babuino." laughing, she looked at him almost pityingly: "it is too difficult for you to tell her," she replied, a little condescendingly. "i will myself write to urania and explain my conduct." he was evidently relieved: "that's delightful, capital! and ... will you come to san stefano?" "no, i can't really." "why not?" "i can no longer move in the circle in which you live, after my change of address," she said, half laughing, half seriously. he shrugged his shoulders: "listen," he said. "you know our roman society. so long as certain conventions are observed. everything's permitted." "exactly; but it's just those conventions which i don't observe." "and that's where you are wrong. believe me, i am saying it as your friend." "i live according to my own laws and i don't want to move in your world." he folded his hands in entreaty: "yes, yes, i know. you are a 'new woman.' you have your own laws. but i beseech you, take pity on me. be an angel of mercy and come to san stefano." she seemed to hear a note of seduction in his voice and therefore said: "prince, even if it agreed with the conventions of your world ... even then i shouldn't wish to. for i will not leave van der staal." "you come first and let him come a little later. urania will be glad to have his advice on some artistic questions, concerning the 'doing up' of san stefano. we have a lot of pictures there. and old things generally. do let's arrange that. i am going to san stefano to-morrow. urania will follow me in a week. i will suggest to her to ask you down soon." "really, prince ... it can't happen just yet." "why not?" she looked at him for some time before answering: "shall i be candid with you?" "but of course!" they had already passed the post-office twice. the street was quite silent and deserted. he looked at her enquiringly. "well, then," she said, "we are in great financial difficulties. we have no money at present. i have lost my little capital; and the small sum which i earned by writing an article is spent. duco is working hard, but he is engaged on a big work and making nothing in the meantime. he expects to receive a bit of money in a month or so. but at the moment we have nothing, nothing at all. that is why i went to a shop by the tiber this morning to ask how much a dealer would give for a couple of old pictures which duco wants to sell. he doesn't like parting with them, but there's no help for it. so you see that i can't come. i should not care to leave him; besides, i should not have the money for the journey or a decent wardrobe." he looked at her. the first thing that he had noticed was her new and blooming loveliness; now he noticed that her skirt was a little worn and her blouse none too fresh, though she wore a couple of roses in the waist-band. "gesu mio!" he exclaimed. "and you tell me that so calmly, so quietly!" she smiled and shrugged her shoulders: "what would you have me do? moan and groan about it?" "but you are a woman ... a woman to revere and respect!" he cried. "how does van der staal take it?" "he is a bit depressed, of course. he has never known money trouble. and it hinders him from employing his full talent. but i hope to help him bear up during this difficult time. so you see, prince, that i can't come to san stefano." "but why didn't you write to us? why not ask us for money?" "it is very nice of you to say that, but the idea never even occurred to us." "too proud?" "yes, too proud." "but what a position to be in! what can i do for you? may i give you two hundred lire? i have two hundred lire on me. and i will tell urania that i gave it to you." "no, thank you, prince. i am very grateful to you, but i can't accept it." "not from _me_?" "no." "not from urania?" "not from her either." "why not?" "i want to earn my money and i can't accept alms." "a fine principle. but for the moment...." "i remain true to it." "will you allow me to tell you something?" "what?" "i admire you. more than that: i love you." she made a gesture with her hand and wrinkled her brows. "why mayn't i tell you so? an italian does not keep his love concealed. i love you. you are more beautiful and nobler and superior to anything that i could ever imagine any woman to be.... don't be angry with me: i am not asking anything of you. i am a bad lot, but at this moment i really feel the sort of thing that you see in our old family-portraits, an atom of chivalry which has survived by accident. i ask for nothing from you. i merely tell you--and i say it in urania's name as well as my own--that you can always rely on us. urania will be angry that you haven't written to us." they now entered the post-office and she bought a few stamps: "there go my last soldi," she said, laughing and showing her empty purse. "we wanted the stamps to write to the secretary of an exhibition in london. are you seeing me home?" she saw suddenly that he had tears in his eyes. "do accept two hundred lire from me!" he entreated. she smilingly shook her head. "are you dining at home?" he asked. she gave him a quizzing look: "yes," she said. he was unwilling to ask any further questions, was afraid lest he should wound her: "be kind," he said, "and dine with me this evening. i'm bored. i have no friends in rome at the moment. everybody is away. not at the grand-hôtel, but in a snug little restaurant, where they know me. i'll come and fetch you at seven o'clock. do be nice and come! for my sake!" he could not restrain his tears. "i shall be delighted," she said, softly, with her smile. they were standing in the porch of the house in the via del babuino where the studio was. he raised her hand to his lips and pressed a fervent kiss upon it. then he took off his hat and hurried away. she went slowly up the stairs, mastering her emotion before she entered the studio. chapter xxix she found duco lying listlessly on the sofa. he had a bad headache and she sat down beside him. "well?" he asked. "the man offered me eighty lire for the memmo," she said, "but he declared that the panel was not by gentile da fabriano: he remembered having seen it here." "the man's crazy," he replied. "or else he is trying to get my gentile for nothing.... cornélie, i really can't sell it." "well, duco, then we'll think of something else," said she, laying her hand on his aching forehead. "perhaps one or two smaller things, a knick-knack or two," he moaned. "perhaps. shall i go back to him this afternoon?" "no, no, i'll go. but, really, it is easier to buy that sort of thing than to sell it." "that is so, duco," she agreed, laughing. "but i asked yesterday what i should get for a pair of bracelets; and i'll dispose of those to-day. and that will keep us going for quite a month. but i have some news for you. do you know whom i met?" "no." "the prince." he gave a scowl: "i don't like that cad," he said. "i've told you before, duco. i don't consider him a cad. and i don't believe he is one either. he asked us to dine with him this evening, quite quietly." "no, i don't care about it." she said nothing. she stood up, boiled some water on a spirit-stand and made tea: "duco dear, i've been careless about lunch. a cup of tea and some bread-and-butter is all i can give you. are you very hungry?" "no," he said, evasively. she hummed a tune while she poured out the tea into an antique cup. she cut the bread-and-butter and brought it to him on the sofa. then she sat down beside him, with her own cup in her hand. "cornélie, hadn't we better lunch at the _osteria_?" she laughed and showed him her empty purse: "here are the stamps," she said. disheartened, he flung himself back on the cushions. "my dear boy," she continued, "don't be so down. i shall have some money this afternoon, for the bracelets. i ought to have sold them sooner. really, duco, it's not of any importance. why haven't you been working? it would have cheered you up." "i didn't feel inclined and i had a headache." she waited a moment and then said: "the prince was angry that we didn't write and ask him to help us. he wanted to give me two hundred lire...." "you refused, surely?" he asked, fiercely. "well, of course," she answered, calmly. "he invited us to stay at san stefano, where they will be spending the summer. i refused that too." "why?" "i haven't the clothes.... but you wouldn't care to go, would you?" "no," he said, dully. she drew his head to her and stroked his forehead. a wide patch of reflected afternoon light fell through the studio-window from the blue sky outside; and the studio was like a confused swirl of dusty colour, in which the outlines stood forth with their arrested action and changeless emotion. the raised embroideries of the chasubles and stoles, the purples and sky-blues of gentile's panel, the mystic luxury of memmi's angel in his cloak of heavily-pleated brocade, with the golden lily-stem between his fingers, were like a hoard of colour and flashed in that reflected light like so many handfuls of jewels. on the easel stood the water-colour of _the banners_, with its noble refinement. and, as they sat on the sofa, he leaning his head against her, both drinking their tea, they harmonized in their happiness with that background of art. and it seemed incredible that they should be worried about a couple of hundred lire, for they were surrounded by colour as of precious stones and her smile was still radiant. but his eyes were dejected and his hand hung limply by his side. she went out again that afternoon for a little while, but soon returned again, saying that she had sold the bracelets and that he need not worry any longer. and she sang and moved gaily about the studio. she had made a few purchases: an almond-tart, biscuits and a small bottle of port. she had carried the things home herself, in a little basket, and she sang as she unpacked them. her liveliness cheered him; he stood up and suddenly sat down to _the banners_. he looked at the light and thought that he would be able to work for an hour longer. he was filled with transport as he contemplated the drawing: he saw a great deal that was good in it, a great deal that was beautiful. it was both spacious and delicate; it was modern and yet free of any modern _trucs_; there was thought in it and yet purity of line and grouping. and the colours were restful and dignified: purple and grey and white; violet and pale-grey and bright white; dusk, twilight, light; night, dawn, day. the day especially, the day dawning high up yonder, was a day of white, self-conscious sunlight: a bright certitude, in which the future became clear. but as a cloud were the streamers, pennants, flags, banners, waving in heraldic beauty above the heads of the militant women uplifted in ecstasy.... he selected his colours, chose his brushes, worked zealously, until there was no light left. then he sat down beside her, happy and contented. in the falling dusk they drank some of the port, ate some of the tart. he felt like it, he said; he was hungry.... at seven o'clock there was a knock. he started up and opened the door; the prince entered. duco's forehead clouded over; but the prince did not perceive it, in the twilit studio. cornélie lit a lamp: "scusi, prince," she said. "i am positively distressed: duco does not care to go out--he has been working and is tired--and i had no one to send and tell you that we could not accept your invitation." "but you don't mean that, surely! i had reckoned so absolutely on having you both to dinner! what shall i do with my evening if you don't come!" and, bursting into a flow of language, the complaints of a spoiled child, the entreaties of an indulged boy, he began to persuade duco, who remained unwilling and sullen. at last duco rose, shrugged his shoulders, but, with a compassionate, almost insulting smile, yielded. but he was unable to suppress his sense of unwillingness; his jealousy because of the quick repartees of cornélie and the prince remained unassuaged, like an inward pain. at the restaurant he was silent at first. then he made an effort to join in the conversation, remembering what cornélie had said to him on that momentous day at the _osteria_: that she loved him, duco; that she did not even compare the prince with him; but ... that he was not cheerful or witty. and, conscious of his superiority because of that recollection, he displayed a smiling superciliousness towards the prince, for all his jealousy, condescending slightly and suffering his pleasantry and his flirtation, because it amused cornélie, that clashing interplay of swift words and short, parrying phrases, like the dialogue in a french comedy. chapter xxx the prince was to leave for san stefano next day; and early in the morning cornélie sent him the following letter: "my dear prince, "i have a favour to ask of you. yesterday you were so good as to offer to me help. i thought then that i was in a position to decline your kind offer. but i hope that you will not think me very changeable if i come to you to-day with this request: lend me what you offered yesterday to give me. "lend me two hundred lire. i hope to be able to repay you as soon as possible. of course it need not be a secret from urania; but don't let duco know. i tried to sell my bracelets yesterday, but sold only one and received very little for it. the goldsmith offered me far too little, but i had to let him have one at forty lire, for i had not a soldo left! and so i am writing to appeal to your friendship and to ask you to put the two hundred lire in an envelope and let me come and fetch it myself from the porter. pray receive my sincere thanks in advance. "what a pleasant evening you gave us yesterday! a couple of hours' cheerful talk like that, at a well-chosen dinner, does me good. however happy i may be, our present position of financial anxiety sometimes depresses me, though i keep up my spirits for duco's sake. money worries interfere with his work and impair his energy. so i discuss them with him as little as i can; and i particularly beg you not to let him into our little secret. "once more, my best and most sincere thanks. cornÉlie de retz." when she left the house that morning, she went straight to the palazzo ruspoli: "has his excellency gone?" the porter bowed respectfully and confidentially: "an hour ago, signora. his excellency left a letter and a parcel for me to give you if you should call. permit me to fetch them." he went away and soon returned; he handed cornélie the parcel and the letter. she walked down a side-street turning out of the corso, opened the envelope and found a few bank-notes and this letter: "most honoured lady, "i am so glad that you have applied to me at last; and urania also will approve. i feel i am acting in accordance with her wishes when i send you not two hundred but a thousand lire, with the most humble request that you will accept it and keep it as long as you please. for of course i dare not ask you to take it as a present. nevertheless i am making so bold as to send you a keepsake. when i read that you were compelled to sell a bracelet, i hated the idea so that, without stopping to think, i ran round to marchesini's and, as best i could, picked you out a bracelet which, at your feet, i entreat you to accept. you must not refuse your friend this. let my bracelet be a secret from urania as well as from van der staal. "once more receive my sincere thanks for deigning to apply to me for aid and be assured that i attach the highest value to this mark of favour. "your most humble servant, "virgilio di f.-b." cornélie opened the parcel and found a velvet case containing a bracelet in the etruscan style: a narrow gold band set with pearls and sapphires. chapter xxxi in those hot may days, the big studio facing north was cool while the town outside was scorching. duco and cornélie did not go out before nightfall, when it was time to think of dining somewhere. rome was quiet: roman society had fled; the tourists had migrated. they saw nobody and their days glided past. he worked diligently; _the banners_ was finished: the two of them, with their arms around each other's waists and her head on his shoulder, would sit in front of it, proudly smiling, during the last clays before the drawing was to be sent to the international exhibition in knightsbridge. their feeling for each other had never contained such pure harmony, such unity of concord, as now, when his work was done. he felt that he had never worked so nobly, so firmly, so unhesitatingly, never with the same strength, yet never so tenderly; and he was grateful to her for it. he confessed to her that he could never have worked like that if she had not thought with him and felt with him in their long hours of sitting and gazing at the procession, the pageant of women, as it wound out of the night of crumbling pillars to the city of sheer increasing radiance and gleaming palaces of glass. there was rest in his soul, now that he had worked so greatly and nobly. there was pride in them both: pride because of their life, their independence, because of that work of noble and stately art. in their happiness there was much that was arbitrary; they looked down upon people, the multitude, the world; and this was especially true of him. in her there was more of quietude and humility, though outwardly she showed herself as proud as he. her article on _the social position of divorced women_ had been published in pamphlet form and made a success. but her own performance did not make her proud as duco's art made her proud, proud of him and of their life and their happiness. while she read in the dutch papers and magazines the reviews of her pamphlet--often displaying opposition but never any slight and always acknowledging her authority to speak on the question--while she read her pamphlet through again, a doubt arose within her of her own conviction. she felt how difficult it was to fight with a single mind for a cause, as those symbolic women in the drawing marched to the fight. she felt that what she had written was inspired by her own experience, by her own suffering and by these only; she saw that she had generalized her own sense of life and suffering, but without deeper insight into the essence of those things: not from pure conviction, but from anger and resentment; not from reflection, but after melancholy musing upon her own fate; not from her love of her fellow-women, but from a petty hatred of society. and she remembered duco's silence at that time, his mute disapproval, his intuitive feeling that the source of her excitement was not pure, but the bitter and turbid spring of her own experience. she now respected his intuition; she now perceived the essential purity of his character; she now felt that he--because of his art--was high, noble, without ulterior motives in his actions, creating beauty for its own sake. but she also felt that she had roused him to it. that was her pride and her happiness; and she loved him more dearly for it. but about herself she was humble. she was conscious of her femininity, of all the complexity of her soul, which prevented her from continuing to fight for the objects of the feminist movement. and she thought again of her education, of her husband, her short but sad married life ... and she thought of the prince. she felt herself so complex and she would gladly have been homogeneous. she swayed between contradiction and contradiction and she confessed to herself that she did not know herself. it gave a tinge of melancholy to her days of happiness. the prince ... was not her pride only apparent that she had asked him not to tell urania that she was living with duco, because she would tell her so herself? in reality, she feared urania's opinion.... she was troubled by the dishonesty of the life: she called the intersections of her line with the lines of other small people the petty life. why, so soon as she crossed one of these intersections, did she feel, as though by instinct, that honesty was not always wise? what became of her pride and her dignity--not apparently, but actually--from the moment that she feared urania's criticism, from the moment that she feared lest this criticism might be unfavourable to her in one respect or another? and why did she not speak of virgilio's bracelet to duco? she did not speak of the thousand lire because she knew that money matters depressed him and that he did not want to borrow from the prince, because, if he knew about it, he would not be able to work free from care; and her concealment had been for a noble object. but why did she not speak of gilio's bracelet?... she did not know. once or twice she had tried to say, just naturally and casually: "look, i've had this from the prince, because i sold that one bracelet." but she was not able to say it, she did not know why. was it because of duco's jealousy? she didn't know, she didn't know. she felt that it would make for peace and tranquillity if she said nothing about the bracelet and did not wear it. really she would have been glad to send it back to the prince. but she thought that unkind, after all his readiness to assist her. and duco ... he thought that she had sold the bracelets for a good sum, he knew that she had received money from the publisher, for her pamphlet. he asked no further questions and ceased to think about money. they lived very simply.... but still she disliked his not knowing, even though it had been good for his work that he had not known. these were little things. these were little clouds in the golden skies of their great and noble life, their life of which they were proud. and she alone saw them. and, when she saw his eyes, radiant with the pride of life; when she heard his voice, vibrating with his new assured energy and pride; and when she felt his embrace, in which she felt the thrill of his delight in the happiness which she brought him, then she no longer saw the little clouds, then she felt her own thrill of delight in the happiness which he had brought her and she loved him so passionately that she could have died in his arms.... chapter xxxii urania wrote most charmingly. she said that they were having a very quiet time with the old prince at san stefano, as they were not inviting visitors because the castle was too gloomy, too shabby, too lonely, but that she would think it most delightful if cornélie would come and spend a few weeks with them. she added that she would send mr. van der staal an invitation as well. the letter was addressed to the via dei serpenti and forwarded to cornélie from there. she understood from this that gilio had not mentioned that she was living in duco's studio and she understood also that urania accepted their _liaison_ without criticizing it.... _the banners_ had been dispatched to london; and, now that duco was no longer working, a slight indolence and a vague boredom hung about the studio, which was still cool, while the town was scorching. and cornélie wrote to urania that she was very glad to accept and promised to come in a week's time. she was pleased that she would meet no other guests at the castle, for she had no dresses for a country-house visit. but with her usual tact she freshened up her wardrobe, without spending much money. this took up all the intervening days; and she sat sewing while duco lay on the sofa and smoked cigarettes. he also had accepted, because of cornélie and because the district around the lake of san stefano, which was overlooked by the castle, attracted him. he promised cornélie with a smile not to be so stiff. he would do his best to make himself agreeable. he looked down rather haughtily on the prince. he considered him a scallywag, but no longer a bounder or a cad. he thought him childish, but not base or ignoble. cornélie went off. he took her to the station. in the cab she kissed him fondly and told him how much she would miss him during those few days. would he come soon? in a week? she would be longing for him; she could not do without him. she looked deep into his eyes, which she loved. he also said that he would be terribly bored without her. couldn't he come earlier, she asked. no, urania had fixed the date. when he helped her into a second-class compartment, she felt sad to be going without him. the carriage was full; she occupied the last vacant seat. she sat between a fat peasant and an old peasant-woman; the man civilly helped her to put her little portmanteau in the rack and asked whether she minded if he smoked his pipe. she civilly answered no. opposite them sat two priests in frayed cassocks. an unimportant-looking little brown wooden box was lying between their feet: it was the extreme unction, which they were taking to a dying person. the peasant entered into conversation with cornélie, asked if she was a foreigner: english, no doubt? the old peasant-woman offered her a tangerine orange. the remainder of the compartment was occupied by a middle-class family: father, mother, a small boy and two little sisters. the slow train shook, rattled and wound its way along, stopping constantly. the little girls kept on humming tunes. at one station a lady stepped out of a first-class carriage with a little girl of five, in a white frock and a hat with white ostrich-feathers. "_oh, che bellezza_!" cried the small boy. "mamma, mamma, look! isn't she beautiful? isn't she lovely? _divinamente_! oh ... mamma!" he closed his black eyes, lovelorn, dazzled by the little white girl of five. the parents laughed, the priests laughed, everybody laughed. but the boy was not at all confused: "_era una bellezza_!" he repeated once more, casting a glance of conviction all around him. it was very hot in the train. outside, the mountains gleamed white on the horizon and glittered like a fire with opal reflections. close to the railway stood a row of eucalyptus-trees, sickle-leaved, brewing a heavy perfume. on the dry, sun-scorched plain, the wild cattle grazed, lifting their black curly heads with indifference to the train. in the stifling, stewing heat, the passengers' drowsy heads nodded up and down, while a smell of sweat, tobacco-smoke and orange-peel mingled with the scent of the eucalyptuses outside. the train swung round a curve, rattling like a toy-train of tin coaches almost tumbling over one another and a level stretch of unruffled la zulite--metallic, crystalline, sky-blue--came into view, spreading into an oval goblet between slopes of mountain-land, like a very deep-set vase in which a sacred fluid was kept blue and pure and motionless by a wall of rocky hills, which rose higher and higher until, as the train swung and rattled round the clear goblet, at one lofty point a castle stood, coloured like the rocks, broad, massive and monastic, with the cloisters running down the slope. it rose in noble and sombre melancholy; and from the train one could hardly distinguish what was rock and what was building-stone, as though it were all one barbaric growth, as though the castle had grown naturally out of the rock and, in growing, had assumed something of the shape of a human dwelling of the earliest times. and, as though the oval with its divine blue water had been a sacred reservoir, the mountains hedged, in the lake of san stefano and the castle rose as its sombre guardian. the train wound along a curve by the water-side, swung round a bend, then round another and stopped: san stefano. it was a small, quiet town, lying sleepily in the sun, without life or traffic, and visited only in the winter by day-trippers, who came from rome to see the cathedral and the castle and tasted the wine of the country at the _osteria._ when cornélie alighted, she at once saw the prince. "how sweet of you to come and look us up in our eyrie!" he cried, in rapture, eagerly pressing her two hands. he led her through the station to his little basket-carriage, with two little horses and a tiny groom. a porter would bring her luggage to the castle. "it's delightful of you to come!" he repeated. "you have never been to san stefano before? you know the cathedral is famous. we shall go right through the town: the road to the castle runs behind it." he was smiling with pleasure. he started the horses with a click of his tongue, with a repeated shake of the reins, like a child. they flew along the road, between the low, sleepy little houses, across the square, where in the glowing sunlight the glorious cathedral rose, lombardo-romanesque in style, begun in the eleventh and added to in every succeeding century, with the _campanile_ on the left and the _battisterio_ on the right: marvels of architecture in red, black and white marble, one vast sculpture of angels, saints and prophets and all as it were covered with a thick dust of ages, which had long since tempered the colours of the marble to rose, grey and yellow and which hovered between the groups as the one and only thing that had been left over of all those centuries, as though they had sunk into dust in every crevice. the prince drove across a long bridge, whose arches were the remains of an ancient aqueduct and now stood in the river, the bed of which was quite dried up, with children playing in it. then he let the little horses climb at a foot's pace. the road led steeply, winding, barren and rocky, up to the castle, while valleys of olives sank beneath them, affording an ever wider view over the ever wider panorama of blue-white mountains and opal horizons gleaming in the sun, with suddenly a glimpse of the lake, the oval goblet, now sunk deeper and deeper, as in a fluted brim of sun-scorched hills, its blue growing deeper and more precipitous, a mystic blue that caught all the blue of the sky, until the air shimmered between lake and sky as in long spirals of light that whirled before the eyes. until suddenly there drifted an intoxication of orange-blossom, a heavy, sensual breath as of panting love, as though thousands of mouths were exhaling a perfumed breath that hung stiflingly in the windless atmosphere of light, between the lake and the sky. the prince, happy and vivacious, talked a great deal, pointed this way and that with his whip, clicked at the horses, asked cornélie questions, asked if she did not admire the landscape. slowly, straining the muscles of their hind-legs, the horses drew the carriage up the ascent. the castle lay massive, huddling close to the ground. the lake sank lower and lower. the horizons became wider, like a world; a fitful breeze blew away some of the orange-blossom breath. the road became broad, easy and level. the castle lay extended like a fortress, like a town, behind its pinnacled walls, with gate within gate. they drove in, across a courtyard, under an archway into a second courtyard. and cornélie received a sensation of awe, a vision of pillars, arches, statues, arcades and fountains. they alighted. urania ran out to meet her, embraced her, welcomed her affectionately and took her up the stairs and through the passages to her room. the windows were open; she looked out at the lake and the town and the cathedral. and urania kissed her again and made her sit down. and cornélie was struck by the fact that urania had grown thin and had lost her former brilliant beauty of an american girl, with the unconscious look of a _cocotte_ in her eyes, her smile and her clothes. she was changed. she had "gone off" a little and was no longer so pretty, as though her good looks had been a short-lived pretence, consisting of freshness rather than line. but, if she had lost her bloom, she had gained a certain distinction, a certain style, something that surprised cornélie. her gestures were quieter, her voice was softer, her mouth seemed smaller and was not always splitting open to display her white teeth; her dress was exceedingly simple: a blue skirt and a white blouse. cornélie found it difficult to realize that the young princess of forte-braccio, duchess of san stefano, was miss urania hope of chicago. a slight melancholy had come over her, which became her, even though she was less pretty. and cornélie reflected that she must have some sorrow, which had smoothed her angles, but that she was also tactfully accommodating herself to her entirely novel environment. she asked urania if she was happy. urania said yes, with her sad smile, which was so new and so surprising. and she told her story. they had had a pleasant winter at nice, but among a cosmopolitan circle of friends, for, though her new relations were very kind, they were exceedingly condescending and virgilio's friends, especially the ladies, kept her at arm's length in an almost insolent fashion. already during the honeymoon she had perceived that the aristocracy were prepared to tolerate her, but that they could never forget that she was the daughter of hope the chicago stockinet-manufacturer. she had seen that she was not the only one who, though she was now a princess and duchess, was accepted on sufferance and only for her millions: there were others like herself. she had formed no friendships. people came to her parties and dances: they were _frère et compagnon_ and hand and glove with gilio; the women called him by his christian name, laughed and flirted with him and seemed quite to approve of him for marrying a few millions. to urania they were just barely civil, especially the women: the men were not so difficult. but the whole thing saddened her, especially with all these women of the higher nobility--bearers of the most famous names in italy--who treated her with condescension and always managed to exclude her from every intimacy, from all private gatherings, from all cooperation in the matter of parties or charities. when everything had been discussed, then they asked the principessa di forte-braccio to take part and offered her the place to which she was entitled and even did so with scrupulous punctiliousness. they manifestly treated her as a princess and an equal in the eyes of the world, of the public. but in their own set she remained urania hope. and the few other, middle-class millionaire elements of course ran after her, but she kept these at a distance; and gilio approved. and what had gilio said when she once complained of her grievance to him? that she, by displaying tactfulness, would certainly conquer her position, but with great patience and after many, many years. she was now crying, with her head on cornélie's shoulder: oh, she reflected, she would never conquer them, those haughty women! what after all was she, a hope, compared with all those celebrated families, which together made up the ancient glory of italy and which, like the massimos, traced back their descent to the romans of old? was gilio kind? yes, but from the beginning he had treated her as "his wife." all his pleasantness, all his cheerfulness was kept for others: he never talked to her much. and the young princess wept: she felt lonely, she sometimes longed for america. she had now invited her brother to stay with her, a nice boy of seventeen, who had come over for her wedding and travelled about europe a little before returning to his farm in the far west. he was her darling, he consoled her; but he would be gone in a few weeks. and then what would she have left? oh, how glad she was that cornélie had come! and how well she was looking, prettier than she had ever seen her look! van der staal had accepted: he would be here in a week. she asked, in a whisper, were they not going to get married? cornélie answered positively no; she was not marrying, she would never marry again. and, in a sudden burst of candour, unable to conceal things from urania, she told her that she was no longer living in the via dei serpenti, that she was living in duco's studio. urania was startled by this breach of every convention; but she regarded her friend as a woman who could do things which another could not. so it was only their happiness and friendship, she whispered, as though frightened, and without the sanction of society? urania remembered cornélie's imprecations against marriage, and, formerly, against the prince. but she did like gilio a little now, didn't she? oh, she, urania, would not be jealous again! she thought it delightful that cornélie had come; and gilio, who was bored, had also looked forward so to her arrival. oh, no, urania was no longer jealous! and, with her head on cornélie's shoulder and her eyes still full of tears, she seemed merely to ask for a little friendship, a little affection, a few kind words and caresses, this wealthy american child who now bore the title of an ancient italian house. and cornélie felt for her because she was suffering, because she was no longer a small, insignificant person, whose line of life happened to cross her own. she took her in her arms, comforted her, the weeping little princess, as with a new friendship; she accepted her in her life as a friend, no longer as a small, insignificant person. and, when urania, staring wide-eyed, remembered cornélie's warning, cornélie treated that warning lightly and said that urania ought to show more courage. tact, she possessed, innate tact. but she must be courageous and face life as it came.... they stood up and, clasped in each other's arms, looked out of the open window. the bells of the cathedral were pealing through the air; the cathedral rose in noble pride from out of a very low huddle of roofs, a gigantic cathedral for so small a town, an immense symbol of ecclesiastical dominion over the roof-tops of the little town kneeling in reverence. and the awe which had filled cornélie in the courtyard, among the arcades, statues and fountains, inspired her anew, because glory and grandeur, dying but not dead, mouldering but not spent, seemed to loom dimly from the mystic blue of the lake, from the age-old architecture of the cathedral, up the orange-clad hills to the castle, where at an open window stood a young foreign woman, discouraged, although that phantom of glory and grandeur needed her millions in order to endure for a few more generations.... "it is beautiful and stately, all this past," thought cornélie. "it is great. but still it is no longer anything. it is a phantom. for it is gone, it is all gone, it is but a memory of proud and arrogant nobles, of narrow souls that do not look towards the future." and the future, with a confusion of social problems, with the waving of new banners and streamers, now whirled before her in the long spirals of light, which, like blue notes of interrogation, shimmered before her eyes, between the lake and the sky. chapter xxxiii cornélie had changed her dress and now left her room. she went down the corridor and saw nobody. she did not know the way, but walked on. suddenly a wide staircase fell away before her, between two rows of gigantic marble candelabra; and cornélie came to an _atrio_ which opened over the lake. the walls, with frescoes by mantegna, representing feats of bygone san stefanos, supported a cupola which, painted with sky and clouds, appeared as though it were open to the outer air and which was surrounded by groups of cupids and nymphs looking down from a balustrade. she stepped outside and saw gilio. he was sitting on the balustrade of the terrace, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the lake. he came up to her: "i was almost sure that you would come this way," he said. "aren't you tired? may i show you round? have you seen our mantegnas? they have suffered badly they were restored at the beginning of the century.[ ] they look rather dilapidated, don't they? do you see that little mythological scene up there, by giulio romano? come here, through this door. but it's locked. wait...." he called out an order to some one below. presently an old serving-man arrived with a heavy bunch of keys, which he handed to the prince. "you can go, egisto. i know the keys." the man went away. the prince opened a heavy bronze door. he showed her the bas-reliefs: "giovanni da bologna," he said. they went on, through a room hung with tapestries; the prince pointed to a ceiling by ghirlandajo: the apotheosis of the only pope of the house of san stefano. next through a hall of mirrors, painted by mario de' flori. the dusty, musty smell of an ill-kept museum, with its atmosphere of neglect and indifference, stifled the breath; the white silk window-curtains were yellow with age, soiled by flies; the red curtains of venetian damask hung in moth-eaten rags and tatters; the painted mirrors were dull and tarnished; the arms of the venetian glass chandeliers were broken. pushed aside anyhow, like so much rubbish in a lumber-room, stood the most precious cabinets, inlaid with bronze, mother-of-pearl and ebony panels, and mosaic tables of lapis-lazuli, malachite and green, yellow, black and pink marble. in the tapestries--saul and david, esther, holofernes, salome--the vitality of the figures had evaporated, as though they were suffocated under the grey coat of dust that lay thick upon their worn textures and neutralized every colour. in the immense halls, half-dark in their curtained dusk, a sort of sorrow lingered, like a melancholy of hopeless, conquered exasperation, a slow decline of greatness and magnificence; between the masterpieces of the most famous painters mournful empty spaces yawned, the witnesses of pinching penury, spaces once occupied by pictures that had once and even lately been sold for fortunes. cornélie remembered something about a lawsuit some years ago, an attempt to send some raphaels across the frontier, in defiance of the law, and to sell them in berlin.... and gilio led her hurriedly through the spectral halls, gay as a boy, light-hearted as a child, glad to have his diversion, mentioning without affection or interest names which he had heard in his childhood, but making mistakes and correcting himself and at last confessing that he had forgotten: "and here is the _camera degli sposi_...." he fumbled at the bunch of keys, read the brass labels till he found the right one and opened the door, which grated on its hinges; and they went in. and suddenly there was something like an intense and exquisite stateliness of intimacy: a huge bedroom, all gold, with the dim gold of tenderly faded golden tissues. on the walls were gold-coloured tapestries: venus rising from the gilt foam of a golden ocean, venus and mars, venus and cupid, venus and adonis. the pale-pink nudity of these mythological beings stood forth very faintly against the sheer gold of sky and atmosphere, in golden woodlands, amid golden flowers, with golden cupids and swans and doves and wild boars; golden peacocks drank from golden fountains; water and clouds were of elemental gold; and all this had tenderly faded into a languorous sunset of expiring radiance. the state bed was gold, under a canopy of gold brocade, on which the armorial bearings of the family were embroidered in heavy relief; the bedspread was gold; but all this gold was lifeless, had lapsed into the melancholy of all but grey lustre: it was effaced, erased, obliterated, as though the dusty ages had cast a shadow over it, had woven a web across it. "how beautiful!" said cornélie. "our famous bridal chamber," said the prince, laughing. "it was a strange idea of those old people, to spend the first night in such a peculiar apartment. when they married, in our family, they slept here on the bridal night. it was a sort of superstition. the young wife remained faithful only provided it was here that she spent the first night with her husband. poor urania! we did not sleep here, _signora mia_, among all these indecent goddesses of love. we no longer respect the family tradition. urania is therefore doomed by fate to be unfaithful to me. unless i take that doom on my own shoulders...." "i suppose the fidelity of the husbands is not mentioned in this family tradition?" "no, we attached very little importance to that ... nor do we nowadays...." "it's glorious," cornélie repeated, looking around her. "duco will think it perfectly glorious. oh, prince, i never saw such a room look at venus over there, with the wounded adonis, his head in her lap, the nymphs lamenting! it is a fairy-tale." "there's too much gold for my taste." "it may have been so before, too much gold...." "masses of gold denoted wealth and abundant love. the wealth is gone...." "but the gold is softened now, so beautifully toned down...." "the abundant love has remained: the san stefanos have always loved much." he went on jesting, called attention to the wantonness of the design and risked an allusion. she pretended not to hear. she looked at the tapestries. in the intervals between the panels golden peacocks drank from golden fountains and cupids played with doves. "i am so fond of you!" he whispered in her ear, putting his arm round her waist. "angel! angel!" she pushed him away: "prince...." "call me gilio!" "why can't we be just good friends?" "because i want something more than friendship." she now released herself entirely: "and i don't!" she answered, coldly. "do you only love one then? "yes." "that's not possible." "why not?" "because, if so, you would marry him. if you loved nobody but van der staal, you would marry him." "i am opposed to marriage." "nonsense! you're not marrying him, so that you may be free. and, if you want to be free, i also am entitled to ask for my moment of love." she gave him a strange look. he felt her scorn. "you ... you don't understand me at all," she said, slowly and compassionately. "you understand me." "oh, yes! you are so very simple!" "why won't you?" "because i won't." "why not?" "because i haven't that feeling for you." "why not?" he insisted; and his hands clenched as he spoke. "'why not?'" she repeated. "because i think you a cheerful and pleasant companion with whom to take things lightly, but in other respects your temperament is not in tune with mine." "what do you know about my temperament?" "i can see you." "you are not a doctor." "no, but i am a woman." "and i a man." "but not for me." furiously, with a curse, he caught her in his quivering arms. before she could prevent him, he had kissed her fiercely. she struggled out of his grasp and slapped his face. he gave another curse and flung out his arms to seize her again, but she drew herself up: "prince!" she cried, screaming with laughter. "you surely don't think that you can compel me?" "of course i do!" she gave a disdainful laugh: "you can not," she said, aloud. "for i refuse and i will not be compelled." he saw red, he was furious. he had never before been defied and thwarted; he had always conquered. she saw him rushing at her, but she quietly flung back the door of the room. the long galleries and apartments stretched out before them, as though endlessly. there was something in that vista of ancestral spaciousness that restrained him. he was an impetuous rather than a deliberate ravisher. she walked on very slowly, looking attentively to right and left. he came up with her: "you struck me!" he panted, furiously. "i'll never forgive it, never!" "i beg your pardon," she said, with her sweetened voice and smile. "i had to defend myself, you know." "why?" "prince," she said, persuasively, "why all this anger and passion and exasperation? you can be so nice; when i saw you last in rome you were so chax-ming. we were always such good friends. i enjoyed your conversation and your wit and your good-nature. now it's all spoilt." "no," he entreated. "yes, it is. you won't understand me. your temperament is not in harmony with mine. don't you understand? you force me to speak coarsely, because you are coarse yourself." "i?" "yes. you don't believe in the sincerity of my independence." "no, i don't!" "is that courteous, towards a woman?" "i am courteous only up to a certain point." "we have left that point behind. so be courteous again as before." "you are playing with me. i shall never forget it; i will be revenged." "so it's a struggle for life and death?" "no, a struggle for victory, for me." they had reached the _atrio_: "thanks for showing me round," she said, a little mockingly. "the _camera degli sposi_, above all, was splendid. don't let us be angry any more." and she offered him her hand. "no," he said, "you struck me here, in the face. my cheek is still burning. i won't accept your hand." "poor cheek!" she said, teasingly. "poor prince! did i hit hard?" "yes." "how can i extinguish that burning?" he looked at her, still breathing hard, and flushed, with glittering carbuncle eyes: "you're a bigger coquette than any italian woman." she laughed: "with a kiss?" she asked. "demon!" he muttered, between his teeth. "with a kiss?" she repeated. "yes," he said. "there, in our _camera degli sposi_." "no, here." "demon!" he muttered, still more softly. she kissed him quickly. then she gave him her hand: "and now that's over. the incident is closed." "angel! she-devil!" he hissed after her. she looked over the balustrade at the lake. evening had fallen and the lake lay shimmering in mist. she regarded him as a young boy, who sometimes amused her and had now been naughty. she was no longer thinking of him; she was thinking of duco: "how lovely he will think it here!" she thought. "oh, how i long for him!..." there was a rustle of women's skirts behind her. it was urania and the marchesa belloni. [ ] the nineteenth century. chapter xxxiv urania asked cornélie to come in, because it was not healthy out of doors now, at sunset, with the misty exhalations from the lake. the marchesa bowed coldly and stiffly, pinched her eyes together and pretended not to remember cornélie very well. "i can understand that," said cornélie, smiling acidly. "you see different boarders at your _pension_ every day and i stayed for a much shorter time than you reckoned on. i hope that you soon disposed of my rooms again, marchesa, and that you suffered no loss through my departure?" the marchesa belloni looked at her in mute amazement. she was here, at san stefano, in her element as a marchioness; she, the sister-in-law of the old prince, never spoke here of her foreigners' boarding-house; she never met her roman guests here: they sometimes visited the castle, but only at fixed hours, whereas she spent the weeks of her summer _villeggiatura_ here. and here she laid aside her plausible manner of singing the praises of a chilly room, her commercial habit of asking the most she dared. she here carried her curled leonine head with a lofty dignity; and, though she still wore her crystal brilliants in her ears, she also wore a brand-new spencer around her ample bosom. she could not help it, that she, a countess by birth, she, the marchesa belloni--the late marquis was a brother of the defunct princess--possessed no personal distinction, despite all her quarterings; but she felt herself to be, as indeed she was, an aristocrat. the friends, the _monsignori_ whom she did sometimes meet at san stefano, promoted the pension belloni in their conversation and called it the palazzo belloni. "oh, yes," she said, at last, very coolly, blinking her eyes with an aristocratic air, "i remember you now ... although i've forgotten your name. a friend of the princess urania, i believe? i am glad to see you again, very glad.... and what do you think of your friend's marriage?" she asked, as she went up the stairs beside cornélie, between mino da fiesole's marble candelabra. gilio, still angry and flushed and not at all calmed by the kiss, had moved away. urania had run on ahead. the marchesa knew of cornélie's original opposition, of her former advice to urania and she was certain that cornélie had acted in this way because she herself had had views on gilio. there was a note of triumphant irony in her question. "i think it was made in heaven," cornélie replied, in a bantering tone. "i believe there is a blessing on their marriage." "the blessing of his holiness," said the marchesa, naively, not understanding. "of course: the blessing of his holiness ... and of heaven." "i thought you were not religious?" "sometimes, when i think of their marriage, i become very religious. what peace for the princess urania's soul when she became a catholic! what happiness in life, to marry _il caro gilio!_ there is still peace and happiness left in life." the marchesa had a vague suspicion that she was mocking and thought her a dangerous woman. "and you, has our religion no charm for you?" "a great deal! i have a great feeling for beautiful churches and pictures. but that is an artistic conception. you will not understand it perhaps, for i don't think you are artistic, marchesa? and marriage also has charms for me, a marriage like urania's. couldn't you help me too some time, marchesa? then i will spend a whole winter in your _pension_ and--who knows?--perhaps i too shall become a catholic. you might give rudyard another chance, with me; and, if that didn't succeed, the two _monsignori_. then i should certainly become converted.... and it would of course be lucrative." the marchesa looked at her haughtily, white with rage: "lucrative?..." "if you get me an italian title, but accompanied by money, of course it would be lucrative." "how do you mean?" "well, ask the old prince, marchesa, or the two _monsignori_." "what do you know about it? what are you thinking of?" "i? nothing!" cornélie answered, coolly. "but i have second sight. i sometimes suddenly see a thing. so keep on friendly terms with me and don't pretend again to forget an old boarder.... is this the princess urania's room? you go in first, marchesa; after you...." the marchesa entered all aquiver: she had thoughts of witchcraft. how did that woman know _anything_ of her transactions with the old prince and the _monsignori_? how did she come to suspect that urania's marriage and her conversion had enriched the marchesa to the tune of a few ten thousand lire? she had not only had a lesson: she was shuddering, she was frightened. was that woman a witch? was she the devil? had she the _mal'occhio_? and the marchesa made the sign of the _jettatura_ with her little finger and fore-finger in the folds of her dress and muttered: "vade retro, satanas...." in her own drawing-room, urania poured out tea. the three pointed windows of the room overlooked the town and the ancient cathedral, which in the orange reflection of the last gleams of sunset shot up for yet a moment out of its grey dust of ages with the dim huddle of its saints, prophets and angels. the room, hung with handsome tapestries--an allegory of _abundance_: nymphs outpouring the contents of their cornucopias--was half old, half modern, not always perfect in taste and pure in tone, with here and there a few hideously commonplace modern ornaments, here and there some modern comfort that clashed with the rest, but yet cosy, inhabited and urania's home. a young man rose from a chair and urania introduced him to cornélie as her brother. young hope was a strongly built, fresh-looking boy of eighteen; he was still in his bicycling-suit: it didn't matter, said his sister, just to drink a cup of tea. laughing, she stroked his close-cropped round head and, with the ladies' permission, gave him his tea first: then he would go and change. he looked so strange, so new and so healthy as he sat there with his fresh, pink complexion, his broad chest, his strong hands and muscular calves, with the youthfulness of a young yankee farmer who, notwithstanding the millions of "old man hope," worked on his farm, way out in the far west, to make his own fortune; he looked so strange in this ancient san stefano, within view of that severely symbolical cathedral, against this background of old tapestries. and suddenly cornélie was impressed still more strangely by the new young princess her name--her american name of urania--had a first-rate sound: "the princess urania" sounded unexpectedly well. but the little wife, a trifle pale, a trifle sad, with her clipping american accent, suddenly struck cornélie as somewhat out of place amid the faded glories of san stefano. cornélie was continually forgetting that urania was princess of forte-braccio: she always thought of her as miss hope. and yet urania possessed great tact, great ease of manner, a great power of assimilation. gilio had entered; and the few words which she addressed to her husband were, quite naturally, almost dignified ... and yet carried, to cornélie's ears, a sound of resigned disillusionment which made her pity urania. she had from the beginning felt a vague liking for urania; now she felt a fonder affection. she was sorry for this child, the princess urania. gilio behaved to her with careless coolness, the marchesa with patronizing condescension. and then there was that awful loneliness around her, of all that ruined magnificence. she stroked her young brother's head. she spoilt him, she asked him if his tea was all right and stuffed him with sandwiches, because he was hungry after his bicycle-ride. she had him with her now as a reminder of home, a reminder of chicago; she almost clung to him. but for the rest she was surrounded by the depressing gloom of the immense castle, the neglected glory of its ancient stateliness, the conceit of that aristocratic pride, which could do without her but not without her millions. and for cornélie she had lost all her absurdity as an american _parvenue_ and, on the contrary, had acquired an air of tragedy, as of a young sacrificial victim. how alien they were as they sat there, the young princess and her brother, with his muscular calves! urania displayed her portfolio of drawings and designs: the ideas of a young roman architect for restoring the castle. and she became excited, with a flush in her cheeks, when cornélie asked her if so much restoration would really be beautiful. urania defended her architect. gilio smoked cigarettes with an air of indifference; he was in a bad temper. the marchesa sat like an idol, with her leonine head and the crystals sparkling in her ears. she was afraid of cornélie and promised herself to be on her guard. a major-domo came and announced to the princess that dinner was served. and cornélie recognized old giuseppe from the pension belloni, the old archducal major-domo, who had once dropped a spoon, according to rudyard's story. she looked at urania with a laugh and urania blushed: "poor man!" she said, when giuseppe was gone. "yes, i took him from my aunt. he was so hard-worked at the palazzo belloni! here he has very little to do and he has a young butler under him. the number of servants had to be increased in any case. he is enjoying a pleasant old age here, poor dear old giuseppe.... there, bob, now you haven't dressed!" "she's a dear child," thought cornélie, while they all rose and urania gently reproached her brother, as she would a spoiled boy, for coming down to dinner in his knickerbockers. chapter xxxv they were in the great sombre dining-room, with the almost black tapestries, with the almost black panels of the ceiling, with the almost black oak carvings, with the black, monumental chimney-piece and, above it, the arms of the family in black marble. the light of two tall silver candlesticks on the table merely cast a gleam over the damask and crystal, but left the remainder of the too large room in a gloomy obscurity of shadow, piled in the comers into masses of densest shadow, with a fainter shadow descending from the ceiling like a haze of dark velvet that floated in atoms above the candle-light. the ancestral antiquity of san stefano hovered above them in this room like a palpable sense of awe, blended with a melancholy of black silence and black pride. here their words sounded muffled. this still remained as it always had been, retaining as it were the sacrosanctity of their aristocratic traditions, in which urania would never dare to alter anything, even as she hardly ventured to open her mouth to speak or eat. they waited for a moment. then a double door was opened. and there entered like a spectral shade an old, grey man, with his arm in the arm of the priest walking beside him. old prince ercole approached with very slow and stately steps, while the chaplain regulated his pace by that stately slowness. he wore a long black coat of an old-fashioned, roomy cut, which hung about him in folds, something like a cassock, and on his silvery grey hair, which waved over his neck, a black-velvet skull-cap. and the others approached him with the greatest respect: first the marchesa; then urania, whom he kissed on the forehead, very slowly, as though he were consecrating her; then gilio, who submissively kissed his father's hand. the old man nodded to young hope, who bowed, and glanced towards cornélie. urania presented her. and the prince said a few amiable words to her, as though he were granting an audience, and asked her if she liked italy. when cornélie had replied, prince ercole sat down and handed his skull-cap to giuseppe, who took it with a deep bow. then they all sat down: the marchesa and the chaplain opposite prince ercole, who sat between cornélie and urania; gilio next to cornélie; bob hope next to his sister: "my legs don't show," he whispered. "ssh!" said urania. giuseppe, revivified in his former dignity, standing at a sideboard, solemnly filled the plates with soup. he was back in his element; he was obviously grateful to urania; he wore a distinguished air, as of one whose mind is at peace, and looked like an elderly diplomatist in his dress-coat. he amused cornélie, who thought of belloni's, where he used to become impatient when the visitors were late at meals and to rail at the young greenhorns of waiters whom the marchesa engaged for economy's sake. when the two footmen had handed round the soup, the chaplain stood up and said grace. not a word had been spoken yet. they ate the soup in silence, while the three servants stood motionless. the spoons clinked against the plates and the marchesa smacked her lips. the candles flickered now and again; and the shadow fell more oppressively, like a haze of black velvet. then prince ercole addressed the marchesa. and turn by turn he addressed them all, with a kindly, condescending dignity, in french and italian. the conversation became a little more general, but the old prince continued to lead it. and cornélie noticed that he was very civil to urania. but she remembered gilio's words: "papa nearly had a stroke, because old hope haggled over urania's dowry. ten millions? five millions? not three millions! dollars? no, lire!" and the prince suddenly struck her as the grey-haired egoism of san stefano's glory and aristocratic pride, struck her as the living shade of the past that loomed behind him, as she had felt it that afternoon, when she stood gazing with urania into the deep, blue lake: an exacting shade; a shade demanding millions; a shade demanding a new increment of vitality; a spectral parasite who had sold his depreciated symbols to gratify the vanity of a new commercial house, but who, in his distinction, had been no match for the merchant's cunning. their title of princess and duchess for less than three million lire! papa had almost had a stroke, gilio had said. and cornélie, during the measured, affable stiffness of the conversation led by prince ercole, looked from the old prince and duke, seventy years of age, to the breezy young far-westerner, aged eighteen, and from him to prince gilio, the hope of the old house, its only hope. here, in the gloom of this dining-room, where he was bored and moreover still out of temper, he seemed small, insignificant, shrunken, a paltry, distinguished little _viveur_; and his carbuncle eyes, which could sparkle merrily with wit and depravity, now looked dully, from under their drooping lids, upon his plate, at which he picked without appetite. she felt sorry for him; and her mind went back to the golden bridal chamber. she despised him a little. she looked upon him not so much as a man who could not obtain what he wanted but rather as a naughty boy. and he must feel jealous of bob, she reflected: jealous of his young blood, which tingled in his cheeks, of his broad shoulders and his broad chest. but still he amused her. he could be very agreeable, gay and witty and vivacious, when in the mood, vivacious in his words and in his wits. she liked him, when all was said. and then he was good-hearted. she thought of the bracelet and especially the thousand lire, always remembered, with a certain emotion, how touched she had been during that walk up and down past the post-office, how touched by his letter and his generous assistance. he had no back-bone, he was not a man to her; but he was witty and he had a very good heart. she liked him as a friend and a pleasant companion. how dejected and moody he was i but then why would he venture on those silly enterprises?... she spoke to him now and again, but could not succeed in rousing him from his depression. for the rest, the conversation dragged on stiffly and affably, always led by prince ercole. the dinner came to an end; and prince ercole rose from his chair. giuseppe handed him his skull-cap; every one said good night to him; the doors were opened and prince ercole withdrew, leaning on his chaplain's arm. gilio, still angry, disappeared. the marchesa, still terrified of cornélie, also disappeared, making the _jettatura_ at her in the folds of her dress. and urania took cornélie and bob back with her to her own drawing-room. they all three breathed again. they all talked freely, in english: the boy said in despair that he wasn't getting enough to eat, that he dared not eat enough to stay his hunger; and cornélie laughed, thinking him jolly, because of his wholesomeness, while urania hunted out some biscuits for him and a piece of cake left over from tea and promised that he should have some cold meat and bread before they went to bed. and they relaxed their minds after the pompous stately meal. urania said that the old prince never appeared except at dinner, but that she always looked him up in the morning and sat talking to him for an hour or playing chess with him. at other times he played chess with the chaplain. she was very busy, urania. the reorganizing of the house-keeping, which used to be left to a poor relation, who now lived at a _pension_ in rome, took up a lot of her time. in the mornings, she discussed a host of details with prince ercole, who, notwithstanding his secluded life, knew about everything. then she had consultations with her architect from rome about the restorations to be effected in the castle: these consultations were sometimes held in the old prince's study. then she was having a big hostel built in the town, an _albergo dei poveri_, a hostel for old men and women, for which old hope had given her a separate endowment. when she first came to san stefano she had been struck by the ruinous, tumble-down houses and cottages of the poorer quarters, leprous and scabby with filth, eaten up by their own poverty, in which a whole population vegetated like toadstools. she was now building the hostel for the old people, finding work on the estate for the young and healthy and looking after the neglected children; she had built a new school-house. she talked about all this very simply, while cutting cake for her brother bob, who was tucking in after his formal dinner. she asked cornélie to come with her one morning to see how the _albergo_ was progressing, to see the new school, run by two priests who had been recommended to her by the _monsignori_. through the pointed windows the town loomed faintly in the depths below; and the lines of the cathedral rose high into the sultry, star-spangled night. and cornélie thought to herself: "it was not only for a shadow and an unsubstantial shade that she came here, the rich american who thought titles so nice,' the child who used to collect patterns of the queen's ball-dresses--she hides the album now that she is a 'black' princess--the girl who used to trip through the forum in her white serge tailor-made, without understanding either ancient rome or the dawn of the new future." and, as cornélie went to her own room through the silent heavy darkness of the castle of san stefano, she thought: "i write, but she acts. i dream and think; but she teaches the children, though it be with the aid of a priest; she feeds and houses old men and women." then, in her room, looking out at the lake under the summer night all dusted with stars, she reflected that she too would like to be rich and to have a wide field of labour. for now she had no field, now she had no money and now ... now she longed only for duco; and he must not leave her too long alone in this castle, amid all this sombre greatness, which oppressed her as with the weight of the centuries. chapter xxxvi next morning urania's maid was showing cornélie through a maze of galleries to the garden, where breakfast was to be served, when she met gilio on the stairs. the maid turned back. "i still need a guide to find my way," cornélie laughed. he grunted some reply. "how did you sleep, prince?" he gave another grunt. "look here, prince, there must be an end of this ill-temper of yours. do you hear? it's _got_ to finish. i insist. i won't have any more sulking to-day; and i hope that you'll go back to your cheerful, witty style of conversation as soon as possible, for that's what i like in you." he mumbled something. "g-ood-bye, prince," said cornélie, curtly. and she turned to go away. "where are you going?" he asked. "to my room. i shall breakfast in my room." "but why?" "because i don't care for you as a host." "me?" "yes, you. yesterday you insult me. i defend myself, you go on being rude, i at once become as amiable as ever, i give you my hand, i even give you a kiss. at dinner you sulk with me in the most uncivil fashion. you go to bed without bidding me good night. this morning you meet me without a word of greeting. you grunt, sulk and mumble like a naughty child. your eyes are blazing with anger, you are yellow with spleen. really, you're looking very bad. it doesn't suit you at all. you are most unpleasant, rough, rude and petty. i have no inclination to breakfast with you in that mood. and i'm going to my room." "no," he implored. "yes, i am." "no, no!" "then be different. make an effort, don't think any more about your defeat and be nice to me. you're behaving as the offended party, whereas it is i who ought to take offence. but i don't know how to sulk and i am not petty. i can't behave pettily. i forgive you; do you forgive me too. say something nice, say something pleasant." "i am mad about you." "you don't show it. if you're mad about me, be pleasant, civil, gay and witty. i demand it of you as my host." "i won't sulk any longer ... but i do love you so! and you struck me!" "will you never forget that act of self-defence?" "no, never!" "then good-bye." she turned to go. "no, no, don't go back. come to breakfast in the pergola. i apologize, i beg your pardon. i won't be rude again, i won't be petty. you are not petty. you are the most wonderful woman i ever met. i worship you." "then worship in silence and amuse me." his eyes, his black carbuncle eyes, began to light up again, to laugh; his face lost its wrinkles and cheered up. "i am too sad to be amusing." "i don't believe a word of it." "honestly, i am full of sorrow and suffering.... "poor prince!" "you just won't believe me. you never take me seriously. i have to be your clown, your buffoon. and i love you and have nothing to hope for. tell me, mayn't i hope?" "not much." "you are inexorable ... and so severe!" "i have to be severe with you: you are just like a naughty boy.... oh, i see the pergola! do you promise to improve?" "i shall be good." "and amusing?" he heaved a sigh: "poor gilio!" he sighed. "poor buffoon!" she laughed. in the pergola were urania and bob hope. the pergola, overgrown with creeping vine and rambler roses hanging in crimson clusters, displayed a row of marble caryatids and hermes--nymphs, satyrs and fauns--whose torsos ended in slender, sculptured pedestals, while their raised hands supported the flat roof of leaves and flowers. in the middle was an open rotunda like an open temple; the circular balustrade was also supported by caryatids; and an ancient sarcophagus had been adapted to serve as a cistern. a table was laid for breakfast in the pergola; and they breakfasted without old prince ercole or the marchesa, who broke her fast in her room. it was eight o'clock; a morning coolness was still wafted from the lake; a haze of blue gossamer floated over the hills, in the heart of which, as though surrounded by a gently fluted basin, the lake was sunk like an oval goblet. "oh, how beautiful it is here!" cried cornélie, delightedly. breakfast was a sunny and cheerful meal, after yesterday's dark and gloomy dinner. urania talked vivaciously about her _albergo_, which she was going to visit presently with cornélie, gilio recovered his amiability and bob ate heartily. and, when bob went off bicycling, gilio even accompanied the ladies to the town. they drove at a foot-pace in a landau down the castle road. the sun grew hotter and the little old town lit up, with whitish-grey and creamy-white houses like stone mirrors, in which the sun reflected itself, and little open spaces like walls, into which the sun poured its light. the coachman pulled up outside the partly finished _albergo_. they all alighted; the contractor approached ceremoniously; the perspiring masons looked round at the prince and princess. the heat was stifling. gilio kept on wiping his forehead and sheltered under cornélie's parasol. but urania was all vivacity and interest; quick and full of energy in her white-pique costume, with her white sailor-hat under her white sun-shade, she tripped along planks, past heaps of bricks and cement and tubs full of mortar, accompanied by her contractor. she made him explain things, proffered advice, disagreed with him at times and pulled a wise face, saying that she did not like certain measurements and refused to accept the contractor's assurance that she would like the measurements as the building progressed; she shook her head and impressed this and that upon him, all in a quick, none too correct, broken italian, which she chewed between her teeth. but cornélie thought her charming, attractive, every inch the princess of forte-braccio. there was not a doubt about it. while gilio, fearful of dirtying his light flannel suit and brown shoes with the mortar, remained in the shadow of her parasol, puffing and blowing with the heat and taking no interest whatever, his wife was untiring, did not trouble to think that her white skirt was becoming soiled at the hem and spoke to the contractor with a lively and dignified certainty which compelled respect. where had the child learnt that? where had she acquired her powers of assimilation? whore did she get this love for san stefano, this love for its poor? how had the american girl picked up this talent for filling her new and exalted position so worthily? gilio thought her _admirabile_ and whispered as much to cornélie. he was not blind to her good qualities. he thought urania splendid, excellent; she always astounded him. no italian woman of his own set would have been like that. and they liked her. the servants at the castle loved her. giuseppe would have gone through fire and water for her; that contractor admired her; the masons followed her respectfully with their eyes, because she was so clever and knew so much and was so good to them in their poverty. "admirabile!" said gilio. but he puffed and blew. he knew nothing about bricks, beams and measurements and did not understand where urania had got that technical sense from. she was indefatigable. she went all over the works, while he cast up his eyes to cornélie in entreaty. and at last, speaking in english, he begged his wife in heaven's name to come away. they went back to the carriage; the contractor took off his hat, the workmen raised their caps with an air of mingled gratitude and independence. and they drove to the cathedral, which cornélie wanted to see. urania showed her round. gilio asked to be excused and went and sat on the steps of the altar, with his hands hanging over his knees, to cool himself. chapter xxxvii a week had passed. duco had arrived. after the solemn dinner in the sombre dining-room, where duco had been presented to prince ercole, the summer evening, when cornélie and duco went outside, was like a dream. the castle was already wrapped in heavy repose; but cornélie had made giuseppe give her a key. and they went out, to the pergola. the stars dusted the night sky with a pale radiance; and the moon crowned the hill-tops and shimmered faintly in the mystic depths of the lake. a breath of sleeping roses was wafted from the flower-garden beyond the pergola; and below, in the flat-roofed town, the cathedral, standing in its moonlit square, lifted its gigantic fabric to the stars. and sleep hung everywhere, over the lake, over the town and behind the windows of the castle; the caryatids and hermes--the leafy roof of the pergola, in the enchanted attitudes of the servants of the sleeping beauty. a cricket chirped, but fell silent the moment that duco and cornélie approached. and they sat down on an antique bench; and she flung her arms about his body and nestled against him: "a week!" she whispered. "a whole week since i saw you, duco, my darling! i cannot do so long without you. at everything that i thought and saw and admired i thought of you, of how lovely you would think it here.... you were here once before on an excursion. oh, but that is so different! it is so beautiful just to stay here, not just to go on, but to remain. that lake, that cathedral, those hills! the rooms indoors: neglected but so wonderful! the three courtyards are dilapidated, the fountains are crumbling to pieces ... but the style of the _atrio_, the sombre gloom of the dining-room, the poetry of this pergola!... duco, doesn't the pergola remind you of a classic ode? you know how we used to read horace together: you translated the verses so well, you improvised so delightfully. how clever you are! you know so much, you feel things so beautifully. i love your eyes, your voice, i love you altogether, i love everything that is you... i can't tell you how much, duco. i have gradually surrendered myself to every word of you, to every sensation of you, to your love for rome, to your love for museums, to your manner of seeing the skies which you put into your drawings. you are so deliciously calm, almost like this lake. oh, don't laugh, don't make a jest of it: it's a week since i saw you, i feel such a need to talk to you! is it exaggerated? i don't feel quite normal here either: there is something in that sky, in that light, that makes me talk like this. it is so beautiful that i can hardly believe that all this is ordinary life, ordinary reality.... do you remember, at sorrento, on the terrace of the hotel, when we looked out over the sea, over that pearl-grey sea, with naples lying white in the distance? i felt like this then; but then i dared not speak like this: it was in the morning; there were people about, whom we didn't see but who saw us and whom i suspected all around me; but now we are alone and now i want to tell you, in your arms, against your breast, how happy i am! i love you so! all my soul, all that is finest in me is for you. you laugh, but you don't believe me. or do you? do you believe me?" "yes, i believe you, i am not laughing at you, i am only just laughing.... yes, it is beautiful here.... i also feel happy. i am so happy in you and in my art. you taught me to work, you roused me from my dreams. i am so happy about _the banners_: i have heard from london; i will show you the letters to-morrow. i have you to thank for everything. it is almost incredible that this is ordinary life. i have been so quiet too in rome. i saw nobody; i just worked a bit, not very much; and i had my meals alone in the _osteria_. the two italians--you know the men i mean--felt sorry for me, i think. oh, it was a terrible week! i can no longer do without you.... do you remember our first walks and talks in the borghese and on the palatine? how strange we were to each other then, not a bit in unison. but i believe i felt at once that all would be well and beautiful between us...." she was silent and lay against his breast. the cricket chirped again, with a long quaver. but everything else slept.... "between us," she repeated, as though in a fever; and she embraced him passionately. the whole night slept; and, while they breathed their life in each other's arms, the enchanted caryatids--fauns and nymphs--lifted the leafy roof of the pergola above their heads, between them and the star-spangled sky. chapter xxxviii gilio hated the _villeggiatura_ at san stefano, every morning he had to be up and dressed by six o'clock, with prince ercole, urania and the marchesa, to hear mass said by the chaplain in the private chapel of the castle. after that, he did not know what to do with his time. he had gone bicycling once or twice with bob hope, but the young far-westerner had too much energy for him, like bob's sister, urania. he flirted and argued a little with cornélie, but secretly he was still offended and angry with himself and her. he remembered her first arrival that evening at the palazzo ruspoli, when she came and disturbed his _rendez-vous_ with urania. and in the _camera degli sposi_ she had for the second time been too much for him! he seethed with fury when he thought of it and he hated her and swore by all his gods to be revenged. he cursed his own lack of resolution. he had been too weak to use violence or force and there ought never to have been any need to resort to force: he was accustomed to a quick surrender. and he had to be told by her, that dutchwoman, that his temperament did not respond to hers! what was there about that woman? what did she mean by it? he was so unaccustomed to thinking, he was such a thoughtless, easy-going, italian child of nature, so accustomed to let his life run on according to his every whim and impulse, that he hardly understood her--though he suspected the meaning of her words--hardly understood that reserve of hers. why should she behave so to him, this foreigner with her demoniacal new ideas, who cared nothing about the world, who would have nothing to do with marriage, who lived with a painter as his mistress! she had no religion and no morals? _he_ knew about religion and morals--she belonged to the devil; demoniacal was what she was: didn't she know all about aunt lucia belloni's manoeuvres? and hadn't aunt lucia warned him lately that she was a dangerous woman, an uncanny woman, a woman of the devil? she was a witch! why should she refuse? hadn't he plainly seen her figure last night going through the courtyard in the moonlight, beside van der staal's figure, and hadn't he seen them opening the door that led to the terrace by the pergola? and hadn't he waited an hour, two hours, without sleeping, until he saw them come back and lock the door after them? and why did she love only him, that painter? oh, he hated him, with all the blazing hatred of his jealousy; he hated her, for her exclusiveness, for her disdain, for her constant jesting and flirting, as though he were a buffoon, a clown! what was it that he asked? a favour such as she granted her lover! he was not asking for anything serious, any oath or life-long tie; he asked for so little: just one hour of love. it was of no importance: he had never looked upon that as of much importance. and she, she refused it to him! no, he did not understand her, but what he did understand was that she disdained him; and he, he hated the pair of them. and yet he was enamoured of her with all the violence of his thwarted passion. in the boredom of that _villeggiatura_, to which his wife condemned him in her new love for their ruined eyrie, his hatred and the thought of his revenge formed an occupation for his empty brains. outwardly, he was the same as usual and flirted with cornélie, flirted even more than usual, to annoy van der staal. and, when his cousin, the contessa di rosavilla--his "white" cousin, the lady-in-waiting to the queen--came to spend a few days with them, he flirted with her too and tried to provoke cornélie's jealousy. he failed in this, however, and consoled himself with the countess, who made up to him for his disappointment. she was no longer a young woman, but represented the cold, sculptured juno type, with a rather foolish expression; she had juno eyes, protruding from their sockets; she was a leader of fashion at the quirinal and in the "white" world; and her reputation for gallantry was generally known. she had never had a _liaison_ with gilio that had lasted for longer than an hour. she had very simple ideas on love, without much variety. her light-hearted depravity amused gilio. and flirting in the corners, with his foot on hers under her skirt, gilio told her about cornélie, about duco and about the adventure in the _camera degli sposi_ and asked his cousin whether _she_ understood. no, the contessa di rosavilla did not understand it any too well either. temperament? oh, yes, perhaps _she--questa cornelia--preferred_ fair men to dark: there _were_ women who had a preference! and gilio laughed. it was so simple, _l'amore_; there wasn't very much to be said about it. cornélie was glad that gilio had the countess to amuse him. she and duco interested themselves in urania's plans; duco had long talks with the architect. and he was indignant and advised them not to rebuild so much in that undistinguished restoration manner: it was lacking in style, cost heaps of money and spoilt everything. urania was disconcerted, but duco went on, interrupted the architect, advised him to build up only what was actually falling to pieces and, so far as possible, to confine himself to underpinning, reinforcing and preserving. and one morning prince ercole deigned to walk through the long rooms with duco, urania and cornélie. there was a great deal to be done, duco considered, by merely repairing and artistically arranging what at present stood thoughtlessly huddled together. "the curtains?" asked urania. "let them be," duco considered. "at the most, new window-curtains; but the old red venetian damask: oh, let it be!" it was so beautiful; here and there it might be patched, very carefully. he was horrified at urania's notion: new curtains! and the old prince was enraptured, because in this way the restoration of san stefano would cost thousands less and be much more artistic. he regarded his daughter-in-law's money as his own and preferred it to her. he was enraptured: he took duco with him to his library, showed him the old missals, the old family books and papers, chatters and deeds of gift, showed him his coins and his medals. it was all out of order and neglected, first from lack of money and then from slighting indifference; but now urania wanted to reorganize the family museum with the aid of experts from rome, florence and bologna. the old prince's interest revived, now that there was money. and the experts came and stayed at the castle and duco spent whole mornings in their company. he enjoyed every moment of it. he lived in his enchantment of the past, no longer in the days of antiquity, but in the middle ages and the renascence. the days were too short. and his love for san stefano became such that one day an archivist took him for the young prince, for prince virgilio. at dinner that evening prince ercole told the story. and everybody laughed, but gilio thought the joke beyond price, whereas the archivist, who was there at dinner, did not know how to apologize sufficiently. chapter xxxix gilio had followed the advice of his cousin, the contessa di rosavilla. immediately after dinner, he had stolen outside; and he walked along the pergola to the rotunda, into which the moonlight fell as into a white beaker. but there was shadow behind a couple of caryatids; and here he hid. he waited for an hour. but the night slept, the caryatids slept, standing motionless and supporting the leafy roof. he uttered a curse and stole indoors again. he walked down the corridors on tiptoe and listened at van der staal's door. he heard nothing, but perhaps van der staal was asleep?... gilio, however, crept along another corridor and listened at cornélie's door. he held his breath.... yes, there was a sound of voices. they were together! together! he clenched his fist and walked away. but why did he excite himself? he knew all about their relations. why should they not be together here? and he went and tapped at the countess' door.... next evening he again waited in, the rotunda. they did not come. but, a few evenings later, as he sat waiting, cholding with annoyance, he saw them come. he saw duco lock the terrace-door behind him: the rusty lock grated in the distance. slowly he saw them walk along and approach in the light, disappearing from view in the shadow, reappearing in the moonlight. they sat down on the marble bench.... how happy they seemed! he was jealous of their happiness, jealous above all of him. and how gentle and tender she was, she who considered him, gilio, good enough for her amusement, to flirt with, a clown: she, the devilish woman, was angelic to the man she loved! she bent towards her lover with a smiling caress, with a curve of her arm, with a proffering of her lips, with something intensely alluring, with a velvety languor of love which he would never have suspected in her, after her cold, jesting flirtation with him, gilio. she was now leaning on duco's arms, on his breast, with her face against his.... oh, how her kiss filled gilio with flame and fury! this was no longer her icy lack of sensuous response towards him, gilio, in the _camera degli sposi_. and he could restrain himself no longer: he would at least disturb their moment of happiness. and, quivering in every nerve, he stepped from behind the caryatids and went towards them, through the rotunda. lost in each other's eyes, they did not see him at once. but, suddenly, simultaneously, they both started; their arms fell apart then and there; they sprang up in one movement; they saw him approaching but evidently did not at once recognize him. not until he was closer did they perceive who he was; and they looked at him in startled silence, wondering what he would say. he made a satirical bow: "a delightful evening, isn't it? the view is lovely, like this, at night, from the pergola. you are right to come and enjoy it. i hope that i am not disturbing you with my unexpected company?" his tremulous voice sounded so spiteful and aggressive that they could not doubt the violence of his anger. "not at all, prince!" replied cornélie, recovering her composure. "though i can't imagine what you are doing here, at this hour." "and what are you doing here, at this hour?" "what am i doing? i am sitting with van der staal...." "at this hour?" "at this hour! what do you mean, prince, what are you suggesting?" "what am i suggesting? that the pergola is closed at night." "prince," said duco, "your tone is offensive." "and you are altogether offensive." "if you were not my host, i would strike you in the face...." cornélie caught duco by the arm; the prince cursed and clenched his fists. "prince," she said, "you have obviously come to pick a quarrel with us. why? what objection can you have to my meeting van der staal here in the evening? in the first place, our relation towards each other is no secret for you. and then i think it unworthy of you to come spying on us." "unworthy? unworthy?" he had lost all self-control. "i am unworthy, am i, and petty and rude and not a man and my temperament doesn't suit you? _his_ temperament seems to suit you all right! i heard the kiss you gave him! she-devil! demon! never have i been insulted as i have by you. i have never put up with so much from anybody. i will put up with no more. you struck me, you demon, you she-devil! and now he's threatening to strike me my patience is at an end. i can't bear that in my own house you should refuse me what you give to him.... he's not your husband! he's not your husband! i have as much right to you as he; and, if he thinks he has a better right than i, then i hate him, i hate him!..." and, blind with rage, he flew at duco's throat. the attack was so unexpected that duco stumbled. they both wrestled furiously. all their hidden antipathy broke forth in fury. they did not hear cornélie's entreaties, they struck each other with their fists, they grappled with arms and legs, breast to breast. then cornélie saw something flash. in the moonlight she saw that the prince had drawn a knife. but the very movement was an advantage to duco, who gripped his wrist as in a vice, forced him to the ground and, pressing his knee on gilio's chest, took him by the throat with his other hand. "let go!" yelled the prince. "let go that knife!" yelled duco. the prince obstinately persisted: "let go!" he yelled once more. "let go that knife." the knife dropped from his fingers. duco grasped it and rose to his feet: "get up," he said. "we can continue this fight, if you like, to-morrow, under less primitive conditions: not with a knife, but with swords or pistols." the prince stood panting, blue in the face.... when he came to himself, he said, slowly: "no, i will not fight a duel. unless you want to. but i don't. i am defeated. she has a demoniacal force which would always make you win, whatever game we played. we've had our duel. this struggle tells me more than a regular duel would. only, if you want to fight me, i have no objection. but i now know for certain that you would kill me. _she_ protects you." "i don't want to fight a duel with you," said duco. "then let us look on this struggle as a duel and now give me your hand." duco put out his hand; gilio pressed it: "forgive me," he said, bowing before cornélie. "i have insulted you." "no," said she, "i do not forgive you." "we have to forgive each other. i forgive you the blow you struck me." "i forgive you nothing. i shall never forgive you this evening's work: not your spying, nor your lack of self-control, nor the rights which you try to claim from me, an unmarried woman--whereas i allow you no rights whatever--nor your attack, nor your knife." "are we enemies then, for good?" "yes, for good. i shall leave your house to-morrow." "i have done wrong," he confessed, humbly. "forgive me. i am hot-blooded." "until now i looked upon you as a gentleman...." "i am also an italian." "i do not forgive you." "i once proved to you that i could be a good friend." "this is not the moment to remind me of it." "i remind you of everything that might make you more gently disposed towards me." "it is no use." "enemies then?" "yes. let us go indoors. i shall leave your house to-morrow." "i will do any penance that you inflict upon me." "i inflict nothing. i want this conversation to end and i want to go indoors." "i will go ahead of you." they walked up the pergola. he himself opened the terrace-door and let them in before him. they went in silence to their rooms. the castle lay asleep in darkness. the prince struck a match to light the way. duco was the first to reach his room. "i will light you to your room," said the prince, meekly. he struck a second match and accompanied cornélie to her door. here he fell on his knees: "forgive me," he whispered, with a sob in his throat. "no," she said. and without more she locked the door behind her. he remained on his knees for another moment. then he slowly rose to his feet. his throat hurt him. his shoulder felt as though it were dislocated. "it's over," he muttered. "i am defeated. she is stronger now than i, but not because she is a devil. i have seen them together. i have seen their embrace. she is stronger, he is stronger than!... because of their happiness. i feel that, because of their happiness, they will always be stronger than i...." he went to his room, which adjoined urania's bedroom. his chest heaved with sobs. dressed as he was, he flung himself sobbing on his bed, swallowing his sobs in the slumbering night that hung over the castle. then he got up and looked out of the window. he saw the lake. he saw the pergola, where they had been fighting. the night was sleeping there; the caryatids, sleeping, stood out white against the shadow. and his eyes sought the exact spot of their struggle and of his defeat. and, with his superstitious faith in their happiness, he became convinced that there would be no fighting against it, ever. then he shrugged his shoulders, as if he were flinging a load off his back: "_fa niente!_" he said to console himself. "_domani megliore_...." and he meant that to-morrow he would achieve, if not this victory, another. then, with eyes still moist, he fell asleep like a child. chapter xl urania sobbed nervously in cornélie's arms when she told the young princess that she was leaving that morning. she and duco were alone with urania in her own drawing-room. "what has happened?" sobbed urania. cornélie told her of the previous evening: "urania," she said, seriously, "i know i am a coquette. i thought it pleasant to talk with gilio; call it flirting, if you like. i never made a secret of it, either to duco or to you. i looked upon it as an amusement, nothing more. perhaps i did wrong; i know it annoyed you once before. i promised not to do it again; but it seems to be beyond my control. it's in my nature; and i shall not attempt to defend myself. i looked upon it as a trifle, as a diversion, as fun. but perhaps it was wrong. do you forgive me? i have grown so fond of you: it would hurt me if you did not forgive me." "make it up with gilio and stay on." "that's impossible, my dear girl. gilio has insulted me, gilio drew his knife against duco; and those are two things which i can never forgive him. so it is impossible for us to remain." "i shall be so lonely!" she sobbed. "i also am so fond of you, i am fond of you both. is there no way out of it? bob is going to-morrow, too. i shall be all alone. and i have nothing here, nobody who is fond of me...." "you have a great deal left, urania. you have an object in life; you can do any amount of good in your surroundings. you are interested in the castle, which is now your own." "it's all so empty!" she sobbed. "it means nothing to me. i need affection. who is there that is fond of me? i have tried to love gilio and i do love him, but he doesn't care for me. nobody cares for me." "your poor are devoted to you. you have a noble aim in life." "i'm glad of it, but i am too young to live only for an aim. and i have nothing else. nobody cares for me." "prince ercole, surely?" "no, he despises me. listen. i told you once before what gilio said ... that there were no family-jewels, that they were all sold: you remember, don't you? well, there _are_ family-jewels. i gathered that from something the contessa di rosavilla said. there are family-jewels. but prince ercole keeps them in the banco di roma. they despise me; and i am not thought good enough to wear them. arid to me they pretend that there are none left. and the worst of it is that all their friends, all their set know that the jewels are there, in the bank, and they all say that prince ercole is right. my money is good enough for them, but i am not good enough for their old jewels, the jewels of their grandmother!" "that's a shame!" said cornélie. "it's the truth!" sobbed urania. "oh, do make it up, stay a little longer, for my sake!..." "judge for yourself, urania: we really can't." "i suppose you're right," she admitted, with a sigh. "it's all my fault." "no, no, gilio is sometimes so impetuous...." "but his impetuousness, his anger, his jealousy are my fault. i am sorry about it, urania, because of you. forgive me. come and look me up in rome when you go back. don't forget me; and write, won't you?... now i must go and pack my trunk. what time is the train?" "ten twenty-five," said duco. "we shall go together." "can i say good-bye to prince ercole? send and ask if he can see me." "what shall i tell him?" "the first thing that comes into your head: that a friend of mine in rome is ill, that i am going to look after her and that van der staal is taking me back because i am nervous travelling. i don't care what prince ercole thinks." "cornélie...." "darling, i really haven't another moment. kiss me and forgive me. and think of me sometimes. good-bye. we have had a delightful time together and i have grown very fond of you." she tore herself from urania's embrace; duco also said good-bye. they left the princess sobbing by herself. in the passage they met gilio. "where are you going?" he asked, in his humble voice. "we are going by the ten twenty-five." "i am very, very sorry...." but they went on and left him standing there, while urania sat sobbing in the drawing-room. chapter xli in the train, in the scorching morning heat, they were silent and they found rome as it were bursting out of its houses in the blazing sunshine. the studio, however, was cool, solitary and peaceful. "cornélie," said duco, "tell me what happened between you and the prince. why did you strike him?" she pulled him down on the sofa, threw herself on his neck and told him the incident of the _camera degli sposi_. she told him of the thousand lire and the bracelet. she explained that she had said nothing about it before, so as not to speak to him of financial worries while he was finishing his water-colour for the exhibition in london: "duco," she continued, "i was so frightened when i saw gilio draw that knife yesterday. i felt as if i was going to faint, but i didn't. i had never seen him like that, so violent, so ready to do anything.... it was then that i really felt how much i loved you. i should have murdered him if he had wounded you." "you ought not to have played with him," he said, severely. "he loves you." but, in spite of his stern voice, he drew her closer to him. filled with a certain consciousness of guilt, she laid her head coaxingly on his chest: "he is only a little in love," she said, defending herself feebly. "he is very passionately in love. you ought not to have played with him." she made no further reply, merely stroked his face with her hand. she liked him all the better for reproaching her as he did; she loved that stern, earnest voice, which he hardly ever adopted towards her. she knew that she had that need for flirting in her, that she had had it ever since she was a very young girl; it did not count with her, it was only innocent fun. she did not agree with duco, but thought it unnecessary to go over the whole ground: it was as it was, she didn't think about it, didn't dispute it; it was like a difference of opinion, almost of taste, which did not count. she was lying against him too comfortably, after the excitement of last evening, after a sleepless night, after a precipitate departure, after a three hours' railway-journey in the blazing heat, to argue to any extent. she liked the silent coolness of the studio, the sense of being alone with him, after her three weeks at san stefano. there was a peacefulness here, a return to herself, which filled her with bliss. the tall window was open and the warm air poured in beneficently and was tempered by the natural chilliness of the north room. duco's easel stood empty, awaiting him. this was their home, amid all that colour and form of art which surrounded them. she now understood that colour and form; she was learning rome. she was learning it all in dreams of happiness. she gave little thought to the woman question and hardly glanced at the notices of her pamphlet, taking but a scanty interest in them. she admired lippo's angel, admired the panel of gentile da fabriano and the resplendent colours of the old chasubles. it was very little, after the treasures at san stefano, but it was theirs and it was home. she did not speak, felt happy and contented resting on duco's breast and passing her fingers over his face. "_the banners_ is as good as sold," he said. "for ninety pounds. i shall telegraph to london to-day. and then we shall soon be able to pay the prince back that thousand lire." "it's urania's money," she said, feebly. "but i won't have that debt hanging on." she felt that he was a little angry, but she was in no mood to discuss money matters and she was filled with a blissful languor as she lay on his breast.... "are you cross, duco?" "no ... but you oughtn't to have done it." he clasped her more tightly, to make her feel that he did not want to grumble at her, even though he thought that she had done wrong. she thought that she had done right not to mention the thousand lire to him, but she did not defend herself. it meant useless words; and she felt too happy to talk about money. "cornélie," he said, "let us get married." she looked at him in dismay, startled out of her blissfulness: "why?" "not because of ourselves. we are just as happy unmarried. but because of the world, because of people." "because of the world? because of people?" "yes. we shall be feeling more and more isolated. i discussed it once or twice with urania. she was very sorry about it, but she sympathized with us and wasn't shocked. she thought it an impossible position, perhaps she is right. we can't go anywhere. at san stefano they still acted as though they did not know that we were living together; but that is over now." "what do you care about the opinion of 'small, insignificant people, who chance to cross your path,' as you yourself say?" "it's different now. we owe the prince money; and urania is the only friend you have." "i have you: i don't want any one else." he kissed her: "really, cornélie, it is better that we should get married. then nobody can insult you again as the prince dared to do." "he has narrow-minded notions: how can you want to get married for the sake of a world and people like san stefano and the prince?" "the whole world is like that, without exception, and we are in the world. we live in the midst of other people. it is impossible to isolate one's self entirely; and isolation brings its own punishment later. we have to attach ourselves to other people: it is impossible always to lead your own existence, without any sense of community." "duco, how you've changed! these are the ideas of ordinary society!" "i have been reflecting more lately." "i am just learning how not to reflect.... my darling, how grave you are this morning! and this while i'm lying up against you so deliciously, to rest after all the excitement and the hot journey!" "seriously, cornélie, let us get married." she snuggled up against him a little nervously, displeased because he persisted and because he was forcibly dissipating her blissful mood: "you're a horrid boy. why need we get married? it would alter nothing in our position. we still shouldn't trouble about other people. we are living so delightfully here, living for your art. we want nothing more than each other and your art and rome. i am so very fond of rome now; i am quite altered. there is something here that is always attracting me afresh. at san stefano i felt home-sick for rome and for our studio. you must choose a new subject ... and get to work again. when you're doing nothing, you sit thinking--about social ethics--and that doesn't suit you at all. it makes you so different. and then such petty, conventional ideas. to get married! why, in heaven's name, should we, duco? you know my views on marriage. i have had experience: it is better not." she had risen and was mechanically looking through some half-finished sketches in a portfolio. "your experience," he repeated. "we know each other too well to be afraid of anything." she took the sketches from the portfolio: they were ideas which had occurred to him and which he had jotted down while he was working at _the banners_. she examined them and scattered them abroad: "afraid?" she repeated, vaguely. "no," she suddenly resumed, more firmly. "a person never knows himself or another. i don't know you, i don't know myself." something deep down within herself was warning her: "don't marry, don't give in. it's better not, it's better not." it was barely a whisper, a shadow of premonition. she had not thought it out; it was unconscious and mysterious as the depths of her soul. for she was not aware of it, she did not think it, she hardly heard it within herself. it flitted through her; it was not a feeling; it only left a thwarting reluctance in her, very plainly. not until years later would she understand that unwillingness. "no, duco, it is better not." "think it over, cornélie," "it is better not," she repeated, obstinately. "please don't let us talk about it any more. it is better not, but i think it so horrid to refuse you, because you want it. i never refuse you anything, as you know. i would do anything else for you. but this time i feel ... it is better not!" she went to him, all one caress, and kissed him: "don't ask it of me again. what a cloud on your face! i can see that you mean to go on thinking of it." she stroked his forehead as though to smooth away the wrinkles: "don't think of it any more. i love you, i love you, i want nothing but you. i am happy as we are. why shouldn't you be too? because gilio was rude and urania prim?... come and look at your sketches: will you be starting work soon? i love it when you're working. then i'll write something again: a chat about an old italian castle. my recollections of san stefano. perhaps a short story, with the pergola for a background. oh, that beautiful pergola!... but yesterday, that knife!... tell me, duco, are you going to work again? let's look through them together. what a lot of ideas you had at that time! but don't become too symbolical: i mean, don't get into habits, into tricks; don't repeat yourself.... this woman here is very good. she is walking so unconsciously down that shelving line ... and all those hands pushing around her.. and those red flowers in the abyss.... tell me, duco, what had you in your mind?" "i don't know: it was not very clear to myself." "i think it very good, but i don't like this sketch. i can't say why. there's something dreary in it. i think the woman stupid. i don't like those shelving lines: i like lines that go up, as in _the banners_, that all flowed out of darkness upwards, towards the sun! how beautiful that was! what a pity that we no longer have it, that it is being sold! if i were a painter, i should never be able to part with anything. i shall keep the sketches to remind me of it. don't you think it dreadful, that we no longer have it?" he agreed; he also loved and missed his _banners_. and he hunted with her among the other studies and sketches. but, apart from the unconscious woman, there was nothing that was clear enough to him to elaborate. and cornélie would not have him finish the unconscious woman: no, she didn't like those shelving lines.... but, after that, he found some sketches of landscape-studies, of clouds and skies over the campagna, venice and naples.... and he set to work. chapter xlii they were very economical; they had a little money; and all through the scorching roman summer the months passed as in a dream. they went on living their lonely, happy life, without seeing any one except urania, who came to rome now and again, looked them up, lunched with them at the studio and went back again in the evening. then urania wrote to them that gilio could stand it no longer at san stefano and that they were going abroad, first to switzerland and then to ostend. she came once more to say good-bye; and after that they saw nobody. in the old days duco had known an artist here and there, a fellow-countryman painting in rome; now he knew nobody, saw nobody. and their life in the cool studio was like life in a lonely oasis amid the torrid desert of rome in august. for economy's sake, they did not go into the mountains, to a cooler spot. they spent no more than was absolutely necessary; and none the less this bohemian poverty, in its coloured setting of triptych and chasuble, spelt happiness. money, however, remained scarce. duco sold a water-colour once in a way, but at times they had to resort to the sale of a curio. and it always went to duco's heart to part with anything that he had collected. they had few needs, but the time would come when the rent of the studio fell due. cornélie sometimes wrote an article or a sketch and bought out of the proceeds what she needed for her wardrobe. she possessed a certain knack of putting on her clothes, a talent for looking smart in an old, worn blouse. she was fastidious about her hair, her skin, her teeth, her nails. with a new veil she would wear an old hat, with an old walking dress a pair of fresh gloves; and she wore everything with a certain air of smartness. at home, in her pink tea-gown, which had lost its colour, the lines of her figure were so charming that duco was constantly sketching her. they hardly ever went to a restaurant now. cornélie cooked something at home, invented easy recipes, fetched a _fiasco_ of wine from the nearest _olio e vino_, where the cab-drivers sat drinking at little tables; and they dined better and more cheaply than at the _osteria_. and duco, now that he no longer bought things from the dealer in antiques on the tiber, spent nothing at all. but money remained scarce. once, when they had sold a silver crucifix for far less than it was worth, cornélie was so dejected that she sobbed on duco's breast. he consoled her, caressed her and declared that he didn't care much about the crucifix. but she knew that the crucifix was a very fine piece of work by an unknown sixteenth-century artist and that he was very unhappy at losing it. and she said to him seriously that it could not go on like this, that she could not be a burden to him and that they had better part; that she would look about for something to do, that she would go back to holland. he was alarmed by her despair and said that it was not necessary, that he was well able to look after her as his wife, but that unfortunately he was such an unpractical fellow, who could do nothing but splash about a bit with water-colours and even that not well enough to live on. but she said that he must not talk like that; he was a great artist. it was just that he did not possess a facile, money-making fertility, but he ranked higher on that account. she said that she would not live on his money, that she wanted to keep herself. and she collected the scattered remnants of her feminist ideas. once again he begged her to consent to their marriage; they would become reconciled with his mother; and mrs. van der staal would give him what she used to give him when he used to live with her at belloni's. but she refused to hear either of marriage or of an allowance from his mother, even as he refused to take money from urania. how often had urania not offered to help them! he had never consented; he was even angry when urania had given cornélie a blouse which cornélie accepted with a kiss. no, it couldn't go on like this: they had better part: she must go back to holland and seek employment. it was easier in holland than abroad. but he was so desperate, because of their happiness, which tottered before his eyes, that he held her tightly pressed to his breast; and she sobbed, with her arms round his neck. why should they part, he asked. they would be stronger together. he could no longer do without her; his life, if she left him, would be no life. he used to live in his dreams; he now lived in the reality of their happiness. and things remained as they were: they _could_ not alter anything; they lived as thriftily as possible, in order to keep together, he finished his landscapes and always sold them at once, much too cheaply, so as not to have to wait for the money. but then poverty threatened once more; and she thought of writing to holland. as it happened, however, she received a letter from her mother, followed by one from one of her sisters. and they asked her in those letters if it was true, what people were saying at the hague, that she was living with van der staal. she had always looked upon herself as so far from the hague and from hague people that it had never occurred to her that her way of life might become known. she met nobody, she knew nobody with dutch connections. anyhow, her independent attitude was now known. and she answered the letters in a feminist tone, declared her dislike of marriage and admitted that she was living with van der staal. she wrote coldly and succinctly, so as to give those people at the hague the impression that she was a free and independent woman. they knew her pamphlet there, of course. but she understood that she could now no longer think of holland. she gave up her family as hopeless. still it tore something in her, the unconscious family-tie. but that tie was already greatly loosened, through lack of sympathy, especially at the time of her divorce. and she felt all alone: she had only her happiness, her lover, duco. oh, it was enough, it was enough for all her life! if only she could make a little money! but how? she went to the dutch consul, asked his advice; the visit led to nothing. she was not suited for a nurse: she wanted to earn money at once and had no time for training. she could serve in a shop, of course. and she applied, without saying anything to duco; but, notwithstanding her worn cloak, they thought her too much of a lady wherever she went and she thought the salary too small for a whole day's work. and, when she felt that she hadn't it in her blood to work for her bread, despite all her ideas and all her logic, despite her pamphlet and her independent womanhood, she felt hopeless to the point of despair and, as she went home, weary, exhausted by climbing stairs and by useless conversations and appeals, the old plaint rose to her lips: "o god, tell me what to do!" chapter xliii she wrote regularly to urania, in switzerland, at ostend; and urania always wrote back very kindly and offered her assistance. but cornélie always declined, afraid of hurting duco. she, for herself, felt no such scruples, especially now that it was being borne in upon her that she would not be able to work. but she understood those scruples in duco and respected them. for her own part, however, she would have accepted help, now that her pride was wavering, now that her ideas were falling to pieces, too weak to withstand the steady pressure of life's hardships. it was like a great finger that just passed along a house of cards: though built up with care and pride, everything fell flat at the least touch. the only things that stood firm and unshakable amid the ruins were her love and her happiness. oh, how she loved him, how simple was their happiness! how dear he was to her for his gentleness, his calmness, his lack of irritability, as though his nerves were strung only to the finer sensibilities of the artist. she felt so deliciously that it was all imperturbable, that it was all settled for good. without that happiness they could never have dragged their difficult life along from day to day. now she did not feel that burden every day, as though they were dragging the load along from one day to the next. she now felt it only sometimes, when the future was quite dark and they did not know whither they were dragging the burden of their lives, in the dusk of that future. but they always triumphed again: they loved each other too well to sink under the load. they always found a little more courage; smiling, they supported each other's strength. september came and october; and urania wrote that they were coming back to san stefano, to spend a couple of months there before going for the winter to nice. and one morning urania arrived unexpectedly in the studio. she found cornélie alone: duco had gone to an art-dealer's. they exchanged affectionate greetings: "i am so glad to see you again!" urania prattled, gaily. "i am glad to be back in italy and to put in a little more time at san stefano. and is everything as it used to be, in your cosy studio? are you happy? oh, i need not ask!" and she hugged and kissed cornélie, like a child, still lacking the strength of mind to condemn her friend's too free existence, especially now, after her own summer at ostend. they sat beside each other on the couch, cornélie in her old tea-gown, which she wore with her own peculiar grace, and the young princess in her pale-grey tailor-made, which clung to her figure in a very up-to-date manner and rustled with heavy silk lining, and a hat with black feathers and silver spangles. her jewelled fingers toyed with a very long watch-chain which she wore round her neck: the latest freak of fashion. cornélie was able to admire without feeling envious and made urania stand up and turn round in front of her, approved of the cut of her skirt, said that the hat looked sweet on her and examined the watch-chain attentively. and she plunged into these matters of _chiffons_: urania described the dresses at ostend; urania admired cornélie's old tea-gown; cornélie smiled: "especially after ostend, eh?" she laughed, merrily. but urania meant it seriously: cornélie wore it with such _chic_! and, changing the topic, she said that she wanted to speak very seriously, that perhaps she knew of something for cornélie, now that cornélie would never accept her, urania's, assistance. at ostend she had made the acquaintance of an old american lady, mrs. uxeley, a regular type. she was ninety years of age and lived at nice in the winter. she was fabulously rich: an oil-queen's fortune. she was ninety, but still behaved as if she were forty-five. she dined out, went into society, flirted. people laughed at her but accepted her because of her money and her splendid entertainments. all the cosmopolitan colony visited her at nice. urania produced an ostend casino-paper and read out a journalistic account of a ball at ostend, in which mrs. uxeley was called _la femme la plus élégante d'ostende_. the journalist had been paid so much for it; everybody laughed and was amused by it. mrs. uxeley was a caricature, but with enough tact to get herself taken seriously. well, mrs. uxeley was looking for somebody. she always had a lady companion with her, a girl, a young woman; and already numberless ladies had succeeded one another in her employ. she had had cousins living with her, distant cousins, very distant cousins and total strangers. she was tiresome, capricious, impossible; everybody knew that. would cornélie care to try it? urania had already discussed it with mrs. uxeley and recommended her friend. cornélie did not feel greatly attracted, but thought it worth thinking over. mrs. uxeley's companion was staying till november, when the old thing was returning through paris to nice. and at nice they would see so much of each other, cornélie and urania. but cornélie thought it terrible to leave duco. she did not think that it would ever work. they were so greatly attached to each other, so much used to each other. from the money point of view it would be excellent--an easy life which attracted her, after that blow to her moral pride--but she could not think of leaving duco. and what would duco do at nice! no, she couldn't, she simply couldn't: she must stay with him.... she felt a reluctance to go, like a hand that withheld her. she told urania to put the old lady off, to let her look out for somebody else. she could not do it. what use to her was such a life--socially dependent, though financially independent--without duco? and, when urania was gone--she was going on to san stefano--cornélie was glad that she had at once declined that stupid, easy life of dependence as companion to a rich old dotard. she glanced round the studio. she loved it with its precious colours, its noble antiques and, behind that curtain, her bed, behind that screen, her oil-stove, making the space look like a little kitchen; with the bohemianism of its precious _bibelots_ and very primitive comforts, it had become indispensable to her, had become her home. and, when duco came in, she kissed him and told him about urania and mrs. uxeley. she was glad to be able to nestle in his arms. he had sold a couple of water-colours. there was no reason whatever to leave him. he didn't wish it either, he never would wish it. and they held each other tightly embraced, as though they were conscious of something that would be able to part them, an ineluctable necessity, as if hands hovered around them, pushing them, guiding them, opposing and inhibiting them, a contest of hands, like a cloud around them both: hands that strove by main force to sunder their radiant path of life, their coalescent line of life, as if it were too narrow for the feet of the two of them and the hands were trying to wrench it asunder, in order to let the broad track wind apart in two curves. they said nothing: clasped in each other's arms, they gazed at life, shuddered at the hands, felt the approaching constraint which already was clouding more closely around them. but they felt warm in each other's company; they locked up their little happiness tightly in their embrace and hid it between them, so that the hands might not point to it, touch it and thrust it aside.... and under their fixed gaze life softly receded, the cloud dispersed, the hands faded away and disappeared and their breasts heaved a sigh of relief, while she still remained lying against him and closed her eyes, as though in sleep.... chapter xliv but the life of constraint returned, the hovering hands reappeared, like a gentle mysterious force. cornélie wept bitterly and admitted to herself and admitted to duco: it could not go on any longer. at one moment they had not enough to pay the rent of the studio and had to apply to urania. gaps showed in the studio, colours vanished, owing to the sale of things which duco had collected with love and sacrifice. but lippo memmi's angel, whom he refused to sell, still shone as of old, still holding forth the lily, in his gown of gold brocade. around him on every side yawned melancholy spaces, with bare nails showing in the walls. at first they tried to hang other things in the place of those which had gone but they soon lost the inclination. and, as they sat side by side, in each other's arms, conscious of their little happiness but also of the constraint of life with its pushing hands, they closed their eyes, that they might no longer see the studio which seemed to be crumbling about them, while in the first cooler days a sunless chill descended shivering from the ceiling, which seemed higher and farther away. the easel stood waiting, empty. and they both closed their eyes and thus remained, feeling that, despite the strength of their happiness and love, they were being gradually conquered by life, which persisted in its tyranny and day by day took something from them. once, while they were sitting thus, their arms relaxed and their embrace fell away, as though hands were drawing them apart. they remained sitting for a long time, side by side, without touching each other. then she sobbed aloud and flung herself with her face on his knees. there was no more to be done life was too strong for them, speechless life, the life of the soft, persistent constraint, which surrounded them with so many hands. their little happiness seemed to be escaping them, like an angelic child that was dying and sinking out of their embrace. she said that she would write to urania: the forte-braccios were at nice. he listlessly assented. and, as soon as she received a reply, she mechanically packed her trunk, packed up her old clothes. for urania wrote and told her to come, said that mrs. uxeley wanted to see her. mrs. uxeley sent her the money for her journey. she was in a desperate state of constant nervous sobbing and she felt as if she were being torn from him, torn from that home which was dear to her and which was crumbling about her, all through her fault. when she received the registered letter with the money, she had a nervous attack, complaining to him like a child that she couldn't leave him, that she wouldn't leave him, that she could not live without him, that she loved him for ever, for ever, that she would die, so far away from him. she lay on the sofa, her arms stiff, her legs stiff, crying out with a mouth distorted as though by physical pain. he took her in his arms and soothed her, bathed her forehead, gave her ether to drink, comforted her, said that everything would be all right again later.... later? she looked at him vacantly. she was half mad with grief. she tossed everything out of the trunk again, all about the room--underclothing, blouses--and laughed and laughed. he conjured her to control herself. when she saw his frightened face, when he too began to sob on her breast, she drew him tightly to her, kissed him and comforted him in her turn. and everything in her became dulness and lethargy. together they packed the trunk again. then she looked round and, in a gust of energy, arranged the studio for him, had her bed taken away, pinned his own sketches to the walls, tried to build up something of what had gone to pieces around them, rearranged everything, did her best. she cooked their last meal; she made up the fire. but a desperate threat of loneliness and desertion reigned over everything. it was all wrong, it was all wrong.... sobbing, they fell asleep, in each other's arms, close against each other. next morning he took her to the station. and, when she had stepped into her compartment, they both of them lost all their self-control. they embraced each other sobbing, while the guard was waiting to lock the door. and she saw duco run away like a madman, pushing his way through the crowd; and, broken with misery, she threw herself back in her seat. she was so ill and distressed, so near to fainting, that a lady beside her came to her aid and bathed her face in eau-de-cologne.... she thanked the lady, apologized for the trouble she had given and, seeing the other passengers staring at her with compassionate eyes, she mastered herself, sat huddled in her corner and gazed vacantly through the window. she went on, stopping nowhere, only alighting to change trains. though hungry, she had not the energy to order food at the stations. she ate nothing and drank nothing. she travelled a day and a night and arrived at nice late the following evening. urania was at the station and was startled to see cornélie look grey and sallow, dead-tired, with hollow eyes. and she was most charming: she took cornélie home with her, looked after her for some days, made her stay in bed and went herself to tell mrs. uxeley that her friend was too unwell to report herself. gilio came for a moment to pay cornélie his respects; and she could not do other than thank him for these days of hospitality and care under his roof. and the young princess was like a sister, was like a mother and fed cornélie up with milk and eggs and strengthening medicines. cornélie let her do as she liked, remained limp and indifferent and ate to please urania. after a few days, urania said that mrs. uxeley was coming to call that afternoon, being anxious to see her new companion. mrs. uxeley was alone now, but could wait until cornélie's recovery. cornélie dressed herself as well as she could and with urania awaited the old lady's arrival. she entered gushingly, with a torrent of words; and, in the dim light of urania's drawing-room, cornélie was unable to realize that she was ninety years old. urania winked at cornélie, who only smiled faintly in return: she was afraid of this first interview. but mrs. uxeley, no doubt because cornélie was a friend of the princess of forte-braccio, was very easy-mannered, very pleasant and free of all condescension towards her future companion; she enquired after cornélie's health in a wearisome profusion of little exclamations and sentences and bits of advice. cornélie, in the twilight of the lace-shaded standard-lamps, took her in with a glance and saw a woman of fifty, with the little wrinkles carefully powdered over, in a mauve-velvet gown embroidered with dull gold and spangles and beads. on the brown, waved chignon was a hat with a white aigrette. her jewels kept on sparkling, because she was very fussy, very restless in her movements. she now took cornélie's hands and began to talk more confidentially. so cornélie would come the day after to-morrow. very well. she was accustomed to pay a hundred dollars a month or five hundred francs, never less, but also never more. but she could understand that cornélie would want something now, for new clothes: would she order what she wanted at this address and have it put down to mrs. uxeley's account? a couple of ball-dresses, two or three less dressy evening-frocks: in short, everything. the princess urania would tell her all about it and would go with her. and she rose, affecting the young woman, simpering through her long-handled lorgnette, but meanwhile leaning hard on her sunshade, working herself with a muscular effort along the stick of her sunshade, with a sudden twitch of rheumatism which uncovered all sorts of wrinkles. urania saw her to the hall and came back shrieking with laughter; and cornélie also laughed, but only listlessly. she really didn't care: she was more amazed at mrs. uxeley than amused. ninety years old! what an energy, worthy of a better object, to remain elegant: _la femme la plus élégante d'ostende_! ninety years old! how the woman must suffer, during the hours of her long toilet, while she was being made up into that caricature! urania said that it was all false: the hair, the bust. and cornélie felt a loathing at having to live for the future beside this woman, as though beside an ignominy. in the happiness of her love, a great part of her energy had become relaxed, as though their dual happiness--duco's and hers--had unfitted her for any further struggle for life and diminished her zest for life; but it had refined and purified something in her soul and she loathed the sight of so much show for so vain and petty an object. and it was only necessity itself--the inevitability of the things of life, which urged and pushed her with a guiding finger along a line of life now winding solitary before her--that gave her the strength to hide within herself her sorrow, her longing, her nostalgia for everything that she had left behind. she did not talk about it to urania. urania was so glad to see her, looked upon her as a good friend, in the loneliness of her stately life, in her isolation among her aristocratic acquaintances. urania accompanied her enthusiastically to dressmakers' establishments and shops and helped her to choose her new outfit. she did not care about it all. she, an elegant woman, a woman of innate elegance, who in her outward appearance had always fought against poverty and who, in the days of her happiness, was able, with the aid of a fresh ribbon, to wear an old blouse gracefully, was utterly indifferent to everything that she was now buying on mrs. uxeley's account. to her it was as though these things were not for her. she let urania ask and choose; she approved of everything. she allowed herself to be fitted as though she had been a doll. she greatly disliked having to spend money at a stranger's expense. she felt lowered and humiliated: all her haughty pride of life was gone. she was afraid of what they would say of her in the circle of mrs. uxeley's friends, afraid lest they knew of her independent ideas, of her cohabitation with duco, afraid of mrs. uxeley's opinion. for urania had had to be honest and tell everything. it was only on urania's eager recommendation that she had been taken by mrs. uxeley. she felt out of place, now that she would once more dare to play her part among all those people; and she was afraid of giving herself away. she would have to make believe, to conceal her ideas, to pick her words; and she was no longer accustomed to doing so. and all for that money. all because she had not had the energy, living with duco, to earn her own bread and, gaily, independently, to cheer him in his work, in his art. oh, if she could only have managed to do that, how happy she would have been! if only she had not allowed the wretched languor that was in her blood to increase within her like a morbid growth: the languor of her upbringing, her superficial, showy, drawing-room education, which had unfitted her for everything whatsoever! by temperament she was a creature of love as well as a woman of sensuousness and luxury, but there was more of love in her than of luxury: she would be happy under the simplest conditions if only she was able to love. and now life had torn her away from him, gradually but inexorably. and now her sensuous, luxurious nature was gratified, but in dependence; yet it no longer satisfied her cravings, because she could not satisfy her soul. in that lonely soul a miserable dissatisfaction sprang up like a riotous growth. her only happiness was his letters, letters of longing but also letters of comfort. he wrote expressing his longing, but he also wrote enjoining courage and hope. he wrote to her every day. he was now at florence, seeking his consolation in the uffizi, in the pitti palace. he had found it impossible to stay in rome; the studio was now locked up. at florence he was a little nearer to her. and his letters were to her a love-story, the only novel that she read; and it was as though she saw his landscapes in his style, the same dim blending of colour and emotion, the pearly white, misty, dreamy distances filled with light, the horizon of his longing, as though his eyes were ever gazing at the vista in which she, on the night of departure, had vanished as in a mauve-grey sunset, a sky of the dreary campagna. in those letters they still lived together. but she could not write to him in this strain. though she wrote to him daily, she wrote briefly, telling him ever the same things in other words: her longing, her weary indifference. but she wrote of the happiness which she derived from his letters, which were her daily bread. she was now with mrs. uxeley and occupied in the gigantic villa two charming rooms overlooking the sea and the promenade des anglais. urania had helped her to arrange them. and she lived in an unreal dream of strangeness, of non-existence alone with her soul, of unlived actions and gestures, performed according to the will of others. in the mornings she went to mrs. uxeley in her boudoir and read her the french and american papers and sometimes a few pages of a french novel. she humbly did her best. mrs. uxeley thought that she read very nicely, only she said that cornélie must cheer up a bit, that her melancholy days were over now. duco was never mentioned and mrs. uxeley behaved as though she knew nothing. the great boudoir looked through the open balcony windows over the sea, where, on the promenade, the morning stroll was already beginning, with the gaudy colours of the parasols striking a shrill note against the deep-blue sea, an expensive sea, a costly tide, waves that seemed to exact a mint of money before they would consent to roll up prettily. the old lady, already painted, bedizened and bewigged, with a white lace wrap over her wig against the draught, lay in the black and white lace of her white silk tea-gown on the piled-up cushions of her sofa. in her wrinkled hand she held the lorgnette, with her initials in diamonds, through which it amused her to peer at the shrill patches of the parasols outside. now and then, when her rheumatism gave a twinge, she suddenly distorted her face into one great crease of wrinkles, under which the smooth enamel of her make-up almost cracked, like crackle-china. in the daylight she seemed hardly alive, looked like an automatic, jointed, stiff-limbed doll, which spoke and moved mechanically. she was always a trifle tired in the mornings, from never sleeping at night; after eleven she took a little nap. she observed a strict _régime_; and her doctor, who called daily, seemed to revive her a little every day, to enable her to hold out until the evening. in the afternoon she drove out, alighted at the jetée, paid her visits. but in the evening she revived with a trace of real life, dressed, put on her jewels and recovered her exuberance, her little exclamations and simpers. then came the dances, the parties, the theatre. then she was no more than fifty. but these were her good days. sometimes, after a night of insufferable pain, she remained in her bedroom, with yesterday's enamelling untouched, her bald head wrapped in black lace, a black satin bed-jacket hanging loosely around her like a sack; and she moaned and cried and shrieked and seemed to be begging for release from her torments. this lasted for a couple of days and occurred regularly every three weeks, after which she gradually revived again. her fussy conversation was limited to a constantly recurrent discussion of all sorts of family-matters, with appropriate annotations. she explained to cornélie all the family-connections of her friends, american and european, but she enlarged more particularly upon the great european families which she numbered among her acquaintances. cornélie could never listen to what she was saying and forgot the pedigrees again at once. it was sometimes unendurably tedious to have to listen for so long; and only for this reason, as though she were forced to it, cornélie found the energy to talk a little herself, to relate an anecdote, to tell a story. when she saw that the old woman was very fond of anecdotes, riddles, and puns, she collected as many as she could from the _vie parisienne_ and the _journal pour rire_ and kept them ready to hand. and mrs. uxeley thought her very entertaining. once, as she noticed duco's daily letter, she referred to it; and cornélie suddenly discovered that the old lady was devoured with curiosity. then she quietly told her the truth: her marriage, her divorce, her independent ideas, her meeting and her life with duco. the old woman was a little disappointed because cornélie spoke so simply about it all. she merely advised her to live discreetly and correctly now. what people said about former incidents did not matter so very much. but there must be no occasion for gossip now. cornélie promised meekly. and mrs. uxeley showed her her albums, with her own photographs, dating back to her young days, and the photographs of all sorts of men. and she told her about this friend and that friend and, vain-gloriously, allowed the suggestion of a very lurid past to peep through. but she had always lived discreetly and correctly. that was her pride. and what cornélie had done was wrong.... the hour or so from eleven to half-past twelve was a relief. then the old woman regularly went to sleep--her only sleep in the twenty-four hours--and urania came to fetch cornélie for a drive or a walk along the promenade or to sit in the jardin public. and it was the only moment when cornélie more or less appreciated her new-found luxury and took pleasure in the gratification of her vanity. the passers-by turned round to stare at the two young and pretty women in their exquisite serge frocks, with their fashionable head-gear withdrawn in the twilight of their sunshades, and admired the princess of forte-braccio's glossy victoria, irreproachable liveries and spanking greys. gilio maintained a reserved and respectful attitude towards cornélie. he was polite but kept a courteous distance when he joined the two ladies for a moment in the gardens or on the jetée. after the night in the pergola, after the sudden flash of his angry knife, she was afraid of him, afraid also because she had lost much of her courage and haughtiness. but she could not answer him more coldly than she did, because she was grateful to him as well as to urania for the care shown her during the first few days, for their tact in not at once surrendering her to mrs. uxeley and in keeping her with them until she had recovered some of her strength. in the freedom of those mornings, when she felt herself released from the old woman--vain, selfish, insignificant, ridiculous--who was as the caricature of her life, she felt that in urania's friendship she was finding herself again, she became conscious of being at nice, she contemplated the garish bustle around her with clearer eyes and she lost the unreality of the first days. at such times it was as though she saw herself again for the first time, in her light serge walking-dress, sitting in the garden, her gloved fingers playing with the tassels of her sunshade. she could hardly believe in herself, but she saw herself. deep down within herself, hidden even from urania, she concealed her longing, her home-sickness, her stifling discontent. she sometimes felt ready to burst into sobs. but she listened to urania and joined in her laughter and talk and looked up with a smile at gilio, who stood in front of her, mincing to and fro on the tips of his shoes and swinging his walking-stick behind his back. sometimes, suddenly--as a vision whirling through the crowd--she saw duco, the studio, the happiness of the past fading away for one brief moment. then with her finger-tips she felt his letter of that morning, between the strips of gathered lace in front of her bolero, and just crushed the hard envelope against her breast, as something belonging to him that was caressing her. and it was not to be denied: she saw herself and nice around her; she became sensible of new life: it was not unreal, even though it was not actual to her soul; it was a sorrowful comedy, in which she--dismally, feebly, listlessly--played her part. chapter xlv it was all severely regulated, as by rule, and there was no possibility of the least alteration: everything was done in accordance with a fixed law. the reading of the newspaper; her hour and a half to herself; then lunch. after lunch, the drive, the jetée, the visits; every day, those visits and afternoon teas. once in a way, a dinner-party; and in the evening generally a dance, a reception or a theatre. she made new acquaintances by the score and forgot them again at once and no longer remembered, when she saw them again, whether she knew them or not. as a rule people were fairly pleasant to her in that cosmopolitan set, because they knew that she was an intimate friend of the princess urania's. but, like urania herself, she was sometimes conscious, from the feminine bearers of the old italian names and titles which sometimes glittered in that set, of an overwhelming pride and contempt. the men always asked to be introduced to her; but, whenever she asked to be introduced to their ladies, her only reward was a nod of vague surprise. she herself minded very little, but she felt sorry for urania. for she saw at once, at urania's own parties, that they hardly looked upon her as the hostess, that they surrounded and made much of gilio, but accorded to his wife no more than the civility which was her due as princess of forte-braccio, without ever forgetting that she was once miss hope. and for urania this contempt was more difficult to put up with than for herself. for she accepted her _rôle_ as the companion. she always kept an eye on mrs. uxeley, constantly joined her for a minute in the course of the evening, fetched a fan which mrs. uxeley had left in the next room or did her this or that trifling service. then she would sit down, against the wall, alone in the busily humming drawing-room, and gaze indifferently before her. she sat, always very smartly dressed, in an attitude of graceful indifference and weary boredom, tapping her little foot or unfolding her fan. she took no notice of anybody. sometimes a couple of men would come up to her and she spoke to them, or danced with one of them, indifferently, as though conferring a favour. once, when gilio was talking to her, she sitting and he standing, and the duchess of luca and countess costi both came up to him and, standing, began to chaff him profusely, without honouring her with a word or a glance, she first stared at the ladies between her mocking lids, eyeing them from head to foot, and then rose slowly, took gilio's arm and, with a glance which darted sharp as a needle from her narrowed eyes, said: "i beg your pardon, but you must excuse me if i rob you of the prince of forte-braccio, because i have to finish a private conversation." and with the pressure of her arm she made gilio move on a few steps, then at once sat down again, made him sit down beside her and began to whisper with him very confidentially, while she left the duchess and countess standing two yards away, open-mouthed with stupefaction at her rudeness, and furthermore spread her train wide between herself and the two ladies and waved her fan to and fro, as though to preserve a distance. she could do this sort of thing so calmly, so tactfully and haughtily, that gilio was tickled to death and sat and giggled with delight: "i wish urania knew how to behave like that!" he said, pleased as a child at the diversion which she had afforded him. "urania is too nice to do anything so odious," she replied. she did not make herself liked, but people became afraid of her, afraid of her quiet malice, and avoided offending her in future. moreover, the men thought her pretty and agreeable and were also attracted by her haughty indifference. and, without really intending it, she achieved a position, apparently by using the greatest diplomacy, but in reality quite naturally and easily. while mrs. uxeley's egoism was flattered by her little attentions--always dutifully remembered and paid with a charming air of maternal solicitude, in contrast with which mrs. uxeley thought it delightful to simper like a young girl--cornélie gradually gathered a court of men around her in the evenings; and the women became insipidly civil. urania often told her how clever she thought her, how much tact she displayed. cornélie shrugged her shoulders; it all happened of itself; and really she did not care. but still, gradually, she recovered some of her cheerfulness. when she saw herself standing in the glass, she had to confess to herself that she was better-looking than she had ever been, either as a girl or as a newly-married woman. her tall, slender figure had a languorous line of pride that gave her a special grace; her throat was statelier, her bosom fuller; her waist was slimmer in these new dresses; her hips had become heavier, her arms more rounded; and, though her features no longer wore the look of radiant happiness which they had worn in rome, her mocking smile and her negligent irony gave her a certain attraction for those unknown men, something more alluring and provoking than the greatest coquetry would have been. and cornélie had not wished for this; but, now that it came of itself, she accepted it. it was foreign to her nature to refuse it. and, besides, mrs. uxeley was pleased with her. cornélie had such a pretty way of whispering to her: "dear lady, you were in such pain yesterday. don't you think you ought to go home a little earlier to-night?" and then mrs. uxeley would simper like a girl who was being admonished by her mother not to dance too much that evening. she loved these little ways of cornélie's; and cornélie, with careless indifference, gave her what she wanted. and those evenings amused her more than they did at first; only, the amusement was combined with self-reproach as soon as she thought of duco, of their separation, of rome, of the studio, of the happiness of those past days, which she had lost through her lack of fortitude. chapter xlvi two months had passed like this. it was january; and these were busy days for cornélie, because mrs. uxeley was soon to give one of her celebrated evenings and cornélie's free hours in the morning were now taken up with running all sorts of errands. urania generally drove with her; and she came to rely upon urania. they had to go to upholsterers, to pastry-cooks, to florists and to jewellers, where cornélie and urania selected presents for the cotillon. mrs. uxeley never went out for this, but occupied herself with every trifling indoor detail; and there were endless discussions, followed by more drives to the shops, for the old lady was anything but easy to please, vain as she was of her fame as a hostess and afraid of losing it through the least omission. during one of these drives, as the victoria was turning into the avenue de la gare, cornélie started so violently that she clutched urania's arm and could not restrain an exclamation. urania asked her what she had seen, but she was unable to speak and urania made her get out at a confectioner's to drink a glass of water. she was very nearly fainting and looked deathly pale. she was not able to continue her errands; and they drove back to mrs. uxeley's villa. the old lady was displeased at this sudden fainting-fit and grumbled so that urania went off alone to complete the errands. after lunch, however, cornélie felt better, made her apologies and accompanied mrs. uxeley to an afternoon tea. next day, when she was sitting with mrs. uxeley and a couple of friends on the jetée, she seemed to see the same thing again. she turned as white as a sheet, but retained her composure and laughed and talked merrily. these were the days of the preparations. the date of the entertainment drew nearer; and at last the evening arrived. mrs. uxeley was trembling with nervousness like a young girl and found the necessary strength to walk through the whole villa, which was all light and flowers. and with a sigh of satisfaction she sat down for a moment. she was dressed. her face was smooth as porcelain, her hair was waved and glittered with diamond pins. her gown of pale-blue brocade was cut very low; and she gleamed like a reliquary. a triple rope of priceless pearls hung down to her waist. in her hand--she was not yet gloved--she held a gold-knobbed cane, which was indispensable when she wanted to rise. and it was only when she rose that she showed her age, when she worked herself erect by muscular efforts, with that look of pain in her face, with that twinge of rheumatism which shot through her. cornélie, not yet dressed, after a last glance through the villa, blazing with light, swooning with flowers, hurried to her room and, already feeling tired, dropped into the chair in front of her dressing-table, to have her hair done quickly. she was just ready when the first guests arrived and she hastened to join mrs. uxeley. and the carriages rolled up. cornélie, at the top of the monumental staircase, looked down into the hall, where the people were streaming in, the ladies in their long evening-wraps--almost more expensive even than their dresses--which they carefully gave up in the crowded, buzzing cloakroom. and the first arrivals came up the stairs, waiting so as not to be the very first, and were beamed upon by mrs. uxeley. the drawing-rooms soon filled. in addition to the reception-rooms, the hostess' own rooms were thrown open, forming in all a suite of twelve apartments. whereas the corridors and stairs were adorned only with clumps of red and white and pink camellias, in the rooms the floral decorations were contained in hundreds of vases and bowls and dishes, which stood about on every hand and, with the light of the shaded candles, gave an intimate charm to the entertainment. that was the speciality of mrs. uxeley's decorations on great occasions: the electric light not used; instead, on every hand candles with little shades, on every hand glasses and bowls full of flowers, giving the effect of a fairy garden. though perhaps the main outlines were broken, a most charming effect of cosiness was gained. small groups and couples could find a place everywhere: behind a screen, in a loggia; you constantly found a spot for privacy; and this perhaps explained the _vogue_ of mrs. uxeley's parties. the villa, suitable for giving a court ball, was used only for giving entertainments of a luxurious intimate character to hundreds of people who were quite unknown to one another. each little set chose itself a little corner, where it made itself at home. a very tiny boudoir, all in japanese lacquer and japanese silk, was aimed at generally, but was at once captured by gilio, the contessa di rosavilla, the duchessa di luca and contessa costi. they did not even go to the music-room, where a concert formed the first item. paderewski was playing, sigrid arnoldson was to sing. the music-room also was lighted by shaded candles; and everybody whispered that, in this soft light, airs. uxeley did not look a day over forty. during the interval she simpered to two very young journalists who were to describe her party urania, sitting beside cornélie, was addressed by a frenchman whom she introduced to her friend: the chevalier de breuil. cornélie knew that urania had met him at ostend and that his name was coupled with the princess of forte-braccio's. urania had never mentioned de breuil to her, but cornélie now saw, by her smile, her blush and the sparkle in her eyes, that people were right. she left them to themselves, feeling sad when she thought of urania. she understood that the little princess was consoling herself for her husband's neglect; and she suddenly thought this whole life of make-believe disgusting. she longed for rome, for the studio, for duco, for independence, love and happiness. she had had it all; but it had been fated not to endure. everything around her was like one great lie, more brilliant than at the hague, but even more false, brutal and depraved. people no longer even pretended to believe the lie: here they showed a brutal sincerity. the lie was respected, but nobody believed in it, nobody put forward the lie as a truth; the lie was nothing more than a form. cornélie wandered through the rooms by herself, went up to mrs. uxeley for a moment, in accordance with her habit, whispered to ask how she felt, whether she wanted anything, if everything was going well, then continued on her way through the rooms. she was standing by a vase, rearranging some orchids, when a woman in black velvet, fair-haired, with a full throat and bosom, spoke to her in english: "i am mrs. holt. i dare say you don't know my name, but i know yours. i very much want to make your acquaintance. i have often been to holland and i read dutch a little. i read your pamphlet on _the social position of divorced women_ and i thought a good deal of what you wrote most interesting." "you are very kind. shall we sit down? i remember your name too. you were one of the leaders of the women's congress in london, were you not?" "yes, i spoke about the training of children. weren't you able to come to london?" "no, i did think about it, but i was in rome at the time and i couldn't manage it." "that was a pity. the congress was a great step forward. if your pamphlet had been translated then and distributed, you would have had a great success." "i care very little for success of that kind." "of course, i can understand that. but the success of your book is also for the good of the great cause." "do you really mean that? is there any merit in my little book?" "do you doubt it?" "very often." "how is that possible? it is written with such a sure touch." "perhaps just for that reason." "i don't understand you. there's a vagueness sometimes about dutch people which we english don't understand, something like a reflection of your beautiful skies in your character." "do you never doubt? do you feel sure of your ideas on the training of children?" "i have studied children in schools, in _crèches_ and in their homes and i have acquired very decided ideas. and i work in accordance with these ideas for the people of the future. i will send you my pamphlet, containing the gist of my speeches at the congress. are you working on another pamphlet now?" "no, i regret to say." "why not? we must all fight shoulder to shoulder, if we are to conquer." "i believe i have said all that i had to say. i wrote what i did on impulse, from personal experience. and then...." "yes?" "then things changed. all women are different and i never approved of generalizing. and do you believe that there are _many_ women who can work for a universal object with a man's thoroughness, when they have found a lesser object for themselves, a small happiness, such as a love to satisfy their own _ego_, in which they can be happy? don't you think that every woman has slumbering inside her a selfish craving for her own love and happiness and that, when she has found this, the outside world and the future cease to interest her?" "possibly. but so few women find it." "i believe there are not many. but that is another question. and i do believe that an interest in universal questions is a _pis-aller_ with most women." "you have become an apostate. you speak quite differently from what you wrote a year ago." "yes, i have become very humble, because i am more sincere. of course i believe in certain women, in certain choice spirits. but would the majority not always remain feminine, just women and weak?" "not with a sensible training." "yes, i believe that it lies in that, in the training...." "of the child, of the girl." "i believe that i have never been educated and that this constitutes my weakness." "our girls should be told when still very young of the struggle that lies before them." "you are right. we--my friends, my sisters and i--had the 'safety' of marriage impressed upon us at the earliest possible moment. do you know whom i think the most to be pitied? our parents! they honestly believed that they were having us taught all that was necessary. and now, at this moment, they must see that they did not divine the future correctly and that their training, their education, was no education at all, because they failed to inform their children of the struggle which was being waged right before their eyes. it is our parents that are to be pitied. they can mend nothing now. they see us--girls, young women of twenty to thirty--overwhelmed by life; and they have not given us the strength for it. they kept us sheltered as long as possible under the paternal wing; and then they began to think of our marriage, not in order to get rid of us, but with a view to our happiness, our safety and our future. we are indeed unfortunate, we girls and women who were not, like our younger sisters, told of the struggle that lay just before us; but i believe that we may still have hope in our youth and that our parents are unhappier and more to be pitied than we, because they have nothing more to hope for and because they _must_ secretly confess that they went astray in their love for their children. they were still educating us according to the past, while the future was already so near at hand. i pity our parents and i could almost love them better for that reason than i ever did before." chapter xlvii she had suddenly turned very pale, as though under the stress of a sudden emotion. she covered her face with her fluttering fan and her fingers trembled violently; her whole body shuddered. "that is well thought on your part," said mrs. holt. "i am glad to have met you. i always find a certain charm in dutch people: that vagueness, which we are unable to seize, and then all at once a light that flashes out of a cloud ... i hope to see you again. i am at home on tuesdays, at five o'clock. will you come one day with mrs. uxeley?" mrs. holt pressed her hand and disappeared among the other guests. cornélie had risen from her chair, while her knees seemed to give way beneath her. she remained standing, half-turned towards the room, looking in the glass; and her fingers played with the orchids in a venetian vase on the console-table. she was still rather pale, but controlled herself, though her heart was beating loudly and her breast heaving. and she looked in the glass. she saw first her own figure, her beautiful slender outline, in her dress of white and black chantilly, with the white-lace train, foaming with flounces, the black-lace tunic with the scalloped border and sprinkled with steel spangles and blue stones, a spray of orchids in the sleeveless _corsage_, which left her neck and arms and shoulders bare. her hair was bound with three greek fillets of pearls; and her fan of white feathers--a present from urania--was like froth against her throat. she saw herself first and then, in the mirror, she saw _him_. he was coming nearer to her. she did not move, only her fingers played with the flowers in the vase. she felt as though she wished to take flight, but her knees gave way and her feet were paralysed. she stood rooted to the floor, hypnotized. she was unable to stir. and she saw him come nearer and nearer, while her back remained half-turned to the room. he approached; and his appearance seemed to fling out a net in which she was caught. he was close by her now, close behind her. mechanically she raised her eyes and looked in the glass and met his eyes in the mirror. she thought that she would faint. she felt squeezed between him and the glass. in the mirror the room went round and round, the candles whirled giddily like a reeling firmament. he did not say anything yet. she only saw his eyes gazing and his mouth smiling under his moustache. and he still said nothing. then, in that unendurable lack of space between him and the mirror, which did not even give shelter as a wall would have done, but which reflected him so that he held her twice imprisoned, behind and before, she turned round slowly and looked him in the eyes. but she did not speak either. they stared at each other without a word. "you never expected this: that you would see me here one day," he said, at last. it was more than a year since she had heard his voice. but she felt his voice inside her. "no," she answered, at last, haughtily, coldly, distantly. "though i saw you once or twice, in the street, on the jetée." "yes," he said. "should i have bowed to you, do you think?" she shrugged her bare shoulders; and he looked at them. she felt for the first time that she was half-naked that evening. "no," she replied, still coldly and distantly. "any more than you need have spoken to me now." he smiled at her. he stood before her as a wall. he stood before her as a man. his head, his shoulders, his chest, his legs, his whole stature rose before her as manhood incarnate. "of course i needn't have done so," he said; and she felt his voice inside her: she felt his voice sinking in her like molten bronze into a mould. "if i had met you somewhere in holland, i would only have taken off my hat and not spoken to you. but we are in a foreign country...." "what difference does that make?" "i felt i should like to speak to you.... i wanted to have a talk with you. can't we do that as strangers?" "as strangers?" she echoed. "oh, well, we're not strangers: we even know each other uncommonly intimately, eh?... come and sit down and tell me about yourself. did you like rome?" "yes," she said. he had led her as though with his will to a couch behind a half-damask, half-glass, louis-xv screen; and she dropped down upon it in a rosy twilight of candles, with bunches of pink roses around her in all sorts of venetian glasses. he sat on an ottoman, bending towards her slightly, with his arms on his knees and his hands folded together: "they've been gossiping about you finely at the hague. first about your pamphlet ... and then about your painter." her eyes pierced him like needles. he laughed: "you can look just as angry as ever.... tell me, do you ever hear from the old people? they're in a bad way." "now and then. i was able to send them some money lately." "that's damned good of you. they don't deserve it. they said that you no loiter existed for them." "mamma wrote that they were so pushed for money. then i sent them a hundred guilders. it was the most that i could do." "oh, now that they find you sending them money, you'll begin to exist for them again!" she shrugged her shoulders: "i don't mind that. i was sorry for them ... and sorry i couldn't send more." "ah, when you look so thundering smart...." "i don't pay for my clothes." "i'm only stating a fact. i'm not venturing to criticize. i think it damned handsome of you to send them money. but you do look thundering smart. ... look here, let me tell you something: you've become a damned handsome girl." he stared at her, with his smile, which compelled her to look at him. then she replied, very calmly, waving her fan lightly in front of her bare neck, sheltering in the foam of her fan: "i'm damned glad to hear it!" he gave a loud, throaty laugh: "there, i like that! you've still got your witty sense of repartee. always to the point. damned clever of you!" she stood up strained and nervous "i must leave you. i must go to mrs. uxeley." he spread out his arms: "stay and sit with me a little longer. it does me good to talk to you." "then restrain yourself a bit and don't 'damn' quite so much. i've not been used to it lately." "i'll do my best. sit down." she fell back and hid herself behind her fan. "let me tell you that you have positively become a very ... a very beautiful woman. now is _that_ like a compliment?" "it sounds more like one." "well, it's the best i can do, you know. so you must make the most of it. and now tell me about rome. how were you living there?" "why should i tell you about it?" "because i'm interested." "you have no need to be interested." "i dare say, but i happen to be. i've never quite forgotten you. and i should be surprised if you had me." "i have, quite," she said, coolly. he looked at her, with his smile. he said nothing, but she felt that he knew better. she was afraid to convince him further. "is it true, what they say at the hague? about van der staal?" she looked at him haughtily. "come, out with it!" "yes." "you _are_ a cheeky baggage! do you no longer care a straw for the whole boiling of them?" "no." "and how do you manage here, with this old hag?" "what do you mean?" "do they just accept you here, at nice?" "i don't brag about my independence; and no one is able to comment on my conduct here." "where is van der staal?" "at florence." "why isn't he here?" "i'm not going to answer any more questions. you are indiscreet. it has nothing to do with you and i won't be cross-examined." she was very nervous again and once more rose to her feet. he spread out his arms. "really, rudolph, you must let me go," she entreated. "i have to go to mrs. uxeley. they are to dance a pavane in the ball-room and i have to ask for instructions and hand them on. let me pass." "then i'll take you there. let me offer you my arm." "rudolph, do go away! don't you see how you're upsetting me? this meeting has been so unexpected. do let me go, or i sha'n't be able to control myself. i'm going to cry.... why did you speak to me, why did you speak to me, why did you come here, where you knew that you would meet me?" "because i wanted to see one of mrs. uxeley's parties and because i wanted to meet you." "you must understand that it upsets me to see you again. what good does it do you? we are dead to each other. why should you want to pester me like this?" "that's just what i wanted to know, whether we are dead to each other...." "dead, dead, quite dead!" she cried, vehemently. he laughed: "come, don't be so theatrical. you can understand that i was curious to sec you again and talk to you. i used to see you in the street, in your carriage, on the jetée; and i was pleased to find you looking so well, so smart, so happy and so handsome. you know that good-looking women are my great hobby. you are much better-looking than you used to be when you were my wife. if you had been then what you are now, i should never have allowed you to divorce me.... come, don't be a child. no one knows here. i think it damned jolly to meet you here, to have a good old yarn with you and to have you leaning on my arm. take my arm. don't make a fuss and i'll take you where you want to go. where shall we find mrs. uxeley? introduce me ... as a friend from holland...." "rudolph...." "oh, i insist: don't bother! there's nothing in it! it amuses me and it's no end of a lark to walk about with one's divorced wife at a ball at nice. a delightful town, isn't it? i go to monte carlo every day and i've been damned lucky. won three thousand francs yesterday. will you come with me one day?" "you're mad?" "i'm not mad at all. i want to enjoy myself. and i'm proud to have you on my arm." she withdrew her arm: "well, you needn't be." "now don't get spiteful. that's all rot: let's enjoy ourselves. there is the old girl: she's looking at you." she had passed through some of the rooms on his arm; and they saw, near a tombola, round which people were crowding to draw presents and surprises, mrs. uxeley, gilio and the rosavilla, costi and luca ladies. they were all very gay round the pyramid of knick-knacks, behaving like children when the number of one of them turned up on the roulette-wheel. "mrs. uxeley," cornélie began, in a trembling voice, "may i introduce a fellow-countryman of mine? baron brox." mrs. uxeley simpered, uttered a few amiable words and asked if he wouldn't draw a number. the roulette-wheel spun round and round. "a fellow-countryman, cornélie?" "yes, mrs. uxeley." "what do you say his name is?" "baron brox." "a splendid fellow! a handsome fellow! an astonishingly handsome fellow!... what is he? what does he do?" "he's in the army, a first lieutenant...." "in which regiment?" "in the hussars." "at the hague?" "yes." "an amazingly good-looking fellow! i like those tall, fine men." "mrs. uxeley, is everything going as it should?" "yes, darling." "do you feel all right?" "i have a little pain, but nothing to speak about." "won't it soon be time for the pavane?" "yes, see that the girls go and get dressed. has the hairdresser brought the wigs for the young men?" "yes." "then go and collect them and tell them to hurry up. they must be ready within half an hour...." rudolph brox returned from the tombola, where he had drawn a silver match-box. he thanked mrs. uxeley, who simpered, and, when he saw that cornélie was moving away, he went after her: "cornélie...." "please, rudolph, let me be. i have to collect the girls and the men for the pavane. i have a lot to do...." "i'll help you...." she beckoned to a girl or two and sent a couple of footmen to hunt through the room for the young men and to ask them to go to the dressing-room. he saw that she was pale and trembling all over her body: "what's the matter?" "i'm tired." "then let's go and get something to drink." she was numb with nervousness. the music of the invisible band boom-boomed fiercely against her brain; and at times the innumerable candles whirled before her eyes like a reeling firmament. the rooms were choked with people. they crowded and laughed aloud and showed one another their presents; the men trod on the ladies' trains. an intoxicating, suffocating fragrance of flowers, the atmosphere peculiar to crowded functions and the warm, perfumed odour of women's flesh hung in the rooms like a cloud. cornélie hunted hither and thither and at last collected all the girls. the ballet-master came to ask her something. a butler came to ask her something. and brox did not budge from her side: "let's go now and get something to drink," he said. she mechanically took his arm; and her hand trembled on the sleeve of his dress-coat. he pushed his way with her through the crowd; they passed urania and de breuil. urania said something which cornélie did not catch. the refreshment-room also was chock-full and buzzed with loud, laughing voices. behind the long tables stood the butler, like a minister, supervising the whole service. there was no crowding, no fighting for a glass of wine or a sandwich. people waited until a footman brought it on a tray. "it's very well managed," said brox. "do you do all this?" "no, it's been done like this for years...." she dropped into a chair, looking very pale. "what will you have?" "a glass of champagne." "i'm hungry. i had a bad dinner at my hotel. i must have something to eat." he ordered the champagne for her. he ate first a patty, then another, then a _châteaubriant_ and peas. he drank two glasses of claret, followed by a glass of champagne. the footman brought him everything, dish by dish, on a silver tray. his handsome, virile face was brick-red in colour with health and animal strength. the stiff hair on his round, heavy skull was cropped quite close. his large grey eyes were bright and laughing, with a straight, impudent glance. a heavy, well-tended moustache curled over his mouth, in which the white teeth gleamed. he stood with his legs slightly astraddle, firm and soldierly in his dress-coat, which he wore with an easy correctness. he ate slowly and with relish, enjoying his good glass of fine wine. mechanically she now watched him, from her chair. she had drunk a glass of champagne and asked for another; and the stimulant revived her. her cheeks recovered some of their colour; her eyes sparkled. "they do you damn well here," he said, coming up to her with his glass in his hand. and he emptied his glass. "they are going to dance the pavane almost at once," she murmured. and they passed through the crowded rooms, to a big corridor outside, which looked like an avenue of camellia-shrubs. they were alone for a moment. "this is where the dancers are to meet." "then let's wait for them. it's nice and cool out here." they sat down on a bench. "are you feeling better?" he asked. "you were so queer in the ball-room." "yes, i'm better." "don't you think it's fun to meet your old husband again?" "rudolph, i don't understand how you can talk to me like that and persecute me and tease me ... after everything that has happened...." "oh, well, all that has happened and is done with!" "do you think it's discreet on your part ... or delicate?" "no, neither discreet nor delicate. those, you know, are things i've never been: you used to fling that in my face often enough, in the old days. but, if it's not delicate, it's amusing. have you lost your sense of humour? it's damn jolly humorous, our meeting here.... and now listen to me. you and i are divorced. all right. that's so in the eyes of the law. but a legal divorce is a matter of law and form, for the benefit of society. as regards money affairs and so on. we've been too much husband and wife not to feel something for each other at a later meeting, such as this. yes, yes, i know what you want to say. it's simply untrue. you have been too much in love with me and i with you for everything between us to be dead. i remember everything still. and you must do the same. do you remember when...?" he laughed, pushed nearer to her and whispered close to her ear. she felt his breath thrilling her on her flesh like a warm breeze. she flushed crimson with nervous distress. and she felt with her whole body that he had been her husband and that he had entered into her very blood. his voice ran like molten bronze along her nerves of hearing, deep down within her. she knew him, through and through. she knew his eyes, his mouth. she knew his broad, well-kept hands, with the large round nails and the dark signetring, as they lay on his knees, which showed square and powerful under the crease in his dress-trousers. and she felt, like a sudden despair, that she knew and felt him in her whole body. however rough he might have been to her in the old days, however much he had ill-treated her, striking her with his clenched fist, banging her against the wall ... she had been his wife. she, a virgin, had become his wife, had been initiated into womanhood by him. and she felt that he had branded her as his own, she felt it in her blood and in the marrow of her bones. she confessed to herself that she had never forgotten him. during the first lonely days in rome, she had longed for his kisses, she had thought of him, had conjured up his virile image before her mind, had persuaded herself to believe that, by exercising tact and patience and a little management, she could have remained his wife.... then the great happiness had come, the gentle happiness of perfect harmony!... it all flashed through her like lightning. oh, in that great, gentle happiness she had been able to forget everything, she had not felt the past within her! but she now felt that the past always remained, irrevocably and indelibly. she had been his wife and she held him still in her blood. she felt it now with every breath that she drew. she was indignant because he dared to whisper about the old days, in her ear; but it had been all as he said, irrevocably, indelibly. "rudolph!" she entreated, clasping her hands together. "spare me!" she almost screamed it, in a cry of fear and despair. but he laughed and with one hand seized both hers, clasped in entreaty: "if you go on like that, if you look at me so beseechingly with those beautiful eyes, i won't spare you even here and i'll kiss you until...." his words swept over her like a scorching wind. but laughing voices approached; and two girls and two young men, dressed up, for the pavane, as henri iv and marguerite de valois, came running down the stairs: "what's become of the others?" they cried, looking round in the staircase. and they came dancing up to cornélie. the ballet-master also approached. she did not understand what he said: "where are the others?" she repeated, mechanically, in a hoarse voice. "here they come.... now we're all there...." they were all talking and laughing and glittering and buzzing about her. she summoned up all her poor strength and issued a few instructions. the guests streamed into the great ball-room, sat down in the front chairs, crowded together in the corners. the pavane was danced in the middle of the room, to an old trailing melody: a long, winding curve of graceful steps, deep bows and satin gleaming with sudden lustre like that of porcelain ... with the occasional flutter of a cape ... and a flash of light on a rapier. chapter xlviii "urania, i beseech you, help me!" "what is it?" "come with me...." she had seized urania by the hand and dragged her away from de breuil into one of the deserted rooms. the suite of rooms was almost entirely deserted; the dense throng of guests stood packed along the sides of the great ball-room to watch the pavane. "what is it, cornélie?" cornélie was trembling in every limb and clutching urania's arm. she drew her to the farthest comer of the room. there was no one there. "urania," she entreated, in a supreme crisis of nervousness, "help me! what am i to do? i have met him unexpectedly. don't you know whom i mean? my husband. my divorced husband. i had seen him once or twice before, in the street and on the jetée. the time when i was so startled, you know, when i almost fainted: that was because of him. and he has been talking to me now, here, a moment ago. and i'm afraid of him. he spoke quite nicely, said he wanted to talk to me. it was so strange. everything was finished between us. we were divorced. and suddenly i meet him and he speaks to me and asks me what sort of time i have had, tells me that i am looking well, that i have grown beautiful. tell me, urania, what i am to do. i'm frightened. i'm ill with anxiety. i want to get away. i should like best to go away at once, to florence, to duco. i am so frightened, urania i want to go to my room. tell mrs. uxeley that i want to go to my room." she hardly knew what she was saying. the words fell incoherently from her lips, as in a fever. men's voices approached. they were those of gilio, de breuil, the duke of luca and the young journalists, the two who were pushing their way into society. "what is the signora de retz doing?" asked the duke. "we are missing her everywhere." and the young journalists, standing in the shadow of these eminent noblemen, confirmed the statement: they had been missing her everywhere. "fetch mrs. uxeley here," urania whispered to gilio. "cornélie is ill, i think. i can't leave her here alone. she wants to go to her room. it's better that mrs. uxeley should know, else she might be angry." cornélie was jesting nervously, in feverish gaiety, with the duke and with de breuil and the journalists. "would you rather i took you straight to mrs. uxeley?" gilio whispered. "i want to go to my room!" she whispered, in a voice of entreaty, behind her fan. the pavane appeared to be over. the buzz of voices reached them, as though the guests were scattering about the rooms again. "i see mrs. uxeley," said gilio. he went up to her, spoke to her. she simpered at first, leaning on the gold knob of her cane. then her wrinkles became angrily contracted. she crossed the room. cornélie went on jesting with the duke; the journalists thought every word witty. "aren't you well?" whispered mrs. uxeley, going up to her, ruffled. "what about the cotillon?" "i will see to everything, mrs. uxeley," said urania. "impossible, dear princess; and i shouldn't dream of letting you either." "introduce me to your friend, cornélie," said a deep voice behind cornélie. she felt that voice like bronze inside her body. she turned round automatically. it was he. she seemed unable to escape him. and, under his glance, as though hypnotized, she appeared, very strangely, to recover her strength. it seemed as though he were willing her not to be ill. she murmured: "urania, may i introduce ... a fellow-country-man?... baron brox ... principessa di forte-braccio...." urania knew his name, knew who he was: "darling," she whispered to cornélie, "let me take you to your room. i'll see to everything." "it's no longer necessary," she said. "i'm much better. i only want a glass of champagne. i am much better, mrs. uxeley." "why did you run away from me?" asked rudolph brox, with his smile and his eyes in cornélie's eyes. she smiled and said the first thing that came into her head. "the dancing has begun," said mrs. uxeley. "but who's going to lead my cotillon presently?" "if i can be of any service, mrs. uxeley," said brox, "i have some little talent as a cotillon-leader." mrs. uxeley was delighted. it was arranged that de breuil and urania, gilio and countess costi and brox and cornélie should lead the figures in turns. "you poor darling!" urania said in cornélie's ear. "can you manage it?" cornélie smiled: "yes, yes, i'm all right again," she whispered. and she moved towards the ball-room on brox' arm. urania stared after her in amazement. chapter xlix it was twelve o'clock when cornélie woke that morning. the sun was piercing the golden slit in the half-parted curtains with tiny eddying atoms. she felt dog-tired. she remembered that mrs. uxeley, on the morning after one of these parties, left her free to rest: the old lady herself stayed in bed, although she did not sleep. and cornélie lacked the smallest capacity to rise. she remained lying where she was, heavy with fatigue. her eyes wandered through the untidy room her handsome ball-dress, hanging listlessly, limply over a chair, at once reminded her of yesterday. for that matter, everything in her was thinking of yesterday, everything in her was thinking of her husband, with a tense, hypnotized consciousness. she felt as if she were recovering from a nightmare, a bout of drunkenness, a swoon. it was only by drinking glass after glass of champagne that she had been able to keep going, had been able to dance with brox, had been able to lead the figure when their turn came. but it was not only the champagne. his eyes also had held her up, had prevented her from fainting, from bursting into sobs, from screaming and waving her arms like a madwoman. when he had taken his leave, when everybody had gone, she had collapsed in a heap and been taken to bed. the moment she was no longer under his eyes, she had felt her misery and her weakness; and the champagne had as it were suddenly clouded her brain. now she lay thinking of him in the dejected slackness of her overwhelming morning fatigue. and it seemed to her as if her whole italian year had been an interlude, a dream. she saw herself at the hague again, with her pretty little face and her little flirting ways and her phrases always to the point. she saw their first meetings and how she had at once fallen under his influence and been unable to flirt with him, because he laughed at her little feminine defences. he had been too strong for her from the first. then came their engagement. he laid down the law and she rebelled, angrily, with violent scenes, not wishing to be controlled, injured in her pride as a girl who had always been spoiled and made much of. and then he subdued her as though with the rude strength of his fist--and always with a laugh on his handsome mouth--until they were married, until she created a scandal and ran away. he had refused to be divorced at first, but had consented later, because of the scandal. she had freed herself, she had fled!... the feminist movement, italy, duco.... was it a dream? was the great happiness, the delightful harmony, a dream, and was she waking after a year of dreams? was she divorced or was she not? she had to make an effort to remember the formalities: yes, they were legally divorced. but _was_ she divorced, was everything over between them? and _was_ she really no longer his wife? why had he done it, why had he pursued her after seeing her once at nice? oh, he had told her, during that cotillon, that endless cotillon! he had become proud of her when he saw how beautiful she was and how smart, how happy she looked driving in mrs. uxeley's or the princess' elegant victoria; it was then that he had seen her, beautiful, smart and happy; and he had grown jealous. she, a beautiful woman, had been his wife! he felt that he had a right to her, notwithstanding the law. what was the law? had the law taught her womanhood or had he? and he had made her feel his right, together with the irrevocable past. it was all irrevocable and indelible.... she looked about her, at her wits' end what to do. and she began to weep, to sob. then she felt something gaining strength within her, the instinctive rebellion that leapt up within her like a spring which had at length recovered its resilience, now that she was resting and no longer under his eyes. she would not. she would not. she refused to feel him in her blood. should she meet him once more, she would speak to him calmly, very curtly, and order him to leave her, show him the door, have him put out of the door.... she clenched her fists with rage. she hated him. she thought of duco.... and she thought of writing to him, telling him everything. and she thought of going back to him as quickly as possible. he was not a dream, he existed, even though he was living so far away, at florence. she had saved a little money, they would find their happiness again in the studio in rome. she would write to him; and she wanted to get away as quickly as possible. with duco she would be safe. oh, how she longed for him, to lie so softly and quietly and blissfully in his arms, against his breast, as in the embrace of a miraculous happiness! was it all true, their happiness, their love and harmony? yes, it had existed, it was not a dream. there was his photograph; there, on the wall, were two of his water-colours--the sea at sorrento and the skies over amalfi--done in those days which had been like poems. she would be safer with him. when she was with duco, she would not feel rudolph, her husband, in her blood. for she felt duco in her soul; and her soul would be the stronger! she would feel duco in her soul, in her heart, in all the most fervent part of her life and gather from him her uppermost strength, like a sheaf of gleaming swordblades! already now, when she thought of him with such longing, she felt herself growing stronger. she could have spoken to brox now. yesterday he had taken her by surprise, had squeezed her between himself and that looking-glass, till she had seen him double and lost her wits and been defeated. that would never happen again. that was only due to the surprise. if she spoke to him again now, _she_ would triumph, thanks to what she had learnt as a woman who stood on her own feet. and she got up and opened the windows and put on her dressing-gown. she looked at the blue sea, at the motley traffic on the promenade. and she sat down and wrote to duco. she told him everything: her first startled meeting, her surprise and defeat at the ball. her pen flew over the paper. she did not hear the knock at the door, did not hear urania come carefully, fearing lest she should still be asleep and anxious to know how she felt. excitedly she read out part of her letter and said that she was ashamed of her weakness of yesterday. how she could have behaved like that she herself was unable to understand. no, she herself could not understand it. now that she felt somewhat rested and was speaking to urania, who reminded her of rome, and holding her long letter to duco in her hand ... now she herself did not understand it all and wondered which had been a dream: her italian year of happiness or that nightmare of yesterday.... chapter l she stayed at home for a day, feeling tired and, deep down within herself, almost unconsciously, afraid, in spite of all, of meeting him. but mrs. uxeley, who would never hear of illness or fatigue, was so much put out that cornélie accompanied her next day to the promenade des anglais. friends came up to talk to them and gathered round their chairs, with rudolph brox among them. but cornélie avoided any confidential conversation. some days later, however, he called on mrs. uxeley's at-home day; and, amid the crowd of visitors paying duty-calls after the party, he was able to speak to her for a moment alone. he came up to her with that laugh of his, as though his eyes were laughing, as though his moustache were laughing. and she collected all her thoughts, so that she might be firm with him: "rudolph," she said, loftily, "it is simply ridiculous. if you don't think it indelicate, you might at least try to think it ridiculous. it tickles your sense of humour, but imagine what people would say about it in holland!... the other evening, at the party, you took me by surprise and somehow--i really don't know how it happened--i yielded to your strange wish to dance with me and to lead the cotillon. i frankly confess, i was confused. i now see everything clearly and plainly and i tell you this: i refuse to meet you again. i refuse to speak to you again. i refuse to turn the solemn earnest of our divorce into a farce." "if you look back," he said, "you will recollect that you never got anything out of me with that lofty tone and those dignified airs, but that, on the contrary, you just stimulate me to do what you don't want...." "if that is so, i shall simply tell mrs. uxeley in what relation i stand to you and ask her to forbid you her house." he laughed. she lost her temper: "do you intend to behave like a gentleman or like a cad?" he turned red and clenched his fists: "curse you!" he hissed, in his moustache. "perhaps you would like to hit me and knock me about?" she continued, scornfully. he mastered himself. "we are in a room full of people," she sneered, defiantly. "what if we were alone? you've already clenched your fists! you would thrash me as you did before. you brute! you brute!" "and you are very brave in this room full of people!" he laughed, with his laugh which incited her to rage, when it did not subdue her. "no, i shouldn't thrash you," he continued. "i should kiss you." "this is the last time you're going to speak to me!" she hissed, furiously. "go away! go away! or i don't know what i shall do, i shall make a scene." he sat down calmly: "as you please," he said, quietly. she stood trembling before him, impotent. some one spoke to her; the footman handed her some tea. she was now in the midst of a circle of men; and, mastering herself, she jested, with loud, nervous gaiety, flirted more coquettishly than ever. there was a little court around her, with the duke of luca as its ringleader. close by, rudolph brox sat drinking his tea, with apparent calmness, as though waiting. but his strong, masterful blood was boiling madly within him. he could have murdered her and he was seeing red with jealousy. that woman was his, despite the law. he was not going to be afraid of any more scandal. she was beautiful, she was as he wished her to be and he wanted her, his wife. he knew how he would win her back; and this time he would not lose her, this time she should be his, for as long as he wished. as soon as he was able to speak to her unheard, he came up to her again. she was just going to urania whom she saw sitting with mrs. uxeley, when he said in her ear, sternly and abruptly: "cornélie...." she turned round mechanically, but with her haughty glance. she would rather have gone on, but could not: something held her back, a secret strength, a secret superiority, which sounded in his voice and flowed into her with a weight as of bronze that weakened and paralysed her energy. "what is it?" she asked. "i want to speak to you alone." "no." "yes. listen to me calmly for a moment, if you can. i am calm too, as you see. you needn't be afraid of me. i promise not to ill-treat you or even to swear at you. but i must speak to you, alone. after our meeting, after the ball last week, we can't part like this. you are not even entitled to show me the door, after talking to me and dancing with me so recently. there's no reason and no logic in it. you lost your temper. but let us both keep our tempers now. i want to speak to you...." "i can't: mrs. uxeley doesn't like me to leave the drawing-room when there are people here. i am dependent on her." he laughed: "you are almost even more dependent on her than you used to be on me! but you can give me just a second, in the next room." "no." "yes, you can." "what do you want to speak to me about?" "i can't tell you here." "i can't speak to you alone." "i'll tell you what it is: you're afraid to." "no." "yes, you are: you're afraid of me. with all your airs and your dignity, you're afraid to be alone with me for a moment." "i'm not afraid." "you _are_ afraid. you're shaking in your shoes with fear. you received me with a fine speech which you rehearsed in advance. now that you've delivered your speech ... it's over and you're frightened." "i am not frightened." "then come with me, my plucky authoress of _the social position of the what's-her-name_! i promise, i swear that i shall be calm and tell you calmly what i have to say to you; and i give you my word of honour not to hit you ... which room shall we go to?... do you refuse? listen to me: if you don't come with me, it's not finished yet. if you do, perhaps it will be finished ... and you will never see me again." "what can you have to say to me?" "come." she yielded because of his voice, not because of his words: "but only for three minutes." "very well, three minutes." she took him into the passage and into an empty room: "well what is it?" she asked, frightened. "don't be frightened," he said, laughing under his moustache. "don't be frightened. i only wanted to tell you ... _that you are my wife_. do you understand that? don't try to deny it. i felt it at the ball the other night, when i had my arm round you, waltzing with you. don't try to deny that you pressed yourself against me for a moment. _you're my wife_. i felt it then and i feel it now. and you feel it too, though you would like to deny it. but that won't help you. what has been can't be altered; and what has been ... always remains part of you. there, you can't say that i am not speaking prettily and delicately. not an oath, not an improper word has escaped my lips. for i don't want to make you angry. i only want to make you confess that what i say is true _and that you are still my wife_. that law doesn't signify. it's another law that rules us. it's a law that rules you especially; a law which, without our ever suspecting it, brings us together again, even though it does so by a very strange, roundabout path, along which you, especially, have strayed. that law rules you especially. i am convinced that you still love me, or at least that you are still in love with me. i feel it, i know it as a fact: don't try to deny it. it's _no use_, cornélie. and i'll tell you something besides: i am in love with you too and more so than ever. i feel it when you're flirting with those fellows. i could wring your neck then, i could break every bone in their bodies.... don't be afraid: i'm not going to; i'm not in a temper. i just wanted to talk to you calmly and make you see the truth. do you see it before you? it is in-con-tro-ver-tible. you see, you have nothing to say in reply. facts are facts.... will you show me the door now? do you still propose to speak to mrs. uxeley? i shouldn't, if i were you. your friend, the princess, knows who i am: leave it at that. had the old woman never heard my name, or has she forgotten it? forgotten it, i expect. well, then, don't trouble to refresh her ancient memory. leave things as they are. it's better to say nothing. no, the position is not ridiculous and it's not humorous either. it has become very serious: the truth is always serious. it is strange, i admit: i should never have expected it. it's a revelation to me as well.... and now i've said what i had to say. less than five minutes by my watch. they will hardly have noticed your absence in the drawing-room. and now i'm going; but first give your husband a kiss, for i am your husband ... and always shall be." she stood trembling before him. it was his voice, which fell like molten bronze into her soul, into her body, and lamed and paralysed her. it was his voice of persuasion, persuasive charm, the voice which she knew of old, the voice that compelled her to do everything that he wanted. under the influence of that voice she became a thing, a chattel, something that belonged to him, once he had branded her for ever as his mate. she was powerless to cast him out of herself, to shake him from herself, to erase from herself the stamp of his possession and the brand which marked her as his property. she was his; and anything that otherwise was herself had left her. there was no longer in her brain either memory or thought.. she saw him come up to her and put his arm around her. he took her to his breast slowly but so firmly that he seemed to be taking possession of her entirely. she felt herself melting away in his arms as in a scorching flame. on her lips she felt his mouth, his moustache, pressing, pressing, pressing, until she closed her eyes, half-fainting. he said something more in her ear, with that voice under which she seemed not to count, as though she were nothing, as though she existed only through him. when he released her, she staggered on her feet. "come, pull yourself together," she heard him say, calmly, authoritatively, omnipotently. "and accept the position. things are as they are. there's no altering them. thank you for letting me speak to you. everything is all right between us now: i'm sure of it. and now _au revoir. au revoir_...." he kissed her again: "give me a kiss too," he said, with that voice of his. she flung her arm round his body and kissed him on the lips. "au revoir," he said, once more. she saw him laugh under his moustache; his eyes laughed at her with flames of gold; and he went away. she heard his feet going down the stairs and ringing on the marble of the hall, with the strength of his firm tread.... she remained standing as though bereft of life. in the drawing-room, next to the room in which she was, the hum of laughing voices sounded loudly. she saw rome before her, saw duco, in a short flash of lightning.... it was gone.... and, collapsing into a chair, she uttered a suppressed cry of despair, put her hands before her face and sobbed, restraining her despair before all those people, dully, as from a stifling throat. chapter li she had but one thought: to take to flight. to fly from his mastery, to fly from the emanation of that dominion which, mysteriously but irrevocably, wiped away with his caress all that was in her of will, energy and self. she remembered having felt the same thing in the old days: rebellion and anger when he became angry and coarse, but an eclipse of self when he caressed her; an inability to think when he merely laid his hand upon her head; a swooning away into a vast nothingness when he took her in his arms and kissed her. she had felt it from the first time of seeing him, when he stood before her and looked down upon her with that light irony in the smile of his eyes and his moustache, as though he took pleasure in her resistance--at that time prompted by flirting and fun, soon by petulance, later by anger and fury--as though he took pleasure in her futile feminine attempts to escape his power. he had at once realized that he ruled this woman. and she had found in him her master, her sole master. for no other man pressed down upon her with that empire which was of the blood, of the flesh. on the contrary, she was usually the superior. she had about her a cool indifference which was always provoking her to destructive criticism. she had a need for fun, for cheerful conversation, for coquetry, for flirtation; and, always a mistress of quick repartee, she invited the occasion for repartee; but, apart from this, men meant little to her and she always saw the absurd side of each of them, thinking this one too short, that one too tall, a third clumsy, a fourth stupid, finding something in every one of them to rouse her laughter, her mockery or her criticism. she would never be a woman to give herself to many. she had met duco and given herself to him with her love, wholly, as one great, inseparable, golden gift; and, after him, she would never fall in love again. but, before duco, she had met rudolph brox. perhaps, if she had met him after duco, his mastery would not have swayed her. she did not know. and what was the good of thinking about it? the thing was as it was. in her blood she was not a woman for many; in her blood she was the wife, the spouse, the consort. of the man who had been her husband she was in her flesh and in her blood the wife; but she was his wife even without love. for she could not call this love: she gave the name of love only to that other passion, that proud, tender and intense completion of life's harmony, that journey along one golden line, the marriage of two gleaming lines.... but the phantom hands had risen all about them in a cloud, the hands had mysteriously and inevitably divided their golden line; and hers, a winding curve, had leapt back, like a quivering spring, crossing a darker line of former days, a sombre line of the past, a dark track full of unconscious action and fatal bondage. oh, the strangeness, the most mysterious strangeness of those lines of life! why should they curl back, forcing her backwards to her original starting-point? why had it all been necessary? she had but one thought: to take to flight. she did not see the inevitability of those lines and the fatality of those paths and she did not wish to feel the pressure of the phantom hands that rose about her. to fly, to turn up the dusky path, back to the point of separation, back to duco, and with him to rebraid and twist the two lost directions into one pure movement, one line of happiness! ... to fly, to fly! she told urania that she was going. she begged urania to forgive her, because it was she who had recommended her to the old woman whom she was now suddenly leaving. and she told mrs. uxeley, without caring for her anger, her temper or her words of abuse. she admitted that she was ungrateful. but there was a vital necessity which compelled her suddenly to leave nice. she swore that it existed. she swore that it would mean unhappiness, even ruin, were she to stay. she explained it to urania in a single sentence. but she did not explain it to the old woman and left her in an impotent fury which made her writhe with rheumatic aches and pains. she left behind her everything that she had received from mrs. uxeley, all the superfluous wardrobe of her dependence. she put on an old frock. she went to the station like a criminal, trembling lest she should meet him. but she knew that at this hour he was always at monte carlo. nevertheless she went in a closed cab and she took a second-class ticket for florence. she telegraphed to duco. and she fled. she had nothing left but him. she could never again count upon mrs. uxeley; and urania had behaved coolly, not understanding that singular flight, because she did not understand the simple truth, rudolph brox' power. she thought that cornélie was making things difficult for herself. in the circle in which urania lived, her sense of social morality had wavered since her _liaison_ with the chevalier de breuil. hearing the italian law of love whispered all around her, the law that love is as simple as an opening rose, she did not understand cornélie's struggle. she no longer resented anything that gilio did; and he in his turn left her free. what was happening to cornélie? surely it was all very simple, if she was still fond of her divorced husband! why should she run away to duco and make herself ridiculous in the eyes of all their acquaintances? and so she had parted coolly from cornélie; but still she missed her friend. she was the princess of forte-braccio; and lately, on her birthday, prince ercole had sent her a great emerald, out of the carefully kept family-jewels, as though she were becoming worthy of them gradually, stone by stone! but she missed cornélie and she felt lonely, deadly lonely, notwithstanding her emerald and her lover.... cornélie fled: she had nothing in the world but duco. but in him she would have everything. and, when she saw him at florence, at the santa maria novella station, she flung herself on his breast and clung to him as to a cross of redemption, a saviour. he led her sobbing to a cab; and they drove to his room. there she looked round her nervously, done up with the overstrain of her long journey, thinking every minute that rudolph would come after her. she told duco everything, opened her heart to him entirely, as though he were her conscience, as though he were her soul, her god. she nestled up against him, she told him that he must help her. it was as though she were praying to him; her anguish went up to him like a prayer. he kissed her; and she knew that manner of comforting, she knew that tender caressing. she suddenly fell against him, utterly relaxed; and so she continued to lie, with closed eyes. it was as though she were sinking in a lake, in a blue sacred lake, mystic as the lake of san stefano in the sleeping night, powdered with stars. and she heard him say that he would help her; that there was nothing in her fears; that that man had no power over her; that he would never have any power over her, if she became his, duco's, wife. she looked at him and did not understand what he was saying. she looked at him feverishly, as though he had awakened her suddenly while she lay sleeping for a second in the blue calmness of the mystic lake. she did not understand, but, dead-tired, she hid her face against his arm again and fell asleep. she was dead-tired. she slept for two hours immovably, breathing deeply, upon his breast. when he shifted his arm, she just moved her head heavily, like a flower on a weary stalk, but she slept on. he stroked her forehead, her hair; and she slept on, with her hands in his. she slept as if she had not slept for days, for weeks. chapter lii "there is nothing to be afraid of, cornélie," he said, convincingly. "that man has no power over you if you refuse, if you refuse with a firm will. i do not see what he could do. you are quite free, absolutely released from him. that you ran away so precipitately was certainly not wise: it will look to him like a flight. why did you not tell him calmly that he can't claim any rights in you? why did you not say that you loved me? if need were, you could have said that we were engaged. how can you have been so weak and so terrified? it's not like you but, now that you are here, all is well. we are together now. shall we go back to rome to-morrow, or shall we remain here a little first? i have always longed to show you florence. look, there, in front of us, is the arno; there is the ponto vecchio; there is the uffizi. you've been here before, but you didn't know italy then. you'll enjoy it more now. oh, it is so lovely here! let us stay a week or two first. i have a little money; you need have no fear. and life is cheaper here than in rome. living in this room, we shall spend hardly anything. i have light enough through this window to sketch by, now and again. or else i go and work in the san marco, or in san lorenzo, or up on san miniato. it is delightfully quiet in the cloisters. there are a few excursionists at times; but i don't mind that. and you can go with me, with a book, a book about florence; i'll tell you what to read. you must learn to know donatello, brunelleschi, ghiberti, but, above all, donatello. we shall see him in the bargello. and lippo memmi's _annunciation_, the golden _annunciation_! you shall see how like our angel is to it, our beautiful angel of happiness, the one you gave me! it is so rich here; we shall not feel that we are poor. we need so little. or have you been spoilt by your luxury at nice? but i know you so well: you will forget that at once; and we shall win through together. and presently we shall go back to rome. but this time ... married, my darling, and you belonging to me entirely, legally. it must be so now; you must not refuse me again. we'll go to the consul tomorrow and ask what papers we want from holland and what will be the quickest way of getting married. and meanwhile you must look upon yourself as my wife. until now we have been very, very happy ... but you were not my wife. once you _feel_ yourself to be my wife--even though we wait another fortnight for those papers to sign--you will feel safe and peaceful. there is nobody and nothing that has any power over you. you're not well, if you really think there is. and then i'll bet you, when we are married, my mother will make it up with us. everything will come right, my darling, my angel.... but you must not refuse: we must get married with all possible speed." she was sitting beside him on a sofa and staring out of doors, where, in the square frame of the tall window, the slender _campanile_ rose like a marble lily between the dome-crowned harmonies of the cathedral and the battisterio, while on one side the palazzio vecchio lay, a massive, battlemented fortress, amid the welter of the streets and roofs, and lifted its tower, suddenly expanding into the machicolated summit, with fiesole and the hills shimmering behind it in the purple of the evening. the noble city of eternal grace gleamed a golden bronze in the last reflection of the setting sun. "we _must_ get married at once?" she repeated, with a doubting interrogation. "yes, as soon as ever we can, darling." "but duco, dearest duco, it's less possible now than ever. don't you see that it can't be done? it's impossible, impossible. it might have been possible before, some months ago, a year ago ... perhaps, perhaps not even then. perhaps it was never possible. it is so difficult to say. but now it can.'t be done, really not...." "don't you love me well enough?" "how can you ask me such a question? how can you ask me, darling? but it's not that. it is ... it is ... it can't be, because i am not free." "not free?" "i am _not_ free. i may feel free later ... or perhaps not, perhaps never.... my dearest duco, it is impossible. i wrote to you, you know: that first meeting at the ball; it was so strange; i felt that...." "that what?" she took his hand and stroked it; her eyes were vague, her words were vague: "you see ... he has been my husband." "but you're divorced from him: not merely separated, but divorced--" "yes, i'm divorced; but it's not that." "what then, dearest?" she shook her head and hid her face against him: "i can't tell you, duco." "why not?" "i'm ashamed." "tell me; do you still love him?" "no, it's not love. i love you." "but what then, my darling? why are you ashamed?" she began to cry on his shoulder: "i feel...." "what?" "that i am not free, although ... although i am divorced. i feel ... that i am his wife all the same." she whispered the words almost inaudibly. "but then you do love him and more than you love me." "no, no, i swear i don't!" "but, darling, you're not talking sense!" "yes, indeed i am." "no, you're not. it's impossible!" "it isn't. it's quite possible. and he told me so ... and i felt it. "but the fellow's hypnotizing you!" "no, it's not hypnotism. it's not a delusion: it's a reality, deep, deep down within myself. look here, you know me: you know how i feel. i love you and you only. that alone is love. i have never loved any one else. i am not a woman who is susceptible to.... i'm not hysterical. but with him.... no other man, no man whom i have ever met, rouses that feeling in me ... that feeling that i am not myself. that i belong to him, that i am his property, his chattel." she threw her arms about him, she hid herself like a child in his breast: "it's so strange.... you know me, don't you? i can be plucky and i am independent and i am never at a loss for an answer. but with him i am no longer sure of myself, i no longer have a life of my own and i do what he tells me to." "but that is hypnotism: you can escape that, if you seriously wish to. i will help you." "it is not hypnotism. it is a truth, deep down inside me. it exists inside me. i know that it is so, that it has to be so.... duco, it is impossible. i can't become your wife. i _mustn't_ become your wife ... less now than ever. perhaps...." "perhaps what?" "perhaps i always felt like that, without knowing it, that it must not be. both for you and for me ... and for him too ... perhaps that was what i felt, without knowing it, when i talked as i used to, about my antipathy for marriage." "but that antipathy arose from your marriage with him!" "yes, that's the strange part of it. i dislike him ... and yet...." "yet you're in love with him!" "yet i belong to him." "and you tell me that you love me!" she took his head in her two hands: "try to understand. it tires me so, trying to make you understand. i love you ... but i am his wife...." "are you forgetting what you were to me in rome?..." "i was everything to you: love, happiness, intense happiness.... there was the most intense harmony between us: i shall never forget it.... but i was not your wife." "not my wife!" "no, i was your mistress.... i was unfaithful to him.... oh, don't repulse me! pity me, pity me!" he had unconsciously made a gesture that frightened her. "let me stay like this, leaning against you. may i? i am so tired and i feel restful, leaning against you like this, my darling. my darling, my darling ... things will never be as they were. what are we to do?" "i don't know," he said, in despair. "i want to marry you as soon as may be. you won't consent." "i can't. i mustn't." "then i don't know what to do or say." "don't be angry. don't leave me. help me, do, do! i love you, i love you, i love you!" she drew him into her arms, in a close, sudden embrace, as though in perplexity and despair. he kissed her passionately in response. "o god, tell me what to do!" she prayed, as she lay hopelessly perplexed in his embrace. chapter liii next day, when cornélie walked with duco through florence, when they entered the courtyard of the palazzo vecchio, saw the loggia dei lanzi and looked in at the uffizi to see memmi's _annunciation_, she felt something like her former sensations irresistibly unfolding within her. they seemed to have taken their lines which had burst asunder and with human force to have bent them together again into one path, along which the white daisies and white lilies shot up with a tenderness of soft, mystic recognition that was almost like a dream. and yet it was not quite the same as before. an oppression as of a grey cloud hung between her and the deep-blue sky, which hung outstretched like strips of æther, like paths of lofty, quivering atmosphere, above the narrow streets, above the domes and towers and turrets. she no longer felt the former apprehension; there was a remembrance in her, a heavy pondering weighed upon her brain, an anxiety for what was about to happen. she had a presentiment as of a coming storm; and when, after their walk, they had had something to eat and went home, she dragged herself up the stairs to duco's room more wearily than she had ever done in rome. and she at once saw a letter lying on the table, a letter addressed to her. but how addressed! it gave her so violent a start that she began to tremble in every limb and managed to thrust the letter away even before duco had followed her into the room. she took off her hat and told duco that she wanted to get something out of her trunk, which was standing in the passage. he asked if he could help her; but she said no and left the room and went into the narrow passage. here, standing by the little window overlooking the arno, she took out the letter. it was the only place where she could read for a moment undisturbed. and she read that address again, written in his hand, which she knew so well, with its great thick heavy characters. the name which she bore abroad was her maiden name; she called herself madame de retz van loo. but on the envelope she read, briefly: "baronne brox, " , lung' arno torrigiani, florence." a deep crimson flush mantled over her face. she had borne that name for a year. why did he call her by it now? where was the logic in that title which, by the law, was hers no longer? what did he mean by it, what did he want?... and, standing by the little window, she read his short but imperious letter. he wrote that he took her flight very much amiss, especially after their last conversation. he wrote that, at this last interview, she had granted him every right over her, that she had not denied it and that, by kissing him and putting her arms around him, she had shown that she regarded herself as his wife, just as he regarded her as his wife. he wrote that he would not now resent her independent life of a year in rome, because she was then still free, but that he was offended at her still looking upon herself as free and that he would not accept the insult of her flight. he called upon her to return. he said that he had no legal right to do so, but that he did it because he nevertheless had a right, a right which she could not dispute, which indeed she had not disputed, which on the contrary she had acknowledged by her kiss. he had learnt her address from the porter of the villa uxeley. and he ended by repeating that she was to return to nice, to him, at the hôtel continental, and telling her that, if she did not do this, he would come to florence and she would be responsible for the consequences of her refusal. her knees shook; she was hardly able to stand upright. should she show duco the letter or keep it from him? she had to make up her mind then and there. he was calling to her from the room, asking what she was doing so long in the passage. she went in and was too weak to refrain from throwing herself on his breast. she showed him the letter. leaning against him, sobbing violently, she heard him fume and rage, saw the veins on his temples swell, saw him clench his fists and roll the letter into a ball and dash it to the floor. he told her not to be frightened, said that he would protect her. he too regarded her as his wife. it all depended upon the light in which she henceforth regarded herself. she did not speak, merely sobbed, broken with fatigue, with fright, with headache. she undressed and went to bed, her teeth chattering with fever. he drew her curtains to darken the room and told her to go to sleep. his voice sounded angry and she thought that he was angry at her lack of resolution. she sobbed and cried herself to sleep. but in her sleep she felt the terror within herself and again felt the irresistible pressure. while sleeping she dreamt of what she could reply and wrote to brox, but it was not clear what she wrote: it was all a vague, impotent pleading for mercy. when she awoke, she saw duco beside her bed. she took his hand; she was calmer. but she had no hope. she had no faith in the days that were coming. she looked at him and saw him gloomy, stem and self-contained, as she had never seen him before. oh, their happiness was past! on that fatal day when he had seen her to the train in rome, they had taken leave of their happiness. it was gone, it was gone! gone the dear walks through ruins and museums, the trips to frascati, naples, amalfi! gone the dear, fond life of poverty in the big studio, among the gleaming colours of the old brocades and chasubles, of the old bronzes and silver! gone the gazing together at his water-colour of _the banners_, she with her head on his shoulder, within his arm, living his art with him, enjoying his work with him! gone the ecstasy of the night in the pergola, in the star-spangled night, with the sacred lake at their feet! life was not to be repeated. they had tried in vain to repeat it here, in this room, at florence, in the palazzo vecchio, tried in vain to repeat it even in the presence of memmi's angel emitting his beam of light! they tried in vain to repeat their life, their happiness, their love; it was in vain that they had forced together the lines which had burst asunder. these had merely twined round each other for a moment, in a despairing curve. it was gone, it was gone!... gloomy and stern he sat beside her bed; and she knew it, he felt that he was powerless because she did not feel herself to be his wife. his mistress!... oh, she had felt that involuntary repulsion when she had uttered the word! had he not always wanted to marry her? but she had always felt unconsciously that it could not be, that it must not be. under all the exuberance of her acrid feministic phrases, that had been the unconscious truth. she, railing against marriage, had always, inwardly, felt herself to be married ... not by a signature, in accordance with the law, but according to an age-old law, a primeval right of man over woman, a law and a right of flesh and blood and the very marrow of the bones. oh, above that immovable physical truth her soul had blossomed its blossom of white daisies and lilies; and that blossom also was the intense truth, the lofty truth of happiness and love! but the daisies and lilies blossomed and faded: the soul blossoms for but a single summer. the soul does not blossom for a lifetime. it blossoms perhaps before life, it blossoms perhaps after it; but in life itself the soul blossoms for but a single summer. it had blossomed, it was over! and in her body, which lived, in her being, which survived, she felt the truth in her very marrow! he was sitting beside her bed, but he had no rights, now that the lilies had blossomed.... she was broken with pity for him. she took his hand and kissed it fervently and sobbed over it. he said nothing. he did not know how to say anything. it would all have been very simple for him, if she had consented to be his wife. as things were, he could not help her. as things were, he saw his happiness foundering while he looked on: there was nothing to be done. it was slowly falling to pieces, like a crumbling ruin. it was gone! it was gone!... she stayed in bed these days; she slept, she dreamt, she awoke again; and the dread waiting never left her. she had a slight temperature now and again; and it was better for her to stay in bed. as a rule, he remained by her side. but one day, when duco had gone to the chemist's for something, there was a knock at the door. she leapt out of bed, terrified, terrified lest she should see the man of whom she was always thinking. half-fainting with fright, she opened the door ajar. it was only the postman, with a registered letter ... from him! even more curtly than last time, he wrote that, immediately on the receipt of his letter, she was to telegraph, stating the day when she would come. he said that, if on such and such a day he did not receive her telegram, he would leave for florence and shoot her lover like a dog at her feet. he would not take a moment to reflect he did not care what happened.... in this short letter, his anger, his fury, raged like a red storm that lashed her across the face. she knew him; and she knew that he would do what he said. she saw, as in a flash, the terrible scene, with duco dropping, murdered, weltering in his blood. and she was no longer her own mistress. the red fury of that letter, dispatched from afar, made her his chattel, his thing. she had torn the letter open hastily, before signing the postman's book. the man was waiting in the passage. her brain whirled, the room spun before her eyes. if she paused to reflect, it would be too late, too late to reflect. and she asked the postman, nervously: "can you send off a telegram for me at once?" no, he couldn't: it wasn't on his road. but she implored him to do it. she said that she was ill and that she must telegraph at once. and she found a gold ten-franc piece in her purse and gave it to him as a tip over and above the money for the telegram. and she wrote the telegram: "leaving to-morrow express train." it was a vague telegram. she did not know by what express; she had not been able to look it up. would it be in the evening or quite early in the morning? she had no idea. how would she be able to get away? she had no idea. but she thought that the telegram would calm him. and she meant to go. she had no choice. now that she had fled in despair, she saw it: if he wanted to have her back, back as his wife, she must go. if he had not wanted it, she could have remained, wherever she might be, despite her feeling that she belonged to him. but, now that he wanted it, she must go back. but oh, how was she to tell duco? she was not thinking of herself, she was thinking of duco. she saw him lying before her in his blood. she forgot that she had no money left. was she to ask him for it? o god, what was she to do? she could not go next day, notwithstanding her telegram! she could not tell duco that she was going.... she had meant to slip quietly to the station, when he was out.... or had she better tell him?... which would be the least painful?... or should ... should she tell everything to duco and ... and run away somewhere with him, anywhere, and tell nobody where they were going but supposing _he_ discovered they had gone! and he would find them!... and then ... then he would murder ... duco!... she was almost delirious with fear, with terror, with not knowing what to do, how to act.... she now heard duco's steps on the stairs.... he came in, bringing her the pills.... and, as usual, she told him everything, too weak, too tired, to keep anything hidden, and showed him the letter. he blazed out, furiously, with hatred but she fell on her knees before him and took his hands. she said that she had already sent the answer. he suddenly became cool, as though overcome by the inevitable. he said that he had no money to pay for her long journey. then, once more, he took her in his arms, kissed her, begged her to be his wife, said that he would kill her husband, even as her husband had threatened to kill him. but she did nothing but sob and refuse, though she continued to cling to him convulsively. then he yielded to the fatal omnipotence of life's silent tyranny. he felt death in his soul. but he wished to keep calm for her sake. he said that he forgave her. he held her, all sobbing, in his arms, because his touch calmed her. and he said that, if she wanted to go back--she despondently nodded yes--it was better to telegraph to brox again, asking for money for the journey and for clear instructions as to the day and time. he would do this for her. she looked at him, through her tears, in surprise. he himself drew up the telegram and went out. "my darling, my darling!" she thought, as he went, as she felt the pain in his torn soul. she flung herself on the bed. he found her in hysterics when he returned. when he had tended her and tucked her up in bed, he sat down beside her. and he said, in a dead voice: "my dearest, be calm now. the day after to-morrow i shall take you to genoa. then we shall take leave of each other, for ever. if it can't be otherwise, it must be like that. if you feel that it has to be, then it must be. be calm now, be calm now. if you feel like that, that you must go back to your husband, then perhaps you will not be unhappy with him. be calm, dear, be calm." "will you take me?" "i shall take you as far as genoa. i have borrowed the money from a friend. but, above all, try to be calm. your husband wants you back; he can't want you back only to beat you. he must feel something for you if he wants you so. and, if it has to be... then perhaps it will be the best thing ... for you.... even though i can't see it in that light!..." he covered his face with his hands and, no longer master of himself, burst into sobs. she drew him to her breast. she was now calmer than he. and, as he sobbed with his head on her beating heart, she quietly stroked his forehead, while her eyes roamed distantly round the walls of the room.... chapter liv she was now alone in the train. by tipping the guard lavishly, they had travelled by themselves through the night and had been left undisturbed in their compartment. oh, the melancholy journey, the last silent journey of the end! they had not spoken but had sat close together, hand in hand, with eyes gazing into the distance before them, as though staring at the approaching point of separation. the dreary thought of that separation never left them, rushed onward in unison with the rattling train. sometimes she thought of a railway-accident and that it would be welcome to her if she could die with him. but the lights of genoa had gleamed up inexorably. then the train had stopped. and he had flung out his arms and they had kissed for the last time. pressed to his breast, she had felt all his grief within him. then he had released her and rushed back without looking round. she followed him with her eyes, but he did not look back and she saw him disappear in the morning mist, pierced with little lights, that hung about the station. she had seen him disappear among other people, swallowed up in the hovering mist. then the silent and despairing surrender of her life had become so great that she was not even able to weep. her head dropped limply, her arms hung lax. like an inert thing she let the train bear her onward with its rending rattle. a white morning twilight had risen on the left over the brightening sea; and the dawning daylight tinted the water blue and defined the horizon. for hours and hours she travelled, sitting motionless, gazing at the sea; and she felt almost painless with her impassive surrender of life. she would now let things happen as life willed, as her husband willed, as the train willed. as in a tired dream she thought of the inevitability of everything and all the unconscious life within herself, of her first rebellion against her husband's tyranny, of the illusion of her independence, the arrogance of her pride and all the happiness of her gentle ecstasy, all her gladness because of the harmony which she had achieved.... now it was past; now all self-will was vain. the train was carrying her to where rudolph called her; and life hemmed her in on every side, not roughly, but with a soft pressure of phantom hands, which pushed and led and guided.... and she ceased to think. the tired dream became clouded in the deeper blue of the day; and she felt that she was approaching nice. she returned to the petty realities of life. she felt that she was looking a little travel-worn: and, thinking that it would be better if rudolph did not see her for the first time in so unattractive a light, she slowly opened her bag, washed her face with her handkerchief dipped in eau-de-cologne, combed her hair, powdered her face, brushed herself down, put on a transparent white veil and took out a pair of new gloves. she bought a couple of yellow roses at a station and put them in her waistband. she did all this unconsciously, without thinking about it, feeling that it was best, that it was sensible to do it, best that rudolph should see her like that, with that bloom of a beautiful woman about her. she felt that henceforth she must be above all beautiful and that nothing else mattered. and when the train droned into the station, when she recognized nice, she was resigned, because she had ceased to struggle and had yielded to all the stronger forces. the door was flung open and, in the station, which at that early hour was comparatively empty, she saw him at once: tall, robust, easy, in his light summer suit, straw hat and brown shoes. he gave an impression of health and strength and above all of broad-shouldered virility; and, notwithstanding his broadness, he was still quite thoroughbred, thoroughly well-groomed without the least touch of foppishness; and the ironical smile beneath his moustache and the steady glance of his fine grey eyes, the eyes of a woman-hunter, gave him an air of strength, of the certainty of doing as he wished, of the power to subdue if he thought fit. an ironic pride in his handsome strength, with a tinge of contempt for the others who were less handsome and strong, less of the healthy animal and yet the aristocrat, and above all a mocking, supercilious sarcasm directed against all women, because he knew women and knew how much they were really worth: all this was expressed by his glance, his attitude, his movements. it was thus that she knew him. it had often roused her to rebellion in the old days, but now she felt resigned and also a little frightened. he had come to her; he helped her to alight. she saw that he was angry, that he intended to receive her rudely; then, that his moustache was curling ironically, as though in mockery because he was the stronger. she said nothing, however, took his hand calmly and alighted. he led her outside; and in the carriage they waited a moment for her trunk. his eyes took her in at a glance. she was wearing an old blue serge skirt and a little blue serge cape; but, notwithstanding her old clothes and her weary resignation, she looked a handsome and smartly dressed woman. "i am glad to see that you thought it advisable at last to carry out my wishes," he said, in the end. "i thought it would be best," she answered, softly. her tone struck him; and he watched her attentively, out of the comer of his eyes. he did not understand her, but he was pleased that she had come. she was tired now, from excitement and travelling; but he thought that she looked most charming, even though she was not so brilliant as on that night, at mrs. uxeley's ball, when he had first spoken to his divorced wife. "are you tired?" he asked. "i have been a bit feverish for a day or two; and, of course i had no sleep last night," she said, as though in apology. the trunk was brought and they drove away, to the hôtel continental. she did not speak again in the carriage. they were also silent as they entered the hotel and in the lift. he took her to his room. it was an ordinary hotel-bedroom; but she thought it strange to see his brushes lying on the dressing-table, his coats and trousers hanging on the pegs: familiar things with whose outlines and folds she was well-acquainted. she recognised his kit-bag in a corner. he opened the windows wide. she had sat down on a chair, in an expectant attitude. she felt a little faint and closed her eyes, which were blinded by the stream of sunlight. "you must be hungry," he said. "what shall i order for you?" "i should like some tea and bread-and-butter." her trunk arrived; and he ordered her breakfast. then he said: "take off your hat." she stood up. she took off her cape. her cotton blouse was rumpled; and this annoyed her. she removed the pins from her hat before the glass and quite naturally did her hair with his comb, which she saw lying there. and she settled the silk bow around her collar. he had lit a cigar and was smoking quietly, standing. a waiter came in with the breakfast. she ate a mouthful without speaking and drank a cup of tea. "have you breakfasted?" she asked. "yes." they were silent again and she went on eating. "and shall we have a talk now?" he asked, still standing up, smoking. "very well." "i won't speak about your running off as you did," he said. "my first intention was to give you a regular flaying, for it was a damned silly trick...." she said nothing. she merely looked up at him; and her beautiful eyes were filled with a new expression, one of gentle resignation. he fell silent again, evidently restraining himself and seeking his words. then he resumed: "as i say, i won't speak about that any more. for the moment you didn't know what you were doing and you weren't accountable for your actions. but there must be an end of that now, for i wish it. of course i know that according to the law i have not the least right over you. but we've discussed all this; and i told it you in writing. and you have been my wife; and, now that i am seeing you again, i feel very plainly that, in spite of everything, i regard you as my wife and that you are my wife. and you must have retained the same impression from our meeting here, at nice." "yes," she said calmly. "you admit that?" "yes," she repeated. "then that's all right. it's the only thing i wanted of you. so we won't think any more now of what happened, of our former unpleasantness, of our divorce and of what you have done since. from now on we will put all that behind us. i look upon you as my wife and you shall be my wife again. according to the law we can't get married again. but that makes no difference. our divorce in law i regard as an intervening formality and we will counter it as far as we can. if we have children, we shall get them legitimatized. i will consult a lawyer about all that; and i shall take all the necessary measures, financial included. in this way our divorce will be nothing more than a formality, of no meaning to us and of as little significance as possible to the world and to the law. and then i shall leave the service. i shouldn't in any case care to stay in it for good, so i may as well leave it earlier than i intended. for you wouldn't find it pleasant to live in holland; and it doesn't appeal to me either." "no," she murmured. "where would you like to live?" "i don't know...." "in italy?" "no," she begged, in a tone of entreaty. "care to stay here?" "i'd rather not ... to begin with." "i was thinking of paris. would you like to live in paris?" "very well." "that's all right then. so we will go to paris as soon as possible and look out for a flat and settle in. it'll soon be spring now; and that is a good time to start life in paris." "very well." he flung himself into an easy-chair; it creaked under him. then he asked: "tell me, what do you really think, inside yourself?" "how do you mean?" "i want to know what you thought of your husband. did you think him absurd?" "no." "come over here and sit on my knee." she stood up and went to him. she did as he wished, sat down on his knee; and he drew her to him. he laid his hand on her head, with that gesture which prevented her thinking. she closed her eyes and laid her head against his cheek. "you haven't forgotten me altogether?" she shook her head. "we ought never to have got divorced, ought we?" she shook her head again. "but we used to be very bad-tempered then, both of us. you must never be bad-tempered in future. it makes you look spiteful and ugly. as you are now, you're much nicer and prettier." she smiled faintly. "i am glad to have you back with me," he whispered, with a long kiss on her lips. she closed her eyes under his kiss, while his moustache curled against her skin and his mouth pressed hers. "are you still tired?" he asked. "yes," she said. "i should like to get my things off." "you'd better lie down for a bit," he said. "oh, by the way, i forgot to tell you: your friend, the princess, is coming here this evening!" "isn't urania angry?" "no, i have told her everything and she knows about it all." she was pleased to know that urania was not angry and that she still had a friend left. "and i have seen mrs. uxeley also." "she must be angry with me, isn't she?" he laughed: "that old hag! no, not angry. she's in the dumps because she has no one with her. she set great store by you. she likes to have pretty people about her, she said. she can't stand an ugly companion, with no _chic_.... there, i'll leave you and go and sit downstairs somewhere." they stood up. his eyes had a golden glimmer in them; his moustache was lifted by his ironic smile. and he caught her fiercely in his arms: "cornélie," he said, hoarsely, "i think it's wonderful to have you back again. do you belong to me, tell me, do you belong to me?" he pressed her to him till he almost stifled her with the pressure of his arms: "tell me, do you belong to me?" "yes." "what used you to say to me in the old days, when you were in love with me?" she hesitated. "what used you to say?" he insisted, holding her still more tightly. pushing her hands against his shoulders, she fought to catch her breath: "my rud!" she murmured. "my beautiful, glorious rud!" automatically she now wound her arms around his head. he released her as with an effort of will: "take off your things," he said, "and try to get some sleep. i'll come back later." he went away. she undressed and brushed her hair with his brushes, washed her face and dripped into the basin some of the toilet-water which he used. she drew the curtains, behind which the noonday sun shone; and a soft crimson twilight filled the room. and she lay down and waited for him, trembling. there was no thought in her. there was in her no grief and no recollection. she was filled only with a great expectancy, a waiting for the inevitability of life. she felt herself to be solely and wholly a bride, but not an innocent bride; and, deep in her blood, in the marrow of her bones, she felt herself to be the wife, the very blood and marrow, of him whom she awaited. before her, as she lay half-dreaming, she saw little figures of children. for, if she was to be his wife in truth and sincerity, she wanted to be not only his lover but also the woman who gave him his children. she knew that, despite his roughness, he loved the softness of children; and she herself would long for them, in her second married life, as a sweet comfort for the days when she would be no longer beautiful and no longer young. before her, half-dreaming, she saw the figures of children.... and she lay waiting for him, she listened for his step, she longed for his coming, her flesh quivered towards him.... and, when he entered and came to her, her arms closed round him in profound and conscious certainty and she felt, beyond a doubt, on his breast, in his arms, the knowledge of his virile, overmastering dominion, while before her eyes, in a dizzy, melancholy obscurity, the dream of her life--rome, duco, the studio--sank away...? the end one man's view by leonard merrick with an introduction by granville barker hodder & stoughton london--new york--toronto introduction this story can be said to date, though quite in the sense that a story legitimately may. it is historic, though that is not to say old-fashioned. if one searches by internal evidence for the time of its writing, might be a safe guess. it was about then that many londoners (besides the american girls in the story) were given their first glimpse of niagara at the panorama near victoria street. the building is a motor garage now; it lies beneath the cliffs of queen anne's mansions; aeroplanes may discover its queer round roof. and it was in an ageing past too--for architectural ages veritably flash by in new york--that broadway could be said to spread into the "brightness of union square." to-day there is but a chaos of dingy decay owning to that name. soon it will be smart skyscrapers, no doubt; when the tide of business has covered it, as now the tide of fashion leaves it derelict. duluth, too, with its "storekeepers spitting on wooden sidewalks"! duluth foresees a lake front that will rival chicago. but in such honest "dating," and in the inferences we may draw from it, lie perhaps some of the peculiar merits of mr. merrick's method--his straight telling of a tale. and digging to the heart of the book, the one man's view of his faithless wife--more importantly too, the wife's view of herself--is, in a sense, an "historic" view. not, of course, in its human essentials. those must be true or false of this man and this woman whenever, however they lived and suffered. such sufferings are dateless. and whether they are truly or falsely told, let the reader judge. no preface-writer need pre-judge for him. for in such things, the teller of the tale, from the heart of his subject, speaks straight to the heart and conscience of his audience, and will succeed or fail by no measurable virtue of style or wit, but by the truth that is in him, by how much of it they are open to receive. look besides with ever so slightly an historical eye at the circumstances in which the lives of these two were set to grow, and to flourish or perish, as it was easier or harder to tend them. see the girl with her simple passion for the theatre--so apt a channel for her happy ambition as it appears--and that baulked, her very life baulked. to-day, this war-day, and most surely for the immediate enfranchised to-morrow breaking so close, the same girl will turn her back light-heartedly on the glamour of that little tinselled world to many another prospect of self-fulfilment. and the lawyer, lost in his law. if a solicitor-generalship is his aim, he will be worldly-wise enough, one hopes, to come home not too tired to make at least a passably attractive figure at his wife's well-chosen dinner-parties. or is that phase of english government now also to pass? no; for probably a country will always be governed from its dinner-tables, while its well-being is finally determined by their quality! mamie to-day, though, would be doing more than give dinners. it is a question if the mamie of to-morrow will have time to. and the literary flâneur--the half-hearted seducer of passionless ladies--is he out of date? mr. merrick implies the quite wholesome truth that he always was. through books and bookish dreams--beautiful, wise dreams--lies the passage to life of many boys and girls. but the healthiest instincts in them are seeking still a real world in which it will be both sane and fine to live. their dreams are mostly a hard test of it when it is found; and, oh, the pity if the finding it quite breaks their dream! in sum, then, it was mamie's tragedy to seek her realities during a phase of art and letters which, in their utter unreality, seemed to deny the very existence of any real world at all. neither true art nor true letters then; they were so turning from reality with fear. are they still denying it to-day? if so this story does not date at all, and mamie's tragedy is a tragedy of our time. for tragedy it is, even though in _one man's view_ she finds at last reposeful salvation of a sort. but our hope is better. and half our pleasure in the story and in its historical truth is the thought that, true author as he is, were he writing it to-day, and of to-day, mr. merrick would have written it just so much differently. granville barker. chapter i the idea was so foreign to his temperament that heriot was reluctant to believe that he had entertained it even during a few seconds. he continued his way past the big pink house and the girl on the balcony, surprised at the interest roused in him by this chance discovery of her address. of what consequence was it where she was staying? he had noticed her on the terrace, by the band-stand one morning, and admired her. in other words, he had unconsciously attributed to the possessor of a delicious complexion, and a pair of grey eyes, darkly fringed, vague characteristics to which she was probably a stranger. he had seen her the next day also, and the next--even hoped to see her; speculated quite idly what her social position might be, and how she came beside the impossible woman who accompanied her. all that was nothing; his purpose in coming to eastbourne was to be trivial. but why the sense of gratification with which he had learnt where she lived? as to the idea which had crossed his brain, that was preposterous! of course, since the pink house was a boarding establishment, he might, if he would, make her acquaintance by the simple expedient of removing there, but he did not know how he could have meditated such a step. it was the sort of semi-disreputable folly that a man a decade or so younger might commit and describe as a "lark." no doubt many men a decade or so younger would commit it. he could conceive that a freshly-painted balcony, displaying a pretty girl for an hour or two every afternoon, might serve to extend the clientèle of a boarding-house enormously, and wondered that more attention had not been paid to such a form of advertisement. for himself, however---- his hair was already thinning at the temples; solicitors were deferential to him, and his clerk was taking a villa in brixton; for himself, it would not do! eastbourne was depressing, he reflected, as he strolled towards the dumpy wish tower. he was almost sorry that he hadn't gone to sandhills and quartered himself on his brother for a week or two instead. francis was always pleased to meet him of recent years, and no longer remarked early in the conversation that he was "overdrawn at cox's." on the whole, francis was not a bad fellow, and sandhills and pheasants would have been livelier. he stifled a yawn, and observed with relief that it was near the dinner-hour. in the evening he turned over the papers in the smoking-room. he perceived, as he often did perceive in the vacations, that he was lonely. vacations were a mistake: early in one's career one could not afford them, and by the time one was able to afford them, the taste for holidays was gone. this hotel was dreary, too. the visitors were dull, and the cooking was indifferent. what could be more tedious than the meal from which he had just risen?--the feeble soup, the flaccid fish, the uninterrupted view of the stout lady with the aquiline nose, and a red shawl across her shoulders. now he was lolling on a morocco couch, fingering the _the field_; two or three other men lay about, napping, or looking at the _the graphic_. there was a great deal of tobacco-smoke, and a little whisky; he might as well have stopped in town and gone to the club. he wondered what they did in belle vue mansion after dinner. perhaps there was music, and the girl sang? he could fancy that she sang well. or they might have impromptu dances? personally he did not care for dancing, but even to see others enjoying themselves would be comparatively gay. after all, why should he not remove to belle vue mansion if he wished? he had attached a significance to the step that it did not possess, making it appear absurd by the very absurdity of the consideration that he accorded it. he remembered the time when he would not have hesitated--those were the days when francis was always "overdrawn at cox's." well, he had worked hard since then, and anything that francis might have lent him had been repaid, and he had gradually acquired soberer views of life. perhaps he might be said to have gone to an extreme, indeed, and taken the pledge! he sometimes felt old, and he was still in the thirties. francis was the younger of the two of late, although he had a boy in the brigade; but elder sons often kept young very long--it was easy for them, like the way of righteousness to a bishop.... a waiter cast an inquiring glance round the room, and, crossing to the sofa, handed him a card. heriot read the name with astonishment; he had not seen the man for sixteen years, and even their irregular correspondence had died a natural death. "my dear fellow!" he exclaimed in the hall. "come inside." in the past, of which he had just been thinking, he and dick cheriton had been staunch friends, none the less staunch because cheriton was some years his senior. dick had a studio in howland street then, and was going to set the academy on fire. in the meanwhile he wore a yellow necktie, and married madly, and smoked a clay pipe; he could not guarantee that he would be an r.a., but at least he was resolved that he would be a bohemian. he had some of the qualifications for artistic success, but little talent. when he discovered the fact beyond the possibility of mistake, he accepted a relative's offer of a commercial berth in the united states, and had his hair cut. the valedictory supper in the studio, at which he had renounced ambition, and solemnly burned all his canvases that the dealers would not buy, had been a very affecting spectacle. "my dear fellow!" cried heriot. "come inside. this is a tremendous pleasure. when did you arrive?" "came over in the _germanic_, ten days ago. it _is_ you, then; i saw 'george heriot' in the visitors' list, and strolled round on the chance. i scarcely hoped---- how are you, old man? i'm mighty glad to see you--fact!" "you've been here ten days?" "not here, no; i've only been in eastbourne a few hours." "you should have looked me up in town." "i tried. your chambers were shut." "the hall-porter at the club----" "what club? you forget what an exile i am!" "have a drink? well, upon my word, this is very jolly! sit down; try one of these." "would you have recognised me?" asked cheriton, stretching his legs, and lighting the cigar. "you've changed," admitted heriot; "it's a long time. i've changed too." they regarded each other with a gaze of friendly criticism. heriot noted with some surprise that the other's appearance savoured little of the american man of business, or of the man of business outside america. his hair, though less disordered than it had been in the howland street period, was still rather longer than is customary in the city. it was now grey, and became him admirably. he wore a black velvet jacket, and showed a glimpse of a deep crimson tie. he no longer looked a bohemian, but he had acquired the air of a celebrity. "have you come home for good, cheriton?" cheriton shook his head. "i guess america has got me for life," he answered; "i'm only making a trip. and you? you're still at the bar, eh?" "oh, yes," said heriot drily; "i'm still at the bar." it is not agreeable, when you have succeeded in a profession, to be asked if you are in it still. "i've travelled along the lines on which you left me--it doesn't make an exciting narrative. chambers, court, and bed. a laundress or two has died in the interval. the thing pays better than it used to do, naturally; that's all." "you're doing well?" "i should have called it 'doing well' once; but we are all olivers in our hearts. to-day----" "mistake!" said the elder man. "you wanted the bar--you've got the bar; you ought to be satisfied. now _i_----" "yes?" said heriot, as he paused. "how's the world used you, cheriton? by the way, you never answered my last letter, i think." "it was _you_ who didn't answer _me_." "i fancy not. you were going to chicago, and i wrote----" "i wrote after i arrived in chicago." "well, it must be five years ago; we won't argue. what did you do in chicago, cheriton?" "no good, sir. i went there with a patent horse-collar. capital invention--not my own, i never invented anything!--but it didn't catch on. they seemed to take no interest in horse-collars; no money in it, not a cent! after the horse-collar i started in the dry-goods trade; but i was burned out. from chicago i went to duluth; i've an hotel there to-day." "an hotel?" "that's so. it isn't a distinguished career, running a little hotel, but it's fairly easy. compared with hustling with horse-collars it's luxurious. duluth is not ideal, but what would you have! i make my way, and that's all i ask now. if i had my life over again----" he sighed. "if we could have our lives over again, eh, heriot?" "humph!" said heriot doubtfully; he was wondering if he could make any better use of his own--if he would be any livelier the next time he was eight-and-thirty. "i suppose we all blunder, of course." "_you_ are a young man yet; it's different for you; and you're in the profession of your choice: it's entirely different. we don't look at the thing from the same standpoint, heriot." "you don't mean that you regret giving up art?" "sir," said cheriton mournfully, "it was the error i shall always regret. i wouldn't say as much to anybody else; i keep it here"--he tapped his velvet jacket--"but i had a gift, and i neglected it; i had power, and--and i run an hotel. when i reflect, man, there are hours--well, it's no use crying over spilt milk; but to think of the position i should have made, and to contrast it with what i am, is bitter!" he swept back his wavy hair impatiently, and in the momentary pose looked more like a celebrity still. heriot could see that the cherished delusion gave him a melancholy pleasure, and was at a loss how to reply. "it was uphill work," he said at last. "who can tell? luck----" "i was a lad, an impetuous lad; and i was handicapped--i married." the man with a failure to explain is always grateful to have married. "but i had the stuff in me, i had the temperament. 'had' it? i have it now! i may keep an hotel, but i shall never be an hotel-keeper. god gave me my soul, sir; circumstances gave me an hotel. i mayn't paint any more, but an artist by nature i shall always be. i don't say it in any bragging spirit, heriot; i should be happier if i didn't feel it. the commonplace man may be contented in the commonplace calling: he fills the rôle he was meant for. it's the poor devil like myself, who knows what he _might_ have been, who suffers." heriot didn't pursue the subject; he puffed his cigar meditatively. after the effervescence subsides, such meetings must always have a little sadness; he looked at the wrinkles that had gathered on his friend's face, and realised the crow's-feet on his own. "you lost your wife, you wrote me?" he remarked, breaking a rather lengthy silence. "in new york, yes--pneumonia. _you_ never married, eh?" "no. do you stay over here long?" "a month or two; i can't manage more. but i shall leave my girl in london. i've brought her with me, and she'll remain." "of course," said heriot, "you have a child--of course you have! i remember a little thing tumbling about in howland street. she must be a woman, cheriton?" "mamie is twenty-one. i want to see if i can do anything for her before i go back. she loathes duluth; and she has talent. she'll live with my sister. i don't think you ever saw my sister, did you? she's a widow, and stagnates in wandsworth--mamie will be company for her." "your daughter paints?" "no, not paints; she wants to be an actress. i wasn't very keen on it; but she's got the material in her, and i concluded i'd no right to say 'no.' still, she's not very strong--takes after her mother, i'm afraid, a little; i'd rather she'd had a gift for something else." "was it necessary for her to have a gift at all?" asked heriot, a shade sarcastically. "couldn't she stop at home?" "well," said cheriton, "she tried it, but it's a hard thing for a girl like mamie to content herself with the life in duluth. there isn't much art in that, heriot; there isn't much anything. there's the lake, and superior street, and the storekeepers lounging in the doorways and spitting on the wooden sidewalks. and there's a theatre of a sort--which made her worse. for a girl panting to be famous, duluth is a hell. she's been breaking her heart in it ever since she was sixteen; and after all, it's in the blood. it would have been odd if my daughter _hadn't_ had the artistic temperament, i suppose!" "i suppose it would," said heriot. "well, why doesn't she go on the stage in america? i shouldn't think she'd find it easy here." "she wouldn't find it easy there. there's no stock company in duluth; only the travelling companies come sometimes for a few nights. there's no bigger opportunity for her on the other side than on this. besides, she wants the english stage. i wonder if you know anybody who could give her any introductions?" "i? not a soul!" "i'm sorry to hear you say that," said cheriton blankly; "i was counting on you some." heriot looked at him. "you counted on _me_? for heaven's sake, why?" "well, i don't know many people over here to-day, you see; the fellows i used to knock against have died, gone to the colonies--fizzled out. you were solid; and you were a swell, with connections and all that. i understand the stage has become very fashionable in london--i thought you might meet actor-managers at dinners and things. that was the idea; i daresay it was very stupid, but i had it. i mentioned your name to mamie as soon as it was settled we should come. however, we'll fix the matter somehow." "i'm sorry to prove a disappointment," said heriot. "tell your daughter so for me. i'd do what you want with pleasure, if i were able. you know that, i'm sure?" "oh, i know that," said cheriton; "it can't be helped. yes, i'll tell her. she _will_ be disappointed, of course; she understands how difficult the thing is without influence, and i've talked about you a lot." "do you think you were wise to--to----" "oh, it was a mistake as it turns out!" "i don't mean that only. i mean, do you think you were wise to encourage her hopes in such a direction at all? frankly, if _i_ had a daughter---- forgive me for speaking plainly." "my dear fellow! your daughter and mine!--their paths would be as wide apart as the poles. and you don't know mamie!" "at all events i know that the stage is more overcrowded every year. most girls are stage-struck at some time or other; and there are hundreds of actresses who can't earn bread-and-cheese. a man i know has his type-writing done by a woman who used to be on the stage. she played the best parts in the country, i believe, and, i daresay, nursed the expectation of becoming a bernhardt. she gets a pound a week in his office, he tells me, and was thankful to obtain the post." "mamie is bound to come to the front. she's got it--she's an artist born. i tell you, i should be brutal to stand in the way of her career; the girl is pining, really pining, for distinction! when you've talked to her you'll change your views." "perhaps," said heriot, as the shortest way of ending the discussion; "very likely i'm wrong." the budding genius bored him. "mind you explain to the young lady that my inability, and not my will, refuses, at any rate." "that's all right," declared cheriton, getting up. "i told her i was coming round to see if it was you." he laughed. "i bet she's picturing me coming back with a bushel of letters of introduction from you by now! well, i must be going; it's getting late." "you brought her down to eastbourne to-day?" "oh, i've been dangling about town a little by myself; mamie and my sister have been here a week. good-night, old chap; shall i see you to-morrow? you might give us a look in if you will--say in the afternoon. belle vue mansion; don't forget!" "where?" exclaimed heriot, startled into interest. "belle vue mansion," repeated cheriton, gripping his hand. "you can't miss it: a big pink house on the esplanade." chapter ii heriot betook himself there on the following day with a curious eagerness. if the girl he had noticed should prove to be cheriton's daughter, how odd it would be! he at once hoped for the coincidence, and found the possibility a shade pathetic. it emphasised his years to think that the ill-kept child of the dirty studio might have become the girl he had admired. his progress during the interval appeared momentarily insignificant to him; he felt that while a brat became a woman he ought to have done much more. he was discouraged to reflect that he had not taken silk; for he had always intended to take silk, and had small misgivings that he would have cause to repent it. his practice had indicated for some time that he would not suffer by the step, and yet he had delayed his application. his motto had been, "slow and sure," but it seemed to him suddenly that he had been too slow; his income as a junior should not have contented him so long. he pulled the bell, and was preceded up the stairs by a maid-servant, who opened a door, and announced him to the one occupant of the room. heriot saw that she was the girl of the balcony and the terrace, and that she moved towards him smiling. "i am mamie cheriton," she said. "my father is expecting you." her intonation was faintly american, but her voice was full and sweet. he took her hand with pleasure, and a touch of excitement that did not concord with his countenance, which was formal and impassive. "i am glad to make your acquaintance, miss cheriton." "won't you sit down?" she said. "he will be here in a minute." heriot took a seat, and decided that her eyes were even lovelier than he had known. "when i saw you last, you were a child," he remarked inaccurately. "yes; it must have astonished you meeting my father again after so many years. it was funny, your being here, wasn't it?... but perhaps you often come to eastbourne?" "no," said heriot, "no, i don't often come. how does it strike you, miss cheriton? i suppose you can hardly remember england, can you?" "well, i shan't be sorry to be settled in london; it was london i was anxious to go to, not the sea-shore.... do you say 'sea-shore' in europe, or is it wrong? when i said 'sea-shore' this morning, i noticed that a woman stared at me." "one generally says 'seaside' over here; i don't know that it's important." "well, the 'seaside' then. the seaside was my aunt's wish. well---- well, i'm saying 'well' too often, i guess?--that's american, too! i've got to be quite english--that's my first step. but at least i don't talk like americans in your comic papers, do i?" "you talk very delightfully, i think," he said, taken aback. "i hope you mean it. my voice is most important, you know. it would be very cruel if i were handicapped by having anything the matter with my voice. i shall have difficulties enough without!" "i'm afraid," he said, "that i'm unfortunate. i wish i could have done something to further the ambitions your father mentioned." she smiled again, rather wistfully this time. "they seem very absurd to you, i daresay?" he murmured deprecation: "why?" "the stage-struck girl is always absurd." recognising his own phrase, he perceived that he had been too faithfully reported, and was embarrassed. "i spoke hastily. in the abstract the stage-struck girl may be absurd, but so is a premature opinion." "thank you," she said. "but why 'stage-struck,' anyhow? it's a term i hate. i suppose you wanted to be a barrister, mr. heriot?" "i did," he confessed, "certainly. there are a great many, but i thought there was room for one more." "but you weren't described as 'bar-struck'?" "i don't think i ever heard the expression." "it would be a very foolish one?" "it would sound so to me." "why 'stage-struck' then? is it any more ridiculous to aspire to one profession than another? you don't say a person is 'paint-struck,' or 'ink-struck,' or anything else '-struck'; why the sneer when one is drawn towards the theatre? but perhaps _no_ form of art appears to you necessary?" "i think i should prefer to call it 'desirable,' since you ask the question," he said. "and 'art' is a word used to weight a great many trivialities too! everybody who writes a novel is an artist in his own estimation, and personally, i find existence quite possible without novels." "did you ever read _mademoiselle de maupin_?" asked miss cheriton. "have _you_?" he said quickly. "oh yes; books are very cheap in america. 'i would rather grow roses than potatoes,' is one of the lines in the preface. _you_ would rather grow potatoes than roses, eh?" "you are an enthusiast," said heriot; "i see!" he pitied her for being dick cheriton's daughter. she was inevitable: the pseudo-artist's discontent with realities--the inherited tendencies, fanned by thinly-veiled approval! he understood. cheriton came in after a few minutes, followed by the aunt, to whom heriot was presented. he found her primitive, and far less educated than her brother. she was very happy to see dear dick again, and she was sorry that she must lose him again so soon. dear mamie, though, would be a consolation. a third-rate suburban villa was stamped upon her; he could imagine her making hideous antimacassars for forbidding armchairs, and that a visit to an eastbourne boarding-house was the event of her life. she wore jet earrings, and stirred her tea with vast energy. with the circulation of the tea, strangers drifted into the room, and the conversation was continued in undertones. "have you been talking to mamie about her intentions?" cheriton inquired. "we've been chatting, yes. what steps do you mean to take, miss cheriton? what shall you do?" "i propose to go to the dramatic agents," she said, "and ask them to hear me recite." "dramatic agents must be kept fairly busy, i should say. what if they don't consent?" "i shall recite to them." "you are firm!" he laughed. "i am eager, mr heriot. i have longed till i am sick with longing. london has been my aim since i was a little girl. i have dreamt of it!--i've gone to sleep hoping that i might; i couldn't recall one of its streets, but in dreams i've reached it over and over again. the way was generally across lincoln park, in chicago; and all of a sudden i was among theatres and lights, and it was london!" "and you were an actress. and the audience showered bouquets!" "i always woke up before i was an actress. but now i'm here really, i mean to try to wake london up." "i hope you will," he said. her faith in herself was a little infectious, since she was beautiful. if she had been plain, he would have considered her conceited. "have i gushed?" she said, colouring. he was not sure but what she had. "she's like her father," said cheriton gaily; "get her on the subject of art, and her tongue runs away with her. we're all children, we artists--up in the skies, or down in the dumps. no medium with us! she must recite to _you_ one of these days, heriot; i want you to hear her." "will you, miss cheriton?" "if you like," she said. "dear mamie must recite to _me_," murmured mrs. baines; "i'm quite looking forward to it. what sort of pieces do you say, dear? nice pieces?" "she knows the parts of juliet, and rosalind, and pauline by heart," said cheriton, ignoring his sister. "i think you'll say her balcony scene is almost as fine a rendering as you've ever heard. there's a delicacy, a spiritual----" "has she been trained?" asked heriot; "i understood she was quite a novice." "i've coached her myself," replied cheriton complacently. "i don't pretend to be an elocutionist, of course; but i've been able to give her some hints. all the arts are related, you know, my boy--it's only a difference in the form of expression. they're playing _romeo and juliet_ at the theatre here to-night, and we're going; she never loses an opportunity for study. it's been said that you can learn as much by watching bad acting as good. will you come with us?" he added, lowering his voice. "you'll see how she warms up at the sight of the footlights." "i don't mind," said heriot, "if i shan't be in the way. suppose we all dine together at the hotel, and go on from there? what do you say?" he turned to the ladies, and the widow faltered: "lor, i'm sure it's very kind of you to invite me, mr. heriot. that _would_ be gay, wouldn't it!" she smoothed her flat hair tremulously, and left the decision to her brother and her niece. heriot took his leave with the understanding that he was to expect them, and sauntered along the parade more cheerfully than was his wont. the girl had not failed to impress him, though he disapproved of her tendencies; nor did these appear quite so preposterous to him now, albeit he thought them regrettable. he did not know whether he believed in her or not yet, but he was conscious that he wished to do so. his paramount reflection was that she would have been a wholly charming girl if she had had ordinary advantages--a finishing governess, and a london season, and a touch of conventionality. he disliked to use the word "conventionality," for it sounded priggish; but "conventionality" was what he meant. at dinner, however, and more especially after it, he forgot his objections. in the theatre he watched miss cheriton more attentively than the stage. she herself sat with her eyes riveted on it, and he could see that she was the prey to strong excitement. he wondered whether this was created by the performance, which seemed to him indifferent, or by the thoughts that it awoke, and he resolved to ask her. when the curtain fell, and they went out, he wasn't sorry that cheriton derided his suggestion of a cab and declared that the walk back would be agreeable. he kept by the girl's side, and the others followed. she did not speak, and after a minute he said: "will it jar upon you if i say, 'let us talk'?" she turned to him with a slight start. "of course not! how can you think me so ridiculous?" "yet it did!" said heriot; "i could see." "i know exactly how i appear," she said constrainedly. "i look an affected idiot. if you knew how i hate to appear affected! i give you my word i don't put it on; i can't help it. the theatre gives me hot and cold shivers, and turns me inside out. that isn't prettily expressed, but it describes what i mean as nearly as possible. am i 'enthusing' again?" "i never said you 'enthused' before. you're not my idea of--of 'the gushing girl' at all." "i'm glad to hear it. i was very ashamed when you had gone this afternoon." she hesitated painfully. "i wish i could explain myself, but i can't--without a pen. i can write what i feel much better than i can say it. i began to write a play once, and the girl said just what i felt. it was a bad play, but a big relief. i've sometimes thought that if i walked about with a pen in my hand, i should be a good conversationalist." "try to tell me what you feel without one," said heriot. "you encourage me to bore you. mr. heriot, i yearn, i crave, to do something clever. it isn't only vanity: half the craving is born of the desire to live among clever people. ever since i can remember i've ached to know artists, and actors, and people who write, and do things. i've been cooped among storekeepers without an idea in their heads; i've never seen a man or woman of talent in my life, excepting my father; i've never heard anybody speak who knew what art or ambition meant. you may laugh, but if i had it, i would give five hundred dollars to go home with some of those actresses to-night, and sit mum in a corner and listen to them." "don't you think it very likely you might be disappointed?" he asked. "i don't. i don't expect they would talk blank-verse at supper, but they would talk of their work, of their hopes. an artist must be an artist always--on the stage, or off it; in his studio, or in his club. my father is an instance: he could not be a philistine if he tried. he once said something i've always remembered; he said: 'god gave me my soul, child; circumstances gave me an hotel.' i thought it happily put." heriot perceived that cheriton had thought so too, as the "impromptu" had been repeated. "what a different world we should have lived in by now if he had kept in his profession!" she exclaimed. "i quiver when i realise what i've missed. people that i only know through their books, or the newspapers, would have been familiar friends. i should have seen swinburne smoking cigars in our parlour; and sarah bernhardt would have dropped in to tea and chatted about the rehearsal she had just left, and showed me the patterns of the new costumes she was ordering. isn't it wonderful?" in sympathy for her he said: "it's possible your father might have remained in england without becoming intimate with celebrities." she looked doubtful. "even if he hadn't--and one likes to believe in one's own father--the atmosphere would have been right. they mightn't have been swinburnes and bernhardts that were at home in our place--they might have been people the world hasn't heard of yet. but they would have talked of the time when the world was _going_ to hear of them. one can respect an obscure genius as much as a famous one." they had reached the door of belle vue mansion; and when he was begged to go in for half an hour, heriot did not demur. they had the drawing-room to themselves now, and cheriton descanted with relish on the qualifications for a successful actress. he had no knowledge of the subject, but possessed great fluency, and he spoke of "broad effects," and "communicable emotion," and "what he might call a matter of perspective" with an authority which came near to disguising the fact that there was little or no meaning in what he said. the girl sat pale and attentive, and mrs. baines listened vaguely, as she might have done to a discourse in chinese. relatives who came back from america and invited her to stay with them in a house where she cost two guineas a week, must be treated with deference; but the stage and the circus were of equal significance to her mind, and she would have simpered just as placidly if her niece had been anxious to jump through a hoop. her chief emotion was pride at being in a room with a barrister who, she had learnt, was the brother of a baronet; and she watched him furtively, with the anticipation of describing the event in lavender street, wandsworth, where the magnate was a gentleman who travelled in a brougham, and haberdashery. "would it be inconsiderate to ask you to recite to-night, miss cheriton?" inquired heriot. "don't, if you are too tired." she rose at once, as if compelling herself to subdue reluctance, and moved towards the bay of the window slowly. for a second or two after she stood there she did not speak, only her lips trembled. then she began portia's speech on mercy. in recitation her voice had the slight tremolo that is natural to many beginners who feel deeply; but its quality was delicious, and her obvious earnestness was not without effect. conscious that her gestures were stiff, she had chosen a speech that demanded little action, and it was not until she came to "therefore, jew, though justice be thy plea," that her hands, which she had clasped lightly in front of her, fell apart. with the change of position she seemed to acquire a dignity and confidence that made the climax triumphant, and though heriot could see that she had much to learn, his compliments were sincere. when he bade her good-night, she looked at him appealingly. "tell me the truth," she said under her breath; "i've only had my father's opinion. tell me the truth!" "i honestly believe you're clever," he answered. "i'm sure of it." he felt his words to be very cold compared with the sympathy that was stirring in him. the proprietress, who had entered, hovered about with an eye on the gas, and he repeated his adieux hurriedly. the interest that he already took in the question of miss cheriton's success surprised him. the day had had a charm that was new, and he found that he was eagerly anticipating the morrow. chapter iii on the pavements of the strand the snow had turned to slush; and from the river a fog was blowing up, which got into the girl's throat, and made her cough. she mounted a flight of gloomy stairs, and pulled a bell. already her bearing had lost something that had distinguished it in the summer: something of courage. she rang the bell deprecatingly, as if ashamed. the anteroom into which she passed had become painfully familiar to her, like the faces of many of the occupants. they all wore the same expression--an air of repressed eagerness, of diffidence striving to look assured. the walls were covered with theatrical photographs, and in a corner a pimply youth sat writing at a table. what he wrote nobody knew or cared. the crowd had but one thought--the door that communicated with the agent's private office, to which they prayed, though they were no longer sanguine, that they would gain admission. it was four o'clock, and at five the office would close. there were so many of them that it was impossible for mr. passmore to interview everybody. which of them would be lucky to-day? mamie also looked towards the door, and from the door back to her companions in distress. a little fair woman in a light fawn costume--terribly unsuitable to the season, but her least shabby--met her eyes and spoke. "have you got an appointment?" she asked in a low voice. "no." "oh, then you won't see him," said the little woman more cheerfully. "i thought, as you'd come in so late, that you had an appointment. _i've_ been here since twelve." the door opened, and mr. passmore appeared on the threshold. he did not say "good-afternoon" to his clients; he cast an indifferent gaze round the room, and signed to a cadaverous man who sat sucking the handle of his umbrella. "here! _you!_" he said, retiring again. the cadaverous man rose hurriedly, among envious glances, and twenty-five heads that had been lifted in expectation drooped dejectedly. the men whose watches were not pawned looked to see the time. "what's your line?" said the little woman, addressing mamie once more. "i beg your pardon? oh, i'm trying for my first engagement; i haven't acted yet at all." the other showed surprise and some contempt. "a novice, are you! good lord, it's no good your coming to the agents, my dear; they can't find shops for _us_." "i paid mr. passmore the usual fee," said mamie; "he promised he'd do what he could." the little woman smiled, and turned her shoulder to her, declining further discussion. another girl rang the bell, but withdrew with a sigh as she perceived the futility of waiting. the cadaverous man came out, with "an engagement" writ large upon his features. he stowed a type-written part into the pocket of his overcoat, and nodded good-bye to an acquaintance, whose cast of countenance proclaimed him a low comedian. "got anything, dear boy?" inquired the latter in a husky whisper. "they want me for the _white slaves_ company--the father. offered four. of course i refused point-blank. 'no,' i said, 'six.' 'oh,' he said, 'impossible!' i wouldn't budge; what do _you_ think! why, i had eight with kavanagh, and she's as good as booked me for her next tour. '_i_ don't mind,' i said; 'i'll go to the harcourts!' they've been trying to get me back, and he knows it. 'don't do that,' he said; 'say five, my boy!' 'six!' i said, 'and i only take it then to fill in.' 'well, they want you,' he said; 'you're the only man for the part, and i suppose you've got to have your own terms; but they wouldn't pay it to anybody else.'" his salary was to be three-pounds-ten, and he could have shed tears of relief to get it. "damn fine, old chap!" said the low comedian, who didn't believe him. "is the comedy part open, do you know? i might----" "don't think so; fancy they're complete." his manner was already condescending. "olive oil!" "now, i can't see you people to-day!" exclaimed mr. passmore, putting up his hands impatiently. "no good, miss forbes," as a girl made a dart towards him with a nervous smile that was meant to be ingratiating; "got nothing for you, it's no use.... what do _you_ want, my dear?" another lady, who found it embarrassing to explain her anxiety in public, faltered "that she had just looked in to hear if mr. passmore could kindly----" "nothing doing! perhaps later on. i'll let you know." "you _will_ bear me in mind, _won't_ you, mr. passmore?" she pleaded. "what?" he said. "oh, yes, yes; i'll drop you a postcard--i won't forget you. good-day." he did not even recollect her name. "can i speak to you, mr. passmore?" said mamie, rising. "you?" he said questioningly. "oh, i can't do anything for you yet! everything's made up--things are very quiet just now.... here, miss beaumont, i want a word with you." "give me a minute," persisted mamie. "i want an engagement; i don't care how small the part is. i'll be a servant, i'll be anything, i want a beginning! i recited to you, if you remember, and----" "did you?" he said. "oh, yes, yes, i remember--very nice. you wanted to play juliet!" he laughed. "i'll be _anything!_" she said again. "i'll give you double the commission if----" "have you got enough voice for chorus?" he asked testily. "how are your limbs?" "i want to be an actress," she said, flushing. "i mean to work!" "come on, miss beaumont!" he cried. and miss beaumont swept past her into the sanctum. the girl who six months ago had looked forward to playing juliet made her way down the dingy staircase drearily. this was but one of many dramatic agents with whom she had gone through the form of registering her name. mr. passmore's booking-fee had been five shillings; the booking-fee of most of the others had been five shillings; one had charged a guinea. all had been affable when she paid her first visit, and forgotten who she was when she paid her second; all had been reminded who she was, and failed to recognise her when she called again. she called on one or another of them every day, and contrived to gain such an interview as she had just had about once a week. she had taken in the theatrical papers and replied to shoals of advertisements, but as she had to state that she was a novice, nobody ever took any notice of her applications. she had haunted the stage-doors when she read that a new piece was to be produced, begging in vain to be allowed to see the manager. she had, in fine, done everything that was possible; and she was as far from securing an engagement as on the day that she arrived in england. and she had talent, and she was beautiful, and was prepared to begin upon the lowest rung of the ladder. the stage is generally supposed to be the easiest of all callings to enter. the girl who is unhappy at home, the boy who has been plucked for the army, the woman whose husband has failed on the stock exchange, all speak of "going on the stage" as calmly as if it were only necessary to take a stroll to get there. as a matter of fact, unless an extraordinary piece of luck befalls her, it is almost as difficult for a girl without influence, or a good deal of money, to become an actress as it is for her to marry a duke. she may be in earnest, but there are thousands who are in earnest; she may be pretty, but there are hundreds of pretty actresses struggling and unrecognised; she may be a genius, but she has no opportunity to display her gift until the engagement is obtained. and this is the tremendous obstacle. she can prove nothing; she can only say, "i feel i should succeed." if she is allowed to recite--and it is very rarely that she is--a recital is little or no test of her qualifications for the stage. she may recite cleverly, and as an actress be very indifferent. she has to beg to be taken on trust, while a myriad women, eager for the vacant part, can cry, "i can refer you to so-and-so; i have experience!" though other artistic professions may be as hard to rise in, there is probably none other in which it is quite so difficult to make the first steps. if a girl is able to write, she can sit alone in her bedroom, and demonstrate her capability; if she can paint, her canvases speak for her; if she pants to be a prima donna, she can open her mouth and people hear her sing. the would-be actress, alone among artists, can do nothing to show her fitness for the desired vocation until her self-estimate has been blindly accepted--and she may easily fail to do herself justice then, cast, as she will be, for minor parts entirely foreign to her bent. to succeed on the stage requires indomitable energy, callousness to rebuffs, tact, luck, talent, and facilities for living six or nine months out of the year without earning a shilling. to get on to the stage requires valuable introductions or considerable means. if a woman has neither, the chances are in favour of her seeking an opening vainly all her life. and as to a young man so situated who seeks it, he is endeavouring to pass through a brick wall. mamie descended the dingy staircase, and at the foot she saw the girl who had been addressed as "miss forbes." she was standing on the doorstep, gathering up her skirts. it had begun to snow again, and she contemplated the dark, damp street shrinkingly. an impulse seized mamie to speak as she passed. from such trifles great things sometimes followed, she remembered. she was at the age when the possibility of the happy accident recurs to the mind constantly--a will-o'-the-wisp that lightens the gloom. the reflection takes marvellous forms, and at twenty-one the famous actor--of the aspirant's imagination--who goes about the world crying, "a genius! you must come to me!" may be met in any omnibus. the famous actor of the aspirant's imagination is like the editor as conceived by the general public: he spends his life in quest of obscure ability. "if we're going the same way, i can offer you a share of my umbrella," she said. "oh, thanks!" said the girl in a slightly surprised voice; "i'm going to charing cross." "and _i'm_ going to victoria, so our road is the same," said mamie. a feeling of passionate pleasure suffused her as she moved away by the girl's side through the yellow fog. the roar of the strand had momentarily the music of her dreams while she yearned in duluth; the greatness of the city--the london of theatres, art, and books--throbbed in her veins. she was walking with an actress! "isn't it beastly?" said the girl. "i suppose you've got to train it?" "yes; i'm living at wandsworth. have _you_ far to go?" "notting hill. i take the bus. passmore hadn't got anything for you, had he?" mamie shook her head. "we were both unlucky; but perhaps it doesn't matter so much to you?" "doesn't it!... have you been on his books long, miss----?" "miss cheriton--mamie cheriton." "that's a good name; it sounds like a character in a play--as if she'd have a love-scene under the apple blossom! where were you last?" "at mr. faulkner's; but he didn't know of any vacancy either." "i don't mean that," said miss forbes; "i mean, how long have you been out?" "oh," answered mamie, "i left home at one o'clock; that's the worst of living such a long way off!" the other stared. "don't you understand?" she exclaimed. "i mean, what company were you in last, and when did it finish?" "oh, i see," stammered mamie. "i'm sorry to say i've everything in front of me! i've never had a part yet at all. i'm that awful thing--a novice." "crumbs!" said miss forbes. "i guess you actresses look down on novices rather?" "well, the profession is full enough already, goodness knows! still, i suppose we've all got a right to begin. i don't mind a novice who goes to the agents in the snow; it shows she means business anyhow. it's the amateurs who go to the managers in hansoms that i hate. but it's an awful struggle, my dear, take my word for it; you'd better stop at home if you can afford to. and passmore will never be any use to you. look at _me!_ i've been going to him for four months; and i played prince arthur on tour with sullivan when i was nine." "i _am_ looking at you," said mamie, smiling, "and envying you till i'm ill. you say passmore is no use: let me into a secret. what _can_ i do to get an engagement?" "blest if _i_ know, if you haven't got any friends to pull the strings! i'd like to know the secret myself. well," she broke off, "perhaps we shall meet again. i must say 'good evening' here; there's my bus." "don't go yet!" begged mamie. "won't you come and have some tea first?" miss forbes hesitated eloquently. "i shall get tea when i reach home," she murmured, "and i'm rather late." "oh, let me invite an actress to tea! do, please! it will be the next best thing to getting a part." "you're very kind. i don't mind, i'm sure. there's a place close by where they give you a pot for two for fourpence. you're american, aren't you?" "i've lived in america; i'm english really." they were soon seated at a table. mamie ordered a pot of tea, and muffins. "it's nice and warm in here," she said. "isn't it! i noticed you in the office. my name is mabel forbes; but i daresay you heard passmore speak to me?" "yes; he didn't speak very nicely, did he?" "they never do; they're all alike. they know we can't do without them, and they treat us like dirt. i tell you, it's awful; you don't know what you're letting yourself in for, my dear." "to succeed i'd bear anything, all the snubs and drudgery imaginable. i do know; i know it's not to be avoided. i've read the biographies of so many great actresses. i should think of the future--the reward. i'd set my teeth and _live_ for that time; and i'd work for it morning, noon, and night." "it would do me good to live with you, if we were on tour together," said miss forbes cheerfully; "you'd keep my pecker up, i think. i loathe sharing diggings with another girl, as a rule--one always quarrels with her, and, with the same bedroom, one has nowhere to go and cry. after they've been in the profession a few years they don't talk like you. not that there's really much in it," she added with a sigh. "to set your teeth and work morning, noon, and night sounds very fine, but what does it amount to? it means you'd get two-ten a week, and study leading business on the quiet till you thought you were as good as ellen terry. but if nobody made you an offer, what then?" "you mean it's possible to be really clever, and yet not to come to the front?" asked mamie earnestly. "how can you come to the front if no one gives you the opportunity? you may be liked where you are--in what you're doing--but you can't play lead in london unless a london manager offers you an engagement to play lead, can you? you can't make him! do you suppose the only clever actresses alive are those who're known? besides, if leading business is what you are thinking of, i don't believe you've the physique for it; you don't look strong enough. i should have thought light comedy was more your line." "it isn't. if i'm meant for anything, it's for drama, and--and tragedy. but i'd begin in the smallest way and be grateful. the ideas i had when i came to london have been knocked out of me--and they were moderate enough, too! i'd begin by saying that the 'dinner was ready.' surely it can't be so difficult to get an opening like that, if one knows how to set about it?" "well, look here, my dear. i played prince arthur with sullivan when i was nine, as i tell you, and i've been in the profession ever since. but i've been out of an engagement for four months now; all i could save out of my last screw has gone in bus fares and stamps--and my people haven't got any more money than they know how to spend. if an engagement to announce the dinner had been offered _me_ to-day, i'd have taken it and i'd be going back to notting hill happy." "i'm awfully sorry," said mamie sympathetically. "shall we have another muffin?" "no, i don't want any more, thanks. but you've no idea what a business it is! i've got talent and experience, and i'm not bad-looking, and yet you see how i've got to struggle. one is always too late everywhere. i was at the queen's this morning. there are always any number of small parts in the queen's things, you know, and i thought there might be a chance for _the pride of the troop_. they'd got everybody except the extra ladies. by the way, you might try to get on at the queen's as an extra, if you like. with your appearance you'd have a very good chance, i should say." mamie felt her heart stirring feverishly. "do you mean it?" she asked. "what are 'extras'--you don't mean 'supers'?" "oh, they're better than supers--different class, you know. of course they've nothing to say, except in chorus. they come on in the race-course scene and the ball-room and look nice. they wear swagger frocks--the management finds their dresses--and are supposed to murmur, and laugh, and act in dumb-show in the background. _you_ know! they're frightful fools--a girl who _could_ act a bit would stand out among extra ladies like a bernhardt at the ladbroke hall." "if they'd take me," said mamie, clasping her hands; "if they'd only take me! do you really think they will?" "it couldn't hurt to try. ask for mr. casey and tell him you want to 'walk on.' there, i've given you a hint, after all!" she exclaimed, as she got up; "one can't think of everything right off. it might prove a start for you; who knows? if casey sees you're intelligent, he may give you a line or two to speak. you go up to one of the principals, and say, 'lord tomnoddy, where's that bracelet you promised to send me when i saw you at kempton park?' then the low-comedy merchant--it's generally the low-comedy merchant you speak to--says something that gets a laugh, and bustles up the stage, and you run after him angrily. but don't be sanguine, even of getting on as an extra! there's always a crowd of women besieging the queen's at every production--you won't be the only pretty one. well, i must be going, my dear. i wish you luck." "and luck to _you!_" said mamie, squeezing her hand gratefully; "and many, many thanks. i look forward to telling you the result. i suppose we're sure to see each other at mr. passmore's?" "oh, we're bound to run against each other somewhere before long," returned miss forbes cordially. "yes, i shall be curious to hear what you do; i've enjoyed our chat very much. take care of yourself!" she hurried towards her bus, waving au revoir, and mamie crossed the road. london widened between the girls--and their paths in it never met again. chapter iv as she reached the opposite pavement heriot exclaimed: "miss cheriton! are you going to cut me?" "you?" she cried with surprise. "it was--it was the fog's fault; i didn't see. what a stranger you are! it's a fortnight since you came out to us. a 'fortnight,' you observe--i'm 'quite english, you know,' now." "you're in good spirits," he said. "what have you been doing?" "i've been rising in my career," she answered gaily; "i have had tea in a cakeshop with an actress. i have just shaken hands with her; she has just given me a piece of advice. i am, in imagination, already a personage." "who is she?" asked heriot. "where does she come from?... let me see you to victoria; i suppose that's where you are going?" he stopped a hansom, and scrutinised her sadly as they took their seats. "have you been out in this weather long?" he said. "you poor child, how wet you must be! well, you know an actress. aren't you going to tell me all about it?" she was as voluble as he wished; he had become in the last few months her confidant and consoler. lavender street, wandsworth, or those residents who commanded a view of no. , had learnt to know his figure well. awhile ago he had marvelled at the rôle he was filling; latterly he had ceased to marvel. he realised the explanation--and as he listened to her tale her words smote him. it hurt him to think of the girl beside him cringing to a theatrical agent, forming a chance acquaintance in the streets, and contemplating so ignoble a position as the one of which she spoke. he looked at her yearningly. "you are not pleased," she said. "is there a great deal to be pleased at? is this sort of thing worthy of you?" "it is the first step. oh, be nice about it, do! if you understood ... can i be juliet at once! if i'm to succeed----" "i have sympathised with you," he said; "i've entered into your feelings; i do understand. but you don't know what you're meditating. admitting it's inevitable--admitting, if you're to be an actress, that you must begin, since you've no influence, where you're content to begin--can you bear it? these women you'll be thrown amongst----" "some, at least," she said, "will be like myself, surely? i am not the only girl who has to begin. and ... whatever they are, it can't be helped! remember, i'm in earnest! i talked at first wildly; i see how childish i was. what should i be if i faltered because the path isn't strewn with roses? an actress must be satisfied to work." "it isn't decreed that you need be an actress," answered heriot. "after all, there is no necessity to fight for your bread-and-butter. if you were compelled----" "there are more compelling forces than poverty. can't you recognise ambition?" "haven't i?" he said. "have i been wood?" "ah," she smiled, "forgive me. i didn't mean that. but be nice still. am i to reject a career because i'm not starving? i'm starving with my soul. i'm like a poor mute battling for voice. i want--i want to give expression to what i feel within me." she beat her hands in her lap. "i'm willing to struggle--eager to! you've always known it. why do you disappoint me now? i have to begin even lower than i understood, that's all. and what is it? i shall be surrounded by artists then. by degrees i shall rise. 'you are in the right way, but remember what i say, study, study, study! study well, and god bless you!' do you know who said that?--mrs. siddons to macready. it was at newcastle, and it was about her performance the same night that he wrote: 'the violence of her emotion seemed beyond her power longer to endure, and the words, faintly articulated, "was he alive?" sent an electric thrill through the audience.' think what that means; three words! i can't do it, i've tried--oh, how i've tried! for months after i read that book, i used to say them dozens of times every day, with every intonation i could think of. but there was no effect, no thrill even to myself. 'study, study, study! keep your mind on your art, do not remit your study, and you are certain to succeed!' i _will_ keep my mind on it, i'll obey her advice, i _will_ succeed. heaven couldn't be so cruel as to let me fail after putting such longings into me." heriot sighed. the impulse to tell her that he loved her, to keep her to himself, was mastering him. never before had her hold on him been displayed so vividly, nor had the temptation to throw prudence to the winds been quite so strong. "if you had a happier home," he said, "there would be other influences. don't think me impertinent, but it can't be very lively for you in that house." "it isn't a whirl of gaiety, and aunt lydia is not ideal. but--but i was just the same in duluth." "duluth!" he echoed; "it was dreary in duluth, too." "at all events i had my father there." "what does he write?" asked heriot. "have you had a letter since i saw you?" "he gives no news. the news is to come from _me_." "i think there's a little," he said; "i can tell it by your tone." "it's cheerful to be with some one who _can_ tell things by one's tone. well, he thinks, if i can't make a beginning, that i may as well go back." "i see," he said. "i won't ask you if you mean to." she laughed a shade defiantly. "duluth has many charms--i've been remembering them since his letter. there is my father, and there's strawberry-shortcake. my father will be disappointed in me if i have to go; the strawberry-shortcake--well, there's a tiny shop there where they sell it hot. i've never seen it hot anywhere else--and they turn on the cream with a tap, out of a thing that looks like a miniature cistern." "you're not going back," he said. "you're going on the stage as a supernumerary instead?" in the flare of the station lamps her eyes flashed at him; he could see the passionate trembling of her mouth. the cab stopped, and they got out, and threaded their way among the crowd to the barriers. there was a train in ten minutes, heriot learnt. "shall we go to the waiting-room?" "no," said miss cheriton. "forgive me what i said just now. i am sorry." "what does it matter?" "it was brutal." "rather, perhaps. it was unexpected. you have failed me when i wanted you most." he took two first-class tickets--he wished to be alone with her, and he knew that she travelled "second." "i'm coming with you," he said. "but you can't have dined? our suppers are not extensive." "let us get in!" he answered. they had the compartment to themselves when the door banged, and he regarded her silently, with nerves that had escaped control. "i have warned you," she said. "it will be something out of a tin for certain, with vinegar over it." "mamie!" there was rebuke in her expression. "mamie," he repeated, "i love you. why i dislike your going on the stage is because i want you myself. i was 'brutal' because i'm fond of you. will you marry me?" she lay back against the darkness of the cushions, pale and startled. "are you serious?" she said. "you--want to marry me? do you mean it?" "i mean it. i don't seem able to tell you how much i mean it. can you like me well enough to be my wife?" "i do like you," she stammered; "but i hadn't an idea.... i never thought you thought----oh, i'm sorry!" "why? why can't you say 'yes'?" "to marry you?" "i'll be very gentle to you," he said shakily. "i--for god's sake, don't judge my love for you by the way i put it! i haven't had much practice in love-making; it's a pity, perhaps. there's a word that says it all--i 'worship' you. my darling, what have you to look forward to? you've seen, you've tried, you know what an uphill life it will be. it's not as if i begged you to waive your hopes while you had encouragement to hope--you've made the attempt, and you know the difficulties now. come to me instead. you shall live where you like--you can choose your own quarter. you can have everything you care for--books, pictures, theatres too. oh, my sweet, come to me, and i'll fulfil every wish! will you, mamie?" "i can't," she said tremulously, "it wouldn't be fair." her eyes shone at him, and she leant forward with parted lips. "i like you, i like you very much, but i don't--i'm not---- i've never been in love with anyone." "i'll be grateful for small mercies," said heriot, with an unhappy laugh. "and i _could_ not do what you ask. if i fail, i fail; but i must persevere. i can't accept failure voluntarily--i can't stretch out my arms to it. i should despise myself if i gave in to-day. even you----" "you know better than that!" he said. "well, yes," she owned, "perhaps i'm wrong there; to you it would seem a sensible step. but i believe in myself. all my life i've had the thought, and i should be miserable, i should hate myself! i should be like my father--i should be always thinking of the 'might have been.' you'd be good to me, but you'd know you had been a fool. i'm not a bit the sort of woman you should marry, and you'd repent it." heriot took her hand and held it tightly. "i love you," he said. "consider your own happiness only. i love you." "i am quite selfish--i know it wouldn't content me; i'm not pretending to any nobility. but i'm sorry; i may say that? i didn't dream you liked me in this way. i'm not hard, i'm not a horror, and i can see--i can see that i'm a lot to you." "i'm glad of that," he said simply. "yes, you're 'a lot to me,' mamie. if you know it, and you can't care for me enough, there's no more for me to say. don't worry yourself. it's not unusual for a man to be fond of a woman who doesn't want to marry him." chapter v she betook herself to the queen's next morning less buoyantly than she had anticipated. her meeting with heriot had depressed her. she retained much of the nature of a child, and laughed or cried very easily. she had met heriot laughing, and he had been serious and sad. with some petulance she felt that it was very unfortunate for her that he had fallen in love with her, and chosen that particular day to tell her so. she entered the stage-door with no presentiment of conquest, and inquired of the man in the little recess if mr. casey was in the theatre. stage-door keepers are probably the surliest class in existence. they have much to try them, and they spend their official lives in a violent draught; but if there is a stage-door keeper sweet and sunny in his home, he provides an interesting study for the dramatic authors. the man took her measure in an instant, saving in one particular--she was prepared to give him a shilling and he did not guess it. "mr. casey's on the stage," he said; "he won't be disturbed now." "if i waited, do you think i might see him?" "i couldn't tell you, i'm sure." he resumed his perusal of a newspaper, and mamie looked at him through the aperture helplessly. there was the usual knot of loafers about the step--a scene-hand or two in their shirt-sleeves; a girl in her pathetic best dress, also hoping for miracles; a member of the company, who had slipped out from rehearsal to smoke a cigarette. cerberus was shown where his estimate had been at fault. he said "miss" now: "if you write your business on one of these forms, miss, i'll send it in to mr. casey." he gave her a stump of pencil, and a printed slip, specially designed to scare intruders. she wrote her name, and mr. casey's name, and could find no scope for euphemisms regarding the nature of the interview she sought. she added, "to obtain engagement as extra lady," and returned the paper with embarrassment; she was sufficiently unsophisticated in such matters to assume that her object had not been divined. "'ere, bill!" one of the scene-hands turned. "take it in to mr. casey for this lady." the man addressed as bill departed through a second door with a grunt and a bang, and she waited expectantly. the girl in her best frock sneered; she could not afford to dispense shillings, herself, and already her feet ached. the door swung back constantly. at intervals of a few seconds a stream of nondescripts issued from the unknown interior, and mamie stood watching for the features of her messenger. it was nearly a quarter of an hour before he reappeared. "mr. casey can't see you," he announced. the stage-door keeper heard the intelligence with absolute indifference; but the girl on the step looked gratified. "what shall i do?" asked mamie. "i can't do no more than send in for you, miss. it ain't much good your waiting--the call won't be over till three o'clock." "could i see him then?" "he'll come out. if you like to take your chance----" "i'll come back at three o'clock," she said. it was then eleven. she turned into the strand--the strand that has broken more hearts than fleet street. here a young actor passed her, who was also pacing the inhospitable pavements until the hour in which he hoped to see patience and importunity bear fruit. he wore a fashionable overcoat, and swung his cane with a gloved hand. presently he would seek a public-house and lunch on a scone, and a glass of "mild-and-bitter." if he had "bitter," he would be a halfpenny short in his homeward fare to bow. there a musical comedy actress went by, who had "married a swell." his family had been deeply wounded, and showed their mortification by allowing her to support him. she had had three children; and when he was drunk, which was frequently, he said, "god forbid that they should ever become damned mummers like their mother!" a manager had just told her that "she had lost her figure, and wouldn't look the part!" and she was walking back to islington, where the brokers were in the house. a popular comedian, who had been compelled to listen to three separate tales of distress between charing cross and bedford street, and had already lent unfortunate acquaintances thirty shillings, paused, and hailed a hansom from motives of economy. it was the typical crowd of the strand, a crowd of the footlights. the men whose positions had been won were little noticeable, but the gait and costume of the majority--affected youth, and disheartened age--indicated their profession to the least experienced eyes. because she grew very tired, and not that she had any expectation of hearing good news, mamie went into mr. passmore's office, and sat down. and she did not hear any. after an hour she went away, and rested next in the anteroom of another of the agents, who repeated that "things were very quiet," and that "he wouldn't forget her." seven or eight other girls were waiting their turn to be told the same thing. at a quarter to three she went back to the queen's. "is he coming out now?" she said. "am i too soon?" "eh?" said the stage-door keeper. "you told me he'd be out about three. i was asking for mr. casey this morning." "oh, were you?" he said. "there's been a good many asking for him since then." he gradually recalled her. "mr. casey's gone," he added; "they finished early. he won't be here till to-night." there was a week in which she went to the stage-door of the queen's theatre every day, at all hours, and at last she learnt casually that as many extra ladies as were required for the production had been engaged. there were months during which she persisted in her applications at other stage-doors and hope flickered within her still. but when september came, and a year had passed since her arrival, the expiring spark had faded into lassitude. she tried no longer. only sometimes, out of the sickness of her soul, the impulse to write was born, and she picked up a pen. then it was definitely decided that she should return to america. it was characteristic of her that she had no sooner dried her eyes after the decision than she was restless to return at once; duluth was no drearier than wandsworth. externally it was even picturesque, with the blue water and the sunshine, and the streets of white houses rising in tiers like a theatre; in duluth the residents "looked down on one another" literally. the life was appalling, but when all was said, was it more limited than aunt lydia? and if, in lieu of acting, she dared aspire to dramatic authorship--the thought stirred her occasionally--she could work as well in minnesota as in middlesex. cheriton had remitted the amount of her passage, and suggested that she should sail in a week or two. she had not received the draft two hours when she went up to town and booked a berth in the next steamer. when it was done, she posted a note to heriot, acquainting him with her intention. his visits had not been discontinued, but he came at much longer intervals latterly, and she could not go without bidding him good-bye. she sat in the lavender street parlour the next evening, wondering if he would come. almost she hoped that he would not. she had written, and therefore done her duty. to see him would, in the circumstances, humiliate her cruelly, she felt. she remembered how she had talked to him twelve months before--recalled her confidence, her pictures of a future that she was never to know, and her eyes smarted afresh. she had even failed to obtain a hearing. "what a fool, what an idiot i look!" she thought passionately. tea was over, but the maid-of-all-work had not removed the things; and when heriot entered, the large loaf and the numerous knives, which are held indispensable to afternoon tea in lavender street, were still on the big round table. the aspect of the room did not strike him any more. he was familiar with it, like the view of the kitchen when the front door had been opened, and the glimpse of clothes-line in the yard beyond. "may i come in?" he said. "did you expect me?" "lor, it's mr. heriot!" said mrs. baines. "fancy!" she told the servant to take away the teapot, and to bring in another knife. he wondered vaguely what he was supposed to do with it. "i thought it likely you'd be here," said mamie; "won't you sit down?" "i only had your letter this morning. so you are going away?" "i am going away. i bow, more or less gracefully, to the inevitable." "to bow gracefully to the inevitable is strong evidence of the histrionic gift," he said. "i came, i saw, i was conquered; please don't talk about it.... it was only settled yesterday. i sail on saturday, you know." "yes, you wrote me," murmured heriot. "it's very sudden." "i'm crazy to do something, if only to confess myself beaten." "may i offer you a cup o' tea, mr. heriot?" asked mrs. baines. she always "offered" cups of tea, and was indebted to neighbours for their "hospitality." he thanked her. "you will miss your niece?" he said, declining a place at the table, to which she had moved a chair. "yes, i'm sure!" she answered. "i say now it's a pity she didn't go with her father last october. going in a vessel by herself, oh, dear! i say i wouldn't have got accustomed to having her with me if she'd gone with her father. though that's neither here nor there!" "yes, i think you may believe you'll be missed, miss cheriton," he said. "i say it's very odd she couldn't be an actress as she wanted," continued mrs. baines. "seems so unfortunate with all the trouble that she took. but lor, my dear, we can't see what lies ahead of us, and perhaps it's all for the best! i say perhaps it's all for the best, mr. heriot, eh? dear mamie may be meant to do something different--writing, or such like; it's not for us to say." "have you been writing again?" asked heriot, turning to the girl. "a little," she said bitterly. "my vanity dies hard--and aunt lydia has encouraged me." heriot looked a reproach; her tone hurt him, though he understood of what it was the outcome. "i should be glad if you had encouragement," he replied; "i think you need it now." but it hurt him, also, to discuss her pain in the presence of the intolerable third. he knew that if he remained to supper there would be a preparatory quarter of an hour in which he was alone with her; and it was for this quarter of an hour that he hungered, conscious that during the opening of the lobster-tin two destinies would be determined. "that's right, mr. heriot," said mrs. baines placidly. "i'm glad to hear you say so. that's what i've been telling her. i say she mustn't be disheartened. why, it's surprising, i'm sure, how much seems to be thought of people who write stories and things nowadays; they seem to make quite a fuss of them, don't they? and i'm certain dear mamie could write if she put her mind to it. i was reading in the paper, _tit-bits_, only last week, that there was a book called _robert ellis_, or some such name, that made the author quite talked about. now, i read the piece out to you, dear, didn't i? a book about religion, it was, by a lady; and i'm sure dear mamie knows as much about religion as anyone." "my aunt means _robert elsmere_," said mamie, in a laboured voice. "you may have heard it mentioned?" "you mustn't expect mr. heriot to know much about it," said mrs. baines; "mr. heriot is so busy a gentleman that very likely he doesn't hear of these things. but i assure you, mr. heriot, the story seems to have been read a great deal; and what i say is, if dear mamie can't be an actress, why shouldn't she write books, if she wants to do something of the sort? i wonder my brother didn't teach her to paint, with her notions and that--but, not having learnt, i say she ought to write books. that's the thing for her--a nice pen and ink, and her own home." "i agree with you, mrs. baines. if she wants to write, she can do that in her own home." "not to compare it with such a profession as yours, mr. heriot," she said, "which, of course, is sensible and grave. but girls can't be barristers, and----" "will you open the window for me?" exclaimed mamie; "it's frightfully warm, don't you think so?" she stood there with her head thrown back, and closed eyes, her foot tapping the floor restlessly. "are you wishing you hadn't come?" she asked under her breath. "why?" "one must suffer to be polite here." "aren't you a little unjust?" said heriot deprecatingly. "you have it for an hour," she muttered; "_i_ have had it for twelve months. have you ever wanted to shriek? _i_ wanted to shriek just now, violently!" "i know you did," he said. "well, it's nearly over.... are you glad?" "yes, and no--i can't say. if----" "won't you go on?" "if i dared hope to do anything else.... but i'm not going to talk like that any more! i'm ridiculous enough already." "to whom are you ridiculous?" "to my own perception--you!" "not to me," he said. "'pathetic'? yes, to you i'm 'pathetic.' you pity me as you might pity a lunatic who imagined she was the queen of england." "i think you know," said heriot diffidently, "that neither the queen nor a lunatic inspires in me quite the feeling that i have for you." she changed her position, and spoke at random. "this street is awfully stupid, isn't it?" she said. "look at that man going up the steps!" "yes, he is very stupid, i daresay. what of it?" "he is a clerk," she said; "and wheels his babies out on sunday." "mamie!" "come and talk to aunt lydia again. how rude we are!" "i want to talk to _you_," he demurred. "aren't you going to ask me to stay to supper?" the suggestion came from the widow almost at the same moment. "i think we had better have the lamp," she went on. "the days are drawing in fast, mr. heriot, aren't they? we shall soon have winter again. do you like the long evenings, or the long afternoons best? just about now i always say that i can't bear to think of having to begin lighting up at five or six o'clock--it seems so unnatural; and then, next summer, somehow i feel quite lost, not being able to let down the blinds and light the lamp for tea. mamie, dear, shut the window, and let down the blinds before i light the lamp--somebody might see in!" she suggested the danger in the same tone in which she might have apprehended a burglary. under a glass shade a laggard clock ticked drearily towards the crisis, and heriot provoked its history by the eagerness with which he looked to see the time. it had been a wedding-present from "poor dear edward's brother," and only one clockmaker had really understood it. the man had died, and since then---- he listened, praying for the kitchen to engulf her. when she withdrew at last, with an apology for leaving him, he rose, and went to the girl's side. "do you know why i came this afternoon?" he said. she did know--had known it in the moment that he opened the window for her: "to say 'good-bye,'" she murmured. "i came to beg you not to go! dearest, what do you relinquish by marrying me now? not the stage--your hope of the stage is over; not your ambition in itself--you can be ambitious as my wife. you lose nothing, and you give--a heaven. mamie, won't you stay?" she leant on the mantelpiece without speaking. in the pause, mrs. baines' voice reached them distinctly, as she said, "put the brawn on a smaller dish." "you are forgetting. there was ... a reason besides the stage." "it is you who've forgotten. i told you i would be content.... it wouldn't be repugnant to you?" "to refuse while i thought i had a future, and to say 'yes,' now that----how can you ask me? it would be an insult to your love." "i do ask you," he urged; "i implore." "you implore me to be contemptible. you would have a disappointed woman for your wife. you deserve something better than that." "oh, my god," said heriot, in a low voice, "if i could only tell you how i ache to take you in my arms--as softly as if you were a child! if i could tell you what it is to me to know that you are passing out of my life and that in two days' time i shall never see you again!... mamie?" the heavy shuffle of the servant was heard in the passage. "mamie?" he repeated desperately. "it will be worse over there." her eyes were big with perplexity and doubt. "mamie?" "are you sure you--sure----" "i love you; i want you. only trust me!... mamie?" "if you're quite sure you wish it," she faltered,--"yes!" chapter vi when heriot informed his brother of his approaching marriage, sir francis said, "i never offer advice to a man on matters of this sort"; and proceeded to advise. he considered the union undesirable, and used the word. heriot replied, "on the contrary, i desire it extremely." "you're of course the best judge of your own affairs. i'll only say that it is hardly the attachment i should have expected you to form. it appears to me--if i may employ the term--romantic." "i should say," said heriot, in his most impassive manner, "that that is what it might be called. admitting the element of romance, what of it?" "we are not boys, george," said sir francis. he added, "and the lady is twenty-two! the father is an hotel-keeper in the united states, you tell me, and the aunt lives in wandsworth. socially, wandsworth is farther than the united states, but geographically it is close. this mrs. payne--or baynes--is not a connection you will be proud of, i take it?" "i shall be very proud of my wife," said heriot, with some stiffness. "there are more pedigrees than happy marriages." the baronet looked at his watch. "as i have said, it's not a matter that i would venture to advise you upon. of course i congratulate you. we shall see miss cheriton at sandhills, i hope? and--er--catherine will be delighted to make her acquaintance. i have to meet phil at the club. he's got some absurd idea of exchanging--wants to go out to india, and see active service. and i got him into the guards! boys are damned ungrateful.... when do you marry?" "very shortly--during the vacation. there'll be no fuss." sir francis told his wife that it was very "lamentable," and lady heriot preferred to describe it as "disgusting." but in spite of adjectives the ceremony took place. the honeymoon was brief, and when the bride and bridegroom came back to town, they stayed in an hotel in victoria street while they sought a flat. ultimately they decided upon one in south kensington, and it was the man's delight to render this as exquisite as taste and money made possible. the furniture for his study had simply to be transferred from his bachelor quarters, but the other rooms gave scope for a hundred consultations and caprices; and like a lad he enjoyed the moments in which he and mamie bent their heads together over patterns and designs. she would have been more than human, and less than lovable, if in those early weeks her disappointment had not been lost sight of; more than a girl if the atmosphere of devotion in which she moved had not persuaded her primarily that she was content. only after the instatement was effected and the long days while her husband was away were no longer occupied by upholsterers' plans, did the earliest returning stir of recollection come; only as she wandered from the drawing-room to the dining-room and could find no further touches to make, did she first sigh. a gift of heriot's--he had chosen it without her knowledge, and it had been delivered as a surprise--was a writing-table; a writing-table that was not meant merely to be a costly ornament. and one morning she sat down to it and began another attempt at a play. the occupation served to interest her, and now the days were not so empty. in the evening, as often as he was able, heriot took her out to a theatre, or a concert, or to houses from which invitations came. the evenings were enchantingly new to her; less so, perhaps, when they dined at the solemn houses than when a hansom deposited them at the doors of a restaurant, and her husband's pocket contained the tickets for a couple of stalls. she was conscious that she owed him more than she could ever repay; and though she had casually informed him that she had begun a drama, she did not discuss the subject with him at any length. to dwell upon those eternal ambitions of hers was to remind him that she had said she would be dissatisfied, and he deserved something different from that; he deserved to forget it, to be told that she had not an ungratified wish! she felt ungrateful to realise that such a statement would be an exaggeration. in the november following the wedding it was seen that "her majesty had been pleased, on the recommendation of the lord chancellor, to approve the name of george langdale heriot to the rank of queen's counsel," and heriot soon found reason to congratulate himself on his step. a man may earn a large income as a junior, and find himself in receipt of a very poor one as a leader. there is an instance cited in the inns of court of a stuff-gownsman, making eight thousand a year, whose income fell, when he took silk, to three hundred. but heriot's practice did not decline. few men at the bar could handle a jury better, or showed greater address in their dealings with the bench. he knew instinctively the moment when that small concession was advisable, when the attitude of uncompromising rigour would be fatal to his case. he had his tricks in court: the least affected of men out of it, in court he had his tricks. counsel acquire them inevitably, and one of heriot's had been a favourite device of ballantyne's: in cross-examination he looked at the witness scarcely at all, but kept his face turned to the jury-box. why this should be persuasive is a mystery that no barrister can explain, but its effectiveness is undeniable. nevertheless, he was essentially "sound." as he had been known as "a safe man" while a junior, so, now that he had taken silk, he was believed in as a leader. the figures on the briefs swelled enormously; his services were more and more in demand. then by-and-by there came a criminal case that was discussed day by day throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom--in drawing-rooms and back parlours, in clubs and suburban trains, and heriot was for the defence. the kensington study had held him until dawn during weeks, for he had to break down medical evidence. and on the last day he spoke for five hours, while the reporters' pens flew, and the prisoner swayed in the dock; and the verdict returned was "not guilty." when he unrobed and left the court, george heriot walked into the street the man of the hour; and he drove home to mamie, who kissed him as she might have kissed her father. he adored his wife, and his wife felt affection for him. but the claims of his profession left her to her own resources; and she had no child. chapter vii when they had been married three years she knew many hours of boredom. she could not disguise from herself that she found the life she led more and more unsatisfying--that luxury and a devoted husband, who was in court during the day, and often in his study half the night, were not all that she had craved for; that her environment was philistine, depressing, dull! and she lectured herself and said the fault was her own, and that it was a very much better environment than her abilities entitled her to. she recited all the moral precepts that a third person might have uttered; and the dissatisfaction remained. to write plays ceases to be an attractive occupation when they are never produced. she had written several plays by this time, and submitted them, more or less judiciously, to several west end theatres. there had even been an instance of a manager returning a manuscript in response to her fourth application for it. but she was no nearer to success, or to an artistic circle. a career at the bar is not all causes célèbres, and the details of heriot's briefs were rarely enthralling to her mind, even when he discussed them with her; and when he came into the drawing-room he did not want to discuss his briefs. he wanted to talk trifles, just as he preferred to see a musical comedy or a farce when they went out. nor did he press her for particulars of her own pursuits during his absence. she never sighed over him, and as she appeared to be cheerful, he thought she was contented. that such allusions to her literary work as she made were careless, he took to mean that she had gradually acquired staider views. once he perceived that it was perhaps quieter for her than for most women, for she had no intimate acquaintances; but then she had never been used to any! there were her books, and her music, and her shopping--no, he did not think she could be bored. besides, her manner at dinner was always direct evidence to the contrary! she was now twenty-five years old, and the kensington flat, and abundant means had lost their novelty. she was never moved by a clever novel without detesting her own obscurity; never looked at the window of the stereoscopic company without a passion of envy for the successful artists; never accompanied heriot to the solemn houses without yearning for a passport to upper bohemia instead. she was twenty-five years old, and marriage, without having fulfilled the demands of her temperament, had developed her sensibilities. it was at this period that she met lucas field. if her existence had been a story, nothing could have surprised her less than such a meeting. it would have been at this juncture precisely that she looked for the arrival of an artist, and lucas field would probably have been a brilliant young man who wore his hair long and wrote decadent verse. the trite in fiction is often very astonishing in one's own life, however, and, as a matter of fact, she found their introduction an event, and foresaw nothing at all. lucas field was naturally well known to her by reputation--so well known that when the hostess brought "mr. field" across to her, mamie never dreamed of identifying him with the dramatist. she had long since ceased to expect to meet anybody congenial at these parties, and the fish had been reached before she discovered who it really was who had taken her down. field was finding it a trifle dreary himself. he had not been bred in the vicinity of the footlights---his father had been a physician, and his mother the daughter of a lincolnshire parson--but he had drifted into dramatic literature when he came down from oxford, and the atmosphere of the artistic world had become essential to him by now. portman square, though he admitted its desirability, and would have been mortified if it had been denied to him, invariably oppressed him a shade when he entered it. he was at the present time foretasting hell in the fruitless endeavour to devise a scenario for his next play, and he had looked at mamie with a little interest as he was conducted across the drawing-room. a beautiful woman has always an air of suggestion; she is a beginning, a "heroine" without a plot. regarded from the easel she is all-sufficing--contemplated from the desk, she is illusive. after you have admired the tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck, you realise with despondence that she takes you no farther than if she had been plain. field had realised that she left him in the lurch before his soup plate had been removed. presently he inquired if she was fond of the theatre. "please don't say 'yes' from politeness," he added. "why should i?" she had gathered the reason in the next moment, and her eyes lit with eagerness. he had a momentary terror that she was going to be commonplace. "i couldn't dream that it was you--here!" she said apologetically. "isn't a poor playwright respectable?" he asked. there was an instant in which she felt that on her answer depended the justification of her soul. she said afterwards that she could have "fallen round an epigram's neck." "i should think the poor playwright must be very dull," she replied. this was adequate, however, and better than his own response, which was of necessity conventional. "i have seen your new comedy," she continued. "i hope it pleased you?" "i admired it immensely--like every one else. it is a great success, isn't it?" "the theatre is very full every night," he said deprecatingly. "then it _is_ a success!" "does that follow?" "you are not satisfied with it--it falls short of what you meant? i shouldn't have supposed that; it seemed to me entirely clear!" "that i had a theory? really? perhaps i have not failed so badly as i thought." he did not think he had failed at all, but this sort of thing was his innocent weakness. "miss millington is almost perfect as 'daisy,' isn't she?" "'almost'? where do you find her weak?" she blushed. "she struck me--of course i am no authority--as not quite fulfilling your idea in the first act--when she accepted the captain. i thought perhaps she was too responsible there--too grown up." "there isn't a woman in london who could play 'daisy,'" said field savagely. "in other words, you think she wrecked the piece?" "oh no, indeed!" "if 'daisy' isn't a child when she marries, the play has no meaning, no sense. that is why the character was so difficult to cast--in the first act she must be a school-girl, and in the others an emotional woman." "perhaps i said too much." "you are a critic, mrs. heriot." "oh, merely----" "merely?" "merely very interested in the stage." "to be interested in the stage is very ordinary; to be a judge of it is rather rare. no, you didn't say too much: miss millington _doesn't_ fulfil my idea when she accepts 'captain arminger.' and to be frank, _i_ haven't fulfilled miss millington's idea of a consistent part." "i can understand," said mamie, "that the great drawback to writing for the stage is that one depends so largely on one's interpreters. a novelist succeeds or fails by himself, but a dramatist----" "a dramatist is the most miserable of created beings," said field, "if he happens to be an artist." "i can hardly credit that. i can't credit anybody being miserable who is an artist." (he laughed. it was not polite, but he couldn't help it.) "though i can understand his having moods of the most frightful depression!" she added. "oh, you can understand that?" "quite. would he be an artist if he didn't have them!" "may i ask if you write yourself?" "n--no," she murmured. "does that mean 'yes'?" "it means 'only for my own amusement.'" "the writer who only writes for his own amusement is mythical, i'm afraid," said field. "one often hears of him, but he doesn't bear investigation. you don't write plays?" "no--i try to!" he regarded her a little cynically. "i thought ladies generally wrote novels?" "i wish to be original, you see." "do you send them anywhere?" "oh, yes; i _send_ them; i suppose i always shall!" "you're really in earnest then? you're not discouraged?" "i'm earnest, and discouraged, too.... is it impertinent to ask if _you_ had experiences like mine when you were younger?" "i wrote plays for ten years before i ever passed through a stage-door--one must expect to work for years before one is produced.... of course, one may work all one's life, and not be produced then!" "it depends how clever one is, or whether one is clever at all?" "it depends on a good many things. it depends sometimes on advice." if she had been less lovely, he would not have said this, and he knew it; if she had not been mrs. heriot, he would not have said it either. the average woman who "wants a literary man's advice" is the bane of his existence, and field was, not only without sympathy for the tyro as a rule--he was inclined to disparage the majority of his colleagues. he was clever, and was aware of it; he occupied a prominent position. he had arrived at the point when he could dare to be psychological. "it depends sometimes on advice," he said. and the wife of george heriot, q.c., murmured: "unfortunately, i have nobody to advise me!" even as it was, he regretted it when he took his leave; and the manuscript that he had offered to read lay in his study for three weeks before he opened it. he picked it up one night, remembering that the writer had been very beautiful. the reading inspired him with a desire to see her again. that the play was full of faults goes without saying, but it was unconventional, and there was character in it. he recollected that she had interested him while they talked after dinner on a couch by the piano; and, as her work was promising, he wrote, volunteering to point out in an interview, if she liked, those errors in technique which it would take too long to explain by letter. it cannot be made too clear that if she had sent him a work of genius and had been plain miss smith in a home-made blouse, he would have done nothing of the sort. he called upon her with no idea that his hints would make a dramatist of her, nor did he care in the slightest degree whether they did, or did not. she was a singularly lovely woman, and as her drama had not been stupid--stupidity would have repelled him--he thought a tête-à-tête with her would be agreeable. to mamie, however, the afternoon when he sat sipping tea in her drawing-room, like an ordinary mortal, was the day of her life. she told him that she had once hoped to be an actress, and believed that the avowal would advance her in his esteem. he answered that he should not be astonished if she had the histrionic gift; and was secretly disenchanted a shade by what he felt to be banal. then they discussed his own work, and he found her appreciation remarkably intelligent. to talk about himself to a woman, who listened with exquisite eyes fixed upon his face, was very gratifying to him. field had rarely spent a pleasanter hour. it is not intimated that he was a vain puppy--he was not a puppy at all. he had half unconsciously felt the want of a sympathetic confidant for a long while, though, and albeit he did not instantaneously realise that mrs. heriot supplied the void, he walked back to his chambers with exhilaration. he realised it by degrees. he had never married. he had avoided matrimony till he was thirty because he could not afford it; and during the last decade he had escaped it because he had not met a woman whom he desired sufficiently to pay such a price. when he had seen mamie several times--and in the circumstances it was not difficult to invent reasons for seeing her--he wondered whether he would have proposed to her if she had been single. heriot was very pleased to have him dine with them; and he was not ignorant that during the next few months field often dropped in about five o'clock. mamie concealed nothing--knowingly--and the subject of her writing was revived now. she told george that mr. field thought she had ability. she repeated his criticisms; frankly admired his talent; confessed that she was proud to have him on her visiting list--and fell in love with him without either analysing her feelings, or perceiving her risk. and while mrs. heriot fell in love with him, lucas field was not blind. he saw a great deal more than she saw herself--he saw, not only the influence he exercised over her, but that she had moped before he appeared. he did not misread her; he was conscious that she would never take a lover from caprice--that she was the last woman in the world to sin lightly, or under the rose. he saw that, if he yielded to the temptation that had begun to assail him, he must be prepared to ask her to live with him openly. but he asked himself whether it was impossible that he could prevail on her to do that, had he the mind to do so--whether she was so impregnable as she believed. he was by this time fascinated by her. his happiest afternoons were spent in south kensington, advancing his theories, and talking of his latest scenes; nor was it a lie when he averred that she assisted him. to be an artist it is not necessary to be able to produce, and if her own attempts had been infinitely more futile than they were, she might still have expressed opinions that were of service to another. many of her views were impracticable, naturally. psychological as his tendencies were, he was a dramatist, and he could not snap his fingers at the laws imposed by the footlights, though he might affect to deride them in his confidences. the only dramatist alive was ibsen, he said; yet he did not model himself on ibsen, albeit he was delighted when she exclaimed, "how ibsenish that is!" many of her views were impracticable, because she was ignorant about the stage; but many were intensely stimulating. the more he was with her, the less he doubted her worthiness of sinning for his sake. he was so different from the ordinary dramatic author! on the ordinary dramatic author, with no ideas beyond "curtains" and "fees," she would have been thrown away. he did not wish to be associated with a scandal--it would certainly be unpleasant--but she dominated him, there was no disguising the fact. and he would be very good to her; he would marry her. she was adorable! his meditations had not progressed so far without the girl's eyes being opened to her weakness; and now she hated herself more bitterly than she had hated the tedium of her life. she knew that she loved him. she was wretched when he was not with her, and ashamed when he was there. she wandered about the flat in her solitude, frightened as she realised what an awful thing had come to her. but she was drunk--intoxicated by the force of the guilty love, and by the thought that such a man as lucas field could be in love with _her_. she revered him for not having told her of the feelings that she inspired. her courage was sustained by the belief that he did not divine her own--that she would succeed in stamping them out without his dreaming of the danger she had run. yet she was "drunk"; and one afternoon the climax was reached--he implored her to go away with him. chapter viii if a woman sins, and the chronicler of her sin desires to excuse the woman, her throes and her struggles, her pangs and her prayers always occupy at least three chapters. if one does not seek to excuse her, the fact of her fall may as well be stated in the fewest possible words. mamie did struggle--she struggled for a long time--but in the end she was just as guilty as if she hadn't shed a tear. field's pertinacity and passion wore her resistance out at last. theirs was to be the ideal union, and of course he cited famous cases where the man and woman designed for each other by heaven had met only after one of them had blundered. he did not explain why heaven had permitted the blunders, after being at the pains to design kindred souls for each other's ecstasy; but there are things that even the youngest curate cannot explain. he insisted that she would never regret her step; he declared that, with himself for her husband, she would become celebrated. art, love, joy, all might be hers at a word. and she spoke it. when heriot came in one evening, mamie was not there, and he wondered what had become of her, for at this hour she was always at home. but he had not a suspicion of evil--he was as far from being prepared for the blow that was in store as if field had never crossed their path. he had let himself in with his latch-key, and after a quarter of an hour it occurred to him that she might be already in the dining-room. when he entered it, he noted with surprise that the table was laid only for one. "where is mrs. heriot?" he said to the servant who appeared in response to his ring. "mrs. heriot has gone out of town, sir." "out of town!" he exclaimed. "what do you mean?" "mrs. heriot left a note for you, sir, to explain. there it is, sir." heriot took it from the mantelpiece quickly; but still he had no suspicion--not an inkling of the truth. he tore the envelope open and read, while the maid waited respectfully by the door. "your mistress has been called away," he said when he had finished; "illness! she will be gone some time." his back was to her; he could command his voice, but his face was beyond his control. he felt that if he moved he would reel, perhaps fall. he stood motionless, with the letter open in his hand. "shall i serve dinner, sir?" "yes, serve dinner, odell; i'm quite ready." when the door closed, it was his opportunity to gain the chair; he walked towards it slowly, like a blind man. the letter that he held had left but one hope possible--the last hope of despair--to keep the matter for awhile from the servants' knowledge. as yet he was not suffering acutely; indeed, in these early moments, the effect of the shock was more physical than mental. there was a trembling through his body, and his head felt queerly light--empty, not his own. the maid came back, and he forced himself to dine. the first spoonfuls of the soup he took were but heat, entirely tasteless, to his mouth, and at the pit of his stomach a sensation of sickness rose and writhed like something living. when she retired once more, his head fell forward on his arms; it was a relief to rest it so. he did not know how he could support the long strain of her vigilance. by degrees his stupor began to pass, as he stared at the vacant place where his wife should have sat; the dazed brain rallied to comprehension. his wife was not there because she was with her lover! oh, god! with her "lover"--mamie had given herself to another man! _mamie!_ mamie had gone to another man. his face was grey and distorted now, and the glass that he was lifting snapped at the stem. she had gone. she was no longer his wife. she was guilty, shameless, defiled--mamie! he rose, an older, a less vigorous, figure. "i shall be busy to-night," he muttered; "don't let me be disturbed." he went to his study, and dropped upon the seat before his desk. her photograph confronted him, and he took it down and held it shakenly. how young she looked! was there ever a face more pure? and heaven knew that he had loved her as dearly only an hour ago as on the day that they were married! not a whim of hers had been refused; not a request could he recollect that he had failed to obey. yet now she was with a lover! she smiled in the likeness; the eyes that met his own were clear and tender; truth was stamped upon her features. he recalled incidents of the past three years, incidents that had been rich in the intimacy of their life. surely in those hours she had loved him? that had not been gratitude--a sense of duty merely?--had she not loved him then? he remembered their wedding-day. how pale she had been, how innocent--a child. yet now she was with a lover! a sob convulsed him, and he nodded slowly at the likeness through his tears. presently he put it back; he was angered at his weakness. he had deserved something better at her hands! pride forbade that he should mourn for her. he had married wildly, yes, he should have listened to advice; francis had warned him. perhaps while he wept, they were laughing at him together, she and field! how did he know that it was field--had she mentioned his name in the letter? he knew that it was field instinctively; he marvelled that he had not foreseen the danger, and averted it. how stupid had the petitioners in divorce suits often appeared to him in his time!--he had wondered that men could be so purblind--and he himself had been as dense as any!... but she would not laugh. ah, guilty as she was, she would not laugh--she was not so vile as that! the clock in the room struck one. he heard it half unconsciously--then started, and threw out his arms with a hoarse cry. he sprang to his feet, fired with the tortures of the damned. the sweat burst out on him, and the veins in his forehead swelled like cords. he was a temperate man, at once by taste and by necessity, but now he walked to where the brandy was kept and drank a wineglassful in gulps. "mamie!" he groaned again; "mamie!" the brandy did not blot the picture from his brain; and he refilled the glass.... nothing would efface the picture. he knew that it was hopeless to attempt to sleep, yet he went to the bedroom. the ivory brushes were gone from the toilet-table--she had been able to think of brushes! in the wardrobe the frocks were fewer, and the linen was less; the jewellery that he had given to her had been left behind. all was orderly. there were no traces of a hurried departure; the room had its usual aspect. he looked at the pillows. against the one that had been hers lay the bag of silk and lace that contained her night-dress. had she forgotten it; or was it that she had been incapable of transferring that? he picked it up, and dropped it out of sight in one of the drawers. he did not go to bed; he spent the night in an armchair, re-reading the letter, and thinking. when the servant knocked at the door, he went to his dressing-room, and shaved. he had a bath, and breakfasted, and strolled to the station. outwardly he had recovered from the blow, and his clerk who gave him his list of appointments remarked nothing abnormal about him. in court, heriot remembered that mamie and he were to have dined in holland park that evening, and during the luncheon adjournment he sent a telegram of excuse. if any one had known what had happened to him, he would have been thought devoid of feeling. he had scarcely re-entered the flat when mrs. baines called. his first impulse was to decline to see her; but he told the maid to show her in. a glance assured him that she was ignorant of what had occurred. "dear mamie is away, the servant tells me," she said, simpering. "i hadn't seen her for such a long time that i thought i'd look in to-day. not that i should have been so late, but i missed my train! i meant to come in and have a cup of tea with her at five o'clock. well, i _am_ unfortunate! and how have you been keeping, mr. heriot?" "i'm glad to see you. i hope you are well, mrs. baines." "where has dear mamie gone?" she asked. "pleasuring?" "she is on the continent, i believe. may i tell them to bring you some tea now?" "on the continent alone?" exclaimed mrs. baines. "fancy!" "no, she is not alone," said heriot. "you must prepare yourself for a shock, mrs. baines. your niece has left me." she looked at him puzzled. his tone was so composed that it seemed to destroy the significance of his words. "left you? how do you mean?" "she has gone with her lover." "oh, my gawd!" said mrs. baines.... "whatever are you saying, mr. heriot? don't!" "your niece is living with another man. she left me yesterday," he continued quietly. "i am sorry to have to tell you such news." he was sorrier as he observed the effect of it, but he could not soften the shock for her by any outward participation in her grief. since he must speak at all, he must speak as he did. "oh, to hear of such a thing!" she gasped. "oh, to think that--well---- oh, mr. heriot, i can't ... it can't be true. isn't it some mistake? dear mamie would never be so wicked, i'm sure she wouldn't! it's some awful mistake, you may depend." "there's no mistake, mrs. baines. my authority is your niece herself. she left a letter to tell me she was going, and why." the widow moaned feebly. "with another man?" he bowed. "oh, heaven will punish her, mr. heriot! oh, what will her father say--how could she do it! and you--how gentle and kind to her you were _i_ could see." "i did my best to make her happy," he said; "evidently i didn't succeed. is it necessary for us to talk about it much? believe me, you have my sympathy, but talking won't improve matters." "oh, but i can't look at it so--so calmly, mr. heriot! the disgrace! and so sudden. and it isn't for _me_ to have _your_ sympathy, i'm sure. i say it isn't for _you_ to sympathise with _me_. my heart bleeds for you, mr. heriot." "you're very good," he answered; "but i don't know that a faithless wife is much to grieve for after all." "ah, but you don't mean that! you were too fond of her to mean it. she'll live to repent it, you may be certain--the lord will bring it home to her. oh, how could she do it! you don't--you don't intend to have a divorce?" "naturally i intend it. what else do you propose?" "oh, i don't know," she quavered, rocking herself to and fro, and smearing the tears down her cheeks with a forefinger in a black silk glove; "but the disgrace! and all lavender street to read about it! ah, you won't divorce her, mr. heriot? it would be so dreadful!" "don't you want to see the man marry her?" "how 'marry her'?" she asked vaguely. "oh, i understand! yes, i suppose he _could_ marry her then, couldn't he? i'm not a lawyer like you--i didn't look so far ahead. but i don't want a divorce." "ah, well, _i_ want it," he said; "for my own sake." "then you don't love her any more, mr. heriot?" he laughed drearily. "your niece has ended her life with me of her own accord. i've nothing more to do with her." "those are cruel words," said mrs. baines; "those are cruel words about a girl who was your lawful wife--the flesh of your bone in the sight of gawd and man. you're harder than i thought, mr. heriot; you don't take it quite as i'd have supposed you'd take it.... so quiet and stern like! i think if you'd loved her tenderly, you'd have talked more heart-broken, though it's not for me to judge." heriot rose. "i can't discuss my sentiments with you, mrs. baines. think, if you like, that i didn't care for her at all. at least my duty to her is over; and i have a duty to myself to-day." "to cast her off?" the semi-educated classes use the phrases of novelettes habitually. whether this is the reason the novelettes trade in the phrases, or whether the semi-educated acquire the phrases from the novelettes, is not clear. "to----" he paused. he could not trust himself to speak at that moment. "to cast her off?" repeated mrs. baines. "oh, i don't make excuses for her--i don't pity her. though she is my brother's child, i say she is deserving of whatever befalls her. i remember well that when dick married i warned him against it; i said, 'she isn't the wife for you!' it's the mother's blood coming out in her, though my brother's child. but ... what was i going to say? i'm that upset that---- oh yes! i make no excuses for her, but i would have liked to see more sorrow on your part, mr. heriot; i could have pitied you more if you'd have taken it more to heart. you may think me too bold, but it was ever my way to say what was in my mind. i don't think i'll stop any longer. the way you may take it is between you and your gawd, but----" she put out her hand. "i don't think i'll stop." "good-evening," he said stonily. "i'm sorry you can't stay and dine." she recollected on the stairs that she had not inquired who the man was; but she was too much disgusted by heriot's manner to go back. chapter ix when a naturally pure woman, who is not sustained by any emancipated views, consents to live with a man in defiance of social prejudices, she probably obtains as clear an insight as the world affords into the enormous difference that exists between the ideal and the actual. matrimony does not illumine the difference so vividly, because matrimony, with all its disillusions, leaves her an unembarrassed conscience. with her lover such a woman experiences all the prose of wedlock, and a sting to boot. a man cannot be at concert-pitch all day long with his mistress any more easily than with his wife. she has to submit to bills and other practical matters just as much with a smirched reputation as she had with a spotless one. the romance does not wear any better because the marriage service is omitted. a lover is no less liable to be commonplace than a husband when the laundress knocks the buttons off his shirts. yes, mamie was infatuated by field; she had not sinned with a cool head simply to procure a guide up parnassus. but she had hoped to pick a few laurels there all the same. she found herself in a little flat in the rue tronchet. they had few visitors, and those who did come were men who talked a language that she did not understand, but who looked things that she understood only too well. the remorse and humiliation that she felt was not leavened by any consciousness of advancing in her art. field rather pooh-poohed her art, as the months went by after the decree _nisi_ was pronounced. he still discussed his work with her--perhaps less as if she had been a sybil, but still with interest in her ideas. her own work, however, bored him now. he had no intention of being cold, but the subject seemed puerile to his mind. if she did write a play that was produced one day, or if she didn't, what earthly consequence was it? she would never write a great one; and these panting aspirations which begot such mediocre results savoured to him of a storm in a teacup--of a furnace lit to boil the kettle. he was rather sorry that he had run away with her, but he did not regret it particularly. of course he would marry her as soon as he could--he owed her that; and, since he was not such a blackguard as to contemplate deserting her by-and-by, he might just as well marry her as not. the whole affair had been a folly certainly. he was not rich, and he was extravagant; he would have done better to remain as he was. still many men envied him. he trusted fervently she would not have children, though! it didn't seem likely; but if she ever did, the error would be doubled. he did not want a son who had cause to be ashamed of his mother when he grew up. it was curious that she did not refer more often to his legalising their union. her position pained her, he could see, and made her very frequently a dull companion. that was the worst of these things! one paid for the step dearly enough to expect lively society in return, and yet, if one complained of mournfulness, one would be a brute. he would write a drama some time or other to show that it was really the man who was deserving of sympathy in such an alliance. it would be very original, as he would treat it. the lover should explain his situation to another woman whom he had learnt to love since, and--well, he didn't see how it should end:--with the dilemma repeated? and it didn't matter, after all, for nobody would have the courage to produce it! he made these reflections in his study. in the salon--furnished in accordance with the tastes of the lady who had sub-let the flat to them for six months--mamie stood staring down at the street. it was four o'clock, and, saving for half an hour at luncheon, she had not seen him since ten. for distraction she could make her choice among some tauchnitz novels, her music, and a walk. excepting that the room was tawdry and ill-ventilated, and that she had lost her reputation, it was not unlike her life in south kensington. in her pocket was a letter from her father--the most difficult letter that it had ever fallen to dick cheriton's lot to compose. theoretically he thought social prejudices absurd--as became an artist to whom god had given his soul--and he had often insisted on their ineptitude. in the case of his own daughter, however, he would have preferred to see them treated with respect. there was a likeness to lucas field here. field also dwelt on the hill-top, but he wanted his son, if he ever had one, to boast a stainless mother. cheriton had not indited curses, like the fathers in melodrama, and the people who have "found religion"; only parents in melodrama, and some "christians" who go to church twice every sunday, are infamous enough to curse their children; he had told her that if she found herself forsaken, she was to cable for her passage-money back to duluth. but that he was ashamed and broken by what she had done, he had not attempted to conceal; and as she stood there, gazing down on the rue tronchet, mamie was recalling the confession to which this was an answer. phrases that she had used came back to her:--"i have done my best, but my love was too strong for me"; "wicked as it may be to say it, i know that, even in my guilt, i shall always be happy. i met the right man too late, but i am so young--i could not suffer all my life without him. forgive me if you can." had she--it was a horrible thought--had she been mistaken? had she blundered more terribly than when she married? for, unless her prophecies of joy to the brim were fulfilled--unless her measure of thanksgiving overflowed--the blunder _was_ more terrible, infinitely more terrible: she was a gambler who had staked her soul, in her conviction of success. the question was one that she had asked herself many times before, without daring to hear the answer; but that the answer was in her heart, though she shrank from acknowledging it, might be seen in her expression, in her every pose; it might be seen now, as she drooped by the window. she sighed, and sat down, and shivered. yes, she knew it--she had thrown away the substance for the shadow; she could deceive herself no longer. lucas field was not so poetical a personality as she had imagined; guilt had no glamour; her devotion had been a flash in the pan--a madness that had burned itself out. she had no right to blame her lover for that; only, the prospect of marriage with him filled her with no elation; it inspired misgiving rather. if she had made a blunder, would it improve matters to perpetuate it? he was considerate to her, he spared her all the ignominy that was possible; but instinctively she was aware that, if they parted, he would never miss her as her husband had done. in _his_ life she would never make a hole! she guessed the depth of heriot's love better now that she had obtained a smaller one as plummet. between the manner of the man who was not particularly sorry to have run away with her, and his whose pride she had been, the difference was tremendous to a woman whose position was calculated to develop her natural sensitiveness to the point of a disease. should she marry lucas or not? hitherto she had merely avoided the query; now she trembled before it. expedience said, "yes"; something within her said, "no." the decree would be made absolute in two months' time. what was to become of her if they separated? to duluth she could never go, to be pointed at and despised! she sighed again. "bored, dear?" asked field, in the doorway. "i was thinking." "that was obvious. not of your--er--work?" "no, not of my--'er--work.'" he pulled his moustache with some embarrassment. "i didn't mean anything derogatory to it." "oh, i know," she said wearily; "don't--it doesn't matter. you can't think much less of it than i am beginning to do myself. you can't take much less interest in it." "you are unjust," said field. "i am moped. take me out. take me out of myself if you can, but take me out of doors at any rate! i am yearning to be in a crowd." "we might go to a theatre to-night," he said; "would you like to?" "it doesn't amuse me very much; i don't understand what they say. still it would be something. but i want to go out now, for a walk. i don't like walking here alone; can't you come with me?" "i'm afraid i can't. you forget i promised an interview to that paper this afternoon. i expect the fellow here any moment." "you promised it?" she exclaimed, with surprise. "why, i thought you said that the paper was a 'rag' and that you wouldn't dream of consenting?" "after all, one must be courteous; i changed my mind. there's some talk of translating _a clever man's son_ into french. an interview just now would be good policy." "you are going to be adapted? _a clever man's son_?" "translated," he said. "i may adapt. i _am_--translated." she smiled, but perceived almost at the same instant that she had not been intended to do so and that he had said it seriously. "i make a very good interview," he continued, lighting a cigarette; "i daresay you've noticed it. i never count an epigram or two wasted, though they do go into another chap's copy. that's where many men make a mistake; or very likely they can't invent the epigrams. anyhow, they don't! the average interview is as dull as the average play. people think it's the journalists' fault, but it isn't. it's the fault of the deadly dull dogs who've got nothing to tell them. i ought to have gone a good deal further than i have: i've the two essential qualities for success--i'm an artist and a showman." "don't!" she murmured; "don't!" he laughed gaily. "i'm perfectly frank; i admit the necessities of life--i've told you so before. my mind never works so rapidly as it does in prospect of a good advertisement. there the fellow is, i expect!" he added, as the bell rang. "the study is quite in disorder for him, and there are a bunch of parma violets and a flask of maraschino on the desk. i'm going to remark that maraschino and the scent of violets are indispensable to me when i work. he won't believe it, unless he is very young, but he'll be immeasurably obliged; that sort of thing looks well in an interview. violets and maraschino are a graceful combination, i think." she did not reply; she sat pale and chagrined. he was renowned enough, and more than talented enough to dispense with these stage-tricks in the library. she knew it, and _he_ knew it, but he could not help them. awhile ago they had caused her the cruellest pain; now she was more contemptuous than anything else, although she was still galled that he should display his foibles so candidly. "i am quite frank," he had said. she found such "frankness" a milestone on the road that she had travelled. "my dear child," said field, "among the illusions of a man's youth is the belief that, if he goes through life doing his humble best in an unobtrusive way, the press will say what a jolly fine fellow he is, and hold him up as a pattern to all the braggarts and poseurs who are blowing their own trumpets, and scraping on their own fiddles. among the things he learns as he grows older is the fact that, if he does his best in an unobtrusive way, the press will say nothing about him at all. the fiddle and the trumpet are essential; but it is possible to play them with a certain amount of refinement. it is even possible--though a clever man cannot dispense with the fiddle and the trumpet--for the fiddle and the trumpet to be played so dexterously that he may dispense with cleverness. i do not go to such lengths myself----" "you have no need to do so," she said coldly. "i have no need to do so--thank you. but i can quite conceive that, say, violets and maraschino, worked for all they were worth, might alone make a man famous. a mouse liberated a lion, and things smaller than a mouse have created one before now. the violet in the hedgerow 'bloomed unseen,'--or 'died unknown,' was it? it did something modest and unsuccessful, i know. the violet assiduously paragraphed and paraded might lead to fortune." "i would rather be obscure and do honest, conscientious work," answered mamie, "than write rubbish, and finesse myself into popularity." "it is much easier," he said tranquilly. "to be obscure is the one thing that _is_ easy still. you don't mind my saying that i hate the adjectives you used, though, do you? the words 'honest' and 'conscientious,' applied to literature, dearest, make me shudder. i am always afraid that 'wholesome' is coming in the next sentence." "are you going to say so to your interviewer?" "the remark isn't brilliant. it was sincere, and to be sincere and brilliant at the same time is a little difficult.... i've been both, though, in the scene i've just done; you must read it, or rather i'll read it to you. you'll be pleased with it. as soon as the piece is finished i must write to erskine. it will suit the pall mall down to the ground, and i should like it done there, only----" "only what?" field hesitated. "i meant it for erskine from the start. he saw the scenario, and the part fits him like a glove." "but what were you going to say?" "well, i fancy he has some idea that a piece of mine just now---- you understand, with the case so fresh in people's minds!... erskine's a fool. what on earth does the public care? of course he'll do it when he reads the part he's got! only i know he's doubting whether my name'd be a judicious card to play yet awhile." there was a pause, in which her heart contracted painfully. "i see," she rejoined, in a low voice. he fidgeted before the mirror, and glanced at his watch. "that fellow must be getting impatient." "you had better go in to him," she said. "well, we'll go to the vaudeville, or somewhere to-night, mamie--that's arranged?" "yes, to the vaudeville, or somewhere," she assented, with another sigh. she went back to the window, and stared at the rue tronchet with wet eyes. chapter x some weeks afterwards field went to england. he did not take mamie with him, for he intended to remain only a few days, nor had she been at all desirous of accompanying him. she had begun, indeed, to see that she did not know what she did desire. her life in paris oppressed her; the notion of duluth was horrible; and the thought of living with lucas in london, where she might meet an acquaintance of heriot's at any turn, was repugnant in an almost equal degree. field was unexpectedly detained in london. the business that had been responsible for his journey constantly evaded completion, and after he had been gone about a month a letter came, in which he mentioned incidentally that he had a touch of influenza. after this letter a fortnight went by without her hearing from him; and, rendered anxious at last, she wrote to inquire if his silence was attributable to his indisposition--if the latter was of a serious nature. her mind did not instantaneously grasp the significance of the telegram that she tore open a few hours later. it ran: "my nephew dangerously ill. if you desire to see him, better come.--porteous." she stood gazing at it. who had telegraphed? who---- then she understood that it was lucas who was meant. lucas was "dangerously ill"! she must go to him. she must go at once! she was so staggered by the suddenness of the intelligence that she was momentarily incapable of recollecting when the trains left, or how she should act in order to ascertain. all she realised was that this was paris, and lucas lay "dangerously ill" in london, and that she had to reach him. her head swam, and the little french that she knew seemed to desert her; the undertaking looked enormous--beset with difficulties that were almost insuperable. the stupidity of the _bonne_, for whom she pealed the bell, served to sharpen her faculties a trifle, but she made her preparations as in a dream. when she found herself in the train, it appeared to her unreal that she could be there. the interval had left no salient impressions on her brain, nothing but a confused sense of delay. it was only now that she felt able to reflect. the telegram was crumpled in her pocket, and she took it out and re-read it agitatedly. how did this relative come to be at the hotel? lucas had scarcely spoken of his relations. "if you desire to see him"! the import of those words was frightful--he could not be expected to recover. her stupefaction rolled away, and was succeeded by a fever of suspense. the restriction of the compartment was maddening, and she looked at her watch a dozen times, only to find that not ten minutes had passed since she consulted it last. it seemed to her that she had been travelling for at least two days, when she stood outside a bedroom in a little hotel off bond street and tapped at the door with her heart in her throat. the door was opened by a woman whose dress proclaimed her to be an institution nurse. field slept, and mamie sank into a chair, and waited for his wakening. "how is he?" she asked in a low tone. the nurse shook her head. "he's not doing as well as we could wish, ma'am." "is mr. porteous here?" "_mrs._ porteous. she'll be coming presently. she lives close by." so it was a woman who had telegraphed! somehow she had assumed unquestioningly that it was a man. "if you desire to see him----" ah, yes, she might have known it! an aunt, who would be frigid and contemptuous, of course. well, she deserved that, she would have no right to complain; nor was it to be expected that lucas's family should show her much consideration, though she could not perceive that she had done them any injury. two hours passed before she had an interview with the lady. mamie was in the room that she had engaged in the meanwhile. she had bathed her face, and was making ready to return to the sick-room, when she was told that mrs. porteous was inquiring for her. "won't you come in?" she asked. "our voices won't disturb him here." mrs. porteous entered gingerly. she was a massive woman, of middle age, fashionably dressed. her expression suggested no grief, only a vague fear of contamination. she had telegraphed to paris because she felt that it was her duty to do so; but she had not telegraphed until it was almost certain that the patient would not rally sufficiently to make a will. "you are--er--mrs. heriot?" she said, regarding her curiously. "the doctor thought that mr. field's condition ought to be made known to you; so i wired." "thank you; it was very kind." "the doctor advised it," said mrs. porteous again, significantly. "is he--is there no hope?" "we fear not; my nephew is sinking fast--it's as well you should understand it. if you think it necessary to remain---- i see you have taken a room? as--as 'mrs. field,' i presume?" "i should have been 'mrs. field,' if lucas----" his aunt shivered. "there are things we need not discuss. of course i'm aware that you are living under my nephew's name. i was about to say that if you think it necessary to remain till the end, i have no opposition to offer; but the end is very near now. my telegram must have prepared you? i should not have wired unless----" "i understood," answered mamie, "yes. i am glad that your nephew had a relative near him, though your name was quite strange to me. he never mentioned it." "really! lucas called to see us at once. our house is in the neighbourhood." "he wrote me," said mamie, "that he had a touch of influenza. it seems extraordinary that influenza should prove so serious? he was strong, he was in good health----" the other's air implied that she did not find it necessary to discuss this either. "people die of influenza, or the results of it, every year," she said. "the doctor will give you any information you may desire, no doubt. you must excuse me--i may be wanted." while field lingered she never left his side, after mamie's arrival. men committed preposterous actions on their death-beds, and though he was not expected to recover consciousness, there was the possibility that he might do so. if an opportunity occurred, his mistress would doubtless produce a solicitor and a provision for herself with the rapidity of a conjuring trick. as it was, mrs. porteous had small misgivings but what he would die intestate. there might not be much, but at any rate, what he had should not swell the coffers of guilty wives! events proved that her summons had not been precipitate, however. field spoke at the last a few coherent words, and took mamie's hand. but that was all. then he never spoke any more. even as she stood gazing at the unfamiliar face on the pillow, the swiftness of the catastrophe made it difficult for the girl to realise that all was over. the calamity had fallen on her like a thunderbolt--it seemed strange, inexplicable, untrue. the last time but one that he had talked to her he had been full of vigour, packing a portmanteau, humming a tune, alluding to fees, some details of the theatre, the prospect of a smooth crossing. and now he was dead. there had been little or no transition; he was well--he was dead! the curtain had tumbled in the middle of the play--and it would never go up any more. it was not till after the funeral that she was capable of meditating on the change that lucas field's death had wrought in her life. she did not ask herself whether he had left her anything, or not. the idea that he might have done so never occurred to her, nor would she have felt that she could accept his bequest if he had made one. she perceived that she had nobody to turn to but her father, and to him she cabled. cheriton replied by two questions: what was field's will? and would she like to return to duluth? to the second she made a definite answer. "impossible; pray don't ask me." and then there was an interval of correspondence. while mrs. porteous rejoiced to find that her confidence was justified and that her nephew had died intestate, mamie was contemplating the choice of swallowing her repugnance to going back to america, or of living with mrs. baines. cheriton had written to them both, and that one course or the other should be adopted he was insistent. mamie need not live in lavender street; mrs. baines might make her home in another neighbourhood, where they would be strangers. but that the girl should remain alone in england was out of the question. which line of conduct did she prefer? she could not decide immediately. both proposals distressed her. on the whole, perhaps, the lesser evil was to resign herself to her aunt lydia if, as her father declared, her aunt was willing to receive her. mrs. baines, at any rate, was but one, while in duluth half the population would be acquainted with her story. but _was_ her aunt lydia willing?--was she expected to write to her and inquire? she was not entitled to possess dignity, of course; but it was not easy to eat dust because the right to self-respect was forfeited. she had removed to a lodging in bernard street, bloomsbury, and in the fusty sitting-room she sat all day, lonely and miserable, reviewing the blunder of her life. she neither wrote nor read--her writing was an idea she hated now; she merely thought--wishing she could recall the past, wondering how she could bear the future. one afternoon when she sat there, pale and heavy-eyed, the maid-of-all-work announced a visitor, and mrs. baines came in. mamie rose nervously, and the other advanced. she had rehearsed an interview which should be a compromise between the instructions that had been given her by her brother, and the attitude of righteous rebuke that she felt to be a permissible luxury, but the forlornness of the figure before her drove her opening sentence from her head. all she could utter was the girl's name; and then there was a pause in which they looked at each other. "it is kind of you to come," mamie murmured. "i hope you're well?" said mrs. baines. "not very. i----won't you sit down?" "i never thought i should see you like this, mamie!" said the widow half involuntarily, shaking her head. the girl made no answer in words. she caught her breath, and stood passive. if the lash fell she would suffer silently. "we always see sin punished, though." she believed we always did; she retained such startling optimism. "it's not for me to reproach you." "thank you. i'm not too happy, aunt lydia." "i daresay, my dear. i haven't come to make it worse for you." she scrutinised her again. she would have been horrified to hear the suggestion, but her niece's presence was not without a guilty fascination, a pleasurable excitement, to her as she remembered that here was one who had broken the seventh commandment. she was sitting opposite a girl who had lived in paris with a lover; and she was sitting opposite her in circumstances which redounded to her own credit! "i have heard from your father," she went on; "i suppose you know?" "yes," said mamie; "he has written me." "and do you wish to make your home with me again? i'm quite ready to take you if you like." "i could never live in lavender street any more, aunt lydia. you must understand that--that it would be awful to me." "your father hinted at my moving. it will be a great trouble, but i shan't shirk my duty, dear mamie. if it will make your burden any easier to bear, we will live together somewhere else. i say, if i can make your burden any easier for you, i will live somewhere else." "i am not ungrateful. i.... yes, if you will have me, i should like to come to you." mrs. baines sighed, and smoothed her skirt tremulously. "to balham?" she inquired. "you are moving to balham?" "i was thinking about it. i was over there the other day to get some stuff for a bodice. it's nice and healthy, and the shopping is cheap." "it's all the same to me where we go," said mamie, "so long as the people don't know me." "i hear you were living with--with _him_ in paris? operas, and drives, and all manner of things to soothe your conscience he gave you, no doubt?" said mrs. baines, in an awestruck invitation to communicativeness. "after that terrible life in paris, balham will seem quiet to you, i daresay; but perhaps you won't mind that?' "no place can be too quiet for me. the quieter it is, the better i shall like it." "that's as it should be! though, i suppose, with _him_ you were out among gaieties every night?" she waited for a few particulars again. as none were forthcoming: "then i'll try to let the house, and we'll go over together and look at some in balham as soon as you like, my dear," she continued. "your father will see that i'm not put to any expense. in the meantime you'll stay where you are, eh? you know--you know i saw mr. heriot after you'd gone, don't you?" "no," stammered the girl, lifting eager eyes. "you went to him?" "the very next day, my dear, so it seemed! i thought i'd drop in and have a cup of tea with you, not having seen you for so long; and through missing a train, and having such a time to wait at the station, i was an hour and more late when i got to kensington. he was at home. of course i had no idea there was anything wrong; i shall never forget it--never! you might have knocked me down with a feather when i heard you'd gone." "what," muttered mamie, "what did he say?" "it was like this. i said to him, 'dear mamie's away, the servant tells me?' for naturally i thought you were visiting friends; 'as likely as not, she's with his family,' i thought to myself. 'oh, yes,' he said, 'you must prepare yourself for a shock, mrs. baines--my wife has left me.' 'left you?' i said. 'yes,' said he, so cool that it turned me a mask of blood to hear him, 'she's gone away with a lover.' 'mr. heriot!' i exclaimed--'_mister_ heriot!' 'she left a note,' he said, 'so it's quite true. do you think we need talk about it much? i don't know that a worthless woman is any loss,' he said." "he said that?" "those were his very words, my dear. and that cool! i stared at him. i'd no mind to make excuses for you, gawd knows; but, for all that, one's own flesh and blood wasn't going to be talked about like niggers in _my_ hearing. when i got my wits together, i said, 'it seems to me i'd be sorrier for you, mr. heriot, if you took it different.' 'oh,' said he in his superior way, 'would you? we needn't discuss my feelings, madam. perhaps you'll stay and dine?' i was so angry that i couldn't be civil to him. 'i thank you,' i said, 'i will not stay and dine. and i take the opportunity, mr. heriot, of telling you you're a brute!' with that i came away; but there was much more in between that i've forgotten. about the divorce it was. he said he had 'a duty to himself,' and that the man could marry you when you were divorced; which i suppose he _would_ have done if he had lived? though whether your sin would have been any less, my dear, if an archbishop had performed the ceremony is a question that i couldn't undertake to decide. you must begin your life afresh, now that it's all 'absolute'--which i learn is the proper term--and you'll never be in a newspaper any more. pray to heaven for aid, and take heart of grace! and if it will relieve you to speak sometimes of those sinful months with--with the other one in paris, why, you shall talk about them to me, my dear, and i won't reproach you." mamie was no longer listening. an emotion that she did not seek to define was roused in her as she wondered if heriot could indeed have taken the blow so stoically as her aunt declared. she scarcely knew whether she wished to put faith in his demeanour or not, but the subject was one that filled her thoughts long after mrs. baines's departure. it was one to which she constantly recurred. with less delay than might have been anticipated, the widow found a house in balham to fulfil her requirements, and the removal was effected several months before no. , lavender street was sub-let. the houses of this class differ from one another but slightly. excepting that the one in balham was numbered " ," and that the street was called "rosalie road," mamie could have found it easy to believe that she was re-installed in wandsworth. it seemed to her sometimes as if the van that had removed the furniture had also brought the ground-floor parlour, with the miniature bay window overlooking the shrubs and the plot of mould. the back yard with the clothes prop, and the neighbours' yards with the continuous clatter, they too might have been transferred from lavender street; and so abiding was the clatter that even if she felt sleepy at nine o'clock, it was useless to go to bed before eleven. in view of this unintermittent necessity for back yards, she wondered how the inmates of more expensive houses for which back yards were not provided managed to support the deficiency. the women that she viewed, from the bedroom, among the clothes lines, or across the plot of mould, as they went forth with string bags, might have been the lavender street tenants. and were they not the lavender street children, these who on week-days swung, unkempt, on the little creaking gates along the road, and on sundays walked abroad in colours so grotesquely unsuited to them? such houses are, for the most part, happily, the crown of lives too limited to realise their limitations--too unsuccessful to be aware that they have failed. to rosalie road, balham, with her aunt lydia for companion, the divorced woman at the age of twenty-six retired to remember that she had once hoped to be an artist, and had had the opportunity of being happy. to-day she hoped for nothing. there was no scope for hope. if she could have awakened to find herself famous, her existence would have been coloured a little--though she knew that fame could not satisfy her now as it would once have done--but the ability to labour for distinction was gone. she was apathetic, she had no interest in anything. when six months had passed, she regarded death as the only event to which she could still look forward; when she had been here a year, a glimmer of relief entered into her depression--the doctor who had attended her, and sounded her lungs, told her that she "must take care of herself." sometimes a neighbour looked in, and spoke of dilapidations and the indifference of the landlord; of the reductions at a high road linendraper's, and the whooping-cough. sometimes a curate called to sell tickets for a concert more elementary than his sermons. in the afternoon she walked to tooting bec and stared at the bushes; in the evening she betook herself to the "circulating library," where _lady audley's secret_ and _the wide, wide world_ were displayed and the proprietor said he hadn't heard of meredith--"perhaps she had made a mistake in the name?" god help her! she was guilty and she had left a husband desolate; but the music that she had dreamed of was the opera on wagner nights; the books that she had expected were copies containing signatures that were the envy of the autograph-collector; the circle that had been her aim was the world of literature and art. she lived at balham; she saw the curate, and she heard about the dilapidations in the neighbour's roof. one year merged into another; and if she lived for forty more, the neighbour and the curate would be her all. chapter xi when five years had passed after the divorce, the liberal party came into power again, and george heriot, q.c., m.p., was appointed solicitor-general. his work and ambitions had not sufficed to mend the gap in his life; but it had been in work and ambition that he endeavoured to find assuagement of the wound. perhaps eagerness had never been so keen in him after his wife went as while he was contesting the borough that he represented now; perhaps he had never realised the inadequacy of success so fully as he did to-day when one of the richest prizes of his profession was obtained. conscious that the anticipated flavour was lacking, the steps to which he might look forward still lost much of their allurement. were he promoted to the post of attorney-general, and raised to the bench, he foresaw that it would elate him no more than it elated him now, as sir george heriot, and a very wealthy man, to recall the period when, as a struggling junior, he had sat up half the night to earn a guinea. the five years had left their mark upon him; the hours of misery which no one suspected had left their mark upon him. the lines about his eyes and mouth had deepened; his hair was greyer, his figure less erect. men who, in their turn, sat up half the night to earn a guinea, envied him, cited his career as an example of brilliant luck--the success of others is always "luck"--and, though they assumed that a fellow was "generally cut up a bit when his wife went wrong," found it difficult to conceive that sir george had permitted domestic trouble to alloy his triumphs to any great extent. nobody imagined that there were still nights when he suffered scarcely less acutely than on the one when he returned to discover that mamie had gone; nobody guessed that there were evenings when his loneliness was almost unbearable to the dry, self-contained man--that moments came when he took from a drawer the likeness that had once stood on his desk and yearned over it in despair. that was his secret; pride forbade that he should share it with another. he contemned himself that he did suffer still. a worthless woman should not be mourned. out of his life should be out of his memory; such weakness shamed him! in august, a week or so after the vacation began, he went to stay at sandhills. his object in going to sandhills was not wholly to see his brother, and still less was it to see his sister-in-law. he was solitary, he was wretched, and he was only forty-seven years of age. he had been questioning for some time whether the wisest thing he could do would not be to marry again; he sought no resumption of rapture, but he wanted a home. an estimable wife, perhaps a son, would supply new interests; and the vague question that had entered his mind had latterly been emphasised by his introduction to miss pierways, who, he was aware, was now the guest of lady heriot. miss pierways was the daughter of a lady who had been the hon. mrs. pierways, and whose straitened circumstances had debarred her from the suite in hampton court that she might otherwise have had at the period of her husband's death. the widow and the girl had retired to obscure lodgings; the only break in the monotony of the latter's existence being an occasional visit to some connections, or friends, at whose places it was hoped she might form a desirable alliance. the most stringent economies had to be practised in order to procure passable frocks for these visits, but the opportunities had led to no result, though she had beauty. and then an extraordinary event occurred. when the girl was twenty-eight, the widow who, for once, had reluctantly accepted an invitation to accompany her, received an offer of marriage herself, and became the wife of an american who was known to be several times over a millionaire. for one door that had been ajar to the daughter of the hon. mrs. pierways, with nothing but her birth and her appearance to recommend her, a hundred doors flew open to the step-daughter of henry van buren; and it was shortly after the startling metamorphosis in the fortunes of the pair that heriot had first met them. the dowry that agnes pierways might bring to her husband weighed with him very little, for he was in a position to disregard such considerations. but miss pierways' personality appeared to him suggestive of all the qualifications that he sought in the lady whom he should marry. without her manner being impulsive or girlish, she was sufficiently young to be attractive. she was handsome, and in a slightly statuesque fashion that bore promise of the serenity which he told himself was now his aim. certainly if he did re-marry--and he was contemplating the step very seriously--it would be difficult to secure a partner to fulfil his requirements more admirably than miss pierways. whether he fulfilled hers, he could ascertain when he had fully made up his mind. it was with the intention of making up his mind, in proximity to the lady, that he had gone to sandhills; and one evening, when he was alone in the smoking-room with his brother, the latter blundered curiously enough on to the bull's-eye of his meditations. "i wonder," said sir francis, "that you've never thought of re-marrying, george?" "my experience of matrimony was not fortunate," answered heriot, smoking slowly, but with inward perturbation. "your experience of matrimony was a colossal folly. all things considered, the consequences might easily have been a good deal worse." "i don't follow you." "between ourselves, the end never seemed to me so regrettable as you think it." "my wife left me." "and you divorced her! and you have no children." "if i had had children," said heriot musingly, "it is a fact that the consequences would have been worse." "but in any case," said the baronet, "it was a huge mistake. really one may be frank, in the circumstances! you married madly. the probability is that if your wife had been--if you were living together still, you would be a miserable man to-day. it was a very lamentable affair, of course, when it happened, but regarding it coolly--in looking back on it--don't you fancy that perhaps things are just as well as they are?" "i was very fond of my wife," replied heriot, engrossed by his cigar. "to an extent," said sir francis indulgently, "no doubt you had an affection for her. but, my dear fellow, what companionship had you? was she a companion?" "i don't know." "was she interested in your career? could she understand your ways of thought? was she used to your world? one doesn't ask a great deal of women, but had you any single thing in common?" "i don't know," said heriot again. sir francis shrugged his shoulders. "take my word for it that, with such a girl as you married, your divorce wasn't an unmixed evil. it wasn't the release one would have chosen, but at least it was better for you than being tied to her for life. damn it, george! what's the use of blinking the matter now? she was absolutely unsuited to you in every way; you must admit it!" "i suppose she was. at the same time i was happy with her." "how long would the infatuation have lasted?" "it lasted more than three years." "would it have lasted another five?" "speaking honestly, i believe it would." "though you had nothing in common?" "i don't explain," said heriot. "i tell you, i was happy with her, that's all. viewing it dispassionately, i suppose she _was_ unsuited to me--i don't know that we did have anything in common; i don't see any justification for the fool's paradise i lived in. but for all that, if i married again, i should never care for the woman as--as i cared for _her_. in fact, i should merely marry to----" he was about to say "to try to forget her"--"to make a home for myself," he said, instead. "have you considered such a step?" asked sir francis. "sometimes, yes." "the best thing you could do--a very proper thing for you to do.... anybody in particular?" "it's rather premature----" "you're not in chambers, old fellow!" "what do you think of miss pierways?" inquired heriot after a scarcely perceptible pause. "a very excellent choice! i should congratulate you heartily. we had not noticed the---- and catherine is very acute in these matters----" "there has been nothing to notice; probably she would refuse me point-blank. but in the event of my determining to marry again, i've wondered whether miss pierways wouldn't be the lady i proposed to." "i don't think you could do better." "really? you don't think i'm too old for her?" "on my honour! 'too old for her'? not a bit, a very sensible marriage! i'm not surprised that you should be attracted by her." "'attracted by her,'" said heriot, "suggests rather more than the actual facts. i appreciate her qualities, but i can't say i'm sensible of any attachment. i'm sorry that i'm not. i appreciate her so fully that i am anxious to be drawn towards her a little more. i'm somewhat past the age for ardent devotion, but i couldn't take a wife as i might buy a horse. of course, i've not been very much in her society. er--down here, i daresay, when i come to know her better---- have you met van buren?" "in town, before he sailed. he is in new york, you know. i like them all. we were very pleased to have the mother and the girl come to us.... well, make your hay while the sun shines!" "it isn't shining," said heriot; "i'm just looking east, waiting for it to rise. but i'm glad to have talked to you; as soon as the first ray comes i think i'll take your advice. i _ought_ to marry, francis; i know you're right." chapter xii the more he reflected, the more he was convinced of it; in marriage lay his chance of contentment. and during the ensuing fortnight his approval of miss pierways deepened. the house would not fill until the following month, and the smallness of the party there at present was favourable to the development of acquaintance. excepting that she was a trifle cold, there was really no scope for adverse criticism upon miss pierways. she was unusually well read, took an intelligent interest in matters on which women of her age were rarely informed, and was accomplished to the extent that she played the piano after dinner with brilliant execution and admirable hands and wrists. her coldness, theoretically, was no drawback to him, and heriot was a little puzzled by his own attitude. her air was neither so formal as to intimate that his advances would be unwelcome, nor so self-conscious as to repel him by the warmth of its encouragement; yet, in spite of his admiration, the idea of proposing to her dismayed him when he forced himself to approach the brink. his vacillation was especially irritating since he had learned that the ladies were at the point of joining van buren in new york. the opportunity of which he was failing to take advantage would speedily be past, and he dreaded that if he suffered it to escape him, he would recall the matter with regret. he perceived as well, however, that if he were precipitate, he might regret that too, and he was sorry that they were not remaining in europe longer. one evening, when their departure was being discussed, the mother expressed surprise that he had never visited america, though she had had no curiosity about it, herself, until she married an american; and in answer heriot declared that he had frequently thought of "running across during the long vacation." "if you ever do," she said, "i hope you will choose a year when we are there." "to tell you the truth, i was thinking of it this year." "we may see you in new york, sir george?" said miss pierways. "really? how strange that will seem! i've been eager to go to new york all my life; but now that i'm going, i'm rather afraid. the idea of a great city where i haven't any friends----" "but you will have many friends, agnes." "by-and-by," answered miss pierways. "yes, i suppose so. but it's very fatiguing _making_ friends, don't you think so? and i tremble at the voyage." "how delightful it would be," remarked mrs. van buren, "if we were going by the same steamer, sir george!" heriot laughed. "it would be very delightful to me to make the voyage in your company. but i might bore you frightfully; a week at sea must be a severe test. i should be afraid of being found out." "we are promised other passengers," observed miss pierways, looking down with a faint smile. her archness was a shade stiff, but her neck was one of her chief attractions. "why don't you go, george?" said lady heriot cheerfully. "you'd much better go by mrs. van buren's boat than any other; and you've been talking of making a trip to america 'next year' ever since i've known you!" this amiable fiction was succeeded by fresh protestations from mrs. van buren that no arrangement could be more charming, and heriot, half against his will, half with pleasure, found himself agreeing to telegraph in the morning to inquire if he could obtain a berth. he hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad when he had done so. that the step would result in an engagement might be predicted with a tolerable degree of certainty, and he would have preferred to arrive at an understanding with himself under conditions which savoured less of coercion. since a state-room proved to be vacant, however, he could do no less now than engage it; and everybody appeared so much pleased, and miss pierways was so very gracious, that the misgivings that disturbed him looked momentarily more unreasonable than ever. the night before he sailed, in their customary chat over whisky and cigars, sir francis said to him: "'ask, and it shall be given unto you'!" "i'm inclined to think you're right," said his brother. "i suppose it will end in it.... she's a trifle like a well-bred machine--doesn't it strike you so?--warranted never to get out of order!" the other's look was significant, and heriot added, "very desirable in a wife, of course! only somehow----" "'only somehow' you're eccentric, george--you always were!" "it's not my reputation," said heriot drily; "i believe that i'm considered particularly practical." "reputations," retorted the baronet, attempting an epigram, as he sometimes did in the course of his second whisky-and-potash, and failing signally in the endeavour, "are like tombstones--generally false." he realised the reality of tombstones, and became controversial. "_i've_ known you from a boy, and i say you were always eccentric. it was nothing but your eccentricity that you had to thank before. here's a nice girl, a girl who will certainly have a good settlement, a girl who's undeniably handsome, ready to say 'yes' at the asking, and you grumble--i'm hanged if you don't grumble!--because you see she is to be depended on. what the devil do you want?" "i want to be fond of her," answered heriot. "i admit all you've said of her; i want to like her more." "so you ought to; but what does it matter if you don't? all women are alike to the men who've married them after a year or two. she'll make an admirable mother, and that's the main thing, i suppose?" was it? heriot recalled the criticism during his first day on board. neither of the ladies was visible until queenstown was reached, and he paced the deck, pursuing his reflections by the aid of tobacco. she would "make an admirable mother, and that was the main thing"! of the second half of the opinion he was not so sure. to marry a woman simply because one believed she would shine in a maternal capacity was somewhat too altruistic, he thought. however, he was fully aware that miss pierways had other recommendations. she appeared with her mother at the head of the companion-way while he was wishing that he hadn't come, and he found their chairs for them, and arranged their rugs, and subsequently gave their letters to the steward to be posted. after leaving queenstown, mrs. van buren's sufferings increased, and the girl, who, saving for a brief interval, was well and cheerful, was practically in his charge. it was heriot who accompanied her from the saloon after breakfast, and strolled up and down with her till she was tired. when the chair and the rug--the salient features of a voyage are the woman, the chair, and the rug--were satisfactorily arranged, it was he who sat beside her, talking. flying visits she made below, while her mother kept her cabin; but for the most part she was on deck--or in the saloon, or in the reading-room--and for the most part heriot was the person to whom she looked for conversation. if he had been a decade or two younger, he would probably have proposed to her long before they sighted sandy hook, and it surprised him that he did not succumb to the situation as it was. a woman is nowhere so dangerous, and nowhere is a man so susceptible, as at sea. the interminable days demand flirtation, if one is not to perish of boredom. moonlight and water are notoriously potent, even when viewed for only half an hour; and at sea, the man and the girl look at the moonlight on the water together regularly every evening. and it is very becoming to the girl. miss pierways' face was always a disappointment to heriot at breakfast. the remembrance of its factitious softness the previous night made its hardness in the sunshine look harder. he wondered if it was the remembrance of its hardness at breakfast that kept him from proposing to her when they loitered in the moonlight. he was certainly doing his best to fall in love with her, and everything conspired to assist him; but the days went on, and the momentous question remained unuttered. "we shall soon be there," she said one evening as they strolled about the deck after dinner. "i'm beginning to be keen. have you noticed how everybody is saying, 'new york' now? at first no one alluded to it--we mightn't have been due for a year--and since yesterday nobody's talking of anything else!" "nearly everyone i've spoken to seems to have made the trip half a dozen times," said heriot. "i feel dreadfully untravelled in the smoking-room. when are you going to niagara? niagara is one of the things i'm determined not to miss." "i was talking to some girls who have lived in new york all their lives--when they weren't in europe--and they haven't been there yet. they told me they had been to the panorama in westminster!" "i have met a londoner who had never been to the temple." "no? how perfectly appalling!" she exclaimed, none the less fervently because she hadn't been to it herself. "oh yes, i know i shall adore niagara! i want to see a great deal of america while i'm there." "i wish _i_ had time to see more; i should like to go to california." "i wouldn't see california for any consideration upon earth!" she declared. "california, to me, is bret harte--i should be so afraid of being disillusioned. when we went to ireland once, do you know, sir george, it was a most painful shock to me! my ideas of ireland were founded on dion boucicault's plays--i expected to see all the peasants in fascinating costumes, with their hair down their backs, just as one sees them on the stage. the reality was terrible. i shudder when i recall the disappointment." "i sympathise." "of course you're laughing at me! i shall have my revenge, if you don't like new york. but, i don't know--i may feel guilty. you mustn't blame us if you don't like new york, sir george. fortunately you won't have time to be very bored, though; will you?" "'fortunately'?" "fortunately if it doesn't amuse you, i mean. when does the--how do you say it? when does your holiday end?" "i must be back in london on the twenty-fourth of next month; i'm almost american myself. i shall have such a fleeting glimpse of the country, that i must really think of writing a book about it." "you have something better to do than write vapid books. to me your profession seems the most fascinating one there is. if i were a man, i'd rather be called to the bar than anything. you'd be astonished if you knew how many biographies of eminent lawyers i've read--they enthralled me as a child. i don't know any career that suggests such power to me as the bar. don't smile: sometimes, when we're talking and i remember the tremendous influence you wield, i tremble." she lifted her eyes to him, deprecating her enthusiasm, which was too palpably a pose, and again heriot was conscious that the opportunity was with him, if he could but grasp it. they had paused by the taffrail, and he stood looking at her, trying to speak the words that would translate their relations to a definite footing. he no longer had any doubt as to her answer; he could foresee her reply--at least the manner of her reply--with disturbing clearness. he knew that she would hesitate an instant, and droop her head, and ultimately murmur correct phrases that would exhilarate him not at all. in imagination he already heard her tones, as she promised to be his wife. he supposed, as they were screened from observation, that he might take her hand. how passionless, how mechanical and flat it would all be! he replied with a commonplace, and after a few moments they continued their stroll. when he turned in, however, he reproached himself more forcibly than he had done yet, and his vacillation was by no means at an end. he was at war, not with his judgment, but with his instinct, and it was the perception of this fact that always increased his perturbation. they landed the following day, and, after being introduced to mr. van buren in the custom-house, heriot drove to an hotel. the hotel he found excellent; new york he found wonderful, but a city different from what he had expected. he had vaguely pictured new york as a paris where everybody talked english. this was before the introduction of the automobile had changed the face of paris, and the face of the parisian--before it incidentally reduced the number of half-fed horses barbarously used in that city, which is the negro's paradise, and the "horse's hell"--and the boulevard was even more unlike broadway then than now. broadway, broad in name only till it spread into the brightness of union square, suggested london more than paris--london in an unprecedented burst of energy. the tireless vigour of the throng, the ubiquitous rush of the elevated railway confused him. though he paid homage to the cuisine of america, which proved as much as much superior to that of england as the worst transatlantic train was to our best of that period, he told himself that he was disappointed. the truth was that, not wishing to take the van burens' invitations too literally, and having no other acquaintances here, he was dull. american hospitality, however, is the most charming in the world, and he spent several very agreeable hours inside the big brownstone house. nothing could have exceeded the geniality of van buren's manner, nor was this due solely to the position of his visitor and a hope of their becoming connected. the average american business man will show more kindness to a stranger, who intrudes into his office, than most englishmen display to one who comes to them with a letter of introduction from a friend, and van buren's welcome was as sincere as it was attractive. heriot stayed in new york a week, and then fulfilled his desire to visit niagara. on his return he called in fifth avenue again. he was already beginning to refer to his homeward voyage, and he was still undetermined whether he would propose to miss pierways or not. the days slipped by without his arriving at a conclusion; and then one morning he told himself he had gone too far to retreat now--that the step, which was doubtless the most judicious he could take, should be made without delay. he called at the house the same afternoon--for on the next day but one the _etruria_ sailed--and he found the ladies at home. he sat down, wondering if he would be left alone with miss pierways and take his departure engaged to her. but for half an hour there seemed no likelihood of a tête-à-tête. presently there were more callers and they were shown into another room. mrs. van buren begged him to excuse her. he rose to leave, but was pressed to remain. "i want to talk to you when they've gone," she said; "i haven't half exhausted my list of messages to london." heriot resumed his seat, and miss pierways smiled. "poor mamma wishes she were going herself, if she told the truth! now that we're here, it is i who like new york, not she." "we're creatures of custom," he said; "your mother has lived in london too long to accustom herself to america very easily... of course you'll be over next season?" "oh yes. shall you ever come to america again, sir george?" "i--i hardly know," he answered. "i certainly hope to." "oh, then, you will! you're your own master." "is anybody his own master?" "to the extent of travelling to america, many people, i should think!" he remembered with sudden gratification that he had never said a word to her that might not have been spoken before a crowd of listeners. what was there to prevent him withholding the proposal if he liked! "i've no doubt i shall come," he said abstractedly. she looked slightly downcast. it was not the reply that she had hoped to hear. "i shall always owe a debt of gratitude to you and to mr. and mrs. van buren for making my visit so pleasant to me," he found himself saying next. "my trip has been a delightful experience." she murmured a conventional response, but chagrin began to creep about her heart. heriot diverged into allusions which advanced the position not at all. they spoke of new york, of england, of the voyage--she perfunctorily, and he with ever-increasing relief. and now he felt that he had been on the verge of the precipice for the last time. he had escaped--and by the intensity of his gratitude he realised how ill-judged had been his action in playing around it. when mrs. van buren reappeared, followed by her husband, her daughter's face told her that the climax had not been reached; and bold in thanksgiving, heriot excused himself when he was asked to dine with them that evening. had he been offered the alternative of the next evening, he could not without rudeness have found a pretext for refusing; but on the morrow, as luck would have it, the van burens were dining out. the footman opened the big door, and heriot descended the steps with a sensation that was foreign to him, and not wholly agreeable. he knew that he did not want to marry miss pierways, and that he had behaved like a fool in trying to acquire the desire, but he was a little ashamed of himself. his conduct had not been irreproachable; and he was conscious that when the steamer sailed and the chapter was closed for good and all, he would be glad to have done with it. he had blundered badly. nevertheless he would have blundered worse, and been a still greater fool, if the affair had terminated in an engagement. of course his brother would say distasteful things when they met, and lady heriot would convey her extreme disapproval of him without saying anything. that he must put up with! of two evils, he had at any rate chosen the lesser. he repeated the assurance with still more conviction on saturday morning during the quarter of an hour in which the cab rattled him to the boat. the experience had been a lesson to him, and he was resolved that henceforward he would dismiss the idea of marriage from his mind. he saw his portmanteau deposited in his cabin, and he returned to the deck as the steamer began to move. the decks were in the confusion that obtains at first. passengers still hung at the taffrail, taking a farewell gaze at friends on the landing-stage. the chairs were huddled in a heap, and stewards bustled among stacks of luggage, importuned at every second step with instructions and inquiries. the deep pulsations sounded more regular; the long line of sheds receded; and the figures of the friends were as little dark toys, waving specks of white. even the most constant among the departing began to turn away now. the hastening stewards were importuned more frequently than before. everybody was in a hurry, and all the women in the crowd that flocked below seemed to be uttering the words "baggage" and "state-room" at the same time. a few men were temporarily in possession of the deck, striding to and fro behind pipes or cigars. the regulation as to "no smoking abaft this" was not in force yet, or was, at least, disobeyed at present. heriot sauntered along the length of deck until it began to fill again. the pile of chairs received attention--they were set out in a row under the awning. the deck took a dryness and a whiteness, and a few passengers sat down, and questioned inwardly if they would find one another companionable. he bent his steps to the smoking-room. but it was empty and uninviting thus early, and he forsook it after a few minutes. as the door slammed behind him, he came face to face with the woman who had been his wife. chapter xiii she approached--their gaze met--he had bowed, and passed her. perhaps it had lasted a second, the mental convulsion in which he looked in her eyes; he did not know. he found a seat and sank into it, staring at the sky and sea, acutely conscious of nothing but her nearness. he could not tell whether it was despair or rejoicing that beat in him; he knew nothing but that the world had swayed, that life was in an instant palpitating and vivid--that he had seen her! then he knew that, in the intensity of emotion that shook him body and brain, there was a thrill of joy, inexplicable but insistent. but when he rose at last, he dreaded that he might see her again. he did not see her till the evening--when he drew back at the door of the saloon as she came out. his features were imperturbable now and betrayed nothing, though her own, before her head drooped, were piteous in appeal. he noted that she looked pale and ill, and that she wore a black dress with crape on it. he wondered whether she had lost her father, or her aunt. next morning he understood that it was her father, for he saw her sitting beside mrs. baines. so dick cheriton was dead. he had once been fond of dick cheriton.... the stranger in the black frock had once slept in his arms, and borne his name.... the sadness of a lifetime weighed on his soul. he perceived that she shunned him by every means in her power. but they were bound to meet; and then across her face would flash the same look that he had seen at the foot of the companion-way; its supplication and abasement wrung him. horrible as the continual meetings grew, in the reading-room, on deck, or below, their lines crossed a dozen times between breakfast and eleven o'clock at night. it became as torturous to heriot as to her. he felt as if he had struck her, as he saw her whiten and shrink as he passed her by. soon he hated himself for being here to cause her this intolerable pain. it was on the evening of the third day that her endurance broke down and she made her petition. with a pang he recognised the voice of her messenger before he turned. "mrs. baines!" "you're surprised i should address you, mr. heriot," she said. "i shouldn't have, but _she_ wants me to beg you to speak to her, if it's only for five minutes. she implores you humbly to let her speak to you. she made me ask you; i couldn't say 'no.'" his pulses throbbed madly, and momentarily he couldn't reply. "what purpose would it serve?" he said in tones he struggled to make firm. "she can't bear it, mr. heriot--_sir_ heriot, i should say; i was forgetting, i'm sure i beg your pardon! she 'implores you humbly to let her speak to you'; i was to use those words. won't you consent? she is ill, she's dying." "dying?" whispered heriot by a physical effort. she nodded slowly. "the doctor has told her. she won't be here long, poor girl. but whether she's to be pitied for it or not, it's hard to say; i don't think she'll be sorry to go.... my brother is gone, sir heriot." his answer was inarticulate. "we got there just at the end. if we had been too late, she----she has been ailing a long while, but we didn't know it was so serious. when she saw you, it was awful for her. i---- oh, what am i to tell her? she's waiting now!" "where?" said heriot, hoarsely. "will you come with me?" "show me," he said; "show me where she is." he still heard the knell of it--"dying!" he heard it as the lonely figure in the darkness rose: "thank you, i am grateful." the familiar voice knocked at his heart. "mrs. baines has told me you are ill. i am grieved to learn how ill you are." "it doesn't matter. it was good of you to come; i thought you would. i--i have prayed to speak to you again!" "it wasn't much to ask," he said; "i--am human." he could see that she trembled painfully. he indicated the chair that she had left, and drew one closer for himself. then for a minute there was silence. "do you hate me?" she said. he shook his head. "should i have come to tell you so?" "but you can never forgive me?" "why distress yourself? if for a moment i hesitated to come, it was because i _knew_ it would be distressing for you. perhaps a refusal would have been kinder after all." "no, no; i was sure you wouldn't refuse. she doubted; but _i_ was sure. i said you'd come when you heard about me." "is it so serious? what is it? tell me; i know nothing." "it's my lungs: they were never very strong, you remember. the doctor told me in duluth: 'perhaps a year,' if i am 'very careful.' i'm _not_ very careful--it'll soon be all over. don't look like that! why should you care? _i_ don't care--i don't want to live a bit. only----do you think, if--if there's anything afterwards, that a woman who's gone wrong like me will be punished?" "for god's sake," he said, "don't talk so!" "but _do_ you? it makes one think of these things when one knows one has only a very little time to live. _you_ can't forgive me--you said so." "i do," he said; "i forgive you freely. if i could undo your wretchedness by giving my life for you, i'd give it. you don't know how i loved you--what it meant to me to find you gone! ah, mamie, how could you do it?" the tears stood in her eyes, as she lifted her white face to him. "i'm ashamed!" she moaned. "what can i say?" "why?" said heriot, at the end of a tense pause. "why? did you care for him so much? if he had lived and married you, would you be happy?" "happy!" she echoed, with something between a laugh and a sob. "tell me. i hoped you'd be happy. that's true. i never wanted you to suffer for what you'd done. i suffered enough for both." "i don't think i should have married him. i don't know; i don't think so. i knew i'd made a mistake before--oh, in the first month! if _you_ haven't hated me, i have hated myself." "and since? you've been with _her_?" "ever since. my poor father wanted me to go home. i wish i had! you know i've lost him--she told you that? he wanted me to go home, but i couldn't--where everybody knew! you understand? and then she moved to balham, and we never left it till two months ago, when the cable came. we were in time to see him die. my poor father!" he touched her hand, and her fingers closed on it. "you oughtn't to be up here at night," he said huskily, looking at her with blinded eyes. "didn't the man tell you that the night air was bad? and that flimsy wrap--it's no use so! draw it across your mouth." "what's the difference?--there, then! shall you--will you speak to me again after this evening, or is this the last talk we shall have? i had so much to say to you, but i don't seem able to find it now you're here.... if you believe that i ask your pardon on my knees, i suppose, after all, that that's everything. if ever a man deserved a good wife it was you; i realise it more clearly than i did while we were together--though i think i knew it then.... you never married again?" "no," he answered; "no, i haven't married." "but you will, perhaps? why haven't you?" "i'm too old, and--i cared too much for _you_." the tears were running down her face now; she loosed his hand to wipe them away. "don't say i've ruined your life," she pleaded; "don't say that! my own--yes; my own--it served me right! but i've tried so hard to believe that _you_ had got over it. when i read of your election, and then that you were made solicitor-general, i was glad, ever so glad. i thought, 'he's successful; he has his career.' i've always wanted to believe that your work was enough--that you had forgotten. it wasn't so?" "no, it wasn't so. i did my best to forget you, but i couldn't." "aunt lydia said you weren't cut up at all when she saw you. you deceived her very well. 'a worthless woman,' you called me; i 'wasn't any loss'! it was quite true; but i knew you couldn't feel like that--not so soon. 'worthless'! i've heard it every day since she told me.... i meant to do my duty when i married you, george; if i could have foreseen----" she broke off, coughing. "if i could have foreseen what the end would be, i'd have killed myself rather than become your wife. i was always grateful to you; you were always good to me--and i only brought you shame." "not 'only,'" he said; "you gave me happiness first, mamie--the greatest happiness i've known. i loved you, and you came to me. you never understood how much i did love you--i think that was the trouble." "'there's a word that says it all: i worship you'! do you remember saying that? you said it in the train when you first proposed to me. i refused you then--why did i ever give way!... how different everything would be now! you 'worshipped' me, and i----" her voice trailed off, and once more only the pounding of the engine broke the stillness on the deck. the ocean swelled darkly under a starless sky, and he sat beside her staring into space. in the steerage someone played "robin adair" on a fiddle. a drizzle began to fall, to blow in upon them. heriot became conscious of it with a start. "you must go below," he said; "it's raining." she rose obediently, shivering a little, and drawing the white scarf more closely about her neck. "good-night," she said, standing there with wide eyes. he put out his hand, and her clasp ran through his blood again. "good-night," he repeated gently. "sleep well." was it real? was he awake? he looked after her as she turned away--looked long after she had disappeared. the fiddle in the steerage was still scraping "robin adair"; the black stretch of deck was desolate. a violent impulse seized him to overtake her, to snatch her back, to hold her in his arms for once, with words and caresses of consolation. "dying"! he wondered if davos, algiers, the cape, anything and everything procurable by money, could prolong her life. then he remembered that she did not wish to live. but that was horrible! she should consult a specialist in town, and follow his advice; he would make her promise it. with the gradual defervescence of his mood, he wondered if she was properly provided for, and he resolved to question mrs. baines on the point. he would elicit the information the following day, and something could be arranged, if necessary--if not with mamie's knowledge, then without it. the morning was bright, and mamie was in her chair when he came up from the saloon after breakfast. as he approached, she watched him expectantly, and it was impossible to pass without a greeting. it was impossible, when the greeting had been exchanged, not to remain with her for a few minutes. "how are you feeling?" he asked; "any better?" "i never feel very bad; i'm just the same to-day as yesterday, thank you." the "thank you" was something more than a formula, and he felt it. it hurt him to hear the gratitude in her tone, natural as it might be. "i want you to go to a good physician when you arrive," he said, "say, to drummond; and to do just as he tells you. you _must_ do that; it is a duty you owe to yourself." she shrugged her shoulders. "what for? that i may last two years, perhaps, instead of one? it is kind of you to care, but i'm quite satisfied as things are. don't bother about me." "you will have to go!" he insisted. "before we land i shall speak to your aunt about it." he had paused by her seat with the intention of resuming his saunter as soon as civility permitted, but her presence was subversive of the intention. he sat down beside her as he had done the previous evening. but now it was inevitable that they should speak of other subjects than infidelity and death. the sky was blue, and the white deck glistened in the sunshine. the sea before them tumbled cheerfully, and to right and left were groups of passengers laughing, flirting, doing fancy-work, or reading novels. "you haven't told me how it was you came to the states?" she said presently; "were you in new york all the time?" heriot did not answer, and she waited with surprise. "i'll tell you, if you wish," he said hastily. "i came out half meaning to marry." "oh!" she said, as if he had struck her. "i thought i might be happier married. the lady and her mother were going to new york, and i travelled with them. i--i was mistaken in myself." they were not looking at each other any longer, and her voice trembled a little as she replied: "you weren't fond enough of her?" "no," he said. "i shall never marry again; i told you so last night." after a long pause, she said: "was she pretty?... prettier than _i_ used to be?" "she was handsome, i think. not like you at all. why talk about it?... i'm glad i came, though, or i shouldn't have seen you. i shall always be glad to have seen you again. remember that, after we part. for me, at least, it will never be so bitter since we've met and i've heard you say you're sorry." "god bless you," she murmured almost inaudibly. he left her after half an hour, but drifted towards her again in the afternoon. insensibly they lost by degrees much of their constraint in talking together. she told him of her father's illness, of her own life in balham; heriot gave her some details of his appointment, explaining that it was the duty of an attorney-general and solicitor-general to reply to questions of law in the house, to advise the government, and conduct its cases, and the rest of it. by wednesday night it was difficult to him to realise that their first interview had occurred only forty-eight hours ago. it had become his habit on deck to turn his steps towards her, to sip tea by her side in the saloon, to saunter with her after dinner in the starlight. even at last he felt no embarrassment as he moved towards her; even at last she came to smile up at him as he drew near. moments there could not fail to be when such a state of things seemed marvellous and unnatural--when conversation ceased, and they paused oppressed and tongue-tied by a consciousness of the anomaly of their relations. nevertheless such moments were but hitches in an intercourse which grew daily more indispensable to them both. how indispensable it had become to herself the woman perceived as the end of the voyage approached; and now she would have asked no better than for them to sail on until she died. when she undressed at night, she sighed, "another day over"; when she woke in the morning, eagerness quickened her pulses. on saturday they would arrive; and when friday dawned, the reunion held less of strangeness than the reflection that she and heriot would separate again directly. to think that, as a matter of course, they would say good-bye to each other, and resume their opposite sides of an impassable gulf, looked more unnatural to her than the renewed familiarity. their pauses were longer than usual on friday evening. both were remembering that it was the last. heriot had ascertained that cheriton had been able to leave her but little; and the notion of providing her with the means to winter in some favourable climate was hot in his mind. "it is understood," he said abruptly, "that you go to drummond and do exactly as he orders? you'll not be so mad as to refuse at the last moment?" "all right!" she answered apathetically, "i'll go. shall i--will you care to hear what he says?" "your aunt has promised to write to me. by the way, there's something i want to say to-night. if what he advises is expensive, you must let me make it possible for you. i claim that as my right. i intended arranging it with mrs. baines, but she tells me you--you'd be bound to know where the money came from. he'll probably tell you to live abroad." "thank you," she said after a slight start, "i could not take your money. it is very good of you, but i would rather you didn't speak of it. if you talked forever, i wouldn't consent." "mamie----" "the very offer turns me cold. please don't!" "you're cruel," he said. "you're refusing to let me prolong your life. have i deserved that from you?" "oh!" she cried, in a tortured voice, "for god's sake, don't press me! leave me something--i won't say 'self-respect,' but a vestige, a grain of proper pride. think what my feelings would be, living on money from you--it wouldn't prolong my life, george; it would kill me sooner. you've been generous and merciful to me; be merciful to me still and talk of something else." "you are asking me to stand by and see you die. _i_ have feelings, too, mamie. i can't do it!" "i'm dying," she said; "if it happens a little sooner, or a little later, does it matter very much? if you want to be very kind to me, to--to brighten the time that remains as much as you can, tell me that if i send to you when--when it's a question of days, you'll come to the place and see me again. i'd bless you for that! i've been afraid to ask you till now; but it would mean more to me than anything else you could do. would you, if i sent?" "why," said heriot labouredly, after another pause, "why would it mean so much?" they were leaning over the taffrail; and suddenly her head was bent, and she broke into convulsive sobs that tore his breast. "mamie!" he exclaimed. "mamie, tell me!" he glanced round and laid a trembling touch on her hands. "tell me, dear!" he repeated hoarsely. "do you love me, then?" her figure was shaken by the shuddering sobs. his touch tightened to a clasp; he drew the hands down from the distorted face, drew the shaken figure closer, till his own met it--till her bosom was heaving against his heart. "do you love me, mamie?" "yes!" she gasped. and then for an instant only their eyes spoke, and in the intensity of their eyes each gave to the other body and soul. "yes, i love you," she panted; "it's my punishment, i suppose, to love you too late. i shall never see you after to-morrow, till i am dying--if then--but i love you. remember it! it's no good to you, you won't care, but remember it, because it's my punishment. you can say, 'when it was too late, she knew! she died detesting herself, shrinking at her own body, her own loathsome body that she gave to another man!' oh!"--she beat her hands hysterically against his chest--"i hate him, i hate him! god forgive me, he's in his grave, but i hate him when i think what's been. and it wasn't his fault; it was mine, mine--my own degraded, beastly self. curse me, throw me from you! i'm not fit to be standing here; i'm lower than the lowest woman in the streets!" the violence of her emotion maddened him. he knew that _he_ loved _her;_ the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought for years to wrap it--he knew that he had never ceased to love her; and a temptation to make her his wife again, to cherish and possess her so long as life should linger in her veins, flooded his reason. their gaze grew wider, deeper still; he could feel her quivering from head to foot. another moment, and he would have offered his honour to her keeping afresh. some men left the smoking-room; there was the sharp interruption of laughter--the slam of the door. they both regained some semblance of self-possession as they moved apart. "i must go down," she said. and he did not beg her to remain. it was their real farewell, for on the morrow they could merely exchange a few words amid the bustle of arrival. liverpool was reached early in the morning, and when he saw her, she wore a hat and veil and was already prepared to go ashore. in the glare of the sunshine the veil could not conceal that her eyes were red with weeping, however, and he divined that she had passed a sleepless night. to mrs. baines he privately repeated his injunctions with regard to the physician, for he was determined to have his way; and the widow assured him that she would write to morson drummond for an appointment without loss of time. the delays and shouts came to an end while he was speaking to her; and the gangway was lowered, and mamie moved forward to her side. he saw them again in the custom-house, but for a minute only, and from a distance. evidently they got through without trouble, for when he looked across again, they had gone. as he saw that they had gone, a sensation of blankness fell upon heriot's mood, where he stood waiting among the scattered luggage. his life felt newly empty and the day all at once seemed cold and dark. chapter xiv the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought to wrap it; he knew that he had never ceased to love her. as he had known it while she sobbed beside him on the boat, so he knew it when the bar claimed him again and he wrestled with temptation amid his work. he might re-marry her! he could not drive this irruptive idea from his mind. it lurked there, impelled attention, dozed, woke, and throbbed in his consciousness persistently. were he but weak enough to make the choice, the woman that he loved might belong to him once more. were he but weak enough! there were minutes in which he was very near to it, minutes in which the dishonour, if dishonour it were, looked as nothing to him compared with the joy of having her for his wife again. yet were he but "weak" enough? would it indeed be weakness--would it not rather be strength, the courage of his convictions? the longing illumined his vision, and he asked himself on what his doubt and hesitation was based. she had sinned; but he had pardoned her sin, not merely in words, but in his heart. and she was very dear to him; and she had repented. then why should it be impossible? what after all had they done to her, what change in the beloved identity had they wrought, those months that were past? he was aware that it was the physical side that repelled him--there had been another man. yet if she had been a widow when he met her first, there would have been another man, and it would have mattered nothing. did this especial sin make of a woman somebody else? did it give her another face, another form, another brain? did unfaithfulness transform her personality? the only difference was the knowledge of what had happened--the woman herself was the same! but he would not vindicate his right to love her--he loved her, that was enough. in its simplicity, the question was whether he would do better to condone her guilt and know happiness, or to preserve his dignity and suffer. he could not blink the question; it confronted him nakedly when a week had worn by. without her he was lonely and wretched; with her, while she lived, he was confident that his joy would be supreme. the step that he considered was, if any one pleased, revolting; but if it led to his contentment, perhaps to be "revolting" might be the height of wisdom. he must sacrifice his pride, or his peace! and at last, quite deliberately, without misgiving or a backward glance, heriot determined to gain peace. a few days after the arrival, mrs. baines had written to inform him that the physician was out of town, but now a line came to say that an appointment had been made for "monday" and that she would communicate dr. drummond's pronouncement immediately they reached home after the interview. it was on monday morning that heriot received the note, and he resolved to go to mamie the same evening. the thought of the amazement that his appearance would cause her excited him wildly as he drove to victoria. he could foresee the wonder in her eyes as he entered, the incredulity on her features as she heard what he was there to say; and the profoundest satisfaction pervaded him that he had resolved to say it. the comments that his world would make had no longer any place in his meditations; a fico for the world that would debar him from delight and censure what it could not understand! he had suffered long enough; his only regret was for the years which had been lost before he grasped the vivid truth that, innocent or guilty, the woman who conferred happiness was the woman to be desired. a criticism of his brother's recurred to him: "you hadn't a single taste in common!" he had not disputed it at the time; he was not certain that he could deny it now. but there was no need to consider whether their views were kindred or opposed, whether she was defiled or stainless, when she was the woman whose magic could transfigure his existence. he was conscious that this marriage to be approved by his judgment, and condemned by society, would be a sweeter and holier union than their first, to which she had brought purity, and indifference. as the cab sped down victoria street, his excitement increased, and in imagination he already clasped her and felt the warmth of her cheek against his face. the hansom slackened, jerked to a standstill; and he leapt out and hurried to the booking-office. a train was at the point of starting. the sentiment of the bygone was quick in him as he found that he must pass through a yellow barrier on to the same platform to which he used to hasten when he went to see her in lavender street, wandsworth. he had never trodden it since. a thousand associations, sad but delicious, were revived as he took his seat, and the guard, whose countenance seemed familiar, sauntered with a green flag and a lantern past the window. victoria slipped back. it had been in one of these compartments--perhaps in this one--that he had first asked her to be his wife. how wet her cape had been when he touched it! a porter sang out, "grosvenor road," and at the sound of it heriot marvelled at having forgotten that they were about to stop there. yes, "grosvenor road," and then--what next? he could not remember. but memory knocked with a louder pang as each of the places on the line was reached. when "wandsworth common" was cried, he glanced at the dimly-lighted station while in fancy he threaded his way to the shabby villa that had been her home. he thought that he could find it blindfold. after this the line was quite strange to him; and now the impatience of his mood had no admixture and he trembled with eagerness to gain his destination. "balham!" was bawled two minutes later; and among a stream of clerks and nondescripts, he descended a flight of steps and emerged into a narrow street. no cab was visible, and, having obtained directions, he set forth for rosalie road afoot. a glimpse he had of cheap commerce, of the flare of gas-jets on oranges, and eggs, and fifth-rate millinery; and then the shops and the masses were left behind, and he was in obscurity. the sound of footsteps occurred but seldom here, and he wandered in a maze of little houses for nearly half an hour before a welcome postman earned a shilling. rosalie road began in darkness, and ended in a brickfield. he identified number by the aid of a vesta, and pulled the bell. impatience was mastering him when he discerned, through the panes, a figure advancing along the passage. his voice was strange in his ears, as he inquired if mamie was in. "yessir; she's in the drorin'-room. 'oo shall i say?" "sir george heriot. is mrs. baines at home?" his title rendered the little maid incapable of an immediate response. "missis is out of a herrand, sir," she stammered; "she won't be long." "when she comes in, tell her that i'm talking privately to her niece. 'privately'; don't forget!" she turned the handle, and heriot followed her into the room. vaguely he heard her announce him; he saw the room as in a mist. momentarily all that was clear was mamie's face, white and wondering in the lamplight. she stood where she had been standing at his entrance, looking at him; he had the impression of many seconds passing while she only looked; many seconds seemed to go by before her colour fluttered back and she said, "you?" "yes, it's i. won't you say you're glad to see me?" "aunt lydia has written to you," she said, still gazing at him as if she doubted his reality. "her letter has gone." "i've come to hear what dr. drummond says." she motioned him to a chair, and drooped weakly on to the shiny couch. "i am not going to die," she muttered. "your sympathy has been thrown away--i'm a fraud." in the breathless pause he felt deafened by the thudding of his heart. "he has given you hope?" "he said, 'bosh!' i told him what the doctor told me in duluth. he said, 'bosh!' one lung isn't quite sound, that's all; i may live to be eighty." "o dear god!" said heriot slowly, "i thank you!" she gave a short laugh, harsh and bitter. "i always posed. my last pose was as a dying woman!" "mamie," he said firmly--he went across to her and sat down by her side--"mamie, i love you. i want you to come back to me, my darling. my life's no good without you, and i want you for my wife again. will you come?" he heard her catch her breath; she could not speak. he took her hands, and drew her to him. their lips clung together, and presently he felt tears on his cheek. then she released herself with a gesture of negation. "you are mad!" she said. "and _i_ should be madder to accept the sacrifice!" for this he was prepared. "i am very sane," he answered. "dearest, when you understand, you will see that it is the only reparation you can make me. listen!" [illustration: "erskine," she said eagerly, "what do you mean?" _page ._] ruth erskine's son by pansy author of "ruth erskine's crosses"; "ester ried's namesake"; "ester ried yet speaking"; "ester ried"; "doris farrand's vocation"; "david ransom's watch"; etc., etc. _illustrated by louise clark_ [illustration] boston lothrop, lee & shepard co. pansy trade-mark registered in u. s. patent office. published, august, . copyright, , by lothrop, lee & shepard co. _all rights reserved._ ruth erskine's son. norwood press j. s. cushing co.--berwick & smith co. norwood, mass., u.s.a. contents chapter page i. whims ii. "never mind, mommie" iii. mamie parker iv. would she "do"? v. the old cat! vi. ideal conditions vii. "mothers are queer!" viii. a spoiled mother ix. sentiment and sacrifice x. "sentimental" people xi. "plans for a purpose" xii. accident or design? xiii. was irene right? xiv. the general manager xv. looking backward xvi. for maybelle's sake xvii. built on the sand xviii. justice or mercy? xix. alone xx. they hated mystery xxi. "a study" xxii. a loyal heart xxiii. puzzling questions xxiv. an ally xxv. a crisis xxvi. a strange change xxvii. a retrograde movement xxviii. "something had happened" xxix. renunciation xxx. "two, and two, and two" illustrations "erskine," she said eagerly, "what do you mean?" (page ) _frontispiece_ facing page "we will give them all the slip, my dear" "my mother isn't old, irene" "i am sorry that i hated you" ruth erskine's son chapter i whims as a matter of fact the name of this story should be: ruth erskine burnham's son. but there are those living who remember ruth erskine and her memorable summer at the new york chautauqua; and that name is so entirely associated with those four girls at chautauqua, and their after experiences, that it seems natural to speak of her boy, erskine, as ruth erskine's son; although, of course, he was also judge burnham's son. the day on which she is again introduced to her friends was a dull one in late autumn; the afterglow of sunset was already fading, and the shadows were gathering fast. it was the hour that erskine burnham liked best for the piano. he was at that moment softly touching the keys, bringing forth harmonious sounds with the air of one not even hearing them. he was a handsome boy. the promise of his early life,--during which time the exclamation, "what a beautiful child!" was being continually heard,--was being fulfilled in his boyhood. friends of his father were fond of assuring ruth that the boy was his father's image; while her friends were sure that no boy could be more like his mother. as for ruth when she saw her son bending over his books, a lock of hair continually dropping over his left eye and being continually flung back with a gesture peculiar to judge erskine, she would say:-- "he is very much like his grandfather." as the boy grew older he laughed at all these opinions, and asked his mother if she did not think it would be difficult for a fellow to have any individuality who was strikingly like three people who were all, as nearly as he could make out, strikingly unlike one another. this remark was one of the memories that came back to her as she looked out at the swift-falling night, and listened to that musical strain which was being played over and over and _over_. she seemed to be watching the people who were hurrying homeward, glancing apprehensively now and then at the sky; for despite the glow of sunset there were premonitions of a coming storm, and already a few advance snowflakes were beginning to fall. but mrs. burnham saw neither people nor snowflakes; or rather she saw them without seeing. her eyes were swimming in tears that she did not intend to let have their way. not as girl or woman had ruth erskine burnham been given to tears, although there had been reason enough in her life for them. since she had not indulged them then, she did not mean to begin now that she was middle-aged and her hair was being sprinkled with gray. she had been going over the story of the years with herself, that afternoon, which might account in part for the dimmed eyes. it seemed to her, looking back, that her chief mission in life had been to minister at dying beds and follow as chief or almost chief mourner in funeral processions. she had gone away back to the betrothed of her youth, and added one more heavy sigh to the multitude that stood for a lost opportunity. how entirely harold wayne had been under her influence! how utterly she had failed him! and she had felt it only when she was following him to the grave. then those other graves, her father's and judge burnham's daughters', seraph and minta, what strange sad memories she had connected with both those graves that were not a year apart in their making. and then their father had been laid beside them and they two were left alone in the world, she and erskine. he was not yet eighteen, but there were times when it seemed to his mother that he was much older, and that he and she had been alone together always. all these memories that, because it was an anniversary of one of her bereavements, had been more vivid with her than usual that day, trooped again about her as she stood in the waning light, apparently intent on watching the outside world, in order to escape being watched by her world, inside. to people who were acquainted with the girl, ruth erskine, it will not seem strange that a look backward over her checkered life brought sombre thoughts that were close to tears. of the four girls who, years and years before when they were young and full of courage, went to chautauqua together and lived their eventful summer and began their new lives together, hers had had the strangest, saddest story; it had been marked by experiences so unlike the commonplace that the world had stopped to look, and express its astonishment. the unusual began with her father's strange revelations about that new mother who yet was not new, but had been her stepmother for years. was ever daughter before called upon to receive a new mother in such way as that? but why go over all that ground again? she too had been followed to the grave, and no one of all mrs. burnham's friends had been more sincerely missed and mourned. then there was her sister, susan erskine. was ever heavier cross or greater blessing thrust into a life than that girl represented to the girl ruth erskine? it had been one of her later trials to give susan up to china. she was sorely missed, but it had been good for erskine to have such a missionary auntie as she made. and those two strange girls seraphina and araminta burnham. could some writer put into print the story of those two lives as it interlaced with hers, the foolish world would call it fiction, and criticise it as unnatural. over the early days of her widowhood ruth burnham knew better than to linger. though so many years had intervened that the little boy he left had grown to young manhood, she still missed his father so sorely that she could not trust herself to stay among those few precious months before he went suddenly from her. she had been left, without even the warning of an hour, to bring up their boy alone! it was from this form of her bereavement that she had shrunken back most fearfully. judge burnham, with his life consecrated to god, had seemed eminently fitted to guide the life of just such a boy as theirs; but god had planned differently. and now, what people call the anxious years were gone, and she had kept her boy. yet the tears which she did not mean to shed were, in part, for him. she knew better than most mothers seem to understand that there were still "anxious years" to be lived through. they had lingered over the breakfast table that morning, discussing certain questions that had been discussed before. "mamma," the boy had said as he served her to fruit, "how came you to have pronounced ideas about all sorts of things? were you always so?" his mother laughed genially. "what a definite question for a lawyer to ask!" for erskine had already announced his intention of being a lawyer like his father and grandfather. "what 'things' are supposed to be under consideration?" he echoed her laugh. "i was thinking aloud then," he said. "it often seems to me as though you and i knew each other's thoughts. but just now i am thinking of one of our argumentative subjects. in spite of the horror in which you have brought me up of those bits of pasteboard called cards, i find that i cannot feel precisely as you would like to have me, concerning them. i used to. as a child nobody could be fiercer than i in their denunciation; but i find that that was merely a reflex influence, and not judgment. in spite of me nowadays they look meek and harmless; and i was wondering how you and they came to be in such fierce antagonism. was my father of that mind?" "am i fierce, erskine?" he gave her a half-quizzical, wholly loving smile as he said gayly:-- "that of course is not the word to apply to the most charming of women, but you know, dearest, that you are very much in earnest about all such matters. were you brought up in that way?" mrs. burnham shook her head. "no, when i was of your age, and younger, we played cards at home; and i went to card-parties in our set very often. it was your aunt flossy who set a number of us to thinking and studying and praying about such matters." erskine shook his head with pretended gravity. "i might have known it, mamma. aunt flossy isn't like people; in fact she always seems to me a trifle out of place on earth." "i thought you were very fond indeed of your aunt flossy." "so i am; and i think i should be very fond of an angel from heaven; but you see, when a fellow has to live on the earth, it is a trifle more convenient to be like the other earth worms. all of which was suggested by the fact that the mitchells are to give a card-party next week. very select, you understand, only the choice few are bidden and i happen to be one of them." then, although his mother shrank from it, feeling that it did harm rather than good to go again over ground that was familiar to both and that was so clear to her and did not convince her son, he persisted in arguing, and in trying to prove that her position was narrow and untenable in these days. throughout the interview he had been courteous and winsome, as he always was with her, and had laughingly complimented her more than once on her skill in argument; but for all that, she knew he was entirely unconvinced, and felt that her hold on him was weaker than when they had gone over the same ground before. the fact was, and this mother knew it well, that the world and all the allurements for which that phrase stands was making a hard fight for her handsome son even so early in life, and there were times when she felt fearful that in a sense it would win. it was not that she believed he would ever be sorely tempted by any of the amusements or frivolities of life; he was strong-principled and strong-willed, and certain, that might be called main, points had been settled by him once for all. yet none knew better than did this woman of long and peculiar experience that it was possible to maintain a high standing in the world and in the church and yet have almost as little knowledge of that life hid with christ in god which was the christian's rightful heritage as did the gay world around him. she craved this separated life for erskine, yet he was social in his tastes and fond of being looked upon as a leader, and his mother knew it already irked him to feel that in certain social functions he must always be counted out. "there are so many of them!" he had said to her once, with as much impatience in his tone as he ever gave to her. "a fellow could manage to indulge one or two whims, but you know, dearest, you have at least half a dozen, and to humor them all will make a rather conspicuous wallflower, i am afraid." something very like that he had repeated that morning, and it had colored his mother's day. she knew that the mitchells were fond of erskine and would make vigorous efforts to secure him for their party. it was hard, she told herself, that one so fitted to shine in cultured circles of young people must so often be made to feel embarrassed and out of place, and she wondered for the dozenth time that season if ways of thinking about these things had changed, along with other changes. was she herself what erskine, if he had made use of the modern slang, might call a "back number"? "still, his father, who had no such prejudices as mine to deal with, grew very positive in his objection to cards," she reminded herself, and sighed. if his father had lived, he would have known just how to manage erskine; this, at least, she pleased herself by believing, ignoring the fact that in their son's early boyhood the father had had many ways of managing, of which she did not approve. this is a habit which we all have with our beloved dead. it was the memory of their morning talk that had led mrs. burnham to appeal, that afternoon, to mr. conway when he dropped in for a social chat. mr. conway was their new pastor; a brilliant, scholarly man, much admired by old and young. erskine in particular had been attracted to him, and was decidedly of the opinion that in the pulpit he was a great improvement on dr. dennis, even. of course his mother did not agree with this verdict, but she was wise enough to remember that the friends of her girlhood could not be expected to be to her son what they were to her. yet erskine was eminently fair and thoughtful beyond his years for her. at the very time when he had so heartily indorsed mr. conway, he had made haste to say:-- "of course, mamma, there is a sense in which no one can ever equal dr. dennis to us, and as for aunt marian her loss is irreparable." he held carefully to the boyish custom of claiming his mother's girl friends as aunts, and she liked it in him:-- "nevertheless," he had added firmly, "as a preacher mr. conway is far superior to dr. dennis." despite his careful courtesy erskine was at the age when wisdom is at its height, and opinions as a rule are delivered autocratically without any softening "i think." his mother, having often to make objections from principle, had learned the art of being silent when she could, and she had made no objection in words to his estimate of mr. conway. to a degree she was in sympathy with it. she liked mr. conway and was glad that he was so young that erskine, being old for his years, could find him almost companionable, and at the same time could be helped by him. because of all these reasons she had been glad that erskine was in, that afternoon when mr. conway called. he was fond of calling there, and playfully accused the two of being responsible for many neglected families in his parish. she had kept herself almost quiet while erskine and their guest discussed books and music and men. they had many tastes in common. then erskine had been urged to play, and his selection from one of the great masters had chanced to be mr. conway's special favorite; and then, mrs. erskine having studied how to do it in an unstudied way, had skilfully turned the conversation into the channel of her morning talk with erskine; and before two minutes had passed would have given much to be able to take back what she had done. chapter ii "never mind, mommie" yet in thinking it over, this course had seemed to mrs. burnham eminently wise. mr. conway was quite as much in touch with the fashionable world as a clergyman could well be; he had been brought up in its atmosphere and had turned from what were supposed to be very alluring prospects to live the comparatively straitened life of a minister of the gospel. his undoubted scholarship commended him especially to a young fellow like erskine who came of a scholarly line. if, without being directly appealed to for advice, the minister could be drawn into an expression of opinion about these questionable matters, it would certainly help; and under her skilful management he expressed himself; but behold, he was on the wrong side! at least he was not on the side that ruth burnham, having been for years accustomed to the pastorate of dr. dennis, had taken it for granted that he would be. there was, he assured her, something to be said on the other side of that question. of course he was opposed to all forms of gambling, but a social game of cards in the parlor of a friend was innocent amusement enough--much better than certain others he could name that seemed to have escaped the ban of the over-cautious. he was really in earnest about this matter. he considered that there was positive danger in drawing the lines too taut. he knew a fellow in college who had been very carefully reared in one of those very narrow homes where a card was never allowed to penetrate, and where they looked in holy horror upon the idea of his touching one elsewhere; but he hadn't been in college an entire year before he spent half his nights at cards! and he went to the bad as fast as he could. that, the clergyman believed, was what often happened when young people were held too closely. that was by no means the only instance which had come under his personal knowledge, and indeed he believed that, of the two extremes, he feared the narrow the more. human nature was such that there was sure to be a rebound from over-strictness, and the clearer, keener brained the victim was, the more fear of results. there was much more of the same sort. poor ruth, who had not meant to argue, and who had wished of all things to avoid anything that would look in the least like a personal matter, tried in vain to change the subject. erskine, with an occasional mischievous glance for her alone, led his pastor on to say much more than he had probably intended at first. not that he differed from him in the least; on the contrary he took the rôle of an eager youth to whom it was a vital matter to have the "narrowness" of his surroundings immediately widened. mrs. burnham, disappointed and hurt, became almost entirely silent, and when she finally walked down the hall with her departing pastor, felt no wish to consult him about a matter on which she had intended to ask his advice at the first opportunity. she had a feeling that it made little difference to her what his advice was on any subject; yet she knew that that was real narrowness and that she must rise above it. such was the condition of things on that evening in late autumn when she stood looking out of the bay window at the swiftly gathering night and appeared to be watching the passers-by through a mist of unshed tears, while erskine played exquisite strains of harmony. his mother, listening, or rather letting the music melt unconsciously into her being, felt peculiarly alone with her responsibilities. who was she that she should hope, alone and unaided, to battle successfully with the temptations of this great wicked world full of yawning pitfalls especially prepared for the feet of young men? how was she ever to hope to guide a boy like erskine successfully through its snares, without even a pastor to lean upon? what if erskine should be like that college boy mr. conway had taken such pains to describe graphically and insist upon going to the bad as soon as he was away from her influence? she could see that that was just what was being feared for him; it was probably what mr. conway meant. wait, must her boy, her one treasure, be away from her influence? yes, of course he must; everybody said so. why, there were people who were certain that she was ruining her son by keeping so close to him even now. not only now, but away back in his young boyhood. she recalled with a shiver of pain how her husband had once said to her:-- "have a care, ruth; you don't want to make a molly coddle of the boy, remember." later, she had heard of one of the mitchells as declaring that "mrs. burnham was making a regular 'miss nancy' of that boy of hers, and if somebody did not take him in hand, he would be ruined." then, her intimate friends had been as plain with their cautions as they dared. had not marian dennis pleaded earnestly for a famous boys' school fifty miles away? "it would be so good for him, ruth; he would learn self-reliance and patience; two lessons that a boy never can learn at home, when there is but one." and dr. dennis had added his word: "as a rule, my friend, a boy learns manliness by being compelled to be manly and to depend upon himself." there was her old friend eurie, with four rollicking, romping boys of her own, always looking doubtfully at ruth's fair-haired, fair-skinned, rather quiet, always gentlemanly boy. "let him come and spend a summer with us, ruth," she urged, "and row and swim and hunt and get almost shot and quite drowned a few times; it will do him good, body and soul. boys learn manhood by hairbreadth escapes, you know." she had laughed at ruth's shudder and had told marian privately that "ruth was simply idiotic over that poor boy." only flossy, their dainty, gentle, still beautiful flossy, had seemed to understand. had she too meant a caution? as she kissed ruth good-by, the four girls of chautauqua memory having spent a never-to-be-forgotten week together at ruth burnham's home, she had said gently:-- "the best place in the world for a boy, dear ruth, is as close to his mother as he wants to be, just as long as he plans to be there. i have studied boys a good deal, and i think i am sure of so much." ruth's face had flushed over this murmured word. she had been half vexed with the others, but it had been given to their little flossy, as often before, to give her a new thought. she studied over it; she took it to heart and let it color all her movements. more and more after that, although erskine was still quite young, she kept herself in the background and pushed him forward. on their little trips to the larger city and in any of their outings indeed, she compelled herself to sit quietly in the waiting-room, while erskine went to buy tickets and check baggage. it is true that every nerve in her body quivered with apprehension until he was safely beside her again, yet she held firmly to her purpose. very early in their life alone together she ceased any attempt to drive the ponies that were erskine's delight, and sat beside him outwardly quiet and inwardly quaking until she had learned her lesson--reminding herself continually that the boy's father had taught him to love and to manage horses when he was too small to touch his feet to the carriage floor. she gave up early, and with a purpose, the taking erskine to town with her for a round of shopping or pleasure-seeking, and learned to say meekly and in a natural tone of voice:-- "can you take me to town on saturday, dear? i have many errands to do, and i don't like to go alone." she had lived through all these things, and it was not in any such directions that either she or her friends had fears any more. erskine was self-reliant enough; in fact he was masterful, though so courteous in his ways that few beside herself suspected it. he had inherited much from his father. still, the mother knew that there was a strong sense in which she dominated his life. that he went to certain places and refrained from going to certain others simply to please her and not at all as a matter of principle. she was far from being satisfied with this, and was always asking herself: "how long will he do this?" and "are such concessions worth anything in the way of character?" she had many questions, this anxious mother of one child; there were days, and this was one, when they pressed her sorely. the music flowed on; now soft and tender as a caress, now breaking into great waves of sound that meant energy, and possibly conflict. suddenly it ceased with a great crash of keys, still in harmony, and the boy wheeled on his stool, looked at his mother, and laughed. "you woke up the wrong chap that time, didn't you, mother?" he said. "it was as good as a play to hear him go on and to watch your face. i haven't enjoyed anything so much in a long time." he laughed again over the memory. his mother did not join in the laugh; just then she could not. those tears that she had managed, not allowing them to fall, had somehow got into her throat. she felt that she should choke if she attempted to speak, and she could not summon at the moment more than the ghost of a smile. erskine wheeled back to the piano for a moment, played a few bars of a popular song with one hand, humming it softly; then, in the midst of a line, arose and strolled over to the window where his mother stood. "never mind, mommie," he said, bending his tall form low enough to kiss the tip of one ear--a whimsical little caress peculiar to himself. "she mustn't go and look at the clouds and the storm and the dark as though there wasn't any sunshine anywhere. i am not intending to go to the dogs as soon as i go away from home, merely because my mother did her level best all her life to keep me right side up with care; and in my opinion it would be a poor sort of chap who would do any such thing. and i don't feel the need of a social game of cards now and then as a safeguard, either. i don't feel especially 'taut,' mommie, honestly; and i don't care a straw for the mitchells' card party. did you really think i cared for it on that account? how absurd! don't you worry one least little mite, mamma, there is absolutely nothing to be troubled over except that you have a pastor who doesn't know enough to talk a little bit on the side that you want talked, or else keep still. wasn't it funny?" he laughed once more, then added, a trifle more gravely:-- "when that man is older, he will understand people better, perhaps. don't you hope so? shall i read to you, mamma, a little while? i have a delicious book here that i know you will enjoy." did he understand, would he ever understand, what a mountain weight he had suddenly lifted from his mother's heart? what a gracious, sweet-spirited, self-sacrificing boy he was! had there ever been one just like him? she knew he was fond of the mitchells, and that they were eager to have him with them in their social life; they had brought as much pressure as they could, and he had resisted it for his mother's sake. it was sweet, but--she could not keep back one little sigh. she was a devoted mother; but she would, oh, so much rather it had been for christ's sake. there was an unexpected outcome from that interview with mr. conway. in a very short time it became evident that he had lost his hold upon erskine. not that the boy turned against him seriously; but he smiled over some of his words and purposely misquoted others in a spirit of mischief. occasionally there was a curve to the smile that suggested a sneer; and the strongest feeling he evinced for him might be called indifference. in his secret heart erskine knew that he was being unreasonable, and was really resenting his mother's having been made uncomfortable; but he could not get away from the feeling that mr. conway, having been weighed in his mother's balance and found wanting, was not to his mind, however much he himself might differ from her. of course all this was mere feeling, not principle. nevertheless, the clergyman, who prided himself on his influence with young men and who puzzled anxiously over erskine burnham's changed attitude which he vaguely felt and could not define, might have been helped if some one had been frank enough to explain the situation. nobody did. the boy scoffed in secret, assuring himself that a minister who could not be a comfort to a woman and a widow when she tried to lean on him was a "poor sort of chap." as for the mother, she told herself that if she had not been weak and foolish in carrying her anxieties to others, mr. conway would not have lost his influence over erskine; and the minister remained perplexed and anxious; he was sincerely eager to be helpful to young men. outwardly they all went on as before. the mitchells and others of their kind made their card parties and their social dances and their theatre parties and continued to invite eagerly mrs. burnham's handsome young son, who cheerfully declined all invitations and stayed with his mother. but he argued no more; in fact he declined to do so, setting the whole matter gayly aside, with a cheerful-- "don't let us argue about these things any more, mommie. we shouldn't agree, and they are not worth disagreeing over. i don't care a copper for the whole crowd of entertainments that you think of with interrogation points attached, and i don't care two straws about what others think of me in connection with them; so let us taboo the whole subject and enjoy ourselves." his mother would have liked something very different. she would have been glad if he had given himself to the study of such matters, and settled them from principle. she harassed herself by imagining what an unspeakably happy mother she would be if instead of his gay, kind words he had said:-- "i have been looking into this matter carefully and i understand why you take the position that you do. in fact i do not see how a christian could do otherwise. i shall take it with you, and you may consider that the question is settled with me for all time." however, it is something, indeed it is a great deal, for a lone and lonely mother to have a boy go her way, and go smilingly, merely to please her. chapter iii mamie parker on a bright winter day more than a year after mr. conway's deliverance with regard to cards, mrs. burnham's next very distinct milestone was set up. she was away from the old home and mr. conway and all the associations of her past. she was spending her second winter in a lively college town, and erskine was a sophomore. the lonely mother of one son had been through much anxiety and perplexity before the plans for this change in their life were fully formed. erskine's gay rendering of the situation was that not only did every adopted aunt and uncle and grandmother that he had in the world know best how to plan their life for them, but had each a pet college to ride as a hobby. he gave this as a reason why it was just as well to break all their hearts at one fell swoop and choose for himself--which was what in effect he had done; at least he had gone quite contrary to the urgings of his other friends and had compromised with his mother. but he had made quite a compromise. his very first choice had been one of which she entirely disapproved; nor could she be persuaded despite his arguments to change her point of view. in vain he held her quite into the night in a close and eager debate, setting forth his important reasons with skill and eloquence. in vain he assured her that conditions had very much changed since his father had expressed disapproval of this particular centre of learning, and as for his grandfather, why there was nothing left of his times but the name. his mother urged that her opinion, or her feeling--he might call it feeling if he chose--was not based on his grandfather's or even entirely on his father's views, but was the result of her own reading and inquiry, and was unalterable. if he selected that college, it would be in direct opposition to her strongly expressed wishes. she had been tempted to add that if he did so, his money, left in her charge and subject to her decisions until he was of legal age, would not be forthcoming. she was mercifully preserved from making this mistake. had she said so, he would probably have gone to the college of his choice even though he had to go penniless. as it was, his eyes flashed a little. but his mother's voice had trembled as she added those last words, "and i suppose i need not try to tell you how such a course would hurt me." it was that which held the boy. he sprang up suddenly, took two or three hasty turns up and down the room in a manner so like his father's that ruth could hardly bear it, then his face had cleared. "you shall not be hurt, mommie," he had said in his usual cheery tone. "you shall never be hurt by me. i want that college more i presume than i could make you understand, and the more i think about it the more i feel that i should like to choose it. but i am not a baby who must have everything he wants; and i do not care enough for anything on earth to get it at the expense of hurting you. you know that, don't you? i'll tell you, mother, we will compromise; this is an age of compromise. i will drop my first choice from this time forth if you will unite heartily with me on the second one and help me stop this clamor of tongues." it had not been by any means her second choice, but she felt that having been treated so well she must meet him halfway; so the vexed question was settled. there had been another anxiety. marion dennis had written to her not to make the mistake of following her boy to college; and dr. dennis had added a few lines to the same effect, saying that in nine cases out of ten he believed such a course to be a mistake, and even in the tenth, separation would probably have been better. moreover, an only son and an only child needed, as a rule, more than any other to be thrown on his own resources. all the old arguments over again, and numberless plans for the disposal of the mother. she was to come to the dennis home for a visit of unlimited length; she was to spend the winter with flossy; she was to go abroad with grace and her husband. eurie, the outspoken, wrote:-- "now, ruth, don't, i beg of you, tie that dear boy to your apron-string. i am the mother of five, and i know all about how they talk, and how they feel when they don't talk. besides, i need you this winter as never before; let me tell you something." then had followed revelations intended to prove that it was ruth's imperative duty to spend the winter with her old friend. mr. conway added his courteous hint, and suggested plans. mrs. conway wondered if mrs. burnham would not like to join her sister helen and their mutual friends, the hosmers, on an extended western trip, now that she was to be alone. the winter was an ideal time for such a tour as they had planned; and it would be pleasant for erskine to think of his mother as travelling with friends instead of being at home alone. poor ruth! her heart turned from them all in almost rebellion. if she must be separated from erskine for the first time in his life, couldn't she be let alone in her own home? to go visiting or sight-seeing without him she felt would be unbearable. she kept most of these anxieties and advices to herself, feeling that she must not cloud erskine's last days at home with them. still, she wondered not a little,--and sometimes it hurt her,--that he had not spoken of her plans at all, but seemed to be so absorbed in his own as to have forgotten her. at last, when she felt that some positive decision must be reached, she told him of mr. conway's proposition, and showed him eurie's letter. he glanced it through, smiling serenely:-- "aunt eurie is cool, as usual," he remarked. "they can all save their time by planning for somebody else, can't they? of course i am going to take you with me, mommie. do they think i would leave you in this big house alone, or let you go travelling without me!" it was all so easy to arrange after that. it sounded so different from the wording in those letters when erskine himself replied to them. "i am very grateful for your thoughtful kindness about my mother, but i am going to take her with me; i had not a thought of doing otherwise. i should not be comfortable to have her away from my care in winter, even though she were with you. i have so long made her first in my thoughts and look upon her so entirely as my father's precious charge to me, that no other plan is to be thought of. i shall find pleasant rooms for her, and i think she will enjoy the change." ruth smiled proudly as she made her verbal explanations. "thank you very much, but erskine says i am to go with him; he cannot think of trusting me to myself; he has taken care of me for a long time, you know." there was not a thought of sarcasm in this suggestion. she knew that the assumption of authority sat well on her handsome son who could look down on her from his splendid height; it seemed quite in keeping with his appearance and character that he was going to take his mother with him in order to take care of her. the scheme had worked well. he "took" his mother and took excellent care of her, and incidentally she did much, of course, for his comfort, and they were happy. early in his college career she had sometimes overheard explanations like this:-- "no, boys, i can't join you to-night. you see, i have my mother with me and i feel bound to give her what time i can spare. it will never do to have her feel lonely and deserted after bringing her away out here among strangers, on purpose to take care of her." it was all very pleasant. but she had learned something from those letters and that volume of advice. she tried steadily not to dominate her son; indeed, so far as a carefully-watched-over mother could, she effaced herself, or tried to. erskine had no thought of such a thing, and was openly and serenely happy in his mother's society. "i pity the other fellows," was a phrase often on his lips. "most of them live in pokey rooms all by themselves or with only each other; no woman to speak to but a cross-grained hostess, and nothing homelike anywhere; while here it is almost as nice as being at home." and he would glance complacently around the handsomely furnished suite of rooms that showed everywhere the touch of his mother's hand. but of course there were evenings that were not spent with his mother. it was in connection with one of these that she reached that distinct milestone of which mention has been made. erskine in explaining about it had shown an unaccountable embarrassment. "it is just a kind of spread that one of the boys is getting up in honor of his sister; she has come to spend the winter with him. it is rather new business to him and i have promised to help him through, so i must go early and stay late--not very late, though. parker's landlady will look out for that; she is one of the grim and surly kind. i should have the shivers if i had to get up a spread, with her in charge. yes, parker is the curly-headed one that you don't quite fancy. i don't know why, he is a good fellow. haven't i spoken before of his sister? she has been here for three weeks. didn't you notice parker last wednesday at the concert? he sat just across from us and had her with him. yes, she is at his boarding-house, and the spread is in his room. he has the downstairs room, mother, in fact it is the back parlor; there is a folding-bed that does duty as a sort of sideboard during the day. it is very nice, really. one wouldn't imagine that there was a bed anywhere around. parker is one of the fellows who has a good deal of money, i think, but not the culture that generally goes with such a condition. sometimes i fancy that his father must have made his money lately and suddenly; but, of course, i don't know. still, everything is very nice and proper about this spread; of course you know that, or i wouldn't be in it. the sister? oh, yes, she is young--younger than parker. he is older than most of us, you know. no, there are no women in the house except the landlady and her sister, a maiden lady. that's a pity; it must be rather lonely for ma--for miss parker." the color flamed in his face and he laughed in an embarrassed way and spoke apologetically:-- "parker has 'mamie' so constantly on his tongue that the rest of us are in danger of forgetting. he is very proud of his sister. why, no, mother, of course he could not very well make any other arrangement; why should he? of course it is a perfectly proper thing for a young lady to be in her brother's boarding-house. she isn't obliged to have any more to do with the other young men than she chooses. parker wants her to stay with him all winter. their father is a mining man, and he and his wife have gone to the mountains somewhere among the mines to look up some more of their money, i suppose." he spoke almost contemptuously; for some reason the evidence of abundance of money in the parker family seemed to annoy him. he went on quickly with his labored explanations:-- "of course it would be pleasanter for m--for his sister if parker were in a house where there are ladies, but he has been there for several years and has a room that suits him; he doesn't seem to think he can make a change. oh, yes, there are to be ladies to-night. some of the other boys have sisters, and cousins, or intimate friends; it is a very informal affair. i fancy that miss parker herself is to be hostess. as for a chaperon, i don't think they have thought of her." he laughed in a half-embarrassed way as he said that, and added hastily:-- "it is really just a frolic, mother; they are not formal people at all, under any circumstances, i fancy. is it possible that that clock is striking seven! i must be off at once; parker will think i have forgotten my promise to see him through from beginning to end." what had he said to cause his mother to sit, for an hour after his departure, as still as a stone, her hands clasped over the neglected book in her lap? what was making that strange stricture around her heart as though a cold hand had clutched her and was holding on? he had kissed her good-by with almost more tenderness than usual, if that were possible. he had called her "mommie," his special pet name for her, and had inquired solicitously as to whether there was any special reason for his getting home early. if there was, why of course--or if for any reason she would rather not be left to-night, he could excuse himself to parker,--of course he could. all his friends knew well enough that his mother came first. but how relieved and pleased he had looked when she made haste to assure him that there was not, and that she would be quietly happy with her book all the evening, and there was no need at all for his hastening home. and besides--she paused over that connecting phrase and tried to formulate her fears. how had her son conveyed to her heart the feeling that the time to which it seemed to her she had always looked forward--the time when he would look upon some other woman with eyes that were no longer indifferent, had come? she could not have put it into words; but though she arose, at last, and put away her book as something that seemed to have failed her, and sat down at her desk to spend an hour with marian dennis, and abandoned her, presently, for flossy shipley, and gave them both up after the second page, and selected another book with the firm determination to compel herself to read it, the simple truth is that she spent the entire evening, and a large portion of the night as well, with one mamie parker. chapter iv would she "do"? the next morning mrs. burnham came into her pretty parlor, where a dainty breakfast table was laid for two, prepared to be as wise as a serpent over the new situation. she was genial, sympathetic, and not too penetrative in her questions. erskine had come home late, much later than he had ever been before; yet apparently his mother had not noticed it. she did not even ask at what time he had come. in truth she needed no information, but how was erskine to know that? did he have a pleasant evening, and was the occasion all that it should have been? he was not enthusiastic. it was pleasant enough, he said. in some respects very pleasant; only--well, a few of the boys were noisier than was agreeable, and two or three of them did not apparently know how to treat ladies. "oh, nothing objectionable, of course," he said quickly, in response to her startled look. "they are so used to being alone that they grow loud-voiced and careless about the small proprieties, or at least courtesies; i fancy some of their ways must have seemed peculiar to miss parker." "the other girls? oh, they are used to such things; they were the sisters and cousins of the boys, and the ways of a lot of fellows accustomed chiefly to their own society would not seem so strange to the others; but miss parker is--at least i hope, i mean i think she--" he caught himself and left the sentence unfinished save by a half-embarrassed laugh, which changed into a slight frown. while his mother rang her table bell and gave low-voiced directions to the maid, she pondered. what was it that erskine hoped? that miss parker was by nature more refined than the other ladies? and was the hope well founded? she was slightly acquainted with some of the sisters and cousins who were probably at this gathering. at least she had met them once or twice and had felt no fear as to their influence over erskine. was this mamie parker different? she felt her face flush a little even over her thoughts. must she learn to say "mamie"? one thing was certain: she must make the acquaintance of the girl at once. she ventured a move. "is this mr. parker so much your friend, erskine, that he will expect your mother to call on his sister, or is that unnecessary?" her heart beat in steady thumps while she waited for his answer. if only he would say in his pleasant, indifferent tone:-- "oh, it isn't necessary, mother; parker and i are not especially intimate, and he has no reason to expect such attentions from you." but there was no indifference in the quick response. "mommie, you know just what, and how, always, don't you? i was wishing for that very thing and not wanting to trouble you. parker and i cannot be said to be inseparable; but he is a good fellow, and i think you would like him better on closer acquaintance. his sister is very much alone here; none of those girls who were there last night have homes or mothers; i mean of course that they are away from home; though i must admit that some of them acted last night as though they had no mothers anywhere, worthy of the name. it would mean very much to miss parker, mother, if she could know you; and of course parker would appreciate it more than anything else that could be done for her. you don't know how much the boys admire my mother." his mother managed to smile cheerfully, and assure him that she would make the proposed call. when he went away to his recitation he kissed her fervently and told her she was the dearest mother in the world; and as she watched him out of sight, she turned from the window and said with a kind of strange gravity:-- "i think it has come: i must pray for grace to do right." for several days thereafter the hours that mrs. burnham spent alone were unusually thoughtful and prayerful. the feeling grew upon her that her son had reached a critical point in his life. it is true he was very young, not yet twenty; but none knew better than she that boys of twenty sometimes glorify and sometimes mar all their future by reason of their interest in one young woman. also, she knew that a single false step on her part, just now, might spoil all her future with her son and hasten a condition of things that she longed to postpone for him. but she could not plan her way, could not indeed see a single step before her until that first one was taken: she must make that call on mamie parker. while she allowed one triviality after another to delay her, the conviction grew upon her that the step was important. erskine's interest was keen; despite the sympathy there had always been between them he had never before shown such a lively desire to hear about each moment of his mother's time while they were separated. that he chose not to ask in so many words whether or not she had yet made that call but emphasized the situation. when, before, had he hesitated to urge what he desired? moreover, he was often absent-minded and constrained; seeming to be almost embarrassed over his own thoughts. he could not mention the girl's name without a heightened color, yet he evidently planned ways of introducing it that would sound accidental. all things considered, mrs. burnham, as she dressed carefully for calling, gravely admitted to herself that she was evidently about to meet one who, for good or ill, had taken a strong hold upon her son's life. as she waited in the large ugly parlor, where the wall-paper was gaudily angry over the colors in the carpet, and where every article of furniture or ornament--of which last there were many--seemed ready to fight with every other one, she wondered what erskine the fastidious thought of this room. it seemed almost profane to think of meeting one's ideal in such a room. yet she must be reasonable; of course the girl was not to blame for the taste, or want of taste, displayed in her brother's boarding-house. she had to wait an unreasonable length of time, and despite her furs she felt the chill of the half-warmed room. there were a few books on the table, but she tried in vain to find one that would hold her thoughts. perhaps no book could have been expected to do that under the circumstances. presently she became aware that some one else had entered an adjoining room where there had been brisk moving about ever since her arrival. with the coming of another, a sharp little voice could be distinctly heard:-- "oh, say, lucile, do come here and fasten this waist; i'm scared to pieces and my fingers all feel like thumbs. don't you think 'ma' has come to look me over and see if i will do! oh dear! can't you hook it? it's awful tight, but i've got to be squeezed into it somehow; i'm keeping her waiting an awful while. i had on that fright of a wrapper when she came, and my hair in crimps. i didn't get up to breakfast this morning; we were so horrid late last night, i couldn't." "'ma' who?" said another voice. "not erskine burnham's mother? you don't say so! my land! i should think you would be scared. they say she's awful particular who she calls on. you must mind your p's and q's, mamie, or you'll never see that handsome boy of hers again. they say she keeps him right under her thumb all the time." mamie's response was in too low a tone to penetrate into the next room, but it was followed by explosive giggles from both talkers. meanwhile, the caller's face was glowing, not only with shame for them, but with indignation. what might _not_ those coarse girls--she was sure they were both coarse--be saying about her son! the door opened at last and a mass of fluffy hair entered; behind which peeped a pert little face with pink cheeks and bright, keen eyes. the girl was dressed in the extreme of the prevailing style,--quite too much dressed for morning, though the material of which her garments were made was flimsy and cheap-looking. plainly if she had money she had not learned how to spend it to advantage. still the clothes were worn with an air that hinted at her ability to learn how to play the fine lady if she were given the opportunity. her manner to her caller suggested a curious mixture of timidity and bravado. she chattered incessantly and showered slang words and phrases about her freely; yet all the while kept up a nervous little undertone of movement and manner that showed she was not at ease. "oh, indeed, she was having an awfully good time. brother jim was doing the best he could to give her a lark. she had never been much away from home and they lived in a stupid little village where there was nothing going on. oh, jim was an elegant brother; he wanted her to stay all winter and look after his buttons and things." "i expect you have heard a good deal about jim, haven't you, from your son? only he calls him 'parker' instead of jim; the boys all do that, you know. it's 'parker,' and 'burnham,' and all the rest of them. ain't it funny, instead of using their first names? i s'pose that's the college of it; but your son has such a pretty name it seems a pity not to use it. don't you think erskine is an awful pretty name? i do. it has such an aristocratic sound. ma says i ought to have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, i like aristocratic things so well. not but what we've got money enough;"--this with an airy toss of the frizzed head. then, in a confidential tone: "but i may as well own to you that it didn't pan out until a little while ago." mrs. burnham, as she took her thoughtful way home, too much exhausted with this effort to think of making another call, studied in vain the problem of her son's enthralment. the girl was pretty, certainly, with a kind of garish, unfinished beauty, not unlike that of a pert doll; and her chatter, if one could divest one's self of all thought of interest in the chatterer save in the way of a moment's diversion, was rather entertaining than otherwise, when it was not too much mixed with slang; but what erskine, her cultivated and always fastidious son, could find in the empty little brain to attract him was beyond the mother's comprehension. but he must have been pronounced in his attentions. had she not been reported as having called to see if the girl would "do"? ruth's sensitive face flushed over the memory. should she tell that to erskine? what should she tell to erskine? how should the place and the interview and her impressions of the entire scene be described? it required serious thought. the more the mother considered it, the more sure she felt that much of erskine's future might turn on the way in which she, his mother, conducted herself just now. she puzzled long and reached no clearer conclusion than that until she saw her way clearer she would take no steps at all, and would be entirely noncommittal in her statements. this she found hard; erskine was curious, more curious than she had ever before known him to be. he cross-questioned her closely as to her call, and was openly regretful, almost annoyed, at her having so little to tell. in the course of the next few days the watching mother, who yet did not wish to appear to watch, knew of at least two social functions that included her son and miss parker. one was a sleigh-ride which fell on the evening of the mid-week prayer-meeting in the church they were attending. erskine had been scrupulous in his attendance on this meeting, declining for it social and business engagements alike, sometimes to his own inconvenience. "there was no use in compromising about these matters," he said. "busy people can find something important to detain them every week of their lives if they once admit an exception. the only way is to set one's face like a flint and march ahead." but he came to her with profuse apologies for this exception; parker had planned, without knowing anything about the prayer-meeting; he had not been brought up to think of such things, and it was going to embarrass him very much if he declined. he wouldn't have had it happen in this way for a great deal, and he should take care to let parker know in the future that thursday evening belonged to his mother and to no one else. he himself arranged for her to have agreeable company to and from the church, and she had grace to be sweet and cheerfully acquiescent in all his plans. nevertheless she owned, quite to herself, that she felt in a strange, new sense alone. she was more straitened in her praying that evening than she had been for months, almost for years. there was a miserable undertone question hovering about each petition: could it be possible that she must teach herself to pray for mamie parker, not as a passing acquaintance but as one of her very own? and could she learn such a lesson? she had by no means settled it that such a catastrophe must come upon them, but she could not keep down her forebodings. it was two days afterwards that mrs. burnham, having at last reached a decision, made another very careful move. it was discussed over the cosey breakfast which she and erskine took together in her parlor. "would he like to have her ask mr. parker and his sister in to dinner on some evening soon? or would that indicate a greater degree of intimacy with the young man than he cared to live up to?" there was a sudden stricture at her heart over the flash of pleasure on her son's face. "mommie, you are a jewel!" this was his first outburst. "parker would be everlastingly obliged to you for such an attention. you see he knows very few people here of the sort that he would care to have his sister visit. most of his friends are just college boys away from home, and parker has ideas about his sister's associates. he is a real good fellow, mommie; if he had had one-third of my opportunities, he would have made more of them, i believe, than i have." his mother did not choose to argue that question. she felt a wicked temptation to say that she would be glad if she need never hear his name again; but she restrained herself and asked another question. chapter v the old cat! "would he like to have one or two young people asked to meet them? alice warder, for instance, and her cousin. how would they do?" did his face cloud a little? "i don't know," he said slowly, and his voice suggested a cloud, or at least a diminution of his pleasure. "is that necessary, do you think, mother? it is not as though we were at home, of course. several guests at one time would hardly be expected at a boarding-house." his mother reminded him of their hostess's cordial offer of a separate table for themselves and three or four guests whenever they cared to give her a half-day's notice; and added that alice was so used to being called upon to help entertain their guests, that to count her out would seem almost strange to her. besides, wouldn't this be a convenient time to show her cousin some attention? he was not to be with her long. apparently erskine had no more arguments to offer. "oh, very well," he said. those were matters for her to settle, and it must all be just as she thought, of course. then he kissed her, lavishly, and went away; but she felt that she had destroyed much of his pleasure in the proposed visit. and he used to be so fond of alice! during the next two days she spent much time and thought over her little boarding-house dinner-party. she had adhered to her resolve to include alice and her cousin among the guests, although she had given herself time to look steadily in the face the reason why she was so insistent about this when erskine evidently desired it otherwise. alice warder was flossy shipley's dear friend, and being introduced by her to the burnhams was at once established on the footing of an old friend. it had taken but a very short time to learn to love her for herself. even the careful mother of one son of marriageable age would have found it hard to find flaws in alice warder. she was beautiful to look upon, with regular, well-modelled features and a complexion that was faultless. perhaps her great brown eyes were what a stranger noticed first; they were certainly very expressive. but she was much more than beautiful. there was about her a charm of manner and movement that are difficult to define and impossible to describe, but that made their invariable impression even on those who met her casually. ruth burnham, who in her womanhood was, as she had been in her girlhood, fastidious to a fault with regard to young women, had yielded to the subtle charm of this one at their very first meeting; and as the intimacy between them deepened into friendship she had found graces of heart and mind that fully harmonized with the lovely exterior. the warders bought a home very near to the burnham place, and so far as social life was concerned the two families speedily became as one. mrs. burnham, singularly enough, as she reflected afterward, had not once, during the early days of their friendship, coupled the names of alice and erskine in her thoughts, congenial as they were. although they were almost to a day of the same age, alice, who had been for several years the nominal head of her father's house, appeared much the older, and more like a mature young woman than a girl still in the charge of a governess. it might have been this apparent disparity in their ages that helped mrs. burnham to take the girl to her heart and think of her as the daughter she had often wished for; not by any means as erskine's wife, but as his sister. erskine had been from the first of their acquaintance drawn to the young woman in the frank and brotherly way that his mother desired. when the plans for college were matured, one of the loudly spoken regrets on the part of both mother and son was that they must be separated from the warders. it came to pass, however, in the course of their second year of absence that mr. warder had occasion to make the college town his headquarters for several months; so alice and her former governess were installed in one of the hotels for the winter, that her father might have as much of her company as possible; and the burnhams rejoiced greatly thereat. yet here was erskine, barely six weeks afterwards, considering it not necessary to invite alice to dinner! the poor mother sighed over the perversity and the blindness of young manhood, and knew for the first time that if erskine had developed the peculiar interest which miss parker seemed to have awakened, for alice warder, instead, she could have rejoiced with her whole heart. they came to dinner, alice and her boston cousin, a harvard student of marked ability, and miss parker and her brother. and alice was fully as marked a contrast to the other young woman as ruth had believed that she would be. first, in the matter of dress. alice warder was an artist in dress. she wore at this quiet little dinner party a cloth gown of olive-green, so severely plain in its make-up that its richness of texture and faultless workmanship were apparent. and miss parker appeared in an elbow-sleeved white dress badly laundered and profusely trimmed with a quantity of lace that was startling rather than fine. moreover, she was adorned with a mass of hothouse blooms to which she referred so significantly that the little company were at once made aware that erskine was the giver. but the dress was perfection compared with the poor girl's manner. she gayly and unblushingly appropriated erskine to herself and rallied her brother on the situation. "poor jim! you haven't any girl at all, have you? since miss warder--must i call you 'miss warder'? it sounds ever so much more friendly and cosey to say 'alice.' you must look after your cousin, i suppose. are you sure he is your cousin? you know that is a dodge girls have when--oh, well, never mind; i won't bother you. this is good for jim; he always has half a dozen strings to his bow and can never decide which one of them he wants the most; so this will be excellent discipline for him, leaving him out in the cold. dear me! what am i talking about? here is mrs. burnham looking young enough this minute to be one of us." all this, while they were making their way through the boarding-house halls and large dining-room to a cosey little alcove, where a table had been set for the burnhams and their guests. erskine's face had flushed deeply during the outburst, and he had darted an annoyed look at his mother to see if she was hearing it. he led the way across the dining-room much to the irrepressible mamie's disappointment, though she chose to seem to ridicule it. "dear me!" she said in a stage whisper to alice, "do look at that ridiculous boy walking off alone. where i come from, the fellows take the girls out to supper. can't i borrow your cousin for this evening, and get even with him?" mrs. burnham felt the color rising in her face, but alice was gracious and lovely. she laughed pleasantly as though used to such jokes, linked her arm in the girl's, and said merrily:-- "we will give them all the slip, my dear, and go in together." [illustration: "we will give them all the slip, my dear."--_page ._] throughout that embarrassing and long-drawn-out dinner alice was a help and comfort at least to her hostess, and did steadily and patiently what she could to cover the blunders of the girl beside her. utterly unaccustomed to even the formalities of a fashionable boarding-house table, mamie made constant blunders with forks and spoons and other instruments of torture for the uninitiated; but these were trifles compared with the blunders of her tongue. she made evident attempts to cover her ignorance with regard to table formalities by much gay talk. she laughed incessantly, and told many jokes at her brother's expense. she said: "him and me," and "her and i," and "you folks," and a dozen other provincialisms. when they returned to mrs. burnham's parlor, it was almost worse--for then mamie sang; and it was hard for her hostess to determine of which she was most ashamed, the bad taste of the girl's selections or the less than mediocre execution. still, the music was by no means the worst feature of that memorable hour. mamie's next startling venture was a pretence of being offended by what she called erskine's desertion of her at dinner-time. "oh, you needn't come around," she said rudely, as he rose to arrange her music. "i can fix things myself, thank you, and mr. colchester will turn the music for me, i know; won't you, mr. colchester?" with a jaunty little smile for the stately boston cousin. "you can't make up for rudeness to me, sir, as easy as you think. i make fellows who want my company mind their p's and q's, don't i, jim?" the stalwart brother thus appealed to replied only by a slight embarrassed laugh, and the hostess had time out of her own embarrassment to bestow a swift glance of pity upon him. he had already seen enough of another sort of world to realize that his pretty, pert little sister, the idol of his country home, was not making as good an impression on these new friends of his as he wished she were. if the ladies had but known it, the poor young fellow was at that moment saying to himself:-- "why can't mamie act more like that miss warder, i wonder? there's an awful difference between them, and she doesn't catch on, somehow." throughout the interminable evening, alice warder proved not only the excellent foil that mrs. burnham had foreseen, but a faithful and efficient coadjutor. not a lift of her eyebrows or a stray glance of any kind betrayed a second's surprise at the character of the guests invited to meet her dignified cousin and herself. she was gracious and friendly to such an extent that before the evening was over, mamie, who was frankness itself, said admiringly:-- "how long you going to stay in this place? dear me! i wish you was going to be here all winter; i can see that you and me would be real cronies." in the privacy of mrs. burnham's bedroom, whither alice was taken to put on her wraps, the girl bestowed her closing touch of sweetness and balm upon her hostess. "i had quite a little visit with mr. parker while you were entertaining the others with those pictures; i was much interested in him; he is a young man of good principle, isn't he? one on whom education will tell. it is lovely in you and erskine to open your home to him in this way; it will be sure to mean much to him; and it ought to help the little sister, too. it is pleasant to see how fond he is of her." "you helped," said mrs. burnham, significantly. "i am more grateful for your help to-night than the mere words will express." she kissed her as she spoke, and felt in her heart that she was willing that erskine should marry this girl to-morrow, if he would. "i was glad of the opportunity," the girl said simply. "and so, i am sure, was ranford. he is very much interested in young men of this type." for a full half hour after "jim" had carried off his pouting sister,--whose parting shot had been that she considered it "awfully pokey" for a girl to go home from a dinner-party with "nothing but her brother"--spoken in a pretended confidence to him, but loud enough for all to hear,--silence reigned in the burnham parlor. erskine had a desk in one of its corners, where he kept certain of his books, and studied, whenever he chose to remain with his mother. he flung himself down before it the moment the door closed after their guests, as though work pressed hard. his mother took a book and sat silent and apparently absorbed, although as a matter of fact, instead of reading, she was studying the half-averted face that was drawn in almost stern lines, and the eyes that stared at the open page as though they did not see its words. she did not believe that erskine was studying latin. what had this terrible evening done for him, and for her? had that pretty-faced, ill-dressed, ill-bred girl secured in some unaccountable way a permanent hold on her son's heart? might it not be possible that in giving him this awful view of her in sharp contrast with alice warder she had but alienated him from herself? perhaps she had blundered, and perhaps the consequences of her blunder would be fatal to them both. why had she done it? why had she not waited, and watched, and understood better before she attempted anything? what should she do now? how was she to bear this silence? and yet, what might not erskine say when at last he broke it? a half-hour passed and neither mother nor son had turned a page. suddenly he wheeled his chair around so that she could get a full view of his face, and smiled a half-sad, half-whimsical smile, and spoke his word:-- "i don't believe we can do it, mommie. it was good in you to try, and you did it royally, as you do things, but--she can't be assimilated. she doesn't belong. we shall have to wait until she goes home before we can do much for parker. all the same, mother, you understand that i thank you for the effort. alice was superb to-night, wasn't she?" then ruth burnham understood that it was her business to understand that her son's interest lay solely in the young man parker, and that in the desire to help the brother the sister must be thought of as simply tolerated. already erskine had put away his first illusion so utterly that he did not propose to own it to himself, much less to his mother. poor mamie parker spent her fruitless winter in the college town, and tried by many innocent and a few questionable ways to win back to interest and special attention her brother's handsome friend, whose sudden defection she could not understand. she tortured herself in a vain effort to discover what could have happened on that evening which she had expected to be memorable to her for other reasons than now appeared. why had it so utterly changed the attitude toward her of the young man who, she had confidently assured jim, was "caught, all right," she "knew the signs"? by degrees, without any clearly defined reason for doing so, she came to associate the defection with the young man's mother, and called her "that old cat!" with a bitterness that had more than mere anger behind it; there was a lump in her throat and a curious stricture about the little organ that she called her heart, which was new to the frivolous girl. jim's handsome college friend had afforded his sister mamie a glimpse into a new, strange world, one that she felt she could have loved, and in which she believed that she could have shone; and in some way, she did not understand how, his mother had closed the door. "the old cat!" she said. "i should like to get even with her!" and then she cried. chapter vi ideal conditions erskine burnham's lesson was short, but sharp, and he seemed to have learned it thoroughly. he gave himself more persistently to study than before, and was even more devoted to his mother than ever, if that were possible. he let the visiting sisters of freshmen and sophomores dignifiedly alone, and resisted without a sigh numerous attempts to draw him into local society circles. "haven't time for society just now," was his invariable excuse. "nor inclination," he would add privately for his mother's benefit. occasionally the mother urged the acceptance of an invitation and begged him not to make a recluse of himself for her sake; but he met her suggestions with his whimsical smile and the gay retort that a society composed of two entirely congenial people met all his present requirements. she was not insistent. why should she be, when erskine was undeniably happy in the life he had planned? certainly it was an ideal life for the fond mother; for both of them, perhaps. it had been unique from the first of erskine's college course. they had been settled but a few weeks in their new home when mrs. burnham, finding much time at her disposal, proposed to erskine that she take up some of her long-ago-dropped studies and let him introduce her to modern college ways. the young man laughed as he gave her an admiring glance and assured her that she knew more than other women, already. nevertheless it pleased him to go into careful detail about his work, and on the following day it surprised as well as pleased him to find that his mother was quite as well prepared with some of his studies as he was himself. from that evening a new order of things was established; mrs. burnham, without matriculating as a college student, and without letting it be known, save to the choice few who were their very intimate friends, became nevertheless a student. how much of erskine burnham's acknowledged success in college was due to the fact that his mother studied with him throughout the entire course is something that will never be known; but her son gave her full credit for the help that she was to him. from the first he recognized her as a stimulant; he discovered that he must have his points very fully in his grasp in order to explain them satisfactorily to his pupil. she always insisted on being his pupil and kept carefully the subordinate place, although her keen questionings more than once led him to change his view of a subject under discussion. altogether, it was a life replete with satisfaction to both mother and son. not that they shut themselves away from society. such of his friends as erskine thought his mother would enjoy or could help he brought freely to their rooms, and between several of the students and herself there was built up by degrees that kind of friendship which one occasionally sees between self-respecting young men and certain middle-aged women. it was a very pleasant experience, and it made ruth feel, as she expressed it to erskine, that she had several sons always ready to serve her. neither did they wholly neglect the outside world. both mother and son held carefully to their resolve not to let college or any other functions interfere with their sunday and mid-week engagements in the church of their choice, and through this channel they made certain acquaintances that ripened into friendship. but there came a time in the mother's life when she wished, not that she had enjoyed her studies with erskine less, but that both of them had given more time and thought and enjoyment to distinctively religious themes and duties. meantime their friendship for alice warder ripened and deepened, although there had been an interim during which its very life had seemed to be threatened. following that painful episode with mamie parker, erskine had seemed to shun even alice warder. he had not from the first been entirely sure that he cared to see much of her boston cousin, and presently made him an excuse for seeing little of alice, for the cousin seemed to be staying indefinitely. this state of things lasted until the college year closed and they went home, and became again next-door neighbors to the warders. at first, it seemed to mrs. burnham that the old friendship was lost. something very vague and intangible, but distinctly felt, seemed to have come between them. then, suddenly, whatever it was, it passed. on a certain evening that stood out plainly afterward in the mother's memory alice had appeared at her window with an air of decision, and a question. "has erskine come in yet, mrs. burnham? when he comes, will you ask him if he can give me an uninterrupted half-hour this evening for something special?" later, the mother wondered, and often wondered what that something special was, but she had not been told. it was something that made a marked difference in erskine's manner. from apparently avoiding alice warder's society as much as possible, he frankly sought it; proposing her as a third on occasions when his mother would have hesitated, and in every possible way proclaiming that the old cordial relations were reestablished. from that time on, the young woman next door became so entirely identified with the daily life of the burnhams that the intimate friends of the family said "alice and erskine," quite as a matter of course. in the fall they went back to college, mother and son. at least that was erskine's way of putting it. "why not?" he said, laughing at his mother's protest. "you are as much in college as i am. they ought to give you a diploma. i believe i'll divide mine; have the sheepskin cut exactly in two, and your name inserted. half of my honors belong to you, anyhow." during his senior year erskine and alice warder were more inseparable than ever. mr. warder went abroad on an extended business trip, which was so entirely business that he would have little or no time for alice, and she chose to be left behind. but her friend who had lived with her as a companion, since she had ceased to be a governess, wanted the winter for her personal friends, so it was decided that alice should secure rooms at the same house where the burnhams boarded and be chaperoned by mrs. burnham. this made them practically one family, though each adhered to his own programme. alice gave much time to correspondence, and interested herself at once in special church work; while mrs. burnham continued to study with her son. but in all social functions, and indeed, in all their leisure time, they were together quite as a family. it was during this winter that mrs. burnham took up a study quite by herself and made diligent effort in it. this was the study of adjusting herself to new relations. she was getting acquainted with and growing used to her daughter, she told herself hopefully; for by this time she had fully decided that alice warder was the one who was to share through all their future erskine's love and care. she grew more than reconciled; she told herself that she was perfectly happy in erskine's choice; that of course she wanted him to marry, she had always wanted it; and where in all the earth could he have found a more lovely character or a more entirely acceptable person in every way than alice warder? it really seemed as though a special providence had planned and created them each for the other. as the intimacy deepened, so that the three seemed to think in unison, the mother told herself cheerfully that it was almost as though the two were married already; there would be no strange chasm to bridge over when that time came; nor would they have to readjust themselves in any way. alice had not known a mother's love and care since childhood, and she turned as naturally to mrs. burnham for mothering as though they were really mother and daughter. it was all ideal. there were times, of course, when mrs. burnham could not help sitting in secret judgment on certain ways and words of this daughter of hers. she would allow herself to wish that this or that had been different, and then would bring herself to order with severity, assuring herself that she had no right to expect perfection, and where, on this earth, could there be found another girl so near it as alice? over one phase of the girl's life this mother in all sincerity rejoiced. alice was unquestionably and deeply religious. her christian life was deep-rooted and pervasive, and the perfume of its flowering filled her days. to come in contact with her for even a short interview was to discover that religion with her was not merely a duty, but a joy. "alice is very unusual in this respect," ruth said to erskine. "it isn't simply that she is regular and methodical in her christianity as in everything else. i have seen girls before who went to prayer-meeting, for instance, regularly, from a sense of duty; but with alice it is this, and something more. she looks forward to it as a pleasure; and she comes from it uplifted and advanced in her christian experience." erskine was hearty in his response. "yes, alice takes hold of life generally with a kind of joyful enthusiasm that is delicious. and there is contagion in it; i enjoy the mid-week meetings better myself, since i have learned to plan for them as she does." everything considered, that last year of college life passed all too quickly, at least for mrs. burnham. there were times when she realized that the peculiarly close relations which she and her son had sustained for four beautiful winters could not, in reason, continue, and she shrank from any change. yet for the most part she was strong in her gratitude that her son's college life had been what it had been, and that the most censorious could not discover any evil results from this long, close fellowship with his mother. there were still years of study for him. it had been decided that he would study law in the city where his father had practised it, and live at the old homestead, making daily trips to and from the larger city. in due course of time, therefore, they were once more settled at home for an indefinite period. alice warder had gone to the coast of maine for a long-promised visit among her mother's relatives, but on her return, the warders were again to become next-door neighbors. already in her letters to mrs. burnham, which were quite as frequent as those to erskine, alice warder was planning certain functions in which "you and father, and erskine and i" were in evidence. there was one feature of the situation that troubled the mother. as the days passed the question which it involved grew more and more insistent. why did not erskine, at least, confide in her? had he not from his very babyhood been in the habit of bringing to her not only every joy and sorrow, but every passing emotion or fancy, however trivial, until she had believed them as nearly one as it was possible for two people to become? why then, in this supreme decision of his life, had she in a sense been counted out? no hint as to his new hopes and plans had been put into words for her; she had simply been left like the rest of the world to take things for granted. there were times when this question probed her keenly. she struggled to discover whether she had been in fault. despite her earnest efforts to hold herself well in check and give no sign of certain emotions which every true mother must feel at such an hour, had she failed? had she appeared cold, or indifferent, or, worse than either, jealous? despite her careful cross-examination of herself she could not lay her finger upon any word or act that she could make different; and she was obliged to content herself with redoubling her efforts to show her entire acceptance of alice as one of them; but so far as any special confidences were concerned she did it in vain. both erskine and alice were entirely frank in their manifest interest in each other, acting at all times as though they had nothing to conceal. they had even reached the stage when they claimed each other's time and attention as a matter of course, and so expressed themselves. erskine, for instance, would glance at a note that had been laid on his desk a short time before, and explain to his mother:-- "i shall have to defer my call on dr. west, mother, until some other evening. alice has to meet her committee at the hall, and wants me to take her over." could anything, argued the mother, indicate more surely that they two had already passed the early stages of sentiment, and begun to realize that they belonged to each other for convenience as well as for love? then why did they not confide in his mother, _their_ mother? no comparatively small matter had ever troubled ruth burnham more than did this one. there were times when she felt almost indignant, and was on the verge of saying to them both that she did not think she deserved such careless treatment at their hands. why, her very intimate friends were almost asking when the wedding was to be! there were other times when she told herself that she would not be the first to speak, even though they kept silence until the wedding day was come. matters were in this state when she reached another distinct milestone in the singularly marked journey of her life. chapter vii "mothers are queer!" it was but the week before alice's expected return, and mrs. burnham was out paying afternoon visits. she had confessed to erskine that she wanted to get them off of her mind before alice came, and be able to give undivided attention to her for a while. "i don't suppose you can imagine how i have missed her," she added in a voice that she intended to express archness, but which was almost wistful. he felt the wistfulness and mistook its cause, and said tenderly:-- "poor little mother! you need a daughter, don't you?" she had turned from him abruptly to hide the glimmer of tears; and she had told herself almost angrily afterward that it was time she had learned self-control. at the home of one of her friends she met a mrs. carson, with whom she had also a calling acquaintance. mrs. carson had been spending some weeks in boston, and had no sooner exchanged greetings with mrs. burnham than she brought out with eager hand from her news budget a choice morsel. "and what do you both think i heard just before i left the city? at first i could scarcely believe my ears; in fact, i did not credit the news at all; i said it could not be so; i am sure, dear mrs. burnham, you will understand why. but afterward it was so signally confirmed that i was obliged to accept it." "dear me!" said the hostess, "this is quite exciting. do enlighten us, mrs. carson. we have been so humdrum here this fall that news is thrice welcome." "you would never guess my news, i am sure, that is, you would not, mrs. webster; but there sits our dear mrs. burnham, looking as calm and unconcerned as usual, though i presume she has known all about it this long time." "now you arouse my curiosity, certainly," that lady said with a quiet smile. "i don't recall any special news from boston, of late." "oh, well, i don't suppose it is late news to you, but it certainly was to me. why, mrs. webster, i have it on excellent authority that our friend alice warder is engaged to her cousin, ranford colchester, and the marriage is to take place very soon. now do you wonder that i was simply amazed over such an announcement?" mrs. burnham took her startled nerves into instant and stern check, and was entirely silent while mrs. webster exclaimed and expostulated. "i told you you wouldn't be able to believe it," said the gratified news-dealer. "such a surprise to us all! and yet you see this naughty woman doesn't express any, and hasn't a word to say for herself! dear mrs. burnham, it isn't necessary i suppose for us to confess that we have been waiting these many weeks for the formal announcement of her engagement to an entirely different person? her cousin, indeed! why i thought they were the same as brother and sister. i was never more surprised in my life. at first i simply disputed it and assured my friends that alice warder was as good as married, already. but it came to me too straight to be disputed. it's this way. my aunt has a young niece living with her this year who is a very intimate friend of miriam stevens, and she, you know, is mr. colchester's stepdaughter; and she told her all about it. it seems, although they have been engaged for a very long time, years and years, miriam said, the engagement has just been announced. mr. colchester, the father, of course, has opposed the match, because it interfered with some of his pet plans. there was an old love story connected with it, don't you know, and a good deal of sentiment and obstinacy on the part of the old gentleman, who has always thought that the world was made for his convenience. but he found that his son could be obstinate too; he was willing to marry alice warder, and he would never, no never, marry anybody else. then alice decided that she would show a little spirit, and she refused to come into the family so long as there was a breath of opposition. nobody knows just what has happened, at least miriam doesn't; but she says that her stepfather has not only withdrawn his opposition, but seems quite as eager as his son to have the marriage take place. miriam did not think that the day had been fixed yet, but she felt sure it would be not later than christmas. now, isn't that a romantic story, and a startling one? just think how that girl has stolen a march on us when we thought we understood all about her future, and were breathlessly awaiting our invitations to the wedding! and here sits our dear mrs. burnham, looking as unconcerned as possible; though all this while she has been helping deceive us into the belief that alice warder was almost her daughter!" how ruth burnham got away from their volubility and their playful accusations and their congratulations she was never afterward able to clearly explain, even to herself. she knew that her brain felt on fire, and every nerve in her body seemed to be quivering, but she also knew that she had one supreme determination, not by word or glance to betray consternation or surprise or indeed feeling of any sort. since these women believed that she had deceived them, let them by all means continue to do so, at least until she could determine what she thought, or what she was to say. she knew that she preserved her outward calm, and made some commonplace reply to the eager questioning exclamations showered upon her. she remembered murmuring something about young people's secrets being sacred to themselves, and then she got herself away and walked the seven squares between her and her home, and wished that there were more of them, that she might have time to steady herself and plan what step to take next. how, for instance, was she to break this terrible piece of news to erskine? to her astonishment she found that she was giving full credit to the story. although the details had been too minute and the source of information too terribly reliable to admit of reasonable doubt, yet her reason told her that she ought to be able to turn in contempt from such a story. how was it possible for alice warder to be guilty of such long-drawn-out unpardonable hypocrisy as this? alice warder of all women in the world! how had it been possible for her to deceive erskine in this way? why had she done it? what could have been her motive? had she simply and deliberately flirted with him, to show that insufferable old man that there were others besides his son who wanted her? poor erskine! poor trusting, deceived heart! what could his mother do or say to soften such a revelation as this! finally she walked quite past her own door, adding several more blocks to the already long distance, before she had herself under sufficient control to meet her son. for the first time in her life she was glad that he was not in when she reached home; and glad again that when he came a friend was with him, who remained to dinner. this enabled her to watch erskine closely, without his observing it, and to determine whether he might have heard from some other source the strange news. she decided that he had not; he was even more full of good cheer than usual, and referred several times to alice, as his guest was also her friend. mrs. burnham's unusual quiet finally called forth solicitous inquiries from her son. had she overwearied herself that afternoon? had there been any accident or detention that had worn upon her? she made haste to reassure him, and struggled to appear at ease; while all the time her mind was busy with the problem of how to break her news to erskine. the more she thought about it, the more strangely improbable it seemed. alice warder engaged to be married to any one but erskine! as for the cruel wickedness of the girl whom she had loved and trusted as a daughter, the woman who felt herself betrayed could not trust her thoughts just yet in that direction. she must give all there was of her to erskine. when their visitor had gone, erskine gave himself in earnest to anxiety about his mother. "i cannot remember ever to have seen you look so wan and worn. is it simply the making calls that has exhausted you? i remember i used to notice that that was an exhausting function for you. i wouldn't do it any more, mommie; let people come to you. where did you go? and what was said to tire you so? or was it what they didn't say? i have noticed that ladies when making calls never seem to really say anything. they talk a good deal, but then!--" if he only knew what they had said that day! how should she tell him? they went to the library; erskine bemoaning the fact that he had some work which must be done, and could not read to her. but he would establish her among the cushions where she could rest, and he could look at her occasionally. so she lay there, outwardly quiet, looking steadily at him as though she must see his very soul, and going on with her problem. was she being cruel, too, lying quietly there concealing a weapon with which she was presently to stab him? if she could only decide upon the least terrible way of telling him what she had heard! she planned and discarded a dozen forms of speech, and finally plunged headlong into the baldest and most commonplace of them. erskine had risen to close a door, and then had come to adjust her cushions and ask if she were comfortable. and then--should she like him by and by, when he had run over two or three more pages, to read to her? there was a magazine article he had been saving up to enjoy with her. or was she too tired to-night for reading? and she had caught his hand and held it in a nervous grip while she exploded her news. "i heard something very strange this afternoon, erskine; something that i do not in the least understand. i don't know how to credit it, yet it came to me very straight. mrs. carson has just returned from boston, and has it, she says, from one of the family that alice warder is soon to be married to her cousin." she felt breathless. she did not know whether to look at her victim or to look mercifully away from him. he was leaning forward in the act of tucking a refractory cushion into place, and he persisted in conquering the cushion before he spoke. then he said cheerfully: "that is out at last, is it? alice must feel relieved." his mother pushed all the cushions recklessly and sat upright. "erskine," she said eagerly, "what do you mean? you don't mean, you _can't_ mean that you knew it all the while!" "why not, mother? have known it for months, might say years. it had to be a profound secret, though, on account of old mr. colchester's state of mind; he had other plans, you see, and at first he utterly refused to side with the young people; then alice refused to enter the family so long as there was any objection to her, and also refused to have her engagement made public; it has been a long, wearisome time; i am glad for both of them that the struggle is over. i have served them to the best of my abilities, but i can see that the new order of things will be a comfort to both; to all three of us indeed." he laughed a little over that last admission, but his mother had not yet recovered from her first amazement. "erskine, why didn't you tell me?" he laughed again and bent over to kiss her. "mommie, you speak as though at the least i had committed forgery. how could i tell you, dearest? it was another's secret. alice was absurdly sensitive, it is true, but of course i had to respect her wishes. she is not accustomed to being objected to, you know. there was a sense in which i came upon their secret at first, by accident, which served to make me doubly careful; i did not feel that i could speak of it even to you; though i will own that i thought it extremely foolish in alice not to do so. "do you feel like being read to, mamma, or would you rather be entirely quiet to-night? do you feel a little bit rested?" "yes, indeed," she told him eagerly. she was very much rested; in fact she did not feel tired at all; she would like exceedingly to be read to; or she was ready to do anything that he wished. he looked at her curiously, and a trifle anxiously. there was something about his mother this evening that he did not understand. a few minutes ago she had looked pale and worn to a degree that was unusual; now her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were very bright. could she be feverish? he wondered. and he mentally vowed vengeance on all formal calls. it was nearly a week afterward that erskine and alice, walking home together from some society function, lapsed into confidential talk. "how did you find my mother?" erskine asked. "was she able to be as glad over it all as you could wish?" "she was lovely," said alice, enthusiastically. "an own mother could not have shown more tenderness and lovingness. i have missed my mother all my life, erskine, but i shall miss her less, even during this time when a girl needs her mother most, because you are so kind in lending me yours." "and yet, do you know, i think she has lately suffered a shock and a disappointment? i am nearly certain that she had cherished hopes which included us both. i did not realize until very lately indeed that she too was being deceived; else i must have insisted on her being taken into confidence." alice's merry laugh astonished and almost vexed him, her first words were more surprising still. "so you thought she was disappointed? what bats men are, to be sure!" "what do you mean? do you not know that to my mother you are the one young woman?" "oh, indeed i do, and rejoice in it. but i know also, my dear simpleton, that she is almost deliriously happy at this moment over her late discovery. i know she loves me almost as she could a daughter, and i also know that she loves me more, oh, far more, because her son erskine is a brother to me instead of--something else." his puzzled look made her laugh again. but after that he studied his mother from a new standpoint. certainly she was very fond of alice and was about to lose her; yet certainly she was happy--happier than he had ever known her to be. "mothers are queer!" was his grave conclusion. chapter viii a spoiled mother it had been an ideal october day: one of those ravishing days that come sometimes in late autumn when, though the air is crisp with the hint of a coming winter, it is at the same time balmy with the memory of the departed summer. the hills in the near distance had put on their glorified autumn dress, and the flowers in the gardens were all of the gorgeous or deep-toned colorings that tell of summer suns and autumn crispness. it was, in short, one of those days when it is, or should be, a delight simply to live. the burnham place had never looked more lovely than it did that afternoon, bathed in the soft glory of an unusually brilliant sun-setting. it was customary to speak of this as the old burnham place; yet nothing in ruth erskine burnham's changeful life showed more markedly the effect of change than did this. the long, low, rambling, old-fashioned house, much in need of paint, that ruth had come to as a bride, was there still, but so altered that even she had all but forgotten the original. the house and the grounds had been, like many other things and persons, transformed. no spot anywhere, for miles around, was such a source of pride and pleasure to the old friends of that region as the burnham place. there were those still living who could tell in minutest detail the story of its transformation, when the judge's new wife came out there to live, and astonished the country by her doings. some of them had been more than half afraid of ruth in those early days; they all believed in her now. she had come out to the upper porch for a moment, not so much to get a view of the wonderful sunset as to get her breath. the house was full of flowers, and they had seemed to stifle her. a handsome woman still was mrs. burnham. stately was one of the words that people had been wont to use in describing her; she was stately yet, though her son erskine would soon celebrate his thirtieth birthday. these later years had touched her lightly. they had been spent, for the most part, in the cheerful quiet of their old home, which, although the city had grown out to it, had yet not absorbed it, but allowed its favored residents to have much of the pleasures of country life, with a rapid transit into the heart of the great city as often as life of that kind was desired. erskine had for several years been admitted to the bar, and the old firm name that had meant so much in legal circles had once more the strong name of burnham associated with it. that her son was a legal success was not a surprise to his mother. with such antecedents as his how could it have been otherwise? she had not kept up with his legal studies as she had almost done through his college course, but she had kept in touch with them, and could copy his notes for him, giving him just the points he needed--better, he told her, than he could do it himself. "we will take you into the firm if you say so, dearest," he said gayly one evening, after a spirited argument between them with regard to a point of law in which mrs. burnham had vindicated her side by an appeal to an undoubted authority. "i told judge hallowell, yesterday, that it was easier to consult you than to look up a point, and did just as well. he would agree to the partnership, mother, without hesitation; he considers you a wonderful woman." at which the happy mother laughed, and told him he was a wonderful flatterer; and then--did he want her to look up the evidence in that brainard case for him? she could do it as well as not. she had been reading up about it that morning. an ideal life they had lived together all these years, this mother and son. more than once in the years gone by mrs. burnham had overheard some such remark as: "it will be hard on that mother when erskine marries, will it not?" it used to annoy her a little. she was conscious of a feeling very like resentment that people should consider it necessary to discuss their affairs at all; especially to intimate that there would ever be anything "hard" between them. there had been other talk, too, that she had resented. it had been noticed that judge hallowell, judge burnham's lifelong friend, came often to the old burnham place, and somebody got up a very sentimental reason for his never having married; and somebody else objected that mrs. burnham did not believe in second marriages; she had been heard to go so far as to say she thought they were actually wrong. then somebody else looked wise and smiled, and said she had heard of people, before this, who changed their opinions about such things, on occasion. and-- how would such a masterful young man as erskine get on with a stepfather? this bit of gossip had floated about the burnhams for a year or more, while erskine was studying law, without their having been the wiser for it. the day for the wedding had almost been set, still without reference to them, when judge hallowell, sixty years old though he was, suddenly brought home a wife; and that, without an hour's break in the friendship between himself and the burnhams. by degrees, the form of the question which the talkers asked each other slightly changed, and they said they were afraid it would be hard on mrs. burnham if erskine should ever marry, and they added that it wasn't probable that he ever would. they even ventured, one or two of the more intimate, or the more rude, to express some such thought to the mother herself. when they did, she laughed lightly and bade them not be sure of anything. her son might astonish them all, yet. she was sure she hoped so. she was sincere in this. as each year passed she told herself more and more firmly that of course she wanted him to marry. why shouldn't she want him to find that lovely being who must have been foreordained for him? she was sure now, after all her long years of experience with him, that she should know the very first moment when he discovered her. of course she had not been through the years since alice warder was married without more than once imagining that she had been discovered. they had numbered some very lovely young women among their friends. there had been a certain miriam whom she had admired and liked and almost loved, and had meant to love in earnest if erskine really wished it. and she had gone about the finding out very cautiously. didn't he think miriam was pretty? "very pretty indeed," he had answered promptly. and she was so sweet and winsome, so thoughtful of her elders, so gracious to everybody; quite unlike many others in that respect. he was quick to agree with this, also. didn't he think her delightful in conversation? she seemed able to converse sensibly on any subject that was under discussion, as well as to talk the most delicious nonsense, on occasion. "well," he said cheerfully. in that respect he must differ from her. he could not say he thought the young woman especially gifted in conversation; it seemed to him to be her weak point. if she could talk as well as her grandmother, she would be charming. mrs. burnham had argued loyally for her favorite; had assured her son that miriam was a charming talker when she chose, and that it was ridiculous to think of comparing her with her grandmother! but she had laughed light-heartedly at his folly, and had confessed to her secret self that she was glad he liked the grandmother better. there were several other temporary interests, and then the mother settled down to restfulness. erskine was a boy no longer, but a full-grown man, doing a man's work in the world; she could trust him. he had always confided in her and of course he would not fail to do so when this supreme hour of his life came to him. she still wanted him to marry; she believed that he would, some day. she promised herself that she would be, when the time came, a perfect mother. she would love the chosen one with all her heart; she should be second only to erskine himself. and she would give herself to helping them both to be so happy, anticipating their wishes and aiding and abetting all their plans, that they would be glad to have her with them always. and always she closed these hours of planning with a long-drawn sigh of satisfaction that they were all in the dim future. erskine burnham had passed his thirtieth birthday before he had been separated from his mother for more than a few days at a time. it was early in the may following the thirtieth anniversary when the break came. he went abroad then, on legal business of importance. "shall you take your mother over with you?" judge hallowell had asked, but a short time before he started; and he had answered quickly: "oh, yes, indeed; i couldn't think of leaving mother alone, with the ocean between us; she is too much accustomed to my daily care for that. moreover, i think a sea voyage will be good for her." but his mother met him at the door, that afternoon, open letter in hand, and the grave announcement that she had bad news for him. "what is it, dearest?" he had asked composedly, as he bent to kiss her. it occurred to him then there could be no very bad news for either of them so long as they stood there together, safe and well. "it is alice; she is ill, very ill they are afraid, and her husband writes that she wants me immediately. they think, erskine, that there will have to be an operation, and she feels that she cannot go through it without me. i fill the place of mother to her, you know, dear." erskine did not take his disappointment easily. he was used to having his own way, and he had planned a delightful outing for his mother. he argued the question strenuously, and was loath to admit that his mother's duty lay elsewhere, and that he must go abroad without her. "it is hard on my mother," he said discontentedly to judge hallowell. but he admitted to himself that it was quite as hard for him; he hated travelling alone. for mrs. burnham the summer had dragged. for thirty years she had lived for her son. why should life without him be called living? it was harder for her because her sacrifice proved to be unnecessary. the surgical operation was, after all, postponed; there was some hope that it would not have to be at all; and alice herself had gone abroad with her husband: not by erskine's route, but on a sailing vessel, making the ocean trip as long as possible. mrs. burnham had stayed to do the thousand and one little things for the invalid that a mother would naturally do, and to see her fairly started on her journey, and then had come back to her lonely home: what might-have-been crowding itself discontentedly among her thoughts. she had lost her summer with erskine for nothing, she told herself. still, the summer was going; it would not be long now. erskine had written to her daily, mailing his letters as opportunity offered. at first the letters were long, very long and full; it was almost like seeing the old world with him. then, as business matters pressed him, and social functions growing out of business relations consumed more and more of his time, they shortened, often to a few hurried lines. sometimes there was only the date at a late hour, and "good night, mother dear. this has been my 'busy day.' interesting things have happened. heaps to tell you when i get home, which i hope now will be soon. perhaps in my very next i can set the date." she had lived on his letters, watching for each as eagerly as a maiden might watch for word from her lover. was he not her lover? all she had in all the world, she told herself proudly, and was satisfied, and smiled over that word, "dearest," that fell as naturally from his pen as from his lips. that next letter in which perhaps he would set the date of his return was waited for in almost feverish impatience. there was so much she wanted to do just before he came. she had planned to set the house and grounds in festive array as for the coming of a conqueror. actually his first home-coming of any note in which she was there to greet him! always before they had come together. the watched-for letter was delayed. there occurred a longer interval by several days than there had been before, between letters. mrs. burnham allowed herself to grow almost nervous over this, and watched the newspapers hourly, glancing over foreign items in feverish haste. she talked about the strangeness of this delay with her friends, until the most sympathetic among them laughed a little and told each other that that spoiled mother was really absurd! and at last it came. she remembered--she will always remember that october evening when, the shades being drawn close and a brisk fire burning in the grate, she had seated herself near it in a luxurious reading chair and, merely for company, had pushed erskine's favorite easy-chair just opposite and laughed a little at her folly, and tried to assure herself that young ben had returned long ago with the evening mail, which had to be sent for, if one could not wait until morning. and then--ben's step had crunched on the gravel outside, and she had held her breath to listen, and--in another minute it lay in her lap! a thick letter, when she had expected only a few hurried lines. it was almost like the steamer letter that he had written her on going out. it couldn't be a steamer letter! not yet! she seized it eagerly and studied the postmark. could he be coming so soon that this was really her last letter? how silly she was! her hand trembled so that the thin foreign paper rattled in her grasp. there were many sheets written fine and full. but it was not a steamer letter; he was still in paris. she made herself wait until she gave careful attention to ellen, who appeared just then, answering all her questions, directing her in minute detail as to a piece of next morning's work, having her add another block to the fire and rearrange the windows before she finally dismissed her. at last she was fairly into her letter. she read rapidly at first, devouring the pages with her eyes. then, more slowly, stopping over one page, re-reading it, a third, a fourth time; staring at it, with a strange look in her eyes. suddenly she dropped them, all the thin rustling sheets, and covered her face with both hands. it seemed to her afterward that she spent a lifetime shut up with that foreign letter. chapter ix sentiment and sacrifice the woman on the upper porch who had come out to get her breath had in a short time passed through so many phases of feeling as to be hardly able to recognize herself. she had lived ten days since that bulky foreign letter had seemed to change the current of her life and set it flowing--when indeed it flowed again--in another channel. in truth, ruth erskine burnham, as she stood there ostensibly watching the sunset, was reviewing the days in a half-frightened, half-shamefaced way. she had always, even in young girlhood, been self-controlled. why could she not hold herself in better check even though her world had suddenly turned to--stop! she would not say it! what had happened to her, after all, but that which fell to the lot of mothers? it was not as though some terrible calamity had overtaken her, and yet--could she have done differently if it had been? she went back in thought to that evening ten days away and looked at herself as though she were another person looking on. she even smiled faintly at the absurdity of that foolish woman's first action, before she had finished reading the letter. she had risen suddenly and turned off the light, and pushed up every window to its highest, and rolled back the curtains and let in a whirl of wind that had made the foreign sheets fly about as though they were things of life. then, aided only by the firelight, she had stooped and clutched after them and held them for a second to her breast and then, suddenly, had thrown them from her with a low cry of pain. the woman on the upper porch looking at the sunset smiled at that half-insane woman of ten days ago and wondered that she could have so far forgotten herself. why should there have been any such outburst as that, when erskine was well and--and happy. she shivered a little even now over the word, and drew her wrap closer and told herself that as soon as the sun disappeared the chill came. then she went back to her review and reminded herself firmly that there had been no calamity to any one; there was nothing but joy. erskine was not only well and happy, but he was coming home. he was coming to-night! no, she must not say "he" any more; _they_ were coming. forever and ever after this it must be "they": her son and daughter. that to which she had looked forward for so many years with varying emotions had come upon her. erskine was a married man; and to-night he was bringing home his bride. she had said over the words aloud, that day, when she was quite alone, trying to make herself feel that she was speaking of her son. it was all so sudden, so utterly different from any imaginings of hers, and she thought that she had gone over in her imaginings the whole wide range of possibilities. that long letter over which she had spent a strange night, believed that it was giving her the minutest particulars of this strange thing. erskine had met the woman who was now his wife on his first evening in paris, and from the very first had been attracted to her by his sympathy with her unprotected condition. her only friend and companion in a strange land was a maiden aunt who was an invalid. indeed it was for her sake that they were lingering in france, because she was not able to travel; she had been made worse by the ocean voyage, instead of better as had been hoped. irene had been very closely confined with her for many weeks, and welcomed a face and voice from home as only those can understand who have themselves been cast adrift among foreigners. he had been able to do a few little things for the comfort of the invalid, and the gratitude of both ladies was almost embarrassing. they were staying at the same hotel, and as they chanced at that time to be almost the only americans, at least the only ones belonging to their world, they naturally saw much of each other. as the aunt grew more and more feeble and irene became entirely dependent on him not only for what little rest and recreation she got, but for all those offices which members of the same family can do for each other in a time of illness, their friendship made rapid strides. then, when her aunt was suddenly taken alarmingly ill, and after a few days of really terrible suffering died, leaving irene alone in a strange land, her situation was pitiable. he would have to confess that he did not know just what she would have done, had he not been there to care for her. "of course, mother, you do not need to have me tell you that long before this i knew that i had met the one woman in all the world who could ever become my wife. the reason that i had not mentioned her in any of my letters was that i could not, even on paper, speak of her casually, as of any ordinary acquaintance, and i had no right to speak in any other way. then, when i had the right to tell you everything, it was so near my home-coming that i determined to leave it until you and i were face to face, and i could answer all your questions and look into your dear eyes and receive from you the sympathy that has never failed me and i know never will. nothing was farther from our thoughts at that time than immediate marriage. indeed it would have seemed preposterous to me, as it would have been under any other circumstances, to be married without your knowledge and presence. but when this unexpected blow came, i realized the almost impossibility of any other course, although, even then, i had the greatest difficulty in persuading irene to take such a step. she had to be convinced through some annoying experiences of the folly of her hesitation. i do not know that even you, with your long experience, realize the difference between this country and ours in matters of etiquette. things which at home would be done as a matter-of-course are so unusual here as to be almost, if not quite, questionable; and the number of purely business details that loomed up to be managed by that lonely homesick girl simply appalled her. she sank under them, physically, and i plainly saw that she simply must have my help and care day and night. why, even the nurse who had attended her aunt, deserted us! that is, she was summoned away by telegraph. in short, mamma, there was literally no other course for us than the one we took; although it had to be taken at the sacrifice of a good deal of sentiment on the part of both. it is a continual relief to me to remember that i am writing to a sane and reasonable woman, who is in the habit of weighing questions carefully, and who, when she decides that a thing is right, does it without regard to sentiment or adverse opinion. but oh, mommie, it was hard not to have you with us." there was more in the letter, much more. erskine had exhausted language and repeated himself again and again in his effort to make everything very clear and convincing. he had been skilful also in his attempt to make his mother see the woman of his choice with his eyes. "she will appeal to your sympathies, mamma," he had written. "although she is so young, barely twenty-six, she has been through much trouble and sorrow. she is an orphan, and has been for four years a widow. i need hardly add that her short married life was unhappy and so sad that she can scarcely speak of that year even to me. of course it is an experience that i shall do my utmost to make her forget; and i need not speak of it again. i wanted you to know, dear mother, that you and i have much to make up to her. she was made fatherless and motherless in a single day, when she was a child of sixteen. i like to think of what you will be to her, dearest mother; a revelation, i am sure, of mother-love; for besides being so young when she lost hers, there are mothers, and _mothers_, you know, and i am sure irene does not understand it very well; do you know, she is half afraid of you? she has read a few of your letters, and has caught an idea of what we are to each other, and talks mournfully about coming between us! as though any one ever could! i have assured her that i am simply bringing to you the daughter for whom your heart has always longed." it was at that point that ruth burnham had flung the sheets away from her and buried her face in her hands. but ten days had passed since then, and she had long known, by heart, all that that letter could tell her. and now, in less than another hour, they would be at home! her son and daughter! she had not gone to new york to meet the incoming steamer, as had been arranged, or rather, as it had once arranged itself, quite as a matter of course. "think how delightful it will be, when you stand on the dock watching the incoming steamer, and straining your eyes to discover which frantically waved handkerchief is mine!" this was what erskine had said as he gave her one of her good-by kisses. she had replied that she would recognize his handkerchief among a thousand. in the earlier letters much had been said about that home-coming, and elaborate plans had been made as to what they would do together in new york. but in that last long letter, on the margin of the last page, as though it had been an afterthought, were these words:-- "on the whole, mother, we believe that it would be better for you not to try to meet us in new york. irene has no love for that city; it was the scene of some of her sorrows. she wants to stop there only long enough to call upon her cousins; and we are both in such frantic haste to be at home that we shall make the delay as short as possible; so we think it would be less fatiguing to you to avoid that trip and be at home to welcome us." ruth burnham said over that sentence as she stood on that upper veranda, waiting to welcome them. she had said it a hundred times before. what was there about it that jarred? she could not have told, in words; yet the jar was there. could it be that continually recurring "we"? was she going to be a jealous woman, with all the rest? so meanly jealous as that? "god forbid!" she said the words aloud, and solemnly. she knew that she needed the help of god in this crisis of her life; since the news of it came to her she had spent hours on her knees seeking his strength. she wanted erskine to say "we" and think "we" and to be supremely happy,--not only in his married life, but to have that life all that it could be to two souls. and yet--would it have been wrong for him, in that first letter, to have remembered that she had been used all his life to being the "we" of his thoughts, and to have said simply "i" once or twice? of course she could never any more be "dearest"--his special name for her; but--was he never again for a little while to be just himself, to her? and must she learn to think "they" and never "him"? oh, she didn't mean any of this, she told herself nervously, and she must get her thoughts away at once. of course she would say "erskine and irene" now, always, and forever. or should she put it, "irene and erskine"? could she? perhaps that would help. did other mothers, waiting for the home-coming of their married sons, have such strange thoughts as haunted her? there was mrs. adams, for instance, whose three sons had all been married within a few years. and mrs. adams had not seemed to care. well, as to that, neither would she seem to; and she drew herself up instinctively. but mrs. adams had four boys; five, indeed; the youngest of them was almost as tall as his mother, while she--"the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." the words seemed to repeat themselves in her brain like a dull undertone refrain. other words that had nothing whatever to do with the situation, but that had been familiar to her girlhood, came back and stupidly repeated themselves:-- "dead! one of them shot by the sea in the east." but that was wildness, and utter folly! erskine would be ashamed of her and with reason, could he know--which he never should--that such fancies had been tolerated for a moment. outwardly mrs. burnham was irreproachable. so was her home. in the ten days following that letter she had given time and thought to its adorning. she was a model housekeeper, and to have erskine's rooms always in spotless order had been one of her pleasures. but they had been very thoroughly gone over, and whereever it was possible to add a touch of beauty, it had been done. already she had drawn the shades and lighted up brilliantly, for at this season the twilights were very brief. she had paused, on her way to the veranda, to take a final critical survey, and had told herself that she did not know how to make an added touch. and then she went swiftly to her own room and brought therefrom a vase of roses and set them on the dressing-table of the bride. the vase was a costly trifle that erskine had brought her just before he went abroad, and the roses were his special favorites. she had kept that vase filled with them on her table ever since she reached home. for herself, she was dressed in white: erskine's favorite home dress for her, summer and winter. indeed he was almost absurd about it, never quite liking to see her in any other attire. "i suppose you will want me to dress in white when i am eighty!" she had said to him once, laughingly. his reply had been quick. "of course i shall. what could be more appropriate for a beautiful old lady? you will be beautiful, dearest, but i cannot think that you will ever be old." so, on this evening, although she had taken down a black silk and looked at it wistfully, she had resolutely hung it away again, and brought out a white cashmere richly trimmed with white silk. this was a festive evening and she must honor it with one of her prettiest dresses. all at once as she stood there, waiting, her heart seemed for a moment to stop its beating. she clutched at the railing to prevent her falling, and made a stern and effectual protest. "this is ridiculous! i will not faint, and i shall do nothing to mar his home-coming, or to give him occasion to be ashamed of me." but she stood still, although the carriage that had gone to the station to meet the bridal party was whirling around the corner, was turning in at the carriage drive, was stopping before the door. they were getting out. they were on the porch, they were in the hall; she could hear her son's voice:-- "where is my mother?" and she was not there as she had meant to be to welcome them! she was still on the upper veranda, steadying herself by the railing and feeling it impossible to take a single step. chapter x "sentimental" people erskine came up the stairs in quick leaps. "mother!" he was calling. "mother! where are you? why, mommie!" and he had her in his arms. "i thought i should be sure to see you the moment the carriage turned the corner! are you ill, mother? what is the matter?" was there reproach in his voice? there was something that gave back his mother's self-command. "it is tardiness," she said lightly. "the carriage came sooner than i had thought it possible. o erskine, it is good to hear your voice again." he kept his arms about her and was half smothering her in kisses while he talked. yet his tones had that note in them which held her in check. "irene will think this a strange welcome home, i am afraid; i had to leave her in the hall with the maids while i came in search of you." "we will go down at once," said his mother; and she withdrew herself from his arms and led the way. "she is very pretty." this was mrs. burnham's mental tribute to her new daughter, as they stood together on the side porch after breakfast. it was the morning after the arrival of the bride and groom. they had been drawn thither by erskine, who had walked back and forth with an arm about each, bewailing the fact that he could not spare even one day for his wife in her new home, but must get at once to business. in the midst of his regretful sentence his car was heard at the crossing above, and he had hurried away, calling back to them to take care of themselves, and get well acquainted while he was gone. the two ladies had each returned a gay answer, and then had watched their opportunity to glance furtively at each other, uncertain how to begin the formidable task set them. ruth burnham had it in her heart to be almost sorry for the younger woman, left thus without erskine to lean upon, her only companion in this new, strange home, a woman to whom the place had been home for a generation. did this give her a special advantage? ought she to do something to make the other woman feel at home? what should it be? what ideas had they in common? there was erskine, of course. it was not hard for the mother to understand why this woman had been attracted to him. how indeed could she help it? but what was it in her that had won him? "she is certainly very pretty," she said again, as she studied the shapely figure leaning meditatively against one of the porch pillars; she was looking down into the garden gay with autumn blooms. she was rather above medium height, with a fair skin and a wealth of golden brown hair and eyes that were very blue. ruth did not like her eyes. that is, she would not have liked them if they had not belonged to her daughter-in-law. in the solitude of her strangely solitary room, the night before, she had fought out again one of her battles, and had resolved anew that there should be nothing about this new daughter that she would not like. certainly she was pretty; so was her dress. she was all in white; not a touch of color anywhere. was that her taste, or erskine's fancy? could his mother make it a stepping-stone to conversation? "you dressed for erskine, this morning, i fancy," she said with a winsome smile. "i presume you have already discovered how fond he is of white?" "oh, yes, he has held forth to me on that subject. some of his ideas are absurd, but they serve me very well just now. all white answers as a substitute for mourning, under the circumstances. i hate black, and i am glad that erskine did not want me to wear it." this was the first reference that had been made to her bereavement. mrs. burnham had not known how to touch it. neither had her daughter's words suggested what should be said. she murmured some commonplace about the peculiar hardness of the situation. "yes, indeed," said the younger woman. "it was simply dreadful! aunt mary had been an invalid always,--ever since i knew her, at least,--but nobody supposed that she would ever die. she was one of the nervous kind, you know, full of aches and pains; a fresh list each morning, and a detailed description of each. i did get so tired of it! if it hadn't been for erskine, i don't know what i should have done. poor auntie was very fond of him, and no wonder. he bore with all her stories and her whims like a hero. i used to tell him that he had not lived with his mother all his life, for nothing." "her sudden death must have been a great shock to you." the new mother made a distinct effort to keep her voice from sounding cold. something in the words or the tones of the younger woman had jarred. "oh yes," she said, and sighed. "you cannot imagine what a perfectly dreadful time it was! you know when people are always ill and always fussing, you get used to it, and expect them to go on forever. if i had had the least idea that she was going to die, i should have planned differently, of course. what i should have done without erskine, as things turned out, it makes me shudder to think. what a queer old place this is, isn't it? erskine tells me that he has always lived here and that the garden looks much as it did when he was a child. is that so? it seems so strange to me! i have moved about so much that i cannot imagine how it would be to live always, anywhere. i don't believe i should like it. the everlasting sameness, you know, would be such a bore. don't you find it so?" ruth tried to smile. "i am very much attached to the place. i came to it, as you have, a bride; and now i am afraid i should have difficulty in making any other place seem like home." "yes, that is because you are old. poor auntie was forever sighing for home. nothing in all france or italy was at all to be compared to the delights of her room at home with four south windows and long curtains that she had hemstitched herself." she laughed lightly and flitted away from the subject. "is that an oak tree over there by the south gateway? don't you think oaks are ugly? they haven't the least bit of grace. i like elm trees better than any other; every movement of their limbs is graceful. there isn't one about the place, is there?" "oh, yes, indeed, the other entrance from the east is lined with them the entire length of the carriage drive. was your aunt compelled to remain abroad on account of the climate? it seems sad to think that she had to be away from her home when she missed it and mourned for it." ruth could not keep her thoughts from reverting to the aunt who had been so large a part of the younger woman's life for many years and had been so recently removed from it. "oh, i suppose she could have lived at home. in fact she was worse after leaving it, or thought she was; i didn't see any great difference. it was a lonesome, poky old house where she lived. older than this, and awfully dreary in winter. i couldn't have stayed there a winter, after i once got away, to have saved her life. it was back in the country, you know, two miles from town; think of it! i hate the country. little cities like this one are bad enough, but the country! deliver me from ever having to live in it again. i thought i should die when i was there as a girl. "is erskine very much attached to this place, do you suppose, or has he stayed here just for your sake? i should think it would be much better for him to live where his business is. think how much of his time is consumed in going back and forth! and then, too, it is so disagreeable for him to never be within call when one wants him." "as to the length of time it takes to go back and forth, that is no more than is taken by those who live in the best residence portions of the large city; we have rapid transit, and all the business men who can afford to do so, keep their homes out here. erskine has never known any other home than this, and it would be strange indeed if he were not attached to it. of course it is associated with his father as no other place can ever be." this time it was not possible for the elder lady to keep her voice from sounding cold and constrained. the thought of erskine in any other home than this one that had been improved from time to time and made beautiful, always with his interests in view, had not so much as occurred to her. she recoiled from the mere suggestion, and also from the easy and careless manner in which it was made. the young woman's manner was still careless. "oh, of course; but young people do not feel such attachments much; it isn't natural. we talk a great deal about sentimental youth, but i think it is the old who are sentimental, don't you? auntie was an illustration of that. she had the greatest quantity of old duds that she carried about with her wherever she went, just because they were keepsakes, souvenirs, and all that sort of thing. they were of no real value, you know, the most of them, and some were mere rubbish. i had the greatest time when we were packing to go abroad; she wanted to lug ever so much of that stuff with her! i just had to set my foot down that it couldn't be done; and it was fortunate that i did, as things turned out. we had a horrid time getting packed; if erskine had had all that rubbish to see to with the rest, i don't know what would have become of him. i don't believe he has sentimental notions; he is too sensible. he ought to be in the city; that is the place for a man to rise; and you want him to rise, don't you? aren't you ambitious for him? i am. i want him to stand at the very head of his profession. i tell him that if he doesn't, it will not be for lack of brains, but on account of a morbid conscience. don't you think he is inclined to be over-conscientious, sometimes? what an odd, old-fashioned plant that is beyond the rose arbor; it looks like a weed." she had a curious fashion of mixing the important and the trivial in a single sentence. the mother, whose nerves quivered with her desire to answer that remark about over-conscientiousness, restrained herself and explained the plant that looked like a weed. "it is a very choice variety of begonia and has a lovely blossom in its season. it is the first thing that erskine planted quite by himself. he was a tiny boy then, with yellow curls." the mother's voice trembled. a vision of her boy in his childish beauty, in the long-ago days when he was all her own, came back to her, bringing with it a strange new pang. the wife laughed carelessly. "and you have kept it all these years, ugly as it is, on that account? i told you it was old people who were sentimental." mrs. burnham turned abruptly away, murmuring something about household duties. she went to the kitchen and gave the cook some directions that she did not need; then went swiftly to her room and closed and locked her door. then she passed through to her sitting room, the door of which was opposite her son's, and stood always open, inviting his entrance, and closed and locked it. she had a feeling that she must be alone. more alone than closed and locked doors would make her. she must shut out something that had come in unawares and taken hold of her life. but could she shut it out, or get away from it? "i must pray," she said aloud, clasping both hands over her throbbing forehead. "i must pray a great deal. i am not alone; god is with me; and nothing dreadful has happened, or is about to happen. there is nothing and there must be nothing but peace and joy in our home. i must be quiet and sensible and not sentimental. oh, i must not be sentimental at all!" she laughed a little over that word--the kind of laugh that does not help one; but it was followed immediately by tears, and they relieved a little of the strain. then she went to her knees; and when she arose, was quiet and ready for life. the thought came to her that it was well that she was acquainted with god and did not have to seek him at this time as one unknown. he had kept his everlasting arms underneath her through trying years, certainly she could trust him now. she went out at once in search of her daughter, intending to propose a drive; but ellen met her in the hall with a message. "i was to tell you, ma'am, that young mrs. burnham has gone to lie down and doesn't want to be disturbed. she doesn't want to be awakened even for luncheon; she says she has been on a steady strain for weeks, and has a lot of sleeping to make up; she shouldn't wonder if she slept all day." "very well, ellen, we will keep the house quiet and let her rest as long as she will." the mother's voice was quietness itself, yet, despite that phrase "young mrs. burnham," which, some way, jarred, her heart was filled with compunction. had the poor young wife, a stranger in a strange home, shut herself up to sleep, or to cry? she had been through nerve-straining experiences so recently; death and marriage coming into one short week; and now, a new home, and erskine away for the day, and no one within sight or sound whom she had ever seen before. would it be any wonder if the tears wanted to come? could not her new mother have helped her through this first strange day? why had she not put tender arms about her and kissed her, and called her "daughter," and said how glad she was to have a daughter? that was what she had meant to do. this morning when she came from her night vigil, she had almost the words on her lips that she meant to say as soon as they two were alone. she had meant the words in their fulness; so at least she believed. they had come to her in answer to her cry for help. what had kept her from saying them? even while she asked herself the question, a faint weary smile hovered about her lips. had she done so, would she have been thought "sentimental?" chapter xi "plans for a purpose" the burnhams were still seated at their dinner table, although mrs. erskine burnham had just remarked that the evening was too lovely to spend in eating. "let us take a walk on the porch in the moonlight the minute we are through dinner," she said to her husband. apparently she paid no heed to the slight dry cough which came so frequently from erskine that his mother's face took on a shade of anxiety. erskine's coughs had been his mother's chief anxiety concerning him through the years; he had never been able to tamper with them; but his wife laughed at her fears and frankly told her that erskine was too old now to be coddled. to all outward appearances the burnham dining room was exhibiting a perfect home scene. the day had been balmy, with a hint of summer in the air, and although the evening was cool enough for a bright fire in the grate, the mantle above it had been banked with violets, whose sweet spring breath pervaded the air. to erskine burnham who had been all day in the rush and roar of the great city, the lovely room with its flower-laden air, and its daintily appointed dinner table with the two ladies seated thereat in careful toilets, formed a picture of complete and restful home life. he glanced from wife to mother with eyes of approval and spoke joyously. "i don't suppose you two can fully appreciate what it is to me to get home to you after a stuffy, snarly day in town. i sit in the car sometimes with closed eyes after a day of turmoil, to picture how it will all look. but the reality always exceeds my imagination." his wife laughed gayly. "that is because you come home hungry," she said. "you want your dinner and you like the odor of it and make believe that it is sentiment and violets. in reality it is roast beef and jelly that charm you." he echoed her laugh. he thought her gay spirits were charming. "the roast beef helps, undoubtedly," he said. "though it was violets i noticed first, to-night. aren't they lovely? did you arrange them, irene? hasn't it been a perfect day? too pleasant for staying in doors patiently. i hope you have both been out a great deal? oh, it is friday, isn't it? then you have, mamma, of course. what have you been about, irene?" "i went to the lake this morning with the bensons; and we spent an hour or more with the langhams; they are here for a month. it is lovely out there, erskine, and there are some charming cottages for rent. two simply ideal ones, either of which would suit us. darling little bird's-nests of cottages, not a great staring room in one of them. i wish we could go there for the summer." erskine laughed indulgently, but at the same time shook his head. "too far away, dear. i couldn't get out there at night until seven, or later. besides, you wouldn't find it so pleasant as you fancy. life in one of those bird's-nest cottages is ideal only on paper. nothing could be pleasanter, i am sure, than our own home; and it is a delightful drive to the lake whenever we want to go there. so the langhams are down." "oh, yes, and came to lunch with me. you should see harry! he has shaved his mustache, and it changes his face so that i hardly knew him." "oh, harry is here, is he? his face could bear changing. what did you think of him, mamma? he is the young man of whom i wrote you, who went over on the same steamer that i did, last spring." before mrs. burnham could reply, his wife's voice chimed in. "she didn't meet him. i went off with a rush, this morning. i heard through the mail that the langhams were down, and i was in such a hurry to see nettie that i thought of nothing else. i ran away, don't you think! never said where i was going, or anything; and then came back to luncheon so late that i supposed of course mother had lunched long before, and was lying down, so i wouldn't have her disturbed. and don't you think she had waited, and so lost her luncheon altogether." erskine laughed genially and waited to hear his mother say that of course that was of no consequence; but she did not speak. the cheerful voice of his wife went on:-- "nettie langham has the sweetest little home, erskine. if you could see it, you would never say again that cottages were only nice on paper. i'm sure i long to prove to you how perfectly charming one could be. and we have such a host of pretty things that would fit into it. will langham says he saves ten minutes night and morning by being at that end of the town instead of this." erskine chose to ignore the cottage. "you had an afternoon of calls, had you not? i met the emersons and the stuarts down town and both spoke of having been here." "oh, yes, they were here, with the needham girls; and mrs. easton and her daughter faye were here. we met them in new york, you know. and oh, don't you think, mrs. janeway's niece that we used to hear so much about called this afternoon with a letter of introduction from mrs. janeway. she is lovely, erskine. i was prepared to dislike her because we heard such perfection of her; but really she is charming. and she is going to be at one of the lake cottages for several weeks; that is another reason for our being out there, you see." she seemed bent on holding his attention, but erskine turned to his mother with a question. "mamma, don't you think mrs. stuart is looking ill? i was shocked at the change in her. isn't it marked, or is it because i haven't seen her lately?" "i did not see her to-day, my son. i did not even know she had been here." mrs. erskine burnham pretended to frown at her husband. "what a stupid boy you can be when you choose!" she said. "how many times must i tell you that i thought mother was resting, this afternoon, and did not disturb her with callers? i'm sure the stuarts are not such infrequent guests that one must make a special effort to meet them. i'll tell you some other people who were here. the hemingways, don't you think! the last time we saw them was just as we were leaving paris. they came back only last month, and mrs. hemingway says she is already homesick for paris. that is the worst of living abroad for a time; one is never afterward quite satisfied with this country." "mamma," said erskine. "do i understand that you have not been out, to-day, friday, though it is? aren't you feeling well?" there was tender solicitude in his tones, but his mother's voice was cold. "quite well, erskine. may i give you some coffee?" this he declined, and almost immediately his wife made a movement to leave the table. she linked her arm at once in her husband's and drew him toward the door. "come out on the porch, erskine, do; this room is stuffy to-night. one can't breathe in a house with a fire, on such charming days as these. why, of course, it's prudent. the air is as mild as it is in midsummer. don't go to housing yourself up because you have a tiny little cold; it is the best way in the world to make it cling. dear me! don't i know all about that? poor auntie was forever hunting about for draughts, and closing doors and windows and putting shawls on herself and everybody else. if i had to stay in the house with another invalid of that kind, i should die." they were on the porch by this time; she had overcome erskine's half-reluctance and had closed the door behind them. but the window was open and the mother could distinctly hear the slight dry cough, more frequent now that they were in the open air. she stood irresolute for a moment, then turned and went swiftly up to her own rooms and closed and locked her door. then she went hurriedly to the front windows and drew the curtains close; she had a feeling that she must shut out the outside world very carefully. but she had no tears to shed; on the contrary her eyes were very dry and bright and seemed almost to burn in their sockets, and two red spots glowed on her cheeks. it was a little more than six months since that october evening when erskine burnham had brought home his bride, and they had been months of revelation to his mother. during that time she had tried--did any woman ever try harder?--to be, in the true sense of the word, a mother to her daughter-in-law. her son's appeal during their first moments of privacy had touched her deeply. he had ignored any necessity for a further explanation of his sudden marriage, accepting it as a matter of course that his mother would fully appreciate the simple statement that, however hard it was for all three, it seemed to be the only right solution of their difficulties; and went straight to his point. "i want you to be a revelation to irene, mommie. she knows very little about mother-love, having had chiefly to imagine it, with, i fancy, rather poor models on which to build her imaginings. she is singularly alone in the world, and she doesn't make close friends easily. it is a joy to me to think how a part of her nature that has heretofore been starved and dwarfed will blossom out under your love and care." then his mother had kissed him, a long, clinging, self-surrendering kiss, while she vowed to her secret soul never to disappoint his hopes. what had she not done and left undone and endured during those six months in order to try to keep that vow! what an impossible vow it was! how utterly erskine had misunderstood his wife in supposing that she wanted to be loved by his mother! that she wanted anything whatever of his mother except to efface her. by slow degrees mrs. burnham was reaching the conclusion that such was the policy of her daughter-in-law. it had come to her as a surprise. whatever else in her checkered life ruth erskine burnham had been called upon to bear, she had been accustomed to being recognized always as an important force. mrs. erskine burnham had not planned in that way. she did not argue, she never openly combated any thing; she simply carried out her own intentions without the slightest regard to the plans or the convenience of others; or at least of one other. from the first of her coming into this hitherto ideal home she had assumed that her mother-in-law was a feeble old woman on whom the claims of society were irksome, and the ordering of her home and servants a bore. at first, ruth, with her utterly different experience from which to judge, did not understand the situation. when her new daughter assured her that it was too windy or too damp or too chilly or too warm for her to expose herself, she laughed amusedly and explained that she was in excellent health and was accustomed to going out in all weather. when callers came and went without her being notified, she attributed it at first to forgetfulness, on the part of a bride, or to her ignorance of the customs of the neighborhood; then to her over-solicitude for an older woman's comfort, then to carelessness, pure and simple, and finally, by closely contested steps, to the conviction that it was a deeply laid, steadily carried-out plan, for a purpose. this day, at the close of which she had locked herself into her room and vainly tried to shut out the sounds of laughter on the porch below, had given her abundant proof of the truth of this conviction. it was friday, the day which, ever since erskine was graduated and they were permanently settled in their home, she had devoted to making a round of calls upon people who had been long ill, or who for any special reason needed special thought. she took one or another of them for a drive, she did errands for certain others, she carried flowers and fruit and reading matter to such as could enjoy them; in short she gave herself and her carriage and horses in any way that could best meet the interests of those set apart. so much a feature of their life had this morning programme become that erskine was in the habit of referring to it much as he did to sunday. "we must not plan for guests at luncheon on fridays, irene; mamma is much too tired for social functions after her strenuous mornings." "we could not have the carriage for that day, dear; it is friday, you remember." numberless times since the advent of the new member of the family, had such reference to the special custom been made; the mother's eyes being now opened, she recalled instance after instance in which there had been in progress some pet scheme for friday, that would interfere with her disposal of it. more than once she had tried to enter a protest; had urged that she could wait until another day, or she could order a carriage from the livery for that time; but erskine's negative had been prompt and emphatic. "no, indeed, mamma; we don't want you to do anything of the kind. we are interested in the friday programme, too, remember. i consider it almost in the light of a trust. why, the very horses would be hurt, irene, if they were not allowed to go their friday rounds, carrying roses, and jellies, and balm. nothing not absolutely necessary, mommie, must be permitted to interfere with that." yet, on that friday morning when mrs. burnham, having studied the barometer and the sky, had sent word to an especially delicate invalid that she believed she could safely take a drive, and had come down at the appointed hour dressed for driving, with a couch pillow in hand and an extra wrap over her arm, ellen had met her at the foot of the stairs with a flushed face and eyes that had dropped their glance to the floor for very shame, as she said: "the carriage has gone, ma'am; i was coming to ask you if i should 'phone for another, right away." "gone!" echoed her mistress, standing still on the third step, and staring at the girl. "what do you mean, ellen? gone where?" "to the station, ma'am. jonas said mrs. erskine had ordered him to take her there to meet a friend." "oh," said mrs. burnham, reaching for her watch. "some guest just heard from who must be met, i presume. then they will be back very soon, of course." again the maid's indignant eyes drooped as though unwilling to see her mistress's discomfiture as she hurried her story. "i guess not, ma'am. she ordered luncheon to be late; not earlier than two or half past, and said there would be company; two anyway, perhaps more. will i 'phone for a carriage, ma'am?" chapter xii accident or design? mrs. burnham had stood for a full minute irresolute; then she had spoken in her usual tone, explaining to ellen that the friend she had intended to take out would not be able to go in a livery carriage. she would herself make plain to her why the drive must be deferred until another time. the mistake had occurred by her neglecting to explain to her daughter the morning's plans. then she had turned and slowly retraced her steps. she had seen and been humiliated by the flush on ellen's face and the flash in her eyes. it was humiliating to think that her maid was indignant over the way she was being treated by her daughter. it is probably well that she did not hear the maid's exclamation:-- "the horrid cat! if i only dared tell mr. erskine all about it!" ruth burnham had gone downstairs again after a time. she had changed her street dress first, and made a careful at-home toilet. she had given certain additional directions to the cook, with a view to doing honor to their unexpected guests. she had made a special effort to have ellen understand that all was quite as it should be, and had sternly assured herself that such was the case. if she could not sympathize with the sudden movements of young people on hearing of the coming of friends, she deserved to be set aside as too old to be endurable. it was absurd in her to be so wedded to an old custom! just as though any other day in the week would not do as well as friday. then she had gone to the living room which was erskine's favorite of the entire house. "it is such a home-y room, mamma," he used to say, away back in his early boyhood. when it had been refurnished, or at least renewed, with a view to erskine's home-coming, his mother had taken pains to preserve the sense of homeiness, and had seen to it that his pet luxuries, sofa pillows, were in lavish evidence. it was a charming room. very long and many windowed, with wide, low window-seats, and tempting cosy-corners, piled high with cushions so carefully chosen, as to size and harmony of color, that they were in themselves studies in art. there was a smaller room opening from this and nearer the front entrance, which was used as a reception room, and was furnished more after the fashion of the conventional parlor; but guests who, as erskine phrased it, really "belonged," were always entertained in the living room. in the doorway of this room the mistress of the house had stopped short and looked about her in astonishment. it wore an unfamiliar air. the easy-chairs, each one of which she had made a study, until it seemed to have been created for the particular niche in which it was placed, had every one changed places and to the eyes of the mistress of the house looked awkward and uncomfortable. but that was foolish, she assured herself quickly. chairs, of course, belonged wherever their friends chose to place them. there were other changes. the window-seats had been shorn of some of their largest and prettiest cushions, and a little onyx table that had occupied a quiet corner was gone. it had held a choice picture of erskine's father, set in a dainty frame, and near it had stood a tiny vase which was daily filled with fresh blossoms. picture and vase and flowers had disappeared. "ellen," mrs. burnham had said, catching sight of the girl in the next room, "what has happened here? has there been an accident?" "no, m'm," said ellen, appearing in the opposite doorway, duster in hand. "it wasn't any accident, ma'am, it was orders. she didn't want such a lot of pillows here, she said. it looked for all the world like a show room, or as if it had been got ready for a church fair. those was her very words." "never mind the pillows, ellen." mrs. burnham had spoken hastily, and was regretting that she had spoken at all. "it is the table, and especially the picture about which i am inquiring. i hope the picture is safe? it is the best one we have." "it's all safe, ma'am; i looked out for that; but that was orders, too. she said the room was too full, and looked cluttery; and she said that only country folks kept family pictures in their parlors. and she had me take the table and the picture and the vase up into the back attic. she said the vase was a nuisance; it was always tipping over and she didn't want it around in the way. of course i had to take them; you told me to obey orders." ellen's indignation was getting the better of her usual discreetness. it was her tone and manner that recalled the elder woman to her senses. she spoke with decision and dignity. "certainly, ellen. why should there be occasion for mentioning that? of course mrs. erskine burnham's orders are to be obeyed equally with my own; or, if they conflict at any time with my own, give hers the preference. especially should the parlors and sitting rooms be arranged just as she wishes. young people care more about such little matters than we older ones do." she knew that her voice had been steady, and she took care to make her movements quiet and her manner natural and at ease. not for the world would she have had ellen know of the turmoil going on inside. it was the picture that hurt her; or rather that emphasized the hurt. erskine's favorite picture of his father; the one that as a child he had daily kissed good morning; the one that now after all these years he always stood beside in silence for a moment, after greeting her. and she could not recall that he had ever forgotten to select from the flowers he brought home, an offering for the tiny vase. how was it possible for his wife to have spent six months in his home without noting all this? and noting it, how could she possibly have interfered with that cherished corner? the morning had been a distinct advance on former experiences. the new daughter had evidently misunderstood the spirit in which small interferences and small slights had heretofore been accepted, and determined on aggressive effort. long before this, and as often as she chose, she had made what changes pleased her in the more pretentious parlor, and mrs. burnham had openly approved some of them and been pleasantly silent over others. she had also given explicit directions to the would-be rebel, ellen, that the "new lady's" slightest hint was to be obeyed. there had been no pettiness in her thoughts about the changes. she was earnestly anxious to have her son's wife feel so entirely at home that she would not need to hesitate about carrying out her own tastes. but was it not to be supposed that a wife would consult her husband's tastes as well as her own? and his father's picture that he had cherished ever since he was a child! she had herself told irene one morning, standing before that very picture, how erskine had singled it out from all the others and said decidedly: "that one is papa." and his wife could banish it to the attic! ruth erskine burnham was used to mental struggles. there had been times in her life when her strong-willed feelings had got the upper hand and swayed her for days together; but it is doubtful if a more violent storm of feeling had ever swept about her than surged that morning. for a while the pent-up emotions of many weeks were allowed their way. but only for a little while. the christian of many years' experience had herself too well in training for long submission to the enemy's control. by the time that delayed luncheon hour drew near she believed that she was her quiet self again; ready to receive and assist in entertaining her daughter's guests whoever they might be. as was her habit when under the power of strong feeling that must be held in check she took refuge with her absent friends, and wrote a long letter to marian dennis, ignoring the immediate present utterly and revelling in certain happy experiences of their past. when her unusually lengthy epistle was finished, she was startled at the lateness of the hour, and began to wonder how certain details of the dinner could be managed if luncheon were much longer delayed. just then ellen knocked at her door. "they are 'most through luncheon, ma'am," was her message. "i heard you moving around and i thought i'd venture to tell you." "why, ellen, how is this? i did not hear any call to luncheon." "you wasn't called, ma'am. she said you was likely asleep, and she wouldn't let me come up and see. she thinks you don't do anything but sleep when you are upstairs!" this last was muttered, and not supposed to be heard by her mistress. ellen had evidently reached the limit of her endurance. since the mistress said not a word, she ventured a further statement. "there's four of them, ma'am, besides mrs. burnham; and it's long after three, and they're on the last course. i thought you would be wanting something to eat by this time." outwardly, ruth was herself again. "thank you, ellen," she said. "since i am so late, i think i will not go down until the guests have left the dining room. i am not in the least hungry; i think on the whole i should prefer to wait until dinner is served." her tone was gentleness itself; but there was in it that quality which made ellen understand that she was dismissed. then mrs. burnham went back to her room and sat down near the open window. the sweet spring air came to her, laden with the breath of the flowers she loved, but their odor almost sickened her. she had thought that her battle was fought and victory declared, and behold it was only a lull! what was she to do? what ought she to do? should she go down to the guests, apologize for tardiness, and act as though nothing had occurred to disturb her? that, of course, would be the sensible way; but,--could she do it well, with the closely observing and indignant ellen to confront? it scarcely seemed possible; and she blushed for shame over the thought that she was afraid to meet the anxious eyes of her maid. even while she waited and considered, a carriage swung around the corner and stopped before her door. three ladies alighted, evidently with the intent of paying an afternoon visit. among them was mrs. stuart, her most intimate acquaintance. now indeed she would have to go down; but she would wait for a summons, that would make it appear more natural. so she waited; but no summons came. the ladies, all of them her friends, made their call and departed. and others came--a constant succession of callers; the new spring day had tempted everybody out. most of the people mrs. burnham knew by sight; some of them were comparative strangers, paying their first calls. what was being given as the reason why she was not there to meet them? the words of ellen recurred to her, words that she had considered it wisdom not to seem to hear:-- "she thinks you don't do anything but sleep when you are upstairs." the matron's lip curled a little. she was not given to sleeping by daylight; a fifteen minutes' nap after luncheon was always sufficient, and even that was frequently omitted. it was a strange afternoon, the strangest that she had ever passed. she kept her seat at the window, almost within view, if the guests had raised their eyes, and saw friends who rarely got out to make calls, and whom she had always made special efforts to entertain. what must they think of her, at home, and well, and not there to meet them? and why was she not there? what strange freak or whim was this? could her daughter-in-law hope to make a prisoner of her in her own house? why did she sit there in that inane way as though she were in very deed a prisoner? why not go down, as a matter of course, and take her proper place as usual? but the longer she delayed and watched those groups of callers come and go, the more impossible it seemed to do this. with each fresh arrival she felt sure that she would be summoned, and waited nervously for ellen's knock. but no ellen came. the day waned and the hour for erskine and dinner drew near; and still mrs. burnham sat like one dazed at that open window. an entire afternoon lost. when, before, had she spent a day in such fashion? she leaned forward, presently, and watched erskine's car stop at the corner, and watched his springing step as he came with glad haste to his home, and received his bow and smile as he looked up at her window. now indeed she must go down; and go before he could come in search of her, and question her with keen gaze and searching words. her eyes told no tales, they were dry, and there were bright spots glowing on her cheeks. she had not known what she should say, just how she should manage his solicitous inquiries. she would make no plans, she told herself; things must just take their course. matters had so shaped themselves that any planning of hers was useless. then she had gone down to that cheerful dining room, and listened to the chatter of her daughter-in-law, and replied to her son as best she could. now she was back in her room, and erskine and his wife were out on the porch in the moonlight, and that slight, frequent cough was coming up to her. presently he would come, and she dreaded it. for almost the first time in her life she dreaded to meet her son. he would be insistent, and she was not good at dissembling. and yet, he must not know, he must never know how she had been treated that day. if only he would stay away and give her a chance to think, to pray, to grow calm. should she lock her door? lock out her son? she could not do that! but she could not talk with him to-night; she would turn off her light and ask him not to light up again and not to stay, because she was tired. that at least would be true: she was tired. for the first time in her life she was tired of life! she must get into a different spirit from this. after erskine had kissed her good-night she would have it out with her heart, or her will. hark! he was coming! they were coming upstairs together, and irene was chattering. out went the lights in the mother's room. she heard the wife pass on to her own room, she heard her son, stepping lightly, stopping a moment before her door, then he too passed on, to his own room, and closed his door. chapter xiii was irene right? if she could have heard some of the talk that had taken place on the porch in the moonlight, mrs. burnham would have better understood her son's consideration. they had taken but very few turns on the porch when erskine said:-- "mamma has gone upstairs. i think i must run up and see her a few minutes, irene. she does not seem to feel quite well to-night; although in some respects i think i never saw her looking better; her eyes were very bright, did you notice? perhaps she is feverish. did she speak of having cold?" "not at all; i have no idea that she doesn't feel quite well." "there was something peculiar about her. didn't she really go out at all to-day? that is certainly unusual; you have seen how particular she is to keep her friday programme. irene, i am really afraid that she is ill." "she isn't ill at all, you fussy boy; i think you are absurd about your mother. you fuss over her as though she were a spoiled child. that is just the word for it." "very well," he said good-humouredly. "i must go and 'fuss over' her, enough to know why she overturned her usual programme," and he moved toward the door. his wife held to his arm and tried to arrest his steps. "don't go in, erskine; it is stuffy inside, and i haven't seen you since morning. as for that programme which worries you so much, if you were not dreadfully stupid to-night you would understand that it is i who overturned it. i ran away with the carriage, i told you--almost as soon as you went yourself. i was so charmed with the idea of seeing the langhams again that i forgot everything else." her husband turned then to look at her, his face expressing surprise. "did you take our carriage, dear? i supposed you ordered one from the livery." his wife pretended to pout. "you are cross to-night, erskine. i don't see why i should. i thought 'our' meant mine as much as hers. why shouldn't she order one if she wanted it?" he laughed, as though he was expected to understand that she was talking nonsense, but he spoke with an undertone of decision. "oh if it comes to that, the carriage as well as the horses are undoubtedly my mother's, but she and i have never drawn any hard and fast lines about 'mine' and 'thine'; i have always found her too willing to give up her convenience for mine. for that reason, perhaps, i have been careful to plan systematically for her, and to anticipate and overrule her personal sacrifices as much as possible, and i know that you will delight to join me in it. i am afraid that she was much inconvenienced to-day; still, that cannot be why she did not see any of her friends. what reason did she give, dear, for not coming down?" irene pouted in earnest this time. "really, erskine, you are strangely obtuse! i have explained at least three times that mother spent the afternoon in her room, and that i gave orders that she should not be disturbed. i thought i should be commended for it instead of blamed." "i haven't had a thought of blaming you, irene, but i am a trifle anxious about my mother, and what you say only increases the anxiety. she has never been given to sleeping much in the daytime." "oh what nonsense! as though you knew what she did all day, while you are in town! of course she sleeps; old people always do." "my mother isn't old, irene." [illustration: "my mother isn't old, irene."--_page ._] "why not, i wonder? you ridiculous boy! when should people begin to be called old, pray, if not at fifty? and she is more than that. she is within a few years of auntie's age, and you thought she was an old woman, and were always preaching to me about how patient i must be with her on that account." her husband gave her a troubled, half-startled look. his mother nearly as old as the invalid aunt who had seemed to him old enough to be his grandmother! "are you sure?" he asked helplessly. his wife laughed satirically. "sure of what, my beloved dunce? that your mother is fifty-three? of course i am. it was only a few days ago that she showed me her gold-lined silver cup, that has the imprint of her first teeth and is dated for her first birthday." then her face sobered. "and i'll tell you another way in which i know it, erskine. she is growing nervous and over-sensitive, as old people always do. i can see a great difference in her, even in the short time that i have been here. it is nothing to worry about, of course; simply something to be expected as among the infirmities of age. you ought to have married me six or eight years before you did; it would have been easier for her. she simply cannot get used to your having a wife. 'my son' has 'lived and breathed and had his being' so many years for her sake alone, that to share him with another is a bitter experience. she doesn't love me one bit, erskine, and it is not my fault. if i were an angel from heaven, it wouldn't make any difference, provided i had presumed to marry you. it makes it hard for both of us; and for that very reason it would be much better if you and i were in a little house of our own. she would get used to it much easier if she did not have me continually before her eyes." if she could have seen distinctly the look of pain on her husband's face, as she got off these sentences with composed voice, it might have moved her to pity for him. when he spoke, his voice was almost sharp. "i am sure you are mistaken, irene; utterly mistaken. my mother wanted me to marry; she has wanted it for years; at times she was actually troubled because i did not, and spoke of it very seriously." irene laughed lightly as she gave his arm some half-reproving, half-caressing pats. "blind as a bat, you are!" she said. "despite all your supposed wisdom. on general principles your mother wanted you to marry, of course, because that is the proper thing for a man to do. but marriage in the abstract and marriage in the concrete are two very different matters. there! haven't i put that well? those are lawyers' terms, aren't they? they sound learned, anyway." he smiled in an absent-minded way at her folly. his thoughts were elsewhere. something in the turn of her sentence had carried him suddenly back to a moon-lighted evening in which he had walked and talked with alice warder, and he could seem to hear her voice again as she said:-- "i know your mother loves me, erskine, almost as she would a daughter; and i also know that she loves me a great deal better because her son is like a brother to me instead of being--something else." he remembered how he had puzzled over it all, and studied his mother's face, and half decided that alice was right. was irene right, also? was his mother grieved that he had married at all? was it possible that she could have stooped to so small a feeling as jealousy! his wife laid her head caressingly against his arm and said softly:-- "don't worry about it, erskine. we can't either of us help it now; and we must just make the best of it and do as well as we can." for the first time in his life, as those low tremulously spoken words sounded in his ears, a feeling very like resentment toward his mother swelled in erskine burnham's heart, and a torrent of tenderness rushed over him toward the wife who had no one in all the world but himself. this was what she had often told him. all things considered it is perhaps not strange that he did not visit his mother's room that evening. it is true that when they went upstairs he paused before her door and listened, and told himself that she was asleep and he would not disturb her. but there had been nights before, many of them, in which he had waited at her door and listened, and murmured: "mommie," and received a prompt invitation to enter. on this evening, though the hour was not late, he was not insistent. he made no attempt to knock or to speak. it was his concession to that new thought about her being an old woman. or was it a slight concession, unawares, to that new feeling of resentment? his mother, knowing nothing of what had been talked over in the moonlight, held her breath and waited. of course erskine would come to say good night. she forgot that she had wished he would not come! when his footsteps moved toward his own room, she waited a minute, then stepped into the hall. "erskine!" she said; but she said it very softly and he did not hear her. she could hear his voice. he was talking with his wife. the mother slipped softly back to her own room and locked her door. it was not late, and she and her son were only across a hall from each other; yet, for the first time in her life under like conditions, if she slept at all it must be without his good-night kiss. there is no true mother but will appreciate the situation. there are, it is true, mothers who are not accustomed to good-night kisses from their grown sons, and so would not miss them, but they are accustomed to a certain atmosphere, and they can understand what it would be like to be suddenly removed from it. mrs. burnham went to her bed as usual, after a while, like the sensible woman that she was. that she did not go to sleep was not her fault, for she made earnest effort to do so. she told herself repeatedly and with a calmness which was itself unnatural, that nothing terrible had happened, and that she was above making herself miserable over trifles. was her daughter-in-law's indifference to her only a trifle? she made a distinct pause over that word "indifference" and selected it with care; of course it was nothing more; and--yes, it was a trifle. how could one who knew her so little and had so little in common with her life be expected to be other than indifferent? erskine had expected more, very much more, but erskine was--was different from other people. then, suddenly, all her heart went out in a great swell of tenderness for erskine. she did not stop to reason about it, she did not wait to ask herself why erskine, who had everything, should be the subject of her shielding care; she simply took him metaphorically once more into her mother-arms and vowed to shield him from even a hint of solicitude on her account. she would rise above it all; she would treat irene exactly as though she were at all times the loving and considerate daughter that erskine believed she was; she would let him be blind to her faults, she would even help him to increased blindness. that was her work for him now; she would accept it and be diligent in it. the thought helped to quiet her, but it did not bring her sleep. she was broad staring awake. she told herself that sleep seemed an impossibility; she wondered curiously how she had ever slept. a low murmur of talk came to her from the room across the hall. they were not sleeping, either. could she have heard some of the talk in that room across the hall it would have made things plainer to her than they were. "there is one thing, dear," erskine burnham was saying to his wife, "which we must look upon as settled. we can have no home apart from my mother's. you can plan for summer cottages if you will, and where you will, for a stay of a few weeks, but the real home must always be here. i have taken care of my mother, practically all my life; and now if she is, as you say, growing old, it is not the time to make any change." "not even though the change would be a benefit to her?" his wife intended her words to represent a playful sarcasm, but erskine's face had clouded and he had answered quickly: "no; not even under such an extraordinary supposition as that. young as i was when my father died, he said that to me about my mother which has always made her seem to me as a trust; and i must be true to my trust in any case." after a moment's constrained silence between them his face had cleared and he had laughed cheerfully. "but we need not be so solemn over it, irene. i know my mother, and i have no fears as to her wishes. nothing that anybody could say would make me believe that she could be happier away from me than with me. i would almost not believe it if she said so herself. quite, indeed. i should feel that she had over-persuaded herself in some spirit of sacrifice. there is material in my mother for martyrdom, irene. it shall be your and my study to prevent her from indulging in it." his wife made no attempt to reply. she was in some respects a wise woman and she understood that there was a time when silence was golden. when she spoke again, it was to ask if he did not think curtains lined with rose color would be an improvement on those now separating their dressing room from the main apartment. chapter xiv the general manager "mother, don't you think that you are being rather hard on irene to undertake to hold her to restrictions to which she has never been accustomed, and which to her seem narrow and unreasonable?" erskine burnham had followed his mother to her room evidently with a view to speaking to her alone, his wife having gone on into her own room and closed the door. even though she had not felt it in the tone of his voice, mrs. burnham would have known by her son's opening word that he was annoyed. he rarely used the word "mother" when addressing her directly. as a rule the habits of his childhood prevailed, and "mamma" was the name in frequent use; or, oftener still perhaps, when they were quite alone, his special pet name for her, "mommie," came naturally to his lips. but of late she had heard, oftener than ever before, what was to him a colder term "mother," and had learned to know what it meant. she hesitated a moment before replying, and her hesitation seemed to irritate her son. he spoke quickly, with a note in his voice which she had never found in it before. "i must confess, mother, that i am surprised and not a little disappointed at the course you are taking. when i brought irene here, it was not only in the hope but the assured belief that i was bringing her to what she had never really had before--a mother,--and that you would become to her in time, what you have always been to me. i never for a moment dreamed of your standing coldly at one side, not only indifferent to her innocent devices for pleasure, but actually blocking her way! if i could have imagined such a condition of things, i would have better understood her feeling from the very first that we ought to go into a house of our own, where she would not feel herself an interloper." mrs. burnham was ready then with her reply. "erskine, i do not think irene could have understood me. i made no attempt to hold her to any restrictions. she asked a direct question about my own views, which, of course, i answered. but i ought not to have to explain to my son that i do not try to force my opinions upon any one." he made a movement of impatience. "that kind of thing is not necessary, mother, between us; but you know very well that there are ways of expressing one's opinions that effectually trammel others of the same household. "the simple truth is that irene has played cards, for amusement, in her own and her friends' parlors, ever since she was old enough to play games of any kind; and to her, our ideas concerning cards seem as absurd as though applied to tennis or golf. personally, i see no reason why she should not continue to amuse herself in her own way. it is true i do not play cards; but she knows, what both you and i understand perfectly, that this is a concession on my part to the extreme views of my mother, who could hardly expect my wife to have exactly the same spirit. i have told irene that out of deference to your feelings, i do not want her to entertain her friends with cards, in the parlors, but she certainly ought to be left free to do in her own rooms what she pleases." at almost any other period in mrs. burnham's life, a formal and elaborate expression of her son's views upon any subject, given in a haughty and almost dictatorial tone, such as he was using, would have filled his mother with astonishment and pain. she was almost curiously interested in herself on discovering that she had passed that stage, and was occupying her mind for the moment with quite a different matter. why had irene chosen just this line of attack? what did she hope to accomplish by such a singularly distorted representation of their talk together? it must have been sadly distorted to have moved erskine to an exhibition of annoyance such as he had never before shown to her. yet had he been present at the interview, his mother felt confident that it would not have disturbed him. she went swiftly over the talk, in memory, while erskine waited, and fingered the books and magazines on her table with the air of a nervous man who wanted to appear at ease. it had been a brief conversation, not significant at least to an observer, in any way. irene had been looking over the mail, and had exclaimed at an invitation. "the wheelers are giving another card party; what indefatigable entertainers they are! it isn't a month since their last one. this time it is a very select few, in mrs. harry wheeler's rooms. that is what erskine and i must do, since you won't allow cards in the parlors. have you really such queer notions, mother, as erskine pretends?" mrs. burnham remembered just how carefully she had watched her words, in reply. "i don't play cards, irene, if that is what you mean." "oh, i mean a great deal more than that. erskine says you won't allow such wicked things in your part of the house. is that so?" "we have never had them in the house since judge burnham changed his views with regard to them." "oh, did he change? how curious, for a lawyer, too! i don't believe erskine will get notional as he grows older. he isn't one of that kind." whereupon the older woman had turned resolutely away, resolved to speak no more words on the subject unless they were spoken in erskine's presence. it was this conversation, reported, that had brought her son to her in his new and lofty mood of guardian of his wife's liberties! just as he tossed down the magazine with which he had been playing, with the air of one who meant to wait no longer, his mother spoke with gentle dignity. "erskine, of course your rooms are your own, to do with as you will. i made no restrictions and hinted at none. on my desk under the paper-weight is the quotation you wished looked up, and also the statistics about which you asked." then she turned and passed out, to the hall. all this was on a midsummer morning nearly three months removed from that moonlighted evening on which this mother had renewed her solemn pledge to be to her son and her son's wife all that they would let her be. in the face of steady resistance she had been fairly true to the pledge. it had now become quite plain to her that it was not chance, nor mere heedlessness, that was working against her, but that mrs. erskine burnham meant to resist her, meant to look upon her as a force in her way, to be got rid of if possible; if not by persuading her son to leave her, then, perhaps by making her so uncomfortable that she would leave him. the plan was not succeeding. ruth erskine burnham had lived through too many trying experiences before this time to be easily routed. she was in the home to which her husband had brought her as a bride, and she meant that nothing but a stern sense of duty should ever separate her from it. yet mrs. erskine burnham, if she had but known it, had accomplished much. the mother no longer turned with a sickening pain from the thought of erskine having other home than hers. there were times when she could almost have joined his wife in pleading for that "cunning little cottage." there were days wherein she told herself breathlessly and very secretly, that for erskine to come home to her for a single half-hour, _alone_, would compensate for days of absence. but if she had changed her point of view, so had irene. his wife talked to him no more of a home by themselves. she was growing fond of the many-roomed, rambling old house whose utter abandonment to luxurious comfort was the talk and the pride of the neighborhood; and was the result of years of careful study on the part of a cultured woman accustomed to luxuries. the new mrs. burnham developed an interest in the carefully-trained servants who had been a part of the establishment for so many years that they said "our" and "ours" in speaking of its belongings. she came to realize, at least in a measure, that servants like these were hard to secure, and harder to keep. she began also to like the comfort of proprietorship, without the accompanying sense of responsibility. the machinery of this house could move on steadily without break or jar, and without an hour of care or thought bestowed by her; yet her slightest order was obeyed promptly and skilfully. her orders were growing more and more frequent, and it was becoming increasingly apparent to those who had eyes to see that "young mrs. burnham," as some of them called her, was assuming the reins and being recognized as the head of the house. ellen, the maid who had been with mrs. burnham since erskine's boyhood, and who was a rebel against other authority than hers, had openly rebelled, one day, and with blazing eyes that yet softened when the tears came, assured ruth that she could not have two mistresses, especially when the one who wasn't mistress at all took pains to contradict the orders of the other; and if she had got to be ordered about all the time by mrs. erskine, the sooner she went, the better. "very well, ellen," mrs. burnham had said, holding her tones to cold dignity. "i shall be sorry to part with you, but it is quite certain that so long as you remain in the house you must obey mrs. erskine burnham's slightest wish. if you cannot do this, of course we must separate." so ellen went. in a perfect storm of tears and sobs and regrets, it is true; but she went. this arrangement pleased just one person. erskine openly complained that her successor was not and never would be a circumstance to ellen, and made his mother confess that she missed ellen sorely, and asked her why, after being faithfully served for twenty years, she could not have borne with a few peculiarities. his mother was thankful that he did not insist upon knowing just what form her peculiarities took, and his wife's eyes sparkled. she had recognized ellen from the first as an enemy, and had meant to be rid of her. in short, mrs. erskine burnham had settled down. she told her special friends with a cheerful sigh that she had sacrificed herself to her husband's mother, who was growing old and ought not to be burdened with the care of a house. so, much as they would have enjoyed a home to themselves, they had determined to stay where they were. so steady and skilful were this general's movements toward supremacy that ruth herself scarcely realized the fact that when she gave an order in these days, she did it hesitatingly, often adding as an afterthought:-- "let that be the arrangement, unless mrs. erskine burnham has other plans; if she has, remember, i am not at all particular." and she was never surprised any more by the discovery that there was a totally different arrangement. it was therefore in exceeding bad taste for erskine burnham to present himself to his mother in lofty mood and threaten her with a separate home for himself and wife. one of his mother's chief concerns at this time was to shield him from the knowledge that she sometimes prayed for solitude as the safest way out of the thickening clouds. that he did not realize any of this can only be attributed to the condition of which his wife often accused him; namely, that he was "as blind as a bat." the proposed card-party at the wheelers' came off in due time, both irene and erskine being among the guests. within the month, irene gave what the next morning's social column called "an exclusive and charming affair" of the same kind in her own rooms. it is true that she had schemed for a different result from this. she had meant to give a card party on a larger scale. her careful rendering to her husband of the talk about restrictions had been intended to call from him the declaration that the parlors were as much theirs as his mother's, and that if she chose to play cards in them, no one should disturb her. she miscalculated. instead of this, his deliverance was more emphatic than ever before. "remember, irene, that my mother's sense of the fitness of things must never be infringed upon in any way that can disturb her. our rooms are our castle and we will do with them as we choose; but no cards downstairs, remember, or anything else that will disturb her--" "prejudices!" his wife had interrupted in a manner that she had intended should be playful; but he had spoken quickly and with dignity. "very well, prejudices if you will. i was going to say traditions; but if you prefer the other word, it doesn't matter. whatever they are, they are to be respected." so irene, having learned some time before this that such deliverances on the part of her husband were to be respected, took care to keep within the limits of their own rooms. but she took a little private revenge upon her mother-in-law, given in that especially trying would-be playful tone of hers. "i am sorry that your prejudices--oh, no, pardon me, i mean your traditions--will not allow you to meet our guests this evening; but i suppose that would be wicked, too? pray how is your absence to be accounted for? must i trump up an attack of mumps, or dumps, or what?" as for erskine, he remained happily unconscious of all these small stings. he was much engrossed in business cares, and left home early and returned late, so that in reality he knew little of what took place during his absence. that all was not quite as he had hoped between his wife and his mother he could not help seeing, but he told himself that he must not be unreasonable; that two people as differently reared as they had been must have time to assimilate; probably they were doing very well, and it was he who was struggling for the impossible. so he straightway put aside and forgot the words of dignified reproach that he had addressed to his mother, and she became "mommie" again, and always his second kiss of greeting was for her. and the mother during these days thanked god that she was able to hide her disappointment and her pain, and meet him always with a smile. chapter xv looking backward mrs. burnham came into the room with the air of one in doubt as to whom she was to meet. probably it was some one whom she ought to recognize; and if she did not, it would be embarrassing. "she would not give any name, ma'am," the maid had said. "she says she is an old acquaintance, and she wants to see if you will know her." but ruth did not know her. she had a fairly good memory for faces, yet as she advanced she told herself that this woman was mistaken in the person. there must be some other mrs. burnham whom she had known. but the lady who arose to meet her was apparently not disappointed, and was at her ease and eager. "i hope you will forgive this intrusion, dear mrs. burnham. i could not resist the temptation to see if you had a lingering remembrance of the silly girl to whom you were once very good. it was foolish in me to fancy such a thing. i was just at the age to change much in a few years." mrs. burnham was studying the fair and singularly reposeful face; taking in unconsciously at the same time the grace of the whole perfect picture, hair and eyes and dress and form, all in exquisite harmony. "a perfect lady!" she told herself. "how rarely the phrase fits, and how exactly it applies here. yet where before have i seen that face?" she was back in the old college town, away back, among the early years. what had suddenly taken her there? she was--this was not!-- "you are surely not," she began, and hesitated. the fair face broke into rippling smiles. "yes," she said, "i am. do you really remember mamie parker just a little bit?" "i remember her, perfectly, but--" "but i am changed? yes, fifteen years make changes in young people. i was not much over eighteen then, and very young for my years. but you have not changed, mrs. burnham; i should have known you anywhere. perhaps that is partly because i have carried you around in my heart all these years. it must be beautiful to be able to do for girls all that you did for me. if i could do it, if i could be to one young girl what you became to me, i should know that i had not lived in vain." mrs. burnham was almost embarrassed. what did the woman mean! "my dear friend, i do not understand," she said. "there must be some strange mistake. have you not confused me with some other friend? what could i possibly have done for you in the few, the very few times that we met?" her caller laughed a low, sweet laugh, and as she spoke made an inimitable gesture with her hands that emphasized her words. "you did everything for me," she said. "everything! you gave me ideals, you refashioned my entire view of life; you were the means god used to breathe into me the spirit of real living. may i claim a little of your time to-day, and tell you just a little bit of the story, for a purpose? i had only this one day here, and i felt compelled to intrude without permission." mrs. burnham heard her almost as one in a dream. she was struggling with her memories; trying to find in this fair vision, with her refined voice and dress, and cultured language and perfect manner, a trace of the singularly ill-bred, loud-voiced, outspoken mamie parker. how had such a transformation been possible? "you have but one day here?" she said, remembering her duties as hostess. "what does that mean, please? are you staying in the neighborhood, and will you not come to us for a visit?" "thank you, i cannot. i am about to leave the country, and am paying a very brief farewell visit to my friends the carletons, who are at their summer home in carleton park. i have broken away to-day from the numerous engagements they have made for me, and run over here alone, in the hope of securing an interview with you; i have been planning for this a long time. dear mrs. burnham, may i claim the privilege of an old acquaintance and ask to see you quite alone where there will be no danger of interruption? i want to talk fast and put a good deal into a small space, because my own time is so limited, and i do not want to take more of yours than is necessary. i have a purpose which i think, and i hope you will think, justifies my intrusion." still as one under a spell, mrs. burnham led the way to her private sitting room and established her guest in an easy-chair, from which she looked about her eagerly. "this is charming!" she said. "i remember your other room perfectly, mrs. burnham, and i think i should have recognized this as yours without being told. rooms have a great deal of individuality, don't you think? do you remember that parlor in the house where my dear brother jim boarded? no, of course you don't, but i do, and i thought it very elegant until i was admitted to yours. may i tell you very briefly just a little of what you have been to me? that winter when i met you and your son--it was my first flight from home. i was young, you remember, and unformed in every way; i was, in fact, a young simpleton, with as little knowledge of the world as a girl reared as i had been would be likely to have. up to that time i had cared very little for study of any kind. my opportunities were limited enough, but i had made very poor use even of them. my chief idea of a successful life was to marry young, some one who had plenty of money and who would be good to me and let me have a good time. i was what is called a popular girl in the little country village where i lived, and was much sought after because i was what they called 'lively' and could 'make things go.' when my brother invited me to visit him, i went in a flutter of anticipation. i had grown rather tired of the country boys by whom i was surrounded, and i believed that the fateful hour of my life had at last arrived." she stopped to laugh at her folly; then said, apologetically, "i am giving you the whole crude story, but it is for a purpose. i can laugh at that silly girl, now, but there have been times in my life when i cried over her. she knew so little in any direction, and there were such possibilities of danger, such imminent fear of a wrecked life. she needed a friend, as every girl does; and i can never cease to be thankful that she found one. "mrs. burnham, i presume you have never understood what you did for me by calling on me and inviting me to your home, and opening to me a new world. we were very plain people with limited opportunities in every way, and my father's sudden financial success but a short time before had almost turned our heads; mine, at least, so that i was ready to be injured in many ways. do you remember me sufficiently to realize the possibilities?" "i remember you perfectly, my dear," said her puzzled and charmed hostess. "but i do not understand in the least why you think, or how you can think, that i--" miss parker interrupted her eagerly. "mrs. burnham, you were a revelation to me. i had never before come into close contact with a perfect lady. at first, i was afraid of you, which was a new feeling to me, and in itself good for me; and then, for a while, i hated you; i thought that you came between me and some of my ambitions, i called them; now i know that they were utter follies." there was a heightened color on the fair face, and for a moment her eyes drooped. then she laughed softly at her girlish follies. "i recovered from them," she said briskly, "and enshrined you in my heart; made you my idol, and, better than that, my ideal. i had discovered from you what woman was meant to be. "and, dear friend, i learned another lesson also, deeper and more far-reaching than any other. up to that time i had always thought of religion as a very serious but somewhat tiresome experience that came to the old, or the sick, after they had got all they could out of life. it was mr. erskine burnham who first showed me my utter misunderstanding of the whole matter. i do not know that he understood at the time what he was doing for me, but he gave me a hint of what jesus christ was, not only to you, but to himself, a young man in the first flush of youthful successes. i could not understand it at first, and it half vexed me by its strangeness; but there came a time in my life, afterward, when i was disappointed in all my plans, and unhappy. then i thought of what had been said to me about christ, and, almost as an experiment, i tried it. mrs. burnham, he stooped even to that low plane and revealed himself to me, and i have counted it all joy to love and serve him ever since and for this, too, i have to thank you and yours." "my dear," said mrs. burnham, the tears shining in her eyes, "thank you; thank you very much; it is beautiful, although i do not understand it in the least--my part of it; i did nothing, _nothing_! i thought of it afterward with deep regret; what i might have said, and did not." "you did better than that," said miss parker, gently. "you _lived_. but now, believe me, i did not intrude upon your leisure merely to talk about myself. i wanted you to understand the possibility of saving a girl's life to her, because--" she broke off suddenly to introduce what seemed an entirely irrelevant topic. "mrs. burnham, i saw your daughter down town to-day, for a moment. i did not know her, and should not have imagined it was she, if i had not been told. she has changed very much since i saw her last." "were you acquainted with my daughter, miss parker? is it miss parker, now? i am taking a great deal for granted." "oh, yes; i am still 'miss parker'; and expect so to remain. no, i cannot be said to have been acquainted with your daughter, though i knew of her; knew a great deal about her, in fact, when she was a young girl. they were the one great family in our little town, mrs. burnham--her uncle's family, with whom she lived; they had a fine old place, three miles from the station, and your daughter used to drive to and from the train in what seemed to me then like royal state. i watched her on all possible occasions and admired and envied her always, though i do not suppose she ever heard of me in her life. she was not so very much older than i, only three years, but i remember i was still counted as a little girl when her sudden marriage took us all by surprise and overwhelmed me with jealous envy." "pardon me," said mrs. burnham, sitting erect and looking not only perplexed but troubled. "i am somewhat dazed by this sudden return to the long ago, and i must be getting things mixed. i thought until a moment ago that you were speaking of my son's wife." "so i am, mrs. burnham. she was irene carpenter when i was at the envious stage; and she became irene somerville in the autumn that i was fourteen. i shall never forget the vision i had of her on her wedding day. it was at the station and the train was late, so i had ample opportunity to admire and make note of and sigh over the glories of her bridal travelling outfit. although i was only fourteen and accounted a little girl by others, i by no means considered myself such; and the wild and foolish visions i had already indulged with regard to my own splendid future, make me blush even now to recall. girls are so foolish, mrs. burnham, and so easily led! if there were only always some wise, sweet one at hand to lead them safely!" mrs. burnham arose suddenly and closed both of the doors opening into the hall. she knew that her son was in town, and that his wife had gone by appointment to meet him there; but it seemed to her that such extraordinary talk as this must be closed away from the hall through which they must presently pass. what could this woman mean? she but fourteen when irene was married? yet she was at least eighteen when she visited her brother in the college town, and that was nearly fifteen years ago! irene a married woman seventeen or eighteen years ago! she could see a line in that fateful foreign letter from her son as distinctly as though she were reading it from the page, 'although she is so young, barely twenty-six, she has,' etc. of course there was some absurd mistake. irene could not have been more than eight or nine years old at that time when some one whom mamie parker fancied was the same person, was married. "how old do you think my son's wife is?" she asked suddenly. a few statistics, such as she could furnish, would help to clear up this absurd blunder. "oh, i know exactly. i have a vivid recollection of the wonderful doings there were in honor of her sixteenth birthday. it happens that our birthdays fall on the very same month and day, the eleventh of november; so that on the day she was sixteen, i was thirteen. i remember how sorely i took to heart the contrast between the two celebrations. it was before my father had made his successes, and we were much straitened at the time." mrs. burnham's pulses were athrob with her effort at self-control. it was true that irene's birthday fell on the eleventh of november. it had been celebrated with much circumstance that very season; but instead of its being her twenty-seventh, miss parker's story would make it her thirty-seventh! that was absurd! and yet--how often had the thought occurred to her that irene looked much older than her years! her maiden name, too, was carpenter, and her married name had been somerville. still, there must have been a cousin, or some near relative of the same name. it was an insult to the family to suppose for a moment that irene could deceive her husband as to her exact age! and then, miss parker made a remark before which all else that she had said sank into insignificance. "mrs. erskine burnham as i saw her to-day, seemed to me a very beautiful woman, though she does not look in the least as she did when a girl. but her daughter does. at seventeen, maybelle is really the image of what her mother was at that age. i wish so much that you could see her just now, in all her girlish beauty." chapter xvi for maybelle's sake mrs. burnham stared at her guest with a look that was not simply bewildered, it was frightened. what _could_ the woman mean! "who is maybelle?" she spoke the words almost fiercely; but her bewildered guest kept her voice low and gentle. "i must ask you to forgive me, dear mrs. burnham. i know that my words must seem very intrusive, perhaps unpardonable; but indeed i thought i was doing right, and it is for maybelle's sake alone that i have ventured." the repetition of that name seemed to irritate mrs. burnham. "will you tell me who she is?" she asked imperiously. "my friend, is it possible that you do not understand? or do you mean that it is your pleasure to ignore her? of course you know that there was a child, a little daughter?" "whose daughter?" "the daughter of the lady who afterward became your son's wife." mamie parker was growing indignant. however painful the subject might be to erskine burnham's mother, certainly the child was not to blame; nor could she, who was apparently the child's only friend, be quite beyond the line of toleration because she had ventured to try to awaken sympathy for her in the heart of a woman who certainly had reason to be interested in her story. whatever had taken place to hurt them, surely the child ought not to suffer for it. mrs. burnham struggled for composure. even at that moment the thought uppermost in her mind was that she must shield her son; yes, and her son's wife, if possible. something terrible had happened somewhere. a confusion of persons, probably, or--she could not think clearly, but there was something, some story, which she must ferret out to its foundation, and must at the same time hide from her son, unless--she would not complete that thought. "you will forgive me i am sure for not being able to quite follow you." her voice though cold and constrained was again self-controlled, and she even forced a smile. "i think i must be unusually stupid this afternoon. there is some misunderstanding that i do not yet quite grasp. this--child? is she?--of whom you are speaking, she is not,--not alone in the world? why does she especially need a friend?" miss parker's bewildered look returned; they were not getting on. she hesitated a moment, then said firmly:-- "her father is still living, mrs. burnham, but he is seriously ill, and she will soon be quite alone. at the best, the father, as you probably know, is not the kind of friend that one would choose for a young girl, though he has tried to be good to her, in his way." mrs. burnham suddenly leaned forward and grasped the arm of her caller, and spoke with more vehemence than before, though this time her voice was low. "what do you mean?" she said. "isn't it possible for you to speak plainly? how should i know what you are talking about? her '_father_'! whose father? who is she? what is she? and what are either of them to me? i do not understand in the least." "mrs. burnham," said mamie parker, sitting erect, with a bright spot of color burning on either cheek, "do you mean me to understand that you are ignorant of the fact that your son married a woman who was divorced from her first husband in less than three years after her marriage, and left with him a little child not six months old, who is now a young woman?" it was well for ruth burnham that she could do just what she did at that moment, although it was for her an unprecedented thing. every vestige of self-control gave way; she covered her face with her hands and broke into a perfect passion of weeping. not the slow quiet weeping natural to a woman of her years, but a tempestuous outburst that shook her whole frame with its force. the distressed witness of this misery sat for a moment irresolute, then she came softly to mrs. burnham's side and touched the bowed head with a gentle, caressing movement such as one might give to a little child, and spoke low and tenderly. "dear friend, forgive me; i am so sorry! i did not for a moment imagine that i was telling you anything that you did not already know. i felt my rudeness in coming to you with matters about which i was supposed to know nothing, but i thought you had, perhaps, been misinformed, and that if you could once understand, poor maybelle would--" then she stopped. there seemed nothing that she could say, while that bowed form was shaken with emotion. it passed in a few minutes. the woman who was accustomed to exercising self-control could not long be under the dominion of her emotions. she raised her head and spoke quietly. "i hope you can forgive me for making your errand so hard. my nerves do not often play me false in this way. you did right to come to me. now, may i ask you to begin at the beginning and tell me all that you know about this matter? you are correct in your inference; there are some things that i have not understood." it was rather a long story. miss parker, feeling herself dismissed from the place of comforter, went back to her chair and tried to obey directions and begin at the beginning; held closely to her work by keen incisive questions. yes, she had known mr. somerville before he married irene carpenter; or rather, she had known of him, as girls in country villages always knew about any people who came their way. he was an englishman of good family, a younger son she had heard, though just what significance attached to that, she had not understood at the time. he had the name among the young people of being wild. they had heard that irene's uncle disapproved of the match, and threatened to lock her up if she tried to have anything more to do with him. she, mamie, knowing something of irene's temperament, had always thought that this was what precipitated matters. she knew that irene was married during her uncle's absence from home, and that there were some exciting scenes after his return. the newly married couple went abroad very soon, but they stayed only a short time, and rumor had it that they quarrelled with mr. somerville's family and were not invited to stay longer. after that, they lived in new york in good style for a few months, and mrs. somerville went into society and was said to be very gay. yes, she had heard a number of things about that winter, but the stories were contradictory and not reliable. oh, yes, some of the stories were ugly, but gossip was always that; she could not go into details about that period; there was nothing reliable, and nothing that she cared to talk of. it was when the child was about six months old that her father and mother quarrelled and separated. oh, yes, there was a divorce; she had made an effort to discover the truth about that, for the little girl's sake, and was sure of it. the mother went abroad with some friends and remained there for several years. she had heard that she served as nursery governess in an american family who were living in berlin, for the purpose of educating their sons. she knew that this was so, because she had met one of the sons, later, and he had told her about her; she went by the name of carpenter--miss carpenter. after leaving that family, miss parker did not know what she had done; knew nothing of her for several years. then she came back to the old homestead and lived there for some time with a maiden aunt who was all that was left of the family, and was an invalid. she had heard that irene was not contented there, and knew that after a time she and the invalid aunt went abroad. it was while they were living in paris that mr. erskine burnham met them. miss parker had heard of his marriage almost immediately, because she had friends in paris at the time who had met both miss carpenter and mr. burnham. indeed all these items had come to her from time to time by a series of accidents or happenings. she had admired irene carpenter at a distance as a girl, and that had made it seem natural to inquire after her, as opportunity offered. oh, yes, she had known more or less of mr. somerville during all these years. he had remained in new york much of the time; though he had twice crossed the ocean, and once had gone to the pacific coast, always taking maybelle with him. her first meeting with him in new york had been at the studio of an artist friend for whom he was doing some work. she had seen the child first, a beautiful little girl who had charmed her; then he had come in and she had been shocked on recognizing him, to think that she must have been playing with irene's little girl. he was an amateur artist, never working steadily enough to make a success for himself, but doing very good work, and earning his living in that way. oh, yes, and in music also, it was much the same story. he was in frail health, was unsteady, and could not be depended upon; but could play divinely when he chose, and on occasion earned money in that way, playing the violin, or piano, or organ. he always took the child with him and seemed devoted to her, never speaking other than gently to her; and he seemed to try to train her wisely. it was pathetic to see him making an effort to fill the place of both father and mother. oh, yes, she saw a great deal of him, or rather, of the child, in whom she had been singularly interested from the first, of course. her father had moved his family to new york about that time, and she was in school as a real student for the first time in her life. but she gave most of her leisure to the little maybelle. her mother became very fond of the child, and after a while they kept her with them much of the time, to the great comfort of the father, who owned that he often had to go to places where he did not like to take the baby. yes, she came to know the father quite well. maybelle had been allowed always to suppose that her mother was dead. she never questioned, having taken that for granted. her father, however, during one of his ill turns when he thought he was going to die, had revealed to her mother and herself the sorrowful story of his life, and had shown them irene's picture. miss parker believed that he had a faint hope that when he was gone, the mother would see that their child was cared for. yes, he had told her only the truth. she had taken pains to corroborate that part of the story which she had not known before; had gone herself to see the woman with whom they had been boarding when his wife left him. the woman said that mr. somerville had come home intoxicated the night before; "not bad," the poor creature said, "only silly," but the next morning he and his wife had quarrelled, and she went away and never came back. being closely cross-questioned miss parker added, that the woman had further given it as her opinion that mrs. somerville meant all along to be "that shabby," and was only waiting for a good excuse; that she didn't care a "toss up" for her husband, nor the baby neither, though he "just doted" on both of them. yes, miss parker had talked with him more than once about his sad, wrecked life. she considered him a weak man rather than an intentionally wicked one. he had never spoken ill of his wife. he said frankly that their marriage was a mistake, and that it was his fault. irene was too young to be married to any one, but he was fascinated with her, and determined to win her at any cost. the truth was, he said, he cheated her. she was tired of her humdrum life in that dull village where her people spent much of their time; she longed to get away, to travel; above all she wanted to go abroad. she had inferred that, because he was from across the water, and belonged to an old family and could show her pictures of a fine old estate that had been in the family for generations, he was therefore wealthy; and he had let her think so. it was the discovery that she had been deceived in this respect, he said, that made her begin to really dislike him, he thought, instead of being simply indifferent to him, as she had been at first. he made no pretence of believing that she had ever loved him. no, he could not say that she had ever seemed to love the child. at first she had been angry about it, looking at it merely in the light of a hindrance to the few pleasures she could have, cooped up in a boarding-house; and the strongest feeling she had ever shown for the helpless little creature was toleration. when they quarrelled, and she threatened to leave him, he had told her that she could not take the baby, and she had replied that it was the last thing she wanted to do. but he had not believed her; he had not thought such a state of mind possible. the little thing, he said, had so wound itself about his heart that the thought of living without her was torture; and he had believed that the mother felt the same, but did not choose to own it. he had taken the baby to a friend of his for the day, and felt secure all day in the thought that irene would be drawn homeward from wherever she went that morning, by the memory of the clinging arms and smiling baby face. but she had never come back. at this point ruth erskine burnham lost her studied self-control and said the only unguarded word that she had spoken since the interview began. "that is monstrous! i cannot credit it. the woman who would do such a thing as that would be a fiend!" "oh, no!" said miss parker, startled at the feeling she had roused, and remembering that they were speaking of this woman's son's wife. "he did not feel it so, the father. he made excuses for her. even while he was telling me the story, he stopped to say simply:-- "'you see i didn't stop to consider that she disliked and despised me, by this time, and that the baby was my child; that made all the difference in the world;' and of course it would, mrs. burnham." chapter xvii built on the sand "your mother has had a very special guest of some sort and was closeted with her all the afternoon; i suppose she is tired out; she looked so when i met her in the hall." this was mrs. erskine burnham's explanation to her husband of his mother's absence from the dinner table. they had waited for her a few minutes, then sent a maid to her room, who had reported that mrs. burnham was tired and did not care for dinner. erskine, on hearing it, had made a movement to rise, a troubled look on his face, and then had waited for his wife's word. "a guest in her own room? that is unusual for mother, isn't it? who was it?" "how should i know? i wasn't enlightened. when i reached home soon after luncheon, i asked nannie who had been here, and among others she mentioned a young lady who had asked very particularly to see 'madame burnham,' and said that after a while she took the lady to her own sitting room, and she was there yet. she left but a few minutes before you came, a very stylish-looking person, indeed, and quite young. it is fortunate that she did not stay for dinner, as i supposed she would, having spent the day, or i might have been seized with a fit of jealousy." "did you say my mother looked worn? were you in her room?" "no, indeed! i did not presume; i all but ran against her in the hall, and thought she looked older than usual." "she may have had some unpleasant news; i think i will run up and see her." "don't, erskine! i am sure you annoy your mother by such watchfulness. old people don't like that sort of care, it seems to them like spying upon their movements; they want a chance to do as they please. i found that out from auntie; she seemed really annoyed when i questioned her about her movements. she wanted to be left to come to her dinner, or stay away, as she pleased; and your mother is just like her." erskine opened his lips to speak, then closed them again. he was on the verge of saying that he could not think of two people more unlike than his mother and her aunt; then it occurred to him that to make a remark so manifestly in favor of his own relative would hardly be courteous. of course irene thought of her aunt much as he did of his mother, and besides, the aunt was gone. but he did not go up to his mother. it is true that he told his wife, presently, that he could not think for a moment that his care of and solicitude for his mother would ever look to her like espionage; they understood each other too well for that; but he spoke in a troubled tone. despite this perfect understanding, his wife's constancy to the belief that his mother was growing old, and more or less feeble, and whimsical, as she believed old people always did, was having its effect upon him; he was beginning to feel at times that perhaps he did not understand his mother, after all. it was well for his peace of mind that he did not go to her just then; for the first time in his life he would have been refused admittance to his mother's room. ruth erskine burnham had shut herself away as much as she could from her outside world, and was fighting the battle of her life. a wild temptation was upon her, so strong that in its first strength she could not have resisted it, had she tried, and she did not try. it was so transformed that it did not appear to her as a temptation, but as a duty. erskine's wife had deceived him; not once, in a crucial moment, but steadily, deliberately, continuously. not only had she posed for him as a widow, but she had given him vivid pictures of her girlish desolation in her widowhood. his mother knew this, for erskine had reproduced some of them in a few delicate touches, with the evident object of awakening in her a tender sympathy for one who, though so young, had suffered much. "young!" indeed! she had even stooped to the low and petty deception of making herself out to be much younger than she was! could an honorable man condone such small and unnecessary meannesses as that? especially in his wife! and erskine was married to her. erskine of all men in the world the husband of a divorced woman! and he was on record in the public journals as one who had denounced with no gentle tongue the whole system of legal divorce as permitted in this country; he had characterized it as unrighteous and infamous. young as he was, he had made himself felt in legal circles along this very line, and was recognized as a strong advocate for better laws and purer living. so pronounced had he been on this whole subject that certain of his brother lawyers who, in the main, agreed with his views, did not hesitate to tell him that he was too severe, and was trying to accomplish the impossible. his mother, in the light of her recently acquired knowledge, laughed, a cruel laugh, then shivered and turned pale over the memory of a recent conversation which had now grown significant. the pastor of their church, mr. conway's successor, was dining with them, and the talk had turned for a moment on the recent marriage of one of the parties in a famous divorce suit. erskine had declared that if he were a clergyman, he should consider it his privilege as well as duty to anticipate the law that was surely coming and refuse to perform the marriage ceremony for a divorced person. "oh, now, brother burnham," the clergyman had said, good naturedly, after a brief, keen argument on both sides: "don't you really draw the lines too closely? you are not reasonable. do you think he is, mrs. burnham?"--the appeal was to erskine's wife--"you see you have made no allowance for accidents, or misunderstandings of any sort. what would you have a poor woman do who was caught as an acquaintance of mine was, a year or so ago? she married a divorced man without having the remotest idea that he had ever been married before, and did not discover it until six months afterward. where would those sweeping assertions you have been making place her?" erskine had not smiled as he replied:-- "i was not speaking, of course, of people who had been the victims of cruel deception; certainly if i believed in divorce, i should consider that the woman you mention had sufficient cause." "because she had been deceived!" "for just that reason. at least it must be terrible for a woman to spend her life with a man whose word she cannot trust. i should think it would be just ground for separation if anything is." his mother recalled not only the energy of his tones, but the suddenness with which his wife introduced another topic. then there flashed upon her the memory of the clergyman's next remark, addressed to her:-- "mrs. burnham, is your daughter always as pale as she is to-day, or has our near approach to a quarrel, just now, frightened her?" whereupon the color had flamed into irene's face until her very forehead was flushed; and erskine, looking at her, had said gayly:-- "my wife always blushes when she is the subject of conversation." what terrible significance attached to all these trifles now! but, worse than all else, the woman had deserted and disowned her own child! so impossibly preposterous did this seem to erskine burnham's mother, that although she had detained her guest until a late hour, and questioned and cross-questioned, and insisted upon yet more proof, and been shown that there was not a possibility of error, she still shrank from it as something that could not be. "can a mother forget her child?" it was the question of inspiration, designed to show the almost impossibility of such a thing; yet inspiration had answered, "yes, she may!" and here, under their own roof, was a living proof of its truth. "_how_ could she! how _could_ she!" the mother-nature continually went back to that awful question. suppose she had not? suppose she had taken the child away with her, and mothered it all these years, and, at last, erskine had married her? then he would have stood in the place of father to that girl, and she would have been taught to call him so! his poor mother shivered as though in an ague chill as the strange, and to her appalling, details of this life-tragedy pressed upon her. a tragedy all the more terrible and bewildering because they had been--some of them--living it unawares. the possibility that erskine might have knowledge of this appalling story did not, even for a moment, occur to his mother. she knew him too well for that. erskine had been deceived, fearfully deceived! not only in great and terrible ways, as one under awful provocation, but in petty details,--as to her age, for instance; and that this was merely an instance, ruth knew only too well. by slow degrees the conviction had been forced upon this truth-loving woman that she had for a daughter one to whom the truth was as a trifle to be trampled upon a dozen times a day if the fancy seized her. numberless instances of this had been thrust upon a close observer. "yes," she would say unhesitatingly and unblushingly to erskine, when his mother knew that "no" would have been the truth. even the servants had learned to smile over this peculiarity in their young mistress, and to make efforts to have witnesses for any of her orders that were important. with the outside world she was so unpardonably careless of her word that mrs. burnham was almost growing used to apologizing for and blushing over her daughter's society inaccuracies. given a woman like ruth erskine burnham, belonging to a family in whom, generations back, there had been martyrs for the truth's sake, trained from her very babyhood to despise every false way, self-trained, through the years, to hold with almost painful insistence to whatever she had seemed to promise, perhaps no other fault would have been harder to condone in others. she was still struggling to try to love her daughter-in-law, but she knew that she had ceased to respect her. it was this condition of things which had made it possible for her to credit miss parker's story. since irene's moral twist with regard to truth was most apparent, why should she be expected to spurn the thought of other immoralities? it was while ruth burnham was at this stage of her mental confusion that the temptation of her life came to her, clad in the white robes of truth and honor. it came, of course, by way of erskine. he must know the whole blighting story and must know it at once. he must be told that the woman whom he had blessed with his love and whom he was tenderly sheltering from a rude world was a woman who could trample upon marriage vows, desert her first-born child, and lie about it all in a colossal manner; not only once, at first, but through the years! the whole fearful structure of erskine's later life, built as it was upon falsehood, must be made to tumble about him in ruins. what a cruel thing! erskine, the soul of honor, with as keen a love for truth as it was possible for human being to have, must, in spite of himself, be involved in the meshes of this false and cruel life! and yet, underneath the groan which she had for his ruined home and his ruined hopes, was a faint little thrill of exultation. when erskine must cease to respect his wife, he could not continue to love her with the kind of love that he was giving to her now. at the best it could be only a pitying, protecting love, and there was a sense in which she, his mother, would have him back again, at least to a degree. no one knew better than herself that there was a sense in which she had lost him. what would he be likely to do? irene was his wife, and he would do his duty at whatever cost, but just what was his duty? she tried to settle it for him. there was the child, the young woman rather, irene's daughter. would he not insist that the mother should do her tardy duty toward the child? but what was the duty of such a mother toward such a child? and how could anything be arranged for now, under such strange, such startling circumstances? she did not know. she could not plan, could not think; erskine would have to do the thinking; but in the meantime, where would a boy, trained as he had been, turn naturally for sympathy but to his mother? she would have him again! she exulted in the thought; even then, in her first recoil from sin and its consequences, she exulted. and then--just in that moment of exultation--she began to realize what she was doing, and a kind of terror of herself came upon her. was it possible that she was really that despicable thing, a creature so full of self, and selfish loves, as to be able to thrill with joy, in the very midst of a ruin that involved her best and dearest, merely because out of it she was to gain something? it was a terrible night. mrs. burnham kept her door close locked, though erskine came once, and again, to seek admittance and went away puzzled and pained: locked out from his mother's room for the first time. she called out to him, trying to speak reassuringly, that she was not ill, only unusually tired; she was in bed, and did not feel equal to getting up to let him in. "but, mommie," he said, "i did not know that you ever locked your door at night--not when we are together. what if you should be ill in the night?" she would not be ill, she told him, and she really could not get up now and unlock the door. she knew that he went away with an anxious heart, and that he came on tiptoe several times during the night and listened; and she hated herself for her apparent selfishness. but she could not let him in, she was not ready yet for the questions he would be sure to ask. she had not been able to plan how to make known to him her terrible secret. chapter xviii justice or mercy? it was just as the silver-tongued clock on her mantel was tolling one, that the suggestion was suddenly made to ruth erskine burnham that she was planning wickedness. instead of trying to arrange how to break the dreadful news to erskine, ought she not to be planning how to avoid having him know anything about it? two very unreconcilable statements were in her mind clamoring to be heard. "of course she must tell him!" "no, she must _not_ tell him!" "he ought to be told!" "he ought _not_ to be told!" these in varying forms repeated themselves in her brain until she was bewildered. and the contradictory argument continued:-- "that girl, that forsaken, disowned girl--justice to her demanded the telling." "justice did no such thing!" "but irene was her mother, and had duties toward her that could not be ignored." "irene was her mother only in name; there was no sense in which she could, even though she wished to do so, take the place of mother to her now." "do not you know," continued that other voice speaking to the stricken woman, "do not you feel sure that for a young girl to be brought under the direction and daily influence of such a woman as irene, would be almost the worst fate that could befall her?" "but erskine has a duty toward her; he ought--" "erskine _cannot_! you know he cannot. have you not daily proof of the limit of his influence over irene? do you not know to your grief that in some matters she dominates him?" "but erskine ought to know the kind of woman that he is harboring. it is horrible to have him go on loving and trusting her!" "such knowledge coming to erskine now, could work only harm. he has done no wrong; his conscience is clear, his hands are clean. simply to reveal to him the former sins of the woman he has promised to love and cherish, would be to plunge him into depths of misery, without accomplishing anything for either the girl or his wife." "but irene ought to be exposed; she ought to repent, and confess her sin; it is monstrous to go on helping her to cover it!" "you have nothing to do with irene's 'oughts.' you cannot make her either confess or repent. to 'cover' her sin, as you call it, will not change the moral conditions for her in any way, it will simply bring unutterable pain and shame upon your son." "but ought not sin to be exposed?" "not always. sometimes to cover sin is god-like. think, if you can, of one helpful, hopeful result which might reasonably be expected to follow such an exposure as you contemplate." it was a long-drawn-out controversy; as real to ruth as though her soul had separated itself from that other mysterious part of her which was yet not her body, and stood confronting her, calm, strong, unyielding. she tossed on her bed from side to side, and turned and re-turned her pillows, and straightened the disordered bedclothing, and sought in vain for an hour of rest. at times she resolutely told herself that she would put it all aside until morning, and wait, like a reasonable being, until her brain was clear and she was capable of reaching conclusions; then she would compose herself for sleep, only to find that she was taking up each minute detail of the story that had been told her and living it over again. she could not even interest herself in any of the side issues save for a few minutes at a time. she tried hard to centre her thoughts about the woman, miss parker, and contrast her with that crude disappointing girl by the same name that she had met years before; it did not seem to her that they could be one and the same! what a beautiful woman in every sense of the word this miss parker was! what if she, erskine's mother, had been gifted with foresight, in those early years, had been able to conceive of the possibilities hidden in that uncouth, silly country girl, and had encouraged in erskine the interest which she then awakened? or, failing in that, what if she had simply kept her hand off and let things take their course? would this woman with her beautiful face and gracious ways and cultivated mind and heart have become erskine's wife, and her daughter? how extraordinary that it should have been mamie parker who had touched her life again, when she had labored so hard to be free from her, and had succeeded! and it was mamie parker who had come to the rescue of a desperately friendless girl who ought at this moment to be sheltered in their own home! and then she was back in the meshes of it all again! she arose at length and began to move softly about her room through the darkness. she must stay in the darkness, otherwise erskine might discover a light and insist upon being admitted. very softly she drew back her curtains and looked out upon the moonless night. there were countless stars, but they gleamed from far away and looked even more indifferent than usual to what was going on below them. softly she drew a chair beside the open casement and sat down to try the effect of the cool night air upon her throbbing head. if she could only get quiet enough to think! but those two conflicting thoughts were still pounding away in her brain: "erskine must be told." "erskine must _not_ be told!" yet she made progress, and a discovery. it was beginning to humiliate her to the very dust to discover that there was a sense in which she wanted to tell him! no, not that, either; but she wanted him to know; and she wanted this because she desired to have irene dethroned! there were no tears shed during those hours. the victim had gone beyond tears. her throat felt dry and parched and her eyes burned, as one in a fever. she was beginning to realize that this might be a conflict between right and wrong, and that her own personality was engaged in it. the clock struck two, struck three, and still that mother sat gazing out on the singularly quiet night. twice during that time she heard erskine come with soft footsteps, evidently to listen at her door. "mamma," he said, speaking low, but so distinctly that she knew he reasoned that if she were awake she would certainly hear him. it seemed to her that he must hear the throbbing of her heart as she waited. a wild desire possessed her to fling wide the door and bid him come in and listen while she said to him: "the woman you have taken to your heart, to love and cherish forever, is false to the truth, false to every sense of honor, false even to her own child!" she clutched at the arms of her chair, to keep her, and held her breath that it make no sound. erskine went on tiptoe back to his room, and his mother, who had almost spent her physical strength, sank limply back into her chair. but before the clock struck again she had got to her knees. all the while she had been conscious of a strange reluctance about going to god with this trouble. accustomed as she was, and had been ever since she became a praying woman, to taking all things, small as well as great, to him, it had seemed strange even to herself that she held back. not that she had said that she would not pray, she had simply shrunken back with a half-frightened "not yet, i am not ready yet; let me think." but she reached the moment when she understood that she must have help and must have it at once, and that only god could give it. she knelt long; at first speaking no words, not thinking words. then she broke into short, half-sobbing ejaculations: "lord, show me the way. christ, son of mary, son of god, help me!" and then the habit of years asserted itself and the sorely shaken woman entered wholly within the refuge and poured out her soul in prayer. when she arose from her knees, the rosy tints of a new day were beginning to flush the east. she drew her shades and went back to her bed and slept. some things had been settled for her; she need not think about them any more. the woman who a few hours later appeared at the breakfast table in a white morning dress and with her hair carefully arranged, showed little trace of her night's vigil, though her son regarded her searchingly. "i am thankful to see you here," he said. "i was quite worried about you last night. it is so unusual not to meet you at dinner and have a little chat with you. you did not even give a fellow a chance to say good-night! i was sure that something was wrong." his wife laughed. "erskine cannot get away from the idea that he is his mother's nursemaid," she said lightly. "and he is a real 'miss nancy' for worrying. such a night as he gave me, merely because you did not choose to come down to dinner! he must have trotted out to your door to listen twenty times, at least." "twice, anyway," said erskine, gayly. "never mind, though; she is all right this morning, and that is more than i dared to hope." but he watched her closely. "what tired you so, mamma? or rather, who did? irene said you had company all the afternoon." "yes, an old acquaintance. i don't think you could guess who it was." "not at least without seeing her. was she also an old acquaintance of mine?" "i think you will remember her; at least you will, her brother. it was miss parker." "'miss parker?' not mamie? how interesting! why didn't you keep her to dinner? i should like to have met her. is she 'miss parker' still, after all these years? that is rather surprising, isn't it? she must be thirty or more. and what about her brother? i haven't heard anything of him to speak of, since i left college." "who are these interesting people who seem to have just sprung into existence again?" irene asked. "i have never heard of mamie parker, have i? is she an old sweetheart of yours?" "hardly!" erskine laughed carelessly. "there was a time during my college life that her brother and i were rather intimate; then we drifted apart; he was a good fellow, though. what about him, mamma?" "something that greatly surprised me. had you supposed him to be of the material that makes missionaries? that is what he has become: a foreign missionary. he went out to china about seven years ago, purely in a commercial way. he represented a new york business house, but he carried letters of introduction to our missionaries located there, and became intimate with them and so interested in their work that, after a time, he gave up his business entirely and became a missionary teacher." "is it possible!" said erskine. "i think he is the last one i should have chosen for such a future; from our class, i mean. though he was a fine fellow with a big unselfish heart. didn't i always insist upon that, mamma, in the days when you did not like him very well? weren't there such days? i have almost forgotten." "i don't think i considered him remarkable," mrs. burnham said. "though i remember that alice saw possibilities in him. she liked him for being so good to his sister." "and he is really in china! how does his sister like that?" "so well that she is going out to be with him for a year, and perhaps longer. she is in daily expectation of receiving a summons from a party of missionaries with whom she is to travel. she is very enthusiastic about it; sees ways in which she can further the work. i should not be at all surprised if she remained there and made it her life work." erskine burnham looked curiously at his mother, as if to determine whether she was really in earnest, then threw back his head and laughed. "mamie parker a missionary in china!" he exploded, "or anywhere else! my imagination isn't equal to such a flight as that." "she has changed wonderfully, erskine. at first i could not make myself believe that she was really the mamie parker we used to know. yet as i studied her closely i could see a suggestion of the girlish face. she was pretty, you remember, but i did not think her face gave promise of the beauty it has now. however, she is more than beautiful. she is an educated cultivated woman." "educated?" erskine repeated the word incredulously. "she went back to school, erskine, the winter after she visited her brother, and prepared for college. she is a smith graduate, think of it! as for culture, i don't think i ever met a more perfect-appearing lady than she has become." "dear me!" said irene with a but slightly suppressed yawn, "what a paragon she must be; i'm glad i didn't meet her. i detest paragons. now, if you, sir, can stop talking about her long enough to consider it, have the goodness to tell me at what time i may expect you in town this afternoon? we are to be at the durands' at five, remember. don't you dare to tell me you must be excused, for i have simply set my heart on having you with me." but erskine could not so readily be made to forget his anxieties. he put off a direct answer to his wife, and followed his mother to her room to press his inquiries tenderly. "are you sure that you are all right this morning, and that it was only weariness which kept you so close a prisoner last night? there is something about you that i don't quite like; there are heavy rings under your eyes, and you are paler than usual. did you sleep well?" "not very," she said after a moment's hesitation. "i was--restless." he studied her face and spoke with tender reproach. "mommie, something troubles you. am i not to know it?" she had no recourse but to speak truth. chapter xix alone she laid a tender motherly hand on his arm as she said:-- "something has been troubling me, erskine, something that i cannot explain, because there is a sense in which it is not my trouble at all, but has to do with others. for a time i was very much perplexed, but i have settled it now, what my share in it should be, so that it need not perplex me any more." she knew that the truth was deceiving him, but it satisfied him. he believed that mamie parker's troubles, whatever they were, had been brought for his mother to share. his face cleared a little, but he felt it his duty to administer a loving admonition. "remember your one weakness, mamma; there was always in your nature a temptation to 'bear one another's burdens' too literally. if there is any way in which i can help without infringing on confidences, you will let me, of course?" she was able to smile as she assured him that she would. despite her night of vigil she felt strong. her part had been revealed to her. she was to keep irene's secret, to suffer and to act in her stead; and to shield her son's name and home as much as lay in her power. a miserable travesty of a home it looked to her; still, it was all he had, and for a time at least it could be kept sacred in erskine's eyes. she had no faith in a perpetual concealment; such skeletons, she believed, were always unearthed sooner or later--often in unexpected and mysterious ways. how remarkable, for instance, it was that, of all the young women in the world who might have discovered and befriended the deserted child it should have been their old acquaintance mamie parker! still, this morning, she could thank god that she need not be the one to unearth this secret. of course the child must be planned for--there was no danger that ruth would forget her--but it had become very clear to her that nothing but disaster could result from an enforced acknowledgement of her by the mother at this late day. if irene wanted her--if her heart had turned toward her child in the slightest, or, failing in heart, if her conscience had impelled her to make the least small effort to repair some of the mischief, then, indeed, ruth would have braved public opinion, gossip, erskine's pain and shame, everything to help her. and she could do it understandingly. had not ruth erskine, away back in her girlhood, helped her father in his tardy right-doing? it is true that, even at this late day, her face flushed with pain and shame over the thought of the manner in which she had done this, at first; still, she had done it. and later, had she not herself taken the initiative and opened the way for her husband to do his belated duty? who could know better than she the cost of such effort? but there was one infinite difference between past experiences and present problems. both her father and her husband, when the crucial test came, had a foundation of moral strength to build upon; while irene-- ruth burnham knew that she had tried very hard to find some lighting up of the story. she had thoroughly probed mamie parker to discover whether or not through the years the mother had made some sign which proved that she at least knew of the continued existence of her daughter; but there had been absolutely no proof that she had ever thought of her six months' old baby again! ruth had to turn quickly away from that subject as one that would not bear dwelling on. the idea that a mother had actually and deliberately abandoned her baby, roused such a sense of revolt in this woman's heart that there were times when she told herself that she could not breathe in the same house with such a creature. miss parker herself had seemed able to appreciate this feeling. at least she had given no hint that she expected or hoped anything whatever from the mother, and frankly owned that she had avoided meeting her on occasions when there would have been opportunity. she had not felt, she said simply, that anything could be gained by coming in contact with her. and all her plea had been that erskine's mother should in some way interest herself in the welfare of the lonely girl. she was very lonely, now, more so by far than she used to be, miss parker had said in a voice that trembled. then she had waited a few minutes to regain self-control before she explained that her mother had to a very great extent taken the place of mother to the little one. "she used to spend her vacations with us," she said, "and mother fell into the habit of looking after her clothes and her comfort in every way, just as though she were a daughter; and the child loved mother with a devotion that is uncommon in one so young. of course she cannot but miss her sadly." "have you lately lost your mother?" ruth had inquired, and her tone had been so full of tender sympathy that miss parker had explained in detail how it was that she had only her brother left. that was why she was going out to him, so that they might be together, at least for a time, since they were all that was left of home. jim had not married; his sister sometimes feared that he never would. didn't mrs. burnham think that was a calamity for a man? "i used to think so," ruth had replied, as one who did not realize that she was speaking aloud, and then she had started and flushed over the thought of what she might thus be revealing; and the flush had deepened as she remembered what this woman already knew of her son's wife. but miss parker had not once glanced in her direction, and made no sign that she had heard. she went on, quietly, talking about her brother. men, she thought, were different in that respect from women. a woman need never marry in order to be comfortable, or to be cared for; but there were ways in which the average man was helpless and almost homeless without the one woman to care for him, selected from all the world. this was so different from the usual putting of the subject that mrs. burnham had felt impelled to smile. yet as she looked at the beautiful woman opposite her she admitted that her brother's home would certainly be brightened by her presence. still, it was a long way to go to make a home for a brother. "do you have any thought of remaining there," she had asked. "i mean, of making it a permanent home?" miss parker did not know. she had not allowed herself to look ahead very far. there were so many changes in life that it did not seem wise to try to plan. she should like to remain there, like it very much, she believed; that is, if she could help in the work. she was sure that she could help jim; at least, she could take care of him, and give him more time to do his work; and jim was a success. still, there were times when she was sorry that she had planned in this way, on maybelle's account. even now, if she could make a change, could delay a little, without incommoding her brother, she would do so; but jim had made plans in view of her coming that would seriously inconvenience him if she did not go. yes, there had been changes, sad changes since her plans were made. mr. somerville, who was a frail man and hopelessly careless of himself, had contracted a cold, a few months ago, that had settled on his lungs; and it was now evident to all but that poor little girl that she would, before long, be fatherless. oh, she would be cared for, no doubt, so far as her body was concerned. she was at school, and it was a good school, as good, perhaps, as any of them. at least she, and her mother, had been at infinite pains to discover it; still, it was school, and not home, and poor maybelle had never been quite happy there. the teachers were kind, but cold and unsympathetic. they did not understand the child, and they almost openly disapproved of her father. he went every day to see her, but the time was coming when he would no longer be able to do so, and she dreaded to think what maybelle would do when this truth dawned upon her. in these and many other ways had miss parker made it apparent to mrs. burnham that her hope lay in winning the woman who had been so much to her, to become this deserted and lonely child's friend and guardian. this was the problem therefore which occupied ruth burnham's chief thought for a number of days following miss parker's visit. only one decision with regard to it had been reached: that she would do what she could; but what that would be, she was unable to determine. her way seemed hedged in with difficulties which had not occurred to her during those first awful hours. how, for instance, was she, a stranger, with no claim to other than a stranger's interest that she could press, to present herself before a young woman who was under the care of her own father, and beg to be taken as a friend and adviser? then, too, she shrank exceedingly from meeting the father; meeting and talking with a man who had been irene's husband! his very presence on the earth seemed an insult to her son! what explanation could she possibly make to him as to her interest in his daughter? would her name tell him anything? what did he know of the after history of the mother of his child? if he was acquainted with her present name, might he not look upon the coming of her husband's mother as an added insult? for, after all, he was a decent man, decent enough for a woman like mamie parker to acknowledge his acquaintance; and he had done what he could for his deserted child. she could not even find that he had been seriously to blame for the child's desertion; therefore he might well resent this tardy coming to his aid. going back step by step over her interview with miss parker, ruth found that there were many questions which she had failed to ask; and among them was this important one as to the father's knowledge of irene's present name and home. it seemed almost necessary to wait and write to miss parker before attempting anything. yet she shrank morbidly from this; it seemed like opening the whole horror afresh. if there were actual need on the part of the girl, such as could be met by money, her way would have been clearer. but of this she had thought at once, and miss parker had almost dignifiedly declined her help. "dear mrs. burnham, i consider it my privilege to look after maybelle in all such ways; we have done it for years, mother and i together, and now it seems almost like her trust to me. it has been a real comfort to see that the child was provided with such little luxuries of the toilet, for instance, as i longed for and could not have. we were much straitened in my girlhood, and i have been living my life over again in this young girl; though she is much less silly than i was. i must not be deprived of this privilege, mrs. burnham; indeed i have her father's permission to do for her whatever i think wise; he trusts me fully; and i have no one else, now, to think about." so that avenue seemed closed. ruth, thinking about it almost irritably as the complications grew upon her, told herself that it would have been wiser for mamie parker to plan to stay away from china and attend to all the rest of it; she could do it better than any one else. she wrote to miss parker at last, a careful letter, re-written several times lest it tell too much between lines. that young woman had evidently taken it for granted that the burnham family were supplied with the main facts in this tragedy, and had found it hard to rally from her astonishment at finding the mother in ignorance. ruth knew that she believed that erskine was not. she longed to tell her that this was false, yet held her pen. did not this infringe upon her solemn covenant with god to shield her daughter-in-law as much as right would permit? yet, was it right to let her son's good name be smirched unnecessarily in the eyes of this woman who had known him in his spotless youth? at last she wrote this:-- "since our interview i have been through a bitter experience trying to decide as to my duty in certain directions. i believe now that i have reached a decision, and feel that i am not called upon to tear down with my own hands the fair home which my son believes he has begun to build. he is god's own servant, and god will see to it that he understands all that he must understand. i believe that i may leave it with him." she waited eagerly for a reply to this letter; it came in the form of a telegram. "i am to sail on saturday. my poor little girl is alone. father buried yesterday. have written. "m. m. parker." chapter xx they hated mystery mrs. ruth burnham was settled in a drawing-room car, surrounded by every comfort and luxury that money and modern ideas can furnish for a long journey; and her son erskine stood looking down on her with a face only half satisfied. it occurred to him as a matter of astonishment that, with the single exception of her one trip homeward, after her ministrations to alice, and while he was abroad, his mother had not, since he could remember, taken a journey without him. and here she was, starting for new york, and planning for a stay of indefinite length, while he was remaining at home. he did not wholly like it. "it does not seem quite right, mamma," he said, with a smile that had almost wistfulness in it. "i am not used to seeing you off, you know. it seems as though i should be going along to look after your comfort." "you have already done that, erskine; i am sure a queen could not be more carefully provided for." "and you have really no idea when you are coming home?" "i could not plan for it, dear. your aunt flossy is a woman of many schemes, you know, and it is long since i visited her; not since you and i were there together, years ago." "it was always 'you and i together,'" he said, discontentedly, as though he almost resented this sudden independence of him. "and this other--person--whoever she is, you will not let her absorb you? i can see how she will wear you out, without me to manage for you. she is imperious and selfish, of course." his mother smiled on him tenderly, and a little sadly. "how did you learn that, erskine?" "oh, by intuition; or common sense. she would not expect an entire stranger to take a long and tiresome journey in her behalf if she were not." "i don't think she knows anything about the journey, or the stranger, my son." "then it is all miss parker's fault?" and he frowned. "she has not grown like her brother; not as he used to be, at least. why doesn't she stay at home and attend to her own affairs, since they are of so much importance? that sounds ugly, i know, but i don't like to lend you, mommie, indeed i don't. you belong to me; and besides, there seems to be an air of mystery about the whole matter, and i hate mystery; at least between us." it was at that moment that the call of "all aboard" sounded, and erskine gave his mother a hasty last kiss and made flying leaps toward the platform. it was a relief to have him go. his mother also hated mystery; and despite her attempts at frankness, no one was more conscious than she of the part that she had not told. she had shown erskine the telegram and made at the time the very brief explanation which it had taken her hours to arrange. "it is a protégé of miss parker's, erskine, for whom she has bespoken my sympathy and help. the girl is quite alone, her father has just died; and since i have been long promising your aunt flossy, and they are in the same city, i think i ought to take this time for my visit." "a protégé," erskine had repeated with lifted eyebrows. "a relative? is she responsible for her? how can one shift such responsibilities as that, especially upon a stranger?" "she is not related to miss parker," his mother had replied, and was glad that at the moment she had been bending over a drawer, so that her burning face was partially hidden. if erskine only knew whose responsibilities had been shifted! it was that thought which burned her face. "she is not!" he had replied in an exclamatory tone. "then why in the name of common sense should she,"--and then, his mother had determined what she would say further. "erskine,"--her face was still bent over that bureau drawer--"the peculiar circumstances connected with this child were explained to me by miss parker in confidence, and of course i cannot speak of them; further than to tell you that she considers the girl as a trust." "well," erskine had said, after waiting a moment for more words that had not come, "i don't half like it, mamma. i am sure of that; and if it were not for your making this long-promised visit to aunt flossy, i should not consent to your going. as it is, rushing off at an hour's notice, in response to an ordinary telegram, as though somebody had a right to order you around, seems absurd. i shall write to aunt flossy not to let your heart run away with your judgment. i am really afraid you are being imposed upon, mamma. remember, we know nothing about these parkers." after his mother had watched, with the nervous tremors with which one watches when all that one has is jumping from a moving train--until erskine was lifting his hat to her from safe ground, and her train was gliding away from him, she drew a deep breath of relief; not only from that immediate tension, but all the hours which had preceded it. every moment since the arrival of that telegram had been a nervous strain to her, because of the things that she must say, and the things that she must not say. irene, especially, had taxed her honesty and ingenuity to the utmost. from the first moment, the young woman had been curious and painstaking in trying to satisfy herself. "the idea!" she would exclaim. "it seems to me that is asking a great deal of an old woman; and erskine says this miss parker is only a passing acquaintance. what possible claim can she have on you? why is she so interested in this girl? do you understand it? it looks as though there was a love affair, somewhere, doesn't it? she is an old maid, of course. you can depend upon it that she was in love with that girl's father!" there was a side to this woman which ruth in her secret soul called coarse. so far as she knew, it was a phase of her character that was never exhibited to erskine. with her fine regard for truth, and her contempt of anything like subterfuge, mrs. burnham found it hard to satisfy the curious questioner, and yet keep back that part of the truth which she must not tell. she could not but be glad when the strain was over. not once had she mentioned the name of the girl. it had been a continual terror to her lest she should be asked it; but though irene asked every possible question that might throw light on the mystery, she had been mercifully preserved from thinking of names. mrs. burnham had learned from miss parker that the first name, maybelle, would reveal nothing; it had been chosen by the father for his still nameless child, months after the mother's desertion; and chosen for no better reason than that baby had come in the month of may, and was a "little beauty." but the name of somerville might at least have startled irene, had she heard it; and her mother-in-law determined that she should not. having resolved upon silence as the right course, the more absolute it could be, the better for all concerned. so it was not until the train was fairly under way, speeding eastward at thirty miles an hour, that ruth felt free to draw a long breath and rest her overstrained nerves. her mind wandered back through the years, lured there by the thought of flossy. it was years since they two had been alone together, but just at this time flossy's husband had taken a hurried business trip abroad. "it is really providential that i am at home," flossy had written, in response to her old friend's letter, telling that she might soon visit her. "evan wanted me to go with him, brief as his stay is to be; and i should have done so, but for the illness of a very dear friend who seemed to need me; to think that if i had gone, i might have missed you!" dear flossy! what a rarely wise little woman she had become! astonishing them all, not by her sweetness,--they had always been sure of that,--but by her strength and skill as a christian worker. no young woman left to herself in a dangerous world could have a safer, more helpful friend than flossy shipley roberts. yet ruth, even as she thought this comforting thought, remembered that the duty thrust upon her of guarding the hateful secrets of others must prevent her from speaking plainly even to flossy. however, she found reticence with flossy easier than it had been with irene. joyfully glad to get possession of her old friend was mrs. roberts, and athrob with eagerness to hear all that she had to tell her, and sympathetic about the minutest details; yet in nothing did she show her perfect breeding and rare tact more distinctly than in the questions that she did not ask, concerning things that ruth did not choose to tell. she told very little. "you know, flossy, i have been planning to come to you for a long, long time." "i certainly do!" interrupted flossy, with an air that obliged ruth to stop and laugh. "but the reason i am here just at this time is because a protégé of my friend--the young woman who sailed last week for china--has just lost her father and is alone in this great city, so far as relatives or very close friends are concerned, and i am commissioned to try to comfort her." "and i know, dear ruth, how certainly you will succeed," was mrs. roberts's comment and her only one. a little later she asked: "where do you find your charge, ruth? is she a young girl, did you say? delightful! i hope you will let me help? oh, no, i must not go with you on your first visit, of course. one new face at a time is enough for the poor child to meet." ruth blessed her in her heart for the delicate reserve which would not let her question even about the woman who had gone to china. after irene's baldly put inference she shrank from trying to explain miss parker's interest in the girl. it was on the morning after her arrival in town that mrs. burnham sat waiting in the reception room of a dignified, many-storied house, which, she told herself, had everywhere about it the unmistakable boarding-school air. she had sent up her card, but was uncertain how much it would tell, or whether she should be allowed to see the person on whom she had called. as matters had turned out it seemed unfortunate that she had so long delayed her visit to mrs. roberts. if she could have been introduced here by miss parker in person, it might have been better for all concerned. as it was, she felt strangely out of place and embarrassed. she had not been able to decide just how she would account for her extreme interest in this stranger. it was especially embarrassing to remember that she must account for it even to the girl herself. while she waited, she went back in memory to that other waiting, in a boarding-house parlor, when she had called to see mamie parker. what eventful years had intervened, and what changes they had wrought! how mistaken she, ruth burnham, had been about many things, notably her estimate of mamie parker. had she been able with prophetic insight to get a vision of the woman mamie was to be, would it have made a difference, a radical difference with all their lives? then she flushed to her temples as she remembered that such thoughts were almost an insult to her son. just then the door opened and there entered madame sternheim, the head of the "young ladies' fashionable school." madame sternheim was dignified and correct in every movement and word, and was as cold as ice. yes, miss somerville was with them, of course. her poor father had left her in their charge, and a serious responsibility she found it. oh, yes, miss parker, before she left, had spoken of some one by the name of--of burnham--she referred to the card which she held in her hand--who might write, or be heard from in some way. she seemed not to be at all sure that any one would call. yes, certainly, the circumstances were peculiar and had been all the time. the poor father--it was by no means a pleasant thing to have to speak plainly of the dead, but it was sometimes necessary, and perhaps mrs.--yes, thank you, mrs. burnham, knew that he was not in every respect the fit guardian for a young woman? oh, yes, miss parker had been most kind, most attentive; miss somerville owed her a deep debt of gratitude, certainly. it seemed a strange--"providence--shall we call it?" that took miss parker away to china at just the time when it would appear that her self-assumed charge needed her the most. she, madame sternheim, had never professed to understand the situation. miss parker, she believed, was not even remotely related to the girl, not even a relative of the relatives--was she? yet her interest in the child and her father had been unaccountably deep. there had always seemed to her to be an air of mystery about the whole matter. madame sternheim did not like mystery; in fact she might say that she shrank from it. did mrs. burnham understand that miss parker knew personally any of the family connection? ruth was angry with herself that she must blush and almost stammer over so simple a question. no, that was what madame sternheim had been led to infer. the relatives were all in england, were they not? it seemed strange that the girl was not to go out to them; but then, her poor father--had mrs. burnham been personally acquainted with the father? well, she knew of him probably? which was perhaps quite enough. miss parker's unaccountable interest in him was beyond understanding, until one remembered that no one could tell on what the human heart would anchor, especially a woman's heart. she had never thought that mr. somerville was especially--but then he, poor man, was gone; they need not speak of such things now. and miss parker, too, was gone--to china! that was unaccountable. if love for the girl had been what had prompted her attentions all these years, why, the poor child was doubly in need of it now. she had been deeply attached to her father despite the fact that-- "ah," madame sternheim broke off quickly, as the door slowly opened, to say:-- "here she is, mrs. burnham, to speak for herself." chapter xxi "a study" a tall, pale girl with delicate features and great brown eyes and a wealth of gold-brown hair. "a study in black and white," was the phrase that floated through ruth's mind as she looked at her. the girl was in deep mourning unrelieved even by a touch of white, and her face was intensely pale. yet there was something about her, a nameless something, that claimed instant interest, and mrs. burnham, who, ever since she had heard of the girl's existence, had been struggling with an unreasonable desire to hate her, felt instantly drawn toward her. she felt rather than realized that, whatever might have been irene's appearance in girlhood, the two had nothing in common now, for her eyes. "i have heard your name," the pale girl said, much as she might have addressed a book agent, "but i did not know that you were coming to new york." "my dear," broke in madame sternheim, reproof in her tone, "i am sure it is very kind in mrs.--yes, mrs. burnham to take all this trouble for your sake. she tells me that she is not related to you in any way, and it is certainly quite unusual for strangers to be so kind." "it is very kind," the girl said coldly, and stood irresolute apparently as to what she should do or say next; while ruth, sorry for her and for herself and unreasonably annoyed with madame sternheim, was at a loss how to proceed. the madame came to her aid, addressing the young girl. "do be seated, my dear, and make yourself at least look comfortable." there was a strong emphasis laid upon the word "look" and the reproof in the tone was still marked, as she continued:-- "mrs. burnham will naturally want to have a talk with you, and learn what little you may be able to explain to her about this sad matter, although i am too fully aware that it will be very unsatisfactory." then she turned to ruth. "with your permission, dear madam, i will retire and leave my charge in your care for the present. i assure you it is a great relief to me to find that there is some one willing to share with me this heavy responsibility." the girl turned at this, and with slow, languid steps preceded the madame to the door, which she held open for her to pass, and bowed respectfully as she did so. then, waiting until a turn in the hall hid the lady from sight she carefully closed the door. ruth, meantime, was watching her with a half-terrified fascination. she was so calm, so self-possessed, so utterly without feeling of any sort, apparently. what was to be said to her? and what good could come in any way from that which now began to look like interference? she was not in the least prepared for the sudden change which the closing of that door seemed to make. the girl turned with an impetuous movement and seemed to fly, rather than walk, over the space between them, and, flinging herself in a crushed little heap in front of her guest, hid her face on mrs. burnham's lap and burst into a passion of weeping. "poor little girl!" ruth said softly, and laid her hand tenderly on the bowed head. there seemed no other word that could be spoken until the storm of weeping had in a degree subsided. "oh, do forgive me!" the child said, after a minute, but without raising her head. "i did not mean to cry, i meant to control myself; i thought i could, through it all, but i am so wretched! and she--she freezes me! she wants me to be resigned, and to remember how much better off i am than some other girls who have no one to look after them, and it doesn't help me one bit. i am so glad that you have come! you are aunt mamie's friend, so you can't be like madame sternheim; and you won't tell me that aunt mamie isn't related to me in the most distant degree and in the nature of things cannot be, will you? i can see that you are not like the madame the least bit in the world, and i am glad, _glad_! oh! i am a very wicked girl! i ought not to have said that; she is good, she is _very_ good; and she is patient with my faults and follies; and yet--there are times when i almost hate her! oh, dear! what will you think of me? i don't act like this very often; i don't cry often--i don't cry at all! but now i must, or i shall die!" then followed another outburst of passionate weeping. "cry as much as you want to, dear child," ruth said. "it is only natural, and will do you good." all the time her hand was moving over the tumbled masses of hair, making quiet, soothing passes. after a little the girl sat up and brushed away the tears. "i can't think what made me," she said. "only you reminded me of aunt mamie, and then--it all came back. i don't know what i am to do; it seems to me that i cannot live without her, but i have got to; and without--everybody. it does seem sometimes as though there was never another girl in the world so utterly alone; but madame sternheim says there are, hundreds of them, even in this city! i am so sorry for them all! i wish they could die and go to heaven. i wish i could, with papa. but madame sternheim says--" she stopped abruptly and struggled for self-control, and spoke almost fiercely. "i won't tell you what she says about my father, nor think about it. it isn't true, and if it were, she--" ruth felt a curious feeling of indignation rising against mamie parker. how could she have deserted this child? so soon, at least, after her bereavement? surely she needed her more than the brother did, who had been alone for years! then came a great gust of shame and shook her heart. why should mamie parker, a stranger, be expected to show compassion for this lonely girl when her own family, her own mother--but that would not bear thinking about. "poor little girl!" she said again, with infinite tenderness. "will you take me for a friend? i will do the best i can to be a true one." "oh, thank you," the child said impulsively. "i am so glad, _so glad_ for you! and only last night i thought i could never be glad about anything again! aunt mamie had to go, of course, at the time appointed. it isn't like other journeys, you know; they have to sail when they are told; missionaries do, i mean. that is,--oh, you understand. but aunt mamie felt very badly about leaving me; and she said she thought you would love me; but of course i couldn't see why you should. it isn't that i am not cared for, mrs. burnham. i have been with madame sternheim for six years and i am sure that i have every care and attention that a girl possibly could; she has always made that plain to me; but--she did not like papa, mrs. burnham. she never did; and she--almost spoke against him, even to me! could a girl ever care very much for one who talked and felt as she did about the dearest, kindest, most loving papa that ever lived? oh!" she clenched her hands, and the tears threatened to choke her; but she put them back with a strong will, and even faintly smiled. "i shall not cry again," she said. "madame thinks it is wicked. mrs. burnham, i wish you could have known my papa. he was--i mean he was not--oh, i don't know how to say it; and i am not sure that i want to say it, ever. he was good to me always; a girl like me couldn't have had a better father; and i don't know how to live in this world without him. it kills me to have to stay all the time among people who say always; 'your poor father!' and shake their heads and look as though they could say volumes of ugly things about him if they chose. they shall not! i will not have people talking about my father! the dearest, the best! a great deal better than the self-righteous creatures made of icicles that they admire!" ruth was amazed at the suppressed fury of her tones, and at her eyes which, but a moment before dim with weeping, now blazed with indignation. evidently the child had passed through a severe mental strain. "don't, dear," she said gently. "no one could be so cruel as to want to speak against your father. i am glad you love him so dearly; he can always help you. you will not want to disappoint him in any way, you know." the girl looked at her searchingly as one startled. this was evidently a new thought; it took hold of her heart. a softened light came into her unusually expressive eyes and after a moment she said very gently:-- "no one ever said anything to me like that, before. it helps." they made great strides toward intimacy even in that first morning. so great that when ruth, pitying the girl's loneliness and evident dread of the people by whom she was surrounded, proposed that she send for her to come and take dinner with mrs. roberts and herself, she caught at the suggestion with an eagerness which showed what a relief it was to her; and then almost immediately demurred. "but i ought not to presume in that way. i am certain the madame will think so. will not your friend think it very strange in me, a stranger, to intrude upon her home?" "wait until you see her," ruth said, smiling. "mrs. roberts and i are very old friends, and i am almost as much at home in her house as i am in my own." as she spoke, she felt a sudden stricture at her heart over those commonplace words. was she not in these later days almost more at home in flossy's house than in her own? but maybelle's face had gloomed over. "i think i must not go, mrs. burnham," she said. "i suppose i ought not to wish, or even be willing to go; i am sure madame sternheim will be shocked at the idea. i am in deep mourning, you know, and my loss is so recent." unconsciously the child had imitated the prim decorum of her mentor, and it had changed her entire face. ruth leaned forward impulsively and kissed her, while she spoke with a smile:-- "dear child, be yourself, and not madame sternheim. adopt me, will you, and let me attend to the decorum part, and all the rest. mrs. roberts is quite alone, save for me; her husband is away on a business trip, and her children have scattered for the vacation; so we shall be very quiet, we three; and there is no reason in the world why you should not come to us. i want you to know mrs. roberts; she is anxious to see you, and would have come with me this morning, if she had not thought it better that you and i should make each other's acquaintance first. as for you, you will love her the first time you look at her. shall i speak to madame sternheim myself about it?" when this was done, madame sternheim was discovered to be graciousness itself. she might be doubtful as to mrs. burnham's place in the world, her knowledge of people being limited and very local, but the name of mrs. evan roberts called for instant approval, and to know that mrs. burnham was her friend and guest was sufficient passport for her. it was very kind and thoughtful in dear mrs. roberts, she was sure, to send for the poor child; and very like her too, if all that the madame had heard concerning her was true. did mrs. burnham know that her friend had the name of always doing the most delicate kindnesses that no one else would have thought of? she was really a wonderful woman? madame sternheim had long wanted to know her. they need not trouble to send the dear child home, she herself was going out this evening, and would have pleasure in calling for miss somerville at ten o'clock. "isn't it beautiful here?" maybelle said, a few hours later, as she sank among the cushions of a "sleepy hollow" and feasted her beauty-loving eyes on the harmonies of mrs. roberts's living-room. "it is like a poem, or no, a picture; that is what it is like, mrs. burnham; one of papa's pictures. how he would have loved this room! he was always making sketches of sweet, dear, home rooms, and there was always a beautiful mother in them with a baby in her arms. i think my mother must have been very beautiful, for it was always the same face, and i know it was intended for mamma, though he never told me so; i could not talk with papa about her, ever, it made him cry. don't you think it is dreadful to see a man cry? when i started the tears in his dear blue eyes, i always felt like a wretch! and for that reason i gave up trying to say anything about mamma, though i should so love to have heard every little thing about her. papa must simply have adored her, but i have had to dream her out for myself. i have spent hours and hours over it, studying papa's sketches, you know, and trying to clothe them with flesh. i believe i know just how she looked. sometimes she would grow so real to me that i almost expected her to hold out her arms and clasp me to them. i was a wee baby, you know, when mamma went away." chapter xxii a loyal heart the friendship so strangely started between mrs. burnham and the girl thrust upon her conscience, grew apace. as ruth had surmised, her old friend flossy had lost none of her charm with young people, and she won maybelle's fascinated interest from the first moment of their meeting; an interest that developed rapidly into love. when mrs. roberts's young people came home--an event that ruth, at least, had dreaded for maybelle's sake--it was found that the charm was increased. ruth, in writing to erskine about them, which she did at some length, had added: "i might have saved you much of this description, by simply saying that the children are very like their mother. even erskine, tall and muscular as he is, a thorough boy in every sense of the word, and a manly one, yet has that indefinable indescribable charm about him that our little flossy always had and always will have, should she live to be a hundred, bless her! what a blessing she would be to this old world if she should. do you realize, dear, that he is your namesake, as well as mine? at first i was not sure that i wanted another erskine,--there is but one to me, you know,--but erskine roberts is such a splendid repetition of the family name that we cannot but be proud of him." but she gave no description of maybelle, and mentioned her name as little as possible. she shrank almost painfully from the thought of writing about this girl to one who ought to be deeply interested in her,--as in the nature of the case erskine should be if he knew,--and yet looked upon her as an intruder, almost resenting his mother's efforts in her behalf. but if she kept silence about her to erskine, she atoned for it in the amount of time and thought that she bestowed upon the child. as the weeks passed and she grew to better understand this child-woman with whom she had to deal, she found herself bestowing upon her a wealth of love and tenderness that she had not supposed any but her very own could call out. and her love was returned in royal measure. however much maybelle might admire and love mrs. roberts and enjoy her son and daughters, she had given the wealth of her heart unreservedly to mrs. burnham. "next to aunt mamie i love you best of all the world," she would declare as she patted ruth's shoulder with a loving little touch that was peculiarly her own. "it ought always to be aunt mamie first, you know, because she--she _mothered_ me all those years when i was hungry for a mother. dear mrs. burnham, if she were your daughter and i could be your granddaughter, would not that be perfect? but that couldn't be, of course, for aunt mamie loved her own dear mother better than any other mother in the world; and she was a _dear_; i loved her very much, but--how many different kinds of love there can be in the same heart!" she broke off to say, with the air of a dreamy philosopher, "different kinds of loves and different kinds of unloves, ever so many of them! the heart is a curious country, isn't it?" by that time mrs. burnham had come to understand miss parker's absorbed interest in the girl, which continued unabated even amid the absorbing interests of a strange land. she wrote long loving letters to the child of her adoption, and long earnest ones to mrs. burnham about her. "there have been times," she wrote, "when i have almost regretted that i left the dear girl all alone and came away out here where weeks must intervene before i can hear from her. i felt this especially after i found that my brother, although very glad indeed to welcome me, had made interests here about which i knew nothing, one that is to help make a home for him in the near future, so that so far as care and companionship are concerned he could have done very well without me. when i first began to understand the situation here, i was puzzled, and just a little bit troubled over the question why i had been allowed to come, or rather left to think that to come was the only right course, when apparently i was much more needed at home on that dear child's account, than here. but after reading maybelle's letter i understood that it was in order to leave the way clear and plain for her to your dear heart; you can do so much more for her than i can ever hope to. how blissful the darling is over her new friendships and interests! i am glad that you have kidnapped her loyal little heart, just as i knew you would." "poor girl!" mrs. burnham said softly to herself after reading this letter. "she has one of those hungry hearts that maybelle talks about; and she fancied that her brother could fill it, instead of being quite satisfied with his generous corner of it! i wonder if it can be possible that she cared for the child's father, as the madame hints? that would account for--but there is nothing to be accounted for; one could not help loving maybelle. i must tell miss parker that she is always to have the first place in that 'curious' heart, while i am enthroned as second. dear simpleton!" then, as the thought crossed her mind, not for the first time, that the one who should hold that first place might be named erskine, the uneasy conviction shook her that in such event certain ugly truths would have to be revealed. but she put the thought from her as soon as possible. she could not plan for the future, and for the present, maybelle and erskine roberts were simply comrades heartily enjoying each other's society, as her own erskine and alice warder had done, without apparently other thoughts than those shared with them by marian roberts, who was erskine's twin. ruth wrote to miss parker that same evening, giving her a detailed account of one of her talks with maybelle. "you may well call hers a 'loyal heart,' my friend," she wrote. "you should hear the pathetic way in which the child talks about you by the hour! yesterday she said to me:-- "'sometimes i used to wish that i could call aunt mamie, mother. she is the only woman that i ever had such a thought about; i suppose it was because she came close enough to give me an idea of what a real mother would be. i mean to keep her always for my heart-mother. there can be heart-mothers, you know, and in some ways they are almost as dear as real ones. oh, i wonder if you know how a girl like me sometimes longs and _longs_ for a real mother! i think it is the only possession that i ever envied. sometimes, mrs. burnham, i have been fiercely jealous for hours together, so that i almost hated the girls who chattered about their mothers. wasn't that dreadful! oh, i cannot think what would have become of me long before this, if i had not had aunt mamie.'" thus much ruth burnham wrote, and stayed her pen. was it necessary for her to tell all this? to lay bare even to this woman, who knew so much, the depths of a suffering young heart, thereby revealing the magnitude of the mother's sin against it? and that mother was her daughter, her son's wife! she wanted to write it; there were times when she wanted to shout it out to all the world, just what manner of woman was being sheltered by her name and home. she knew that she would never do it, but ought not mamie parker who had mothered the child, to understand? she thought long, she shed a few struggling tears that seemed to burn her face; the hurt at her heart was too deep for tears, and then she hid her face on the writing table and talked with god. the end of it was that she tore the sheet across and threw the fragments into her grate. and wrote again:-- "you may well call hers a 'loyal heart,' my friend; she loves with a depth that seems to me unusual in one so young; and she has enthroned you at her heart's very centre. i want to say, just here, that i do not think she overestimates what you have done for her; i believe you have saved her to herself." meanwhile, the days that mrs. burnham, without any definite planning, had thought might be given to her visit lengthened into weeks, and still she lingered in the east. erskine was astonished, was bewildered, was half indignant, yet she set no date for the home-going. one reason for this was the fact that mr. roberts's stay abroad, which was to have been very brief, had been much lengthened by unexpected business complications, and his wife was begging her old friend to stay with her until his return. but of course there was no real excuse for this, as she had her children and multitudes of home friends about her. the real reason was that ruth could not decide to leave maybelle. the girl clung to her with an ever increasing abandon to the joy of having for her very own one who knew how to be in every sense of the word motherly. certainly she was nearer real happiness than her confused life had ever been before. from being one whom some of her schoolmates pitied and patronized because she seemed to have no friends of her own except a somewhat doubtful father, she became almost an object of envy. all of the girls at madame sternheim's knew mrs. evan roberts by reputation; and highly exaggerated stories of her house and her friends and her lavish expenditures for certain of them, were afloat in the school. but it chanced that maybelle was the first one of the school girls who had entered the charmed circle of mrs. roberts's friendships. when it became known that she was being sent for three or four times a week to take dinner with the roberts family, that she went on tuesdays to luncheon, that she spent most of her saturdays and sundays in the same choice home, interest in her comings and goings became marked. then, when she began slowly, and almost reluctantly it must be admitted, to choose out some especially lonely or homesick or timid girl to take with her to dine at mrs. roberts's, her popularity knew no bounds. madame sternheim, too, during these days was gracious almost beyond recognition. it was not that the good woman had not meant to be gracious always; she had been faithful to her duty as she saw it, and poor maybelle, who confessed that she had hours of almost hating her, had in reality very much for which to thank her. but madame sternheim was very human indeed, and the daughter of a poor artist father with a questionable past and a doubtful future, whose only friend, apparently, was a very fine young woman, it is true, but a woman without family and with no reasonable way of accounting for her interest in the girl, and nothing to show how soon the interest might cease--for that matter she had already gone away off to china for no reason in particular, unless it was to be well rid of her charge now that the father was gone--was one person, and a girl who had apparently been adopted into the inner circle of mrs. roberts's family was quite another; especially now that the poor father had been respectably buried and all doubtful or uncomfortable things could be forgotten. madame sternheim was relieved and pleased and hopeful. she liked to have mrs. roberts's carriage stand before her door waiting for maybelle. she liked to say to certain of her patrons:-- "oh, the coachman is used to waiting; our dear maybelle is almost certain to be tardy, but then she is so much at home at mrs. roberts's house that she can take all sorts of liberties. oh, yes, she dines there several times a week and often takes some of her classmates with her. dear mrs. roberts welcomes my girls to her home as though she were their elder sister. what a charming woman she is! really when one comes to know her intimately, one feels that the half has not been told concerning her." and maybelle was blossoming under this reign of love. her cheeks were rounding out a little and taking on a touch of color, and her eyes were growing less sad. she had by no means forgotten her grief nor put aside the thought of her father. on the contrary, she liked nothing better than to talk of him by the hour to a sympathetic listener, while to be allowed to talk about her mother, was to give free vent to the one pent-up passion of her life. it was to mrs. burnham that she talked most freely, though mrs. roberts's young people were sympathetic, and erskine, especially, liked nothing better than to hear long stories about the artist and his method of dealing with a picture. "he made them up," maybelle would say, "composed them, you know, or made a plot, as you do when you write a story for your college paper. the picture grew, just as a story does. 'that's an idea!' papa would say, when i was sitting meekly enough beside him, telling him some story of my day. 'that's a look i never saw before, let me get it, maysie'--that was one of his dear names for me, he had dozens of them--and he would seize palette and brush and work for a few minutes as hard as he could, then sit back and gaze at me and think, and i knew that a new picture was born and would have to be watched over and nourished and developed. it was very interesting." "yes, indeed! he painted me a hundred times and in a hundred different ways, but they did him no good; he never would try to sell them, nor even show them. they are all boxed up with our other things and stored; aunt mamie took charge of them. he told her they were never to be sold. i think it was because my mother's picture was always mixed in with them, and he could not bear to sell her. he used to make pictures of me, sometimes, that he said were like mamma. there would be just little hints of me about them, not a likeness of me at all, but a beautiful girl, and the tears would come into papa's dear eyes when he looked at her, and he would say softly, 'it is her image.'" when maybelle talked in this way to ruth, she once or twice said wistfully:-- "it must be beautiful to be loved in the way that my father loved my mother." but erskine roberts never heard any words of this kind. chapter xxiii puzzling questions "this is lovely!" said maybelle, as she drew the curtains, and pushed her sewing chair closer to mrs. burnham's. "isn't it nice to be alone together? erskine wanted me to go with them to the rehearsal and act as prompter, but i told him i was going to follow the promptings of my own heart and stay with you, especially since his mother must also be away. if we lived all alone in a dear little home, you and i, i could take care of you all the time." "i am afraid i should need something besides lovely rooms and pretty sewing," mrs. burnham said laughingly. "yes, indeed! but i could do them; all sorts of things. i used to do things for mrs. parker, and for papa when he would let me. i was always coaxing papa to have a little bit of a house just large enough for us two, and let me take charge of it; i knew i could; i could learn, you know, and mrs. parker taught me a great many things; but he never would. poor papa! he didn't want a home; he said that he had one once, and he wanted it to live in his memory forever. he meant that time--before mamma died. do you think it is like most men to be so constant to a memory?" "i do not know," mrs. burnham said, with an effort. she never knew what to say to maybelle when she was in this mood. it was impossible to join in the talk about a dead mother, and not feel herself a hypocrite. but maybelle was already on another theme. "dear mrs. burnham, i am glad we are alone to-night. there are matters about which i want to talk with you. "do you know, i have been treated always like a little girl? and it seems to me that the time has come for me to begin to be a woman. i used to try to get papa to tell me about his affairs, but he never would. during those last dreadful days, all he would tell me was that he had left everything to aunt mamie, and i was to do just as she said. but i have a feeling that papa was poor; and that he just made enough by his pictures to support us, perhaps not always that; i have thought lately that perhaps a great many of my nice things and--and opportunities, came through aunt mamie. madame sternheim has dropped hints more than once that have made me believe so. and now,--don't you think i ought to know all about it, and be making plans to support myself?" "my dear!" was all that ruth could say, in an almost dismayed tone. maybelle's future and her connection with it were more puzzling to erskine burnham's mother than they could possibly be to this child. the earnest young voice went on:-- "i wrote to aunt mamie just how i felt, but she cannot see it as i do. she says that she is alone in the world, that money is the only thing she has enough of, and that papa gave me to her to take care of. she does not understand why i should not be quite happy over such an arrangement; but dear mrs. burnham, i am sure you do. it is not that i do not love to belong to her, i mean to, always; and sometimes i cannot sleep for the joy of thinking that she loves me so dearly; i can't think why she does. but don't you think that a self-respecting girl wants to support herself just as soon as she possibly can, unless she has a father and mother who can do it as well as not, and want to?" this also was a sore and embarrassing phase of the subject to poor ruth. oh, to be able to say to her that her mother, her own mother, was in a position to cover for her every need that money could supply and that the man who now stood in the place of father to her would insist upon so much tardy justice--if he knew of her existence! yet ruth's common sense told her that even though there were no terrible reasons for silence for the sake of others, the hardest blow that could be given to a girl like maybelle would be to destroy her beautiful illusions of her mother with the base truth. that mother of sacred memory, alive, well, living in ease and luxury and ignoring her as utterly as though she had never been born! could such a cruel blow as that be borne! yet any words that this much-tried woman could arrange in reply to the appeal just made, seemed false. she hesitated, and knew that her face was flushing under the girl's earnest gaze. at last, she said the only words there seemed left for her to say. "my dear, i am a little bit on both sides of this question. i certainly sympathize with your view, and on general principles should agree with you. but the circumstances are peculiar this time." and as she said the words she felt like a hypocrite; how peculiar they were, that poor child had not the least idea! "miss parker is, as she says, practically alone in the world. her brother's marriage is a coming event; then he will not need her any more, in the special sense in which she can help him now, and he does not need her money, for he has plenty of his own. their father discovered a gold mine, you know, as well as one of another metal, almost more valuable than gold. so, if miss parker wants to spend a little of her surplus money upon you, because she loves you, ought you not to please her in this, and be governed by her advice, at least for the present? when you are older, and especially when miss parker returns home, which i think she will do before very long, probably some plans can be made that will please you both. cannot you wait, dear?" maybelle sat thoughtful for a moment, then she drew a long sigh. "i suppose i must," she said. "indeed, there is no other way for me at present; only--i am to graduate, you know, in a few days, and i thought--but of course i ought not, contrary to aunt mamie's wishes. but i do not know what she wants me to do for the summer. she has not seemed to remember it. i have always spent the summer vacations with her." "you are not to forecast anxieties about the summer," mrs. burnham said, trying to make her voice sound cheery and free from all anxiety, though it struck her like a physical pain, the fact that she could not say to this girl who was growing dearer to her with every passing day, "come home with me, child, of course;" that she could never invite her to her home, and could never explain to her why she must not. she must simply be silent and trust to maybelle's shrewd guessing that there were reasons why this new friend of hers did not feel at home in her own home, and was not at liberty to take her friends there. it was true that summer was upon them, and the air of the boarding school was athrob with the plans of eager girls getting ready for the home-going. maybelle was almost the only one who had not some sort of home to plan for. and yet maybelle was to graduate! if only mrs. burnham could say to her, "come, we will make home together, and you may do for me all that your heart prompts." there were hours when she was tempted to do something of the kind. but her words to maybelle revealed none of her pain. "there are lovely schemes maturing for the summer. 'good times,' my dear, and unlike the illustrious gloriana mcquirk you are 'in 'em.' i am not to divulge them before the appointed hour, but i empower you to say to those envious schoolgirls that your summer plans are a delicious secret even from yourself, being locked in the heart of that blessed little schemer, mrs. roberts." maybelle's face was still serious, but, after a moment, she laughed softly. "i am the strangest girl!" she said. "i don't think there can be another girl in the world who lives my kind of life. i have not what madame sternheim calls a 'relative' this side heaven to care what becomes of me, and i have the dearest company of people, on whom, according to madame again, i have not the shadow of a claim, who never weary of doing for me! what more, for instance, could you and that dear mrs. roberts and those girls and boys of hers do for me, even though i had that potent charm, some of 'the same blood' in my veins? and yet, do you know, selfish creature that i am, the madame has so instilled her principles into me that if i only had a sister or brother of my very own to love and care for, i think i could give up joyfully all other luxuries." "are you not forgetting your aunts in england, my dear?" maybelle shook her head and spoke resolutely. "i want to forget them; i do not claim them as aunts of mine." then, in response to ruth's look that might have meant reproach, she added:-- "they did not like mamma, mrs. burnham, and they were not good to her. papa told me as much as that. he said she was young, and away from all her home friends and unhappy, and they led her a hard life. papa could not help feeling hard toward them for that. it was the reason why he never went to england again after grandmother died. he took me to see grandmother, did you know that? but she did not seem like a grandmother. she wasn't _dear_, you know, and sweet, like the grandmothers in stories, and in real life too,--some of the girls at school have lovely ones,--but mine was stately and cold. she and my two aunts used to talk about mamma right before me. "'she looks like _her_,' one of them said, with a strong emphasis on the 'her' a contemptuous emphasis it seemed to me. and the other aunt replied, 'but she isn't like her in disposition, apparently.' then grandmother said quickly, 'heaven forbid!' could one love people who talked in that way before a child about her dear dead mother? not that they meant me to understand," she added thoughtfully, after a moment, as one who must do full justice even to one's enemies. "i don't think they did; they were the kind of people who think that a child is deaf and blind and stupid. i understood hints and shrugs of the shoulders and curls of the lip and exclamations a great deal better than they thought i did. i have no relatives, dear mrs. burnham, that i care for, but i have friends whom i love with every bit of me. may i ask just one little question?--and you need not answer it if it is part of the secret. do the summer plans include you? because if they don't, and there could be a way for me to have you for just a little piece of the summer, i--" the tremble in her voice had grown so marked that she stopped abruptly. she looked up, after a minute, with her eyes swimming in tears, and said with a queer little attempt at a laugh:-- "i'm not going to cry, mrs. burnham, don't you be afraid. and i'm not going to be selfish and babyish; i mean to be just as glad and happy and grateful as i can be, even though you have to be away from me all summer long." it was just at that moment that ruth resolved upon yielding to flossy's entreaties and spending at least part of the summer with them at their new seaside cottage, which was to be a surprise to all the young people, maybelle included. erskine expected her at home, but what were erskine's needs compared to this deserted child's?--and the child clung to her. but she would not tell maybelle, not just yet; so she spoke lightly, commending the child's resolve to count her mercies, and then admonishing her that she had better also count her stitches, as she was making a mistake in the row she was crocheting. there was a thoughtful silence on the part of both for a few minutes, then maybelle spoke again in what mrs. burnham called her grown-up tone. "there is one strange question i have wanted to ask of somebody for a long time. i tried to talk to erskine about it without letting him know that it was really a question in my mind; but erskine is like all boys, very wise and very positive, without being always able to give a reason for what he believes." "which means," said ruth, smiling, "that erskine did not agree with you." "well, he didn't," and maybelle stopped to laugh at herself; then spoke earnestly. "that is, so far as i may be said to have an opinion on that subject; i am not sure what i think, or at least i do not know why i think it. mrs. burnham, do christian people ever pray for their dead? and if they do not, why not? does the bible say we must not? i have tried to find something in the bible about it, and i could not." ruth was much startled. this was very different from the question she had expected. the young people argued vigorously upon every live question of the day, not excepting interesting theological points, but this was out of the regular line. while she considered just how best to answer it, maybelle explained. "i suppose that seems to you a strange question; young people do not often discuss such things, i suppose; but it interests me very much because i have such a longing, sometimes, to pray for mamma, that i can hardly keep her name from my lips; yet i thought perhaps it was wrong. i began to have that feeling almost as soon as aunt mamie taught me to pray. i had said my prayers before that time; papa taught me to say: 'now i lay me down to sleep,' and 'bless thy little lamb to-night.' i used to like to say them, but i did not understand what praying really was, until long after that time. but when aunt mamie made it plain to me, and my heart took hold of the fact that i was really talking with god, and that i could talk to him about papa, and in that way help him, i cannot tell you how glad i was! and then, very soon, i wanted to put mamma in." nothing that the girl had said had ever startled ruth as much as this. was there a woman living who needed prayer more than this child's mother? yet how could she counsel her daughter to pray for her? chapter xxiv an ally "i do not know that there is any 'thus saith the lord,' against your wish, my dear," she said at last, in a hesitating tone, "but the inference from all gospel teaching seems to be that this life is the time for prayer." maybelle gave a disappointed sigh. "i should think people would study into it," she said, "and find out if they might. it makes such an awful blank in one's praying to suddenly leave out a name that has been on one's lips and in one's heart for years." then ruth knew that the child was thinking of her father, and that she must move very carefully in trying to comfort her. "i did not have that feeling about my father, maybelle dear, nor about my husband. on the contrary i had an almost joyful realization that they were beyond the need for prayer--were where they could make no mistakes, where the mistakes of others could never harm them any more, and where they would be forever in the presence of the lord. what could one possibly ask more for them?" maybelle was silent for several minutes, and her eyes were soft with unshed tears. then she spoke gently:-- "what a lovely thought! thank you." after a moment she began again, earnestly. "mrs. burnham, there is something i want you to know. what i am sure that madame sternheim thinks about my papa isn't true. papa learned how to pray; and every afternoon during those last few weeks, he and i used to read in the bible together, and pray. and the last time i saw him he told me that, although he had wasted his life, and been in every way a different man from what he ought to have been, god had forgiven him, and was going to take him home. he wasn't a bad man, ever, mrs. burnham; at least--well, i know he did some wrong things, but he was good in many ways. he had a very low estimate of himself, though, and those were the words he said. i shall never forget the last sentence he ever spoke; i can often close my eyes and seem to hear his dear voice with its note of exultation, 'it is wonderful, but i am going _home_!' he used to speak that word 'home' in a peculiar manner; his voice seemed to linger over it lovingly, like a caress. he had no home, you know, after mamma went away." this was maybelle's way of speaking of death; but the woman, who realized how literally the phrase "went away" applied to this child's mother, could never hear it without an inward shudder. her own eyes had dimmed with tears as she listened to this pathetic and yet gracious close of a wasted life. then she acted upon a sudden resolution. "maybelle, dear, there is one person for whom i want you to pray with all your soul; that is my son's wife." "your daughter?" said maybelle, lingering over the word as a sweet sound, yet with a hint of surprise in her tone, as though she might almost ask, "why should any woman so blessed as she need praying for?" but what she added was:-- "i should love to pray for her. tell me about her, please. she must be a very happy woman to have the right to call you 'mother.' what is it you want me to ask for her? of course she is a christian?" "she is a member of the church," said ruth. "but i do not think she knows the lord jesus in the way that you and i know him, or that she loves and serves him." "oh!" said maybelle, and that single mono-syllable from her lips meant much. surprise, regret, pity, resolve, were all expressed in it. ruth made haste to finish what she had resolved to say. "and she needs to know him; oh! she needs it more than most women do. if she could come, even now, into intimate fellowship with the lord jesus christ, it would make an infinite difference, not only with her life, but in the lives of others. there are others who--" she stopped abruptly; excitement was getting the better of discretion. she must have a care what she said. after a moment she spoke with less intensity. "i hope you will pray, too, for erskine. for my son, i mean." for maybelle had made a little startled movement at the mention of this name, and turned great wondering eyes upon her. "my son's name is erskine, you remember. he is my only one, dear, the only treasure that i ever had; for years and years he has been all that i have; and i cry out so for god's best for him! he is a christian, a good, true christian man; he is everything that to other people seems desirable; but--" "i think i know what you mean," maybelle said gently. "i know that there can be degrees in living religion. sometimes i think i know that fact better than any other; i have had so many illustrations of it in my life. it must be hard for him that his wife does not always think just as he does in this. at least i should think it would be very hard indeed for married people not to be as one in such matters." "yes," said ruth, "it is very hard." then she turned suddenly to a radically different subject, with the conviction strong upon her that she could talk no more about erskine and irene without saying what would be better left unsaid. but she had secured a wonderful ally in maybelle. the girl knew how to pray, and her faith was as the faith of a little child: simple, and literal, and firm. she became intensely interested in mrs. burnham's daughter-in-law. she asked many questions about her, sometimes making remarks, in her ignorance, that wrung ruth's heart. "i think i love her," she said one day. "there are times when i feel a curious yearning tenderness for her, as though i must put my arms about her and kiss her. it seems strange, doesn't it, when i have never seen her? i do not love a great many people; of course i like ever so many, but this feeling that i have is different. still, i suppose it is the way one feels toward those for whom one prays, definitely and daily. isn't it?" "perhaps," said ruth, unable to add another word, and turning away her face so that the child could not see what it might express. if only irene had loved _her_! one noticeable feature of this time was that maybelle began to speak confidently regarding the answer to her prayers. "you will tell me when your daughter truly begins to serve jesus christ, won't you?" she said. "i think i should like to know it, soon, because it changes the tone of one's prayers, don't you think, as soon as one for whom you have been asking just this, recognizes jesus christ and begins to be acquainted with him?" "you speak very confidently, dear," ruth could not help saying. "do you always feel quite sure that the people for whom you pray will 'recognize' jesus christ?" "not always," the girl said thoughtfully. "i cannot be sure, because they may keep on refusing to let him in, and of course he will not force an entrance. when i was a little girl, i thought that was very strange. i wondered why god did not _make_ people love and serve him, whether they wanted to, or not. but when i grew old enough to realize what love really is, i knew better; for what is enforced service worth? and as for enforced _love_, that couldn't be. but sometimes the feeling comes to me that the one for whom i am asking, will let him in; and i have it now." and then mrs. burnham began to desire exceedingly that this girl should pray mightily for her son. more than all things else, more even than that the rags of his outward respectability--as regarded his home--might be preserved to him, did she long for his entire consecration to god. she knew only too well that, despite his strict integrity and his firm adherence to the letter of his faith, the world was gripping him with a mighty hold. she knew, too, how insidiously and how surely irene's views, and irene's feelings, and irene's wishes were slipping in between him and that entirely consecrated life which would hold him safe above all the world's allurements. it was not that he was markedly different in word or deed from what his early manhood had promised. it was rather that he had not grown, spiritually, with the passing years; and of late years, since his marriage, his mother could detect a backward movement, as of one drifting downstream imperceptibly to himself, and losing force. there were times when she felt almost jealous of the hold which her daughter-in-law had taken upon the heart of this girl who believed as well as prayed. "you will not forget my erskine?" she said one day when they had been talking about it. "oh, no!" maybelle said quickly. "no, indeed! how could i, dear mrs. burnham, when he is your son, and you asked me to pray for him? i never forget him; but after all, it isn't so important, you know." "why not?" the mother was almost indignant. from her standpoint nothing in life seemed quite so important as that erskine should be the kind of christian that the lord wanted. "why, because," said the child, wonderingly, "he _belongs_, you know, and--won't the dear lord take care of his own? but it is different with her,--why, she may not let him!" there was the most peculiar emphasis of that word "belongs"; and almost infinite dismay expressed by the last phrase. maybelle was a literalist. she believed that when the lord said, "ye _will not_ come unto me that ye might have life," he meant that it was quite within man's power to refuse it. but from that hour ruth's heart was quieter concerning her son, and she prayed in stronger faith. erskine "belonged" and she could trust the lord to take care of his own. it seemed strange, but the child was really helping the christian of mature years. "except ye become as little children," she repeated to her heart with a grateful smile. maybelle's faith was as the faith of a little child; that was what made it so strong. the plans for the summer matured and, to the joy of all concerned, mrs. burnham was carried a willing captive to the new seaside home; and, on one pretext or another, lingered there from week to week. the young people were fertile in schemes, and vied with one another in pretexts to hold her just a few days more. "you cannot surely go until after the fourteenth!" and "why, we must have you for the twenty-first, anyway!" meantime, erskine was growing almost indignant, at least on paper. his final argument was put with lawyer-like directness. "it seems to be true that you have ceased to care for your son, but perhaps the advent of your grandson will move you. erskine burnham, junior, arrived at four this morning, as i have already announced to you by telegram, and is in excellent health and spirits, and very desirous of beholding the face of his grandmother; i might remark, in passing, that his father and mother sympathize with him in this desire, save that the cruel grandmother seems to be quite dead to all natural affection. we are hoping that to have a grandson will be something so unnatural as to arouse her desires for home." but if he could have seen his mother during that first hour after the despatch reached her, he would have been deeply pained as well as puzzled. did ever grandmother take such triumphant news in such strange fashion before? she was alone in her room, and she let the paper drop away from her while she hid her face in her hands and shook as though in an ague chill. her grandson! yes, but irene's son! born of such a mother into this dangerous, sin-stricken world! to be trained by such a mother! and her fair and lovely daughter an outlaw at this moment from her mother's home and heart! how would it be possible for a boy with such an inheritance as such a mother would give him, to escape the snares that would assuredly be set for him? great waves of pain seemed to have this woman in its clutches, as she lived over again her own young motherhood, and thought of all that it had meant to her, and contrasted herself with that other mother; and remembered that she was the mother of erskine burnham's son. but by degrees saner thoughts began to come. heredity was not everything, she reminded herself; and even according to it its full place, had not the boy a father? the thought of maybelle in this connection helped to quiet her. was ever sweeter, purer, more lovable girl born of woman than she? and was not that same woman her mother? what of heredity here? but the girl was deserted by her mother, and mercifully preserved from such training as she would have given. what was that promise? "when my father and mother forsake me, then the lord will take me up." had not the lord made good this word? if only this little new boy, her grandson, could--and then ruth turned in stern repellence from herself. what was this that she was thinking! could not god take care of his own? but she must go home, of course she must go home now, at once. but she did not. one of mrs. roberts's flock fell ill, and before noon of the following day was very seriously, even desperately ill, and there followed a long, hard battle with disease; and ruth, who had lingered for her pleasure, apparently, could not of course leave them now, when for the first time there was opportunity to be of real service. the sick one, even after the battle was fought, was slow in convalescing, and the mother was worn, and ruth could see that she held a place in this home that no one else just then could fill, and she stayed. so it came to pass that the summer was gone, and the roberts household was established in town again, and maybelle was entered at madame sternheim's for a year of graduate work, before the burnham carriage waited at the station for the belated grandmother, and her son paced the station platform more eager and impatient for his mother than it seemed to him he had ever been in his life before, and his son was two months old that day. chapter xxv a crisis "do you think i will ever let you go away from us again?" this was erskine burnham's word to his mother when he had her all to himself in the carriage. his arms were about her, and he was kissing eyes and nose and hair after the fashion of his childhood. "such a wicked, wicked grandmother! does she think she deserves the most beautiful, most intelligent grandson that ever drew breath?" throughout that drive they were very gay; both of them covered under the semblance of merrymaking, the deep feeling that neither wished just then to express. only once, as the carriage turned in at the familiar gateway, did erskine trust himself to a tender word:-- "o mommie, mommie! do you suppose you know anything about how a boy feels to get his mother again?" "my boy!" she began, but her voice broke, and she could not utter another word. and then the carriage drew up before the side entrance, and erskine became very busy with the bags and wraps, and believed that his mother's emotion was the natural feeling of a grandmother on coming into her possession. the weeks that immediately followed were very far from happy ones, although one member of the family circle was doing her utmost in the interests of peace. ruth burnham had not lingered for months away from her home simply from dread of facing the situation; nor yet on account entirely of the young girl whom she had taken to her heart; there had been underneath these, a determined purpose to leave those two quite to themselves; to try the effect upon irene of relieving her for a time of her mother-in-law's daily presence. it is true she had not planned just how long she could do this--she had not been sure when she went away that it could be done, save for a few days; but she had allowed herself to be apparently swayed by every passing reason for delay, despite erskine's evident bewilderment over such action, with an end in view which had to do with that solemn self-sacrifice she had made. it remained to be seen whether this phase of it had been of any avail. at first, irene was gracious, or tried to be; but in all her apparent sweetness, and sometimes even attempts at deference, there was a curious little undertone sting, which made ruth feel constrained, and always uncertain what to say or do next. but the baby, toward whom her sore heart turned with a hunger that was almost pain, was as fair and sweet a creation as ever came from the thought of god. so like his father--in the eyes of the grandmother, that there were moments when she could shut herself up alone with him and live her mother-joy over again. not many of them; her time with him was literally counted by moments, and grew more and more uncertain each passing day. ruth had schooled herself to see at least indifference on the part of the mother toward her child, and had planned how she would try to atone for such unutterable loss by making him the very centre of her own life. but behold! instead of anything like indifference, irene developed a love for the child so passionate, so fierce, indeed, that it suggested the instinct of wild animals, instead of cultivated motherhood. moreover, the poor mother was jealous of even the nurse who lavished loving nonsense upon her baby, and intensely jealous of the grandmother, for whom the baby, even thus early in his life, began to exhibit a perverse fondness. the entire situation was a surprise, and, it must be admitted, an added blow to ruth. instead of being able to rejoice that the maternal instinct had been at last awakened in this woman, she was dismayed and heartsick over it. if irene meant to begin thus early to keep the boy under her constant care and surveillance, what hope was there for his future? she awakened to the fact that she had been counting upon this mother's fondness for all sorts of social functions, and expecting to see her enter with zest upon her former care-free life, thus making it possible for the baby to be much under his grandmother's supervision. she had planned prematurely. irene seemed to have forgotten society; she never walked, or drove, without her baby; she kept him with her during all his waking moments, and apparently lived for the purpose of warding off the attentions of, especially, his grandmother. in vain did ruth try, by utmost deference to the mother's superior claim, by never presuming to offer even a suggestion as to the child's care, to disarm the intense dislike that irene could not help showing--a dislike of having her even notice the child. so marked was this condition of things becoming to the servants that ruth, beyond measure distressed and bewildered, stayed much of the time in her own room, and considered and abandoned a dozen schemes for going away again. the difficulty was to make any movement that would not excite erskine's suspicion; for erskine, being a man and a very busy one, continued to be what irene once told him he was, "as blind as a bat." he was a very proud, glad father, prepared to believe that his son was the sweetest, brightest, most beautiful baby who ever blessed the earth with his presence, and he was unequivocally and blissfully happy at seeing that baby in his grandmother's arms. in rejoicing over her home-coming, and in delighting over the thought of having his son grow up in daily intimacy with her, he said "we" as heartily and jubilantly as though certain that irene shared his happiness, and it is certain that he so believed. "we have learned one lesson, anyway," he said gayly, as they sat together one evening after dinner. "that is that we mustn't let you get away from home again very soon. a mother who has no conception of when it is time to come home must not be allowed her freedom. do you think we have forgiven you already for those months of indifference to us? what was the charm, mommie? you have never told us. the truth is, you have told us very little about that long visit. irene used to be sure that there was some attraction that you did not reveal. have you made her confess, irene?" irene made a feint of joining in his gayety, and said something about not thinking it worth while to attempt what he had failed in accomplishing. "well," erskine said, after a moment, puzzled and a trifle hurt because his mother did not seem to join heartily in the nonsense, "there is one comfort; i am not afraid of her deserting us again. erskine burnham, junior, is an attraction that will hold, even though his father's power seems to have waned." it was by random sentences like these, that ruth was made to realize how difficult it would be to get away again. as the days passed and the situation grew more and more strained, the mother's only comfort was that erskine did not understand it. how should he? the claims of business pressed every day more heavily upon him. from being the younger partner in a great legal firm, as his decided ability became known, he had risen steadily, until responsibilities as well as honors had been thrust upon him, and he was now a recognized power in his profession. this meant very close attention to business, and he had scarcely any time that he could call his own. how could he know, and, after a little, the resolute mother asked herself why he should ever know that when he left his beautiful home each morning for his long, busy day in town, he left jealousy and suspicion and unreasoning aversion behind him? "i think she hates me," ruth said to herself as she sat in her room with folded hands and listened to the vigorous protests of the boy across the hall, and knew that she, his grandmother, who loved every hair of his dear golden head, must hold herself from going to him. "i am sure she hates me, and the feeling grows stronger every day. oh, what shall i do? what can i do! how is one to endure such a state of things for a lifetime? i am not an old woman. i may have to stay here for years and years! if i could _only_ get through with it all and go to my home!" it was not often that she indulged herself in such moods, and she felt always distinctly self-condemned when they were allowed to take hold of her. she had never been one to indulge herself in what her old friend eurie mitchell used to characterize as "useless whining"; and it would be beneath the mature christian to allow it. but a crisis was at hand. erskine surprised his family one afternoon by coming home several hours earlier than usual. "i ran away!" was his gay announcement as he found his wife and mother in the living-room. they had been entertaining a caller who had asked first for ruth, and then had insisted upon seeing the young mother and the baby. "such tiresome people!" irene had said impatiently. "forever trying to pry into my affairs! i wish they would at least let me have my baby in peace." but she had ordered the nurse to bring him down to her in a few minutes, for the callers were erskine's friends of long standing, and she knew that he meant them to be treated with all deference. "this is great luck to find you both here," erskine said. "it will save time. i escaped from the office on purpose to enjoy a drive with my family. it is just the day for boy junior," and he tossed the delighted baby in his arms as he spoke. "it is as balmy as spring. why, this is a spring month, isn't it? i had forgotten. get ready, beloveds, and we shall have time for a glimpse of the bay before the sun sets." "oh, no!" said irene, hastily. "not today, erskine; i don't want to go. you can take mother, and baby and i will stay at home." erskine looked surprised and troubled. "why is that, dear? i planned on purpose for you. i don't think you get out enough in this sweet spring air. i could not help noticing how pale and worn you looked this morning. don't you think so, mamma? come, dearest, it will do you good; and i have so little time nowadays for driving with you. i have been planning all the morning to get away." "i don't want to go," irene said fretfully. but her husband took no notice of the words. "we'll go on a lark!" he explained to the delighted baby. "father and mother and grandmother and grandson. how does that sound, my boy? i feel like a boy myself to-day. you and the little boy may have the back seat, mommie, and your big girl and boy will sit in front, and drive. don't you want to drive, irene? the horses are in fine spirit, just as you like them to feel when you have the reins. "here, nurse," as that young woman appeared at the moment in the doorway. "put this young man into driving attire, while the ladies are getting on their wraps. we mustn't waste another minute of this glorious sunshine." but at this point the baby asserted himself. the nurse had taken him from his father's arms and was moving toward the door; as he passed ruth, he made a quick, unexpected spring in her direction, and had not her arms been quick and her grasp firm, there might have been an accident. as it was, he cuddled in her embrace with a gurgle of happiness. "you young scamp!" said the proud father, with a relieved laugh. "you knew where you meant to land, didn't you? showed excellent taste, too. he is becoming to you, mommie. you look young enough to-day to be mistaken for his mother. doesn't she, irene?" for ruth's cheeks had flushed like a girl's, and her heart was beating swiftly under the baby's caresses. she bent her head over the golden one, and murmured some incoherent sentence, while she hid eyes that were filled with tears. it was so rare a thing in these days to get a chance to cuddle that baby! and then irene spoke, in a tone of voice that her husband had rarely heard:-- "rebecca, i did not ring for you. go away; i will bring the baby myself. i _wish_ you wouldn't! i don't want him kissed nor fondled. give him to me." this last, addressed to ruth, in a tone so sharp and a manner so rude that erskine in unbounded astonishment said:-- "irene!" just that word, but not as she had ever before heard it spoken. "i don't care!" she said. "let her leave my baby alone. i don't want her to touch him, and i won't have it! i _won't_! i say!" her voice had risen almost to a scream. rebecca had disappeared with the swiftness with which this woman's servants generally obeyed her commands, and ruth, putting the baby without a word into his amazed father's arms, fled away also. chapter xxvi a strange change there was no driving out that day; the burnham horses were remanded to the stable with no other explanation to their astonished care taker than that the ladies had decided not to go out. when ruth, distressed and bewildered as to what course to take, obeyed the tardy summons to dinner, she found a stranger in the dining room whom erskine introduced as a member of the severn law firm, from town, who had come out for a business conference. would she be kind enough to take irene's place at table? his wife, he explained to the guest, was the victim of a severe headache and must be excused. throughout the dinner erskine was thoughtful for and courteously attentive to his mother; but of course there was no opportunity for a personal word. when at last he excused himself for a business conference and took his guest to the library, ruth stood where he had left her, irresolute and distressed. under normal conditions the proper and natural thing for a mother whose daughter was suffering with headache would be to go to her with sympathetic inquiries and offers of help. should she attempt this? would erskine think it the right step for her to take? she feared that she knew only too well how irene would receive her; but no matter. the question was, what did erskine want? what did he think about it all? did he blame her for the strange exhibition he had seen that afternoon? true, it was not more than she had endured before, but it was a strange experience to erskine, and it would be only natural for him to think that his wife must have had strong provocation, in order to make such an outburst possible. if he thought that,--if he blamed her in any way, how would it be possible ever to undeceive him? wait--ought she to undeceive him? ought she even to exonerate herself? could she expect any man to take sides against his wife? what a horrible question! could she want him to do such a thing even for her? oh, the misery of it all! that she and her son had reached the hour when they could not explain to each other! only one thing seemed certain. she must go away somewhere, and speedily. it must now be apparent even to erskine that they could not continue longer in this way of living. she crept back to her room, at last, and sat in the darkness with hands closely clasped, so closely that the diamond of her engagement ring cut into the flesh. she listened for words from across the hall, or for movements. she went over and over and over the miserable scene of the afternoon; she listened for erskine, and wondered if he would stop at her room, and was afraid to have him come. it was late when he came upstairs very quietly and paused at his mother's door and listened; and she was breathlessly still. then he went on, to his own rooms; and ruth, physically exhausted, went to her bed, and, in the course of time, fell asleep, not having been able to come to any decision as to what she could do. the gray dawn of another day was beginning to make faint shadows in the room, when a knock at her door awakened her, and erskine entered. was she awake? he inquired anxiously. it was too bad to disturb her rest, but he must. irene was ill, very ill. nurse was with her, and the baby had awakened and was crying. might he bring him to her, and could she care for him until they could plan how to manage? even in that moment of haste and anxiety ruth detected in her son's voice a kind of solemn relief, almost of satisfaction, and read its meaning. it was as if he had said:-- "irene is violently ill, is not herself, indeed, and probably has not been for a long time. it is plain that she was not responsible for what she said or did yesterday." his mother could understand that even such an explanation, sad as it was, was balm to his soul. she sprang up and began to dress in haste, while she answered him. of course she would care for baby; bring him at once; or wait, she would go for him herself. "go back to irene," she commanded. "she may be needing you this minute; and you needn't think of baby again." how glad her hungry arms were to enfold him, even at such price, she would have been almost ashamed to have had known. in this manner the dreaded day broke for them; with all embarrassments forgotten and all programmes of possible action swept away. irene was desperately ill. rebecca, the baby's nurse, who was a graduate of a training school, and had done hospital service, admitted that it looked like what she called "a case." she was willing to transfer her attentions entirely to the mother, until other arrangements could be made. then began in the burnham household a new and strange but very busy life. with incredible promptness the house took on that indescribable and distinctly felt change which serious illness brings in its train. all ordinary routine was suspended. the eight o'clock car for which erskine was almost as sure to be ready as the sun was to rise at a given moment, halted at the corner for passengers as usual, but went on without him. he came down to breakfast at any hour when he could best get away from irene, and sometimes stood in the doorway, coffee cup in hand, ready for a summons; for irene was as imperious in her delirium as she had been in health. the house seemed to be in the hands of physicians and nurses. as the illness had from the first assumed a serious form, a trained nurse had been at once secured, but it proved necessary for rebecca, also, to be in almost constant attendance. this placed the baby entirely in the care of his grandmother, whose thankful and devoted service was his at any hour of the day or night. while the machinery of all the rest of the house was more or less thrown out of gear, the people taking their meals at any hour that chanced to be convenient for them, and ordering all their movements with a view to the sick room, erskine burnham junior went on his serene and methodical way. he was bathed and dressed and breakfasted at his usual hours; he went out in his carriage at the given time; he sat on the porch in the sunshine at just such and such periods, and was in every respect as serene and sunny and well-cared-for a baby as though his mother was not lying upstairs making a desperate fight for life. this state of things lasted for about three weeks; then the alarming character of the illness subsided, and by degrees, the long, slow period of convalescence was entered upon, and the house adjusted itself again to changed conditions. in kitchen and dining room something like routine could once more be carried out; and erskine began to think of business, and even to get away to his office for an hour or two each day. by and by the closely drawn shades below stairs were raised, and flowers began to appear in the vases. but in baby erskine's apartments his grandmother still reigned supreme. the special trained nurse had departed, and rebecca had sole charge of the patient. a young nurse girl had been secured at the first, to help with the care of baby, under ruth's supervision, and she was proving herself a comfort. altogether, these days, full of responsibilities though they were, and not without some anxieties, held much comfort and even happiness for ruth. erskine's baby was in her care, and as often as she chose was in her arms; she could fondle him as she would, without fear of reproof. she could bathe and rub and clothe the perfect little body, she could curl the lovely golden rings of hair about her fingers, she could catch him up in a transport of bliss and kiss his lovely little neck and dimpled chin and exquisite arms, and in a thousand tender mother-ways rest her heart upon him. and the baby lavished love without measure upon her, and clung to her when any attempt was made to take him away, and made wild little demonstrations of delight at her approach; and all day she was happy. it was only at night when he lay in his crib near her bedside, sleeping quietly, that the spectre of the near future came and sat with her and set her heart to quivering. the days were passing swiftly; each one was bringing nearer the hour when she must give back her treasure and banish herself. where? she did not know; she had not been able to decide. somewhere with maybelle, if that could be brought about; only--what could be said to erskine? was it absolutely necessary? was it possible that this very serious illness, whose outcome much of the time had been more than doubtful, had wrought changes in irene? sometimes it almost seemed to her that such was the case; and yet it might be only physical weakness that made the difference. daily now, by the doctor's advice, baby was taken to his mother's room for a few minutes. at first, ruth sent the little maid with him, and avoided going in at the same time, lest the baby's demonstrations of delight over her would annoy his mother. but one morning as she was passing through the hall with baby in her arms, the door of the sick room opened, and rebecca called:-- "mrs. burnham, will you please bring baby here a minute? his mother wants to see him." so ruth turned at once and carried him to the bedside, where he, being in genial mood, chose to smile upon and coo at his mother. "he grows rapidly, doesn't he?" irene said, and it was the first remark she had volunteered, directed to her mother-in-law. ruth had seen her twice a day ever since there had been any admittance for other than those in constant attendance, but her visits had necessarily been very brief, and there had been no attempt at conversation. "yes, indeed!" she made haste to say. "he is growing finely; you will be astonished to find how strong he is, and he seems to be perfectly well." "he does you credit." his mother's tone was listlessness personified. ruth, looking at her closely, began to realize that some strange change which seemed not to be accounted for by illness had come upon irene. it was not simply that the fierceness of her love for her child was gone, and almost if not quite indifference taken its place, physical weakness might account for that; but there was an indescribable something about her that seemed to ruth like a surrender, as one who had made a fierce fight and been worsted in the battle and had given up. the troubled grandmother thought it all over after she and baby were back in his room. she could not but fear that a new distress was coming upon them. what if irene were that abnormal creature, a woman who could not continue to love a child, even her own! there was no fear that she would again desert it, her evident and unfailing, even increasing passion for her husband would hold her, this time, to her home; but--could the misery of it be borne, if this baby must grow up under the control of an unloving mother? she strained him to her so suddenly and so closely that he rebelled, and got off a lovely jargon of talk in protest. she went back, later, to irene's room, carrying the baby who was in a flutter of delight over just the joy of living. it did not seem possible that one could look at him without loving him. she could not help wanting to test irene and see if her interest in him had indeed waned. she smiled languidly on him, and suffered ruth to place him on the couch beside her, although she said:-- "two visits in one morning! hasn't he been here before?" "he was so sweet in his new dress," ruth explained, "that i thought his mamma ought to see him while it was fresh." then she began to rehearse some of his pretty baby ways, making a distinct effort to awaken in his mother's heart a sense of pride in her child. irene listened vaguely, as one who only half heard. suddenly she made an impatient movement. "here," she said, "take your baby. he is so full of life that the very sight of him wearies me. take him away." ruth's heart sank. better the fiercest, unreasoning passion of love and jealousy than this! others beside herself began to notice and be puzzled and troubled by this change in the patient. rebecca, the nurse, expressed her mind to ruth in anxious whispers. "doesn't it seem queer to you, ma'am, that she doesn't notice baby more? and he growing so smart and cunning! you know how she was just bound up in the child, and couldn't seem to think of anything else?" "it is because she is still so weak that she cannot yet think connectedly about anything," ruth replied with a confidence that she was far from feeling. "you noticed, didn't you, that she said he was so full of life it wearied her to look at him?" but the nurse who had received hospital training, shook her head and whispered again:-- "it isn't right, ma'am, somehow. i'm no croaker but i've seen lots of sick folks and i don't think things are going just right with her. if i were mr. burnham, i should want another doctor to see her, or--something." then came erskine, his face troubled. "mamma, did you ever see any one get well as slowly as irene does? it almost seems to me as though she is weaker to-day than she was two weeks ago; and she seems to take less and less notice of baby. last night when i heard him laughing, i asked her if she did not want me to bring him for a little good-night visit, and she said: 'no, i don't want him. i've given him up!'" his voice broke with the last word, but he waited for his mother to say something encouraging; and she had only the merest commonplaces. "she has been very ill, erskine, and i suppose we must be patient. she cannot be expected to be interested in anything while she is still so weak." "mamma, you don't think--" and then ruth was glad that the baby cried, and she had to go to him, without waiting to tell what she thought. chapter xxvii a retrograde movement erskine, once roused, could not rest. he came to his mother on the next evening, his face more troubled than before. "mamma, i had a long talk with the doctor this morning. he is not satisfied with the present state of things. he admits that for some days there has been a retrograde movement. he has been watching very closely and has become convinced that there is some mental disturbance, a heavy mental strain of some kind that must be removed before medicine will be of any use. now what possible mental strain could irene have! "i told the doctor that before we were married, she went through very trying experiences, and lost her nearest relative while she was alone in a foreign country; but that time was long past, of course, and there had been absolutely nothing since, to trouble her." his mother's start of dismay at hearing the doctor's word, and the flushing of her face did not escape him, and he added almost sternly:-- "mother, are you keeping something from me that i ought to know?" for a moment she did not know how to answer him. then her mind cleared and she spoke quietly:-- "i am doing right, erskine; i have no secrets of my own from you. i have heard of some things that i can conceive of as troubling irene, but she did not confide them to me, and i have no right to talk about them even to you; especially as i can think of no good, but rather harm, to result." he turned from her abruptly. she could see that he was not only sorely perplexed but hurt; in his hour of deepest need his mother seemed to have failed him. it was a bitter hour for her. yet she felt that she must be right. would any one but a fiend go to erskine now with the story of his wife's long years of living a lie! if her duty elsewhere were but as clear as this! could it be that this was what was preying upon irene and causing that retrograde movement? had her long-sluggish conscience awakened at last? was she perhaps ignorant of the fate of her daughter? was she afraid that her former husband was still living, and that he and erskine might, sometime, meet? who could tell what questions of horror and terror were struggling in her tired brain and wearing out her weakened body? ought she--the woman who knew the whole dread story, knew many details that the sick one did not--ought she to be the surgeon to probe that wound? to be able to talk about it all might help. and yet--who could tell? the knowledge that her husband's mother knew every detail of that life which had been so carefully hidden from them, might be the last shock to that already overcharged brain. oh, to be sure of her duty! she told herself that she would perform it at any cost, she would shrink from nothing, now, if she could but be sure of the way. well, why should she not be sure? where was her father? what was that promise: "thine ears shall hear a word behind thee saying: 'this is the way, walk ye in it.'" sleep did not come to her that night, but perhaps she was given a strength that was better. she spent much of the time on her knees beside the quietly sleeping baby; and though, when morning came, she was not sure which way she was to turn that day, "whether to the right hand or the left," she found her mind repeating the words: "in quietness and confidence shall be your strength." the day passed without marked changes of any sort. erskine comforted himself with the belief that irene was a trifle stronger. he told his mother that dr. sutherland was coming out to see her on the following day. the great nerve specialist could not get away from the city before that time. irene heard of his expected visit with the same air of indifference that she had exhibited toward all things of late. she lay very quiet most of the day, and at evening made no objection whatever to erskine's going to an important conference with his firm. no sooner was he gone than she herself proposed that rebecca go at that time to the kitchen to superintend the making of a new kind of food for her, instead of waiting until morning. "i might want to try it in the night," she said, "and i don't need any further attention at present. mother will stay with me." this looked like deliberate planning. irene had never before, of her own will, arranged to spend five minutes alone with her mother-in-law. that astonished woman while hastening to agree to the proposition, made a swift mental claim upon the promise: "thine ears shall hear a word behind thee saying, this is the way." it was irene who began conversation as soon as the door closed after rebecca. but the topic she chose was a new astonishment. "i have been thinking about those two step-daughters of yours, seraph and minta. you must have lived a strange life with them." ruth turned surprised eyes upon her. "i did not suppose that you had ever heard of the girls," she said. "erskine was so young when they left us that i thought he scarcely remembered them." "oh, he remembers them very well. he has told me some things; but it was mrs. portland from whom i received their connected history. she was here for two months while you were away, and was quite intimate with me; she ran in often, and liked nothing better than to talk about you and those two girls." now mrs. portland was an old resident of the neighborhood who had known judge burnham and his daughters before ruth had heard of their existence. what she could reveal of their history if she chose, would leave nothing for another to tell. the question was, why had their story interested this sick woman? or rather, why was it being brought forward just now? "it seems strange that they both came back to you to die, doesn't it?" this was certainly a strange way of putting it! ruth hesitated how to reply. at last, she said:-- "seraph never left home, you know; and poor minta was glad to return to it. she had been through a very bitter experience." "yes, i heard about it. you have had all sorts of experiences yourself, haven't you? and to conclude with a good-for-nothing daughter-in-law seems too bad!" surprise and almost consternation held ruth silent. this was so utterly unlike any sentence that she had expected! irene's tone expressed both sympathy and regret. ruth decided to pass it off lightly. she laughed a little in a way that was intended to express good cheer, as she said:-- "you are not to find fault with my daughter-in-law, if you please! i allow no one to do that." "that is because you are not acquainted with her yourself. you don't know anything about her. you think you do, but you are mistaken." there was no excitement in her tone; there was even no indication that she had a personal interest in the conversation; it seemed to be a mere statement of fact. ruth's swift thought took hold of the promise and heard the voice: "this is the way." she spoke with quiet firmness. "i know all about her; i know a great deal more than she thinks i do." irene moved on her pillow so as to get a more direct view of the other's face as she asked:-- "what do you mean?" "just that, dear. i know much more than you think, and have known it for a long time." "you don't know what i mean," the tone was still impersonal, "but i am going to tell you. you think i was a widow when i married your son. i was not." she raised herself slightly on one elbow as she spoke, using more strength than she had exerted since her illness. ruth came swiftly over to her and slipped a supporting arm under her as she said:-- "don't try to raise yourself up, irene, and i wouldn't talk any more. i know all that you want to tell me. you were a divorced wife, and your husband was living; but he has since died. you see i understand all about it." irene's eyes fairly pierced her with their keenness; still, her voice betrayed no emotion. "you knew it all the time?" she said. "i have known it for a very long time, irene. don't talk any more; it is time for your medicine now, and after it you must be very quiet, you know." irene was as one who had not heard. "you do not know the worst," she said, still speaking as though her words were about some one else; but she was deathly pale. "there was a child." ruth hurriedly wet a cloth in a restorative and bathed her face, while she spoke low and soothingly, as to a child. "yes, i know; there was a dear little girl, who is a young woman now,--one of the sweetest, dearest girls in the world. i know her and love her. irene, for erskine's sake, won't you try to be careful!" for irene had pushed the soothing hand away and was making a fierce effort to raise herself to a sitting posture, and her eyes looked to ruth for the first time like maybelle's. ruth hurried her words. "i know all that you want to say; you must lie quiet and let me talk. i am sure there must have been strong provocation, and you were very young; i know how bitterly you must have regretted it all." "you cannot know that, at least," she said. "there is no need for what you call future punishment, i have had mine here; and i have hated you for fear you would find me out. how long have you known it?" "for a long time, many months. irene, i _cannot_ let you talk or think about it now. won't you try to put it all away for to-night? there is nothing, you see, that you need to tell me." the great solemn eyes that maybelle's were like when she was troubled were fixed upon ruth. "could you put it away?" she asked. "it has never been away from me for a moment, the fear that erskine would--would--" a convulsive shiver ran through her frame, as of one in physical pain. "oh!" said ruth, in terror, "this is all wrong! if you are worse, erskine will never forgive me." irene made a visible effort to control herself, and lay with closed eyes, and motionless, allowing ruth to bathe her face and make hot applications to her hands and feet. after a little, she spoke, quietly enough. "i will talk quietly, but you must let me talk, now. i have kept it to myself just as long as i can. since baby came, my life has been a daily terror. will you tell me how you came to know about me, and why you have not told erskine? i am sure you have not, but i do not understand why." "because," said ruth, solemnly, "jesus christ, to whom i belong, told me not to do so. it is your secret, irene, yours and his. you must let him tell you what to do with it." irene gazed at her. "you are a strange woman," she said at last, "a very strange woman; but you are good, and i have not understood you. i am sorry that i hated you. if i had understood, it might have been--different. i thought you would find it out, sometime, women always do, and i hated you for that; i dreaded you, you know. every letter that came from you while you were away made me faint and sick because of what might be in it. i was afraid to have erskine come home at night because of what he might have heard; and i was afraid to have him go away again in the morning for fear it would be the last time he would kiss me." "poor child!" the words were wrung from ruth's heart,--the first words of real tenderness that she had ever spoken to this woman. again there came that strange new look into irene's eyes. [illustration: "i'm sorry that i hated you."--_page ._] "you are a good woman," she said slowly. "i am sorry that i hated you. let me talk now, and tell you about it. i have got to! i ought not to have married that man; i never pretended even to him that i loved him. i married to get rid of dulness and restraint, and to go to europe. i was a young fool! i got rid of nothing, and instead of feeling only indifference for him i learned to hate him. he was a drunkard, and i hated him for that. then--i did not like the baby. you can't quite control your horror of that, can you? i don't wonder, now that i have learned what mother-love really is. i could almost hate myself for having such a feeling. you think a mother couldn't--but she can. i turned from the child, just as i had from the father, in disgust. even so early in her life she looked like him, and i hated him. he was a weak man, and i never had any patience with weakness. sometimes he was maudlin and loving, and then i hated him worst of all. one day i went away from him and stayed away. that was all i did. oh, yes, i got a divorce; that was because i hated his name. at first i meant to do something for the child, i didn't know what,--he worshipped the baby,--and then i heard that it died; and i did not know until years afterward that it lived; but it was too late then to do anything. by that time i had met erskine and discovered what love really meant. oh, to think how i have loved him! and i have struggled and planned and lied to keep his love! i have even prayed to keep it! and now it is all over!" "irene," said her listener, firmly. "if you persist in talking, i shall have to send for erskine. you must swallow this sedative and then lie still and let me talk. i will say in just a minute all i want to, and then we will both be quiet and you will try to sleep, for erskine's sake. it isn't all over; it is just beginning. we cannot undo the past, but we can make another thing of the present--and the future. i promise you, before god, and call on him to witness, that i will never by word or look reveal to erskine one word of what we have said or of what i know, unless you tell me to do so. when you are well and strong again, you will decide how much or how little you want to tell him. god will show you what is right and you will want to do right; i am sure of it. and we will love each other, you and i, and help each other. two women who love one man as you and i love erskine burnham should be very much to each other. now i am not going to say another word." she bent her head and kissed the sick woman on her forehead--her first voluntary caress. irene, who had closed her eyes and was death-like in her stillness, opened them again and looked steadily at her. then she said with slow conviction in her tones:-- "you are a good woman." chapter xxviii "something had happened" but ruth burnham went to her room that night in a tumult of pain and self-reproach keener than she had felt for years. as plainly as though a book had been opened before her, and a solemn unseen figure had pointed to the page, she read the story of her failure. she had tried to be good to this woman, she had been outwardly patient with her faults, she had been long suffering, she had been silent over wrongs--she had effaced herself in a thousand ways, but she had been as cold as ice. there had been nothing in her face or voice to invite the confidence of this younger, weaker woman. there had been nothing in her daily attitude toward her to suggest the love and sympathy of christ. she cried to him for forgiveness, for the privilege of beginning again, for wisdom to know just how to do it. and then she prayed for irene in a way that, with all her trying, she had not been able to do before. it came to her while on her knees that she would tell irene of maybelle's beautiful faith and daily praying for her mother, without knowing that it was her mother. were the child's prayers being answered? was this strange new mood of irene's part of the answer? but they could not be brought together, that mother and daughter, not now--it was too late. how could they? what explanation of her existence, of their intense interest in her, could be given to erskine? would irene ever be intensely interested in maybelle? could she do other than shrink from her now, after all these strange years? oh! there were depths to this trouble that she must not try to touch. but one thing was plain: she must help irene. whatever would do that, at whatever sacrifice, must be done. the next day, that in some way ruth had thought would be an eventful one, passed in even unusual quiet. irene seemed less restless than usual, and lay much of the time with closed eyes. the great specialist came out to see her, and there was a long interview, and a long conference afterward with the attending physician, but they kept their own counsel. all that the family knew was that in the main they agreed, and the specialist wished to withhold his final opinion until he saw the patient again after thirty-six hours. in the evening irene roused herself from what had for several hours been almost a stupor, to ask erskine if he could give the entire evening to her, and if they could be quite alone. "yes, indeed," he said with a brave attempt at gayety. "we will banish them all, even rebecca, and i will be doctor and head nurse and errand boy combined. see that you get a good sleep, rebecca, and you need not come until i ring for you." to ruth this arrangement was somewhat of a disappointment. she had hoped that irene would want to see her for a few minutes; there were questions that it would seem as though she must want to ask, and there were things that ruth felt might help her, if she were told them. but irene gave no hint that she even remembered what had passed between them, save that, as ruth went to bid her good-night, she made a movement with her hand to draw her down and murmured:-- "you are a good woman." erskine held the door open for his mother to pass, then followed her into the hall. "mamma, don't you think irene has seemed a little better to-day, more quiet? and she took a good deal of notice of baby this afternoon." there was such a wistful note in his voice that his mother's eyes filled with tears; she longed to comfort him, and realized that she did not know how. she was wakeful and alert during the first part of the night, ready for some emergency which she feared, without knowing just why. but toward morning she slept heavily, and was wakened by the sunshine and the prattle of baby's voice in his crib at her bedside. she dressed hurriedly, still with that vague impression upon her that something had happened or was about to happen. in the hall was erskine, standing with folded arms gazing out of the window; gazing at nothing. the first glimpse she had of him she knew that something had already happened. his face was gray, not white, with a pallor that was unnatural and startling; he gave her a strange impression of having grown suddenly old--years older than he had been the night before. and he looked strangely like his father. "erskine," his mother said, alarmed, and hurried toward him. he turned at once, lifting a warning finger. "hush!" he said; "i think she is sleeping. she has been very quiet since midnight." then he went without another word into his dressing-room and closed the door. it was a strange long day. the patient lay quiet, not sleeping all the time, but like one too weak and too indifferent to life to move. the house was kept very still; although noises did not seem to disturb the sick one, the different members of the household conversed in mono-syllables and in whispers when they met. ruth kept the baby out all day in the lovely soft summer air, and he was happy. when a tear rolled once or twice down the cheeks of his grandmother, he kissed her lovingly, and patted her face with his soft hand. the specialist came again, but he did not stay long, and ruth, who could not leave her charge at the time, did not know what he said. no one came to her with any word. one of the maids told her that mr. burnham was sitting beside his wife, and had not left her room for hours. the afternoon shadows were growing long, and ruth was explaining to the baby that it was almost time for him to go to his little bed, and that she did not know whether mamma could kiss him good-night or not, when rebecca, her face swollen with weeping, crossed the lawn and touched her arm. "may i take baby, ma'am? the doctor said perhaps you would want to go to mr. burnham. he went into his dressing-room and closed his door, and the doctor thinks perhaps you might help him; he was awfully pale." "is any thing wrong?" ruth asked hurriedly, as she rose up to give her charge into rebecca's arms. "is she worse?" but rebecca was crying. "oh, ma'am," she said, "she just slipped away! it was awfully sudden for him! the doctor told him she might live for hours, i heard him." "rebecca, she is not _dead_!" "she just stopped breathing, ma'am, and that was all. mr. burnham was sitting close to her where he has been sitting 'most all day, and she didn't look any different to me. i thought she was asleep; but he looked up suddenly at the doctor, poor man, with _such a face_! i never shall forget it! and the doctor said:-- "'yes, she is gone.'" and then rebecca, who had not loved her mistress devotedly in life, broke into bitter weeping. ruth was like one paralyzed. she stood gazing at the girl as though unable to move. it was not erskine's grief so much as her own consternation that held her. it seemed to her impossible that irene was dead! with all her thinking, and her foreboding, she had not thought of that. she had felt on the eve of a great calamity, but it had not been death. erskine's gray, pale face that morning had not suggested such trouble. instead, she had worried herself all day long with the possibilities connected with that evening conference; of what irene had told him, and how he had borne it and what he would feel must be done. she went to erskine at last, utterly in doubt what to say to him. he was in his private study with his head bowed on the desk. he did not notice his mother's entrance by so much as a movement. she went over to him and laid her hand gently on the brown curly locks, with a caressing movement familiar to him from childhood. he put out a hand and drew her to him, but neither of them spoke a word. a tender memory of the long ago came to ruth. she was back in the days of erskine's childhood, she was in that very study which had been his father's, with her head bowed in anguish on her husband's desk, while he lay in the room below dressed for the grave. her little boy stood beside her, a longing desire upon him to comfort his mother; and half frightened because she cried. "mamma," he had said at last, hesitatingly, "mamma, does god sometimes make a mistake?" it had come to her like a voice of tender reproof from god himself, and had helped her as nothing else did. long afterward she had told the boy about it, and it had become a sacred memory to them both. "erskine," she said at last, speaking very tenderly;-- "does god sometimes make a mistake?" his strong frame shook. "o mother!" he said. "_o mother!_" and lifted tearless eyes to her face. how old he looked, and haggard! how like to his father his face had grown! just then there came one of those commonplace interruptions from which in times of mortal stress we shrink away. the intrusive world knocked at his door with its questions, and thrust duties and responsibilities upon him. did mr. burnham wish this, or that, or the other? could dr. cartwright speak to him a moment? it was a matter of importance. would he see miss stuart for just a minute about a telegram? it was harrowing. his mother's heart ached for him. the interruptions to his grief seemed impertinent and trivial, and those who were nearest to him deplored them as they always do, without realizing that the commonplaces of life are often salvation to desperate souls. erskine rose up to meet the demands upon him, putting back with stern hand all outward exhibition of his misery save that which his face told for him. he gave careful attention to the thousand details that pressed upon him. he planned and arranged and carried out, when necessary, saving his mother all the burdens possible, but it seemed to her that he avoided seeing her alone. it was not until irene's body had been lying for an entire week in the family burial ground that erskine came to his mother's room one afternoon and asked if she were engaged. "only with baby," she said eagerly. "come in, erskine, and see how sweet he is. you haven't seen him since morning." he took the child in his arms and studied his face intently, smiling over his pretty motions in a grave, absent-minded way; then he gave him back with a question:-- "can you banish him, mamma, for a little while? i want to talk with you." "yes, indeed," she said. "rebecca can take him for a walk. i will have him ready in a few minutes." he watched the process of robing and kissing, with eyes that seemed not to see; and that troubled his mother, they were so full of pain. when the baby was gone, and ruth had closed the doors leading into other rooms and seated herself near to him, he seemed to have forgotten that he wanted to talk. his eyes were fixed on the far-away hills that towered skyward, and were snow-capped; and yet she was not sure that he saw them. "mother," he said at last, "she told me you were a good woman, and it is true. i have always been able to anchor to you. we have trusted each other utterly, you and i, and spoken plainly to each other; we must always do so. you have something to tell me. will you begin at the beginning and let me have all that you know? don't try to spare me, please; i want the whole. o mother! if i had only known long ago, it might have been--different." there was no reply that she could make to this. after a moment, he said again: "you know that i am not blaming you, don't you? it was what i might have expected of you, what you did; she thought it was wonderful. but if she could only have trusted me! "will you tell me the whole, mamma? irene told me to ask you; she said you would not tell it without her word. i mean about the man, and--the child; all the details. how did you hear of it all, and when?" he hesitated over the simple words, his face flushing painfully. ruth hurried her speech to save him further effort. "do you remember, erskine, when our old acquaintance mamie parker called upon me? it was then that i heard the story." he made a gesture of astonishment. "mamie parker! is it possible that she is mixed up in our family matters?" "she found the little girl without other care than a father could give, and interested herself in her, and loved her. she has been thus far in the child's life as dear and wise a friend as a girl could have." then she began at the beginning and gave in minutest detail the whole story, as it had come to her at first, and as she had since lived it with maybelle. erskine's amazement at the discovery that the young girl to whom his mother had been summoned by telegram, and for whom she had cared ever since, was the one whose life-story he was now hearing, was only equalled by his pain in it all. but after the first dismayed exclamation he sat like a statue, his face partially hidden by his hand, interrupting neither by question nor comment. ruth purposely made her story long that he might have time to get the control of himself; and she tried to make maybelle's loveliness of heart and mind and person glow before him; under the spell of the thought that it would all be less terrible to him, if he could realize that his dead wife's strange conduct had not ruined the young life. chapter xxix renunciation when she stopped speaking because there was nothing more to be told, they sat for a little in utter silence. when at last erskine spoke in a low, carefully controlled voice, he asked the very last question that his mother expected. "how soon do you think she could come to us?" "who?" ruth's astonishment blurred for the moment her penetration. "mother! whom could i mean? the child. she must be sent for; she must come at once; or, at least as soon as a suitable escort can be secured. would she come? and would she stay, do you think? i mean would she stay willingly? oh, mamma, surely you will help me!" "erskine, dear boy, what do you want to do?" "my duty." he withdrew his shielding hand and his pallid lips made an effort to smile; then grew grave again, taking almost stern lines. "she is my wife's daughter; and as such i stand now in the place of father to her. as fully as it is possible for me to do so, now, i want to fill that place. to provide for her, to take care of her in any and every way that she may need care; to have my home hers as fully as it is our little son's." his voice broke there, and for a moment he was still. then he went on. "you said you loved her; it would not be unpleasant to you to have her here, would it?" then his mother found her voice. "erskine, maybelle has a place in my heart second only to baby's, and i would like so much to have her with me, that at one time i tried to plan a little home where we could be together. but--do you realize the situation, do you think? we cannot live entirely to ourselves, you know, we have friends; and we have neighbors who ask questions. if maybelle comes to us, to remain, what is to be said to them?" "the truth, mamma; never anything but truth. she is my wife's daughter by a former marriage, the half-sister of my boy." "erskine, dear son, i must hurt you, i am afraid; but do you realize what the truth will be to the child? she loves her dead father with such love as i believe few girls give, and she cherishes in her inmost heart an ideal mother who has been invested with more than human qualities; if you could hear her talk about that dear, dead mother, you would understand." he had shielded his face again, and was quiet so long, that it seemed to her she could not bear it. at last he spoke, huskily but with firmness. "i understand, mamma, more than you think; at least i believe i realize something of her feeling; but--i cannot help it. truth must be spoken; the real must take the place of the ideal. isn't it so in all our lives? i promised her dead mother that it should be so. it was perhaps a morbid feeling,--some might think so,--but in any case, she felt it; she said that she could not die without my promise that the truth should be made plain to the girl, and that she should be told the very words that her mother said, at the last. and i believe she was right," he added firmly after another moment of silence, "i will speak only truth about it all, so help me god." never was summons more joyfully received on the part of a young girl than the one that called maybelle to the distant home of her newest and, as she phrased it, "almost" her best friend. the night preceding her departure she spent with the roberts family, where together they went over the situation as they understood it, for erskine roberts's benefit. that young man had just arrived for a few days' vacation and could not be said to approve of the new plans. "why is aunt ruth in such terrific haste?" he grumbled. "she has never mentioned a visit to you before this, has she?" "no," said maybelle, her bright face shading for a moment. "she never said a word about it; but you know it is all very different now. she is alone; i mean there is no other woman, and there is a dear baby to be thought about; i don't positively know, but i cannot help hoping that she needs me." maybelle's tones had become so jubilant that they made erskine gloomy and sarcastic. "for nurse girl you mean, i suppose," he said savagely. "and if that delightful arrangement should be found convenient for them, i suppose you would stay on indefinitely?" "erskine," said his mother, smiling, "don't be a bear! she hasn't promised to stay forever." then maybelle, her color much heightened, tried to explain further. "the reason for such haste is so i can have one of mr. burnham's partners for an escort. it was found that he had to come east on a hurried business trip, and of course it was an unusual opportunity." "i should hope so!" grumbled the discontented youth. "and who is there to escort you back? i'll venture they haven't planned for that!" then suddenly he bent toward the girl, ostensibly for the purpose of returning to her the letter that had dropped to the floor, and spoke for her ear alone. "i'll tell you how we will manage that, maybelle. i will come for you myself, if you will let me. will you let me?" a vivid crimson mounted to the very forehead of the fair-faced girl, and she seemed at a loss how to reply; but she certainly had not been troubled by his appeal whatever it was, so the indulgent mother slipped away and left the young people to themselves. * * * * * "am i to tell her, erskine?" ruth had asked her son, on the day that she was to go to the station to meet maybelle. he shook his head. "no, mamma, no, i will not make it harder for you than is necessary. yes, i know only too well how surely you would do everything for me if you could; but--i have assumed an obligation, and i do not mean to shirk it in the slightest particular. do not tell her anything save that you wanted her--that is true, is it not?" he broke off to ask anxiously. "then, in the evening, when she has had time to become somewhat rested from her journey, send her to me in my library and i will manage the rest." how he managed it, or what took place during that interview which must have been strangely tragic some of the time, ruth never fully knew. she asked no questions, and what her son and the girl revealed to her in scraps and detached expressions afterward, suggested a confidence so sacred that even she must not invade it. she had known by the start and the swift look of pain which swept over erskine's face when he first met maybelle at the dinner table, that the girl in her radiant beauty suggested his dead wife. to ruth there was a strange unlikeness to the face that she had not loved; but her heart was able to understand how irene had been to one whom she had loved, nay worshipped, as she had her husband, a very different being, living a life solely for him, and leaving a memory that the fair girl could awaken. maybelle was all but overwhelmed with astonishment and a sweet timidity when ruth told her that erskine wanted to see her for a little while in his library. "not alone!" she said. "without you, i mean? oh! am i not almost afraid? i mean, i shall not know what to say to him. it is all so recent, you see. i can see his beautiful character shining through his sorrow; dear mrs. burnham, i admire him almost as much as even his mother could wish, but i can see that a great crushing sorrow is heavy upon him, and a girl like me does not know how to touch such wounds without hurting. does he mean to talk to me about her, do you think? does he know that i loved her and prayed for her all the time? oh, dear friend, don't you think he wants you too?" ruth kissed her tenderly, solemnly, and put her away from her. "no, dear," she said gently. "he wants to see you quite alone. he has something to tell you. you will know what to say after you have heard him; god will show you." she closed the door after the slowly moving, half-reluctant, serious girl, and sat alone. it came to her vaguely, as one used to sacrifice, that here was another. she must sit alone with folded hands while another, and she a young girl upon whom he had never before set eyes, went down with her son into the depths of human pain. was it always so? was that forever the lot of motherhood, to stand aside and have some one else touch the deepest life of her children, whether in joy or pain? the interview was long, very long. sometimes it seemed to the waiting mother that she could not endure the strain; that she must go to that closed room and discover for herself what those two were saying to torture each other. but at last, the door across the hall opened and maybelle came with swift feet and knelt in front of her, hid her face in the older woman's lap, and broke into a passion of weeping. at first ruth let the storm of pain roll on unchecked, only touching the bowed head with soothing hand and murmuring:-- "poor child! dear little girl!" but the girl cried on, and on, as though she would never stop, her whole slight frame shaken with the force of her sorrow. across the hall ruth could hear the steady tread of her son's footsteps as he paced back and forth, fighting his battle alone. should his mother go and try to comfort him? but this motherless one was clinging to her. "maybelle," she said at last, "is it a hopeless grief? is there no one who can help?" then the girl made a desperate effort to control herself. she reached for ruth's hand and gripped it in her young, strong one. then, after another moment, she spoke:-- "forgive me. i did not mean to hurt you; i did not mean to cry at all; i said that i would not; but it was all so new, so--o mamma, mamma!" the head, which had been raised a little, went down again; and the exceeding bitterness of that last wailing cry of renunciation ruth never forgot. she had grace to be thankful that the mother was not there to hear it. but the violence of the storm was over, at least so far as its outward exhibition was concerned. in a few minutes more the girl spoke quietly enough. "he is very, very good. i did not know that any--just human being could be so good. and he spoke tenderly all the time of--of my mother. i could feel in his voice the sound of his great love for her. my poor, poor mother!" later, after much had been said and there had been silence between them for a few minutes, she spoke suddenly:-- "he asked me to call him 'father,' he said he wanted it." ruth could not suppress a little start of surprise and--was it pain? in all her hours of thinking over this whole tragedy, trying to plan how all things would be, she had not thought of this. yet it was like erskine; the utmost atonement that he could make, in word as well as deed, would be made. "what did you say in reply?" she asked the waiting girl. "i said that i would try to do in all things just as he advised. i could not do less, mrs. burnham; he is very good. i told him about my own dear papa, and that i should always, _always_ love and honor him as i had reason to; and he was good about that, too; he said that the way i felt about him was not only natural but it was right, and that he honored me for it. then he spoke of baby erskine and called him my little brother; and that broke my heart. i have so longed to have some one of my very own. mrs. burnham, do you think perhaps that--that papa understands about it all, and would want me to--" she seemed unable to express her thought in words, but ruth understood it, and the yearning wistfulness in the child's voice was not to be resisted. the older woman put aside her own pain to comfort and counsel this girl who had certainly in strange ways been thrust upon her care. a thought of comfort came to her, that, after a little hesitation, she gave to the girl. "maybelle dear, if you call my son 'father,' what name does that give to me as my rightful possession?" she had her reward. there was a moment's wondering thought, then a flush of surprise and a wave of radiance swept over the expressive face. she spoke the word in a whisper, almost a reverent one, yet the syllables were like a caress, and thrilled with joy:-- "'grandmother'! oh! do you mean it? that i may?" and then the caresses that ruth received were almost as sweet as any that she was waiting for baby erskine to voluntarily bestow upon her. chapter xxx "two, and two, and two" it took but a little while for the burnham household to settle down quietly to routine living; so easily, after all, does human nature adjust itself to tremendous strains and changes. maybelle fitted into her place as though she had always been an acknowledged daughter of the house, come home after long absence. and the neighbors, even those morbidly curious ones, of which there are always a few in every community, took kindly to the new order of things and to the bright-faced stranger who rode and drove and walked and appeared in church with erskine and his mother, and was introduced with punctilious care as "my wife's daughter, miss somerville." they could not help, even from the first, saying kind and complimentary things about the beautiful young face, and after a few days of wonderment and conjecture they arranged their own story--with a very meagre array of facts to build upon--quite to their satisfaction. "oh, yes, i knew she was a widow when he married her; but i never heard of a child." "well, he married abroad, don't you know, and i suppose the girl just stayed on, with her relatives. her mother must have been a mere child when she was first married; though this girl is very young, and mrs. burnham was probably older than she looked; for that matter, don't you know, i always said that she looked older than her husband? i suppose the girl has lived abroad all her life; that's what makes her look different, some way, from american girls, though her mother was born in this country, she told me so. still, the girl would have english ways, of course, always living there. did you hear her say the other day that the somerville brothers, great english bankers that ned lake was asking her about, were her uncles?" "it seems hard that the poor girl couldn't have been with her mother before she died," said one whose interests ran naturally in other channels than those of ages and pedigrees. "yes, it does," chimed in another home-keeping and home-loving matron, "but then her death was awfully sudden. erskine's mother told me that they had no idea of her dying up to the very day; and i guess the girl has been separated from her a good deal. i have heard somewhere, and i am sure i don't remember where, that there was a fuss of some sort in the family. probably her first husband's people didn't like the idea of her going into society and marrying again, especially marrying an american; english people are queer about some things, i have heard; i suppose they held on to the girl as long as they could." thus, with supposition and surmise, and a stray fact now and then, and vague remembrances, the story was worked over and shaped and pieced until it suited them. meantime, the burnham family went quietly on its way, having no confidants, and, while they spoke only truth when they spoke at all, judging it not necessary to tell the whole truth to any. so quiet and peace settled once more upon ruth burnham's home, and it was proved again, as it often is, that a new grave in the family burial ground is more productive of peace than a life has been. erskine was habitually grave, and his mother told herself sorrowfully that sin, not death, had permanently shadowed his life. but by degrees his gravity took on a cheerful tone, and baby erskine, whom at first he had almost shunned, became a never failing source of comfort to him. as for maybelle, no grown-up daughter was ever more devoted to a father's interests than she became. she hovered about his home life with an air of sweet, grave deference, ministering to his tastes with unlimited thoughtfulness and tact, until from being to him an infliction for whose comfort he must be thoughtful from a sense of duty, she became first an interest, and then almost a necessity. the neighbors said how lovely it was in her to take her mother's place so beautifully. then, of course, there were some to say that they shouldn't wonder if she should succeed at last in comforting him entirely for his loss. wouldn't it be romantic if he should marry her! of course she was really not related to him at all, and great difference in age was much more common than it used to be. for that matter, erskine burnham was still a young man. for their part, they agreed almost to a woman, that it would be a nice idea-- but all that was before they made the acquaintance of erskine roberts. that young man was true to his word, and in the course of time came across the continent. that he came after maybelle, as he had said he would, was perfectly obvious, but he did not take her back with him, as at one time he had tried to plan to do. he had two more years to spend at the theological seminary, and during those two years it had been agreed by all concerned that maybelle was to continue to bless her new home with her presence. erskine roberts was one of the very few to whom the whole situation had been fully and carefully explained. not only maybelle, but ruth herself had written the story, both to erskine, and his mother; and then, when his namesake came out to them, the other erskine had him into his private room one evening, and as he believed was his duty toward the man who was to make maybelle his wife, went down with him into the lowest depths of his life tragedy. and erskine roberts, who had been half angry with the man ever since he had heard the strange story--though he admitted all the time to his secret soul that erskine burnham had been in no wise to blame, went over loyally and royally to his side, and said to ruth while his honest eyes filmed with something like tears and his voice was husky:-- "aunt ruth, it must be a grand thing for a mother to have a son like that man across the hall. if i can be half like him in true nobility, my mother will have reason to be proud." and he even admitted to maybelle that, since he could not have her to himself yet awhile, he was glad that that man who was worthy that she should call him father was to have the comfort of her. it was noticeable to themselves that they said very little about the mother. poor mother! she had forfeited her right to be talked of in the tender and reverent way that maybelle would have talked, or with the passion of longing for something had, and lost, that used to mark her words to ruth. she said that word "mamma" no more; the tone in which she used to speak it had been peculiar, and had marked it as set apart for a special and sacred use. evidently it meant more to her than the word "mother," or at least meant something different. now, in speaking to ruth, she said always: "my mother," and said it in a hesitating, half-deprecating tone, almost as if she must apologize for her. it was not that the girl was bitter; on the contrary she was markedly tender of her mother's memory and pitiful toward her. ruth, with the reflex influence of this upon her, found herself searching for all the lovable qualities in irene that she could by any possibility recall, and by degrees it appeared that death was having its inevitable and gracious influence over hearts, softening the past and casting a halo of excusing pity over that which had at the time seemed unpardonable. but her daughter never again said in a passion of exquisite tenderness: "my mamma!" she had learned to say "father," and used the word with a shy grace that was fascinating; she had learned also what was of far more consequence: to have the utmost respect for and faith in the man to whom she gave the title. respect deepened steadily into love, and he became indeed "father" to her, in her very thought. yet she never put into the word the throbbing love that had shone in the words "my papa!" they were a peaceful household, with a fair and steadily increasing measure of happiness. "baby erskine," as they still called him and probably would, his father said, until he was ready for college, lived his beautiful, carefully ordered life, blossoming into all the graces and sweetnesses of judiciously trained and sheltered childhood, and being familiarized with all the sweet interests and excitements that belong to a baby beloved. his first tooth, his first step, his first definite word were as eagerly watched for and as joyously heralded as though a fond mother had been there to lead. never had child a more devoted sister and admirer and willing slave than maybelle; and no words ever expressed more exultant pride and joy than those in which she introduced him to transient guests: "my little brother." she labored patiently by the hour to teach the boy to shout "papa!" as soon as he caught a glimpse from the window of the man who would presently ride him upstairs on his proud shoulder; but they never tried to train the baby lips to say "mamma." "i am glad," said maybelle one day, breaking suddenly into speech in a way she had, over a train of thought, the steps by which she had reached it being kept to herself: "i am glad that he will always have the dearest and wisest of grandmothers close at hand." ruth smiled indulgently. "by inference," she said, "i am led to believe that you are speaking of baby erskine and his grandmother, and am duly grateful for the compliment, but the last remark you made was about the climbing roses on the south porch. am i to be told or simply be left to imagine the steps by which you reached from rosebuds to baby erskine?" maybelle laughed softly. "the transition was not so very great, dear doting grandmother! confess that you think so." then, the color deepening a little in her face, she added:-- "i was thinking, dear, of our home here, and of the coming changes, and of other--possibilities. to be entirely frank, i thought of a possible second mother for baby erskine. father is still so young that one cannot help thinking sometimes of possibilities. and then, even though i want you so much, i could not help being glad that in any such event you would be close to baby erskine." ruth held from outward notice any hint of the sudden stricture at her heart over these quiet words, and said cheerfully:-- "the near at hand probabilities are crowding us so hard just now, darling, that i don't think we have room for remote possibilities; let us leave the unknown future, dear child, to one who knows." it was true that the coming changes were almost beginning to crowd upon them. the climbing rose bushes over the south porch were even thus early thinking of budding; which meant that june and flossy roberts and her family would be with them in two months more. time had flown on swift wing after all. it hardly seemed possible that the young man, who had seemed to begin his theological studies but yesterday, was already receiving letters addressed to "the reverend erskine shipley roberts!" one shadow maybelle had, and ruth understood it well, although it was rarely mentioned between them. erskine burnham, the very soul of unselfish thoughtfulness for others, had yet held with unaccountable tenacity to one strange feeling. he shrank with evident pain from the thought of mamie parker's presence in the house. she had returned from china early in the previous year, and maybelle's first eager hope that "aunt mamie would come to them at once" for a stay of indefinite length had been wonderingly put aside upon the discovery that "father" apparently shrank from even the mention of her name. he made a painful effort to explain to his mother. "of course, mamma, i do not mean for one moment to stand in the way of anything that you and maybelle really want, and i do not know that i can explain to you why i feel as i do; but--she is associated, painfully associated, as you know, with that which is like the bitterness of death to me. and i cannot--we will not talk about it, mamma." ruth understood and was sorry for the morbid strain which it revealed. she made earnest effort to combat it, not vigorously but with suggestive sentences as occasion offered. it hurt her that erskine should allow so comparatively small a matter to retard his progress. he had not only gone bravely through his peculiar trial, but had made a distinct advance in his spiritual life. maybelle's constant prayer for him had assuredly been answered. the lord christ had, manifestly, a stronger grip on his personality than ever before. all the details of business and literary life were learning from day to day that they were not to be masters but servants to this man, and that one was his master. but this sore spot which could not be touched without pain, his mother felt sure would continue to burn as long as he hid it away. if he could know mamie parker as she now was, it was almost certain that the sting of pain and shame which her name suggested would lose its power. but maybelle felt sure that aunt mamie would never come unless invited by the host. "and i can't want her to, grandmother, much as i long to see her, so long as her presence is not quite comfortable to father." so the grandmother bided her time, and spoke her occasional earnest words. "in short, mamma," erskine said one morning, turning from the window where he had been standing a silent listener to what she had to say, "in short, mamma, you are ashamed of your son, are you not? and i don't wonder; he is rather ashamed of himself. you have been very patient, you and maybelle, but this whole thing must cease. of course the child must have her friend with her. invite her, mamma, in my name, to come at once and remain through the season. i want it to be so. i do, indeed, now that i have settled it; make maybelle understand that i do." after he had left the room he turned back to say pointedly:-- "of course, mamma, it will not be necessary for me to see very much of her; but i shall try to do my duty as host." she saw how hard it was for him, but she rejoiced with all her heart at this triumph over the morbid strain. and mamie parker came; and was met in due form by her host and treated in every respect as became an honored guest. there came an evening when ruth sat alone by the open window of her room. she had turned out the lights, for the room was flooded with moonlight. it outlined distinctly the little white bed in an alcove opening from her room, where her darling lay sleeping. she had just been in to look at him, and had resisted the temptation to kiss once more the fair cheeks flushed with healthy sleep. downstairs in the little reception room she knew that maybelle and erskine roberts were saying a few last words together; the girl and the boy who, to-morrow, would begin together the mystery of manhood and womanhood, "until death did them part." from time to time she could hear maybelle's soft laughter float out on the quiet air; they were very happy together, those two. from one of the guest chambers near at hand the murmur of voices came to her occasionally. it was growing late, and most of the guests had retired early to make ready by rest for the excitements of the morrow; but sleep had evidently not come yet to flossy and her husband. they were talking softly. they were happy together, those two. downstairs on the long vine-covered south porch two people were walking; the murmur of their voices as they walked and talked came up to her, mamie parker's voice, and erskine's. and the mother knew, almost as well as though she could hear the words, some of the things they were saying to each other. "mommie," her son had said but a little while before as he bent over and kissed his boy, and then turned and put both arms about her and kissed her, using the old name that of late had almost dropped away from him:-- "mommie, can you give me your blessing and wish me godspeed?" she had not pretended to misunderstand him. she had known for days, it almost seemed to her that she had known before he did, the trend that his life was taking. there had been no word between them, but erskine had told her once, that he believed she knew his thoughts almost as soon as they were born, and he seemed to take her knowledge for granted. she was glad that she had controlled her voice, and that her answer had been quick and free:-- "yes, indeed, my son; god bless and prosper you." she knew he would be prospered. at least a woman knows a woman's heart. they would be happy together, they two. two, and two, and two, everywhere! the youth and maiden, the mature man and woman, the father and mother who were smiling together over their son's espousals, always "they two." it had been "they two" once with her. and again, and for many years, mother and son; but now--it seemed for a moment to the lonely woman as though the whole world beside was paired and wedded and only herself left desolate. she pressed her hands firmly against the balls of her closed eyes. should she let one tear mar this night of her son's new joy? and then, tenderly, like drops of balm upon an aching wound, came the echo in her soul of an old, _old_ pledge: "with everlasting loving-kindness will i have mercy on thee, said the lord, thy redeemer... i will betroth thee unto me in faithfulness." "i am a happy woman," she said aloud, in a quiet voice; "i am blessed in my home, and in my--children, and in the abiding presence of my lord." =the pansy books.= =note.--the books in each of the series marked with a brace are connected stories.= =ester ried series= {ester ried asleep and awake {julia ried listening and led {the king's daughter {wise and otherwise {ester ried yet speaking $ . each =chautauqua series= {four girls at chautauqua {chautauqua girls at home {ruth erskine's crosses {judge burnham's daughters the hall in the grove eighty-seven $ . each =general series= {chrissy's endeavor {her associate members {household puzzles {the randolphs an endless chain three people interrupted a new graft on the family tree mrs. solomon smith looking on spun from fact one commonplace day the pocket measure links in rebeeca's life stephen mitchell's journey "wanted" $ . each cunning workmen miss priscilla hunter what she said and what she meant $ . each mrs. harry harper's awakening $ . =by pansy and mrs. livingston= divers women profiles {aunt hannah and martha and john {john remington, martyr $ . each =by pansy and faye huntington= from different standpoints modern prophets $ . each =by pansy and her friends= a sevenfold trouble $ . =juvenile books= tip lewis and his lamp little fishers and their nets the man of the house christie's christmas miss dee dunmore bryant sidney martin's christmas twenty minutes late only ten cents $ . each grandpa's darlings $ . next things at home and abroad in the woods and out $ . each bernie's white chicken helen lester docia's journal jessie wells monteagle couldn't be bought mary burton abroad six little girls cents each =golden text stories= her mother's bible we twelve girls browning boys dozen of them (a) gertrude's diary hedge fence (a) side by side six o'clock in the evening exact truth helen the historian little card cents each =the pansy primary libraries= pansy primary library no. . vols., $ . net. pansy primary library no. . vols., $ . net. pansy primary library no. . vols., $ . net. pansy primary library no. . vols., $ . net. =lothrop, lee & shepard co., boston= =books by annie h. ryder.= =hold up your heads, girls!= _ mo, cloth, $ . ._ "the author of 'hold up your heads, girls!' has, in the treatment of a very important subject, invested it with an interest and brightness which will make it pleasant and even fascinating reading for the class of young people to whom it is addressed. in the eleven chapters of which the contents consist there is more sound practical advice, sensibly put, on points of every-day interest to girls, than we have ever before seen put into the same number of pages. it is a book for study, for companionship, and the girl who reads it thoughtfully and with an intent to profit by it will get more real help and good from it than from a term at the best boarding-school in the country."--_boston transcript._ =margaret regis and some other girls.= _ mo, illustrated, $ . ._ "the college life of young women is described in this book in a very entertaining way, and in a spirit the most wholesome and cheerful. margaret regis is a splendid creation of the author's fancy, just such a young woman as all of us like to read about. in her schooldays she is not different from others. there is a shade of profound thought in her description of this period of life: 'she is like the many, many girls, increasing in numbers every year, who, unfixed and restless, go into college or the office, with a vague determination to do something that shall make them independent or superior to the greatest number of girls, but with no definite idea of how they are to use the knowledge and experience they gain.' margaret regis does not remain long in this unsettled state. she is emphatically a woman with a purpose. how its current was turned from the intended course makes an interesting narrative which the reader will find full of profit."--_cleveland leader._ =new every morning.= a year book for girls. edited by annie h. ryder. _square mo, cloth, $ . ; gilt, $ . ; limp, seal, $ . ._ a book of choice reading for girls for every day in the year. "there is a happy blending of practical common sense, pure sentiment and simple religious fervor."--_education, boston._ =boston: lothrop, lee & shepard co.= =when grandmamma was fourteen= by marion harland with four full-page illustrations and numerous pictures in the text price $ . _later adventures of the heroine of "when grandmamma was new."_ those who recall this noted author's delightful story, "when grandmamma was new," will be glad to hear that in this book are the adventures of the heroine at a later period. through the eyes of fourteen-year-old molly burwell, the reader sees much that is quaint, amusing and pathetic in ante-bellum richmond, and the story has all the charm of manner and rich humanity which are characteristic of marion harland. all healthy-hearted children will delight in the story, and so will their parents. =when grandmamma was new= _the story of a virginia girlhood in the forties_ by marion harland mo illustrated price $ . =the boston journal says:= "if only one might read it first with the trained enjoyment of the 'grown-up' mind that is 'at leisure from itself,' and then if one might withdraw into ten-year-old-dom once more and seek the shadow of the friendly apple-tree, and revel in it all over again, taste it all just as the child tastes, and find it luscious! for this book has charm and piquancy. and it is in just this vivid remembrance of a child's mental workings, in just the avoidance of all 'writing down' to the supposed level of a child's mind, that this story has its rare attractiveness. it is bright, winsome, and magnetic." =the interior, chicago, says:= "'grandmamma' may have charmed other folks,--has charmed them all, incontrovertibly,--but she has never tried harder to be vivid and dramatic and entertaining, and to leave a sweet kernel of application, withal, than in these memory-tales of a sunny childhood on a big virginia plantation. it is a book which will delight, not children alone, but all such as have the child heart and a tender memory of when they were 'new.'" at all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers =lothrop, lee & shepard co., boston= =a little maid of concord town= a romance of the american revolution by margaret sidney. one volume, mo, illustrated by f. t. merrill, $ . a delightful revolutionary romance of life, love and adventure in old concord. the author lived for fifteen years in the home of hawthorne, in concord, and knows the interesting town thoroughly. debby parlin, the heroine, lived in a little house on the lexington road, still standing, and was surrounded by all the stir and excitement of the months of preparation and the days of action at the beginning of our struggle for freedom. =by way of the wilderness= by "pansy" (mrs. g. r. alden) and mrs. c. m. livingston. mo, cloth, illustrated by charlotte harding, $ . this story of wayne pierson and how he evaded or met the tests of misunderstanding, environment, false position, opportunity and self-pride; how he lost his father and found him again, almost lost his home and found it again, almost lost himself and found alike his manhood, his conscience and his heart is told us in pansy's best vein, ably supplemented by mrs. livingston's collaboration. the famous pepper books by margaret sidney in order of publication =five little peppers and how they grew.= cloth, mo, illustrated, $ . , postpaid. this was an instantaneous success; it has become a genuine child classic. =five little peppers midway.= cloth, mo, illustrated, $ . , postpaid. "a perfect cheeryble of a book."--_boston herald._ =five little peppers grown up.= cloth, mo, illustrated, $ . , postpaid. this shows the five little peppers as "grown up," with all the struggles and successes of young manhood and womanhood. =phronsie pepper.= cloth, mo, illustrated, $ . , postpaid. it is the story of phronsie, the youngest and dearest of all the peppers. =the stories polly pepper told.= cloth, mo. illustrated by jessie mcdermott and etheldred b. barry. $ . , postpaid. wherever there exists a child or a "grown-up," there will be a welcome for these charming and delightful "stories polly pepper told." =the adventures of joel pepper.= cloth, mo. illustrated by sears gallagher. $ . , postpaid. as bright and just as certain to be a child's favorite as the others in the famous series. harum-scarum "joey" is lovable. =five little peppers abroad.= cloth, mo. illustrated by fanny y. cory. $ . , postpaid. the "peppers abroad" adds another most delightful book to this famous series. =five little peppers at school.= cloth, mo. illustrated by hermann heyer. price, $ . ; postpaid. of all the fascinating adventures and experiences of the "peppers," none will surpass those contained in this volume. =five little peppers and their friends.= illustrated by eugenie m. wireman. cloth, mo, $ . ; postpaid. the friends of the peppers are legion, and the number will be further increased by this book. =ben pepper.= illustrated by eugenie m. wireman. cloth, mo, $ . . this story centres about ben, "the quiet, steady-as-a-rock boy," while the rest of the peppers help to make it as bright and pleasing as its predecessors. lothrop, lee and shepard company =the girl who kept up= by mary mccrae cutler illustrated by c. louise williams. mo. cloth. $ . [illustration] this is a strong, wholesome story of achievement. the end of a high school course divides the paths of a boy and girl who have been close friends and keen rivals. the youth is to go to college, while the girl, whose family is in humbler circumstances, must remain at home and help. she sees that her comrade will feel that he is out-growing her, and she determines to and does _keep up_ with him in obtaining an education. "the story is human to the least phase of it, and it is told with such simple force and vivacity that its effect is strong and positive. the pictures of college and home life are true bits of realism. it is an excellent piece of work."--_bookseller, newsdealer and stationer, new york._ "the story is well told, and is thoroughly helpful in every respect."--_epworth herald, chicago._ "the telling of the story is attractive, and will be found helpful to all readers."--_the baptist union, chicago._ "let us recommend this book for young people for the excellent lesson of honest striving and noble doing that it clearly conveys."--_boston courier._ "it is a healthy and inspiring story."--_brooklyn eagle._ "the tale is full of good lesson for all young people."--_boston beacon._ "the story will be both pleasant and profitable to the youth of both sexes."--_louisville courier-journal._ _for sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by_ lothrop, lee & shepard co., boston =the laurel token= a story of the yamassee uprising by annie m. barnes author of "little betty blew" and "a lass of dorchester" illustrated by g. w. picknell mo cloth $ . [illustration] this is a book for young people of either sex, for, although the leading character is a girl of eighteen, her cousins, two boys of sixteen and fourteen respectively, are prominent throughout the story, which centres about a beautiful girl, left an orphan, as is supposed, in barbados, who goes to live with her uncle, a leading man in the flourishing "goose creek" colony, in the year of the indian uprising, . the very real danger from the red men, who have been regarded as friendly, but have been the victims of selfishness, and thus made ready tools for the crafty spanish having their headquarters at st. augustine, forms the background to the story, and gives opportunity for the surprising developments which occur respecting the heroine and others. the illustrations by mr. picknell are very accurate in their composition, besides being finely executed. =an honor girl= by evelyn raymond illustrated by bertha g. davidson mo cloth $ . [illustration] a bright, helpful story of a girl who, as the valedictorian and "honor girl" of her class at high school, wins a scholarship which would take her through wellesley college. family reverses bring it home to her that _duty_ demands that she devote herself to helping her parents and wayward brother to face the future better than they seem likely to. she heroically surrenders her prize, with its glowing prospects, to a jealous rival, and with a brave humor says that she has matriculated in the college of life, the hard features of which she happily styles the "faculty," with "professor poverty" prominent among them. these prove excellent teachers, aided by "professor cheerfulness." kind friends are won by her courage, her brother achieves manly character, and the family are finally re-established on the road to prosperity: all better, happier, and more to each other than had selfishness not been so well met and overcome by "an honor girl." _for sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers._ lothrop, lee & shepard co., boston =joy bells a story of quinnebasset= by sophie may illustrated by frank t. merrill mo cloth $ . [illustration] the thousands of admirers of the "quinnebasset" books have had to wait a long time for another, but this new story is well worth waiting for. all the delightful wit of the author is here and at its best, and "persis," the heroine, is very near to being the most charming of all her gifted creations. the scene is laid in the fifties. there are thrilling incidents, and also mysteries and suspicions, but all these are finally unravelled and allayed by the persistent efforts of the heroine. =pauline wyman= by sophie may cloth illustrated $ . in "pauline wyman" the author has drawn a typical new england girl whose strong and beautiful character is developed by her environment. how she overcomes unfavorable surroundings, her experience in teaching school, the interesting circumstances in a young girl's life are all told with the same originality and freshness which have drawn a multitude of young people to the author's previous work. =madge a girl in earnest= by s. jennie smith mo cloth illustrated by james e. mcburney $ . madge is indeed "a girl in earnest." she scorns the patronage of an aristocratic relative and takes upon her strong young shoulders the problem of carrying along the family in an independent manner. her bravely won success, in spite of the lions in her path, not the least of which was the fear of social disfavor felt by some of her family, forms an inspiring tale. an unusual amount of practical information is presented in a thoroughly entertaining manner, and the character-drawing is remarkably true and strong. =for sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers= =lothrop, lee & shepard co., boston= [illustration] =we four girls= by mary g. darling mo cloth illustrated by bertha g. davidson $ . "we four girls" is a bright story of a summer vacation in the country, where these girls were sent for study and recreation. the story has plenty of natural incidents; and a mild romance, in which they are all interested, and of which their teacher is the principal person, gives interest to the tale. they thought it the most delightful summer they ever passed. [illustration] =a girl of this century= by mary g. darling cloth illustrated by lilian crawford true $ . the same characters that appear in "we four girls" are retained in this story, the interest centering around "marjorie," the natural leader of the four. she has a brilliant course at radcliffe, and then comes the world. a romance, long resisted, but worthy in nature and of happy termination, crowns this singularly well-drawn life of the noblest of all princesses--a true american girl. =beck's fortune a story of school and seminary life= by adele e. thompson cloth illustrated $ . the characters in this book seem to live, their remarks are bright and natural, and the incidental humor delightful. the account of beck's narrow and cheerless early life, her sprightly independence, and unexpected competency that aids her to progress through the medium of seminary life to noble womanhood, is one that mothers can commend to their daughters unreservedly. for sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers =lothrop, lee & shepard co., boston= =brave heart series= by adele e. thompson =betty seldon, patriot= illustrated mo cloth $ . a book that is at the same time fascinating and noble. historical events are accurately traced leading up to the surrender of cornwallis at yorktown, with reunion and happiness for all who deserve it. =brave heart elizabeth= illustrated mo cloth $ . it is a story of the making of the ohio frontier, much of it taken from life, and the heroine one of the famous zane family after which zanesville, o., takes its name. an accurate, pleasing, and yet at times intensely thrilling picture of the stirring period of border settlement. [illustration] =a lassie of the isles= illustrated by j. w. kennedy mo cloth $ . this is the romantic story of flora macdonald, the lassie of skye, who aided in the escape of charles stuart, otherwise known as the "young pretender," for which she suffered arrest, but which led to signal honor through her sincerity and attractive personality. =polly of the pines= [illustration] illustrated by henry roth cloth mo $ . "polly of the pines" was mary dunning, a brave girl of the carolinas, and the events of the story occur in the years - . polly was an orphan living with her mother's family, who were scotch highlanders, and for the most part intensely loyal to the crown. polly finds the glamor of royal adherence hard to resist, but her heart turns towards the patriots and she does much to aid and encourage them. _for sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers_ =lothrop, lee & shepard co., boston= transcriber notes: passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=. small caps were replaced with all caps. throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. those words were retained as-is. the illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the list of illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the same in the list of illustrations and in the book. errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted. on the title page, a quotation mark was added before "ester ried". on page , "conisdered" was replaced with "considered". on page , a period was added after "mrs". on page , "reëstablished" was replaced with "reestablished". on page , the quotation mark after "let him in" was deleted. on page , "esrkine" was replaced with "erskine". on page , the period after "calamity for a man" was replaced with a question mark. on page , the quotation mark after "i can ever hope to" was removed. on page , a quotation mark was added before "it is as balmy as spring. in the advertisement for when grandmama was new, kernal was replaced with kernel. the eddy a novel of today by clarence l. cullen illustrations by ch. weber ditzler g. w. dillingham company publishers new york _copyright, , by_ g. w. dillingham company _the eddy_ [illustration: louise] contents chapter page i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. xi. xii. xiii. xiv. xv. xvi. illustrations page louise _frontispiece_ laura, a woman of thirty-five, had the slender yet well-rounded structural sinuosities of a girl of twenty he'd go over to the house on the drive and get the thing over with "but, why did you never tell me, mother?" he squeaked like a rat; then he went down like a log the eddy chapter i "if only she were a boy!" mrs. treharne almost moaned the words. she tugged nervously at her absurdly diaphanous boudoir jacket, vainly attempting to fasten it with fluttering, uncontrolled fingers; and she shuddered, though her dressing-room was over-warm. heloise, who was doing her hair, juggled and then dropped a flaming red coronet braid upon the rug. the maid, a thin-lipped young woman with a jutting jaw and an implacable eye, pantomimed her annoyance. before picking up the braid she glued the backs of her hands to her smoothly-lathed hips. mrs. treharne, in the glass, could see heloise's drab-filmed grey-blue eyes darting sparks. "i shall resume," croaked the maid in raucous french, "when madame is through writhing and wriggling and squirming." laura stedham--she was relaxing luxuriously in the depths of a chair that fitted her almost as perfectly as her gown--smiled a bit wickedly. "forgive me if i seem catty, tony," said laura in her assuaging contralto, "but it is such a delight to find that there is some one else who is bullied by her maid. mine positively tyrannizes over me." "oh, everybody bullies me," said mrs. treharne, querulously, holding herself rigid in order not to again draw heloise's wrath. "everybody seems to find it a sort of diversion, a game, to browbeat and hector and bully-rag me." "surely i don't, afflicted one--do i?" laura tacked a little rippling laugh to the question. "you do worse, my dear--you laugh at me," plaintively replied the fading woman huddled before the glass. she was haggard as from a trouble that has been unsuccessfully slept upon, and her mouth--not yet made into a crimson bow through heloise's deft artistry--was drawn with discontent. "heaven on high, if only she were a boy!" she broke out petulantly again, after a little pause. this time there was genuine enjoyment in laura's laugh. "don't scowl, antoinette--i know i am a beast for laughing," she said, abandoning her chair and lissomely crossing the room to glance at some new photographs on a mantel. "but, really, you say that so often that it sounds like the refrain to a topical song. 'if only she were a boy--if only she were a boy!'--don't you catch the rhythm of it? i wonder, tony, how many times i have heard you give utterance to that phrase during the past few years--just?" "you haven't heard me say it any oftener than i've meant it, my dear--be very sure of that," said mrs. treharne, without a symptom of a smile. her sense of humor was embryonic, and laura's laughter and words, obviously meant merely in mitigation, jarred upon her. "and a remark is none the less true for being repeated, is it?" she went on in her plaintive monotone. "i _do_ wish louise had been born a boy. you would, too, if you were in my place. you know you would." "but, dear tony, it is such a futile, such a dreadfully childish wish," said laura, striving to erase the smile from her face. "it is like wishing for the fairy prince, or the magic carpet, or the end of the rainbow. worry makes wrinkles, dear. that may sound bromidic, but it's true. why worry yourself through all the years with wishing so impossible--i was going to say so insane--a wish? not only that--forgive me for saying it, dear, won't you?--but it is rather a grisly wish, too; and so unfair to the girl, really. don't you think--don't you know--that it is?" "don't scold, laura--please," said mrs. treharne, almost in a whimper. "you don't know what a miserable mess i am in. you haven't given me time to tell you. louise is coming home immediately." "for the holidays, naturally," said laura. "why shouldn't the poor child come home for the holidays? it will be the first time she has had her holidays at home since she went away to school--nearly four years, i think--isn't it?" "i hope you are not meaning that for a reproach," accused the haggard lady, now being corseted by the lusty-armed heloise. "you are in a shocking humor today; and i did so depend upon you for advice and comfort, if not consolation, when i 'phoned you to come over." "oh, i am in a lark's humor," protested laura, smiling as she rested a gloved hand upon one of the milky shoulders of her troubled friend. "but you puzzle me. why should you make such a catastrophe of it, such a veritable cataclysm, because your pretty and agreeable and, as i recall her, quite lovable daughter announces that she is coming home for the holidays? enlighten me, dear. i seem not to discern the point of your problem." "problem isn't the word for it!" repined the unhappy lady, upon whose nearly knee-length stays heloise now was tugging like a sailor at a capstan. "louise coolly announces--i had her letter yesterday--that she is not returning to miss mayhew's school; that she is coming to remain with me for good." "well?" said laura, murdering the smile that strove to break through her visible mask. "'well?'" wailed mrs. treharne. "is that all you have to say--'well'? can't you see how impossible, how utterly out of the question, how----" "her quitting school now, you mean?" said laura. "really, i think you should be pleased. her announcement shows that louise is a woman--a girl of nineteen who has spent nearly four years at a modern finishing school no longer is a young person, but a woman--that she is a woman with a sense of humor. it is very human, very indicative of the possession of the humorous sense, to tire of school. i did that, myself, a full year before i was through. all of the king's horses could not have dragged me back, either. i hated the thought of graduation day--the foolish, fluttery white frocks, the platitudes of visitors, the moisty weepiness of one's women relatives, the sophomoric speechifying of girls who were hoydens the day before and would be worse hoydens the day after, the showing off of one's petty, inconsequential 'accomplishments'--i loathed the thought of the whole fatuous performance. and so i packed and left a full year in advance of it, resolved not to be involuntarily drawn into the solemn extravaganza of 'being graduated.' that, no doubt, is louise's idea. she is a girl with a merry heart. you should be glad of that, antoinette." laura was simply sparring with the hope of getting her friend's mind off her problem. she knew very well the nature of the problem; none better. the idea of a girl just out of school being plumped into such an environment as that enveloping the treharne household perhaps was even more unthinkable to laura that it was to the girl's mother, a woman who had permitted her sensibilities to become grievously blunted with what she termed the "widening of her horizon." but laura, not yet ready with advice to meet so ticklish a situation, sought, woman-like, to divert the point of the problem by seizing upon one of its quite minor ramifications. of course it was not her fault that she failed. "laura," said mrs. treharne, dismissing her maid with a gesture and fumblingly assembling the materials on her dressing table wherewith to accomplish an unassisted facial make-up, "your occasional assumption of stupidity is the least becoming thing you do. why fence with me? it is ridiculous, unfriendly, irritating." she daubed at her pale wispy eyebrows with a smeary pencil and added with a certain hardness: "you know perfectly well why i dread the thought of louise coming here." laura, at bay, unready for a pronouncement, took another ditch of evasiveness. "i wonder," she said in an intended tone of detachment, "if you are afraid she has become a bluestocking? or maybe a frump? or, worse still, what you call one of the anointed smugs? such things--one or other of them, at any rate--are to be expected of girls just out of school, my dear. louise will conquer her disqualification, if she have one. her imagination will do that much for her. and of course she has imagination." "she has eyes, too, no doubt," said mrs. treharne, drily. "and you know how prying, penetrating the eyes of a girl of nineteen are. you know still better how poorly this--this ménage of mine can stand such inspection; the snooping--wholly natural snooping, i grant you--of a daughter nearly a head taller than i am, whom, nevertheless, i scarcely know. frankly, i don't know louise at all. i should be properly ashamed to acknowledge that; possibly i am. moreover, i believe i am a bit afraid of her." laura assumed a musing posture and thus had an excuse for remaining silent. "additionally," went on mrs. treharne, a little hoarsely, "a woman, in considering her daughter's welfare, must become a trifle smug herself, no matter how much she may despise smugness in its general use and application. what sort of a place is this as a home for louise? i am speaking to you as an old friend. i am in a fiendish predicament. of course you see that. and i can't see the first step of a way out of it. can you?" "for one thing," said laura, mischievously and with eyes a-twinkle, "you might permanently disperse your zoo." mrs. treharne laughed harshly. "one must know somebody," she said, deftly applying the rouge rabbit's-foot. "one can't live in a cave. my own sort banished me. i am _declassée_. shall i sit and twiddle my thumbs? at least the people of my 'zoo,' as you call it, are clever. you'll own that." "they are freaks--impossible, buffoonish, baboonish freaks," replied laura, more earnestly than she had yet spoken. "you know i am not finical; but if this raffish crew of yours are 'bohemians,' as they declare themselves to be--which in itself is _banal_ enough, isn't it?--then give me the sleek, smug inhabitants of spotless town!" "you rave," said mrs. treharne, drearily. "let my zoo-crew alone. we don't agree upon the point." "i thought you had your queer people--your extraordinary sunday evening parties--i came perilously near saying rough-houses, tony--in mind in bemoaning louise's return home," said laura, yawning ever so slightly. "oh, i'd thought of that, of course," said mrs. treharne, artistically adding a sixteenth of an inch of length to the corners of her eyes with the pencil. "but my raffish crew, as you call them, wouldn't harm her. she might even become used to them in time. she hasn't had time to form prejudices yet, it is to be hoped. you purposely hit all around the real mark. louise is nineteen. and you know the uncanny side-lines of wisdom girls pick up at finishing schools nowadays. since you maliciously force me to mention it point-blank, in heaven's name what will this daughter of mine think of--of mr. judd?" "now we are at the heart of the matter," answered laura. "heart, did i say? fancy 'pudge' with a heart!" there was little mirth in her laugh. "you must not call him that, even when you are alone with me, laura," said mrs. treharne, petulantly. "i am in deadly fear that some time or other he will catch you calling him that. you know how mortally sensitive he is about his--his bulk." "well might he be," said laura, drily enough. "is there any particular reason why your daughter should have to meet judd? except very occasionally, i mean?" "how can it be avoided?" asked mrs. treharne, helplessly. "hasn't he the run of the house? you don't for an instant suppose that, even if i implored him, he would forego any of his--his privileges here?" "i am not so imbecile as to suppose any such a thing," said laura, with a certain asperity. "but the man might exhibit a bit of common decency. he knows that louise is coming?" "i haven't told him," said mrs. treharne, fluttering to her feet from the dressing table. "you will hook me, laura? i don't want to call heloise. she only pretends that she doesn't understand english, and she knows too much already. no, i haven't told him yet. he resents the idea of my having a daughter, you know. he will be here directly to take me out in the car. i shall tell him when we are going through the park. then nobody but the chauffeur and i will hear him growl. i know in advance every word that he will say," and the distraught woman looked wan even under her liberal rouge. laura impulsively placed an arm around her friend's shoulder. "tony," she said, gravely, "why don't you show the brute the door?" "because it is his own door--you know that," said mrs. treharne, her eyes a little misty. "then walk out of it," said laura. "this isn't the right sort of thing. i don't pose as a saint. but i could not endure this. come with me. let louise join you with me. you know how welcome you are. i have plenty--more than plenty. you shouldn't have permitted judd to refuse to let you continue to receive the allowance george treharne provided for louise. that wasn't fair to yourself. it was more unfair to your daughter. you shouldn't have allowed her to get her education with judd's money. she is bound to find it out. she would be no woman at all if that knowledge doesn't cut her to the quick. but this is beside the mark. i have plenty. she is a dear, sweet, honest girl, and she is entitled to her chance in the world. i am sure i don't need to tell you that. what chance has she in this house? the doors that are worth while are closed to you, my dear. you know i say that with no unkind intent. it is something you yourself acknowledge. the same doors would be closed to your daughter if she came here. she could and would do so much better with me. neither you nor she would be dependent. we are too old friends for that. and i know george treharne. he would renew the allowance that you permitted judd to thrust back at him through yourself and his lawyer. leave this place, this sort of thing, once and forever. i want you to--for your own sake and your daughter's." mrs. treharne wept dismally, to the sad derangement of her elaborately-applied make-up. but she wept the tears of self-pity, than which there are none more pitiful. the reins of a great chance, for herself and her daughter, were in her hands. perhaps it was the intensity of her perturbation that did not permit her to hold them. very likely it was something else. but, at any rate, hold them she did not. "you are a dear, laura," she said, fighting back her tears for the sake of her make-up. "it was what i might have expected of you. of all the friends i used to have, you are the only one who never has gone back on me. but you must see how impossible it all is. i am in over my head. so what would be the use?" "you speak for yourself only, antoinette," said laura, a little coldly. "what of your daughter?" "oh, if only she were a boy!" the wretched woman harped again. laura stedham removed her arm from her friend's shoulder and shrugged a bit impatiently. "that refrain again?" she said, the warmth departing from her tone. "i must be going before i become vexed with you, tony. your own position would be quite the same in any case--if you had a son instead of a daughter, i mean. for my part, i fail to perceive any choice between being shamed in the eyes of a son of in the eyes of a daughter. true, a son would not have to tolerate so humiliating a situation. a son could, and unquestionably would, clap on his hat the moment he became aware of the state of things here, and stamp out, leaving it all behind him. a son could and would shift for himself. but a girl--a girl just out of school--can't do that. she is helpless. she is at the mercy of the situation you have made for her. i fear you are completely losing your moorings, tony. when is louise arriving?" "tonight," replied mrs. treharne, who had subsided into a sort of apathy of self-pity. "at nine something or other. i shall meet her at the station in the car." laura turned a quizzical, slitted pair of eyes upon her friend, now busy again with her tear-smudged make-up. "not in judd's car, surely, tony?" she said, in earnest expostulation. "why do that? why not let the girl in upon your--your tangled affairs a little more gradually? how could she help wondering at the extravagant, vulgar ornateness of judd's car? for of course she knows perfectly well that your own finances are not equal to such a whale of a machine as that." "it will not take her long to find out everything," said mrs. treharne, a little sullenly. "she need not be uncommonly observant to do that. and you remember how embarrassingly observant she was even as a child." "give her a chance to observe piecemeal, then," said laura, laconically. "i shall be with you at the station. one of my poor accomplishments, you know, is the knack of ameliorating difficult situations. and i was always so fond of the child. i am stark curious to see how she has developed. she was a starchy miss of fifteen when last i saw her. we'll fetch her home in a taxicab. that will be better. it is arranged, then?" "everything that you suggest is as good as arranged,' laura," replied mrs. treharne, with a wan smile. "your gift of persuasion is irresistible--i wish i knew the secret of it. it is extremely good of you to want to meet the child. if i could only meet her with--with such clean hands as--well, as i should have!" "never mind--there'll be a way out of it," said laura, cheerily. "i am off." she grazed the adeptly-applied artificial bloom of the other woman's cheek with her lips. as they stood side by side in the juxtaposition of a caress--they were friends from girlhood--the contrast between the two women was sufficiently striking. laura stedham, a woman of thirty-five, had the slender yet well-rounded structural sinuosities of a girl of twenty who passes all her days in the open air--minus the indubitable blowsiness which some open-air young women can't help but reveal to the dissecting eye. unusually tall, she had the gliding grace of movement which so many women of uncommon stature lack. even in the cluttered dressing room of her friend she made nothing of the obstacles that barred her path, but, walking always with a sort of nervous swiftness, passed around them to her point of destination--a mantel, a table, a hanging picture--with a threading ease of locomotion that made it seem oddly doubtful if she were dependent upon the ground at all for a base. there are tall women who, if they do not collide with stationary objects when they undertake a tour of a room, at least arouse the fear that they will infallibly do so. laura possessed an eye for the measurement of distances, and the litheness perfectly to follow her measurement. her complexion was that of a woman to whom a long tramp, even in the city, in the mist or in the blinding rain, was not a task, but a delight. her hair, all her own, yet worn in the final perverse mood of exaggeration of the coiffure "artist," was of an incredible burnished black, in unusual contrast with her full, kindling, celtic-grey eyes. a certain irregularity in the outline of her features--especially of her nose, which, far from being aquiline, was too short by the merest fraction--lent a certain piquancy to her expression, even when her face was in repose. she had the habit, growing rare in a world of social avoidances and white lies, of looking the person addressing her straight in the eye. it was not an impaling, disquieting gaze, but one that fairly demanded truthfulness and candor; a gaze unconsciously calculated to cause the liar to stutter in the manufacture of his lie. [illustration: laura, a woman of thirty-five, had the slender yet well-rounded structural sinuosities of a girl of twenty.] mrs. treharne, four years older than laura, had the somewhat hollow-eyed plumpness of an indoor woman who wars fiercely but hopelessly and unequally upon ever-threatening _embonpoint_. her triumphs over the enemy never were better than drawn battles; she was compelled to devote at least three hours a day to her determined, almost hysterical warfare upon the natural process of accretion, solely that she might not gain; long before she had abandoned hope of achieving the fragility of outline she pined for. the nostrums she employed in this incessant conflict had made her fragile, however, in at least one respect: her health; besides imparting a certain greenish-yellow tint to her skin which made her make-up box almost as necessary a part of her equipment as the hands wherewith she applied the mitigating tints. five years before she had been a fresh-skinned, clear-eyed, naturally pretty woman of a somewhat inconsequential type; but the necessity--the hideous duty, as she deemed it--of banting without cessation or intermission had left her merely her regular features upon which artificially to create the illusion of a youthfulness she was far from feeling. with the final touch added for an appearance in a company, she still looked dainty, certainly of impeccable grooming. but she had learned to be uneasy under the scrutiny of eyes that she felt to be unfriendly, and she had become exceptionally partial to veils. her hair, originally a light, unaggressive red, had been "done over" into a sort of vivid, brittle "titian." there were occasional reddish gleams in her slightly furtive, small eyes of hazel. she had a child's foot, and she was inordinately proud of her tiny, waxy, too-white hands. in a company she smiled continuously in order to display her teeth, which were perfectly assembled and of an almost porcelain whiteness. mrs. treharne was called a pretty woman even by those who perhaps entertained unexpressed misgivings as to how she might look at her rising hour. after laura had gone mrs. treharne tried, before her glass, the effect of a smile--somewhat frozen and quickly obliterated--upon her carefully studied and artfully executed make-up mask; then sighed drearily as she sank into a chair and began polishing her nails upon her palms. "of course laura is right, as usual--it wouldn't help matters particularly if louise were a boy," she mused with puckered brows. "a boy might be longer in finding out how affairs stood here; but when he did find out--what a storm, what heroics, what juvenile reproaches, what a stagey to-do there would be! perhaps, after all, it is as well that louise is--louise. she can adapt herself to--to things as they are. she must. there's no other way. she can't have lost the tact she possessed as a child. i wish i knew her better, so that i could have some sort of an idea just what to expect from her. i hope she understands the good sense of closing one's eyes to things that can't be improved by looking at them. perhaps i shall be lucky enough to marry her off quickly. that would be almost too easy a solution for me, with my vile luck, to expect." she rang for heloise to have her furs in readiness. "it was thoroughly decent of laura," she thought on, finger at lip, "to advise me to bolt all this and take refuge with her. but i haven't the nerve--that's the plain truth of it. how could i ask treharne to renew the allowance? what a triumph it would be for him if i were to do that! he would be too quixotic to view it as a triumph, but that wouldn't alleviate my humiliation in asking him. and what would the three or four thousand a year be in comparison with--" "the car is at the door, madame," announced heloise, appearing with the sables. mrs. treharne smiled at herself before the glass to smooth out the wrinkles of her musing, tripped lightly down the stairs, and was humming blithely when she nodded indulgently at the ponderous, shaggy-furred man who was waiting to help her into the huge, over-lavish, pulsing car. "you take your time, don't you?" grumbled judd, his breath vaporing into broken clouds in the raw december air. "does that monkey-chattering maid of yours sleep all the time, or has she a case on with the butler? i've been tooting here for ten minutes." his tone was snarling, and his thin lips were drawn away from gnarled teeth. judd was one of those physical anomalies, a man of falstaffian girth with sharp, peaked, predatory features. he pulled off his fur cap to readjust it before stepping into the car, showing a head wholly bald except for crinkly wisps of mixed red and gray hair at the sides and back. there was a deep crease at the back of his neck where the scant hair left off, and his deep-set, red-rimmed little watery-blue eyes were alert and suspicious. mrs. treharne laughed so carelessly that it almost seemed as if she deliberately sought to intensify his irritation. "still in your villanous humor?" she asked him, a taunt in her tone. "i believe this is one of the days--they grow rather frequent--when you should be allowed--required, i should say--to ride alone." "well, that's easy enough to do," grumbled judd in a voice curiously high-pitched for so vast a man. "see here, perhaps you are conceited enough to think--" very deliberately, and still smiling, mrs. treharne rose to leave the car. judd looked blankly nonplussed. "oh, stop this infernal nonsense, tony," he said in a tone tinged with alarm. then his ruddy face expanded into a grin behind which there seemed to be little mirth. "d'ye know, i believe you would be cat enough to step out, before we start, and--" "no names, if you please," mrs. treharne interrupted, choppily. "decidedly i shall leave the car if you feel that it is impossible for you to behave yourself like a human being. i have ceased to extract enjoyment from your growling humors." it was a tone she might have taken in addressing a menial. obviously, however, it was the tone required for the proper subjugation of judd. he exuded a falsetto laugh and patted her hand, at the same time motioning the chauffeur to start. "i don't complain of your hellish moods, do i, tony?" he asked her, still chuckling unpleasantly. "in fact, i believe i rather like the feel of your claws. all the same, there may come a day when--" "when i shall enjoy the sight of your back," calmly interrupted the apparently complaisant woman at his side. "speed the day!" judd's face took on a half-chagrined, half-worried look. it generally did when mrs. treharne was operating upon him what she privately called her "system." this "system," in essence, consisted in her invariable habit of quarreling with him and reducing him to abjectness by more or less veiled threats of abandoning him to a lonesome fate whenever she had something to ask of him, or to tell him, that she knew quite well would arouse his surliness. it was a neatly-devised balancing method, and mrs. treharne as well understood the vital advantage of striking the first blow as she apprehended the extent of her power over him. "i say, tony," said judd, patting her gloved hands again, "you wouldn't really cut and run just because--" "spare me your elephantine sentimentalities, please," she put in, a little less indifferently. "you were never ordained for that sort of thing. anyhow, i would like a sane word or two with you. i've something to tell you." "it's money, of course," said judd, sulkily, leaving off patting her hands with ludicrous suddenness. "more damned extravagance, eh?" "no, it's neither money nor extravagance, beautifully as those two words trot in tandem," she said, airily, yet with a new soothing note in her tone. "it is this: louise is coming home. at once. tonight." "the devil she is!" blurted judd. "what for? who sent for her? how long is she going to stay? what's it all about?" "one question at a time, please," mrs. treharne replied, looking indifferently out toward the bleak river as they shot by claremont. it was a palpably assumed air of indifference; but judd, unskilled at penetrating feminine subtlety, did not discern the nervousness underlying her careless manner. "my daughter is coming home because she wants to. nobody sent for her. she is not going back to school. she announces that in her letter to me; and she is old enough to know her mind and to be entitled to freedom of action. she is remaining permanently with me." she had expected him to storm upon hearing the news in full. judd, however, was an individual who owed a considerable part of his immense success as a man of affairs to his studied and carefully-elaborated habit of never doing the obvious. he leaned back in the car and half-screened his turkey-like eyes with their small, veinous lids. mrs. treharne, surprised at his silence, went on hastily: "i am wretchedly disturbed over it. i know that i have no fit home to offer her. i know that i have completely undermined her chance in life. but what can i do? she can't live alone. and she merely brings the difficulty to a head by coming now. she must come home some time, of course. the child has not spent her holidays or her summer vacations with me for four years. always she has been pushed about among school friends, who, glad as they and their people may have been to have her, surely must have wondered why she did not come home." judd fluttered his eyelids and leaned forward in his seat. "i understand perfectly, of course," he said with a sort of leer. "i understand, you understand, we understand, they understand, everybody understands. then what are you making such a devil of a rumpus about it for?" "well," said mrs. treharne, making the mistake, in dealing with judd, of falling into a slightly apologetic tone, "i thought that perhaps you might----" "wait a minute, antoinette," interrupted judd with suave brutality, leaning back again among the cushions and once more half-closing his eyes. "it doesn't matter a damn what i think. i can stand it if you can. she isn't my daughter, you know. she's your daughter. i suppose she has been taught to mind her own business? very well. i can stand the situation if you can." the slur cut like a rattan, as judd, perceiving a rare advantage, thoroughly intended that it should. he made it worse by patting her hands as he spoke. she hated him with an almost virtuous intensity as he uttered the sneer. but she said no more about her daughter's impending arrival during the remainder of the ride. chapter ii the chair car was well filled when louise somewhat misty-eyed from parting with the doleful group of school intimates who convoyed her to the little station, walked down the aisle just as the train began to move. not in the least sorry because she was finally leaving school, she was affected by the glumness of the girls who had insisted upon bidding her goodbye at the train; but she had not actually wept at any stage of the parting. perhaps the tear-reddened eyes and noses of her school friends had slightly touched her risibles; for her by no means latent sense of humor invariably struggled to the surface when she found herself figuring in anything of the nature of a "scene." she was not lacking in what the iron-jowled dowagers call "becoming sensibilities;" but she was habitually self-contained, and tears were unusual with her. nevertheless, she found difficulty in properly discerning objects, even at close range, as she searched for her place; and it was due to her filmed vision that she took a chair that did not correspond to the number on her pullman ticket. women as well as men pivoted about in their chairs for a second glance at louise. her unusual height was emphasized by the loose-fitting fur-lined cloth coat which fell straight from her shoulders to her skirt's hem. when she removed the coat her simple one-piece gown of blue cloth caused cogitating men in surrounding chairs to marvel as to how she had ever contrived to get into it, and, worse, how she would possibly manage to get out of it. the guimpe of the dress was of a creamy embroidery that dissolved bafflingly into the whiteness of her neck. louise might have reminded an imaginative traveler, had there been such in the car, of a freshly-blown, firm-petalled chrysanthemum. there are women in whom you first discern an utter, convincing wholesomeness; later you become aware of their beauty. their wholesomeness, you think upon your first comprehensive glance, is like that of an early vernal breeze, of dew upon clean grass; then the contributing elements of their beauty emerge upon your consciousness as through a succession of lifted veils. louise treharne was of this type. unusually tall, she had none of the raw-boned angularities of the over-trained young woman who makes a fad of gymnasium or out-of-doors activities and who thoughtlessly sacrifices the beauty of contour on the profitless altar of over-athleticism. slender, yet well rounded, the fine amplitude of her proportions caused her to look several years older than her age. her face contributed to this effect. it was a face such as the imaginary imaginative traveller might vaguely have associated with the faces of women stamped upon roman coins. there is a sort of creamy, vivid pallor that, equally with ruddiness, denotes perfect health and vigor. this was louise's; and the uncommon regularity of her features was tempered and softened by varying phases of expression that spoke of an habitual serenity and a searching common sense. her hair, of the darkest shade of lustrous auburn, waved back loosely and often a bit rebelliously to the great knotted coil in which it was caught at the back of her finely-lathed head. her eyes, the corners of which had an almost indistinguishable slant that only became agreeably noticeable when she smiled, were wide and full, and of so dark a brown that, at night or in shadowed rooms, they were often supposed to be black. she had barely settled herself, chin in palm, to gaze out of the window at the blurred landscape of ice-crusted snow, before she became somewhat confusedly conscious of a loomful figure standing patiently in the aisle beside her. when she suddenly turned her head and surveyed him with calm, questioning eyes, he pulled off his cap of plaid a bit awkwardly and smiled. she mentally observed that his mouth was a trifle over-large; but his smile, for all of that, she thought, was the smile of a man. with the woman's mystifying ability mentally to absorb innumerable details at a mere glance, she noticed (without in the least seeming to notice) that he was of unusual stature and of the type called by women, in their between-themselves appraisals, "delightfully scrubbed-looking;" that he was perhaps a little above thirty; that he had a closely-shaven rugged jaw and somewhat jutting chin, huge, well-cared-for hands, rather closely-cropped brown hair slightly greying at the sides, candid grey eyes with tiny lines of humor and experience running away from their corners. she noticed, too, that he was not wearing gloves, which was satisfying. all of the other men in the over-warm car were wearing their heavy cold-weather gloves, and she was slightly contemptuous of this as an unmasculine affectation. finally, in the same single glance, she perceived his visible embarrassment.... "pray don't disturb yourself," he said, fumbling his cap with both hands. ("why don't all men talk basso?" thought louise.) "i can reach it without your moving at all, if you will permit me. my bag, you know. there are some papers in it that i want to go over, and----" he stopped dead and looked quite wretched when louise came to her feet. "i am in your chair," she said, as he stooped to pick up a bag that, she now noticed for the first time, was wedged by the seat she had unwittingly taken. she was about to remove her coat to the back of the chair in front--her rightful place, as she quickly remembered when she saw the number on the panel--when he put out a determinedly detaining hand. "don't make me feel such a disgraceful nuisance, i beg of you," he said with an earnestness that was out of keeping with his twinkling eyes. "one chair is as good as another--better, in fact, when one already has possession of it. this bag is my only gear. you'll keep the seat, won't you? that's immensely kind of you," as louise resumed the chair. "i wouldn't have had you move for----" "of course," she interrupted him with a quietly frank laugh, "i hadn't the slightest intention of moving. it is more than good of you to suppose that i meant to be so agreeable." "that," he pronounced, again with his liberal smile, "is probably a neat, quickly-conceived way of letting me down easily, for which i am nevertheless grateful;" and, bowing, he took the chair in front of her, dug into his bag and quickly became immersed in a batch of formidable looking documents. louise, again leaning back in her chair, decided that the rear of his head was decidedly shapely. the excessive warmth of the car was making her sleepy, and she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to dozing reflections. she was dubious as to the reception her mother would give her. she had not heard from her mother since writing the letter in which she had calmly announced, as something settled and therefore not open to debate, that she was through with school and would not return to miss mayhew's after the holidays. laura had been only partly right as to louise's reason for quitting school. louise, it was true, was glad enough to escape the nightmare of "commencement exercises" by leaving half a year in advance of her graduation. but she had a far deeper reason for quitting the school without consultation with her mother. she wanted to be at home; any sort of a home. she had no very pleasurable recollections of the places--there had been many of them, and they had not been homes--in which she had lived with her mother before being sent to the finishing school in central new york. her young girlhood had been a period of aimless drifting, at seashore and mountain resorts in summer, and in tiny but by no means snug apartments in new york in the winter; her mother's restlessness and her frequently expressed dislike of "smug domesticity" had combined against her ever establishing anything even approximating a genuine home for herself and her daughter. louise only vaguely remembered her father; the separation, followed by a divorce, had taken place when she was only nine years old. at fifteen she had been trundled off to the up-state finishing school; and the school had been the only home she had known for close upon four years. her mother had visited her twice a year, taking her to the seaside for a week or so during the summer vacation and to lakewood for a brief stay during the holidays. her mother had always been provided with some sort of an excuse for not taking louise to her home--louise knew that she must have some sort of a home--in new york. the place was being overhauled, guests had unexpectedly swooped upon her, she was about to start upon a journey; louise had listened, mystified, so often to these reasons her mother gave for not having her daughter with her in the city at times when nearly all the other girls were leaving the school for home visits that she at length came to believe that her mother was treating her with somewhat humiliating disingenuousness. this feeling, however, aroused less resentment in the girl than it did a feeling of distress; she could not avoid, as she grew older, the conviction that she was being neglected. the feeling became intensified when, year after year, she was shunted, as she considered, on visits to the homes of her schoolgirl friends. it was natural enough, when she observed how cherished the other girls were in their homes, how the arms of strong affection constantly were thrown around them, that she should compare her own thrust-aside state with theirs and that she should develop the intense longing of a normal, affectionate young woman for similar love and protection. she had no sense of resentment against her mother; it was rather a feeling of regret that the curious aloofness between them, which she had no possible way of understanding, had ever risen. she hoped that perhaps, after all, her mother might really need her as sorely as she felt that she herself needed a mother and a home. she was returning to her mother with an open mind; no longer a child to be shunted and evaded, but a woman to be treated with frankness. there were some points in connection with her mother's affairs that she did not understand but as to which she had no undue curiosity. but she was intensely glad to be at least on her way home--on her way to her mother, at any rate--for good and all; and she formed plans for drawing nearer to her mother, wistfully hoping that the plans would have the fruition she longed for. louise's reflections gradually, with the purring movement of the train, became merged into dreams. she awoke with a start when the train came to a grinding stop at a station. she began cutting the pages of a magazine when, glancing up, she saw the man with whom she had held the little colloquy a while before striding down the aisle of the car. in his hand was an unopened telegram. she noticed that he was looking at her as he approached her seat, and that he was knitting his brow in a puzzled, serious sort of way. he stopped when he came to her chair and held out the telegram. "the boy paged the dining car, where i happened to be," he said to her, "and, thinking that you might still be asleep, i took the liberty of signing for your telegram." the telegram was addressed to "miss louise treharne." it was from one of louise's girl friends at the school, telling her that a piece of hand-baggage that louise had absent-mindedly left at the station was being forwarded. louise scarcely glanced at the contents of the telegram, so great was her astonishment over its method of reaching her. "you grant, of course, that i have reason to be puzzled," she said to him, unconstrainedly but entirely in earnest. she noticed that he was far from being unconstrained, and that a certain seriousness sat upon his strong features which she had not before observed. "it is plain that you knew this telegram was for me." "otherwise, of course," he replied, a little huskily, "i should not have presumed to sign for it. i should not have signed for it in any case had i not supposed you to be asleep. i feared, you see, that you might miss it." "but you do not in the least appease my curiosity," said louise, smiling somewhat nervously. "if you knew me--as it seems of course you do--i cannot understand why you did not reveal yourself when we had our little conversation a while ago." "but i did not know--i should say i did not recall you then," he said, plainly flustered. "you only add to the mystery," said louise. "you will enlighten me, of course?" he whirled his chair about so that, sitting back on the arm of it, he could face her. "it is simple enough," he explained, with a hesitancy which louise did not fail to note. "when the lad with the telegram came through the dining car, calling out your name, i could not fail, with that startling reminder, to remember----" he broke off as if reluctant to proceed. "yes?" put in louise, a bit proddingly. "well, i could not fail to remember your father's daughter," he said in a low tone, obviously striving to regain some ease of manner. "you know my father?" said louise, her sense of the mystery of it all increasing rather than abating. "yes," he replied, still struggling, as louise could see, to conquer a trouble that was visible on his features. "i am your father's attorney. i know your mother quite well, too. but this is the first time i have seen you since you were a little girl in pigtails and highly-starched skirts." he strove to make his laugh sound natural and easy, but it was a failure. some worry, as to the nature of which louise could of course not even guess, was in his voice as well as on his face. louise impulsively held out her hand. "the mystery is cleared," she said, brightly, "and it is delightful to meet so old a friend, no matter how oddly. won't you sit down and tell me all about my father and my mother and myself and yourself and--and everybody? or is it permissible for one to cross-examine so solemn and cautious a person as an attorney?" he sat down in the chair facing hers and studied, constrainedly, the pattern of the cap which he held out before him. then he glanced at his watch. "i am leaving the train at peekskill," he said, "so there is not much time. you are to be home for the holidays?" "for the holidays and for all time," she replied with a certain eagerness. "you have visited my mother's home? because, you know, i never have." she had not meant to say that so baldly, and she was sorry for the slip as soon as the words were out. "it is on riverside drive. therefore it must be lovely; the view, at any rate. it is lovely, isn't it?" he deliberately evaded the question. "you are not returning to school at all?" he pointedly counter-questioned her instead. "does your mother know this? i hope i don't seem inquisitive. but i am really interested in knowing." "you trap me into a confession," replied louise, smiling. "i simply announced to my mother that i was through with school, and here i am on my way home. i am hoping that she will not be excessively angry with me. do you think she will be?" louise was finding him decidedly difficult, in spite of her efforts to put him at his ease. he became so immersed in cogitations which louise could see were of the troubled sort that he seemed scarcely to listen to what she was saying. "you have not answered my question, you know, mr.--mr.--you see i do not even know your name," said louise, after a pause, pretending to be aggrieved. "oh, pardon the rudeness, won't you?" he said, hastily. "blythe is my name--john blythe. and forgive me for not having caught your question, miss treharne. you don't mind asking it again?" "oh, it doesn't matter," said louise, appeased, but still curious as to the cause of the perturbation he had exhibited ever since he had brought her the telegram, and which had become more pronounced since she had told him that she was on her way to her mother's home to remain there. she had not failed to notice his quite manifest unwillingness to speak of her mother. not of a prying nature, she concluded, without framing the thought in words, that, if he had a reason for that unwillingness, it was decidedly his privilege to keep the reason to himself. but her curiosity as to her father was not so easily repressed. she had not heard him spoken of--her mother forbade the subject--for many years, nor had he ever communicated with her directly; but her childish recollections of him were very sweet. she could not resist the temptation to speak of him to this newly-revealed friend. why should she not, she thought, since he seemed to be so well acquainted with her parents--and was her father's attorney besides? "mr. blythe," she found herself saying in a tone of unusual hesitation for her, a young woman of perfect frankness, "i feel that i may ask you about my father, seeing that you know--well, everything concerning him and my mother and--myself. it has been so many, many years since i have even heard him mentioned. where is he? when did you see him last?" "he lives in hawaii, miss treharne--i saw him in honolulu a few years ago," replied blythe, promptly enough. louise pondered. there was nothing specific she wanted to ask about her father. but she considered that blythe had not told her very much. "is he--well, nice?" she asked him. blythe, disturbed as he was, could not help but smile at the naïve question. but he sobered before he replied. "he is almost, if not quite, the finest man i ever knew," he said. "i hope to be allowed to tell you all about him some time. i shall be writing to him presently. tut! here is peekskill. i am dropping off here for a few hours," and he thrust his arms into his overcoat. "you will send my love to my father in your letter?" said louise, her eyes slightly filmed, touching him upon the sleeve. he looked gravely down upon her; her words touched him keenly. "i am glad you have asked me to do that, miss treharne," he said. "and he will be more than glad--depend upon that. goodbye--not for very long, i hope. i am overjoyed to have come upon you again--especially at this time," and he took her two hands in his huge palms for an instant and was gone. "'especially at this time'--i wonder what he meant by that?" thought louise. he waved at her as he passed beneath her car window. she was conscious that his smile in doing so was slightly forced; an instant before he caught sight of her through the window she had noticed that his face was clouded with worry. * * * * * an hour later louise was weaving her way through the rushing, holiday-chattering crowd toward the exit gate at the grand central station. peering toward the gate, and able, with her unusual height, to see over the heads of the hurrying women and most of the men, she espied her mother, looking somewhat petitely stodgy beside the stately laura, gazing rather wearily through the iron lattice. "i think i see myself being sent to bed without any supper," whimsically thought louise, considering, as she drew nearer, her mother's bored expression. louise was glad laura was with her mother; when a mere growing girl she had become gratefully familiar with laura's self-styled "ameliorating knack." she had become very fond of her mother's handsome, superbly-capricious but sunny-natured friend before being packed off to school; and now her eyes became slightly blurred at the thought that laura had remembered her and had thought enough of her to be with her mother at her home-coming. "here is our blossomy, bronze-haired boadicea!" louise heard laura say as she was taken into the older woman's arms and heartily kissed. then laura thrust her away with assumed annoyance. "but, minx, you are taller than i am; a full inch, maybe two, taller! how do you ever expect me to forgive you that, child?" and she smiled, drawing louise toward her again, and hugged her once more. louise's mother brushed the girl's cheek with her lips, her daughter bending toward her. "you _are_ grotesquely tall, aren't you, dear?" said mrs. treharne, not very good-naturedly. her petulance over louise's return was by no means allayed; and her masseuse had told her that evening that she had gained two pounds in a week! "you will have to get clothes that will reduce your shocking stature." then, swept by a momentary compunction, "you are well, dear? you are looking excessively well." louise was not hurt by the tone of her mother's greeting. she was well acquainted with her parent's irritableness, and even more familiar with her indurated indifference. the main thing was that she was back with her mother, and with a chance to strive for a better understanding. "but aren't you a mite thinner, mother?" louise asked, thoroughly meaning it; for there wasn't an ounce of sycophancy in louise's make-up, and she noticed her mother's hollowness of eye and generally distraught air and so concluded that she was losing in weight. mrs. treharne flared instantly. "you are not to make game of me, my dear, whatever else you do," she said, icily, to her astonished daughter. laura laughed outright and caught louise's arm in her own as they started through the station. "don't be absurd, antoinette--the dear is not making game of you, as you call it," said laura. "you know she is incapable of that." "but i am all at sea," said louise, still mystified over her mother's inexplicable outbreak. "what is it? what did i say that was wrong?" her mother looked at her and saw that the girl was wholly innocent of the sarcasm she had hastily attributed to her. "you know very well, louise," she said, in a tone meant to be appeasing, "that i am hideously, scandalously, shockingly fat; and you cannot expect me to be cheerful when you begin to taunt me with it before you have had more than one glance at me." "but you are anything but stout, mother dear, and i really meant what i said," put in louise. "why, it perfectly stuns me to think you could suppose that i----" "tut-tut--can't we find something more engaging to talk about than what the weighing scales do or do not tell us?" broke in laura, gaily. "antoinette, dear, won't you see if you can attract that taxicab man's attention?" when mrs. treharne walked over to the curb to summon the chauffeur of the taxicab laura seized the moment to say to louise in a low tone. "some things have occurred to disturb your mother, dear; so don't mind if she seems a bit _difficile_ tonight, will you? she is a little annoyed over your intention not to return to the school; but i shall help you out there. i am going home with you now for a little while. you'll depend upon your old friend laura?" louise, watching her mother, furtively pressed laura's hand. "you know how i always loved you as a little girl?" she said simply. laura's eyes became suddenly suffused with tears. she knew the girl's need of affection; and she vowed in her heart, then and there, crowding back the tears when she saw mrs. treharne beckoning to them, that she would stand in the place of the girl's mother if the time ever came--and she more than dimly apprehended that come it would--when such a thing need be. laura forced the conversation and strove to give to it a note of gayety as the taxicab sped through the icy streets. once, in addressing her, louise called her "mrs. stedham." instantly laura assumed a mighty pretence of annoyed hostility. "mrs. hoity-toity, child," she said, severely, to louise. "you are not supposing, i hope, that i shall permit a woman a full two inches taller than i am to call me any such an outlandish name as 'mrs. stedham'? great heaven, am i not old enough as it is? i am laura to you, dear; flatter me at least, by making me believe that you consider me young enough to be called by my christened name; the aged have so few compensations, you know," and louise, not without initial difficulty, however--for laura had always been a woman to her--called her laura thenceforth and was pleased to imagine that the elder woman was her "big, grown-up" sister. on the ride to the riverside drive house louise, suddenly remembering, mentioned blythe. she described the incident through which he had made himself known to her, but forbore, out of a certain diffidence which she always felt in her mother's presence, saying anything about blythe's allusions to her father. she omitted that part altogether. "how extraordinary!" commented laura. "but john blythe's practice is always sending him prowling about the country on trains. everybody who knows about such things tells me what an enormously important personage he is becoming in the dry-as-dust legal world. i am sure he does astonishingly well with my hideously complicated affairs--you know he is my legal man, louise. isn't it odd that you should have met him in such a way? didn't you find him rather--well, _distingué_, we'll say, louise?" "i thought him very fine and----" louise strove for a word haltingly. "and with an air about him--of course you did, my dear; everybody does," laura aided her. "if he wasn't such a perfectly wrong-headed, wrapped-up-in-the-law sort of a person he would have fallen in love with me long ago, even if i am old enough to be his grandmother; he is thirty-two, i believe, and i am bordering upon thirty-six; but he barely notices me in that way," with an acute emphasis on the "that," "though we are no end of first-rate friends; pals, i was going to say; for i've known him ever since----" laura came to a sudden stop. she had been upon the brink of saying "ever since blythe had helped her to get her divorce from rodney stedham;" but she recollected in time that that was not exactly the sort of a chronological milestone that should be reverted to in the presence of a girl just that day out of school. "louise, did you tell mr. blythe that you were to remain with me--permanently?" asked mrs. treharne, constrainedly, suddenly joining in the conversation. louise reflected a moment before replying. "why, yes, mother, i did; he asked me about it, i recall now," she said. "did he have any comment to make?" asked her mother in a reduced tone. "why, no, dear," said louise. "in fact, he appeared to be considerably worried about something, and so----" louise felt herself being furtively prodded by laura, and she left off suddenly. opportunely, the taxicab drew up in front of an ornate house on the drive. "do you live here, mother?" louise inquired, innocently. "i wonder how i managed to form the impression that you were living in an apartment?" mrs. treharne pretended not to have heard her. the door was silently opened by a man in livery. laura was watching louise keenly as the girl's eyes took in the splendor of the foyer and hall. the magnificence was of a pittsburgesque sort, in which beauty is sacrificed to a mere overwhelming extravagance; but, for its extravagance alone, not less than for its astonishing ornateness, it had a sort of impressiveness. "why, how dazzling!" louise could not refrain from commenting. "how delightfully different from what i expected! i am so glad that i am home--home!" she lingered lovingly upon the word. it was a difficult moment for laura. but she was prepared for it. in addition to the "ameliorating knack" she had a way of being ready for contingencies. "antoinette," she said, mainly to stop louise, "i have one of my headaches coming on. can't we have some tea in your rooms?" "i was just about to suggest that," said mrs. treharne, drily, and presently the three women were in her sumptuous sitting room, overlooking the twinkling lights of the hudson. a butler spread the cloth and brought a fowl and salad and jams, while louise roamed about exclaiming over the beauty of the rooms, and laura fought desperately against her inclination to brood. laura contributed whatever of merriness there was to the home-coming feast. mrs. treharne confined herself to occasional questions directed at louise, and the girl saw that her mother was tired and out of sorts; she remembered what laura had told her at the station of her mother's state of mind "over matters," and she made the allowances that she had been accustomed to make for her mother since her earliest years. the three women were still at the table, beginning to make allusions to bed--laura had summoned her car by 'phone, for it was close upon eleven--when a great-girthed man, in a sealskin coat that fell almost to his heels, an opera hat set rakishly on one side of his bald head, and his turkey-like eyes still more reddened with the libations that his lurching gait made still more obvious, lumbered into the room without the least attempt at knocking on the door. "hay-o, folks--having a little party?" said judd, lurching toward the table. "am i in on it?" and he plumped himself drunkenly into a chair. laura rose at the first sight of him. mrs. treharne kept her seat but gazed at him vitriolically. louise looked at him quietly enough. she was intensely mystified, but quite willing to wait for any information as to the intrusion. no information, however, was forthcoming. "your mother will show you to your room, dear," said laura, placing an arm around louise's waist and guiding her to the door. under her breath she said: "no questions, dear heart. he is an--an adviser of your mother. we are going to be great cronies, are we not?" she kissed louise and went. her mother conducted louise to a sleeping room done in white and silver, and kissed the girl good night with a sort of belated rush of affection. but she said nothing to her in explanation of judd. toward midnight john blythe, after striding up and down his solitary bachelor apartment for two hours in lounging robe and slippers, went to the telephone in his study and called up laura. "is that you, laura?" he said, quietly, into the transmitter when she answered the call. "what time tomorrow forenoon will you be fit to be seen?" "by noon," laura's voice came back to him quietly. "i know what you want to see me about, john." "do you? i doubt that." "it is about louise treharne." "i'll be there by noon. goodnight." "goodnight." chapter iii heloise's intentional noisiness in rearranging the toilet articles on the dressing table aroused louise. the brilliant sunlight of a sparkling winter morning was pouring into the room. half-awake and the brightness of the room filtering through her still-closed eyelids, she was obsessed for an instant with the fear that, over-sleeping, she was late for the exercises attending the beginning of a day at miss mayhew's school. she smiled at the thought, in spite of a brooding, indefinable trouble that had burdened her sleep, when, with wide eyes, she quickly sensed the lavishness of the room and saw the invincibly trig heloise moving about. "mademoiselle is awake at last?" said heloise in french, a trace of irritation in her tone. "one considered that mademoiselle contemplated sleeping until the end of time." louise disarmed her with a laugh. "perhaps i should have," she said, lightly, but on her guard with her french in the presence of so meticulous a critic, "had i not just this moment dreamt of coffee. am i too late for breakfast?" of course mademoiselle should have her coffee instantly, said the appeased heloise, ringing. the maid mentally pronounced that louise's finishing-school french was almost intelligible to one understanding that language. mrs. treharne had sent heloise to look after louise until a maid should be obtained for her. louise, sitting up in bed, her fresh, clear-colored face aureoled by her agreeably awry mass of bronzed hair, the nocturnal braids of which she already had begun to unplait, laughed again at the thought of being attended by a maid. "i shall have to be trained for that," she said to the mollified heloise. "i never had a maid. i doubt if i should know how to behave with a maid doing my hair. i think i should find myself tempted to do the maid's instead; especially if her hair were as pretty as yours." heloise was louise's sworn, voluble, tooth-and-nail, right-or-wrong, everlasting friend from that moment. she 'phoned to the butler, demanding to know why mademoiselle's coffee had not been sent, although she had only called for it three minutes before, and she buzzed about the tractable louise, arranging her hair with expert fingers, cheerful and chirpful, nothing whatever like the austere, croaking heloise who scowled so threateningly over the slightest unruliness of her actual mistress. heloise was prepared to give an enthusiastic recommendation of louise to the maid who should be engaged to attend her mistress's daughter. and she began already to be envious of louise's unobtained maid. when heloise had finished with her louise, inspecting herself in the glass with frank approval, decided that never before had she looked so astonishingly well at that hour of the morning. but, when the garrulous maid had gone, louise, sipping her coffee, sat in the streaming sunlight of the bowed window, watching the sparkling ice floes drift down the bleak hudson, and the trouble that had weighted her sleep returned upon her, slowly taking shape with her consciousness. she had been too tired the night before to engage in much reflection, before losing herself in sleep, upon the incidents--one incident particularly--of the previous night. now she was face to face with the gravamen of her depression, with an alert morning mind to sift over its elements. it was characteristic of her that she did not seek to thrust aside her consciousness of conditions which she imperfectly understood. she understood them, however, sufficiently to grasp at least the essentials of the situation. louise, whose native shrewdness was tempered by an innate and unconquerable tendency to look upon the bright side of the world and of such of the world's people as she came into contact with, was far better acquainted with her mother than her mother was with her; which was natural enough, considering that she had the receptive mind of youth, and that her mother's major trait was a sort of all-inclusive indifference. many things in connection with her mother's manner of life, her almost hysterical love of admiration, her restlessness and her habitual secretiveness with louise during the girl's early girlhood years, had become all too plain to the daughter as she developed into womanhood at the finishing school. perhaps it may be added that a twentieth century finishing school for young women commonly is an institution wherein all of the pupils' deductions are not made from their text books nor from the eminently safe premises laid down by their instructors. the young woman who has spent four years at such a school does not step through a nimbus of juvenile dreams when she enters into the world that is waiting for her. it is true that, when she takes her place in the uncloistered world, she has a great deal to unlearn; but this is balanced by the indubitable fact she has not very much to learn. those who expect her to be utterly surprised over the departures that she sees from the rules of the social game are merely wasting their surprise. it is mere futility to suppose that several hundreds of young women of the highly intelligent and eager type who attend exclusive schools of the so-termed finishing kind, thrust constantly upon each other for companionship and the comparison of notes, are going to occupy all of their leisure in discussing the return of halley's comet, or the profounder meaning of wagner, or even the relative starchiness of their hair ribbons. louise, participating in the whispered precocities of the school, had often caught herself on the defensive in her mother's behalf. to seek to brush away imputations that seemed to fit her mother's personality and way of life had become almost a habit with her. the habit, however, was availing her little on this her first morning after leaving school in her mother's sumptuous home--"that is, if it is mother's home." she flushed when she found herself saying that. but the doubt propelled itself through her consciousness, and she resolutely refused to expel it, once it had found lodgment in her mind, merely because it caused her cheeks to burn. her mother's favorite word, in contemptuously denominating people who lived in accordance with convention, was "smug;" mrs. treharne considered that she had pilloried, for the world's derision, persons to whom she had adverted as "smug." of the smugness of the kind mrs. treharne meant when she employed the word, there was not an atom in louise's composition. her nature, her upbringing, were opposed to the thought of a narrow, restrained, buckram social rule. but here was a situation--the investiture of almost garish splendor in which she found her mother living, considered in connection with subconscious doubts as to certain quite visible flaws in her mother's character which had been forming themselves in the girl's mind for years--here, indeed, was a situation with respect to which louise's unquietude had no need of being based upon mere smugness. the girl knew quite well that, up to the time of her going away to school at any rate, her mother's income had been a limited one--some three thousand a year voluntarily contributed by the father for his daughter's support and education. it had not been, in fact, her mother's income at all, but louise's; and it had been voluntarily contributed by the father because, as he had been the plaintiff in the divorce suit, the decree had not required him to aid his detached wife or his daughter at all; the court had given him the custody of the child, and he had surrendered that custody to the mother out of sheer pity for her. how, then, had her mother provided herself, on an income which, with a daughter to educate, called for frugality, if not positive scrimping, with such a sheerly extravagant setting? and judd! louise flushed again when she remembered judd. she did not know his name. she had never seen or even heard of him before. she only remembered him--and the thought caused her to draw her negligée more closely about her, for she experienced a sudden chill--as the girthy, red-eyed individual who, with the proprietary arrogance of an intoxicated man who seemed perfectly to know his position under that roof, had lurched into her mother's apartments on the previous night without the least attempt at announcing himself. how would her mother explain these things? would she, indeed, explain to her daughter at all? in any case, louise formed the resolve not to question her mother. she possessed, what is unusual in woman, an instinctive appreciation of the rights of others, even when such rights are perversely altered to wrongs. she considered that her mother's affairs were her own, in so far as they did not involve herself, louise treharne, in any tacit copartnership; and as to this point she purposed ascertaining, before very long, to just what extent she had become or was expected to become involved. for the rest, she was conscious of a distinct sympathy for and a yearning toward her mother. in her reflections she gave her mother the benefit of every mitigating circumstance. turning from the window, louise saw her mother standing before the dresser glass studying her haggard morning face, now lacking all of the sorely-required aids to the merely pretty regularity of her features, with a head-shaking lugubriousness that might have had its comic appeal to an unconcerned onlooker. louise, however, was scarcely in a mood of mirth. "i knocked, my dear, but you were too much absorbed," said mrs. treharne, offering her daughter her cheek. "you were in a veritable trance. did you get enough sleep, child? was heloise in a scolding humor? she makes my life a misery to me with her tongue. what beautiful hair you have! and what a perfect skin! a powder puff would mar that wonderful pallor. yet you are not too white. it becomes you, with your hair. appreciate these things while you have them, dear; look at your mother, a hag, a witch, at thirty-nine! but, then, you will keep your looks longer than i; you pattern after the women of your----" she came perilously close to saying "your father's family," but adroitly turned the phrase when she caught herself in time. louise, putting on a cheerful mask, replied to her mother's trivialities and devised some of her own. her mother had not lost her banting-killed bloom when louise had last seen her at such an hour in the morning; and the girl was inwardly pained to note how all but the mere vestiges of her remembered prettiness had disappeared. mrs. treharne caught her looking at her with a certain scrutinizing reflectiveness, and she broke out petulantly: "don't pick me apart with your eyes in that way, louise! i know that i am hideous, but for heaven's sake don't remind me of it with your criticizing, transfixing gazes!" she was of the increasing type of women who, long after they have the natural right to expect adulation on account of their looks, still hate to surrender. louise quickly perceived this and provided unguents for her mother's sensitiveness. they chatted upon little matters, mrs. treharne so ill at ease (yet striving to hide her restlessness) that she found it impossible to sit still for more than a minute; she fluttered incessantly about the room, her wonderful negligée of embroidered turquoise sailing after her like the outspread wings of a moth. after many pantheress-like rounds of the room, during which louise somehow felt her old diffidence in her mother's presence returning upon her, mrs. treharne, after her evident casting about for an opening, stopped before louise and pinched her cheek between dry fingers. "at any rate, my dear," she said with a trace of her old amiability and animation, "you are not a frump or a bluestocking! there was a time when i had two fears: that you would not grow up pretty and that you would become bookish. and here i find myself towered over by a young princess, and you don't talk in the least like a girl with crazy notions of keeping up her inane school studies." then, after a slight pause: "are you religious, my dear, or--er--well, broad-minded?" louise smothered her mounting laugh, for fear of offending her mother in her mood of amiability; but her smile was eloquent enough. "is there any incompatibility between those two states of mind, mother?" she asked. "don't dissect my words, child; you quite understand what i mean," said the mother, with a slight reversion to peevishness. "your father, you know, was--no doubt still is--shockingly narrow; he hadn't the slightest conception of the broad, big view; he belonged in this respect, i think, in the middle ages; and i have been tortured by the fear that you might--might--" she hesitated. she had not meant to mention louise's father, much less to speak of him even in mild derogation; and she suddenly recalled how, years before, there had been a tacit agreement between them that louise's father was not to be mentioned. the agreement had been entered into after an occasion when louise, then a child of eleven, with the memory of her vanished father still very keen in her mind, had rushed from the room, in blinding tears, upon hearing her mother speak of him in terms of dispraise. "i did not have much time at school for self-analysis, mother," said louise, coming to her mother's aid. "i suppose i am normal and neutral enough. i am not conscious of any particular leaning." she flushed, swept by a sudden sense of the difficulty, the incongruity, of such a conversation with her mother amid such surroundings. "mother," she resumed, hastily, "i am so keen to see new york again that i am hardly capable of thinking of anything else just now. are we to go out?" "the car is yours when you wish it, louise," said mrs. treharne, absently. "i rarely go out until late in the afternoon." "the car?" said louise. "you have a car, then?" her mother glanced at her sharply. it was sufficiently obvious that she was on the lookout for symptoms of inquisitiveness on louise's part; though louise had not meant her question to be in the least inquisitive. "i have the use of a car," said mrs. treharne, a little frigidly. "it belongs to mr. judd." instinctively louise felt that "mr. judd" was the sealskinned falstaff whose unceremonious appearance the night before had startled her. but she remained silent. nothing could have induced her to ask her mother about mr. judd. her mother did not fail to notice her silence, which of course put her on the defensive. "mr. judd," she said, "is--a--" she hesitated painfully--"my business adviser. he has been very good and kind in making some investments in--in mining stocks for me; investments that have proved very profitable. he is alert in my interest. it was mr. judd, my dear, whom you saw last night. he was not quite himself, i fear, or he would not have made his appearance as he did. he has helped me so much that of course it would be ungrateful of me not to permit him the run of the place." she rambled on, as persons will who feel themselves to be on the defensive. "in fact, he--he--but of course, if you have formed a prejudice against him on account of last night, there will be no occasion for you to meet him except occasionally." louise caught the hollowness, the evasiveness, of the explanation. not one word of it had rung true. louise had never felt sorrier for her mother than she did at that moment. she noticed a certain hunted expression in her mother's face, and it cut her to the quick. she placed a long, finely-chiselled arm, from which the sleeve of the negligée had slipped back to the shoulder, around her mother's neck. "but i haven't the least use for a car, dearie," she said. it was not with deliberation that she ignored altogether what her mother had been saying as to judd; it was simply that she could not bring herself to offer any comment on that subject. "i am a walker; every day at miss mayhew's i did ten miles--even in rain and snow, and it is clouding for snow now, i think. you will not mind my going out for a long walk? i am wild for air and exercise." mrs. treharne was grateful to the girl for turning it off in that way even if, by so doing, louise indicated that she was of more than one mind with respect to what had been told her regarding judd. and mrs. treharne, careless and indifferent as she was, could not visualize her daughter in the gigantic yellow-bodied judd car without being swept by a feeling that was distinctly to her credit. * * * * * laura stedham, over her cocoa, was weaving with careless rapidity through her morning mail when john blythe arrived shortly before noon. laura's apartment overlooked the west side of the park. its dominant color scheme now was based upon a robin's egg blue; but there was a jest among laura's friends that they never had seen her apartment look the same on two visits running; they declared that every time laura left the city for as long a period as a fortnight, she left orders with her decorator to have her apartment completely done over so that even she herself quite failed to recognize it when she returned. blythe, throwing his snow-sprinkled stormcoat over the extended arm of laura's brisk maid, strolled over to a window and watched the still, unflurried flakes sift through the bare branches of the park trees. his hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his eyes were so unusually meditative that laura, used to his absorption as she was, laughed quietly as she turned from her escritoire. "yes, john, it is snowing," she said, thrusting away a heap of still-unopened letters. blythe turned to her with a twinkling look of inquiry. "i thought perhaps you might not have noticed it," chaffed laura, "seeing that you were looking right at it. you require an excessive amount of forgiveness from your friends. i believe you have not even seen me yet, although i've employed a good hour that i might have spent in bed in devising additional fascinations in anticipation of your coming." "meaning, for one thing, i suppose," said blythe with rather an absorbed smile, "that--that--" "don't you dare call it a kimono," interrupted laura. "it's a mandarin's coat--a part of the peking loot. of course you are crazy over it?" it was a magnificent pale blue, ermine-padded garment, with a dragon of heavy gold embroidery extending from nape to hem down the loose back. blythe studied it for a moment and then glanced significantly at the faint-blue walls and ceiling of the room. "i presume," he said, solemnly, "you had your rooms done this last time to match the mother hub--i mean the mandarin's coat?" they did not need thus to spar, for they were (what, unhappily, is so unusual between men and women in a world devoid of mid-paths) close friends; even comrades, in so far as blythe's hard work permitted him to assume his share of such a relationship; and they understood each other thoroughly, with no complication differing from a genuine mutual esteem to mar their understanding. nevertheless, both of them found it a trifle difficult to undertake the lead on the subject that was uppermost in their minds and the occasion of blythe's forenoon visit. laura with her customary helpfulness, finally gave him an opening. "she told us of having met you on the train," said laura, as if in continuation of a conversation already begun on the theme. "an odd chance, wasn't it? i wonder if you were so enormously struck with her as i was?" "you met her at the station, did you not?" said blythe, quietly. "that was like you; like your all-around fineness." "thanks," said laura, appreciatively. "but you evade my question. isn't she a perfect apparition of loveliness?" "i wish she were less so," said blythe, not convincingly. "no, you don't wish that," said laura. "i know what you wish; but it is not that." blythe was silent for a space and then he fell to striding up and down the room. "did you ever come upon such an unspeakable situation, laura?" he broke out, stopping to face her. "what is antoinette treharne thinking of? is she utterly lost to any sense of--" "i wouldn't say that, john," put in laura, holding up a staying hand. "it is natural enough, i know, for you to reach such a conclusion; on a cursory view the case seems to be against her; but you must remember that louise came home without warning. antoinette had no opportunity to devise a plan. she is horribly humiliated. i know that." "your usual method of defending everybody--and you know how i like you for that as for so many other things," said blythe. "but, laura, louise's mother knew that the girl must leave school in half a year at all events. she must have considered some way out of the hideous mess?" "none that she ever mentioned to me," said laura. "you know her habit of procrastination. i grazed the subject two or three times in talking with her. she dodged, or was downright brusque. she has no plan, i am sure. but she is sorely distressed over it all, now that the situation has come to a head. i am very sorry for her." "but the girl?" said blythe, a slight note of irritation in his tone. "how about her?" "i should be more worried if i were not so entirely confident that louise is amply competent to take care of herself," said laura. "she is no longer a girl, john. she is a woman, and a woman with more than her share of plain sense. her position, of course, is positively outrageous, heartrending. but i am at a loss to suggest a single thing that her friends--that you or i, or both of us--could do just now to better it." "that," said blythe, a little hoarsely, "is just the devil of it." "i should like to have louise with me," laura went on, "but i doubt if she would come, although i believe she is fond of me. not just yet, at any rate. she would not care to leave her mother after her long separation from her. louise will find out the situation herself. no doubt she already has sensed a part of its sinister aspect. i am horribly sorry for her. but, as i say, she is a woman of character. she will know what to do. all that we can do, for the present at any rate, is to be on guard for her, without seeming to be. of course she shall know that we are her friends. she already knows that i am her friend. did you, on the train--" "yes," put in blythe, apprehending what laura was going to ask. "i told her that i knew her father. the matter came about in an odd way. i wish, laura, that you'd make it clear to her, if you have the chance, that she--that i--" he halted embarrassedly. "i quite understand," laura aided him, smiling. "that you mean to be her friend, too--of course i shall tell her that," and laura looked reflective when she observed how blythe's face brightened. it soon clouded again, however, when he broke out: "she will find out, of course, sooner or later, that she has been taken care of and educated for the past five years and odd with judd's money," he said, worriedly. "you can imagine how intense her mortification will be over that discovery. judd, you know, in contempt of george treharne, forced mrs. treharne to return to me the quarterly checks that treharne sent me from hawaii for louise--for of course i sent the checks to antoinette. i explained this to treharne when i saw him in honolulu a few years ago. he was badly cut up over it but of course he was powerless to do anything about it. he refused to take the checks back, though, and directed me to deposit the money to louise's account. i have nearly fifteen thousand dollars--five years' accrued checks, for treharne has never stopped sending them--on deposit for louise now. don't you think she had better be told this?" "wait a while," advised laura. "wait until she discovers how the land lies. then she will be coming to you. if you told her now it would involve your telling her also that she had been educated with judd's money. i think it better that she discover that for herself--if she must discover it. then she will know what to do. she will be seeking you out then," and laura smiled inwardly when again she noted how blythe's face cleared at her last words. "there is only one thing to do, of course, and that is to follow your advice and let the matter stand as it is for the present," said blythe, preparing to go. "but the thing is going to sit pretty heavily upon me. i have been treharne's legal man ever since my senior partner died, as you know, and, although it isn't of course expected of me, i can't help but feel a certain responsibility for his daughter when she is thrust into such a miserable situation as this. i wonder," catching at a new and disturbing idea, "if her mother will expect louise to meet the wretched crew of near-poets, maybe-musicians and other rag-tag-and-bobtail that assemble at what antoinette calls her sunday evening 'salon?'" "antoinette's 'zoo,' i call it," laughed laura. "what if louise does meet them? they can't harm her. they, the unfortunate make-believes, will only appeal to her risibles, if i mistake not. louise must have got her sense of humor from her father. antoinette hasn't a particle of humor in her composition. if she had how long do you suppose she would continue her absurd 'salon?" laura, in extending her hand to blythe, who had resumed his stormcoat, gazed quizzically into his rugged face. "john," she said, "is your solicitude for louise solely on account of the--er--sense of responsibility you feel toward her father?" blythe caught the twinkle in her eyes. "humbug!" he ejaculated, striding out to the obligato of laura's laugh. * * * * * when they were settled in the car for their snowy ride that afternoon, mrs. treharne turned in her seat to face judd. "you will understand," she said in a tone quite as hard as it was meant to be, "that i am not wasting words. if you repeat your grossness of last night in my daughter's presence, our--our friendship is at an end. that is understood?" "now, now, shush, shush, tony," said the gargantuan judd, soothingly, and resorting to his habit of patting her hands, "not so severe, not so terrifically severe, you know. how did i know that your daughter would be there? didn't know the least thing about it--forgot, i mean, that she was coming. got a bit screwed at the club, and--" "i don't elect to listen to that sort of an explanation," interrupted mrs. treharne, with cold deliberation. "i am unutterably weary of your porcine manners. it is bad enough that i have permitted myself to endure them. you are not imbecile enough to suppose that my daughter is to endure them, too? you are to meet her only when it is absolutely necessary; be good enough to remember that. while she is with me--i don't now know how long that is to be--you are to curtail your visits; and if you come even once again in the sodden condition that you were in last night, i am done with you from that instant. i make myself plain, i hope?" "'pon honor, tony, you are horribly severe," blurted judd, whiningly. "you know very well that if you were to cut and run i'd blow my head off." he felt that he meant it, too; for judd was tremendously fond of the fading woman seated beside him, as he had been for years. he was blind to her departing prettiness; to him she was the one woman in the world--his prim, elderly wife, the mother of his family of grown children, being utterly negligible in his view; and mrs. treharne knew her complete power over him as well as she knew the lines of her face. "i wish," she said, with a cutting way of dwelling upon each word, "that you had blown your head off before ever i met you. i might then have been able to cling to at least the shreds of self-respect." judd had no reply to make to that, and they rode the rest of the way in silence. chapter iv by mid-january louise had completed her inventory of the situation. she faced her position without flinching and with no visible sign of the distress the gradually unfolding picture caused her, save a certain silent preoccupation from which laura vainly sought to rouse her by taking her on incessant rounds of the theatres, whisking her off on short up-state and long island motor tours, and providing other means of distraction and excitement. laura's heart ached for louise. her own girlhood had been clouded by trouble. orphaned at sixteen, an heiress with no disinterested advisors save those who were the legal guardians of her person and estate, she had yielded shortly after leaving school to a girlish infatuation and entered upon a surreptitious marriage with a man who, with his child-wife's large wealth at his disposal, had surrendered to one dissipation after another until, eventually becoming a drug fiend, he had, in his treatment of her, developed into such an utterly savage and irresponsible brute that she was compelled to divorce him, after which he had been put under permanent restraint. it had taken laura long years to recover her natural equipoise after her bitter disillusionment. louise's trouble, laura could not help apprehending, was even more grievous than her own had been, intensified as she knew it must be by the girl's carefully-screened feeling of humiliation. laura admired louise beyond words for her uncomplaining acceptance of her bitter bolus. "i never saw such pluck," she told john blythe time and again. "it is the pluck of a thoroughbred. i believe she thoroughly understands everything now, except that she is in judd's debt for her education. her loyalty to her mother is wonderful, beautiful; far greater than antoinette really deserves. i don't remember ever meeting a girl or woman whom i admired so much as i do louise treharne." laura could not fail to note how blythe's clear grey eyes would glisten when thus she praised the girl. "louise is like her father," he would say in reply to laura's enthusiasm. "you know what a fine, game man george treharne was and is. i'll never forget how generous he was in his treatment of me--and he tried to prevent me from knowing it, too--when, as a cub lawyer, i was first starting out on my own hook; and there wasn't the least reason in life why he should have been so decent to me, either. you remember how he never whimpered when antoinette dragged his--oh, well, no use in referring to that. but, when i first met the grown-up louise on the train--after i accidentally discovered her identity, i mean--i couldn't help but observe how her resemblance to her father--" "to whom," laura watched him with twinkling eyes, "your sense of responsibility is so great that--er--that--" whereupon blythe would flush hotly and proceed to shrivel laura with whatever in the way of polite invective occurred to him in his confusion. the thought of leaving her mother for the sake of extricating herself from a difficult and taxing situation never entered louise's mind. her mother, she felt, needed her. it was not, she considered, a problem for her interposition; she shrank from the thought of even mentioning it. she knew that it was an utterly impossible situation; she had a profound belief that it was not, from its very nature, destined to last; but she preferred that her mother should take the initiative in casting off the evil. she clearly saw how, from day to day, her mother was becoming increasingly conscious of the grave trouble she was heaping upon her daughter's young shoulders; she perceived how her mother, not inherently vicious, simply was in the bondage of an ingrained, luxury-loving selfishness, and that, having been cast out of the social realm in which she formerly had moved, she was now possessed by a sort of despair which, more than anything else, prevented her from making the attempt to extricate herself from the slough. louise, then, schooled herself to wait. it was a sort of waiting that drew heavily upon her natural store of equanimity. but she could see no other course, and hopefulness is the tandem mate of youth. "i have lived long enough," laura said to her one afternoon, when they were driving, during this trying period when louise was testing her adaptability to the utmost, "to have discovered that nothing matters very much except one's own peace of mind. if one have that, the rest is all a mirage. i don't mean the peace of mind that proceeds from a priggish sense of superiority to human weaknesses. that, i am pleased to say, is a sort of mental peace that i haven't yet experienced, and i hope i never shall. but when one's hands are just decently clean, and one at least has tried to shake off the shackles forged by one's own little meannesses, a sort of satisfying mental quiet ensues that is worth, i think, more than anything else one finds in life." "but one's worry for others?" quietly suggested louise, putting it in the form of a question. laura pressed the girl's hands between her own. "all of us, dear, must know the meaning of solicitude--often painful solicitude--for others at some period of our lives," she said, tenderly. "i know what you mean. you are carrying yourself nobly through a difficult ordeal. let that consciousness suffice. you will have the right to feel proud, in the coming time, to remember that you stood the test--as we are proud of you now." "'we?'" said louise, puzzling. "we," repeated laura, steadfastly. "i think you scarcely understand, dear, how profoundly interested--yes, and chivalrously interested, too--john blythe is in your--your problem." louise felt the blood rushing to her face. "does mr. blythe know?" she asked, her cheeks tingling. "how could he avoid knowing, dear?" rejoined laura, gently. "he is your father's lawyer. he is an occasional visitor at your--" she hesitated; "--visitor on riverside drive," she resumed. "and so of course he knows--everything. you may be glad of that, dear. there is no man in the world whose friendship i value more highly than that of john blythe. i think he would like to have you feel--i know, in fact, that he would--that he is interested in your--your concerns; that, indeed, in a way, he is standing guard for you." louise studied for a little while. "i should have understood, of course, that he knew," she said, hesitatingly. "but it did not occur to me. i am afraid that i should have been a little reluctant to meet him on those two or three occasions at your home if i had known that he--" she paused. "why, dear child, should you have such a feeling when a man of innate nobility, who knew you when you were a little girl----" "it is wrong, i know," put in louise, hastily. "but i find it so hard to regard him as--as just a lawyer, you know, laura. he is not like a lawyer at all--at least i have not found him so. he is----" laura pointed a teasing finger at her, which caused the color to reappear on louise's face. "don't try to tell me what he is, louise," said laura, smiling. "don't you suppose i know? but you don't know how intensely glad i am to hear that you can't regard mr. blythe as--as 'just a lawyer.' i shall tell him that you are going about criticizing his professional ability." "don't do that--please!" said louise in such an obvious panic that laura pinched her cheek reassuringly. the meetings with blythe to which louise referred were casual ones in laura's apartment. blythe was in the habit of dropping in occasionally for coffee--he abominated tea--and a chat at laura's tea hour in the late afternoon; and laura duly noted, not without slyly chaffing him over it, that he had made this an almost daily habit since his discovery that he stood a pretty fair gambling chance of finding louise there almost any afternoon. once, when laura and louise came in from a drive which had been prolonged rather later than usual, they entered the library quietly, to find blythe, looking decidedly glum, browsing among the books without the least seeming of being interested in any of them, for his hands were thrust deep into his pockets and they caught him yawning most deplorably. but at sight of the two women--one woman, laura said, accusingly, to him after louise had gone home in laura's car--he had brightened so suddenly and visibly that laura had to profess that her rippling laugh was occasioned by something she had seen during her drive. on these occasions laura had found it imperatively necessary to leave them together in order to confer with her servants. louise and blythe had talked easily on detached, somewhat light matters, finding an agreeable mutual plane without effort. louise, remembering his somewhat sober preoccupation on the train, had been surprised and pleased--though she could not have told why--to note his possession of a rather unusual social charm. she was pleased, too, that, except in the matter of a remarkable physique, he was not to be rated as a handsome man. his features were too rugged for that. strength, keenness and kindliness shone from his masterful countenance; but he was anything but handsome judged from the magazine-cover standard. louise had amused laura one day by saying that she found blythe's face "restful." she had not the least partiality for men of the generally-accepted straightout handsome type of features; she was, in truth, a little inclined to be contemptuous of an excessive facial pulchritude in men. but--again for a reason which she could scarcely have explained--she was glad that blythe was perhaps two inches more than six feet in height, that he was as straight as a lance, and that he found it necessary to walk sidewise in order to get his shoulders through some of laura's lesser doors. on her last meeting with blythe louise had asked him, with a certain hesitancy which he noticed, if he had written to her father. "yes," blythe had replied, simply, "and i sent him your love." he had not offered to become more communicative; and louise, concluding that his reticence on the subject might be based on a considerateness for her which it might be unfair for her to seek to fathom, did not mention the matter to him again. she had an oddly resolute confidence in him, considering how short the time had been since he had come into her life; and she felt that, if he now exhibited a taciturnity which puzzled her, it would be explained in due time. louise treharne belonged to that rare (and therefore radiant) type of women who know how to wait. * * * * * louise's life at the house on the drive quickly resolved itself into a daily programme tinctured with a monotony that could not but wear upon the spirits of a young woman of a naturally cheerful and gregarious temperament. her mother, generally in a state of feverish unrest that marked her strained incertitude over a situation which, in a way, was more intolerable to her than to her daughter because she was guiltily conscious that she was the maker of it, usually dropped into louise's room for an hour's chat during the forenoon. she was alternately affectionate, stilted, indifferent and petulant in her attitude toward her daughter. she did not seek, in her brooding self-communings, to thrust aside the keen consciousness that she was utterly and hopelessly in the wrong; but this consciousness did not serve to allay her irritation, even if it was directed against herself. like most women, she hated to be in the wrong; and she particularly loathed the thought of confessing herself in the wrong. she was less immoral than unmoral; her descent had been due to a sort of warped view as to forbidden relationships, nourished by an inborn and intense dislike for the sovereignty of convention--"the tyranny of the smug," she habitually called it--and based essentially upon her love of luxurious and extravagant living. but a consciousness of these facts only made her self-contempt the more keen. she measured and despised her sordidness. she was not, she fell into the habit of reflecting after her daughter's return, the victim of anybody but herself; her days of ardor had slipped away; she well knew that she had not even the excuse of a fondness for the man who had made her a social pariah. if she had ever experienced any such a fondness that fact might have mitigated, at least in her own self-view, the rawness of her course. but she cared nothing for judd, which made her case abominable, and she knew it. yet her weakened will, her character rendered flaccid by years of careless self-indulgence, made it acutely difficult for her to contemplate the thought of abandoning her way of living, even for the sake of her daughter. her prettiness was now purely a matter of meretricious building up; she would soon be forty; she fumed inwardly at the thought of middle age, which now, for her, was only around the corner, so to speak; she had been cast off by her own kind; and the terminal idea of her self-communings always was that, since there was no hope for her in any event, no matter what she might do, she might as well finish the scroll. she pushed aside louise's involvement in the difficulty as something that would--that would have to--adjust itself. a way out for louise must present itself sooner or later; but the way out for her daughter must be one that would not demand too great a sacrifice--if any sacrifice at all--on her own part. perhaps a good marriage could be contrived for louise; that would be the easiest and most natural solution; and she would cast about in her mind for eligibles on whose sensitive social concepts perhaps her own method of life would not grate. her dreary meditations usually terminated with futilities of this sort. louise, fighting back the oppressiveness that had clutched her ever since her return from school, was cheerful and sunny when her mother was with her. she made no allusion of any sort to the conditions of her environment. her mother, noticing this, was grateful for it, and she was conscious of a genuine and growing admiration for the mingled dignity and delicacy of her daughter's behavior. on one of her forenoon visits to louise's dressing room the mother herself, swept by a feeling of remorse in the contemplation of the girl's fragrant, pure-eyed beauty, could not refrain from touching impulsively upon the nub of her own unrest. "my dear," she said to louise, passing a white and still prettily rounded arm around her daughter, "do you hate your little mother?" louise fought back the tears that suffused her eyes. "why do you ask such a thing, dear?" she asked in a voice the hoarseness of which she strove to disguise. her mother did not reply to the question, but went on, turning her head away: "because there are circumstances, conditions that you can't have failed to notice here that maybe--" she struggled for words. "it has never been in my heart to do anything except what was right and fair by you, child, but one drifts, drifts, always drifts----" she could not proceed. louise wrapped her arms about her mother. neither spoke for a space. "nothing can ever change me, dear," said louise then in her quiet tone. "it is not for me to judge or condemn. i can--wait. we shall not speak of it again, shall we, mother?" her mother, haggard and with pain-drawn features, smoothed louise's face with her hand for a little while and went away without another word. the girl's eyes were swollen when laura came for her in her car an hour later. but laura did not ask her why. louise went nowhere with her mother. mrs. treharne made it plain from the beginning that this was her intention. louise, for her part, required no reason. she understood. nor did louise seek to re-establish the friendships she had formed with girls at miss mayhew's school, many of whom now were living in new york or visiting their homes there during the holiday vacation. one afternoon, at an opera matinée, louise, strolling out the entr'acte in the foyer with laura, came face to face with bella peyton, a girl who had been graduated from the finishing school with the class ahead of louise's. miss peyton was with her mother, a stony-eyed, granite-featured dowager who had often met louise on her frequent visits at the school; for her daughter and louise had been school inseparables. bella rushed up cordially to louise and kissed her enthusiastically. "you darling!" she exclaimed in the abandonment of her delight at coming upon the chum of her school days so unexpectedly. "when did you reach town? and why didn't you come to see me the very instant you returned?" mrs. peyton, who, at sight of louise, had purposely lagged in the rear, and whose adamantine countenance reflected intensifying degrees of frozenness with each word that her daughter was saying to louise, drew her adipose person into a posture of icy rigidity, and croaked: "bella!" mrs. peyton had not so much as nodded to louise. "why, mamma," bella broke out, "don't you remember louise treharne, my sworn and subscribed and vowed and vummed chum at miss mayhew's?" "bella!" this time it was not merely an adjuration, it was a command. bella, perceiving then that something was wrong, flushed. but she was loyal to her friend. "you are coming to see me immediately, dear?" she said, hurriedly shaking hands with louise in order to obey her mother's command. "bella! come to me at once!" mrs. peyton croaked with cutting, unconscionable rudeness, seizing her daughter by the arm and incontinently marching her off. louise, crimsoning, took the stab without a word. "the tabby!" broke out laura, her eyes flashing with indignation. "gracious heaven, is it any wonder that men privately sneer at the way women treat each other? don't you mind the shocking old cat, louise; she'll tear herself to pieces with her own claws some day;" and laura was unusually tender and kind in her treatment of louise for the remainder of the afternoon. but, after that encounter, louise learned to avoid meeting her school friends when, as occasionally happened, she saw them before they caught sight of her. she felt that they all "knew" or "would know," and she did not elect to take chances on additional snubs. her first formal meeting with judd had been a trial. it had been an accidental encounter, happening about a week after louise's return from school, and at a time when mrs. treharne was in more than one mind as to whether she would permit louise to meet judd at all. mrs. treharne and judd were stepping out of the huge yellow car at the close of their late afternoon ride just at the moment when louise, alone, was returning in laura's car. their meeting on the pavement was inevitable. for a moment louise hoped that her mother would permit her to lag behind on pretense of returning to laura's car to find some imaginary forgotten article; but mrs. treharne, suddenly deciding that the meeting had best be over with, since no way of avoiding it, sooner or later, had suggested itself, called to her; and louise, very beautiful with her cold-ruddied cheeks nimbussed by her breeze-blown hair of bronze, walked erect to where her mother stood with the bulky, red-eyed judd, who regarded louise with a stare of disconcerting admiration. "my dear louise," said mrs. treharne, obviously quelling a certain tremulousness in her tone, "permit me to present mr. judd; mr. judd, my daughter louise." judd, his mouth still unpleasantly agape, started the preliminary gesture toward extending his hand. but he made no further progress with the hand, for he was quick to notice that louise, at that very instant, was inserting her loose right hand in her muff. louise bowed and then returned to laura's car in quest of the imaginary article; she desired to give judd time to resume his place in his car before she joined her mother on the steps. "demmed handsome, that daughter of yours," judd commented on louise to mrs. treharne when he saw her the next afternoon, "but--er--uppish, what?" "i can dispense with your generalities on that subject," mrs. treharne had replied. after that louise had met judd casually in the wide, fire-lit down-stairs hall on two or three occasions, and once at the only one of her mother's extraordinary sunday night receptions--the "salon" which at once provoked and amused laura--which she attended; but she had exchanged no word with him. she was not lacking in diplomacy, but there were some stultifications that she found to be wholly beyond her; and she was conscious of a certain previously unexperienced difficulty with her neck when she even inclined her head to judd. * * * * * "would you care to meet some of my sunday night people, louise?" her mother had asked her. "i dare say laura has told you they are freaks. perhaps some of them are. but there are clever ones among them, and one must take the gifted with the mediocre. it would not harm you to meet a few of them. they are not wicked. they only think they are; some of them, that is. their wickedness is an amiable abstraction. shall you be down?" it was on a sunday morning, in louise's apartments, that mrs. treharne made the suggestion. louise was conscious of the need of a laugh, even if it were a politely smothered one; and laura had comically depicted her mother's "salon" to her. she told her mother that she had been waiting for that invitation, which caused mrs. treharne to glance sharply at her to ascertain if louise already had adopted laura's point of view as to the sunday evening gatherings. "do you entertain your people yourself, mother, or is there a--" louise stumbled on the word "host." but her mother was quick to catch her meaning. "i should not ask you down, else, my dear--you should credit me that far," she had replied, a tinge of reproach in her tone. and so, an hour or so after dinner on sunday night, louise, willowy yet full-blossomed and splendid in a simple princesse dress of white broadcloth, a gardenia nestling in an embrasure of her velvety auburn hair, and a tiny-linked chain of gold, with aquamarine pendants--a gift from laura--around her firm white neck, went, for the first time since she had been in the house, to the already crowded main floor. louise, in her inexperience, could not know that the gathering really was little less than an apotheosis of the _declasée_; she merely found some of the people agreeable, others of them unconsciously naïve in their ebullient enthusiasm over their imaginary achievements or accomplishments, still others frankly laughable for their indurated habit of self laudation. it was in the main, so far as its social side went, an assemblage of persons, men and women, who, thrust outside the genuine social breastworks for various and more or less highly-tinctured lapses, thus foregathered in response to an instinct of gregariousness--an instinct around which the "birds of a feather" aphorism no doubt was framed. having no choice in the matter, these persons were willing to accept the shadow for the reality. it might almost be said that on every uptown square of new york there is at least one common meeting point for similar assemblages of social exiles. nearly all of the figurantes in mrs. treharne's sunday evening affairs were _divorcées_ of more or less note; the "cases" of some of whom had been blazoned in huge red block type in the yellow newspapers, and "illustrated," in default of genuine portraits, with blurred "cuts" of no less benevolent or redoubtable females than the late mrs. pinkham or carrie nation. the men in the company who had not already rocketed through the divorce court were willing, it appeared from their frank method of expressing themselves, to make that by no means perilous passage; though there was a sprinkling of younger men, still factors in a social world from which there are no voluntary expatriates, who attended mrs. treharne's sunday evening affairs in a spirit of larkishness and glad of the chance to forsake, for a little while, regions more austere and still under the domination of at least a tacit repression. for the rest, there were poetasters who fidgetted until they were called upon, out of pure sympathy, to read their own verse--some of the latter obviously "lifted;" temperamental musicians, male and female, who preferred to sway at or with their instruments with the rooms darkened while they performed; manufacturers and proselytizers of personally-conducted and generally quite unintelligible cults, physical, moral or ethical, all of the cults extending a maximum of "freedom of action" to the individual; devisers of impromptu or extemporaneous religions or near-religions, none of which boasted so inconvenient a restriction as a decalogue; fashionable or striving-to-be-fashionable palmists and chiromancers, "swamis," "yogis;" burnoosed, sullen, white-robed exploiters, from the near or far east, of women who mistook their advanced symptoms of neuresthenia for a hankering for the occult; and the other unclassified, sycophantic factors of a "bohemianism" whose seams were perfectly visible to the naked eye and whose sawdust was only held in place with the all-together co-operation of the whole artificial assemblage. louise's entrance upon the scene created a stir which caused her to feel distinctly uncomfortable. she longed for laura; but laura had "sworn off" attending mrs. treharne's sunday evening parties; not from any selfish motives of caution--for laura was in keen demand in the social circle in which she had been born and reared; but simply because she had at length ceased to extract amusement from the self-idolizing vagaries of mrs. treharne's crew; more briefly still, because they bored her to extinction. when the word was buzzed around among the slowly-moving, chattering assemblage to whom the entire lower floor of the house, including the conservatory, had been thrown open--that "the tall girl with the air and the hair" was mrs. treharne's daughter--the more privileged ones adverted to their hostess as tony--there was a sudden cluttering of the passageways leading to the room in which louise was standing with her mother. in their keenness to catch a glimpse of the "just-bloomed daughter of tony" many of them even forsook the long and generously-provided buffet, than which no greater sign of a consuming interest or curiosity could be given; for not a few of the raffish guests appeared to be so patently in need of nourishment--and stimulant--that they spent the major portion of the evening at the buffet. a woman whose vision seemed to be slightly filmed from her inordinate devotion to the punch lifted her glass, after studying louise in a sort of open-mouthed daze for a moment or so, and sang out, in a tone that she apparently had some difficulty in controlling: "to tony's daughter--the empress louise!" the men and women in her neighborhood grabbed for glasses to fill from the punchbowls and took up the refrain: "the empress louise!" louise felt the blood swirling to her head, but she braced herself to stand the volleying of eyes. her mother was intensely annoyed and made not the least effort to conceal her annoyance. when the incident had been merged in a diversion afforded by a recitation of a portuguese madrigal in another room by a man with unkempt hair and untidy fingernails, mrs. treharne glided away from louise's side for a moment and found the woman who had proposed the toast. she was still absorbedly busy at the buffet. "you are to leave at once, ethel," she said in a low but determined tone to the toast-proposer, a woman whose divorce story in the newspapers had been remarkable for the detailed account of liquid refreshments she had consumed up and down the world, at foreign hotels and on board yachts, for a number of years at a stretch. "i shall never forgive you if you make another scene here." "all right, tony," the woman replied, with a vacuous smile. "not angry at me, are you, for wishing luck to your little girl--your big girl, i mean; she _is_ an empress, you know, and--" mrs. treharne guided her to the cloak room and stayed by her side until she bade her goodnight at the door. louise, in the meantime, had been approached by a man whose eyes, she had noticed with a certain vague disquietude, had been following her about since her entrance upon the scene. he was a handsome man of the florid type, with a sweeping blonde mustache and oddly-restless light brown eyes in which louise, catching him devouring her with his gaze at frequent intervals, nervously thought that she detected certain felinely-topaz glints. he was tall and a trifle over-heavy; but there was a certain slow-moving, easy air of adventitious distinction about him which might have been in part lent by the immaculateness of his evening clothes and his facile way of disposing of his hands without requiring any article to give them employment; an art in which even practiced courtiers and carpet knights occasionally are deficient. louise did not like his face; she observed, when she saw, not without a certain vague trepidation, that he was approaching her, that his over-red and over-full lips, from which the sweeping mustache was brushed away, were curved in a sort of habitual sneer which by no stretch of charity could be called a smile; though that, no doubt, was the desired intent of it. he bowed low, keeping his eyes upraised on louise's face, when he reached her side, and said: "miss treharne?" louise, used to more formal methods of meeting new men, inclined her head. "you will condone, i hope, miss treharne, my seeming breach of formality in presuming to address you without a presentation," he said, even his intensified smile failing to efface the sneering curve from his too visible lips. "but your mother is generous enough to permit her guests at times--on such occasions as these, for example--to forego formality. i have been ineffectually trying to reach her for an hour in order to--" "in order to ask me to do that which you have already done," said mrs. treharne, with quite unusual affability, coming up at that moment and catching his final words. "louise, dear, permit me--mr. langdon jesse. don't expect her to know, mr. jesse, that you are a cotton king. i doubt if her routine at school permitted her to read the newspapers, even if they interested her; which i sincerely hope they did not and will not." louise had not often seen her mother in so gracious a humor toward any man; but this fact did not in any sense serve to quell the instinctive dislike which she immediately felt for jesse, the "cotton king" of her mother's somewhat too purposely-significant introduction. she noticed that his hands were small and obtrusively white; that there was a wave in his burnished blonde hair; that his large clear-cut features were of a chiselled regularity; and her natural aversion to the merely handsome man promptly asserted itself. the sneer of his mouth, and his fixed way of gazing squarely into her eyes as if his own eyes were forming a question, disquieted her. she replied in purposed monosyllables to his rather trivial yet studied questions about her school life. she knew perfectly well that he was in no wise interested in her school life, but that he merely was seeking what he considered might be the most engaging method of capturing her attention. five minutes after his meeting with her she devised an excuse and went to her apartments. she threw her windows wide and let the wintry air bulge the curtains when she reached her sleeping room; perhaps it was her subconsciousness that told her that she needed some such a bath of purifying air to obliterate what intangible traces there might remain of her brief contact with langdon jesse. that night she dreamt persistently of a leopard with large, blazing eyes of topaz; and an hour after she awoke a large basket of superb orchids, with langdon jesse's card attached, was brought to her. laura was with her at the time. "from langdon jesse?" said laura, knitting her brow. "did you meet him last night, louise?" "yes. i disliked him intensely." "if i were you, dear," suggested laura, "i should send these orchids to a hospital. they can of course have no sinister effect upon those who have not met their donor. but i should be afraid to have you keep any flowers sent you by langdon jesse. they might poison the air. the bald impudence of him in sending you flowers at all!" a footman was carrying the orchids to a nearby hospital five minutes later. chapter v langdon jesse and his one-time associate and co-partner in lamb-shearing "deals," frederick judd, met at luncheon in a restaurant in the financial district a few days later. judd, one of the powers of "the street," was past fifty-five, and he had no great toleration for the vacuities of young men. this fact, however, placed no inhibition on the admiration--it could scarcely be called a liking--which he felt for langdon jesse; for jesse, whatever else he may have been, certainly was not vacuous in the matter of business; and it was from the angle of their success in business that judd exclusively judged men. jesse, well under forty, already was a veteran of the stock market; and on at least one occasion he had deftly "trimmed" no less a person than his former associate, mr. judd; wherefore judd, with the breadth of vision of the financial general in considering the strategy of the general who has beaten him, admired jesse, who had been virtually his pupil, all the more; resolving, at the same time, not to permit his quondam pupil to "trim" him again. jesse, accepting the nodded invitation, took a seat at the table at which judd, alone, was eating his heavy luncheon. they exchanged market talk in brief, brittle phrases, for a while. then jesse, his too-prominent lips curving, and seeming to be gazing over the top of judd's bare poll, said: "sumptious, isn't she?" judd, used to jesse's adversions to the sumptuosity of women--many women--went on doggedly eating. after a space he replied with a monosyllable: "who?" jesse did not answer for a moment; nor did judd seem to be particularly worried over that fact. "i dropped into your--er--your place on the drive on sunday night," said jesse, fastening an abnormally long cigarette into a remarkably long cigarette holder of amber and gold. judd, his fork poised in the air, looked up at jesse. there was a question in his red-rimmed eyes; but judd made it a point not to submit questions of any consequence until he had turned them over in his mind several times. "so i heard," said judd, with no obvious interest, pronging away again with his fork. "who told you," asked jesse, with a sharp glance at judd. "not----" "how the devil should i remember who told me?" replied judd in a matter-of-fact tone. "what's the difference who told me, anyhow?" but it made considerable difference, as a matter of fact, to jesse; his self-satisfaction and his serene belief in his ability to make an immediate "impression" were very great; and when judd told him he had "heard" he had been at the riverside drive house he took it for granted that judd had "heard" it from the person on whom his thoughts were dwelling; louise treharne, that is to say. "oh, no particular difference," said jesse, blowing a cloud of acrid turkish cigarette smoke at judd, which caused judd to scowl. "i thought perhaps----" judd knew perfectly well what he thought; but judd often failed even to mention things that he knew perfectly well. "you take in those bear-garden affairs at tony's--at mrs. treharne's," catching himself, "right along, don't you?" said judd. "how the devil you can endure that pack of imbecile, loquacious what-are-theys is more than i can make out. one of those sundays nights cured me." jesse, however, had not the least intention of being side-tracked. "well, she is--er--well, ripping; isn't she?" he said, after a pause. judd, perceiving the futility of evasion, gave way. "yes--if that's what you want me to say--and all ice, besides," said judd. "you're up against it there, son," he went on, judicially. "or are you looking for a death by freezing? why, i'm afraid that she's going to fracture one of her upper vertebrae even when she nods to me! and that's all the recognition she ever gives me--a nod." "she doesn't strike me as being so hopelessly arctic as all that," said jesse, inordinately proud of what he considered his keen judgment of women. "did you ever happen to meet a woman with auburn hair who possessed a--er--a frozen or freezing temperament? and, by the way, why do you dwell upon her rigidity, so to speak, when she nods 'even to you?' why 'even to you?'" judd, a little choler showing in his purpling face, broke out: "because a man naturally expects a little manners, a little common politeness, from people he's taking care of, doesn't he? she's living in my house, by god!" "that," said jesse, quietly, "is precisely what i am getting at: since she is living in your house--if she knows it is your house--she can't be so--er--well, stupendously straight-laced, can she? and, by frozen, of course you meant straight-laced." "i meant exactly what i said," replied judd, sulkily. "stop twisting my words around, will you? i said that she was ice, and that is what i meant to say. you're on a blind trail, jesse, if that's what you're getting at. take it from me. you're a hit with 'em, i know, and all that sort of rot. but this one is more than your match. she'll shrivel you good and plenty if you try anything on with her. at that, why can't you let her alone? there are plenty of the other kind--your kind. what's the matter, anyhow? have all the show girls moved out of new york?" jesse didn't relish the slap. it was not exactly a truthful slap, moreover. jesse had withdrawn his devotions to "show girls" several years before; since doing which he had quarried in entirely different quarters. "let the girl alone--that's my advice," went on judd, seized for the moment by a flickering sense of fairness. "i don't fancy her particularly--because she's so damned haughty with me, i suppose, and looks down upon me from a mountain. but she's all right. i know that, and i'm telling it to you for your information. better forget it. there isn't a chance on earth for you, anyhow." jesse didn't appear to be in the least thrown off the quest by the advice. "are you sure," he inquired of judd after a short silence, "that she knows just where you figure in the riverside drive establishment?" "well, you could see for yourself that she is more than seven years of age, couldn't you?" briefly replied judd. "but," observed jesse, obviously seeking to get hold of all of the threads of the situation, "she is only recently out of school, i understand, and perhaps she hasn't yet fully grasped----" "i don't know what she has grasped, and i don't care a damn," thrust in judd, tired of the colloquy. "she must know a good deal about the way things stand or she wouldn't treat me as if i were rubbish. i can see how i stick in her throat. when it comes to that, why shouldn't i? she's only a schoolgirl, if she is a head taller than i am. her mother made an idiotic mistake in having the girl around the place. but that's none of my affair. i take the game as it stands. only i advise you to stand clear. you might as well be decent for once in your life. unless, of course," and judd shot a glance of inquiry at jesse, "you mean to turn respectable--it's about time--and go in for the marrying idea?" jesse's somewhat waxy, excessively smooth face flushed at judd's afterthought. "i marry?" he said, with a distinctly disagreeable laugh. "well, it may come to that, some day or other. but can you see me marrying the daughter of your acknowledged----" he fumbled for the word; "mistress" was what he wanted to say, but he discarded it out of sheer timidity; "--your acknowledged companion?" he finished. "be good enough to keep out of my personal affairs, jesse," said judd, coldly. "i don't dip into your private concerns. you may take my advice or leave it. but you want to go pretty slow, if you're asking me. nobody has yet forgotten that west indian affair of yours; just remember that." with judd, one shot called for another. jesse gave a start and paled slightly at judd's allusion to "the west indian affair." judd waited only long enough to see that the shot found its mark; then, with an amused leer, he rose from the table, his luncheon finished, and lumbered away with a nod. jesse, discarding his cigarette, bit off the end of a cigar and fumed. the "west indian affair" was a sore subject with him solely because the world knew all about it. he had not the least feeling of self-condemnation over it; it was the thought that, for once, he had been found out that caused him to rage internally when the matter was adverted to; for the newspapers had been full of it at the time of the occurrence. "the west indian affair," jesse well knew, had not been forgotten, as judd had said, nor was it likely to be forgotten. it threw a raking light upon his general attitude toward and his treatment of women. a year before, after one of his periodical triumphs in the cotton market, in which, to quote the newspapers' way of putting it, he had "cleaned up millions," jesse had made a midwinter cruise of the west indies on his yacht. a girl of unusual beauty, whom he had met by accident on an automobile tour on long island, had been his companion on the cruise. she was inexperienced, of humble parentage, and he had overborne her objections by vaguely intimating something as to a marriage when they should arrive in the west indies. she had protested when, upon the yacht's touching at many ports, he had of course shown not the least inclination to make good his merely intimated promise; and, in his wrath over her attitude, he had not only committed the indefensible crime, but he had made the stupendous mistake, viewed from the politic point of view, of deserting the girl in a west indian city, without money or resources, without even her clothing, and sailing back to new york alone. the girl, thus stranded amid new and unfriendly surroundings, had but one resource--the american consul. the consul provided for her passage back to new york. the correspondents of the new york newspapers in the west indian city had got hold of the details, adding a few neatly whimsical touches of their own, and for days the newspapers had reeked with the story. there had been talk of prosecuting jesse for abduction, but he had employed the underground method, rendered easily available to him owing to his wealth, to smother that suggestion. but the grisly affair had thrown a cloud over jesse from which he knew, raging as he knew it, there was no emerging. several of his clubs--the good ones--had dropped him; men and women of the world to which he aspired, and in which he had been making progress, cut him right and left; his name had been erased from most of the worth-while invitation lists; and the hole in his armor was wide open to the shafts of the kind judd had just discharged at him. jesse sat at the table and gnawed angrily at his unlighted cigar for a long time after judd had gone; it was characteristic of him that his compunction was all for himself. he had been found out and pilloried. that was what cut him. he never gave a thought to the young woman whose life he had destroyed. jesse had been instantly struck by the beauty of louise treharne. he surmised that it was through no complaisance on her part, but purely because she had been helpless in the matter, that she had found herself living with her ostracised mother in the house on the drive. that situation, he was confident, had been thrust upon her. but this consideration, and the additional one that she was, as he could not have failed to note, nobly undergoing the ordeal, which might have aroused the admiration and excited the sympathy of a man of merely average fairness, had touched no compassionate chord in langdon jesse. adopting the trivial and far-fetched methods of analysis which are employed by men who consider themselves expert in their knowledge of women, he had calmly concluded that in all likelihood louise treharne's manner was a skillfully-studied pose. at any rate he meant to find out. he meant to "know her better." it was thus that his determination framed itself in his mind; he would "know her better." in gaining the attention of women, he believed in the gentle siege and then the grand assault; it was, in truth, the only "system" with which he had any familiarity, and it had generally proved successful. jesse returned to his office, summoned his car, went to his suite at the plaza, gave himself over to the grooming activities of his man for an hour; then, resuming his car, he went to the house on riverside drive. * * * * * louise, in brown walking suit and brown turban, her cheeks ruddy from a long and rapid walk from one end of the park to the other, had just returned when jesse's card was brought up. she was studying the card, trying to devise an excuse--for she shrank from the thought of seeing him--when her mother, ready for her motor airing, entered the room. "i just caught sight of mr. jesse's car from my window," said mrs. treharne to louise. louise observed that her mother was in the same fluttered state that she had been in when she had found jesse talking to her on the previous sunday night. "he has sent his card to you? of course you are going to see him?" "i think i shall not see him, mother," said louise, ringing for heloise with the purpose of sending word that she was indisposed, not at home--anything. mrs. treharne looked annoyed and there was irritation in her question: "why not, my dear?" "i don't care for him, mother," said louise, frankly. "in fact, i believe i rather dislike him. do you think he is the sort of man i should meet?" louise was intensely disappointed that her mother should care to have her meet jesse. she tried to assure herself that her mother did not know or realize the character of the man as she herself had heard it briefly described by laura; but she found that a bit difficult to believe. "tell me, please, louise, why you ask me such a question as that," said mrs. treharne, irritatedly. "what do you know about mr. jesse? who has been telling you things about him?" louise, remaining silent, plainly showed that she did not care to answer her mother's question. "it was laura, no doubt," went on mrs. treharne. "laura, i begin to fear, is growing garrulous. you must not permit her to put absurd ideas into your head, my dear. i must speak to her about it." "pray do not, mother," said louise, earnestly. "she is one of the dearest women in the world, and everything that she tells me, i know, is not only perfectly true, but for my good. it is not anything said to me by laura that makes me dislike the idea of receiving mr. jesse. it is simply that i don't like him. there is a boldness, an effrontery, a cynicism, about him that make me distrust him. i don't care for his type of man. that is all." "you must not fall into the habit of forming sudden prejudices, my dear," said her mother, diplomatically assuming an air of grave persuasiveness. "mr. jesse no doubt has had his fling at life. what worth-while man of his age hasn't? but he is a man of mark. he has made his way as few men have. of course you found him handsome, _distingué_? most women do, my dear. and i could see that he was greatly struck with you. you will soon be twenty, louise; and mr. jesse, perhaps i should remind you, is a great _parti_." louise felt herself crimsoning. her mother did know jesse's record, then. that was manifest from her words. and yet she was calmly exalting him as an "eligible!" the girl so shrank from having any further conversation with her mother on the subject just then that she turned to her and said: "i would not see him of my own volition, mother; but if you very much wish it, i shall see him." "for heaven's sake, louise, don't look so terribly austere and crushed over it!" broke out mrs. treharne. "the man will not kidnap you! i very much wish that you should be sensible and receive eligible men, of course. isn't that a perfectly natural wish?" louise, without another word, not stopping to remove her turban or even glance in the glass, went down-stairs to receive jesse. her mother fluttered past the drawing-room door a moment later, merely stopping for a word of over-effusive greeting to jesse before joining the waiting judd in his car. jesse, whether by accident or from foreknowledge, had timed his visit well. he was quite alone on the floor with louise treharne. she caught the gleam of his upraised eyes and noted the bold persistence of the question in them when, still in his fur overcoat, he turned from the contemplation of a picture to greet her. "ah," he said with an attempt at airiness, slipping out of the overcoat and extending his hand, "our empress already has been out?" glancing at her turban and her wind-freshened cheeks. "that is unfortunate. i was about to place my car at her disposal----" he withdrew his hand, not seeming to notice that louise had failed to see it. "yes, i have been walking," put in louise, in no wise stiffly, but with an air of preoccupied withdrawal which she genuinely felt. "as to what you call me, i believe i should prefer to be known by my name." jesse, remembering what judd had said as to the likelihood of his being frozen or shrivelled, laughed inwardly. he rather enjoyed being rebuffed by women--at first. it made the game keener. none of them, he remembered now with complaisancy, continued to rebuff him for very long. "pardon me, miss treharne," he said, with a certain languishing air which louise found even more offensive than his initial familiarity. "i thought, when the title was so spontaneously applied to you on sunday night, that perhaps you found it agreeable. but it is difficult to gauge--women." he dwelt upon the word "women," thinking that, considering how recently she had left school, it might flatter her. louise chose to talk commonplaces. her bed-rock genuineness made it impossible for her to affect an interest in a visitor which she did not feel. and her lack of interest in jesse was complicated by her growing dislike for him. "i am doubly disappointed," said jesse after a pause which he did not find embarrassing. nothing embarrassed jesse when he had his mind definitely set upon a purpose. "first, i had hoped, as i say, that, not having been out, you would honor me by accepting the use of my car. second, i am desolated because you are wearing a hat. i had been promising myself another glimpse of your superb hair. is it _banal_ to put it that way? i am afraid so. but consider the temptation! was it aspasia or cleopatra whose hair was of the glorious shade of yours--or both?" "mr. jesse," said louise, now quite _dégagé_, facing him squarely and speaking with the greatest deliberation, "i seem to find, from my two limited conversations with you, that you are suffering under some sort of a misapprehension as to me. you will discover that yourself, i think, if you will take the trouble to recur to several things you already have said to me after an acquaintanceship, all told, of perhaps ten minutes. suppose we seek a less personal plane? i am too familiar with my hair to care to have it made a subject of extended remarks on the part of men whom i scarcely know. there are less pointed themes. permit me to suggest that we occupy ourselves in finding them." "by god, a broadside!" said jesse to himself, not in the least abashed; his admiration always grew for women who trounced him--at first. "i didn't think she had it in her! and judd, the fat imbecile, called her an iceberg! she is a volcano!" aloud, he said, with a neatly-assumed air of subjection and penitence: "well delivered, miss treharne. but i merit it. i have made the error of supposing--" "that my comparatively recent return from school, and the open-mindedness naturally associated with that," louise quietly interrupted, "made me a fair target for your somewhat labored and not particularly apt compliments. yes, you erred decisively there." "again!" thought jesse, bubbling with finely-concealed delight. "she _is_ an empress right enough, whether she likes to be called that or not! what a prize!" aloud, he said with an air of chastened gravity: "you do me scant justice there, miss treharne, but that is easily passed, seeing how chagrinedly conscious i am that i deserved your rebuke in the first instance. you are fond of motoring?" changing the subject with no great deftness. "no," replied louise, sufficiently out of hand. "i don't in the least care for it." the conversation was irksome to her and she would not pretend that it was not. "i inquired," said jesse, looking chapfallen though he did not in the least feel so, "because i had been hoping you might do me the honor to accept the use--the steady use--of one of my cars. i have several," this last with an ostentation that rather sickened louise. but she could not allow the carefully veiled suggestion in his words to pass. "mr. jesse," she said, reverting to her tone of deliberation and again gazing straight at him, "aside from the fact that, as i have told you, i don't in the least care for motoring, will you be good enough to suggest to me just one fairly intelligible reason why i should accept your proffer of the use--'the steady use'--of one of your cars? it may be that you will have some reason to offer for what, otherwise, i should deem a distinct impertinence." jesse's eyes gleamed with the joy of it. "what a prize!" he thought again. "i seem, miss treharne," he said with a laugh which he purposely made uneasy, "to be stumbling upon one blunder after another. there is no reason for my having offered you the use of one of my cars--and i hasten to withdraw the offer, since it seems to offend you--other than my friendship of long standing with your mother and my desire--my hope, i was about to say--that you, too, might consider me worthy of your friendship." it was rather adroitly turned, but it completely missed fire. "i don't seem to recall that it is necessary for one to adopt one's mother's friends as one's own," said louise, without the least hesitancy. his assumption of an easily-penetrated ingratiating manner had thoroughly disgusted her; she wanted him to take his departure; and she chose the most straightout means to that end. there was no possible way for her to know that jesse enjoyed the early taunts of some women much as he relished the cocktails with which he preceded his dinners, and for very much the same reason--they were appetizers. he rose with an air of irresolution which he was far from feeling. "i fear," he said, resignedly, "that something has happened--or perhaps that something has been said--to predispose or prejudice you against me, miss treharne. it is a conclusion to which i am driven." he paused, then faced her with an appearance of frankness which he was adept at assuming. "miss treharne," he went on, cleverly adopting a tone with a tremolo note in it, "you will grant, i think, that men--men, that is to say, who cut any sort of figure in affairs"--a flourish here--"often are misjudged. without in the least desiring to pose as one who has been a victim of such misjudgment, i feel, nevertheless----" here he stopped, having carefully calculated his stopping point, and, with impulsively extended hands, he went on with a beautifully acted semblance of real feeling: "miss treharne, i merely ask you to give me a chance to prove myself; a chance at least to wear the candidate's stripes for your friendship." despite her youthfulness and her utter inexperience with men of jesse's type, louise, aided by an unusually subtle intuition, and mindful of what she had heard of jesse, caught the hollow ring in his tone, detected the false shifty light in his now furtive, eager eyes. she rose. "you are quite overpoweringly in earnest over what seems to me a very trivial matter, mr. jesse," she said with a little laugh that sounded harsh even to her own ears. "you gravely underestimate the value of your friendship in calling it trivial, miss treharne," said jesse, rising also; for at length he was ready to accept the dismissal which a less thick-skinned man, even of his type, would have taken long before. "i have not been in the habit of placing any sort of an appraisal upon the value of my friendship," she replied, succinctly. he thrust his arms into the sleeves of his greatcoat of fur and strolled, with a downcast air, to the drawing-room door. "this is not your normal mood, miss treharne," he said, turning upon her a smile that he meant to be wan. "you see what unresentful justice i do you. there are to be other days. i shall find you in a humor less inclined to magnify my candidly professed demerits. i hope to have an opportunity to prove to you that i have at least a few merits to balance the faults." the hint was sufficiently broad, but louise appeared to be momentarily obtuse. at any rate she did not extend the invitation he too patently fished for. her reticence in that respect, however, did not in the least abash jesse. "at least i have the cheering knowledge that this door is open to me," he said, entering the foyer on his way out. "have i not?" unavailingly louise strove to steady herself in order to thrust back the color which she felt mounting to her face. "it is not my door," she said in a low tone; and instantly was keenly sorry for having said it. "oh, i quite understand that," he said, with an air of lightness, though at the moment he did not dare to turn and look at her. "but it is all the same, since it is your mother's, is it not?" she made no reply. she felt that she deserved the barb for having given him the opportunity to discharge it. he bowed low, essayed the smile that he considered his most engaging one, and went out to his waiting car. for the second time after having been in the presence of langdon jesse, louise went to her rooms and threw all the windows wide; then stood in the wintry eddies and permitted the cold, sweet air to enwrap and purify her. * * * * * when mrs. treharne, after leaving louise and jesse together, stepped into the car with judd, she found that adipose man of finance chuckling softly to himself. she deigned not to inquire of him the reason for his chuckling--knowing, of course, that presently he would be volunteering that information himself. "that was jesse's car in front of the house, wasn't it, tony?" he asked her, still chuckling unpleasantly as the car pulled away from the curb. "yes," she replied, alert of a sudden, but disdaining to appear so. "jesse is calling to see--er--your daughter, eh?" judd asked, continuing his rumbling manifestations of joviality. "he is," replied mrs. treharne, carefully screening her impatience to catch judd's drift. "but i fail to see why that fact should incite you to give vent to such a harrowing series of low comedy chuckles." "quite so, quite so, my dear antoinette," said judd, soothingly, but not in the least diminishing his choppy cachinnatory performance. mrs. treharne, with an air of disgust which merely screened her worried curiosity, permitted him to continue for a while. then she said, with an air of gravity intended to drag him back to his naturally sullen state, but assumed also for the purpose of sounding him: "jesse was plainly struck with louise on sunday night last. her position now, of course, is hideous. jesse may be the solution." judd straightened himself in his seat and suddenly stopped chuckling. then he glanced with quizzical keenness out of slitted eyes at his companion. "meaning, i suppose," he said, "that you have an idea that jesse might take it into his head to marry her?" "what else could i mean?" she asked him huskily. "quite so, quite so, my dear antoinette," said judd, leaning back in his seat again. "of course. certainly. i fully understand you," and he closed his eyes as if about to lapse into a refreshing nap. mrs. treharne, distinctly wrought up, grasped one of the lapels of his seal-lined greatcoat and shook him determinedly. "be good enough to explain to me, and at once, precisely what you mean," she said rapidly, a growing hoarseness in her tone. judd, for his part, promptly relapsed into his chuckling. "it is nothing, my dear--nothing at all, i assure you," he said, between wheezes. "only it strikes me as rather diverting that anybody should consider jesse in the light of a matrimonial eligible. when, by the way, did you gather the idea that jesse was a marrying man? since that--er--somewhat widely-exploited little affair of his in the west indies last year? or more recently?" judd generally won in the little skirmishes they had in the motor car. the fact that he had won again was plainly indicated by the fact that she remained silent for the remainder of the ride. chapter vi louise, still bound by the discipline of school, was not a late sleeper. as early as seven o'clock on the morning following langdon jesse's call she was lying awake, striving to dispel, by the process of optimistic reasoning, the sinister nimbus that seemed to be enshrouding her, when the telephone bell in her dressing room began to ring persistently. louise sprang up to answer the call. "i know it is a barbarous hour, dear," laura's cheerful contralto came over the wire, "but i've just been aroused from my juvenile slumbers by the telephone, and of course i must have revenge upon somebody. listen, dear: i know that it only takes you about fifteen minutes to dress--of course you are not dressed yet? well, begin this instant. put on something for tramping and fussing around in the country. you must be over here by eight o'clock. we are going to have a romping day in the country. now, hurry, won't you?" "just you and i, laura?" asked louise, delighted. a day in the country! open fields to dispel vapors! the thought of it made her eager and excited. "no, there'll be another," replied laura. "i disregard the axiom, you know, that 'three is a crowd.' three needn't be a crowd if one of the three has a little tact and--and the knack of opportunely vanishing," and louise heard her soft laughter. "a man i know has what he calls a little tumbledown place, with some ground around it, over in jersey. he calls it sullen manor, because he says he always goes over there, in preference to all other places, when he feels the imperative need to sulk. now, there is not another moment to be wasted in 'phoning. start to dress this very instant! will you solemnly promise me to be here on the stroke of eight? very well. i shall be waiting. goodbye." louise, "very trig and complete," as laura remarked, in a suit of grey with a matching fur-trimmed grey toque, was with the astonished laura a good quarter of an hour before eight. "heaven knows how you do it," said laura, still in the hands of her maid. "go into the dining-room and have some coffee, dear. i shall be with you directly." louise, humming happily at the thought of the care-free day ahead of her, sped into the bright dining room. john blythe, sipping coffee at the table, rose to meet her. he looked fine and upstanding in his fresh, rough tweeds, his close-shaven face ruddy and his clear grey eyes showing an agate sparkle from the brisk walk to laura's apartment from his own. louise halted abruptly in her astonishment when she saw him. but she was extremely glad to see him and said so frankly, resting her hand in his muscular but gentle clasp for a moment. "laura packed me off here to take some coffee," she said. "does she know you are here? and how early you are abroad in the world. we are stirring about at this sunrise hour because we are going for a day in the country--and i am mad to get there! in my previous incarnation i must have been a milkmaid, for i dearly love the country." then she added, with a little air of disappointment: "i do wish you were coming with us!" "that," replied blythe, smiling his wide smile as he poured coffee for her, "is precisely what i am going to do." louise, in the act of taking the cup from him, looked into his face with an expression of pleased mystification on her own. "why, what is--how can--" she broke off suddenly and rose from her chair in the intensity of a pleasure which she herself, at that moment, could scarcely have analyzed. "surely," she went on in a lower tone, her face irradiated by a smile which it thrilled him to observe, "surely you are not the man who sulks?" "one of laura's agreeable fictions," he pronounced. "she calls my little place sullen manor, and declares that it is my sulking cave, because i've not had her over there to see it. i've had no chance to ask her until now. do you mean to say she did not tell you that i was the organizer of this expedition?" "the secretive creature did not even hint at such a thing," declared louise, not very successfully pretending to be miffed. "now i call that downright neglect of orders," said blythe, also striving to show a serious face. "i particularly charged laura to tell you who the party of the third part was to be in order that you might have the privilege of refusing to accompany the expedition in case you so desired. a shocking departure from discipline on laura's part." "then it was you," said louise, lighter in spirits than she had been for a long time, "who invited me?" "my dear, don't you know he would say so to you no matter whether it were true or not?" said laura, who had caught louise's question, breezing into the dining-room at that moment. "come on, children. your antique chaperone is impatient to be on her disregarded way. louise, have you had your coffee? and some toast? finish them this instant! even so ascetic and imaginative a person as mr. blythe knows that a girl must have a little breakfast before venturing upon an expedition into the jungles of jersey." laura, perfect in a walking suit of shepherd's plaid and tan walking shoes, had, on this morning, the animation as well as the beauty of a girl. blythe compared the two as they stood side by side, hastily sipping coffee. laura, with her judith-black, glossy hair and fresh, youthful color, and louise with her thick coils of vivid, velvety auburn and glowing ivory pallor--blythe thought, studying them for a moment over the rim of his cup, that he had never seen so splendid a contrast. "_allons!_" laura broke in upon his reflection. "are we to dawdle here until luncheon time? already it is," looking at her watch, "twenty-four seconds past eight!" blythe, slipping into his greatcoat, turned a solemn face upon laura when they had reached the hall, outward-bound. "there is one thing, laura, in connection with this expedition, that i am keenly sorry for," he said, assuming a sepulchral tone. "why, what is that?" asked laura, a little alarmedly, taken off her guard. "well," replied blythe, still solemn, "you'll only be away from here for about fifteen hours, and how are you possibly going to have your apartment completely redecorated, from forepeak to mizzen, alow and aloft, in that space of time?" "tush!" laughed laura. "there will be plenty of time to have the place done over--and it really does sorely need it, now doesn't it?" this with a wistfulness at which blythe and louise laughed, "--when i take louise to europe with me in may--less than three months off." "am i to go to europe with you, dear--really?" asked louise, surprised and pleased; for laura had said nothing about it before. "most assuredly you are," replied laura, entirely in earnest. "if, that is, you can make up your mind to be burdened by the companionship of one so aged." the topic was lost in the excitation of their arranging themselves in laura's car, which was to take them to the ferry. but the thought of it recurred to louise several times during the ride to the ferry. it was an alluring prospect, barring the obstacles. how could she leave her mother, even for a short time, now that she had rejoined her after a separation of years? finally she was able to dismiss such cogitations and yield herself to the enjoyment of the day ahead. it was one of those unseasonably mild days in late february that occasionally "drop in" to point an accusing finger at the harshness of winter. a brilliant sun swam in a cloudless sky, and the soft yet invigorating balminess of late april was, as they noticed when they sped by the park, deluding the buds of tree and hedge into swelling prematurely and even seducing the willows into a vague, timidly displayed elusive green. hardy, pioneering robins, advance couriers sent forth to investigate the senile endurance of winter, hopped about the park sward. school-ward bound boys, out of sight of their homes, were doffing their irksome overcoats, and thrusting them, blanket-wise, at demure little schoolgirls who, in turn, were carrying their stuffy jackets over their arms. motormen and truckmen were smothering yawns that denoted a premature spring fever. business-bound men, going more slowly than usual, glancing occasionally at the sky of sapphire, and feeling on their cheeks gusty little zephyrs from the south, thought of fishing "where the wild stream sings." belated shopgirls, sensing the morning's benign balm as they hurried through crowds, thought of hats and furbelows for the season that, they surmised, was almost upon them. in the ferry-bound automobile, john blythe was thinking about a letter hid in the pocket of his coat and wondering how the person whom the letter most concerned would regard its contents. louise was wondering if her mother would be annoyed over the word she had left with her maid that she would be with laura for the entire day and part of the evening; occasionally she glanced sidelongwise at john blythe, when there was no possibility of his catching her at it, and strove vaguely to analyze the sense of power, mingled with kindliness, which his presence diffused. laura, leaning back, emitting an occasional absurdity, studied them both and wondered, her eyes a little dreamy, if matters ever actually turned out in real life as they did in novels. they stood on the ferryboat's prow, bathing in the sun's relenting glow and blinking at the gold-tipped river crests; and it was only ten o'clock when, after half an hour's ride on the slam-bang little accommodation train, they debarked at the spick-and-span little station, at the side of which blythe's care-taker, a grinning but stolid german, had drawn up a fine and comfortable, if old-fashioned, surrey to which was hitched a pair of glossy, mettlesome sorrels. louise and laura felt like clapping their hands when, after the two-mile drive through woodlands and past neat, well-cared-for little farms the clean, sweet-smelling soil of which already was being turned up, they drove on a firm, natural road through a wide wooden gate and came in sight of the pretty colonial house, with four bright yellow pillars, topped by a balcony of snowy white, with wide-open shutters of an intense green, and a big white double door at the sides of which were little grooved columns surmounted by the inevitable corinthian capitals. the house, fresh and smart in its old-fashioned way, was roomier than it looked from the front. it was divided by a wide hall which ran its entire length on the ground floor; and a wide stairway ran from the hall in front to the second floor, where, after the colonial fashion, the balcony gave upon sleeping rooms. "sullen manor," announced laura, assuming the megaphonic utterance of the sight-seeing car's expounder. "but doesn't it beautifully belie its name and its owner's doldrumish use of it? why, it is as pretty and cheerful as a pigeon-cote snuggling under sifting cherry blossoms! how much ground is there around the place, john?" "twenty acres," replied blythe, smiling a little gravely. "i suppose i know every foot of the twenty acres, too, though i left here--it is where i was born, you know--when i was seven years old. my father lost the place, you see, through bad investments and what not, when i was at that age. we moved to new orleans, and a year later both my father and mother were swept off by yellow fever. i only remember them in a shadowy way. oddly enough, i remember this old place much better than i do my parents; its corners, clumps of trees, and that sort of thing. i had a chance to get the place back a couple of years ago, and i seized it. a good deal of the gear that was here when i was a tyke is still here, stowed in the attic; for the place has not been often occupied since we left it. i've refurnished it in a sort of a way. i hope you'll not find it so bad, laura; but i'm prepared right now to wilt under your superior, and, i might say, your inveterate knowledge of interior decoration." blythe looked a bit self-disdainful over what had been rather a long speech for him, particularly when he observed that louise had been waiting to ask him something. "you will not think me inquisitive, mr. blythe?" she prefaced. "but what you said about the--the carrying away of your people by yellow fever not only touched me but aroused my curiosity. you were only a child then, of course. what did you do then? were you taken in hand by relatives? you are not annoyed because i ask?" "why should i be?" blythe laughed. "particularly when the reply is so simple. i have no relatives--had none then. when my people died i was on the streets. i believe i hold the record yet for the number of _new orleans picayunes_ and _times-democrats_ sold in a given time. whatever else i became later, i certainly was a hustling newsboy. then i came up here and i've been working ever since. my annals, you see, miss treharne, are distinctly dry." "but your education?" louise asked, her eyes alight with an interest which caused laura to smile. "well," said blythe, "there are plenty of people living in princeton yet, i think, who will tell you, if ever you take the pains to inquire, that i was an exceptionally successful furnace-tender, tinker, chore-doer, and all-round roustabout. oh, yes, i forget. i was a persuasive peddler of soap and starch before the lord, too. likewise, i acquired the knack of mending umbrellas. not to overlook the fact that, odd times, i drove a village hack. at princeton, in short, i was virtually everything and anything you can think of except a barber and a policeman. i shied at those two occupations." "and you took your degree?" inquired louise. "just squeezed through," replied blythe. "don't you believe anything of the sort, louise," put in laura. "he was valedictorian of his class, and, worse than that, he played full-back with his eleven, and a sensational full-back too. i ought to know. i am old enough, woe is me, to have been a woman grown the year john blythe contributed a good three-fifths to the tigers' victory over yale." blythe, flushing embarrassedly, was holding up a protesting hand when the surrey drew up in front of the clean, scrubbed porch and the care-taker's wife, a freshly-ginghamed, bright-eyed german woman of middle age, appeared to receive them. then, from around the left side of the house, a terrific yipping began. two hysterically joyous fox terriers, scenting their master, came tearing around the porch and literally leaped upon blythe. then they "side-wheeled" in circles over the lawn, first listing precariously over on starboard legs and then on port, whimpering in their sheer delight as they tore around. a huge angora cat, as they entered the hall, made two bounds of it from the huge fireplace, from which a pair of smouldering logs diffused a red glow that contrasted oddly with the streaming sunlight, to rub her sides, purring almost vociferously as she did so, against blythe's trousers legs. later in the day, she was solemnly to conduct blythe and his guests to the cellar for the purpose of exhibiting a litter which kept the women chained around the basket for nearly an hour. in the lives of most men and women there are days--usually unanticipated days--so encompassed, aureoled, by a memorable happiness that, ever afterward, in hours of retrospection, they mark the beginning or denote the closing of the eventful periods. this was such a day for blythe and louise and laura. they rambled through miles of field and forest, chattering and laughing like children a-berrying; the women's hair blowing free or tumbling down altogether, their skirts caught by brambles, their deadliest fears aroused by the inevitable ruminative cow. they climbed fences, while blythe pretended that something had just dropped out of his pocket back of him. they romped with the dogs, they tossed pebbles at a mark in a garrulous little just-thawed stream, they even sat down on an inviting little mound, beneath an old elm, and played at mumblety-peg with blythe's jack-knife and quarrelled laughingly over the score of the game. when they returned to the house in mid-afternoon, they found the german woman preparing a meal for them. laura and louise insisted upon helping her. in fact, they banished her from the kitchen altogether and did it all themselves. louise announced, her features set rather determinedly, that she was going to make some biscuits, whereupon blythe, asking her if she'd learned that in the cooking class at miss mayhew's school, incontinently fled in well-simulated alarm. but he came back to the spotless kitchen to watch the two women, aproned to the neck, and their arms bared to the shoulders, breeze about with their preparations. he was repaid for his inquisitiveness by being swaddled in an apron and set to peel the potatoes. the meal was an unqualified success, including the biscuits, which, to louise's intense surprise, were superb, although blythe impertinently maintained that the german woman really had made them and that louise had merely heated them over. the light began to fall as they chatted around the table, and blythe, having no great liking for oil lamps, tossed logs on to the dining-room fireplace for the flickering glow of their light. blythe lighted a cigar with his coffee and fell into a silence of content when louise and laura began to hum, very low, snatches of old songs in unison; laura in her deep, moving contralto, with an appealing little "break" in it, and louise in a clear, sweet soprano--she had been the honor girl of her school for her singing. "more," blythe would give the repressed command when they ceased; and they would willingly obey. after a while, darkness having quite fallen, laura went to another part of the house for her after-dinner cigarette. she made it a practice not to take her cigarettes in the presence of quite young women. blythe, silent enough now, and his silence tacitly concurred in by louise, who also had become preoccupied, under the spell of the flickering fire-light and her nearness, alone, to a man who made a strong appeal to her imagination, brought up a deep leather chair before the logs and motioned to louise to take it. but she pulled an old-fashioned three-legged footstool before the fire, and blythe himself had to take the chair. thus they sat silent for a while, listening to the sputtering of the green logs. "louise." it was the first time he had called her that. but she did not even turn her head. she was sitting near him on the low stool, chin in palm, her face illumined by the fire's glow. it was agreeable to hear him call her louise. he knew her father. she had been thinking of her father while she and laura were singing softly. "yes," she said, quietly. "i am to be your guardian, louise. does that please you?" blythe, leaning back in the deep chair, did not take his eyes from the murmuring logs. louise, chin still in palm, turned to look at him calmly. then she gazed back into the fire. "yes," she replied, no surprise in her tone. perhaps, she thought whimsically, the dancing, leaping flames had hypnotized her. but she was not surprised. she was, instead, swept by a surge of deep gladness. "you have a letter from my father?" "two," said blythe. "one of them is for you." she moved her little stool close to his chair and he handed her the packet. the letter for her was under cover of the letter addressed to blythe. louise studied, in the fire's glow, the bold, clear address on the envelope. it was the first time she had ever seen her father's handwriting. her eyes became slightly suffused at that thought. her letter dropped out of the larger envelope. "if you care to, read the one addressed to me first, louise," said blythe. louise, turning a bit the better to catch the fire's glow, read her father's letter addressed to blythe--as far as she could read it. she was nearly at the end when her unshed tears blinded her. blythe's hand, which she then felt, without surprise, softly clasping both of her own as they rested in her lap, felt very cool and soothing to her. after a while, nothing having been said by either, she broke the envelope and read her father's letter to her. it was not a long letter, but it took her a long time to read it; the tears would blot out the words, try as she would to crowd them back. her father's letter to blythe was couched in the tone a man assumes in addressing his lawyer who also is his friend. it bore the postmark of lahaina, island of maui, hawaii--george treharne's sugar plantations were on that island of the hawaiian group. the letter concerned louise wholly. he was tied to his plantations, owing to labor troubles with the japanese, and there was no possibility of his visiting the states for some time. he had been surprised to hear that louise had left school. she was now a woman grown. he had looked forward to the time when, he hoped, she might feel an impulse to come to him. if that time had not yet come he trusted implicitly to blythe to see that she should be properly bestowed, placed in a fitting environment, and shielded from baneful influences. he knew that blythe, the young partner of his old lawyer, now dead, would not fail him in this. he desired that blythe should apply immediately for a court order appointing him his daughter's legal guardian. he inclosed the necessary papers for the accomplishment of that purpose. he was eager to see his daughter, and hoped to see her within a year. in the meantime he confidently committed her to blythe's watchful guardianship. his letter to louise bespoke a deep and solicitous affection. he told her of blythe, adverting to him in terms of praise as a man of exalted honor ("poor father! as if i did not know that," thought louise, when she came to that passage), and beseeching her to follow blythe's advice in all matters in which his large experience would be invaluable to her. he added that he felt that she would not find blythe's suggestions irksome. he inclosed a draft on a honolulu bank for five thousand dollars, which would suffice for her needs until she heard from him again. he hoped to see her within a year. and he was hoping that she would be glad to see her "always-affectionate father, george treharne." at length louise conquered her tears and turned a fire-illumined smile upon blythe. "i am glad," she said simply. "even before you told me, this had been the happiest day of my life. now it is beautiful. i cannot even begin to tell you how beautiful it is." "then i shall apply for the guardianship, louise," said blythe. "i wish i could say how it pleases me to know you are willing that i should." "willing?" said louise. "do you know that, aside from laura, you are the only--" she had been close to saying "friend;" but she could not leave her mother out in that way;--"the only adviser i have?" blythe, glancing from the logs into her eyes as she said that, longed to take her in his arms. laura, at the piano in the music room on the other side of the hall, began softly to play the barcarole from "the tales of hoffmann." they listened for a little while, and then blythe said, smiling gravely: "as your father says, i shall not be, i hope, an exacting guardian. there are many things upon which i shall not touch at all. i shall not affect to believe that you do not know what i mean." "i know," said louise. "your duty is that to which your heart prompts you--i know that," said blythe. "it is not for me, nor for anyone else, to seek to alter your conception of your duty. all that i ask is that you call upon me in your time of need, if that time should ever come; and i hope it never shall. for the rest, nothing is to be changed at my suggestion. the scroll is in your hands, louise. only when you need me--i shall not fail you then." "would it be unworthy," she asked him after a pause, "if i were not to tell my father--just yet--that i am living with my mother?" blythe knew what a hard question that had been for her to ask. "not unworthy, or anything like it, i think," he replied promptly, "when the motive is so pure and fine." impulsively she rose and held out both of her hands and he took them in his. "call laura," she said. "i want to tell her. i want my guardian angel to meet my guardian." laura came into the room as she spoke. she walked over to louise and placed an arm around her. "i knew it, dear," she said to louise. "john told me last night. that is why we are over here. he thought, and i agreed with him, that it would be better to tell you at the close of a happy day. and was there _ever_ such a happy day since the world began?" blythe looked at his watch and whistled. "we've half an hour to make the last new york train tonight, and a two-mile drive to the station," he said. "if we miss the train we'll have to stay here all night." laura gathered up her skirts and raced for her hat, louise after her. "stay here all night!" gasped laura. "you are making a glorious beginning as a guardian, aren't you!" it was past ten o'clock when louise, in laura's car, which had been waiting at the ferry, reached the house on the drive, laura having been dropped at her apartment. the sheer happiness of the day still absorbed her. up to the moment when the car pulled up at the curb she had been going over and over, since parting with blythe and laura, the incidents of the day that had made it such an oasis of happiness. but it all disappeared like a suddenly-vanishing mirage when, upon stepping to the pavement, she saw langdon jesse's car drawn up at the curb. chapter vii jesse's car looming suddenly upon her, instantly dissolved louise's happy absorption and aroused within her the foreboding that she was upon the threshold of something sinister; and the premonition caused her to become physically and mentally tense as she ascended the steps. the impact of the hall's stream of light slightly blinded and confused her as she entered; but she very soon discerned jesse and judd standing before the wide, brassy fireplace. both were in shaggy automobile coats and plainly were about to leave the house. judd, his burnished bald pate mottledly rosy from the heat of the blazing logs, was standing with his back to the fire, his hands thrust in the greatcoat pockets, his heavy under-shot jaw working upon an imaginary cud. jesse, towering over the other man, but his own increasing over-bulkiness made more manifest by his bulging coat of fur, was the first to see louise, who, with an inclination of the head, was for passing them to gain the stairs. neither jesse nor judd intended that this should be. the two had dined together. the blitheness of their humor, therefore, contained also a seasoning of carelessness. without the least movement of his grotesquely-paunched body, judd turned his head sidewise and viewed louise quizzically through his sharp, red-rimmed, oddly small eyes. "evening--er--daughter," he said to her in an experimental but sufficiently matter-of-fact tone. the greeting sounded so incredible that louise, coming to a sudden halt, rested her hands on the back of a chair and stared curiously at him without a word. she felt very cold, in spite of the excessive heat of the hall; but she was amazed quite beyond the power of speech. while thus she stood, staring puzzledly at judd, jesse faced her, and, bringing his heels together with a click, made her a low bow accompanied by a sweeping cross-wise gesture with his cap of fur. it is a dangerous thing for a man to attempt the grand manner unless he is very sure of his practice or at least of the indulgence of his gallery. louise, startled as she was, could not fail to notice the inadequacy of his attempt. "glad i haven't missed you, after all, lou--miss treharne," said jesse, catching himself before he had quite finished addressing her by her first name. his tone was grossly familiar; and louise, merely glancing at him, saw that the question that was always in his eyes when he looked at her now was made more searching and persistent by his potations. "i've been dallying a-purpose. i came to offer you the use of my box for 'pelleas and melisande'--it's being done at the manhattan tonight for the first time here, of course you know. they're repeating it friday night, though. mary garden's a dream in it, they say--she's a dream in any old thing--or hardly anything, when it comes to that," and he laughed boldly at the suggestiveness of the remark. "the box is yours for friday night. may i hope to join----" louise, as he spoke, had been steadying herself to make reply. now she raised a hand for him to desist. the gesture was simple, but he obeyed the implied command. perhaps it was the picture that she made in her anger that warned him. she stood straight, shoulders back, head up, eyes gazing unflinchingly into his; a moving figure of womanly dauntlessness, had there been eyes there thus to appraise her attitude. "mr. jesse," she said in a clear tone, picking her words with a cutting deliberation, "you are not, i have heard, deficient in intelligence. a very short time ago you had the hardihood to proffer me the use of one of your cars. i declined for the same reason that i now repeat in refusing your proffer of the use of your opera box. there is no imaginable reason why i should accept such favors at your hands. i told you that before. and you knew it before i told you. my acquaintanceship with you is merely casual. but, since you force me to it by disregarding what i said before, permit me to say now, explicitly and i hope finally, that i am not conscious of the least desire to become further acquainted with you." judd choked on a gloatful cough. while louise had been speaking he had been grinning malevolently at jesse, the grin saying, as plainly as words: "well, i was right, wasn't i? you're properly shrivelled, aren't you?" jesse smiled chagrinedly and, as he imagined, conciliatingly. but he evaded her direct gaze, and his wholly unconvincing assumption of the grand manner had quite departed. he was not, however, appreciably disturbed. jesse had a habit of discounting such setbacks in advance. the stock market and women required deft manipulation, he considered, and his fame as a manipulator was established. the citadel, finally scaled, would be the more inviting for the difficulty of the besiegement. he entertained no doubts as to the outcome. in the meantime louise could enjoy her schoolgirl heroics. he was not unfamiliar with that sort of thing. but in time they all sensed the glamour of the advantages he so well knew how to dangle before them. these thoughts danced agreeably before jesse's mental vision even at the moment when he felt himself, with no sense of degradation, to be the target of louise's scorn. "well, i am sorry, miss treharne, that you still seem to misunderstand me," said jesse, attempting the tone of one whose sorrow overtops his mortification. "it is because i do understand you that i speak as i do," replied louise with perfect self-possession. judd choked again in the gleefulness of his vindication and jesse shot him a malignant glance. then and there jesse began to outline a little plan whereby, by means of "market" pressure, he calculated that he could promptly and effectually change judd's attitude. "i prefer to believe, miss treharne," said jesse, "that you are indisposed and that upon reflection you will be sorry that----" "i am perfectly well," interposed louise in a tone of cold finality, "and i shall not be sorry." then she passed up the stairs to her mother's apartments. "now will you be good!" broke out judd, chuckling vindictively, when she had gone. "say, jesse, i wonder if you feel so much like a clipped and trimmed lothario as you look?" jesse, his mask off, growled something inarticulate by way of reply. then: "are you for the club?" he asked judd. he decided that he might as well test the strength of the screws upon judd at once. they went out together. * * * * * mrs. treharne, dressed for a restaurant supper party that was to assemble at midnight, was reading, with the wistfulness of one debarred, the "society news" in a chattery and generally wrong weekly publication when louise entered her sitting room. she was wonderfully coiffured, and encased in a _décolletté_ dress that somewhat too liberately exploited the chisellings of her still milky arms and shoulders. she stiffened slightly in her chair at the sight of louise; and the dimplings which had been creasing her plastic face in her enjoyment of the publication's malevolent gossip gave way to the expression of peevishness with which her daughter was becoming all too well acquainted. "well, my dear," she started to say as louise, in whose eyes the embers of the wrath jesse's words had aroused still slumbered, "i must say that you have a cool way of walking off and----" "no reproaches just now, mother, please," interposed louise, sinking wearily into a chair. "i never had a happier day until, returning here----" she paused, passing a hand before her eyes. she was loth to enter upon the topic of judd and jesse with her mother. but mrs. treharne, looking at her more closely, saw her perturbation. "oh, you met mr. judd and mr. jesse as you came in?" she asked, a note of slightly worried curiosity in her tone. "were they----?" she broke off. "men are men, my dear," she resumed, placatingly. "they had been dining--i noticed that. but of course they said nothing to----" "your business adviser," said louise--she could not bring herself to mention judd's name--"greeted me as 'daughter.' i remember now that i was too much startled to tell him that he must not repeat that." "tush, louise--a slip of the tongue, of course," said mrs. treharne, appeasingly. privately, however, she already began to contrive the things she intended to say to judd on the morrow. "and mr. jesse--did he----" "mr. jesse," interposed louise, "caught himself as he was about to address me as louise. he offered me the use of his box at the opera. several days ago--i was too chagrined to tell you--he insisted upon my accepting the use of one of his automobiles. i hope i made it plain to him tonight--and i tried hard enough to make it plain to him before--that there is not the remotest chance that i shall ever accept his sinister civilities." "why 'sinister,' louise?" put mrs. treharne, bridling. "how can you possibly put such a construction upon it when one of my friends generously extends to you courtesies that are commonly and with perfect propriety accepted by----" louise sighed wearily and held up a pleading hand. "don't ask me such a question--please, mother," she entreated. "you don't know how the subject revolts me." "but, my dear," her mother persisted, "what is it that you have against mr. jesse? i am entitled to know." "i am not sufficiently interested in the man to have anything against him," replied louise. "is it not enough that i loathe him?" "no, louise, it is not enough," pronounced her mother, plainly ready for argument on the subject. "you are too young a woman to be forming prejudices or leaping to conclusions. what do you know about mr. jesse that has caused you to form such an opinion of him?" louise hesitated. her intimacy with her mother had never been very great. there had never been any plain talk, or even mother-and-daughter confidences, between them. the theme as she had said, was revolting to her. but her mother deliberately chose to remain on that ground. there was no path around the point her mother dwelt upon. louise entertained no thought of evading it. "mother," she said, leaning forward in her earnestness, "it is natural enough, i know, that you still regard me as a child. but, before i answer your question, are you willing to grant, at least for the time, that i am a woman?" "don't be so unmitigatedly solemn about it, louise," demurred her mother, evasively. "my question was simple enough." "simple enough to put, but not so simple for me to answer," was louise's quiet reply. "but i shall answer it nevertheless. the reason, then, why i do not intend to have any further contact with langdon jesse is that he is one of the most notorious libertines in new york; a man who regards women from a single angle--as his prey. everybody seems to know that, mother, except you: and you don't know it, do you?" there was a pathos in the eagerness with which the girl asked the question; it spoke of a dim hope she yet had that perhaps, after all, her mother did not know about langdon jesse. her mother's harsh, dodging reply quickly dashed that hope. "who has been telling you such scandalous things, child?" mrs. treharne demanded. "laura stedham?" "you must not ask me that question," replied louise, quietly firm. "but if nobody had told me about langdon jesse--and i shall not deny that i was told--i am sure my instinct would have taught me to suspect him of being--precisely what he is." mrs. treharne shook her head dismally. "it is exactly as i feared it would be, louise," she said, sighing drearily. "you are narrow, restricted, pent-in; you haven't even a symptom of bigness of view; your horizon is no wider than the room in which you happen to be. i always feared they would make a prude of you. now i see that my forebodings were right." louise, very much wrought upon, rose rather unsteadily and walked over to her mother's chair. "you repel me a little, mother," she said in a low tone. "it hurts me to say that: but it is the truth. if i am a prude, then i am unconscious of it. it may be that i don't know your definition of the word." she paused and gazed about the room wearily. "if to be a prude," she resumed, "is to be conscious of the desire and the intention to be an honest woman, then, mother, i am a prude," her voice breaking a little. "and if one must be a prude to recoil from the hideous advances of a man like langdon jesse, then again i am a prude." she had been unfairly placed on the defensive. she had not meant to wound. but, while her words cut her mother like the impact of thongs, they did not arouse within her a sense of the humiliation of her position. "louise," she asked, hoarsely, moistening her dry lips, "are you saying these--these stinging things with the deliberate purpose of reflecting upon your mother?" addressed to anybody else but louise, the question would have been absurd in the opening it afforded. "i should hate to have you think that," replied louise, flushing hotly and taking her mother's hands. "you don't think such a thing, do you?" "i don't know what to think," said her mother, taking the martyred tone, "when you say such horrid things. i never heard you say such--such flaying things before. i can't think what is coming over you." "i am very lonesome, for one thing," said louise, looking at her mother through suffused eyes. "i see so little of you. perhaps i become moody. but i never mean, never meant, to say anything to hurt you, dear." "but you see enough, if not too much, of--of others, louise," put in her mother, slightly mollified. "you have been with laura ever since early this morning?" "yes; with laura--and another," replied louise, unfailingly candid. "another?" said mrs. treharne, querulously. "whom do you mean?" "mr. john blythe," replied louise, coloring. "john blythe?" said her mother, wonderingly. "you were with laura and john blythe? so that is the direction of the wind? laura is trying to----" she broke off when she saw the expression of pain on her daughter's face. "please don't say that," said louise, her face and forehead a vivid crimson. "i have often met mr. blythe at laura's. i couldn't begin to tell you how i esteem him. and, mother, he is to be my guardian." she had meant to tell her mother that at a more fitting time; but, since blythe's name had come up, she discerned that there could be no excuse for a postponement of the revelation. mrs. treharne gazed at her daughter with mouth agape. when she finally spoke her words were almost inarticulate. "your guardian?" she gasped. "john blythe is to be your guardian? at whose direction? upon whose application?" "my father's, mother." "but are you sure that you are not being tricked--that----" "john blythe is not the man to trick anybody, dear--everybody, of course, knows that," said louise, very prompt to a defense in that quarter. "moreover, i saw the letters from my father. one of them is to me. so there is no mistake about it." "what does your father say in his letter?" asked mrs. treharne, suspiciously. "does he mention me? say anything to my detriment?" "nothing of that sort, mother," replied louise, disliking exceedingly the drift of the conversation. "mr. blythe's guardianship is to be largely a matter of form. i--i am glad the arrangement has been made. there are times when i feel that i need guidance. you are so busy and i so much dislike to worry you. often, since i came home, i've found myself wishing that i had a brother." she stopped, her voice faltering. mrs. treharne started slightly, swept by the thought of how often she had wished that louise herself had been a son. now, for the moment, she repented that thought; the dignity and strength of her daughter were making their appeal to her. she had her periods of fairness, and she could not throttle her consciousness of the wretchedness of louise's position under that roof nor subdue the accusing inner voice that held her solely responsible for it. she trembled with indignation when she remembered that judd had dared to address louise as "daughter." she raged at herself for not possessing the strength to cast the judd incubus from her once and forever. and she ended, as usual, by giving way to an effusion of dismal tears and by promising herself that "some time--some day----" louise went to bed with a disturbed mind. she was trying not to face the indubitable fact that her mother was proving herself but a reed to lean upon. then her drowsy thoughts wandered to the fire-lit dining-room of the serene old house in the country in and around which she had spent a day marked by a sort of placid happiness which she could not quite analyze; and her last thought, before succumbing to unquiet dreams based upon the events at the end of the day, were of a rugged, kindly-faced man quietly watching her as she read her father's letter by the flickering light of the droning logs. * * * * * judd, still chuckling viciously, continued to taunt the rebuked but by no means cast-down jesse after the two had got into jesse's car. "not saying much, are you, old top?" he gurgled joyously as the car throbbed away from the curb. "well, i don't blame you. not, of course, that i didn't give you fair warning. i told you you'd be frozen stiff if you tried on any of your don juanish airs and graces in that quarter. but don't take it to heart--don't grieve over it. you'll thaw out again in time. right now i wouldn't dare take a chance on touching you for fear one of your arms or something'd drop off. but you'll thaw--you'll thaw," and he squirmed and wabbled around in his seat in the excess of his mirth. jesse, gnawing on an unlighted cigar as was his wont when temporarily eclipsed or engaged in blocking out a campaign, listened in silence. when it becomes the unfailing habit of a man to enjoy the last laugh he learns to pay little heed to the too-previous chirrupings of those over whom he feels confident of eventually triumphing. so he permitted judd to enjoy himself. when the chuckles of his companion gradually ceased, however, he said, drily enough: "to all intents and purposes she's a dependent of yours, isn't she?" judd parried the question. he was indifferent enough as to what might happen to louise treharne: he regarded her as an interloper, and he was disgruntled over her studiously aloof treatment of him. but it had become a habit with him to parry jesse's questions since the occasion when his over-expansiveness in replying to a few seemingly innocent and unmeditated questions from jesse had resulted in the sound "market" trouncing which his one-time pupil had inflicted upon him. "what the devil difference does it make?" was judd's reply. "she has your number all right, and that's all you need to know, isn't it?" and he chuckled again. jesse waited again until judd's glee had subsided, then resumed. "she has to look to you to make provision for her needs--clothes, hats, ribbons, furbelows, that sort of thing--doesn't she?" he inquired with the coolness of one who does not mean to be rebuffed. "oh, forget it," said judd, a little grumpily now. "don't try to pin me, jesse. i don't spout about these things. she's living under one of my roofs, is a member of one of my households. and she regards you as--well, as a considerably-drowned water-bug. why don't you let it go at that? there are more women in the world than there are red ants or railroad ties. can't you take your medicine--stand for the defeat?" "not in this particular case," was jesse's perfectly frank reply; he could be frank when there was no possibility of a "come-back." "what's more, i don't intend to. just make up your mind to that, will you?" "oho!" said judd, struck by the intentional rawness which jesse had put into his last phrase. "that's the tune, is it?" "that house of yours on the drive isn't the place for the young woman," said jesse. judd knew that he wasn't assuming any virtuous strain, but merely leading up to a point. "you ought to know that--as the father of a family." "you're becoming confoundedly erect in your ideas, aren't you?" snorted judd. "and i've told you before that i won't have you dabbling in my private affairs. just cut out your harpings, in this connection, upon my family and all of that sort of thing, understand?" "damn your private affairs," said jesse, quietly, but with a note of meaningfulness in his tone that caused judd to sit up and take immediate notice. "i am no more interested in your private affairs than i am in the transactions of the congo missionary society. but i repeat that your--er--that mrs. treharne's daughter doesn't belong under that riverside drive roof. do you understand me?" "no," said judd, "i don't," nor did he. but he no longer chuckled. "i think you've told me several times," jesse went on calmly, "that the young woman flaunts you?" judd made some inarticulate reply which jesse took for an affirmative. "that being the case," inquired jesse, "why do you keep her around the place?" "what's your idea--that i should turn her into the street?" asked judd, gradually getting a hold on jesse's thread. "oh, she wouldn't be in the street very long," said jesse with significant emphasis. "but, since on your own say-so she scarcely even nods to you, and you are paying the freight, what's the answer? doesn't she know that she's dependent upon you?" "how the devil could she help knowing it?" broke out judd impatiently. "she has eyes and what belongs to her by way of brains, i suppose." "well," said jesse, "if she cuts in on your--your game, and is such a nuisance to you, why don't you exert your authority--the authority of the provider--and----" he hesitated. "and what?" inquired judd, proddingly. "make provision for her--not necessarily luxurious provision--under some other roof?" said jesse. "in a modest little apartment, for example, with just the necessaries and that sort of thing. that would alter her demeanor toward you--and toward others. once they've enjoyed the gewgaws of life the other thing is a come-down and they feel the sordid misery of it." judd studied. "you're a deep sort of a reprobate, jesse," he said, musingly, after a pause. "i don't profess to be able to plumb some features of your scoundrelism, and yet i've never been accused of being uncommonly dense. how the devil would my planting the young woman in a miserable little six-by-eight flat help your case?" "that," coolly replied jesse, "is my affair; but you exhibit your denseness, at that, in asking such a fool question. it wouldn't take her long to begin to pine for the light and laughter and lavishness of life after she'd had a taste of the miserable little six-by-eight flat as you call it, would it?" "and when she did begin to pine that's where you'd come in, eh?" said judd. "yes, it was pretty thick of me not to catch your drift, i'll admit. but i guess i'll keep out of it. you can conduct your own damned round-ups. you've got your nerve with you to ask me to figure in any such a dirty subtle scheme as that, haven't you?" he spoke more in resentment of jesse's overbearing tone than from any profound sense of the contemptibleness of jesse's suggestion. jesse lit his cigar and said nothing for a while. then, puffing hard so that the glow of his cigar lit up his stolid waxy face, he said: "i hear you're carrying a pretty nifty line of cotton, judd, and that you're still buying. waiting for cotton to touch sixteen cents, eh?" judd cocked his ears. "well," he said, moistening his lips, "i haven't got anything on you. you're carrying ten bales when i'm only carrying one." "is that so?" lied jesse with perfect serenity. "well, you're entitled to have your dream out, of course. but it so happens that i am not carrying even one bale." judd sat up straight in his seat. "well?" he asked, huskily. "well, what?" asked jesse. "what are you shooting at?" inquired judd. "do you mean to say you're going to take the bear end of it?" "i don't mean to say anything of the sort," replied jesse. "and you don't suppose i'd go around placarding the fact if that was my intention, do you? i'm merely out of the market for the present, that's all. but you're in, eh, and waiting for sixteen cent cotton?" the screws were working all right. jesse saw that. it was chilly in the automobile, but judd was mopping a damp brow. "if i ever do break into that market," jesse went on clinchingly but in the same even tone he had been using, "you want to watch my smoke. that's all." judd, in a cold tremor, resolved to unload his line of cotton as soon as the market opened on the morrow. also he decided that it wouldn't be any impolitic thing for him to placate jesse in the immediate meanwhile. "well, if i have been dense, i'm not now," he said, reflectively. "i understand you all right." "i thought you would," said jesse, tossing his cigar out of the car window. * * * * * despite her natural reserve and the reticence, born of keen humiliation, which she maintained in respect of her mother's affairs, louise, feeling the need of an experienced woman's counsel, gave to laura stedham, her one woman friend in need, a somewhat guarded account of her meeting with jesse and judd upon her return from the day in the country. laura listened to the story in a sort of silent rage. she was not a woman to rant, and even if she had been, the recital that louise gave her, with the wretched details which laura could guess at, of her gradual hemming in at the riverside drive house, filled the other woman with a sense of anger and disgust beyond the mere power of words. louise had not previously told laura of langdon's proffering her the use of an automobile; she feared that laura's wrath and alarm over that would be directed against her mother for having made such a situation possible; and her loyalty to her mother never wavered. at the close of her story, which she gave to laura in a quiet, rather hopeless way that the older woman found pathetic to a degree, louise, in a moment of inadvertence, let fall how judd had greeted her as "daughter." laura flared at that. but she held herself in, and she asked louise, quietly enough: "my dear, there is one thing that i want to ask you. i hope you won't think me intrusive for asking it. it is this: just why are you remaining at that house? you know the--the circumstances there. i am not trying to influence you. but i want you to tell me just why, since you cannot change the conditions, you deem it necessary to go on living there?" louise replied without hesitation. "i don't lose hope that i may be able to change the conditions some time, dear," she replied. "there would be no use in my staying with my mother if i did not possess that hope." "but," asked laura, not pressingly, but with a grave, interested earnestness, "don't you think your chance to change the conditions is almost negligible? just how can you possibly expect such a change ever to come about?" "i am hoping," louise answered bravely, but coloring, "that, if i stay on with my mother, sooner or later she will become ash----"; she could not finish the word "ashamed;"----"she will come to a realization of herself," she took up the thread, "of what the conditions in which she lives mean; of what, eventually, they must bring her to, and bring me to, also. often i think that she doesn't view it as i do--as we do. she is drifting. she told me that she was. she has lost her moorings. i want to bring her back. i am the only one who could bring her back, am i not? and i can't leave her as long as there is a chance to do that." "but your own life, dear?" interposed laura. "you must consider that, you know. you are a very young woman. there is no reason why you should be dragged down." "i shall not be," replied louise. "and, if my mother is to be dragged down, if she is to continue in this way, of what use would my life ever be to me? i never could be happy with her in such surroundings, could i? there is only one thing for me to do, dear; stay with her until she sees it all. i know that she will understand sooner or later. she can't help it. she's bound to--to change. i want to help her. i don't ever say anything to her, of course. it would be impossible for me to do that. but she isn't happy as she is now. my mother and i will have a dear, cosy, happy life together yet, laura, never fear." laura pretended that some pictures on a mantel needed straightening in order to hide her suffused eyes. "all the same, louise," she said, resuming her seat after a little while, "mr. blythe is entitled to know these things that you have told me. and you should have the benefit of his advice. he not only is your guardian, but he is a man--a regular man--and your--oh, well, i do not need to say that he is your friend, do i?" smiling. "i meant to tell him," replied louise, turning to gaze out of the window. "oh, you did, dear?" said laura, teasingly. "then my advising you to tell him was superfluous, wasn't it? i wonder why you decided to tell him, louise?" "because----" louise started to reply. but she did not finish, for at that instant john blythe, in riding dress, walked into the room. chapter viii laura glanced wistfully at blythe's riding clothes. "i suppose you come here in that apparel to tantalize me, knowing that my odious, ogreish medical man has absolutely forbidden me to ride for the present," she said to him in mock reproach. "there is nothing in the least subtle about that doctor man. he wants to buy my horse. that's why he has forbidden me to ride. but i am going to thwart him by turning scamp over to louise. you ride, of course, dear?" louise smiled her gratitude. she had become a finished rider as a young girl during the periods when her mother would abandon her improvident life in the city and retire to the country to enable her income partially to catch up with her expenditures. "i've been trying the most ambitious horse i ever saw," said blythe, very much the wholesome, out-of-doors looking man, dropping into a chair. "if i buy him--and i'm going to think that over carefully--i think i shall call him the climber. he was very keen to accompany me up in the elevator, but the man on guard at the door wouldn't have it. would you have minded my fetching him up, laura? he has the true artistic sense, too. he tried all he knew to climb that statue of bobbie burns in the park. wouldn't it have been a victory for art if he had succeeded in demolishing that bronze libel on burns? then he wanted to walk--prance, i mean--into the car of some people i stopped to pass the time of day with. curious psychological study, that horse. i can't imagine where he acquired his mounting social ambition, for he's about one-half wild horse of the pampas and the other half wyoming cayuse." "louise," suggested laura, who had been meditating during blythe's raillery, "would you care for a ride now?" blythe's eyes lighted up at the words. "i must have some excuse, you see, for driving the two of you away, for my dressmaker is moaning piteously over the 'phone for me to try some things on, and i'll have to go. scamp has been eating his head off for a fortnight, but he'll behave, i'm sure. and my habit, boots, everything, will fit you perfectly." before laura had finished blythe was at the telephone, directing laura's stableman to send scamp around and laura was guiding louise to her dressing room to put her into the hands of her maid for the change into laura's riding things. half an hour later louise, well-mounted on the breedy-looking, over-rested but tractable enough scamp, was on the park bridle-path alongside blythe, who rode the mettlesome cob he had maligned with the stigma of cayuse. the two horses, adaptable striders, trotted teamwise for a while, louise and blythe silently giving themselves over to the enjoyment of the eager, tingling air and the brilliant sunshine. they reined up to cross the carriage road and for a while after that, by a sort of tacit understanding, they reduced their horses' pace to a brisk walk. it is a bromidic truism, but it is none the less true, that it is only possible for a woman to be wholly at her ease in the presence of the man in whom she is not "interested." louise, as she rode at blythe's side through the bright vistas of bare, interlacing branches, perhaps would have shrunk from being judged by the mildly accusatory terms of such an axiom; nevertheless, alone with this man, she was wonderingly conscious of being possessed by a speech-cancelling diffidence, a restraint not so much superimposed as involuntarily felt, that was wholly unusual with her in the presence of anyone else. she caught herself, not without flushing when she became aware of her own purpose, in the act of permitting her horse to drop a pace behind in order that she might be free to glance at blythe's rugged profile and the shapeliness of his head for an instant; for she was beginning to discover that it was oddly difficult for her to meet his frank, direct, generally cheerful gaze. this was, of course, from no lack of candor, but, on the contrary, because she was beginning to fear betrayal through her excessive natural candor. it would have been impossible for her to name any other human being with whom she would have preferred to be riding through the sunny park on this afternoon; yet this knowledge did not efface the other fact that she was not at her ease with him. she endeavored, in vaguely wondering about this, to assure herself that it was because of certain revelations which she intended to make to blythe concerning happenings to herself since last she had seen him; but her inner frankness informed her that she was merely searching for a pretext for her slightly provoking diffidence. blythe was the first to break the silence. "'on a hazy, brilliant afternoon in february, , a solitary horseman might have been seen--'" he began to quote, smiling, in a sing-song way, as from the inevitable beginning of an antique novel. louise laughed. "do you feel so lonesome as all that?" she asked him. "not precisely lonesome," said blythe, "but--well, a little detached from the picture. speaking of pictures, please try and steady yourself in the saddle for a moment while i say something pretty. i have been mentally browsing for a word to describe your profile. now i have it. it is 'intaglio.' the beauty of that word is that i almost think i know what it means; and also it fits. the mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse. i think that is the first compliment i ever made in my life," and his reddening features testified to the truth of it. "then i shall not deny that it pleases me," replied louise, able now to turn her head and look at him without the unwonted stealthiness which had been puzzling her. "it is what numismatists would call a 'first-minted' compliment, is it not?" "don't ask me to analyze it, louise, or it might come apart in my hands and i shouldn't be able to put it together again, being so new at the craft," replied blythe, whimsically. she found it very natural and agreeable that he should call her louise; she had been conscious, in truth, of a deep-down little fear, now dissipated, that he might resume calling her miss treharne. she felt that she would not have cared for "miss treharne" any more--from him. they fell silent again for a little while, during which blythe, infected by the furtiveness which had actuated louise a little while before, once slightly drew rein in order to steal an unobserved oblique glance at louise's gleaming auburn hair, which refused to be confined under her three-cornered continental hat of felt, but moved in rebellious, slipping coils under the impact of the occasional gusts of wind; and he wanted, too, to get the effect of her cameo face outlined against a patch of unusually dark shrubbery slightly ahead of them. his plotting, however, was a dead failure. she caught him in the very article of making this cribbed momentary inspection, and she laughed outright. "draw alongside, please," she commanded, and he noticed for the first time the all but indistinguishable slant of her full eyes when they were possessed by laughter. "you are not to criticize the fit of laura's habit on me, as of course you were doing." "of course," said blythe, more or less unconsciously delivering himself of a white one. "additionally, i was wondering--" he paused a bit abruptly. "well?" inquired louise. "you won't be annoyed?" said blythe. "i was wondering just what you used to think and do, and sing, and say, when, in your last-previous incarnation, titian was spending all of his hours painting your face and hair." "now," replied louise, smiling, "you are showing a suspicious proficiency for one who claims to have uttered his first compliment only three minutes ago. annoyed? why should i be? one might even become used, in the course of nineteen years, to the possession of green or blue or purple hair; so that i scarcely ever think of my ensanguined locks unless i am reminded of them." "i think," said blythe, musingly, "that you have the gift of cheerfulness." "oh," replied louise, purposely misunderstanding him, "it doesn't take such an inordinate amount of resignation, really, to tolerate one's own red hair." "i deny that it is red," said blythe, assuming an impressive judicial air. "in fact, to employ a perfectly useless legal term, i note an exception to that statement. it isn't red. it's--it's the tint of an afterglow; an afterglow that never was on land or sea." at that instant they emerged upon the open road, and a mounted policeman held up a detaining hand, holding up a huge yellow-bodied car to enable them to cross to where the bridle-path began again. louise, crimsoning, saw her mother leaning back in the big car, judd beside her. blythe, too, saw mrs. treharne--and her companion--and lifted his hat. louise had waved a hand at her mother; but it was a limp hand, and the sun had suddenly darkened for her. blythe noticed her immediate abstraction. he understood. he rode a trifle closer to her, in silence, for a while. louise was gazing at the pommel of her saddle, and he observed the tremulousness about her lips. at a point where the path narrowed in passing a great boulder, blythe reined yet closer, and, reaching out, pressed for an instant her gloved guiding hand. "don't worry, louise--all of these things come right in time," he said in a subdued tone, and as if they had already been speaking of that which had caused her sudden distress. "be sustained by that belief. everything works out right in time. i venture to touch upon that which pains you, not because we are to have a mere legal relationship, but because i am hoping that you view me as a friend. do you?" "you must know that i do," said louise, more moved than he could guess. the touch of his hand had strangely thrilled her. "if it were not for you and laura--" she paused, turning her head. "i know," said blythe. "it is not a matter for volunteered advice. but perhaps you have thought of some way in which i--we--can help you; make the course smoother for you. have you?" "no," replied louise, simply. "there were some occurrences--some things that happened last night--that i meant to tell you about. but i can't now. laura will tell you. you must not be too angry when she tells you. the happenings were not the fault of my mother's; she----" "i can easily surmise that," blythe helped her. "but, louise, if you had meant to tell me these things yourself, what has altered your determination? perhaps, though," reflecting, "that isn't a fair question." "the unfairness--perhaps i should call it weakness--is on my side," replied louise. "i make very brave resolutions," smiling a little detachedly, "as to the candor i am going to reveal to you when i meet you; but when i am with you--" the sentence required no finishing. "there is no weakness in that," said blythe. "or, if there is, then i think my own weakness must be far greater than yours. there are many things that i want to say to you and that i find it impossible to say when the opportunity comes. several times, for example, i have fruitlessly struggled to say that i hope my guardianship over you will erect no barrier between us." "how could it?" asked louise, meeting his eye. "it is just that," replied blythe, "which i find it so difficult to express. i fear to venture too close to the quicksands. but i might as well take the risk. i did not exactly mean to use the word 'barrier.' you make quite another appeal to me than as a ward to a guardian. my imagination is far more involved than that. perhaps i take a roundabout method, louise, of saying that, in spite of my approaching guardianship, i sometimes find myself presuming to hope that a time might come when you would be willing to accept my devotion as a man." "that time," quietly replied louise, pretending to adjust her hat so as to screen her face with her arm, "has already come." she had no _penchant_ for evasiveness, and coquetry was apart from her; she spoke words that her heart brimmed to her lips. blythe, his face transfigured, caught himself reeling a bit in his saddle. her words, so quietly and frankly spoken, had suddenly cleared what he had not hoped would be anything but a pathway of brambles. he swayed so close to her that their faces almost touched, and for a mere instant he was conscious of the fragrance of her pure breath, aware to the core of him of an intoxicating propinquity of which he had not until that moment dreamed. "perhaps i misunderstood you, louise," he said, hoarse of a sudden, reining out and settling himself sidewise in his saddle so that he could see her. "it is impossible that i did not misunderstand you." louise, gazing straight ahead, but with misty eyes, shook her head. she had no more words. and her silent negation told him, better than words, that he had not misunderstood her. they rode without speaking for the remainder of the way back to laura's. just before they drew up to the curb, where he was to assist her to dismount, blythe broke the long reverie that had pinioned them. "i only came to know the meaning of what is called 'the joy of living' an hour ago, louise," blythe said to her then. a moment later he was lifting her from her horse, and the sky swirled before his eyes as, for a rocketing instant, he held her in his strong arms and felt her warm breath (as of hyacinths, he thought) upon his face. he rode away leading her horse, and their parting was of the eyes only. louise, a happy brooding expression on her face, walked in upon laura, who was deeply snuggled on a many-pillowed couch, and sat down, pre-occupiedly tapping a gloved palm with her riding-crop, without a word. "well, dear?" said laura, glancing at her. louise continued to tap-tap her palm with the crop, but she was devoid of words, it appeared. "louise!" laura suddenly sat up straight on the couch and directed a startled, accusatory, yet puzzledly-smiling gaze at the wistful, unseeing and silent girl in the riding habit. louise turned her abstracted gaze upon laura. "what is it, dear?" she asked. "you said something, didn't you?" laura gazed at her with an absorbed smile for nearly a minute. then she settled back among the pillows. "no, sweetheart, i haven't said anything," she replied. * * * * * judd prowled about his club that night in the humor of a savage, barking at the club servants, growling at or turning his back upon cronies who addressed him civilly enough, and almost taking the head off one of them who, noticing the baleful judd mood, cheerfully inquired: "what is it, old chap--gout, liver, the market, or all three?" the market was in part responsible; the entire "list" had gone against him persistently and diabolically from opening to close. but the raking which mrs. treharne had given him during their ride on account of his "daughtering" of louise on the night before was mainly responsible for the bubbling rage which he was taking no pains to conceal and which he was adding to by extraordinarily short-intervalled stops at the club buffet. and so he'd been hauled over the coals again on account of that high-and-mighty daughter of tony's, had he? judd reflected, his thoughts swirling in an alcoholic seethe of self-sympathy. well, he was getting tired of that sort of thing--d----d tired of it. he hadn't had a minute's peace of his life on his visits at the house on the drive since the arrival there of that toploftical, sulky, ridiculously haughty daughter of tony's. haughty about what? haughty for what reason? what license had she to be haughty--especially with him, judd? wasn't she living in his house? what the d----, then, did she mean by flouting him? yes, jesse had been right; she had flouted him since the first day she'd met him. and that wasn't "coming to him;" he didn't deserve it. didn't he fairly shower money upon her mother? didn't her mother have his signed blank checks to fill out at her own sweet will and option? didn't he humor all of tony's extravagances without ever a word of complaint? well, then! what the devil did tony mean by snarling at him all the time about this daughter of hers that had come along and messed everything up? anyhow, why shouldn't he have called the young woman "daughter" if he felt like it? that wasn't going to kill her, was it? he had been drinking a little at the time, anyhow, and it was a slip of the tongue; but even if it hadn't been, what was the difference? what right did she have, anyhow, to look at him as if he were a woodtick? he couldn't understand what jesse saw in her; she was good-looking, of course, but when that was said all was said; she had an unthawable disposition, hadn't she? and a porpoise's cold-bloodedness? but jesse was entitled to his idiotic fancies; he, judd, wasn't going to interpose any obstacles in jesse's way. she needed taming, and jesse's reputation as a tamer was established. leaving all that aside, though, she wasn't going to stay around his house creating discord and giving her mother cherished opportunities to "open up" on him whenever she felt like it. she would have to go somewhere else. he'd take care of her all right. he had no idea of absolutely turning her out; tony wouldn't have that, and, besides, there wasn't anything mean about him. but he wasn't going to be flouted any longer; wouldn't have it; wouldn't endure it; wouldn't tolerate it. fact was, he intended to have it out with tony that very night. he'd go over to the house on the drive and get the thing over with. no use in postponing it. [illustration: he'd go over to the house on the drive and get the thing over with.] thus judd, fuming, and already more than half drunk. "get me a taxicab," he ordered a club servant, and, with a final libation for the tightening of his resolution, he lumbered unsteadily into the taxicab and was catapulted to the house on riverside drive. the butler admitted him and smirked behind his back with the derisiveness of english servants in american households when he saw judd hold out a miscalculating hand for the banister post and miss it by a foot, thereby almost going to his knees on the stairs. but he recovered his equilibrium, growling, and made his way into mrs. treharne's sitting room. heloise was there alone, reading a french comic weekly of extraordinary pictorial frankness with such gusto that she did not even rise when judd partly fell into the room. judd glared at her out of red eyes. "why the devil don't you get to your feet when i come in here, you jabbering chimpanzee?" he inquired of the by no means flabbergasted heloise. she had often seen judd thus and she was used to his expletives and his fondness for comparing her to the simian species on account of her french tongue. "where's your mistress?" "madame has gone to the theatre," said heloise, giving judd a view of a wide, unscreened french yawn. "oh, madame has, has she?" said judd, apeing the maid's tone with a drunken disregard for even the most ordinary dignity. "what theatre?" heloise shrugged. "what theatre?" judd bawled at her. "how should one know?" inquired heloise, disdainfully enough. "madame did not say." judd plumped himself into a deep chair, cocked his evening hat at a little more acute angle over his left ear, fumblingly loosened the buttons of his overcoat, crossed his legs with grunting difficulty, removed his gloves, revealing the enormous diamond rings which he wore on the third finger of each freckled, pudgy hand; then glared at the unruffled heloise again. "is anybody at home?" he asked her. "mademoiselle is here," replied heloise. "but she is retiring and is not to be seen." "oh, she's not to be seen, hey?" snarled judd. "who says she isn't to be seen? you?" heloise shrugged again. she knew that her shrugs enraged him, but she was a dauntless maid of france. "you tell her that i want to see her, understand?" ordered judd, thickly. "want to see her right here and right now." "mademoiselle sent her maid out for the evening and left word that she was not to be disturbed," protested heloise. "i don't care a continental hang what word she left!" raged judd. "you tell her that i want to see her, here and now. you take that message to her or out you go, bag and baggage. i'm paying your wages." heloise, bestowing upon him a parting shrug which was artistically designed to inform him as to just how little she cared for him or his "wages," left the room and knocked upon louise's sleeping-room door. louise, in a negligée and with her hair rippling silkily over her shoulders, was preparing for sleep. the afternoon's reverie still possessed her. musing dreams lingered in her eyes. she looked up, not surprised to see heloise enter. the french maid, devoted to louise from the beginning, often came in for a chat when her mistress was out, to the jealous concern of louise's own maid. now, however, louise was struck with the light of wrath and disgust in heloise's fire-darting, eloquent eyes. "what is it, heloise?" she asked. heloise broke into objurgation as to "zat jood beast"--_cochon rouge_, she called him, explosively. "he demands that you come," she said to louise. "he is not himself; that is, he is himself; he is drunk." "but what does he want with me?" asked louise, apprehensively. heloise could furnish her with no reply to that. "of course i shall not see him." heloise, finger on lip, considered. she knew judd exceedingly well, and she was acquainted with his violence when in his cups. she knew that he was quite capable of breaking in upon louise's privacy if she did not respond to his summons--even if he had to put his shoulder to her door. after a moment's reflection, heloise advised louise to go to him. he could not harm her, except perhaps with his tongue, and he would do that anyhow if she refused to answer his summons; heloise would be hovering near to see that he offered her no other harm. louise, who had the gift of becoming deliberate and cool in emergent moments, decided to take the maid's advice. she dressed hastily and heloise quickly tucked her hair up. she was very regal, very much in control of herself, when she swept swiftly into her mother's sitting room and confronted judd. judd did not rise. neither did he remove his rakishly-tilted hat. he still sat with crossed legs, and he was muttering hoarsely to himself when louise entered. when he heard her rustled entrance he dovetailed his fingers on the lower portion of his evening shirt, twiddled his thumbs, and gazed at her through his red, drink-diminished eyes. "oh, so you came, eh?" he wheezed, drily, continuing to regard her with his bleary stare. "what is it you wish of me?" louise asked him, meeting his gaze, but continuing to stand. "oh, nothing in particular--nothing in particular," said judd with the incoherency of intoxication. quickly, though, he took a tone of brazenness. "you're going to sit down, ain't you? it doesn't cost any more to sit down." "i shall stand," said louise, immovable before him. "oh, you'll stand, hey?" sneered judd. "all right, stand. i sent for you because, in the first place, i wanted to see if you'd come or not. and you're here, ain't you?" this with an air of drunken triumph. louise made no reply. "secondly," went on judd, scowling over the drink-magnified memory of his wrongs, "i sent for you to ask you what in blazes you mean by continually stirring up rows and rough-houses between your mother and me? hey? what's the answer?" there was no answer. louise, literally numb from the vulgar violence of the man, was bereft of speech. she faced him with her fingers tightly laced behind her back, and her face had grown very pale. "that's what i want to find out from you," went on judd, uncrossing his legs so that he could lean forward in his chair and wag an emphasizing finger at her. "and there are some other things i want to find out from you. one of 'em is why the devil you think you're licensed to treat me--_me!_--as if i were a flunkey?" louise retained her frozen attitude. she had the feeling of one being blown upon by icy blasts. even had there seemed to be any need for her to make reply, she could not have done so. "you've got a tongue, haven't you?" demanded judd, her silence adding to the rage into which he was deliberately lashing himself. "don't you try your infernal haughty airs on me any more, young woman. i won't tolerate it. i don't have to tolerate it. didn't they teach you manners at school? if they didn't, by god, i'll know the reason why! i paid 'em to teach you manners!" involuntarily louise pressed her hands to her temples, for she felt suddenly faint. but she conquered the faintness. the utter incredibleness of his words seemed to nerve her. "what do you mean by that?" she asked him, her voice sounding in her ears like that of someone else. "mean?" raged judd, gripping the arms of his chair and half rising. "what do i mean? i mean what i say. i paid the people who educated you, or pretended to educate you, to drill some manners into you. and now i'm going to take a whole lot of pains to find out why they took my money under false pretenses!" "are you not beside yourself?" asked louise quietly enough, though her thoughts were in a vortex. "am i to understand that you really expect me to believe that you paid for my education?" judd flopped back into his chair and stared hard at her. then he broke into a short, jarring laugh. "will you listen to that?" he croaked, looking around the room as if addressing an invisible jury. then, lowering his head and glowering upon louise, he went on: "am i to understand that you are pretending that you don't _know_ that i paid for your education?" "i did not know it," said louise in so low a tone that she could hardly hear herself. "am i to understand," brutally went on judd, now entirely out of himself, "that you are pretending not to know that i've been shovelling out money for you for nearly five years--ever since you were in pigtails? d'ye mean to stand there, with your damned outlandish haughtiness, and tell me that you don't know that every hairpin, every pair of shoes, every frippery or furbelow that you've owned in that time, hasn't been settled for by me? that you don't know that the roof over your head and the bed you've slept in has been paid for by me? that you don't know that the clothes that you've got on your back right this minute were bought for you by me?" it was the cruelest moment in the girl's life. her senses were reeling. but, by an effort of pure will, of supreme concentration, she mustered her strength to withstand the shock. "i did not know these things," she replied in a voice that sounded in her own ears like a mere distant echo. "they are true? i was not told. until this moment i had always supposed that my education and maintenance were paid for out of funds from--" she could not mention the name of her father in the presence of this drink-inflamed brute;--"from other sources." "not by a damned sight," roared judd, relentless, paying no attention to the girl's drawn features and trembling lips. "i know what you're getting at. but you're wrong. there haven't been any 'funds from other sources,' as you call it, disbursed for you for nearly five years. and that's easy to explain, too. i wouldn't have any 'funds from other sources' dribbling along to an establishment i was maintaining. that's why i chucked what you call the 'funds from other sources' back into the sender's teeth." louise, under the impact of that final cowardly blow, might have fallen prone had not her mother, eyes alight with mingled rage and compassion, swept into the room at that instant and gently pushed her daughter into a chair just as louise felt that her knees were giving way beneath her. mrs. treharne, standing stunned in the hall upon coming in, had heard judd's last few sentences; and she judged from them what he had been saying before her return. judd's jaw fell when he saw mrs. treharne, for the moment imperious in her anger and her solicitude for her daughter, sweep into the room in her trailing furs. but, after an instant, he brought his twisted teeth together with a snap and gazed at her with drunken dauntlessness. it was one of judd's hours when he was too far gone to think of surrendering even to her. "what have you done, you unspeakable brute?" mrs. treharne asked him, her voice trembling, as she stood facing him, one hand on louise's shoulder. louise looked up at her mother. "he has been telling me, mother, what i now believe to be the truth," she said; "that i am indebted to him for my schooling, my maintenance, my--" she could not go on. mrs. treharne's eyes blazed. "you low cad--you vulgar coward!" she fairly hissed at judd. but judd, for once, would have none of that. he rose unsteadily to his feet and stood swaying before her. "no more of that from you!" he thundered, the veins of his forehead standing out purplishly. "i know what i've said, and i stand for it! don't you try to come that bullyragging business over me--i'm all through standing for that! you can do as you please, go as far as you like. but this is my house--don't you ever forget that! see that you remember it every minute from this time on, will you?" and with a parting glare he strode to the door, tramped down the stairs, and went out, pulling the door after him with a crash. mrs. treharne, herself used to such scenes with judd, but hideously conscious of what a horror this one must have been to an inexperienced girl less than three months away from the serene atmosphere of school, sat upon an arm of louise's chair and began to stroke her daughter's hair. "but why did you never tell me, mother?" asked louise after a long silence. [illustration: "but, why did you never tell me, mother?"] mrs. treharne, on the defensive, tried to devise excuses, but they were very feeble ones. she had not wanted to worry louise by telling her; the girl had been too young to be told while at school, and, since her return, she had not had the courage to tell her; it would have done no good to tell her at any rate, would it? and so on. after a while louise rose. "i can't stay here, mother," she said. "i am going at once." "that is absurd," her mother replied, flutteringly. "it is after midnight. you must not be hasty, dear. he had been drinking. men are beasts when they drink. it will all pass over," she added weakly. "no, it cannot pass over," said louise in a wearied tone. "i am going. i could not remain here another hour. you must not ask me to. it is impossible." "but, my child," cried mrs. treharne, beginning to dab at her eyes, "it is out of the question--unheard of! there is no reason for it. these things happen everywhere. you must face life as it is, not as you have been dreaming it to be. sleep with me tonight and think it over. you'll view it all differently in the morning." "i am going now, mother," replied louise, and her mother knew then that the girl's decision was unalterable. "but where are you going at this hour of the night, child?" she asked, now weeping outright. "to laura's," said louise. saying it, she was swept by a sudden wave of feeling. "mother," she went on in a broken voice, "come with me, won't you? let us go together. i want to be with you all the time. i want to live with you only. i need you. we can be so happy together, just by ourselves! we can get a pretty little place somewhere and be happy together, just you and i. and i have been so unhappy, so miserable, here! won't you come with me--come now?" a beautiful hour had struck for that mother, had she but known it. but she released herself from louise's arms and shook her head, all the time dabbing, dabbing at her eyes with her little wad of a lace handkerchief. "don't ask me such an absurd thing, louise," she replied. "of course i can't do anything so outlandishly foolish." "then i must go alone, dear," said louise, bitter disappointment placarded on her drawn face. "i wanted to be always with you. i never meant to leave you. but i can't stay now. won't you come, mother?" mrs. treharne shook her head and sobbed. louise gazed commiseratingly at the weak, tempestuously-crying little woman, and then went to her rooms. she called laura on the telephone. "i am coming to you now, laura," she said. "you mean tonight, dear?" inquired laura in her caressing contralto, refraining, with the wisdom of a woman of experience, from giving utterance to any astonishment. "yes, at once," said laura. "i shall take a taxicab and be there within the half hour." "i shall be waiting, dear," replied laura. louise, in hat and coat, bent over her mother, who had thrown herself weeping on a couch, and sought to soothe her. but her mother had only wild, broken reproaches for her for going away "so foolishly, so unnecessarily," and louise saw that her efforts to calm her were futile. so she bent over and kissed her mother's tear-wet face, then walked down the stairs and out of the house to the waiting taxicab. she never put foot in the house on the drive again. chapter ix laura, her face flushed from sleep and a cheerful awakening, her burnished black hair in two great plaits that fell forward on her shoulders far below the waist of her negligée, tiptoed early next morning into the room, next to her own, where she had put louise. but her tiptoeing was a considerateness wasted. louise was wide awake. she had scarcely slept at all. the shock of her experience had been heavier than her ensuing weariness, so that, for the greater part of the night, she had lain wide-eyed, gazing into the darkness; dozing once, she had been gripped by a hideous dream, in which she had stood paralyzed by terror, awaiting the approach, from opposite directions, of two gigantic reptiles, wearing the faces of judd and jesse. laura noticed the dark rings under the girl's feverishly bright eyes, and her heart glowed at the thought that louise, quite as a matter of course, had sought asylum with her. when the girl had arrived at her apartment on the previous night laura, far from questioning her, had pantomimed, finger at lip, that louise was not to tell her anything then; and louise had been grateful for the fine delicacy of the remission. finding louise awake, laura, smiling to match the sunlight that streamed through the curtains, and exhibiting none of the curiosity or jarring glumness of manner with which a woman of less tact might easily have intensified the misery of such a situation, sat on the edge of louise's bed and began to chatter as gaily as if her listener's world had been swimming in rose. "my dear," she said, stretching her satin-smooth arms high above her head in an abandonment of waking enjoyment, "i feel as chirpful this morning as a sparrow in a wistaria vine. let's talk until we get hungry. let's make plans and things. plan number one: we are going abroad next week, instead of early in may. i can't wait for may. i need things to wear at once. i am positively in rags and tatters, the cinderella of central park west. how is that for one gorgeous plan?" it might easily have been thought, listening to her and studying her enthusiasm, that she was the girl and louise the woman. but louise, for all of her still throbbing memory of the night before, was infected with the older woman's unquenchable cheerfulness. "you talk of going to europe as if it were a run out to the bronx in your car, dear," she said, smiling. "and am i really to go with you? at any rate, of course i must ask----" she had meant to say that she must ask her mother's permission; but the thought rushed to her mind that in all likelihood her mother would be only too willing to let her go. laura divined her thought and rushed to her aid. "oh, i shall do all the asking," she interposed. "that's another of my glittering specialties--asking. i'm the most immoderately successful asker, i think, in all north america; yes, and getter, too, i verily believe. really, i can't remember when i was refused anything that i out-and-out asked for. so i'll arrange that. but with this stipulation: you'll have to ask mr. blythe yourself." "mr. blythe?" said louise, wonderingly. the sound of his name somehow gave her an immediate sense of uplift; but for the moment she failed to catch laura's meaning. "what is it that i must ask mr. blythe about, dear?" laura gazed at her with skeptical eyes. "what is it we were talking about, louise?" she asked, mischievously. "the relation of the cosmic forces to--er--mental healing? the real nub of the suffragettes' cause? child, you don't really suppose that you could gallumph off to the continent of europe with a frivolous, irresponsible, happy-go-lucky person like me without first asking the consent of your guardian--or, at any rate, your guardian-to-be?" louise's flush shone through her amused smile. "that is true, isn't it?" she said simply. "of course i must ask him." "i am in a frenzy of fear, though," went on laura, affecting an exaggerated solemnity, "that the ogre will flatly put his foot down and refuse to let you go. i know that i should if i were he." "why, laura?" asked louise with such genuine wide-eyed innocence that laura laughed outright. "why?" she repeated in louise's tone. "well, i haven't the least doubt that i should be a great deal more selfish about it than he will be. just because a man has to be such a horridly legal, dry-as-dust creature as a guardian, is that any particular reason why he should become incapable of experiencing the entirely human misery called lonesomeness?" louise had no reply for that except a little gesture of deprecation that quite failed to convince. "how could we possibly get ready to go abroad in a week, laura?" she covered her confusion by asking. "my dear," replied laura, convincingly, "i could and would start for the straits of sunda inside of twenty minutes if there were any possible reason why i should want to go there--if, for example, there happened to be a dressmaker or milliner there whose creations i particularly fancied. the voyage to europe is now a mere ferry trip. you speak as if we were still living in the victorian period. in those days folks 'made preparations' to go abroad--the dear, fussy, old-fashioned creatures! now it is like riding to staten island, with the exception of the sleeps and meals in between. one of the most delightful men i know goes to europe every year with no other impedimenta than a walking stick--he is so used to a cane that he must have it for his constitutionals on deck--and a toothbrush; he gets his changes of linen from the head steward--i believe he knows every head steward afloat; and he is such a cheerful steamer companion, because he is unhampered by luggage, that it is a delight to be his fellow voyager. once, when i was a young woman ("you are so aged and decrepit now, aren't you?" murmured louise.) i went on board a steamer to wish some friends _bon voyage_. it was rather a cheerless day in new york, with overcast skies. i thought of sunny italy. and so i went along with them, in the clothes i was standing in, and i had the most enjoyable voyage of my life." thus laura chattered on, eager to take louise's mind off the previous night's experience which, even without having heard any of the details, she well knew must have been a trying one. during the night laura had decided to start within the week on the trip to europe which she made every year. the climactic turn in louise's affairs, which had by no means been unexpected by laura, had prodded her to this decision. she had meant to take louise abroad with her early in may at any rate; now, however, that her young friend, whom she had come to regard with an encompassing affection, was in obvious distressing straits, an almost immediate withdrawal of her from painful scenes would, laura felt, be at least an attempt at a solution. a few months abroad would enable louise to shake off the bravely-borne but none the less wearing depression which had taken possession of her when she found herself so unexpectedly thrust into a horribly difficult situation--a situation which laura now blamed herself for not having actively sought to terminate before the interposition of the incident, whatever had been its nature, which had caused the girl to leave the house on the drive in the middle of the night. and laura, meditating these things as she lay awake, declared in her heart that louise should never again be subjected to a renewal of that ordeal. without any questioning, louise, after a little actual planning with laura for the early trip abroad, told the older woman what had happened at the house on the drive on the previous night. she went over the details calmly enough, grouping judd's brutal utterances into a few phrases which presented the picture almost as plainly to laura's mental vision as if she had been actually present at what she knew must have been a scene sufficiently searing in its effect upon a girl yet under twenty and fresh from school. it was only when she came to her mother's flaccid, vacillating part in the affair that louise's voice weakened a little. "she disappointed me, laura," said louise, feelingly. "i would not say that to anybody else but you. but she did. i don't know just what to think. i thought that, having returned in time to hear at least some of the things that were said to me, she would come with me when she saw how impossible it was for me to stay there. i can't even guess why she did not. that was the worst part of it--her remaining there. and now i am afraid that i did wrong in leaving her. perhaps there was something to prevent her leaving. it may be that if i had stayed on with her for a while longer she might have----" laura interrupted her with a gesture. "don't say that, louise," she put in, earnestly. "you must not do yourself injustice. that wouldn't be fair. your mother is one of my oldest friends; we were girls together. but right is right. your mother should never have permitted you to so much as set foot in that house. i am not disloyal to her in saying that. she herself knows in her heart that it is true. but, having been allowed to go there, you did your part; you played the game, as one says, without complaint; and you stayed as long as you could. you have nothing to reproach yourself for. your mother herself, i think, will be fair enough to acknowledge that. and you are never to go back there. that, of course, is settled. the situation must work itself out in some other way. i feel perfectly confident that your mother will see it all in the right light, and before very long; probably while you are abroad with me. she will miss you. and it is right that she should miss you. missing you, she will come to a realization of what she is sacrificing for--what? that, dear, is my prediction as to the way it will all come out. but you must not think of reproaching yourself for the step you have taken, nor even dream of retracing that step." during the forenoon laura telephoned blythe, giving him an outline of what had happened. "it was inevitable, of course," was blythe's brief comment over the 'phone. "since it had to come, i am glad that it is over with--better now than later. may i come up to see you?" "to see _me_--hypocrite!" laura answered, laughing--and she could hear blythe hastily and rather fumbling hanging up the receiver. blythe arrived at laura's early in the afternoon and his arrival was a signal for laura to profess burdensome housekeeping cares in a distant part of the apartment. this time louise's feeling in blythe's presence was not a mere vague shyness, but genuine embarrassment. she had thought of him a great deal during the night, particularly of that which had passed between them during the ride in the park. now she flushed at the thought that she had even passively permitted such a thing, much less have seemed to invite it. her mother's position, and the stigma which, she could not but feel, that position placed upon herself, now seemed, with the humiliating incident of the night before fresh in her mind, to forbid the continuation of any relationship between blythe and herself other than that of guardian and ward. it was purely from a sense of consideration for blythe, a man who had won his way in the world in the teeth of almost insuperable obstacles, that louise resolved that there must be an abridgement of their gradually growing intimacy. she had sighed in making that mental decision, for the relationship had been very agreeable and--and something else which she could not quite analyze; but she shrank from certain intuitive forecastings involving blythe's progress toward the goal he had set for himself, which she feared a continuation of their closer relationship might develop. blythe was quick to notice her altered manner, expressed by a reserve which, with the penetration of an alert mind, he could not but see was studied. he was puzzled by it; but he attributed it, after a moment of rapid pondering, to the effect of the shock from which he knew she must still be suffering. nevertheless he was conscious of a sudden depression which for a while he found it difficult to throw off. louise spared him the difficulty of making the first adversion to that which she knew was uppermost in his mind--her course, that is, now that she had voluntarily, but under the press of circumstance, detached herself from an impossible environment. more guardedly than she had related the incident to laura, louise told him of the affair; but he was more than able to fill in the grisly details. "what i cannot understand," she said, not in any tone of reproach, but earnestly enough, "is the fact that i was not told, particularly after i left school, that i was so intolerably indebted to--to that man. my impression always was so different. i never doubted that my father was providing for me. i was given to understand that when i was a young girl, and i never thought anything different. it would have been difficult, of course i know, to tell me any such a thing while i was at school; but i can't help but believe that i should have been told when i went to live in that house. i doubt if i could have stayed there had i known, even to be near my mother; i should have found some other way of meeting her. it is unthinkable that i should be in that man's debt. i shall not remain in his debt, at any rate, to the extent of the amount my father sent me recently. i shall use that, at all events, to help rid myself of such an intolerable obligation." blythe then explained it all to her: how her father had never ceased to make provision for her, even after blythe had informed him that his remittances were being rejected; how, when he had seen her father in honolulu, he had been instructed to deposit the remittances as a fund for louise's future use, and he named the amount which he was holding for her. louise's eyes lighted up when she heard this. "i shall send the entire amount to that man," she said, in precipitate decision, "to reimburse him for what he has expended for me." blythe was forced to repress a smile. "that decision does you credit, louise," he said quietly. "but it is out of the question. the man not only would not accept the reimbursement, but, in offering it, you would simply give him another opportunity to mortify you by returning it. that is what he would do. he is very rich, and he has the porcine pride of riches. he would keenly enjoy the flourish of thrusting back at you the offered reimbursement, just enjoy as he enjoyed--i hate to say it, but i must to make matters clear--thrusting back the quarterly remittances of your father." "but why did you not tell me these things when my father asked you to become my guardian?" louise asked him. a natural curiosity, but no reproof, marked her tone. "because i did not feel up to it," blythe replied plainly enough. "that would have involved telling you the whole miserable story. i could not do that. nor could laura. we talked it over and we found that neither of us was equal to so gruelling a task. it seemed better to let you gradually grasp the facts yourself. our telling you would not have helped matters. moreover, so far as i was concerned, i did not feel that i had the right to touch upon matters so intimate. it is different now--today. the proscription has been removed. i am now your guardian." louise gave a little start at his last words, and blythe, trained in observation, did not fail to notice the increased lustre of her wide eyes, any more than he neglected to see that she was at some pains to quell words which he felt assured would have been phrases of gladness had she permitted herself to utter them. why was she thus repressing her impulses? blythe immediately concentrated an acute mentality upon the problem. the answer, and the right one, came to him in a flash, as if by telepathic revelation: he understood the reason underlying her new restraint, which he perceived, not without pleasure, she was having difficulty in maintaining. it was from a keener realization of her mother's position: blythe felt so sure of it that he smiled inwardly and was comforted. her mother's position was nothing to him! but how to convince louise of that? he made poor progress of this factor of the problem in trying to study it while talking with louise. he told her that he had only been notified that morning that the court had appointed him her guardian. "are you prepared to be severely disciplined?" he asked her. he felt in vastly better spirits since arriving at what he felt assured was the correct solution as to louise's manifestly changed manner toward him. "i rather believe i shall insist upon your permitting me to pick out your frocks and hats. i think i shall have you change at once to quaker garb." louise could not repress a smile at that. she caught herself longing to be on her former plane with him. but her fancied ineligibility, her somewhat morbid consciousness that she was hedged in by circumstances which she had no right even to tacitly ask him to share with her, put a damper upon her temptation to resume her former manner with him. blythe walked to the window and looked out over the park for a silent moment. then he thrust his hand into his breast pocket, brought out a photograph, and handed it to her. "i came upon the picture this morning in rummaging through my safe," he said to her. louise gazed puzzledly at the photograph. it was that of a tall, distinguished-looking man with silvered hair and mustache, dressed in white linen; he was shown standing on the porch of a squat, wide, comfortable-looking bungalow, the open space in front of which was a riot of tropical verdure. louise glanced up at blythe, and her eyes filled. "you must not think it odd that i did not give it to you before this," said blythe, fighting a bit of a lump in his throat. "i've been spending at least two hours every day searching for it ever since--well, ever since i met you on the train," he admitted, his cheeks tingling with the confession. "when was it taken? and is he so--so glorious-looking as this?" asked louise, her enthusiasm over her father's photograph--the first she had ever seen of him, for her mother had resentfully destroyed the earlier ones--overcoming her hardly-maintained restraint. blythe sat down beside her and told her about the picture. he had gotten it from her father upon the occasion of his visit to honolulu nearly three years before. blythe had been summoned to california on some legal business, and, a bit run down from over work, he had made the six-day cruise down to honolulu, partly for recuperation and partly to go over some affairs with george treharne. treharne had come from his plantations on the island of maui to meet him in honolulu. louise sat rapt for more than half an hour while blythe answered her eager questions about her father. he had felt a delicacy about expanding on that subject so long as the girl was domiciled with her mother; now, however, that louise had been literally forced to the severance of at least her constant propinquity to her mother, and, now, too, that he was her guardian in fact instead of in prospect, he felt at liberty to throw off that reserve; and he keenly enjoyed the absorption with which she listened to his account of her father, nearly every detail of which was absolutely new to her. "how i should love to see him!" louise exclaimed, sighing, when at length blythe rose to leave. "i am promising myself the intense satisfaction and pleasure of taking you to see him, louise--some day," blythe said, tacking on the last two words when he caught her scarlet flush. it was not until after he had spoken that he reflected that what he had said might easily be open to one very lucid and palpable interpretation; but that interpretation so fitted in with what he meant to encompass, all conditions being fair and equal, that he refused to stultify himself by modifying or withdrawing his words. and louise's beauty was heightened when she flushed in that way, anyhow! laura, with the skillfully-assumed air of one who had been excessively busy, came in at that moment. "well, mr. ogre-guardian, are you going to be at the pier to wish us _bon voyage_?" she asked blythe. blythe stared at her. laura stared back at him. "do you mean to tell me," exclaimed laura, laughing, "that, after you've been here more than a solid hour, louise has not told you? in heaven's name, what else could you two have been talking about?" "don't keep me oscillating on this--this ten-thousand-revolutions-to-the-minute fly-wheel, please, laura," said blythe, blankly. "what are you talking about?" "then it is true that louise hasn't told you we are going abroad next week?" "next week?" blythe's jaw fell. "why, i thought surely she would have finished asking your guardianly permission--and everything by this time," said laura, shaking a finger at louise. "but i can see how it is going to be: she means to wheedle me into asking her guardian all the terribly difficult things." "but are you really going so--so scandalously soon?" inquired blythe, for a moment genuinely glum. "why, new york will seem like some miserable tank town plunged in stygian darkness without you and----" "oh, finish it!" dared laura when he came to a sudden halt. but blythe did not, for already his mind was grasping the fact that the plan was a good one, as laura's plans generally were. he did not try to convince himself that he would not miss them both sorely; laura for her cordial, unexacting friendship and _camaraderie_ and louise because----he knew equally well why he should miss louise, but there was a shyness about this man even in his self-communings, and so he did not go to the bottom of that in his summary reflection on the project. laura's keen eye detected that there was something distrait in louise's manner with blythe, and, wondering, she made another escape in order to permit blythe to make his devoirs to one instead of to two. blythe took louise's hands in his and gradually, by mere silent compulsion, drew her averted eyes into a direct line with his own, which were smiling and alight with an utter frankness. "louise," he said, going straight to the point, "i know what is in your mind and why you are holding me at a little more than arm's length. i am glad to say, although i am a little sorry that you do not already know it, that you are absolutely wrong; not hopelessly wrong, because you are going to see the matter differently when you are less troubled in mind than you now are. i wish such an idea had not entered your mind. i believe it would not have entered your mind had you known me better." louise, startled that he should have read her so clearly as his words denoted, replied, with no great conviction that what she said was exactly true: "does not the very fact that you seem to understand so clearly furnish the best evidence?" but that sounded rather inconsequential to her, and she went on flurriedly: "i don't mean just that. perhaps i do not know precisely what i do mean," averting her head again in her confusion, "now that you----" and she came to a futile end. "now that i read you aright, you were about to say," said blythe, smiling gravely. "well, i am not going to be ungenerous enough to triumph over you because you have virtually admitted that you were wrong--for you have so admitted, haven't you?" louise remained silent, her head still averted; but her hands still rested in blythe's. "haven't you?" said blythe; and she was conscious that his grasp upon her hands was tightening. blythe peered around to catch a view of her face, and he saw that she was faintly smiling. he did not let go of her hands, nor did she appear at all eager to have him do so. "i have an appointment for which i am already late, and i am keen to have a look at my watch," went on blythe, quite cheerfully, without in the least relaxing his possession of her hands. "but of course i can't look at it--i can't do anything but remain here for a week, say--until you tell me that you are wrong." louise turned her natural face upon him and nodded brightly--conquered, and willing to be; there was, she noticed, an inviting little hollow in his coat, between his left shoulder and the rise of his chest, which she vaguely imagined would be a very inviting spot upon which to rest, if even for a transitory moment, a tired head; blythe was conscious of a decided response when he pressed her hands just before releasing them; and when he went out she felt that the room, somehow, had become a little darker than it had been. she knew that he had understood, and she appraised his fineness in telling her that she had been wrong at its true value; but she was not entirely convinced, and she recoiled from the thought of permitting him to make any sacrifice for her sake. but she was glad that he had divined what had been in her mind, and her heart gave a little leap when she thought that, if ever there was to be any computation of or allusion to a sacrifice, it would be on her side, and not on his; she knew now that he was above even the thought of entertaining, much less measuring, such a consideration. her mother came to laura's late in the afternoon, very downcast, very plaintive on the subject of how terribly she already had missed louise. judd, with his customary morning penitence, had seen her at noon and made his usual abject apology; and he had endured the lash of her scornful tongue with a shaky consciousness that his conduct had been pretty outrageous even for him. he did not acknowledge how set back he was, however, when mrs. treharne, a tirade over, let fall the fact that louise had gone to laura's, and the additional fact that louise, having been placed under john blythe's guardianship at her father's direction, would be very well looked after and provided for. but judd wondered, nevertheless, just how these facts would dovetail with langdon jesse's sweet scheme to have louise relegated, under judd's provision, to the depressing and chastening surroundings of a "five-by-eight flat." louise's heart went out to her mother when mrs. treharne, in an effusion of tears, told her how hideously lonesome the house on the drive was and would continue to be without her; but the girl had difficulty in matching this with the undeniable fact that, when she told her mother that she would be sailing for europe within a week, mrs. treharne, drying her tears, offhandedly pronounced that the plan was a very wise one and would be the best imaginable thing for louise. louise, as often before, was stunned by the palpable contradiction afforded by her mother's tears over what she called her lonesomeness and, in the next moment, her dry-eyed approval of a trip that would place an ocean between them. she wanted to go with laura and she meant to go; but she was conscious of a sinking of the heart when she found that, far from seeking to deter her, her mother appeared not only willing but anxious to have her go. mrs. treharne's one thought, of course, was that the trip would give her a breathing spell, "give her a chance to think," as she futilely expressed it to herself; for her life had become one continuous procrastination. louise, she considered, would be "broadened by travel" and sheared of some of her "old-fashioned notions." and, while louise was gone, she herself could "think things over" and block out a course. a misty, intangible idea of abandoning judd already had crept into her mind, in her self-searching, self-contemning moments; perhaps, while louise was across the sea, she might be able to evolve some plan whereby----and here her musings halted when she came plumb upon the thought of the surrender of luxuries that her abandonment of judd would involve, the scrimping and saving of a "narrow, smug existence with smug, narrow people." anyhow, louise's absence from the scene would "give her time to think." that was the main point. but louise, who had been lonesome for her mother, now found herself lonesome in her mother's presence. * * * * * judd met langdon jesse at the club a few nights later. "judd," jesse sneered, "you are, all in all, about the most accomplished damned blunderer in the western hemisphere, aren't you?" "that will be about all of that from you," growled judd in reply. he had got out of the cotton market with, as he put it, an "unpunctured pelt," so that he had no present fear of the vindictive machinations of the younger man. "a civil tongue between your teeth henceforth in your dealings with me, or we don't deal. do you get that?" "oh!" said jesse, eloquently. he surrendered the whip hand with his customary deftness. "but you'll remember, i suppose," going on suavely, "that you told me that miss treharne was a virtual dependent of yours?" "well," snarled judd, "supposing i really thought so? how about that?" "oh, if you really thought so, why of course that's different," said jesse, graciously. "but you were pretty wrong, weren't you? you separated her from her mother on that presumption by bawling at her as if she had been a chambermaid; and all the time she was virtually, as she is now in fact, under the guardianship of that toploftical blythe fellow; she is living with mrs. stedham, with whom she starts for europe in a few days, and she is more than amply provided for by her father. in all candor, and between man and man, could you possibly have botched things worse than you did upon your mistaken premise?" "you mean botched the thing so far as you are concerned, eh?" growled judd. "well, things were botched for you in that direction before you ever started. you've been kicking around long enough to know when you're left at the post; but you don't know it, all the same. anyhow, count me out of your confounded woman-hunting schemes in future, understand? i've got enough to do to attend to my own game. play your own hand. but you're butting your head against a stone wall in this one instance, let me tell you that." "is that so?" inquired jesse, with no sign of perturbation or discouragement. "well, to adopt your somewhat crude metaphor, i'll play the hand out, and i'll show you the cards after i've finished. will you want to see them?" "oh, go to the devil," virtuously replied judd. chapter x late in the afternoon of the day before louise and laura were to sail, john blythe, having fled his office and a great mass of work at an unusually early hour and without any conscientious scruples whatever, strode up and down, back and forth, the entire length of his apartment--barring the kitchen--many dozens of times. he subjected his hair to an absurd hand-tousling as he paced; he kicked up corners of the rugs and then kicked them into place again on the next trip back; he stopped at tables to pick up books, glancing at their titles with unseeing eyes and then tossing them back on the tables with a bang; once he picked up an ordinary match-safe that he had owned for years, and caught himself holding it out in front of him and staring curiously at it--but really far, far beyond it--as if he had never before clapped an eye upon it, and, emerging for a moment from that trance, he replaced the match-safe on the table with a flickering smile. noticing all of which from the kitchen out of the corners of her solicitous and suspicious eyes, sarah became worried. sarah was the stout, grey-wooled colored woman who managed, not to say ruled, john blythe's bachelor establishment, including john blythe himself. she had been blythe's boyhood nurse, and, never having been entirely out of touch with him through all of his early struggles, she had returned to him when he had won his way and set up his solitary lares and penates. she was highly privileged. there were times, indeed, when she exercised the actual veto power; as for example, when blythe wanted to shift too early into lighter-weight linen, or sought to rush off to an appointment without his breakfast, and so on. now, polishing a glass to give her hands something to do, she appeared at the door of the kitchen, completely filling it, and waited for blythe to stride back that way. so intense was his absorption that he did not see her until she coughed remindfully. then he looked up and at her--still without seeing her, as she well knew. "yo' all ain't sick, is yo' mistuh john?" inquired sarah, gazing at him slantwise and showing a good deal of the whites of her eyes. blythe didn't hear her. he gazed right through her, and, thence on, through the rear wall of the kitchen. after quite a pause, however, it was borne in upon his consciousness that she had said something. "how is that, sarah?" he asked her, coming to a standstill. "ah said, is yo' tuk sick, suh?" repeated sarah. "dis heah crazy, triflin', no-'count n'yawk weathuh is 'nough tuh mek anybody tuhn ovuh an' die, an' ah got de misuhy in mah haid mahse'f. is yo' got any fevuh, suh? yo' face looks raid on de tips o' de cheeks." blythe, only half-hearing, felt tentatively of the "raid" spots on his cheeks, which, as a matter of fact, were decidedly flushed. then he thrust his hands into his pockets and resumed his up-and-down pacing, saying: "oh, i'm all right, sarah. not a bit under the weather. just--er--fixing up a case, that's all." sarah, polishing away at the glass, gazed intently at his back as he walked away. then she slowly turned and re-entered the kitchen, muttering to herself: "can't tell _me_ no sich conjingulatin' stuff--'fixin' up a case.' de case dat boy is fixin' up weahs petticoats an' puffs an' maybe one o' dese heah d'rectory dresses--ah reckon ah can tell de symptoms!" wherein, as to the main point of her suspicion, the sagacious sarah was exactly right. john blythe was indubitably, whole-heartedly, whole-mindedly in love with louise treharne. he knew that. he had known it for some time. that, however, in accordance with a by no means uncommon rule in such cases, was, he considered, an exceedingly unimportant factor in the problem. the problem, briefly stated, was this: what did louise treharne think of him? he remembered now, with impatience, his words to louise in the park, when he had hoped that she might accept his "devotion as a man," and her reply. his "devotion as a man?" that, blythe reflected, might mean anything, especially to a girl placed in a difficult position and, as a natural consequence, in need of all the devotion of any sort that might be offered her. had louise understood his words as he had meant them? blythe, with the customary self-depreciating pessimism of the lover, was afraid she had not. he reproached himself for not having made his meaning more plain--another grisly pastime in which love-possessed males indulge for the purpose of making themselves even more acutely miserable. immediately atop of this regret that he had not been more explicit, he flared at himself and decided that he would have been an inexcusable scoundrel had he done anything of the sort. it would have been taking a mean and an unworthy advantage of her in her distress. then he pondered the few words of hers that had so thrilled him. what, after all, had they amounted to? she had said that she was ready to accept his devotion. what of that? devotion, how? devotion, from whom? why, her guardian-to-be, of course! how else could her words possibly be viewed by a sane man? what right had he to seek to torture her simple utterance into anything more meaningful, more solacing to his wretched self-esteem? at this point of his cogitations blythe became quite indignant with himself. here he was (he reflected, figuratively hiding his head), a man of thirty-two who had been brushing elbows with the world's people nearly all his life, and wearing a few more than the average number of scars to show for it--here he was, actually thinking of pouncing upon a girl of nineteen, who had scarcely forgotten the discipline of school; actually contemplating the imbecility (why, worse than that--the crime!) of hurling himself and his love at her, before she had so much as had a chance to meet any other man or men, before, in fact, she had had even a chance to turn around--for hadn't he (accidentally or not) begun to vaguely form these idiotic notions on the very day she was leaving school? and what would be her natural implication? that he was seeking to take advantage of her inexperience and her helplessness, solely on the strength of his being her legal guardian! he had been all wrong (he mentally maundered on) the other day at laura's when he had attributed louise's perfectly proper restraint with him to her keener realization of her mother's ostracized status in its bearing upon her own position. what had louise's mother's status to do with louise? and hadn't he been a complaisantly self-satisfied numbskull to suppose that this was the reason for louise's obvious aloofness on that day! the truth was (still he drivelled on, never sparing himself) that she had come to a perfectly proper realization of how presumptuous he, blythe, had been in his attitude toward her, and she had distinctly meant to indicate to him in an unmistakable manner that any aspirations of that kind on his part might as well be immediately suppressed, inasmuch as they were foredoomed to fail. true (taking again for the moment his own case as plaintiff), the love of any reasonably honest and fairly successful man for a woman ought to be at least worth considering, and louise treharne was the first woman he had wholly loved; other little affairs, scattered through the flown years, had been mere inconsequentialities, the mutual amusements (and so mutually understood) of an hour, a day, a week, perhaps, at most, a month. three months before blythe would have smiled, if he had not laughed outright, if any smirking imp had whispered to him that the time was quite close at hand when he would be shamefully neglecting his decidedly important practice because of his work-disqualifying absorption in thoughts, not to say dreams, of a woman. and yet here he was, supposedly a self-contained, level-headed man of the law, a man rigorously trained in the austere school of experience--here he was, sighing like a furnace, drawing meaningless pictures on blotting pads when he should have been preparing briefs, forgetting his meals, to sarah's profound worriment and scandalization, and walking the world in a veritable schoolboy trance! blythe, in lucid moments, caught himself smiling inwardly at the thought of it. was he sorry that such a thing had come to be? he quickly beat down that trivial question, tentatively submitted by his subconsciousness. schoolboy, furnace-sigher, sentimentalist, imbecile, what not--he was glad! ceaselessly pacing the apartment, then, and mulling the matter over, first condemning himself for his presumptuousness and then wondering in a blank sort of a way if louise herself took this view of his attitude, blythe found himself on the horns of his life's dilemma. it would not be so bad, he thought with a catch at the throat, if she were not going away; but the thought of the wide atlantic rolling between them caused his heart to thump against his ribs and incited him to rumple his hair still more outrageously. at length, seized by an idea, he walked into his study, closed the door after him, sat down at his desk telephone, and called up laura. very promptly he heard her musically rising "well?" "greetings, laura," he said. "this is your insane friend, john blythe." "greetings, deserter blythe," replied laura. "you have not been to see us for an age. and how long have you been insane?" "for several months, i believe. i am hardly a competent witness as to that." "i am so distressed to hear it--when your career and--and everything looks so promising, too!" "'everything?' define 'everything.'" "i haven't the gift of being specific. you have. what, then, is the most convincing manifestation of your insanity?" "i am thinking of taking a great chance; prematurely, and therefore insanely." "you are talking rationally enough. perhaps your madness is a sort of recurrent mania, with lucid intervals?" "no, there are no lucid intervals. at this moment i am obsessed by a fear of the perils of the sea." "that is odd, considering that you are not going to sea. are you?" "no; but you are--and she. is she with you now?" "no; she is in her room writing a letter to her father, the first she has ever written to him. a little sad, is it not? i am in my dressing room, quite comfortable, thank you, with my elbows on my writing desk; and so there is no danger of interruption. what is it you wish to tell me, john? or ask me, perhaps?" "it is something both to tell you and to ask you. in about an hour from now i want to ask louise if she will marry me. that's the telling. the asking is this: would that be a fair thing to do?" "such druid-like deliberation! you speak, john, as if you were leading up to asking one for a cup of tea!" "do i? well, i am mindful of this somewhat open medium of communication. believe me, i feel anything but deliberate. but my question: would it be fair?" "how could it possibly be viewed as anything else but fair?" "because the circumstances are unusual. in the first place, i am almost the only man she knows--that she has had a chance to know. then, i am her guardian. would it not be rather presumptuous, not to say downright unfair, for me to take advantage of these things?" "that, i think, is what might be called an obliquely conscientious view, john." "then the disparity in our ages." "the difference between nineteen and thirty-two hardly constitutes a case of may and december. another wholly trivial consideration of yours. thirteen years' difference--and, by the way, haven't i heard you affirm that thirteen is your lucky number?" "finally, i haven't the least imaginable reason for supposing that she has ever thought of me in that respect." "haven't you? how perfectly unimportant! isn't that quite the rule? how many men ever believed they were considered as possibilities until they endured the travail of finding out?" "you are riotously optimistic this afternoon. i wish i were in the same humor. i think i shall be in need of a mood like that very soon." "what a glorious opportunity for me to work in that antique bromidiom, 'faint heart ne'er won,' and so forth. but i shan't. in an hour, you said?" "about an hour." "don't expect to see me. i am horribly busy packing silver and things. perhaps i may see you a moment before you leave. if not, then at the steamer in the morning." "i wish i had words to tell you what a trump you are, laura." "i wish i had words to tell you how delighted i am, john." "not prematurely delighted, i hope, good friend. at this moment i find myself believing that the perils of the sea are nothing to certain perils of the land. goodbye." "goodbye. don't lose confidence in your lucky number--even if you do call it a 'disparity!'" * * * * * it would have been the obvious thing for laura, after her telephone conversation with blythe, to at least intimate to louise that she was upon the verge of an event quite universally and correctly deemed of considerable importance in a young woman's life--her first proposal. most women in laura's place would have done so. but laura's dislike for the obvious was almost a part of her religion. she had none of the benevolent marplot in her composition. she made it a point never to interfere with symmetrical sequences. her own unhappy marital experience had by no means bereft her of sentiment; and she felt that a girl about to receive an offer of marriage should be entitled to enjoy the surprise--and in this case she knew it would be a surprise--inhering to so important an occasion. so laura, although she visited louise in her room after her telephone talk with blythe, said nothing about it; but she craftily intimated, in order that louise might look her best, that she would not be greatly surprised if blythe were to drop in. the intimation was sufficient. louise, a very human woman, promptly proceeded, as soon as laura returned to her own quarters, to correct even her most trifling disarrays; so that when blythe (astonishingly conforming to laura's prophecy, louise thought) arrived she looked very lovely in a one-piece dress of quaker-grey rajah, with a band of grey velvet, which somehow suggested to blythe the insignia of a princess, around her wonderful hair. she was at the piano, striving, soft pedal down, to extract musical sense from strauss' "salome" (impossible task!) when blythe came in. he noticed her grey dress at once. "it is a comfort to have such a tractable, obedient ward," he said, studying the dress approvingly when she rose to greet him. "here, a little less than a week after i threatened to insist upon your adopting the quaker garb, i find that you've voluntarily assumed it--the color, at any rate. i know some guardians who would envy me." louise, quickly at ease--which had been blythe's purpose in beginning with persiflage--smiled with a woman's usual deprecation of a complimented costume. "seeing that i have had this dress for more than a year," she said, "my obedience must have become an unconscious habit before i knew you." blythe, a trained hand at sparring, took advantage of the opening. "before you knew me, perhaps, louise," he said. "but not before i knew you. aren't you forgetting that i knew you when you still believed in kris kringle and hans andersen?" he sighed with rather too smiling an assumption of melancholy. "that reflection, i confess, makes me feel pretty aged." "does it?" asked louise. "you forget that, if it makes you feel aged, it should make me feel at least middle aged, don't you? and i believe in santa claus and in fairy tales yet, i think." then, resuming the first thread: "it seems singular that there should have been a time when you knew me and i didn't know you; that is, to remember you. for i didn't remember you at all on the train that day. come to think of it, you didn't remember me, either, until you were reminded--that telegram, you know. an odd chance, was it not?" "so odd," said blythe, "that i catch myself wondering what my life had been before and what it would be now if--" he paused, already groping for words;--"if i had missed that train." louise, far from missing his meaning, grasped it so acutely that blythe caught the tell-tale color mounting to her face. "and now i am wondering," he went on, gazing for comfort at his nails, "since we are on the subject, whether my having known you for such a long, long time confers upon me the privilege of--well, of being entirely candid with you?" "i should expect candor, in any case--from you," said louise, trying desperately to concentrate her mind upon something quite matter-of-fact in order to keep her color down. "why, particularly, from me?" said blythe, grasping at straws. "oh, i can hardly say--because you are the embodiment of candor, or candor itself," said louise. "aren't you?" "i don't know," he answered as if really in doubt about it--as he was. "it seems to me that if i actually possessed that quality in such a high degree, i should have proved it to you, louise, before this. proved it, for example, in the park the other afternoon." louise knew quite well what he meant. moreover, it never occurred to her to pretend that she did not know. "are you sure that you did not?" she asked him, flushing, but with a direct enough gaze. "i am afraid that i did not," said blythe, nervously rising and facing her. "perhaps it was as well, too. for the first time in my life i am in more than one mind as to whether a certain sort of candor is always desirable." having thus plunged into the domain of the purely ethical, blythe could scarcely have expected an offhand reply. as a matter of fact, he got no reply at all. "what i am striving to say, i suppose, louise," he went on, taking himself a little better in hand, "is that, after you sail tomorrow, i am going to be more lonesome than i have ever been in my life before." "is that so hard to say?" louise asked. "not when it is rewarded by so helpful an answer," said blythe, conscious of a throbbing at his temples. "i do not find it in the least hard to say that i shall miss you," said louise, frankly enough; nevertheless, to give herself countenance, she picked up from the table a little carved ivory tiger and examined it with great apparent curiosity. "miss me for--for my guardianly wisdom and ghostly counsel?" said blythe, his wide smile visibly nervous. then, when there was a pause, he pressed the point: "is that it, louise?" her silence did not imply affirmation, and, the throbbing at his temples increasing, blythe knew it. he bent over her chair, gently but firmly removed the ivory tiger from her hands, took one of them in his own, and said: "listen to me, louise. i am fearful, if i do not plunge ahead, of becoming entangled in a weave of subtleties. i don't want to be incoherent, even if my excuse would be that i became so while taking a desperate chance. i haven't the least idea what you think of me--i don't mean as your guardian and interested friend, but as a man very susceptible to human impulses. but i am not debarred from finding out. and i should have no right to ask you such a question before telling you, as i tell you now, that i love you." she rose as he spoke, her hand still tightly grasped in his, and their eyes mingled. "you have set a new light to glow within me. i am conscious of a new propulsion that i never knew before--that i did not believe existed until i met you as a woman grown. it means everything to me--the world and all. i do not know that i am fair in saying this to you. i am incapable of judging. i do know that i want to be fair. after all, there is no unfairness in my simply telling you that i love you. it would be different, i think--but you are to judge of that--if i were to ask you to marry me--yet. but that, louise, is what i came here to ask you." there is no eloquence, however ornately phrased, to compare with that of a man or a woman who is altogether in earnest. louise thrilled under the quiet, but, as she knew, deeply-felt words of this man whose clear-cut, rugged face, as he spoke, became positively handsome. she placed an impulsive hand on his arm. "i told you that i should miss you," she said haltingly, but with a womanly sweetness that moved him like a harp-chord. "and i could not miss you if i did not care for you? i do care for you--as much as i esteem and honor you; and that is a great deal. i have not yet asked myself, i think, if i love you. it may be that i do. if to miss you dreadfully when i do not see you every day--and, until now, i had not seen you for nearly a week!--is--is that, then perhaps i--" blythe, fighting, as if in actual conflict with something tangible, the temptation to take her in his arms, grasped her other hand. his face was very close to hers, and her curved, girlish lips sent his blood swirling with their maddening proximity. but he held himself in a vise, knowing that the hour had not yet struck for their contact of lips. "it is enough that you care for me, louise," he said, hoarsely fervid; and he felt as weak as a man who has successfully come through a great peril. "i could ask no more; i ask no more. your caring for me is, i know now, more than i ever hoped or dreamed. it is enough--for now. it is a start." he smiled vaguely at the homeliness of his phrase. "i scarcely know what i am saying, louise. but it doesn't much matter what a man says, does it, when he is happier than he has ever before been in his life?" she raised the hand which had been resting on his arm and took hold, with thumb and forefinger, of a button of his coat. the unconscious little intimacy set his pulses to throbbing again. "i shall know when i come back," she said to him with a simplicity that was almost quaint, "whether--whether my caring for you is more than just that. i believe that it is, but--but there are reasons--you know what they are--that restrain me from owning it, even if i knew positively; which i do not, yet, john." john! a quiver ran through the man, which, as she still was unconsciously toying with the button of his coat, she could not help but feel. "louise," he said, bending so close to her that he felt her cool, fragrant breath upon his cheek, "i want you to call me that; but not again now. there must be an interval--tonight, say--for me to become used to it. i warn you of my irresponsibility if you call me that again before tomorrow. and i am not minding, my dear, about what you do not know positively. neither am i presuming upon it. you have made me happy enough. everything else can wait. you are not committed. i wouldn't dream of holding you committed. your life is still all your unpromised own. i tell you that it is enough for me now--it will be enough for me hereafter, if nothing else is to be--to know that i am even cared for, have been cared for, by a woman like you. i am going now. my heart is raging with love and honor for you; i want to get out underneath the sky; feel the cold upon my face so that i shall know i am not dreaming. goodbye, dear, until i send you away from me--send you away, not with wretchedness and despair in my heart, but with hope, and light, and happiness--tomorrow!" and he pressed her hands, gazed at her with wide, kindling eyes, and went reeling from the room, as one who seeks a secure footing after many days at sea. laura, by design, was standing in the doorway of her sitting room when he passed unsteadily out. "well?" she said to him. "did the 'disparity' number win, john?" he stopped, gazed at her for an instant unseeingly, then shook himself together and grasped her outstretched hands. "i may be a john o' dreams, dear friend," he said to her huskily. "in fact, i am sure that i am, right now. but it is worth a little delirium to find that, after all, i am not actually insane," and he strode out, laura watching him with a dimpling face. after a while laura went in and found louise standing musing before a window, seeming to watch the twilight settling upon the vaguely greening park. laura threw an arm around the girl's shoulder and kissed her. "did he tell you, dear?" louise asked, turning. "not in words," replied laura. "but one surmises. the air has been charged with it. i know, of course, that he has been worshipping you as did the shepherd of old a distant star. and you, heart of hearts?" "i seem, somehow, to have been loving him all my life," said louise. "did you tell him so?" asked laura. "i am afraid that he, too, surmises," said louise, smiling shyly. chapter xi "american letters!" exclaimed laura, turning the packet over eagerly. "some rainy afternoon--which means, probably, this afternoon, even if the sun _is_ shining smokily now--i am going to write a brief but enthusiastic essay, 'for private distribution,' on how good american stamps look on american letters addressed to americans who are not in america--long may she wave!" and she sorted over the just-brought letters with fluttering fingers. "what a lot of america in one sentence!" said louise, her own eyes alight at the bulgy little packet of letters from overseas. "i wish," she added a little wistfully, "america were as near as your patriotism is genuine." "don't _i_!" heartily agreed laura. "could anything be better calculated to inspire patriotism in the american bosom than an occasional inspection of europe--and particularly an occasional residence in london? all americans possessed of the steamship fare should be forced by law to visit europe--particularly london--at least once. then there would be no further trouble in getting soldiers for our army. all of the tourists by mandate would become so patriotic that they would _enlist_ just as soon as they got back to the united states!" then they fell upon their united-states-stamped mail as if the envelopes had contained anxiously awaited reprieves or dispensations, and for the next quarter of an hour the only sounds in the room were the crackling of paper and the absorbed, subdued ejaculations to which women give utterance in perusing letters. the murk-modified morning sunshine of early june in london filtered wanly through the windows of their rooms at the savoy. very close to the consciousness of both women was the keen recollection of glorious junes in the united states, with over-arching skies of sapphire, unstained for days at a stretch even by the fleeciest of golden clouds. louise was confessedly lonesome. laura, who had her london almost at her fingers' ends, was lonesome, too, but not confessedly so. it would be too much to ask a seasoned londoner from new york to admit such a departure from the elemental rule of cosmopolitanism. laura, in london or anywhere else in europe, was lonesome in the abstract, so to speak. her method of giving expression to her feeling was to comment--when no europeans were of her audience, of course--upon the superior comforts and joys of life in the united states, which, to her, meant new york almost exclusively. louise shared the almost inevitable feeling of genuine lonesomeness and unanalyzable oppression which overcomes, to the point of an afflictive nostalgia, most americans of whatever degree who find themselves for the first time in european capitals. they had spent their first fortnight in london; and louise had only been saved from complete dejection during that period by the gayety--somewhat studied and reserved, but still gayety--of laura's troops of friends, english and american, in the city that, for the socially unacclimated american, is the dullest and most hopeless in all europe. paris, whence they had gone from london for a month's stay, had been made endurable to louise by her close fellowship with laura in the older woman's incessant battlings with the milliners and makers of dresses. victory had never failed eventually to perch upon laura's banners at the termination of these conflicts; but the intervening travail had given her young companion more than enough to think about and thus to ward off an ever-recurring depression. she did not call it "homesickness," even to herself; for by this time she had become, if not used, at least reconciled to the thought that she had no real home. one of the least true maxims of all of those having perennial currency is that which declares that "all good americans go to paris when they die." most americans, if the truth could be tabulated, are poignantly disappointed with paris. it is a city where american men of a certain type feel that they have almost a heaven-bestowed license to "throw off responsibility." but "the morning after" knows neither latitude nor longitude, and it is just as dismal and conducive to remorse and good resolutions in paris as it is in any other quarter of the irresponsible world. it takes an american man about a week to become thoroughly disillusioned as to paris. the american woman, who, like women the world over, must preserve her sense of responsibility at all times, even in the french capital, discovers her disappointment with and her weariness of the over-lauded paris in considerably less time than a week. louise found it unutterably tiresome, artificial, insincere, absurdly over-praised. now they had been back in london for three weeks, and she was beginning to wonder when laura would give the "pack-up signal" for the return to new york. whenever she circuitously led up to such a suggestion, however, laura told her how ridiculous it would be to return to new york in june, at the height of the london season; besides, there were thousands upon thousands of people in london whom laura wanted louise to meet; and louise (laura would go on) must fight to overcome her londonphobia, because, after all, london probably would be on the map as a sort of meeting place for peripatetic folk for quite a long time to come; whereupon, with fine feminine inconsistency, laura would round upon london for its primitiveness in the supplying of ordinary comforts, for its incurable smudginess, for the mediæval complaisance of its populace, and for a hundred other matters that made it a mere "widely-spraddled" hamlet in comparison with her beloved new york. additionally, there had been an utter absence of the querulous note, and an unwonted tone of positive sadness, in her mother's letters that gravely disquieted louise. her mother's self-revelations on paper hitherto had been characterized by a sort of acidulous recklessness; her letters to louise while the girl was at school had been long-drawn out epistolary complaints, the pages running over with the acridness of a woman at variance not only with her world but with herself. but the half dozen and odd letters which louise had received from her mother since leaving new york had been of an entirely different character. their tone denoted, not the indifference which proceeds from the callousness of surrender, but the long-deferred awakening of a maternal instinct and a maternal conscience. they were filled with reproaches, not for others, but for herself. in them, too, louise perceived a vein of hopelessness, as of one who has been aroused all too late to the evils and dangers of a self-wrought environment, a self-created peril, which sorely disturbed her daughter. louise's parting with her mother had been tender enough on both sides. the girl had said, simply enough, that she was going away for a while in the hope that there would be an adjustment, a righting, of all things awry with her mother before her return. she felt her helplessness, she added, even to make herself a helpful instrument toward such an adjustment by remaining near her mother; but she hoped and believed that before she came back--and louise had been able to progress no further. nor was there any need. her mother, troubled even beyond the relief of tears by her daughter's words, had taken louise in her arms and cuddled her as if she had been again a child; and her last words had been, "everything will be changed, dear--the slate will be cleansed, and we shall start hand in hand again--before you get back. depend upon that. it is odd, i suppose, that i am beginning to remember my duty to you as a mother before i have made a start toward seeing my duty to myself as a woman. but the two awakenings go together, louise, i find--as you shall see when you return." louise had been quick to detect the implied promise in her mother's words; and her main reason for not being insistent with laura upon an earlier return was that she wanted to give her mother plenty of time to redeem the tacit pledge bound up in her parting words. her letters from blythe had been perfervid variations--the effort at restraint being almost humorously visible between the lines--upon the one theme, the _leit motif_ of which was: "we are to be married: when?" the fact itself, it will be observed, was masterfully taken for granted; the time only remained to be mutually agreed upon, so it appeared to blythe. it was from such a letter as this that louise now looked up and gazed pensively at the reddish rays of smothered london sunshine flickering, with the movement of the curtains, upon the rug. laura herself, just having finished a far more informative letter from blythe, caught the pensive expression and not unnaturally associated it with the still open letter on louise's lap. "of course the man is impatient, dear," she said to louise, weaving without effort into the subject matter of the girl's reflections. "but you must not mind that. being impatient--at such an interesting juncture of their poor, benighted lives, i mean--is good for them. really, it is the best thing that can possibly happen to them. it chastens them, teaches them the benignities, the joys of--er--abnegation and renunciation and things. by the way, louise," veering about with diverting instability, "when do you really and privately mean to get rid of the man by marrying him?" louise, not without an effort, shook herself out of her reverie, folded her letter from blythe with an odd sort of deliberation, and looked frankly enough at laura. "it is not certain, dear," she replied, with no irresolution of tone, "that i shall ever marry him." laura regarded the girl with a gaze of perfectly unaffected stupefaction. "i wonder," she said, as if to herself, "if the acoustics of these london rooms can be so atrocious, or if i am really becoming so old that my hearing already is affected? say that again, child. it isn't possible that i could have heard you correctly." louise was unable to repress a slight smile at the extraordinary bewilderment which was visible on laura's face, but her tone was distinct enough when she repeated: "it is far from a certainty that i shall marry him at all, laura." laura rose from her deep chair, gathered her "getting-up gown" hastily about her, crossed over to where louise was sitting, placed an arm about the girl's shoulder, and gazed wonderingly into her eyes. "it is impossible," she said, "that you two are quarrelling across the wide atlantic? i shall cable john blythe this very hour! it is his fault! it must be his fault!" and she rushed to her escritoire and pretended to fumble for her cable blanks. "of course i know you haven't the least idea of doing any such a thing," said louise, earnestness showing through her composure. "won't you please stop your aimless ransacking and come over and talk with me?" "but," said laura, seating herself by louise, "i am afraid i am too anxious to scold somebody--either you, here and now, or john blythe, by a few stinging words sent under the sea, or--or anybody i can lay my tongue or pen to! really, i am baffled by what you say, louise. of course the man has asked you time and again, since we've been over here, to marry him?" "he scarcely writes about anything else," replied louise, smothering a smile over laura's intense but uninformed earnestness. "and don't i _know_," pursued laura, with a mystified rapidity of utterance, "that he made his incoherent, almost unintelligible declaration to you on the very day before we sailed--didn't i _see_ him as he left, treading on air, and _hear_ him emit the entranced gibberish that customarily mounts to a man's lips at such a time? and you received his declaration as if you had been timing its arrival, and you told me two minutes after he had gone that you loved him. then what in the wide world is the--" laura threw up her hands with a baffled gesture that was almost comic. "i confess myself completely daunted, dear. won't you tell me what it is all about?" louise regarded laura with steady, reflective eyes. "you know how i appreciate your fine, generous impulsiveness, dear," she said to the older woman. "but you must have thought, haven't you, that it would not be fair for me to marry john blythe?" another film of mystification appeared on laura's widened eyes. "fair?" she almost whispered in her amazement. "how do you mean--'fair'? fair to whom--to yourself or to john?" "to him," said louise. "of course it would not be fair to him. i cannot see how there could be two views as to that." laura, arms folded, rose and lithely crossed the room several times, knitting her brow. then she sat down again beside louise. "i think i know what you mean, child," she said. "but of course you are wrong. utterly, hopelessly, pitiably wrong. he isn't that sort of a man. you should know that, dear." "i don't underestimate him--far from that," said louise. "it is just because he isn't that sort of a man, as you say, that i shrink from the thought of being unfair with him--of permitting him to do himself an injustice." "but," said laura, "he is not a cubbish, haphazard lad. he is a man--a real man. he knows and gauges the world. more and better than that, he knows himself. i should have difficulty in recalling the name of any man who knows his mind better than john blythe does his." "i know that, laura," said louise. "but his unselfishness is too fine a thing to be taken advantage of. he has made his way unaided. he has had a long fight. he will never cease to mount. why should i hamper him?" "hamper him!" exclaimed laura. "child, how can the woman a man loves hamper him?" "your partiality causes you to generalize, dear," said louise. "my case--our case, if you will--is entirely different." she took a turn up and down the room and then confronted laura calmly. "don't you _know_ what the world--_his_ world--would say if he married me?" laura shrugged impatiently. "the 'they sayers'!" she exclaimed. "the 'they sayers' say this, they say that, they say the other thing. and what does their 'they-saying' amount to?" "it would amount to nothing at all in his estimation--i am only too sure of that," replied louise. "but a man who is making his way in the world must even take heed of the 'they-sayers,' as you call them. he cannot ignore them. his unselfish impulse would be, not only to ignore them, but to flaunt them; and all on my account. it would, i think, be simply contemptible for me to permit him to do that." laura studied for a moment, then shook her head despairingly. "my dear," she said, "you are the first girl i ever knew deliberately to erect barriers between herself and the happiness that rightfully belongs to her. what, in heaven's name, has your mother's departure from--from rule to do with you? how has it, how could it, ever involve you, or come between you and the man--the big-minded man--who loves you and whom you love? tell me that." "it could not come between _us_," replied louise. "but the world--the very 'they-sayers' you mention--could and would use it as a thong to punish him. and that is the one thing i could not have. i am the daughter of my mother. i am not very experienced, but i know how the world views these things. the world does not draw lines of demarcation where women are concerned. its ostracism is a very long and heavy whip. its condemnation does not take the least heed of mitigations. i can speak plainly to you, dear--you are of course the only living person to whom i would say these things. but, if i were to permit john blythe to marry me, can you not hear the gruelling comment--comment that, while it might not actually reach my husband's ears, he could not fail to be conscious of? they would say that he had married a girl whose mother had been openly maintained by a man--a man in the public eye--whose wife was living. they would go farther and say--which of course is the simple truth--that i had lived for a time under the roof maintained by that man. and, with such things to go upon, how could the world possibly reach any other conclusion--granting, as you must, the knack the world has for leaping at conclusions--than that john blythe, a growing man, a man destined for distinction, had made a tremendous mistake in his marriage? of course you understand. i have been wanting to say these things to you for a long time, but i could not summon the courage. i wanted to say them to john on the day before we sailed; but i _could_ not." her voice broke, and she gazed out of the window to hide the tears that stood in her eyes. laura, so strongly moved that she deliberately forced herself to think of inconsequentialities to keep back her tears, wrapped her arms about the girl. "my dear," she said, "i am not, i fear, as religious, as reverent a woman as i should be. but i do not believe that god will keep a woman like you and a man like john blythe apart. that would be a deviation from his all-discerning rule in which i simply could not believe. i don't admit that you are right. i don't say now that you are wholly wrong. but, through the very nobility of the view you take, a way shall be found. never doubt that, child. i know that in some ways--many ways--the world is awry enough. but i know, too, that there is not enough injustice in all the world to keep you from the arms of the man who loves you and is beloved by you." * * * * * there were two topics in john blythe's letter to laura that gave her more than a day's material for reflection. one of them concerned louise's mother. "mrs. treharne summoned me a few days ago, and in the evening i went to the house on the drive," blythe wrote. "there seemed to be nothing in particular as to which she wished to see me--except that she was good enough to intimate that she had noticed my 'interest' in louise. (interest!'--when that very evening i'd been cursing the slow progress of the art of aviation, which made it impossible for me to fly to london out of hand--out of wing, i mean.) really, laura, i think the depressed little woman merely wanted to have a talk with somebody about louise, which was why she sent for me. she looks in shocking health. if i read aright, i think she is at least at the beginning of some sort of a decline. better not tell louise this--just yet. there are reasons why i think it would be better for louise to remain abroad with you for a while longer. one of the reasons is this: i gather that mrs. treharne is pretty nigh through with judd. she as much as told me so. i was touched by her lack of reserve in speaking to me of this matter. louise was right. her mother, as louise prophesied to you, is undergoing the miseries of an awakening--a singularly bitter awakening in her case, i fear. i felt and feel intensely sorry for her--she was never wrong at heart, but was caught in the eddy of circumstance. "she hinted, not vaguely, but quite directly, that she was upon the verge of a complete change in her environment--and the intertwined remarks denoted that her keenly-felt humiliation in the eyes of her daughter was at the bottom of the contemplated change, whatever it is to be. i am very confident that it is to be a withdrawal from the protection, if one could call it that, of judd. it is too bad, isn't it, that this did not come just a few months earlier? but (here's a bromidiom for you!) better late than never! think what distress such a withdrawal would have spared louise if it had happened before the child quit school! "but enough of if-it-had-beens. the point is that louise, i feel very sure, has accomplished a wonderful regeneration--the regeneration of her own mother! could there be anything more unheard-of, more marvelous, than that? but it is merely of a piece with the influence which louise has upon everybody. you know that badly-batted-around modern word, 'uplift'? it applies actually, i think, to but one human being in the world: louise. i mean that everybody who comes even slightly under her influence experiences that sense of 'uplift.' i know that _i_ do! and even you, my dear laura, even you ..." ("of course the dear headlong creature is right," thought laura when she read this, "but isn't it hard to picture the self-contained, occasionally even austere john blythe _raving_ so! but they're all alike. i suppose that even alexander, cæsar, and charlemagne privately raved the same way over their sweethearts!") "so you will see," blythe went on in his letter, "why it is better that louise should remain on the other side with you until matters work themselves out here--until, in essence, her mother completely clears her skirts of the wretched judd entanglement; and that, i think, is something very imminent. it will be a joy for louise to be freely and unrestrainedly alone with her mother when she comes back. you understand, of course. so stay over there for another month at least, won't you, petrarch's laura and the laura of all of us?... "a few forenoons ago i came perilously close to getting a bit of needed exercise by throwing a man bodily out of my office--and this will seem the more startling to you when you remember my almost lamb-like non-aggressiveness. i think, though, i should have gone the length of throwing him out of the window had i not mentally visualized, in an unaccustomed access of caution, the large, rampageous red headlines in the afternoon newspapers: 'struggling young (?) lawyer hurls famous financier from fifth story window,' etc., etc. "the man was langdon jesse, whom of course you know. (sometimes i wish you did not know so many sinister persons, but perhaps you can't help it.) probably you are aware that i don't like the jesse individual. i don't believe i am a victim of a prejudice as to him, either. he is a waxy, doughy person who makes the pursuit of women a hobby as decenter men make hobbies of golf, billiards, cigars and so on. i do not lean to the condemnatory tone where men are concerned, but this man's record is too besmudged and his personality too repulsive even for my amiable, non-pharisaical (i hope) taste. i have known him in a general sort of a way for a number of years, but have always been at some pains to make it clear to him that i preferred the sight of his back. "he lounged in upon me the other forenoon, very oily and desirous of exhibiting to me his somewhat rhino-like brand of _savoir-faire_, and he told me that, inasmuch as he was leaving for europe directly, he thought he would ask me if i, as the guardian of miss treharne, would be willing that he should extend the tourist's usual civilities and courtesies to that young lady. can you imagine a more imbecile question? naturally, i was astonished to find that he had even met louise, and you may hold yourself in readiness to be very severely spoken to when you return because you did not inform me of it. seriously, i am inordinately sorry that louise ever did meet him. of course i gave the fellow what the reporters call 'very short shrift.' i can't remember ever having been more annoyed. the impudence of this loathly eden musée lothario, knowing (as he certainly must have known) that i was perfectly familiar with his record and character, coming to me on such a mission! he was upon the pin-point of hinting that a note of recommendation from me, submitting him to the fair opinion of you and louise, might enable him to offer the two of you certain somewhat prized civilities not easily obtainable--when i, without the least attempt at hinting, indicated the general direction of my door and gave him a view of my back. "i haven't the least notion as to what the fellow's actual purpose was, but if, as he claims, he really has met louise, i am perturbed to think that presently he will be in the same hemisphere with her. (i would include you in my perturbation, only i know how thoroughly well able you are to crunch such objects with a mere word, if not, indeed, a simple lifting of the eyebrows.) of course he will not now have the temerity to call upon you in london. but if he does exhibit such hardihood, and in any way attempts to annoy you or louise with his 'prized civilities,' you will let me know at once, of course--by cable, if you think it necessary. i don't know why i have permitted and am permitting myself to be disturbed by this individual's inexplicable little machinations (his whole life, in business and in private, is one huge machination), but i have been and i am. write me just how he contrived to meet louise, won't you?" laura, in reading this, felt considerable compunction over the fact that she had not told blythe of louise's unavoidable meetings with langdon jesse and of the attentions which he had attempted to force upon her. she had not done so because she had frankly feared the possible consequences of blythe's quick-blazing anger. while she would have been willing enough to commit jesse to the corporeal handling of a physically adept man like john blythe, she had no means of knowing in advance whether the story of such a chastisement, if it took place, would become public; and as louise had come under her own protection very soon after her final encounter with jesse, laura had felt that, as the jesse incubus probably had been disposed of for good and all, it would be better not to disquiet blythe by telling him anything about it. she knew that louise had not mentioned jesse to blythe out of a feeling of plain shame that she had been put in the way of meeting a man of his stamp. but laura, after re-reading that part of blythe's letter referring to jesse, found herself vaguely uneasy at the thought that even then he was on his way to london. she determined not to say anything about it to louise. she also determined that london was going to remain large enough for louise and herself and ten thousand langdon jesses; which, interpreted, means that she had not the remotest idea of bolting for it because of jesse's impending arrival. laura also concluded to obey blythe's injunction to say nothing to louise as to her mother's changing affairs. she longed to tell the girl of blythe's forecasting of the approaching dissolution of the relationship between her mother and judd; but she had learned the time-biding lesson, and she disliked to arouse hopes within louise's mind that might not, after all, have fruition. moreover, she had frequently had occasion to test blythe's judgment, and she had always found it sound. "but i wish john blythe would take a vacation of a fortnight or so and run over here," she caught herself meditating. "he would fit into the situation beautifully at the present moment and in some moments that i seem to feel approaching. but there never was a man yet who could recognize the psychological moment even when it paraded before his eyes--much less grasp it by intuition." chapter xii not alone from john blythe had langdon jesse suffered a rebuff in his attempt to gather ammunition, in the form of intimate and more or less mandatory credentials, for his european campaign, in which louise treharne figured as the alluring citadel of his sinister ambition. first he had tried louise's mother with that purpose in view; and in that quarter he had been treated to one of the surprises of his by no means uneventful life. jesse's method of reasoning, in approaching mrs. treharne on such a mission, was in no wise subtle; it was, on the contrary, as plain and pointed as a fence-paling. it all started from the outright premise that jesse "wanted" louise treharne and thoroughly meant to "have" her--for jesse had the merit (negative enough in his case) of never attempting to deceive himself as to his eventual purposes where women were concerned. louise, of course, had plainly given him to understand that she despised him. that, however, was, in jesse's view, a negligible detail. it would make his final conquest all the more satisfying. many women who had begun by disliking him and frankly questioning his motives had ended by yielding to him; whereupon, after basking in the joys of triumph, he had taken a revengeful pleasure in casting them into what, in his self-communings, he brutally termed his "discard." it would be the same, jesse thoroughly believed, in louise's case. she now represented to him a difficulty to be surmounted, a transaction to be successfully carried through. the weakness in the armor of men of the jesse type is that they have little or no imagination. they foresee merely results; and their handling of the means to an end often is singularly clumsy and unadept. in regarding all women, of whatever class, as mere palterers with virtue and self-respect, jesse considered that he was justified by his experience with women; but he made the egregious mistake of supposing that his own experience with women established a criterion, a formula, from which there could be no departure. a week or so before he contemplated going abroad, mainly for the purpose of continuing his besiegement of louise, jesse dropped in at the house on the drive one evening. he was glad to find mrs. treharne alone. he was not unmindful of his boast to judd that he would victoriously overcome what, in his b[oe]otian imagining, he really deemed louise's "prejudice" against him; and he preferred to lay his course without any judd finger on his chart. mrs. treharne, now thin and frail-looking, no longer from banting, but from the conflict with conscience that been consuming her ever since her daughter's departure, received him coldly enough. not the least of her self-scornings since louise had gone away had centered upon her complaisance in tacitly permitting her daughter to be pursued by a man of the langdon jesse type. "i am leaving for england," jesse found early occasion to announce. mrs. treharne, very languid and tired-looking, did not find the announcement sufficiently important to call for comment. "louise, i believe, is in london?" pursued jesse, sensing, without perturbation, the chill mrs. treharne was purposely diffusing. mrs. treharne gave him a level, penetrating glance. "miss treharne, i think, would not be interested in knowing that you possessed information as to her movements," she replied, with studied indifference. jesse smiled and stooped to stroke a dozing spaniel. "what have i done, tony?" he asked after a pause, looking up with a dental smile. "you have presumed to employ miss treharne's first name, after having met her, i believe, not more than three times. don't do it again," replied mrs. treharne in a tone that, while quiet enough, had a ring in it that was utterly new to jesse. jesse, seeming by his manner to take the rebuke in a chastened spirit, occupied himself again with the spaniel's silky coat. "i seem," he said, finally breaking the oppressive silence, "to have found you in a somewhat arctic humor. still, that should not be allowed to congeal an old friendship. it cannot be that you, too, are beginning to misunderstand me, as miss treharne has from the beginning?" "miss treharne should not have been allowed to meet you at all," returned mrs. treharne. "i leave you to imagine how bitterly i condemn myself now for not having at least screened her from that." "you say 'now,'" said jesse. "why, particularly 'now?'" "that," replied mrs. treharne, "is my affair." the time, of course, had arrived for jesse to make the best of a poor departure. the man, however, was of a surprising obtuseness as to such details. "and yet i came this evening," he said, adopting a tonal tremolo which was intended to convey the idea that he was sorely put upon, "to offer, through you, any poor courtesies that i might have at my command to make miss treharne's stay in england agreeable." mrs. treharne shrugged impatiently. "spare yourself these posturings, if you please," she said. "miss treharne has made it plain enough that she detests you. are you waiting to have me tell you that i applaud her judgment?" an ugly sneer flickered across jesse's features. at length the barbs were hitting home. but he effaced the sneer and twisted it into a forced smile. "what i can't understand is why you received me at all this evening, if this is your feeling--your newly-formed feeling--toward me," he said, quelling the hoarseness that proceeded from his repressed anger. "i confess to having entertained a certain curiosity, perhaps a certain uneasiness, as to your purpose in calling at all," promptly replied mrs. treharne. "it is the first time you have been here since my daughter's departure. i have been sorting over certain of my mistakes since she went away. i have been considering them, too, from a different angle than any you could possibly understand. not the least of these mistakes, as i have told you, was in permitting my daughter to exchange as much as two words with you. happily, it is not too late to rectify that mistake, at least. she is well protected. i need not tell you that if you should have the temerity to attempt to call upon her in london she would instruct the flunkeys to cease carrying her your card. i think there is no more to be said?" mrs. treharne rose and assumed the attitude of dismissal. this time jesse, also rising, did not essay to erase the sneer from his wrath-flushed features. "what is all this--a scene from some damned imbecile play?" he demanded, completely throwing off the mask. "are you trying to regale me with a rehearsal of the flighty mother turned virtuous? don't do that. that isn't the sort of thing you could reasonably expect me to stand for from fred judd's kept wo----" "say that if you dare!" exclaimed mrs. treharne, stepping close to him and transfixing him with blazing eyes. jesse, out of sheer timidity, broke off at the exact point where she had interrupted him. as she stepped to the wall to ring, he put on his hat with studied deliberation and patted it to make it more secure on his head. thus, with his hat on, he spoke to her. "i suppose your solicitude for the--er--the what-you-may-call-it of your auburn-haired daughter is natural enough, probably being based upon something that you, and you alone, know," he said, sidling, however, toward the door as he spoke. "but it is wasted solicitude, let me tell you that. she has lived here with you, hasn't she? well, that fact will about settle her, you know. there's no downing that. and after awhile she'll give up. she won't be able to stand the stigma. none of them can stand it. it would take a superwoman to endure, without herself surrendering, the ignominy of having lived under this roof. don't forget that." then the butler, answering the ring, appeared at the door. mrs. treharne raised a limp arm and pointed to jesse. "this man," she said to the butler, "is not to be admitted to the house again as long as i am in it." the butler inclined his head with butler-like gravity, detoured to get behind jesse, and jesse, patting the top of his hat again to emphasize, in the menial's presence, the insult of wearing it, stalked down the hall. the broken, faded woman tottered to her sleeping room and fell upon a couch in an agony of tears. it was on the day following this scene that jesse, inconceivably persistent in the pursuit of such a purpose as he had in mind, and now roused by obstacles to the point where he swore to himself that he would "win out," made the call at blythe's office which the latter purposely glossed over in describing it in his letter to laura. jesse's purpose in seeking out blythe was two-fold. in the first place, he wanted to measure the man who, he knew, had been appointed louise's guardian. he only recalled blythe in a general sort of a way, and he wanted to "size him up" from this new angle. he was aware that blythe was not only the guardian but an admirer of louise, and he wanted to ascertain, from the contact of an interview, whether blythe's admiration was of a piece with his own; the manifestation of a mere predatory design, that is to say; for men of the jesse type are ever prone to drag the motives of other men to a level with their own. secondly, if he found, as he hoped to find, that blythe was a mere supple and sycophantic young lawyer, eager to succeed, and therefore capable of being impressed by a call from a man looming large in the financial world, jesse prefigured that probably blythe, by means of credentials that would have the weight of a guardian's advice, might very easily aid him in his "little affair" (so he thought of it) with louise when he reached london. jesse was not in the least fearful of the consequences, so far as his standing with louise was concerned, of his unmasking in the presence of her mother. he was under the impression that louise had left the house on the drive at odds with her mother and that no correspondence existed between them. so that he felt sure that louise would not hear from her mother of his brutality toward her. it took jesse something less than thirty seconds, when he called upon blythe, to discover that that young lawyer was neither sycophantic nor supple, and that, so far from being impressed by a visit from jesse in his capacity of financial magnate, blythe was coldly but distinctly hostile toward him. the interview had terminated with startling abruptness. after having mentioned louise's name once, and been forbidden to repeat the offense, jesse had involuntarily let slip her name again. blythe, seated in his desk-chair with his hands on his knees, viewed jesse calmly, but with eyes that showed cold glints of steel. "are you going to get out now, or are you waiting for me to throw you out?" blythe inquired of him in much the same tone that he would have employed in asking for a match. jesse, it appeared, was not waiting to be thrown out. he went at once. but when he reached the street level and got into his waiting car, he was in almost as pretty a state of passion as any sepulchral-voiced stage villain. and he was quite as resolved to win the baffling battle, even under the lash of unintermittent scorn, as he had been from the hour of his first meeting with louise treharne. an hour after jesse had gone, leaving the stunned, shattered woman weltering in his litter of cowardly words, judd walked into antoinette treharne's apartments. he found her dishevelled and still weeping convulsively. he sat down and regarded her with the bewildered helplessness of the male when the woman's tears are streaming. she scarcely saw him, but lay, huddled and shaking, a mere wraith of the woman whom he had beckoned to this present disaster and despair but a few years before. judd, a gross, fleshly man not without human traits, felt sorry for her as he sat watching her. also, he felt sorry for himself. it was not agreeable that a woman--this woman--should be weeping and moaning and shaking her shoulders in her grief in such a manner. it was disturbing. it destroyed the poise of things. it created a sort of sympathy which was bad for the digestion of the sympathizer. but judd felt sorry for her. he really did. he had been watching, with a sort of mystified concern, how her health had been going to pieces lately. he wondered why that was. surely, she had everything that she wanted? well, then. anyhow, judd was sorry. he was extremely fond of tony. she had touched a certain responsive chord in him, and he knew that his chords were pretty well insulated; and here she was weeping and staining her face with tears, her hair all mussed, and all that--judd was decidedly disturbed, and sorry as well. "i say, tony, what is it?" he asked her, after keeping vigil for fifteen minutes without emitting a word. there was no reply. she did not even look up at him. gradually, though, her weeping ceased. judd walked up and down the room, smoking an enormously long, black cigar, occasionally stopping in his heavy stride to look at her. presently she sat up, blinking in the light, her face still swollen with her tears. a certain prettiness still remained to her; but it was the pathetic prettiness of the exotic the petals of which are dropping, dropping. "is it anything that i can help, tony?" asked judd in a tone that was not lacking in kindliness, as he stopped and stood before her. she shook her head wearily. "no," she answered him in a quiet, tear-hoarsened tone. "it is nothing that you can help. it is all my own fault." judd flicked the long ash of his cigar to the rug and studied her with a puckered but not scowling brow. "i don't want to stir up or start anything anew," he said, not unkindly, "but may i ask what it is that is your fault?" she crushed her wet handkerchief between her palms and looked up at him with vague eyes. "oh, everything," she replied, with a shrug of utter weariness. "few women could be found in all the world tonight, i believe, who have made such an utter mess of their lives as i have of mine. but i am not so unfair, thank god, as to blame it upon anybody but myself. it is a compensation, at any rate, to be able to see things in their true light." "you are ill, aren't you?" judd asked her, with a solicitude that was obviously genuine. "i don't know--i think so," she replied. "i am very tired--i know that. tired of myself, of everything." "you need a change," suggested judd. "you ought to go away somewhere. but i don't want you to go alone. i am pretty busy, but i'll chuck everything to go with you if you want me to, tony." she looked at him with a sort of weary curiosity. "it is just as i have said," she murmured after having made this inspection of him. "it has never been your fault. you have, in your way, been kind to me. you still are. you care for me in your way. but it is a bad way, fred. i know that now. it is too late, of course. nevertheless, i am going to make what amendment i can. i must try to preserve at least a shred of womanhood. i am sure you are not going to take it angrily or bitterly. but we have reached the parting of the ways, my friend. you have been fair enough, from your point of view, through the whole wretched business. it has been my fault, my weakness, from the beginning." judd plumped into a deep chair near her and, pondering, blew great smoke-rings at the portieres. "the thing is," he said, presently, "that you've lost your nerve. and, having lost it, why, you've gone into the camp of the folks you call the smugs. am i right?" "you are utterly wrong," she replied, spiritlessly. "i have little toleration for--well, death-bed repentances. that is too old and too unconvincing a story. a woman does as she likes, flouts the world, snaps her finger at usage, until she becomes middle aged or near it; then she begins to fumble her beads, takes on the face of austerity, and condemns, right and left, the lapses of the younger generation of defiant women. i haven't the least use for that sort of thing. it is simply that i have arrived at the knowledge that a woman is an idiot not to conform and to stay conformed. it is mere madness for a woman to suppose that she can fight so unequal a battle against the world's opinion as i have foolishly tried to fight. it makes no difference as to a man. he can do as he pleases. i suppose it was the inequality of that law that goaded me into it all in the first place. but i've lost. i see now that there never was the possibility of any other outcome." "you get a bit beyond me, you know," said judd, not argumentatively, but as one seeking enlightenment. "i am willing to grant that men have the best of it, and all that sort of thing. but women know the rules of the game. then why can't they play the game without moaning and kicking to the umpire?" "there isn't any umpire except conscience," she answered him. "there isn't any arbitration for a woman. she is what the steel-sheathed law of the ages says she is to be, or she is not. i have not been, and i have lost. that is all. i am not so futile as to complain of the game. i despise myself for having been so opaque as to suppose that i could defy the rules, win, and not be disqualified--as i have been, of course, ever since i tried it." "it's queer," said judd, reflectively, after a pause, "how these man-made laws sooner or later anchor all you women, after you've made your flights. the whole thing, you know, is an idiotic system. they try to regulate us by rote and rule, by bell, book and candle. but, after all, they only think they're regulating us that way, don't they? i wonder how many of us really follow their rules? mighty few that i know of. openly, we subscribe to all of the iron-bound tenets, privately we laugh at them and do the best we know to rip them apart. it's all a matter of being found out; of being caught with the goods. a woman, of course, has to watch out for more danger signals than a man. but they're pretty clever little watchers, believe me." "well, you can't blame them for that," said mrs. treharne. "most of them, at any rate, have the common sense not to attempt to brazen matters out, as i have." "i see what you mean," said judd, cogitatively. "your idea is that it is a woman's business to get all that she can out of life, and that the only way for her to get the most out of life is to pretend to agree to the rules as they've been made for her, and then, if she feels disposed to kick over the traces, why, to keep under cover about it. you're right in that view, of course. but, after all, what difference does it make? sooner or later, no matter how we play the string, they toss us into a box and plant us. when it comes to that, i can't see why you should permit what you call your conscience to make a wreck of you in this way. what have you done? why, you've been my companion. will you be good enough to tell me how that companionship could possibly have been made any better than it has been if, at its outset, a man in a surplice or a mouthing justice had mumbled a few so-called binding words over us? faugh! you can't believe such crass humbug. the so-called 'consecration of matrimony' is a good enough phrase and a good enough scheme to keep groundlings up to the mark. don't you suppose we'd have fought and barked at each other just the same if we'd been married according to the frazzled old rule? at that, i'd have married you years ago, just to straighten you out, if there had been the least chance of my prevailing upon my wife, who made life a hell for me with her whinings, to get a divorce from me. but, now that the thing has ambled along to this stage, what's the use of talking about quitting?" she listened to him composedly. but his words fell thumpingly enough upon her ears. he had never gone to the pains before of giving her so complete an elucidation of his doctrine. "there is as little use in our debating the world's social and ethical system," she said. "i am not thinking of myself. there is no reason why i shouldn't acknowledge to you that i don't much care how our relationship affects myself. but----" "yes, i know what it's all about," put in judd. "it's your daughter. well, i'll have to grant that you've got a big end of the argument there. i've got daughters of my own, and i know how i'd snort around if i thought there was a chance on earth for any of my daughters to inherit my doctrine, my view of the world, the flesh and the devil. that's the finest little inconsistency i possess. i might as well stick in the observation here, while we're all confessing our sins, that i've felt a good deal more like a blackguard than has been comfortable to my self-esteem ever since the night i rounded on your daughter. that, i think, was about the meanest and commonest act of my life. a pretty fine sort of a girl, your daughter." "i didn't think you had it in you to admit that, and i'm glad that you have admitted it," replied mrs. treharne. "of course your surmise is exactly right. it _is_ on my daughter's account that i have brought myself up with a round turn. it is pretty late in the day for me to do that, i know; but one must do the best one can. we can talk as we please about our opinions of morals and ethics and the world's harsh rules; but all of our talk vanishes into murky vapor when we begin to consider our children. the most contemptible act of _my_ life, since you have so unexpectedly acknowledged yours, was in permitting my daughter to come here. you know that as well as i do--now." judd lit another cigar and smoked in silence for a time. "the thing that gets me around the throat in connection with all this," he said, presently, "is that it seems all to simmer down to the fact that you are thinking of quitting me." "don't be absurd, fred," said mrs. treharne. "that consideration doesn't disturb you a whit. you know very well that you will be glad to be rid of me." "that," said judd, leaning toward her, his small eyes curiously alight, "is not true, and you know it." "but," she said, perhaps, with the unconquerable desire of the woman for affection and admiration, curious to hear his reply, "i have lost my looks; i am a mere relic of what i was when i came to you; i am not far from forty. you know these things." "yes, i know them," said judd, and there was genuine feeling in the man's tone. "but i know, too, that i care a damned sight more for you than i ever did for any other woman in all my life. i know that, if you really mean to go through with this plan of quitting me, it's going to knock me sky-high. i can't figure myself being without you. you have grown into my scheme of living. i don't profess to much when it comes to morals and all that sort of thing; but i've got a heart built upon some kind of a pattern, i suppose; i must have, and you ought to know it, for you've possessed it for years. and, that being the case--and it _is_ the case--our relationship isn't so bad as you might have been supposing it to be. don't you imagine that i am so infernally dried up as to what is called the affections. i know that my life won't be worth much to me after you go out of it." mrs. treharne, astonished and perhaps a little pleased at the earnestness of the man's self-revelation, nevertheless shook her head wearily. "yet you know very well, at this moment, that i _must_ leave you," she said broodingly. "well, i'm going to be fair with you," said judd, the latent manhood, that had been buried under the callousness of years, showing in him. "i'm leaving that part of it up to you. i wouldn't do that, either, if i didn't care for you as i do. but you've got your end of it, and a big end. you're entitled to do what you are prompted to do in consideration of your daughter. i'm not hound enough to try to block you in that. i'll go further and say that you're right about it. if i were in your place i'd do the same thing. the devil of it is that i care for you all the more when i see you moved to give your daughter the fair deal she's entitled to. i hate to have you go. i don't know what i'll do with myself without you. but you've hit me right where i live in this business--the progeny end of it. the young ones have got to be thought of. and there is, i suppose, no way whereby you could remain openly under my protection and at the same time be doing the right thing by your daughter. of course, if you cared to be more private about it, why----" "no, no--don't even suggest that," put in mrs. treharne. "that would be a pitiable evasion. you know that." "well, probably it would, but i'm putting all angles of the thing up to you," said judd, perhaps more in earnest that he had ever been in his life before. "one thing, though, you must leave to me. it's only the fair thing that i should continue to take care of you, no matter where you go." "not even that, fred," replied mrs. treharne, determinedly. "that, too, would be a dodging of the issue. i have a few thousands put by. they came from you, of course, but before i had made up my mind to--to live otherwise. i shall manage. let me have my own way this final once, won't you?" and she smiled wanly. judd rose and picked up his hat and coat. "don't take any leaps in the dark, tony, that's all," he said. "think the thing all over. don't give yourself the worst of it. you know that _i_ won't give you the worst of it. i never have, have i? maybe you'll change your mind about it all. i'll be back tomorrow night and see. goodnight." there were tears standing in the eyes of the huge-girthed man as he went heavily out of the room, and his shoulders were hunched forward as if he had suddenly passed from elderliness to old age. mrs. treharne, for almost an hour after judd had gone, sat, chin in palm, gazing into vacancy. then she rose, heavily enough for a woman so fragile as she now had become, gazed for a moment in the glass at her haggard features, and shook her head, smiling bitterly. "'_facilis descensus_,' and the rest of it," she murmured. "that, i suppose, is the truest of the maxims; it stands the wear of time better than any of the rest of them. well, i have the mournful satisfaction of knowing that i have sufficient intelligence, at any rate, not to blame anybody but myself." then she rang for her maid. "pack in the morning, heloise," she said when the maid appeared. "begin early. get one of the housemaids to help you. pack everything--all of your own things, too. we shall be leaving before noon." "everything, madame?" inquired heloise, her eyes widening, "winter costumes--everything?" "everything," repeated mrs. treharne. "i am not to return here." heloise nodded with a sage acquiescence, and began to take down her mistress's hair. "where do we go tomorrow, madame?" heloise asked when she had finished her task and mrs. treharne was in readiness for retiring. "i haven't the least idea, heloise," replied mrs. treharne, gesturing her unconcern. "i shall decide between now and morning. to the mountains, i suppose--the adirondacks, probably. i am not very well--new york stifles me. the mountains, i think it shall be, heloise." "madame feels badly?" inquired heloise, solicitously. "one has noticed that madame is _distraite_, grows thin, looks unlike herself." "sometimes i wish i were anybody but myself, heloise," said mrs. treharne, enigmatically enough, considering her audience. "goodnight." after the maid had gone mrs. treharne went to her desk and wrote to louise, telling her that she was leaving the house on the drive, not to return. it was a long, self-reproachful letter, threaded with the wistful but not outrightly expressed hope that the step she was taking would atone, if only in a slight degree, for the "wretched sin," as she called it, of having permitted her daughter to set foot within the riverside drive establishment. she did not mention langdon jesse's name. she felt a singular uneasiness over the thought that jesse's approaching visit to london in some way involved the weaving of a net about her daughter; but she dismissed that thought, as often as it recurred, when she considered louise's poise and her protection by laura stedham, an experienced woman of the world. moreover, mrs. treharne would have found it difficult, unless there were some grave actual peril, to mention jesse's name in a letter to her daughter; for it brought the blood to her face to remember how unconcernedly she had permitted louise to meet the man--how she had even chided her daughter for not having accepted jesse's attentions in a more pliant, not to say grateful, spirit. "i am leaving with heloise tomorrow, dear, but i have not decided where to go," she concluded. "i shall write or cable you an address before long. i am entirely well, though i believe i need rest and change. have out your good time--i know that you are in good hands with laura, to whom my love. i am looking forward to our new, happy life when you return to me." then she penned a little note to be left behind for judd. "don't think me unkind for going without seeing you again," she wrote. "we have gone over it all, and we are both of the same opinion as to the need for the step i am taking. i cannot quite tell you how you have advanced in my opinion for some of the things you said tonight. you have been very fair, and i am correspondingly grateful. i will not be so _banal_ as to suggest that, if there be any chance for a reconciliation, or at least a decent armistice, between you and your wife, it might be at least a solution of a sort, considering your children; i only wish that i could suggest that outright without incurring the suspicion that, having made a belated repentance myself, i am seeking to reform the world. one thing, however, i shall say outright: if i had it all to do over again, i should _conform_. there is no other way for a woman. we seek to ridicule the promptings of conscience by calling conscience an abnormality, a thing installed in us to whip us into line with age-old system. but it won't do. it is, after all, the true voice. i wish i had never closed my ears to its urgings. "time heals all. you will find yourself thinking less and less often of me as the days drift by. that is as it should be. i am sorry for the hurt--i did not know until you spoke as you did tonight that it would be a hurt--i am inflicting upon you in thus effacing myself, at such short notice, from your life. but time heals. goodbye, and all best wishes." before noon, on the following day, mrs. treharne and heloise left the house on the drive, leaving no word behind as to whither they were bound. chapter xiii langdon jesse maintained a bachelor apartment in london the year round. when he arrived there, about a fortnight after his turbulent scene with mrs. treharne and his signally unsuccessful attempt at an _entente_ with blythe, he found everything in order, quite as he had left it the year before. gaskins, factotum and general overseer of the bachelor apartments, of which there were three tiers, jesse's being the second, was a little more bald and fat, but he still rubbed his hands as a mark of subservience and cocked his head to one side in a bird-like way while engaged in conversation with his supposititious superior. he had a respectful but earnest complaint to make of one of jesse's new york cronies, a man engaged in the somewhat tempestuous task of drinking himself to death, who had occupied jesse's apartment for a month during the spring; for it was jesse's habit to extend the use of his london lodging, which was desirable mainly on account of its highly privileged character, to those of his intimates who happened to be in london while he himself was in new york. "'e was more than 'arf-seas hover hall the time, sir," gaskins told jesse, lamentingly, "which of course was 'is privilege, but 'e did give 'isself some 'orrid bumps when 'e come 'ome along o' three or four o' mornings. hi'm afraid 'e would 'ave killed 'iself, sir, falling hagainst the furniture, 'ad i not been living on the premises hand come hup hand got 'im straightened hout hin bed. hand, sir, when hi didn't come hup, 'e would halways go to sleep in the bath-tub with 'is clothes on. a swift goer, sir, but killing 'isself; killing 'isself fast." jesse laughed. he was tolerant enough of the idiosyncrasies of his intimates, and this one, the "swift goer," had been of use to him in new york as a sort of organizer and major domo of revelries. jesse's apartment was on one of the quiet squares of curzon street, set amid a row of other houses given over to the accommodation of stationary and transient bachelors who found the restraints of london hotels irksome. it was beautifully appointed, even to the culinary department which jesse himself only used on the occasions when he entertained companies of roystering americans and their companions, who were usually more or less photographed figurantes from the musical comedies. his breakfast was brought to him from the gaskins ménage in the basement, and he dined here, there and everywhere--not infrequently at the savoy. it had not taken jesse long, following his arrival in london, to ascertain that louise and laura were at the savoy. he had, in fact, within an hour after his arrival, caused a telephone canvass to be made of the london hotels mainly patronized by americans during the touring season to gain this information. now, lounging about his apartment while his japanese man unpacked his things, he began upon the devising of a method whereby he might again meet louise. he had been reluctantly forced to abandon the idea that by this time she might have "altered her prejudice" against him and might therefore be at least passively willing to meet him upon the plane of ordinary acquaintanceship, thus giving him an opportunity to exercise his fascinations upon her. but he had not the least intention of abandoning his besiegement of louise treharne--even if the besiegement had to be turned into an ambuscade. he had come to london, leaving new york at a time when the market was setting strongly against him, solely with this purpose in his mind. he furnished himself with plenty of excuses for the deliberation with which he undertook this particular quest. it was his indurated habit to doubt the continence of all women; and he made no exception of louise treharne. the fact that she had scarcely been out of school a month when he had first met her did not in the least serve to give her immunity from such a doubt in jesse's mind. his single guide in such appraisals of women was his own experience with them, and his experience, he told himself, embodied plenty of parallels to the case of louise treharne. why should she be immune from a furtiveness, and the indulgences thereof, which he had so often studied at first hand? why should she be less clever at dissimulation than many others he had known? he had not the least doubt that he was right in this view. he sought to make himself believe that otherwise he would be entirely willing to permit louise to go her way. but, being right, then it was intolerable that she should have flouted him--_him!_--as she had. it was a girlish, immature prejudice. he had not had sufficient opportunity to gain her better will. her treatment of him had sorely touched his vanity as a moulder of women to his purposes. the circumstances of his meeting with her had deprived him of a fair chance. she was young, beautiful, and, he felt sure, superbly secretive. he had not the least intention of supinely yielding to her foolish belief--it could not be other than that--that she disliked him. but how to proceed? no problem, having to do with what he would have called his diversions, had ever before so daunted him. laura, to begin with, was a stumbling block in his path. laura, with whom he had a perfunctory acquaintanceship extending over several years, had pointedly cut him, not once, but frequently, since the newspapers had flared with accounts of the one disreputable affair concerning him which had leaked out. he knew very well that there was not the least possible chance for him to regain even a nodding plane with laura stedham. and she was the barrier between himself and louise treharne. they were rarely, he felt sure, out of each other's company. if laura were out of the way, and he could reach louise alone, there would, he felt, be a chance. it was unimaginable that louise would, in such a case, be unresponsive to the allurements of his wealth, his power proceeding from wealth, his personality--jesse felt so absolutely certain of this that he smiled when a vague doubt of it passed through his mind. he had won many aloof women by bestowing upon them magnificent gifts. but he knew perfectly well that this method would not do with louise treharne. whatever else she might be, there was, he felt, not a particle of greed in her. there had even been times when jesse had not scrupled to effect his designs by putting forth the pretence that his devotions tended in but one direction--the altar. how to employ even this final method to engage the attention of a woman whose eyes, he very well knew, would flame with scorn of him even if she found herself accidentally in his presence? for several hours, while mutsu, his japanese valet, went forward with the unpacking, jesse strode up and down his apartment, going over this problem as he would have calculated the chances and mischances of a market campaign. it was inevitable that jesse, at the end of his study of the problem, should have reached but one conclusion: it must be an ambuscade. having reached this conclusion, he measured the risk and sought to forecast the aftermath. everything was in his favor. in the situation which he meditated bringing about, he knew that, in case anything went wrong, the man's word would be worth that of a thousand women, no matter how exalted their reputations. and more than likely, he calmly figured, there would be no aftermath at all. entrapped, and perceiving no possibility of escape louise would acknowledge her finely-acted furtiveness to him, and, like all women who used furtiveness as a screen, would make the best of the situation--which was all that jesse desired. the salient feature of the plan which rapidly took form in his mind consisted in discovering when louise and laura should be out of each other's company, even for a short time. jesse, not in the least balking at the idea of setting a deliberate trap because he knew that he would hold the advantage no matter what the outcome, applied himself to the solution of this by no means minor difficulty. the sight of the silent, busy mutsu, industriously stowing his master's gear in dressers and closets, furnished jesse with a suggestion. he would give his japanese man a vigil at the savoy. the vigil might be a tedious as it was sure to be a delicate one, but mutsu was both patient and discreet. he was a studious but alert man-boy of indeterminate age, as is characteristic of japanese males under fifty, who had been employed as a club attendant in new york for several years and thus had added to his natural gift for discretion. he had been with jesse for more than a year, always doing more than was ever asked of him, but studiously refraining from indicating whether he entertained any personal liking for his employer--which is another trait of a certain type of japanese in their relationships with occidentals. jesse spent a concentrated half hour in minutely instructing mutsu as to what he desired of him. the valet was to go to the savoy on the morrow, and, by liberally tipping the doorman at the ladies' entrance, or the carriage-opener, or whomsoever among the hotel's menials he found the most pliable or knowing, have mrs. laura stedham and miss louise treharne, american ladies who were guests of the hotel, pointed out to him when they should make their appearance, as they no doubt would in the course of the day, either for driving or walking. miss treharne would be the younger of the two. after having familiarized himself with the personal exteriors of these ladies, mutsu was to keep vigil, on whatever pretext he might invent, in or around the hotel, until such a time as he should see the older of the two american ladies leaving the hotel alone. whenever that should happen, the valet was instantly to telephone to jesse at the curzon street apartment. the watch on the movements of the two ladies was not to terminate until mrs. stedham should leave the hotel unaccompanied by miss treharne, no matter how many days of waiting should be required before such a thing occurred. mutsu nodded and exhibited his dental smile when jesse had finished his instructions. he understood the instructions perfectly, without, of course, in the least guessing at the purpose back of them. jesse made no mistake in appraising his japanese man's acuteness at such work. within less than two hours after ingratiating himself, by the use of unostentatiously distributed backsheesh, with certain of the savoy's flunkeys, matsu had had laura and louise pointed out to him as they left the hotel and entered a taxicab. he fixed their faces on his mental recording tablets, and called up jesse on the telephone and told him of his progress. thenceforward, for several days, the wiry little japanese valet hovered about the ladies' entrance of the savoy, forestalling suspicion as to the purpose of his loitering by the bestowal of liberal _pourboires_ upon such of the flunkeys as were in a position to notice the constancy of his vigil. jesse kept to his curzon street apartment during the day, ever on the alert for a telephone message from his valet. he chafed under the necessity--as he deemed it--which kept him indoors throughout the daylight hours and only permitted of his prowling about london at night. but he possessed a sort of luciferian determination in the pursuit of such a purpose as that upon which he was now engaged; to the successful accomplishment of which he would have passed his days in a cellar if that had been one of the requirements of the game. * * * * * laura had many friends, english and american, in london whom she received and called upon informally. she cared nothing for the "functionizing" of the anglo-american social season in london, but she keenly enjoyed the unceremonious gayeties of little groups of friends. she laughingly declared that she had "trained" the people she liked to "drop in" upon her in london in the american manner of neighborliness; and she enjoyed "showing off," as she expressed it, "the beautiful miss treharne, from the states," as some of the chatty london weeklies had alluded to louise. she liked to junket about, too, with louise; and there was no lack of agreeable men keen to take them on day-long motor tours through the country, attach them for merry afternoons to houseboat parties, and so on. for her part, louise enjoyed the contrast afforded by the shy diffidence of the young englishmen whom she met to the exuberant breeziness of laura's american men friends in london. one afternoon--it was ten days after jesse's arrival in london--laura suggested to louise, at luncheon, that, as they had a "clean slate" for the remainder of the daylight hours for the first time in a long while, a tour among the shops, including a visit to the american department store just then established in london, might fill in a part of the time agreeably. "but i am not insisting upon your going with me, dear," said laura. "i know your lack of keenness for shopping in london, and i don't blame you, considering how the tradespeople here try to positively _make_ one buy things one doesn't want. so you can very easily escape on the plea that you have letters to write, or that you are tired and want to rest up for the theatre tonight, and i shan't be in the least miffed." "i'll make it the letter-writing plea, then, laura," said louise, "and cling to the truth in spite of the temptation you offer me to fib. i really have a lot of letters to write." laura went away in a taxicab directly after luncheon, saying that she would not be gone more than three hours, and louise, at the desk in the sitting room of their suite, began a letter to her father, from whom, forwarded by john blythe, she had lately received a long and affectionate letter, expressing his anxiety to see her and the hope that he might so arrange his business affairs as to permit of his visiting new york late in the autumn. about half an hour after she had begun writing the telephone bell rang. "his this miss tre'arne?" louise heard a man's voice, "but mrs. stedham says that you are that of an upper servant," in the telephone. "yes, i am miss treharne--what is it?" she replied. "begging pardon, miss tre'arne," went on the man's voice, "but mrs. stedham says that you are not to be halarmed. mrs. stedham, miss, was taken slightly ill in a taxicab--nothing serious, miss, she hasks me to hassure you--and she is now with mrs. 'ammond, at number naught-fourteen curzon street. mrs. stedham, miss, hinsists that you be not halarmed, and wishes you to come to 'er at mrs. 'ammond's at once. this is mrs. 'ammond's butler that is speaking." "tell mrs. stedham, please, that i shall come at once," said louise, instantly aroused by the thought that something serious might have happened to laura. "what is the number and street again, please? and you are sure mrs. stedham has had no accident or is not seriously ill?" "it is naught-fourteen curzon street, miss tre'arne," came the reply, "hand mrs. stedham 'erself hasks that you be hassured that she is only slightly hindisposed." "i shall be there immediately, please tell her," said louise, making a pencilled note of the address. very uneasy, louise put on her hat and long pongee coat with fluttering fingers. she felt that something serious must have happened to deflect laura from a shopping tour to the home of a woman friend. she had not heard laura allude to any woman friend in london named mrs. hammond, but that consideration did not linger more than an instant in her mind, for laura no doubt had many london friends of whom she had not chanced to speak. within less than five minutes after receiving the telephoned summons, louise was on her way in a taxicab to the address in curzon street. she was pale and in a tremor of uneasiness when the taxicab pulled up at the curb of a neat three-story house near the end of a row of similar houses. so perturbed was she by the thought that she had not been told the entire truth as to what had happened to laura that she scarcely noticed the bald, bland gaskins when he opened the door for her and said "miss tre'arne?" "yes, yes," hastily replied louise. "where is mrs. stedham?" "if you please, miss, hi shall conduct you," said gaskins, inured by years of experience to the sort of deception he was practising; and he softly padded up the thickly-carpeted stairs in advance of her. closely followed by louise, who paid hardly any attention at all to the surroundings in her trepidation as to how she might find laura, gaskins quietly opened the front side door of the second floor apartment and held it open for her. louise stepped into the room, and gaskins, not entering himself, closed the door after her. she did not of course notice the click which denoted that the closed door was fitted with a spring lock. afterwards louise remembered having thought it odd that gaskins did not follow her into the room to announce her, instead of so suddenly effacing himself. louise quickly saw that there was nobody in the charmingly arranged room--partly study, partly living room--in which she found herself. also she noticed that it was distinctively a man's room. wondering, but not yet affected by any fear, she made a few steps toward the portieres at the rear of the room. she was about to reach out a hand to draw the portieres side, when they parted; and langdon jesse confronted her. he was trig in a big, overweight way in his lounging suit of grey; but the pallor of excitement had overspread his naturally waxy face, and his attempt at the debonair manner was proclaimed to be a mere assumption by the trembling of his hands and the huskiness of his voice when he spoke. louise had never swooned in her life. now, however, at this apparition of the one human being she had ever learned to loathe, she pressed one hand to her forehead and another to her heart and swayed slightly. she feared that she would fall; but the thought rocketed through her mind that if she yielded to the almost overpowering physical weakness of the moment she would be at his mercy. by an effort of will which she afterwards remembered with wonderment, she steadied herself as if by the process of actually forcing her blood to flow evenly. she permitted her hands to fall to her sides and regarded jesse with an appearance of calmness. in that clash of eyes, jesse, after a very few seconds of it, turned his head away on pretence of motioning louise to a chair. the impalement of her gaze was beyond his endurance. louise paid no attention to his arm-waved invitation to be seated, but stood in the spot where she had stopped when the first sight of him had almost sent her reeling. she regarded him steadily, almost incredulously; an expression of incredulity that such a thing could be. "it is unpardonable, of course, miss treharne," said jesse, with a clearing of the throat in an attempt to sweep away his huskiness. "but my madness to see you, the hopelessness of trying to see you, alone, in any other way--" he brought his sentence to a finish with a gesture meant to emphasize the excusableness of his position. "therefore you have sought to entrap me?" said louise, with no trace of scorn in her tone; her contempt for him was quite beyond such a manifestation of loathing; she asked the question as if really astonished to discover that a man would do such a thing. "what other method could i employ save a sort of strategy?" asked jesse, evading her gaze. "knowing that i was under the ban of your unreasonable dislike, that you would refuse to receive me, and wretched, despairing, under the constant castigation of your prejudice--what else could i do? what else could any man do who found himself in a state of desperation from his love for a woman?" "say anything but that, i beg of you," replied louise, experiencing a surge of disgust at the man's effrontery in professing love in such a situation. "i have no reason to expect anything savoring of manliness from you, of course; but you might at least spare yourself the humiliation--if you can be humiliated--of seeming ridiculous." "i expected harsh words from you, which, of course, is tantamount to confessing that i deserve them," said jesse. "but i think we shall have a better understanding. won't you be seated?" "i would have credited you for knowing better than to ask me that," replied louise. she stepped to the door by which she had entered, tried the knob, and of course found that the door was locked. jesse, watching her, gradually resumed his attempt at the debonair manner. all of the odds were in his favor in this adventure. he could not see where he stood a chance to lose. therefore, according to the smooth argument of cowardice, there was no reason, he considered, why he should continue his air of deference. "you did not suppose that, having been to somewhat adroit pains to get you here, i would make it so easy for you to walk out without, at least, a little interchange of ideas?" he asked her, with coolly lifting brows, when she turned from the door. she noticed his change of tone, and was conscious that she preferred it to his manner of fawning self-exculpation. "make your mind easy as to that. i have told you that i expect nothing whatever of you that befits a man," she replied with a coldness of tone from which he inwardly recoiled far more than if she had poured out upon him an emotional torrent of rebuke. for a moment jesse, studying her, was visited by the suggestion that perhaps, after all, louise treharne was wearing no mask; that she was really that anomaly--as he would have viewed such a one--a woman who was what she professed to be. but he quickly dismissed this prompting as something out of the question. she was merely a proficient in the art of acting, and she was employing her mimetic talent to the utmost upon him--thus he argued it out with himself. moreover, he decided to give expression to his belief, as being calculated sooner to bring her to the realization that he had her measured. "listen, louise," he said to her, thus calling her without even attempting to make his tone apologetic; he leaned his elbows on the back of a leather chair and forced himself to look directly at her as he spoke: "it is idle for you to seek to delude me. it might do if i were not nearly twice your age and had not had about five thousand times your experience. as the matter stands, it is simply absurd. at least give me credit for having cut my wisdom teeth as to women. you portray the part you assume with me very well. i'll have to say that for you. but, seeing that i have penetrated to the heart of the comedy, why protract the play?" louise disdained to attempt to have him believe that she did not understand him. but she was so riven by the shamefulness of his imputation that she could not have found words to reply to him if she had wanted to. "why not give me a chance to make good with you, louise?" went on jesse in a tone of arguing familiarity, coming from behind the leather chair and advancing toward her. he accepted her silence for wavering, or at least a willingness to listen to the sort of a presentation he had started. "you know that i am devilishly fond of you, else i would not have gone to all this trouble to get you here. of course you may call it a trap and all that sort of penny-dreadful rot; but what other way had i to see you? you've scarcely been out of my mind since first i met you at judd's--i should say, at your mother's house. i've been stark raving about you--am yet; and that's the truth. why can't we be bully good friends? your little pretenses are all very engaging and that sort of thing, and do you credit, of course, but you see i have penetrated them. well, then, why can't we hit it off? you don't know how good i'll be to you if you look at the thing in the sensible way. the first time i saw you i heard them hail you as empress louise. well, i'll see to it that you have the adornment and the investiture of an empress. well, is it a bargain, louise? will you shake hands on it?" he was very close to where she stood by this time, having continued to advance toward her as he spoke. a sudden flush had appeared on his features, and his enunciation was choppy, muffled, indistinct from the huskiness of passion. "don't come any closer to me than you are," she said to him when, within an arm's length of her, he stopped and held out his hand to bind the pact his words had attempted to frame. she spoke quietly, stood her ground, looked straight at him, and placed her hands behind her back. "and allow me to say this: i feel sure no coward of your kind ever yet escaped some sort of retribution. you will repent what you have said to me. but you will repent far more if you put your hands upon me. will you open this door and let me go?" she looked her innocence, her perfect purity, as she stood before him. but jesse was blind to what even the most ordinary, uncultivated man might have seen at a glance. his prominent, protrusive eyes had become bloodshot, and, instead of breathing, he was almost gasping. "so you're going to keep on your white domino of pretense, eh?" he sneered. "open the door? do you think i'm going to let you treat me as if i were some credulous cub just turned loose from school? open the door? don't, for heaven's name, take me for an imbecile!" suddenly he reached forward and twined his arms about her waist and crushed her to him, making for her lips. she gave no outcry, but, raising her right forearm, pressed it under his chin, thus holding his head back and keeping his face from hers. but he did not relax his powerful embrace. louise strove with all of her unusual woman's strength to break his hold upon her, but his hands were clasped back of her, and her exertions only caused the two of them to sway and change ground; and his embrace remained that of a python. "you might as well drop this damned ground-and-lofty business and behave yourself like a sensible girl, you know," panted jesse, speaking in a choked tone because her forearm remained wedged under his chin. "you're game, and all that sort of thing, and you're all kinds of a good actress, too; but, by god, you're not quite clever enough to pull the wool over my eyes! you're antoinette treharne's daughter, and you're some other things besides that i don't exactly know the details of but have a pretty good guess at; and you're going to rest quiet in these arms today, if you never do again!" they struggled back and forth, louise, quite conscious that she stood in the greatest peril she was ever likely to know, holding her own with a strength which jesse, even in the madness of the moment, told himself was almost preternatural in a young, slender woman. "you are simply wasting your strength, you know," jesse went on, putting forth all of the power of his arms and holding her so close to him that for a moment she could not move. "i have no taste for this sort of schoolboy and schoolgirl tugging and hauling. but you force me to it. you haven't a chance on earth of getting out of here, even if i release you--which i shall, as soon as i have taken a little harmless toll of your lips. now, are you going to be sensible and quit this idiotic business?" louise did not answer him. she had said no word, made no plea, since he had seized upon her. she knew that words would be useless, and she could not have framed a beseeching phrase to address to him had she tried. she was taking her chance, doing all she could to make the chance better. but she could not and would not implore him to release her. she thought of screaming; but, remembering how the man who had conducted her upstairs had let her into the room and then obliterated himself, she reasoned it out, even in the intensity of the struggle, that this man no doubt was a flunky accomplice who would pay no attention to her screaming. nevertheless she did decide that, as a last resort, she would scream, taking the chance that whomsoever happened to be on the floor beneath or the one above might come to her assistance. she had relaxed a little, for rest, as he spoke to her, and, catching her off her guard, jesse suddenly put forth all of his power and swung her, slipping and almost falling as he did so, partly through the portieres from which he had emerged when she came in. when the portieres thus were thrust apart, louise saw, standing in the middle of the room which they screened off, a surprised-looking, somewhat scowling little japanese. jesse caught sight of mutsu at the same instant that louise did. "what the devil are you doing here?" jesse demanded of the valet. "get out and stay out till this evening, do you hear?" mutsu first lowered his head, then shook it with a most decided negative. his lips were pulled back from his teeth; mutiny shone all over him. "what you do?" he demanded of jesse, falling into a pidgin vernacular which he rarely used except when excited. "she no like to be crushed in embrace? she is of an innocence. she is of an honorable. i saw that at savoy hotel when first i see her. why you no let go?" "get out of here, i say, you damned chattering monkey!" jesse raged at him, relaxing his hold upon louise, and leaping at the little japanese. mutsu, retreating not an inch, met the charge of his employer with lowered head, and when jesse thrust out a hand to grab him the japanese, revealing a perfect adeptness at jiu-jitsu which jesse never had known he possessed, seized the thrust-out hand between both of his own sinewy ones; and in an instant jesse's face was drawn with pain. then the japanese made a sudden dart behind jesse, pulling back the hand to which he still clung and the arm to which it was attached in such a way that the big, bulky man could not move without breaking the arm; he felt the tendons stretching to the breaking point as it was. "now you go, miss innocent honorable lady," said mutsu, without visible excitement, to louise. "go through next back room and out door there. i see you at savoy tonight after i get fired-dismissed from valet position here." jesse, his face red with the torture of the accomplished jiu-jitsuing he was receiving, stormed at and cursed the japanese in fo'c'sle terms as he saw louise pass toward the rear door the japanese had indicated. she nodded affirmatively to mutsu when he told her that he would be at the savoy that evening to see that she had arrived there safely; then she passed through the rear door leading into the hall, went down the thickly-padded stairs without awakening the bald and bland gaskins, who dozed in a hall chair; and had the luck to hail a taxicab almost in front of the house. * * * * * laura was at the hotel, and in a panic of worriment about louise, when the girl got back. louise told laura what had happened in a few words, then fainted, falling back heavily upon a couch, for the first time in her life--after the danger was all over, with the usual feminine whimsiness. that night the following cable message to john blythe was flashed under the sea: "come immediately. you are needed here. laura." chapter xiv the mutiny of mutsu, culminating at so opportune a time for louise, was the result of an enmity for his employer which had been slumbering for a long time in the mind of the japanese valet. it had its origin in jesse's treatment of several women and girl victims for the entrapment of whom jesse had invoked the unwilling services of his japanese man. mutsu had been employed as an attendant at new york clubs long enough to know the meaning of the word "thoroughbred" in its vernacular application to men; and he knew very well that the "thoroughbred" man did not go in for the sort of women-corraling machinations to which jesse devoted more than half of his time. thus formed and grew mutsu's contempt for his employer as a coward who preyed upon the defencelessness of inveigled women; and his contempt had reached a focal point when, after having been made the instrument to accomplish the enmeshment of louise treharne, he had returned to the curzon street house to find her in a peril with which he had become all too familiar since entering jesse's service. louise's beauty and palpable purity had touched a sympathetic chord in the japanese; so that, after accomplishing his vigil, his knowledge, based upon experience, of the indignities and perhaps worse to which she was bound to be subjected by his employer had impelled him, in a sudden surge of oriental wrath, to follow her after he had seen her start for the curzon street house. mutsu had no difficulty in making a leisurely departure from jesse's establishment and service after having released louise from his employer's toils. he retained his tendon-stretching jiu-jitsu hold on jesse until he was sure that louise had reached the street, while jesse, literally foaming at the mouth in his rage, cursed him with an almost arabic variety and profusion of epithets. then mutsu, suddenly releasing his employer, darted to the center of the room and faced jesse with a teeth-exhibiting smile that was also half a snarl. "now i quit," said mutsu, briefly. "i am glad for a quit. i despise-hate your typical. you not come near me--" as jesse, rubbing his sorely-stretched arm, made a step toward him--"or i break your two-both arms. i pack. you pay me. i quit permanent-forever." jesse came to a full stop at the threat of being treated to a pair of broken arms. he was twice the size of the japanese, but the difference in their sizes was more than compensated for by his own cravenness and the valet's mastery of the bone-breaking art. mutsu, never taking his eyes off jesse, got out his two suit-cases and packed them carefully and deliberately. jesse, striding up and down and storming, seized a heavy jade ornament from a mantel, when mutsu was about half through with his packing task, and drew it back as if to heave it at the valet; but mutsu, making two agile backward steps, grabbed one of jesse's pistols which lay on top of the tray of an open trunk, and thus waited for the missile. jesse replaced the jade ornament on the mantel and resumed his striding up and down. when the japanese had finished his packing, he consulted a little notebook and, totting up a column of expenditures, found that jesse owed him fifteen pounds. "you pay now and permanent i quit," the japanese said to jesse, and the latter threw his wallet on a table. "take it out of that, you dirty little mandril," he growled to mutsu, "and be on your way before i have you handed over on the charge of being a thief." "just that you try," replied mutsu, breathing hard, as he counted over the money that was due him, "and i--you see where you get off--just that you try! your name like fertilizer i would make!" then mutsu stuffed the amount that was due him into his pocket, tossing the rest of the money on to the table, clapped on his hat, picked up his pair of suit-cases, and walked out, flying the gonfalon of victory. he went straight to the savoy, and was taken into the service of laura stedham the instant he made his appearance before her. jesse, wearing a thoroughly whipped look, huddled in a deep chair for hours after mutsu's departure. the chair was close enough to his brandy bottle to enable him to apply himself to it at startlingly frequent intervals. the first "transaction" of his life, having to do with women, had gone flatly against him. he ground his teeth as he drunkenly pondered that irrefutable fact. he had no fear of the consequences of his attempt to enmesh louise treharne. her only male protector, he knew, was on the other side of the sea. but it was the knowledge that he had utterly and finally lost out in the most diligent and ingenious attempt he had ever made upon a feminine citadel that enraged him. he did not even have the satisfaction of framing reprisals. what reprisals could he attempt? and they could avail him nothing even if he succeeded in setting such revengeful machinery in motion. jesse was considerably more than middling drunk when, his brandy having receded to the lees, he summoned the obsequious gaskins. "anybody above or below me here now?" he inquired of gaskins. "no, sir," replied gaskins. "the gentleman that 'as the hapartment below is abroad, hand the gentleman that 'as the hapartment above only comes 'ere occasionally, sir, for a little hamusement--'e's married now, sir." "well, that's good," said jesse, reeling about. "that'll let me have the whole damned outfit for my parties for the next ten days or so, eh?" "hat your service, sir," replied gaskins, familiar with jesse's prodigality in devising and settling for his diversions. "i'm going to have a series of rough-houses here," said jesse, minus even a crumb of dignity in the presence of a man who had been a flunky all his life, "to celebrate a defeat--or make me forget a defeat; it all comes to the same thing. fellows have been defeated before my time, haven't they? yes, and they'll be defeated after i'm dead, by hell! you've got your work cut out for you, gaskins; i'm going to paint this sheltered little corner of london a luminous red for a week or so, and then damn your england! i'll have you fix up the suppers and that sort of thing. engage all the help you want, and right away. and, say, get me another man, will you? i've fired that dirty little japanese chimpanzee--he's a thief." "you may leave heverything to me, sir," said gaskins, rubbing his hands. "hi quite understand, sir." the saturnalia in the curzon street house began that very night. certain london stage managers of musical comedies still remember that week as one during which, for several nights running, they had to present their extravaganzas with mere apologies for feminine choruses, and, in some instances, with many of the female principals' shrill understudies doing their dismal best with only half-learned lines and songs. * * * * * john blythe, making the _mauretania_ a quarter of an hour before that leviathan started on one of her east-bound record-breaking voyages, reached london on the sixth day after having received laura's cablegram. he surmised why he had been summoned. so sure was he that his surmise was correct that, when he walked in upon laura and louise at the savoy, he did not even inquire why so urgent a summons had been sent to him. he preferred to postpone that question until he had an opportunity to be alone with laura. laura had told louise that blythe was coming. but neither of the women had been expecting him so soon. when he was announced by telephone from the hotel desk louise flushed and paled alternately. laura watched her amusedly. "such hardened unconcern is dreadful to see in one so young, louise," she was beginning to chaff when blythe was ushered in by a diminutive buttons. louise gave him both of her hands. he held them, looking into her eyes with his wide smile. "may i?" he asked her, a little unsteadily. "as louise's chaperon, i shall never forgive her if she refuses--nor you, if you accept her refusal," said laura. louise upraised her face to his. it was a simple but eloquent confession that she knew her lips were for him. "not as your guardian, i hope, louise?" said blythe, putting it in the form of a question. her face still upraised and her eyes partly closed, she shook her head; and blythe, drawing her to him, kissed her full on the lips. then he quickly released her and took laura's outstretched hands. it was the luncheon hour, and laura had luncheon served in the rooms. they chatted upon little intimate matters quite as if they had been lunching in laura's new york apartment. blythe, in fact, mentioned laura's apartment. "i met your decorator the other day," he said, "and he wore a very puzzled expression. he told me that you had charged him by cable to do your place over in tyrian purple, and he was afraid that color would be too dark, or too obtrusive, or something--i forget his exact words." they knew, however, that his banter was simply a device. both of the women, taking blythe's manner as their cue, and observing how pointedly he refrained from asking why he had been sent for, knew at once that he had formed his surmise. louise, for her part, was awaiting laura's signal for her to withdraw. when she had gone, blythe turned a suddenly-sobered face upon laura. "it's jesse, i suppose?" he said to her. "yes," said laura, and she told him of what had happened at the curzon street house. also she told him of jesse's attempted advances upon louise in new york. "i reprove myself now, of course, that i did not tell you at the time about how the man sought to force his attentions upon her in new york," she said, "but you will understand, i know, why i hesitated to tell you. i felt that you would have found it too hard to keep your hands off of him, and i feared to put you to the test. of course i should have known that you would do nothing, no matter how sorely tempted, that would have involved louise; but my timidity, i suppose, is of a piece with that of other women in such circumstances." "don't worry about that part of it, laura," said blythe, consolingly. "you've atoned, if any atonement were necessary, by getting me here now. after all, i could scarcely have taken it upon myself to chastise him in new york. the blackguard did not go quite far enough there, as i understand it, to permit of me getting out on the firing line, even if i had known about it. it is just as well that you waited, for that and some other reasons. there is everything in having a good case," and his face wreathed in a dry sort of a smile which laura analyzed as boding little good for the man of whom they were speaking. "what are your plans, john?" laura asked him presently. "london, you know, is quite as fruitful a field as new york for the achieving of an unmerited and distorted notoriety. i lean upon your judgment, of course." "you are not supposing that i am going to call the cur out, or tweak his nose in public, or any such yellow-covered thing as that, are you, laura?" blythe asked her with another of his reflective smiles. "i know that you are going to punish him," replied laura. "i want you to punish him. heaven knows that i am not bloodthirsty, but i should dearly love to be by while you are in the article of punishing him. only it is an affair that must be handled with extreme caution. i promise not to say that again. but, really, john, you must----" "the only thing i am afraid of," interrupted blythe, meditatively, "is that he might have left london. where did you say his place is? i'll have to devise some way to find out if he is still there." "mutsu can do that," said laura. she had told blythe of the japanese valet's fine part in saving louise from jesse, and now she summoned him. blythe, studying the wiry little man, who wore a distinctively agreeable smile when he made his appearance, commended him warmly for his conduct and asked him if he knew whether jesse still remained at the curzon street house. mutsu replied that he did not know but that he could find out; and he went to the telephone and called up gaskins, representing himself to be a club servant who had been directed to ascertain if mr. jesse still remained in town. gaskins replied that he was, and mutsu gave that word to blythe. "you go there, sir?" inquired mutsu, evidently sensing that blythe's contemplated visit to the curzon street house was not to be in the nature of a peace errand. "let it be that i shall go with you, sir? i can the help-assist you." blythe laughingly told the japanese that he considered that he had done his share and that he would not be needing any help-assistance; and mutsu withdrew. "shall we all dine together here?" blythe asked laura, rising after the japanese had gone. "i am staying at the carlton, and i want to run over there to----" "listen, john: are you going to see that man at his place now, at once?" laura asked him, with an expression of mingled worriment and curiosity. "you know you are!" "oh," said blythe, "i have a bit of running about to do, and----" "but listen, please: supposing the coward were to try to use some weapon on you and----" "tush, laura. what became of louise? but stay: make my devoirs to her, won't you, please? i am off to keep an appointment. we are dining here this evening then? you may expect me by eight o'clock," and off he rushed. he had, in fact, been "straining at his leash," as laura thought, watching him, ever since he had found that jesse still was in town. louise came back a few moments after blythe's departure, and she looked rueful when she saw that he had gone. "don't take it so excessively to heart, dear," laura said to her. "he left all sorts of messages of apology for going without seeing you, but he had an appointment--er--i mean he had to go to----" laura came to a somewhat feeble pause, and louise, moreover, had noticed that her tone was a bit forced. louise, trembling slightly, placed her hands on laura's shoulders. "dear, he has gone to curzon street, has he not?" she asked the older woman. "of course he has!--why shouldn't he?" replied laura, with a bravado which immediately gave away to tears. louise promptly followed her example. it was merely another repetition of the age-old story wherein women weep when men go forth. and, although they of course did not know it at the time, no doubt both women enjoyed their tears quite as heartily as if they had been justified in feeling the least fear for the safety of john blythe. * * * * * jesse, his fiesta "in celebration of a defeat" at an end, was supervising the packing of his trunks by the young english valet obtained for him by gaskins. his face was puffed and there were purplish pouches under his restless eyes. three new york men, two of them somewhat youngish, the third of about jesse's age, who had been drawn into the current of the recent gayety at the curzon street house, lounged about, smoking rather dismally, glancing occasionally into the mantel glass at their furred tongues and shaking their heads in the spirit of self-accusation which comes with the aftermath. "back to little old new york and at least a year's exemplary conduct for mine," observed the eldest of jesse's three visitors, jermyn scammel, a stock broker widely known in new york for the catholicity of his views as to his associates. "the veil for me," chorused the two younger men, sepulchrally. jesse accepted their vows of amendment as tributes to his lavishness as an entertainer and smiled flaccidly. the self-gratulating smile still flickered on his face when there came a knock, and gaskins, grown unceremonious during the recent gay proceedings, opened the door without waiting for a "come in" and said: "gentleman with an happointment with you, sir." blythe had told gaskins that he had an appointment with jesse and that therefore there would be no need to announce him. jesse's smile congealed, his jaw fell, and he stood with mouth agape, when john blythe stepped into the room. blythe bestowed a mere nod upon him and then glanced around at the other men. he knew scammel. "hul-lo!" exclaimed that now repentent _bon vivant_, advancing upon blythe with outstretched hand. "john blythe it is, but too late for the doings! but who'd have thought you ever participated in doings, old man!" something in blythe's eye, as well as the panic-stricken appearance of jesse, stopped scammel's airy greeting when he had got that far. "why, what the devil----" he muttered, looking first at blythe and then at jesse, whose face had taken on a sickly, chalky pallor. the two younger men, seated a-straddle of chairs, watched the scene with curious eyes. blythe rather liked scammel, in spite of the latter's excessively careless way of living. the man was genuine, at any rate, and blythe was not displeased to find him there; he knew that scammel would be a trustworthy witness as to anything that might happen. blythe bowed to the two younger men, and turned to the still agape jesse. "would you prefer to see me privately, or do you elect to have these gentlemen remain?" he asked jesse in a quiet tone. "i have nothing to see you about," spluttered jesse, "and you are intruding upon----" "you know what i have crossed the atlantic to see you about," blythe broke in upon him in an even tone. "this is no place for a clergyman's son--i can see that!" ejaculated scammel, picking up his hat and stick, the two younger men doing likewise; the fact having become very obvious by this time that something unusual between blythe and jesse was in the wind. "don't you people go!" gasped jesse, and they all saw, not without a certain immediate disgust, that the man was in positive terror. "i want all of you as witnesses! this man," staring with protrusive eyes at blythe, "has no appointment with me. he wasn't asked to come here, and he has no right here. he is intruding upon my----" "easy has it, jesse," put in scammel, putting off his airiness of a sudden and assuming the dignity which belonged to him. "i know blythe. he doesn't intrude anywhere. this is a quarrel between you two. i am your guest and i'll stay if you want me to and if blythe is agreeable. how about it, blythe?" "i would a little prefer that you and these other gentlemen remain," replied blythe, quite at his ease. "i think it fair to tell you in advance, however, that you are to witness the chastisement of your host." jesse gave an audible gasp, and scammel looked at him and then at blythe. "well, since you both want us to stay, there is no other way for it, is there?" turning to the two younger men, who nodded acquiescently. "but it's a bit unusual, isn't it, blythe? coming to a man's house with a chastising programme?" "you won't think so, scammel, nor will your friends here, when i explain the reason," replied blythe, no trace of excitement in his tone; "and, since you are going to remain, you are of course entitled to an explanation." "it's all a put-up job!" broke out jesse, hoarsely. "i've had no affair with this man. he's meddling, that's what he is doing--meddling! i swear it, by god!" "just a moment, jesse," put in scammel, squarely facing the man he addressed. "blythe doesn't meddle. i know that as well as i know that i wear a hat. he wouldn't be here with any such purpose as he announces unless he had some pretty good reason. don't try to prejudice his case in advance. that isn't the square thing." "but," almost screamed jesse, "he is picking up other people's affairs and trying to make them his----" "stop that, jesse!" broke in scammel, raising an authoritative arm, a trace of anger in his tone. "good god, man, can't you play the game? you've got a man's gizzard, haven't you? what the devil are you trembling and quaking about? is your case so bad as all that? go ahead, blythe. it's your say now, and we're listening." jesse, knowing that the verdict of this court of arbitration could not but be against him, glanced at the portieres as if upon the point of bolting for it. scammel, noticing this, passed behind jesse and took his stand at the parting of the portieres. the two younger men rose from their straddled chairs and viewed the proceedings standing, their eyes slitting perceptibly when they perceived jesse's manifest cravenness. "gentlemen," said blythe, glancing from scammel to the younger men and not even seeming to see jesse, "i don't think it will be necessary to pledge you to secrecy as to what happens here, even if no names are to be mentioned. if the affair involved a man it would be different. but it does not. it involves a young new york lady, now in london, who has been out of school less than half a year. the young lady is my ward. moreover, she is to be my wife." "but i didn't know that!" broke in jesse with a hideous shrillness of tone. "i swear to god that i did not know that, or----" scammel glared jesse into silence, and blythe went on. "it makes no difference, as you will discover, whether he knew it or not," he said, speaking of jesse as if he had not been present. "the thing that he did, in this place, a week ago, was a thing so incredibly base that my account of it might well tax your credulity. but that it happened precisely as i am going to tell it to you is of course true, else i should not be here. the young new york lady of whom i speak is in london under the protection of a chaperon, a friend of her mother's. a week ago, by means of a trick, this man enticed my ward, who is wholly lacking in experience, to this house. he caused a telephone message to be sent to her at her hotel, informing her that her chaperon, who had left the hotel on a shopping tour, had been overtaken by an illness and had been brought to this house. this house was represented in the telephone message to be the home of a 'mrs. hammond,' an imaginary friend of my ward's chaperon. the young lady came here with all haste to see, as she supposed, her chaperon and protectress. this man, waiting for her, not only insulted her grossly, subjecting her to indignities and physical violence which i can scarcely speak of in the presence of gentlemen, but he told her, virtually in so many words, that it was his deliberate purpose to deflower her. his own valet, a japanese, appeared in her moment of peril; and it was the valet's physical intervention alone that saved her from the fate this man had ingeniously and malignantly planned for her." blythe paused. he had spoken quietly, but there was a menacing timbre in his voice. jesse, looking like a hunted animal, had attempted several times to break in upon blythe's recital, but each time scammel had stopped him with a warning gesture. now scammel, with gathered brows, stepped in front of jesse and inquired of him: "what have you to say to this, jesse?" "i didn't know, i tell you," jesse broke out in a voice that was choked with terror, "that she was to be married to blythe, or----" "wait!" commanded scammel, thrusting up a staying hand. "that convicts you, jesse. you're a damned scoundrel on your own say-so. what difference does it make as to the main facts of your dirty bit of work whether you knew that or not? i am not unmindful of the duties of a guest; but, for all that, if i were blythe i'd whale the everlasting hell out of you, here and now, and i reckon he will; and i, for one, am going to stick around to see fair play!" "same here" and "that goes for me, too," put in the two younger men. blythe stepped forward, and, drawing back his right arm, left the quickly-crimsoning imprint of his palm upon jesse's waxy cheek. jesse received the blow, merely meant to be introductory, with a shriek, and wriggled back and sought to huddle in a corner of the room. "why, damnation take it, jesse," exclaimed scammel, reddening with the shame of seeing a man he had been on terms with performing so cravenly, "you're going to put up your hands, aren't you? you're not going to be such a cur as to----here, none of that, you know!" and he leaped at jesse and wrenched from his grasp the heavy teakwood tabouret which the man, at bay and with no sense of fairness, had suddenly reached down and grabbed from beneath the jardiniere which it supported. "keep out, scammel, please," quietly enjoined blythe, and he stepped over to jesse, pulled him to the center of the room by the lapel of his coat, and then brought his right fist crashing to the point of jesse's jaw. jesse, seeing the blow coming, squeaked like a rat; then he went down like a log and lay unconscious before the fireplace. blythe and the three other men stood looking at him with wonderment mingled with disgust. [illustration: he squeaked like a rat; then he went down like a log.] "well, by st. george and the dragon, that gets me--a man weighing two hundred if he weighs an ounce, and well put together, too, even if he may be not exactly fit--a man like that standing up and letting another fellow bang away at him without ever so much as sticking up his hands-- damn such carrion in a man's shape, i say! i consider that you've been cheated, blythe. i know that you'd a thousand times rather he had taken at least one healthy swing at you!" "i feel as if i had hit a woman," replied blythe, a lump of loathing in his throat. one of the younger men went to the head of the stairs and called to gaskins to come up. gaskins viewed the prone man imperturbably enough, then dashed a glass of water in his face. presently jesse's eyelids fluttered and after a moment he sat up, rubbing his chin, and staring about confusedly. then the four men left the house, scammel and his two companions lashing out at themselves for having even unwittingly permitted themselves to become the guests of a man of such monolithic cowardice. blythe, sickened by the spinelessness of the man whom he had called to account, went to his rooms at the carlton to dress for dinner at the savoy. louise and laura, neither of them in a conversational humor, had just finished dressing when blythe, ushered by the pompous three-foot buttons, walked in upon them, very "tall and wide" in his evening clothes. as he came under the light of the electrolier both women surveyed his face keenly and nervously for marks of a conflict. "of course he has been there," thought laura, "but----" just then blythe, in removing his right glove in rather a gingerly fashion, pulled with it a piece of white sticking plaster, and laura perceived that the skin was missing from the middle knuckle of his right hand. then she knew that he had "been there." but she did not hear what had happened that afternoon at the curzon street house until scammel, whom she had known all her life, told her several months later in new york; scammel, while blythe had been making his explanation, having correctly guessed, being acquainted with nearly all the americans in london, as to the identity of the chaperon of blythe's ward. chapter xv before louise had risen on the following morning laura entered her bedroom and handed her an unopened cablegram. louise tore open the envelope with trembling hands. she had no means of surmising the character of the message. blythe had been purposely evasive in replying to louise's questions as to whether her mother had looked ill when he had last seen her, for he disliked to be the bearer of disquieting news. his private report to laura, however, as to the obvious state of mrs. treharne's health had been sufficiently alarming to cause laura to lie awake a good part of the night, meditating as to whether she should tell louise. laura had read mrs. treharne's letter to louise, announcing her departure from the house on the drive for an undetermined destination; and this complicated the situation and was the reason why laura withheld from louise what blythe had told her about her mother's gravely-declining health. since the receipt of that letter no message had reached louise from her mother, giving her address; and laura had not elected to alarm the girl needlessly while mrs. treharne's address remained unknown. the cablegram took the problem out of laura's hands. it was dated from saranac, in the adirondacks, and read: "am ill. come immediately. mother." louise handed the message to laura and rose at once. she found it very natural that, at such a moment, she should lean upon the resourcefulness of john blythe. "i suppose john can arrange for our passage?" she said to laura. "john," replied laura, confidently, "can do anything, i think, even to obtaining accommodations on a new-york-bound steamer in july, which is next to impossible." laura immediately telephoned to blythe at the carlton, telling him of the summons louise had received from her mother. "of course i am to go with her," said laura, "and equally of course we shall have a dreadful time getting steamer accommodations at this season." "probably i can manage," was blythe's prompt reply. "the _mauretania_, which brought me over, is returning day after tomorrow. i know she is booked to the gun'ls--but i'll see what can be done. of course i am going, too. i'll see you by noon and let you know." jermyn scammel and his two companions who had been witnesses of blythe's meeting with jesse at the curzon street house were staying at the carlton, and blythe knew that they had reserved accommodations on the _mauretania_. blythe found them at breakfast in scammel's rooms and he told them of the quandary in which two american ladies found themselves owing to the extreme difficulty of securing passage on board west-bound steamers at that season. "anybody i know, blythe?" scammel asked him. "i think so," said blythe. "mrs. laura stedham is--" "laura stedham? known her all my life--tried my infernallest to marry her when i was a cub, but she wouldn't so much as look at me," said scammel, cheerily. "she can have my cabin if i have to stay over here for the remainder of my natural life. how about you fellows?" addressing his companions. it was all one to them, it appeared. if scammel was willing to remain in london for a while longer, why-- "but i haven't the least idea of remaining in london," put in scammel when they had got that far. "the night train for paris for mine, now that i can't get away on the _mauretania_. no use talking, blythe, fate is against me. i want to be good, but i'm not allowed to be. i'll leave it to you or anybody else if i had the slightest idea of making paris this trip. i've been fighting the temptation to hit up paris ever since i've been over this time. now, you see, i'm positively driven to it. man comes along and grabs my homeward-bound cabin away from me. what else is there for it but paris? are you cubs going along with me?" turning to the two younger men. the "cubs," it appeared, were quite willing to defer their meditated repentance until such time as scammel might be ready to repent with them, and they proclaimed that paris sounded good to them. thus it was that blythe was able to appear at the savoy long before noon with the announcement that he had contrived to obtain three highly-desirable staterooms on the _mauretania_. "what should we ever have done without him?" said laura to louise, while blythe lounged about--making occasional discreet exits--during their packing operations. "without jerry scammel and the two apt and obliging young new york pupils he is breaking in over here, you should say," observed blythe. "john! was it dear old jerry scammel who did this for us?" asked laura, blushing. "well, i shall certainly bake him a cake or crochet him a pair of pulse-warmers or ear-laps or something as soon as he gets back to new york. he's a dear, and always was, and i always fight tooth and nail for him when the catty old dowagers call him the most dissipated man in new york. jerry, to this day, declares to me, every time i meet him, that he holds the world's record for proposals to the same girl within a given time. i was the girl. i believe i was somewhat under sixteen and jerry was not yet nineteen. he swears that he proposed to me forty-four times within one month. of course he is wrong. it was only twenty-three." laura and blythe purposely kept up this sort of small talk to divert louise's thoughts from her mother's illness. louise, heavy-hearted as she was, quite understood their kindly purpose, and successfully strove to appear entertained by their banter. but her foreboding was not easy to dispel. she knew that her mother would not have summoned her if her illness had not been of the gravest character; for in her last letter--the one she wrote on the night before leaving new york--she had insisted upon louise having her london visit out. the girl had been filled with an intense happiness upon reading her mother's announcement of her departure from the house on the drive. she had pictured a happy reunion with her mother and had begun immediately to make plans for the home which they should have together upon her return to new york. so that her mother's summons and louise's certainty that the summons would never have been made had her mother's condition not been very serious, bore heavily upon her. "i begin to fear that i have found my mother only to lose her again," she had said to laura in talking over the cable message; and laura, while professing to be shocked at louise's premonition, had turned away to hide her tears; for the same premonition, better-grounded than louise's on account of what she had heard from blythe as to the visible decline into which mrs. treharne had seemed to be falling, was depressing laura. * * * * * the steamer made an unseasonably squally and heavy passage of it, and laura, who had never been intended for a vikingess, as she expressed it, kept to her stateroom almost throughout the voyage. louise and blythe were among the few on board the crowded steamer who did not shrink even once from mess call, which is the test of the born voyager. they kept pace with the most hardened constitutional-takers on deck every day, and were together almost constantly. louise treharne and john blythe already knew that they loved each other. on board the steamer, and for five days running, rarely out of each other's company, both found that, humanly speaking, they also genuinely liked each other. even men and women entirely devoted to each other quite commonly develop a certain pettishness often verging upon actual irascibility when they find themselves incessantly in each other's company on board a steamer. louise and blythe, despite the unfriendliness of the elements and the consequent discomforts of the passage, both felt quite lost and miserable when they were separated from each other even for short periods during the voyage. louise, in her inexperience, did not seek to analyze this phenomenon. but blythe did. "she is as fine-grained as she is beautiful, laura," he said to that ever-receptive confidante, when he found himself alone with her for a moment one day toward the end of the voyage. "i have, as of course you know, no particular amount of sweetness of disposition at sea or anywhere else. but, somehow, i have been a marvel of beatific mildness and contentment ever since we left england. there's only one way to account for that. louise is temperamentally perfect." "charming, but wholly wrong," replied laura. "louise is magnificently deficient in the thing called 'temperament'--thank heaven! did you ever happen to encounter a female who delighted in calling herself a 'woman of temperament,' john blythe? then you know how hopelessly impossible a woman of that sort is, considered as a companion for any normal human being of either sex. if louise had been temperamental--_any_ kind of temperamental--i am certain that you two would be passing each other on deck without even nodding by this time. but the dear is just a sweet girl-woman with a wholesome imagination and human impulses, and i myself, a woman (and a fussy one, too, sometimes!), could live with her forever without a symptom of friction. you are a very lucky rising young legal person. i don't know what i shall do without her." "without her--when?" said blythe, his surprise genuine. "you are going up to the adirondacks with her, aren't you?" "to be sure," replied laura. "i mean that i don't know what i shall do without her when--" she broke off in momentary confusion. "oh, you are impossibly opaque today, john," she finished, smiling illuminatingly. "oh--that!" said blythe, enlightened, yet a bit rueful. it was precisely "that" which, as the steamer drew near new york was causing blythe no little disquietude. he knew that he would miss louise acutely after the delightful intimacies of the voyage. no word as to their tacit relationship had been spoken by blythe since they had thus been thrown almost constantly together. a natural delicacy had deterred him from touching upon that subject at a time when louise was hurrying to the bedside of her mother. but, now that the steamer was less than half a day from new york, he began to draw a desolate picture of his lonesome state when he should bid goodbye to louise at the station. her vigil at her mother's bedside might be a protracted one. he remembered, not without a shock of astonishment, that he had never asked louise to be his wife. when he mentally retraced the path, he found it easy enough to understand why he had not put this question to her. nevertheless, the fact that she was by no means plighted to him had caused him a vague uneasiness since the beginning of the voyage; and, now that their separation, for an indeterminate period, impended, he found himself swept by a desire to make their mutual understanding--if such, indeed, he thought nervously, louise really took it to be--more explicit, if not more binding. it chanced that louise herself furnished him his opportunity to speak. she had written a wireless message of greeting to her mother, to be transmitted from new york to saranac, and they watched the operator as he flared the message over the waste of tumbling waters. "i told her in the message that you are with us," louise said to him. "and of course she shall know, when i see her, that laura and i might have had to remain in england indefinitely had it not been for you." "there is something that i want your sanction to tell your mother when i see her," said blythe as they set out for a stroll on the long deck. "yes?" she said, with a quick sidewise glance at him. she understood perfectly well what he meant; had, indeed, been waiting for him to assume that direction; but women are not expected to make such admissions. "i think you will be ready to admit that i have striven to practise self-restraint," said blythe, with a smile in which there was a touch of nervousness. "but there is a point beyond which i cannot go. are you to tell your mother that i have asked you to marry me, or am i to tell her when i see her?" "have you asked me that?" inquired louise, a little mischievously; but she asked the question in order to gain time. blythe laughed in self-deprecation. "if i have been guilty of so stupid an omission, i can rectify it by asking you now?" he said; and louise noticed the flush that overspread his features. "i have, i know, a habit of taking too much for granted. but i really supposed you knew that my life is bound up in yours, louise." "and mine in yours," she replied with a perfect candor that thrilled him. "if i did not love you dearly--and i do--perhaps i should not so keenly feel that i would be doing you an injustice to marry you." blythe could scarcely credit his ears. her first words had set him to soaring, but, when she had finished, he was conscious of as stunned a feeling as if he had received a physical blow. involuntarily he stood stock still and faced her; but the need to keep moving in order not to block the progress of the other deck pedestrians quickly flashed upon him. when he moved forward again at her side, however, listening to her quiet, earnest words, he was conscious, for a while, of a certain numbness, almost approaching languor, which he found it difficult to throw off. louise, more reservedly but with no lack of clearness, touched upon the points which she had made in going over the same ground with laura. surprised as he was, blythe, whose mind had never been visited by any of the considerations which she named, nevertheless had an immediate and acute understanding of the ordeal through which the girl must be passing in thus presenting her analysis of the situation to him. "it would be the logical thing for me to say that you have wholly misjudged me, louise," he said to her when she had finished. "but i am not going to do that, because i know that you have done nothing of the sort. you are simply the victim of a perfectly natural supersensitiveness. i know how difficult you have found it to say such things. i blame myself for having pressed you to the point where you considered it necessary to say them. it is scarcely less hard for me to talk of such a matter--harder still because nothing that you have touched upon has even once occurred to me. i know that you are the woman my heart craves for. nothing that you have said, or ever can say, will change that. and if you care for me--" "i do," louise interrupted him. "you are never out of my thoughts. i find it hard to believe that there ever was a time when i did not know you and love you." the beautiful spontaneity and frankness of the avowal sent the blood pounding at blythe's temples. "then do you suppose, louise," he said to her, in a vibrant voice of enthrallment, "that anything in this world of god can ever keep us apart? everything gives way--must give way--to the love of a man for a woman, of a woman for a man. you speak of my ambition, my career. what would they be worth to me without you? vain things--things that i would thrust away from me! i tell you it has come to pass that my life is inseparably bound up in yours. all the rest would be a futile striving without you. the great miracle of life has come upon me. there was a time when i feared that it would pass me by. you are the woman of all my dreams--the dreams of boy and man. how can anything stand between us?" "i have thought that, too, often," said louise, no less moved by his fervor than he had been by her avowal. "but the thought that i might be the means of throwing a shadow upon your path--" "shadow!" broke out blythe. "there would be no _path_ for me without you!" "but, dear," said louise, conscious that her ground was giving way beneath her, "we cannot always do that which we want to do, can we? we owe each other unselfishness at least, if only on account of our love? and if you were to be swept by a regret in the time that is to come, how--" "don't say that, louise," said blythe. "it is too impossible. it is too inconceivable." they came to a pause in their stroll and stood, hands on rail, gazing over the billowing expanse of sun-sparkling sea. "you will give me time to think it all out, dear, won't you?" said louise. "my experience has been so small that i do not often presume to feel very sure of my ground." "when you speak of how small your experience has been, louise," said blythe, a symptom of a smile flickering around his eyes, "i am revisited by a kind of self-condemnation that i have known ever since i became aware that i loved you. even now i wonder if i am really guilty of having pounced upon you, when you were barely out of school, and before you had your rightful chance to enslave and then appraise your cluster of suitors--" louise, smiling, placed a hand upon his arm. "please don't continue that," she said. "all the 'clusters of suitors' in the world would have made no difference to me. always, i think, john, i should have been gazing beyond them--if they had appeared, which of course is merely your polite assumption--to see your face. and then the poor 'enslaved' ones would have disappeared in a sudden mist, and i should have seen only you." hands resting upon steamer rails may be furtively pressed, no matter how many deck strollers there may be. "how royally you grant absolution!" said blythe. "but, for all that, it is not as a sister confessor alone that i need you. if now you have made the path so clear for me, then it is your own fault, heart of dreams. it is as wife, mate of me, that i need you--and shall have you." wife and mate of the man beloved! they were new words--even expressing a new thought--to louise, and they sang tumultuously in her heart. * * * * * mrs. treharne, very white and with the spiritual delicacy of an illness already far-advanced upon her features, was propped up in bed, gazing with a sort of vacant wonderment at her almost transparent hands, which she held up to the light, when the faithful heloise entered the room with louise's wireless message from the _mauretania_. she read it eagerly and then suffered the message to flutter from her fingers to the coverlet. "my little girl will be here day after tomorrow morning," she said to the maid, smiling wanly with the happiness of it. "do you think she will know her mother, heloise?" "know you, madame?" said the maid, half grumblingly, half soothingly, as she raised her mistress and patted the pillows. "madame must not be morbid. the doctor said that. i, too, say it. why should not mademoiselle louise know her mother?" "because, good heloise, her mother is a spectre, a wraith, a lingering ghost," said mrs. treharne, taking the maid's hand in both her own and patting it; whereupon heloise promptly produced a handkerchief from the pocket of her tiny apron with her free hand and began to dab at her eyes. the mistress studied the maid with surprise. "why, heloise, i did not know you cared so much," she said. "but i have noticed that you do not scold me any more. that is because you do care, then, heloise?" "madame does not need to be scolded any more," said heloise, brokenly. "before, one was obliged to scold her; that is, one thought so." the girl turned away her face and gazed blankly out of the window at the swaying trees. "but now, madame, one is sorry ever to have scolded at all." they occupied a pretty hotel cottage on the outskirts of the bright little town of saranac in the adirondacks. it is a town transiently inhabited mainly by victims of pulmonary affections. but mrs. treharne's illness was not of that character. she had been obliged to take to bed a few days after reaching saranac. her medical men had told her that she was suffering from a gradual disintegration of the vital forces. "i quite understood that before i came here," mrs. treharne had said to them. "you express in terms of politeness a fact that i have been perfectly familiar with for a long time: that i am simply worn out. there are reasons, aside from any consideration of myself, why i should like to have you gentlemen inform me as to one point at once." "and that is?" the physicians had asked her. "am i to get well, or am i to die?" mrs. treharne had asked them out of hand. very naturally the medical men had paused under the impact of so unusually direct a question. then they had begun to tell her that her case presented certain complications of a somewhat grave character, and that-- "i understand," mrs. treharne had interrupted, smiling up at them with a bravery which the physicians later commented upon glowingly. but they had not sought to disabuse her of the inference which their halting words and manner had caused her to derive. mrs. treharne had turned the matter over in her mind for days before cabling to louise. before sending that message she had, in her perplexity, turned to her maid for advice. "heloise," she had said to the devoted french girl, "tell me something, won't you? the doctors have given me to understand that--oh, well, that i am not to be here very long. do you think it would be well for me to send for my daughter?" heloise, thus hearing of the physicians' pronouncement for the first time, had given way to a torrent of tears; but, upon becoming calm under her mistress's cheerful words, she had replied that it would be an everlasting pity if louise were not sent for in any case. "i am not so sure about that," mrs. treharne had replied. "i recall very easily how i myself, when i was of louise's age, recoiled from the thought of death--though i do not at all now, oddly enough. i should have hated to be at the bedside of my mother when she died--i was only a child in arms and did not know anything about it. louise, i think, must feel the same way. why should she not? she is my daughter. would it not be quite as well for her to return to this country and find me gone, as it would be to send for her now and subject her to the distress of seeing me pass? i am not considering myself, heloise. every minute i am longing to see her. but i want to be fair now, at least, and do what is best." heloise had found no difficulty at all in withstanding this sort of reasoning. "if madame does not send for her daughter," heloise had replied, "i myself shall do so, in my own name." "very well," mrs. treharne had replied, "i shall cable her at once, and god speed her over the sea to me!" * * * * * on the second morning--sunny and beautiful--after mrs. treharne had received louise's wireless message, she and heloise heard the grinding of carriage wheels on the short gravel road leading to the cottage porch. the doctor already had paid his visit and departed, so they knew that the sound was not that of his buggy. heloise raced on tiptoes to the window and looked down. then she turned a delighted face upon her mistress, whose hair she had been arranging with unusual care in expectation of louise. "it is mademoiselle!" cried the maid. there was a sound of hurried tripping up the stairs; and louise, flushed from the drive, regally beautiful, swept softly into the room and, kneeling by the bed, took her mother in her arms and held her tight, rocking back and forth on the pillows, and restraining her tears by sheer effort of will. laura found an excuse to remain on the porch for a moment, giving directions to the driver of the carriage, while mother and daughter met. louise had schooled herself to withstand the shock of finding her mother looking badly. but her first glance at the white-faced invalid had caused her heart to beat with agonized trepidation. it would have been obvious to an uninterested stranger that mrs. treharne was fast approaching the end of her days. louise perceived it at a glance. but she would not yield to her almost overwhelming woman's impulse to weep. her mother's penetrating mind quickly sensed the girl's struggle and the victory; and she raised louise's head from where it nestled on her shoulder and held her face in her hands and looked at her with a smile. "it is fine of you not to cry, dear," she said, stroking the girl's face. "it means a good deal to me to know that my daughter is a thoroughbred--and you are always that, sweetheart. and how superb you have become! what a commotion you and laura must have made in london! where is laura--she is with you, of course?" "here i am, tony dear, as unlosable as the proverbial bad penny," said laura, entering the room just then and bending over from the other side of the bed and taking her old friend in her arms. "isn't louise looking superb? i can say it before her, because the child hasn't a groat's worth of vanity. and she has behaved extraordinarily well. i haven't had to tie her to the bedpost once." "you are looking dazzling yourself, laura," said mrs. treharne with a little sigh. "did you know that i always was just a little jealous of you, dear?" and she laughed more merrily than she had for a long time. "not that i ever had any reason to be, for it was the design of providence that you should outshine me. you and louise are to spend hours with me, are you not, telling me of your conquests in europe? and where is john blythe?" turning to louise. "is he not with you? i judged from your wireless message that--" "oh, yes, he returned with us on the steamer, but he remained in new york, mother," louise put in, a quick flush overspreading her features. "did you wish to see him? i know he would come if i were to--" mrs. treharne glanced, smiling, at laura, who returned the smile. "would he, dear?" asked mrs. treharne. "i haven't the least doubt of it. but there will be time. later i should like to see him. he has a compelling way." she paused, then added with a smile at louise: "but he is very lucky, all the same." louise, marveling at her mother's penetration in discerning, with so little to go upon, the bond between blythe and herself, nevertheless was glad that the relationship had thus been read; for there still remained enough of her habitual shyness with her mother to have caused her to shrink slightly from making even so natural and simple a revelation. laura left the room presently to attend to the disposal of the arriving baggage, and louise, removing her hat and travelling wrap, arranged her mother's pillows and then sat beside her on the bed. "i do not ask you, you see, dear, to try to conceal the fact that you find me so greatly altered," said her mother, holding the girl's hand. "i am ashamed to recall how petulant it used to make me when you seemed to be tracing, with your big, wide eyes, my new wrinkles--which you were not doing at all; i know that now, dear heart." "when does your doctor come today, mother?" asked louise, a little haltingly. "he has been here and gone," replied her mother, discerning what was in louise's mind. "but there is no need for you to see him privately, daughter. your little mother will tell you, for you have shown how brave you can be. i am quite as ill as you suppose me to be, louise, and entirely beyond the help of medical men. cry, dear, if you feel like it; i shall not mind; and there are times when tears do help one." louise, yielding at last, knelt beside the bed and buried her face on her mother's shoulder in an agony of quiet weeping, while her mother stroked her hair and murmured phrases of endearment that had not visited her lips since louise had been a child. "take heart, girl of mine," she said after a while, when she observed that louise's sobs were gradually abating. "i am resigned. it was to be--but i shall not distract you with phrases of that kind, which, after all, are not so consoling as they are supposed to be. i am glad that i have lived to know and to understand and to appreciate so fine and sweet a daughter as i have. and, louise: listen." "yes, mother: i am listening." "it is a gift of god, i know, that i have a daughter who, when my very soul was in peril, regenerated, recreated me. you have done that for me. i confess it without shame. my little girl summoned me, raised me from the depths. thank god i answered the summons before i knew that my life was slipping away from me, so that i am at least open to no charge of hypocrisy or of repenting in mere grovelling fear of the judgment. my little louise, grown to sweet, serene, pure womanhood, did this thing for me. it is something to have brought your mother to the foot of the cross, my dear; and that knowledge, i know, will ennoble and exalt you during all the years that are to come." when heloise entered the room, hours later, she found her mistress asleep, and louise's head still pillowed upon her mother's breast. chapter xvi a tall, bronzed man, erect and broad of shoulder, strode slowly, meditatively, hands clasped behind him, back and forth on the wide porch of a rambling, palm-shaded one-story hawaiian bungalow. he had the unlined countenance of a man of forty-five who had lived most of his life in the open; but his silvered, almost white, hair and mustache, might well have given at first glance, the impression that he was older. he was clad in white linen, although it was the day before christmas. december in hawaii! there is nothing in the whole world to compare with it. the sun shone in serene splendor from a cloudless sky of the intensest indigo. the fronds of the towering palms stirred with a soothing sibilance under the light touch of fragrant whispering zephyrs. surrounding the bungalow were many unfenced acres rioting in the myriad hued flowers of the tropics; thence, from where the welter of blossoms ceased, on all sides, as far as the eye could see, stretched miles of sugar-cane in growing, with its unmatchable tint of young, tender yet vivid green. it was the island of maui; and maui, next to the main island of hawaii, is the most beautiful of all the sugar-cane islands in the world. in the still air the chattering of hundreds of japanese workers among the cane reached, mitigated by distance, the porch of the bungalow, attached to one of the stanchions of which was a telephone at which the bronzed man occasionally stopped to reply to the questions of foremen scattered over the plantation. from the rear came the softer tones of the kanaka household servants; at intervals the voices were raised in fragments of the melodious but curiously melancholy hawaiian folk songs. but george treharne, accustomed to the beauty of his surroundings, was giving little heed, as he paced unceasingly back and forth, to the sights and sounds of his marvelous investiture. his mind was upon the snowy christmas eves of the flown years. he had not heard from his daughter, nor even from blythe, a punctilious correspondent in matters of business, since receiving louise's announcement of her mother's death, in the early part of september. and he had been unable to make his contemplated visit to "the main land," as americans living in hawaii call the united states. after one born and reared in temperate zones has passed many christmases in tropic lands, the approach of that memory-hallowed day never fails to arouse longing for the keen bite of the cutting, north wind, the sight of drifting snow, the sound of sleigh-bells, the holiday activities of the icy winter lands; nor does the flowery, fragrant beauty of the tropics, after long familiarity, compensate the native of the winter-knowing lands for his severance from the holiday spirit to which his youth made him accustomed. george treharne was more lonesome on this day before christmas than he had ever been in his life. he came to a pause in his stride, stopped by the telephone and began to devise the terms of a christmas greeting by cable to louise. he could telephone the message to lahaina, the nearby seaport of the island of maui, whence it could be transmitted by telephone to honolulu for the cable. he was taking down the receiver, when he happened to glance down the long white road to the entrance gate, nearly three-quarters of a mile away. in the clear air he could discern that the horse trotting up the road was ridden by a woman. many tourists visited the treharne plantation and were received with solicitous hospitality by its owner in person. knowing that this presumable tourist would reach the bungalow before he could finish his message to lahaina, george treharne deferred taking down the receiver of the telephone. he resumed his strolling back and forth on the porch, and, when horse and rider were within a hundred yards or so of the bungalow, he summoned a kanaka boy to take charge of the horse. he himself descended the steps and went to the edge of the road, where, with bared head, he waited to assist the visitor from her horse. the sunlight was blindingly in his eyes, so that he scarcely saw her face when he lifted her from the saddle. after a few words of courteous greeting he led the way, his vision still slightly obscured by the after-effects of the sun's direct rays, to the wide palm-shaded porch. when she stood beside him on the porch, rather nervously switching her riding crop, he observed that she was a very lovely, unusually tall young woman with a great coil of auburn hair flowing from beneath her wide-brimmed soft hat; and he had noticed, too, when she spoke, that she possessed a singularly sweet, rather subdued voice. but he did not know her. he was about to conduct her through the open door into the long, cool hall, when, turning his head to speak to her, he was struck by something in her face and attitude. she was not following him. that was what he noticed at once. instead, she was standing quite still in the middle of the porch, her riding crop now at rest, and holding up the skirt of her habit with the other hand. there was a half-smile on her face; but, in odd contrast to this, he noticed that her eyes were filmed with tears; that, in truth, two tears at least already had fallen. halting, then, in the doorway, he turned full around upon her. a tremor ran through his frame. he reached her in two bounds which were as sudden and springy as the bounds of a wrestler. he crushed her to his heart without a word. he knew that he was incapable of speaking. he kissed her over and over again and devoured her with his eyes. "my little girl louise!" he was finally able to say in a broken voice. "my beautiful, woman-grown little girl--god forever bless her!" and he held her out at arm's length, his powerful, bronzed hands gripping her shoulders, and gazed avidly at her until once again he clasped her to his heart. * * * * * after a time, when father and daughter were able to speak collectedly, louise walked over to the railing of the porch and raised her riding crop high in the air. her father saw the signal. the man for whom it was intended saw it as quickly. instantly, from behind the superintendent's house at the gate of the plantation road, a horse, ridden by a man in khaki, emerged and quickly swung into a gallop, making for the bungalow. when john blythe, with his wide smile, leaped from the horse and tossed the reins to the waiting kanaka boy, george treharne, recognizing him at once, glanced wonderingly from his face to the smiling, flushed face of louise. then his own bronzed features were creased by a smile of warmth and happiness. "then i have a son, too, louise?" he asked his daughter. but he knew how needless her brightly nodded answer was when, an instant later, he saw her clasped in her husband's arms. the inevitable by louis couperus translated by alexander teixeira de mattos new york dodd, mead and company the inevitable chapter i the marchesa belloni's boarding-house was situated in one of the healthiest, if not one of the most romantic quarters of rome. one half of the house had formed part of a villino of the old ludovisi gardens, those beautiful old gardens regretted by everybody who knew them before the new barrack-quarters were built on the site of the old roman park, with its border of villas. the entrance to the pension was in the via lombardia. the older or villino portion of the house retained a certain antique charm for the marchesa's boarders, while the new premises built on to it offered the advantages of spacious rooms, modern sanitation and electric light. the pension boasted a certain reputation for comfort, cheapness and a pleasant situation: it stood at a few minutes' walk from the pincio, on high ground, and there was no need to fear malaria; and the price charged for a long stay, amounting to hardly more than eight lire, was exceptionally low for rome, which was known to be more expensive than any other town in italy. the boarding-house therefore was generally full. the visitors began to arrive as soon as october: those who came earliest in the season paid least; and, with the exception of a few hurrying tourists, they nearly all remained until easter, going southward to naples after the great church festivals. some english travelling-acquaintances had strongly recommended the pension to cornélie de retz van loo, who was travelling in italy by herself; and she had written to the marchesa belloni from florence. it was her first visit to italy; it was the first time that she had alighted at the great cavernous station near the baths of diocletian; and, standing in the square, in the golden roman sunlight, while the great fountain of the acqua marcia gushed and rippled and the cab-drivers clicked with their whips and their tongues to attract her attention, she was conscious of her "nice italian sensation," as she called it, and felt glad to be in rome. she saw a little old man limping towards her with the instinct of a veteran porter who recognizes his travellers at once; and she read "hotel belloni" on his cap and beckoned to him with a smile. he saluted her with respectful familiarity, as though she were an old acquaintance and he glad to see her; asked if she had had a pleasant journey, if she was not over-tired; led her to the victoria; put in her rug and her hand-bag; asked for the tickets of her trunks; and said that she had better go on ahead: he would follow in ten minutes with the luggage. she received an impression of cosiness, of being well cared for by the little old lame man; and she gave him a friendly nod as the coachman drove away. she felt happy and careless, though she had just the faintest foreboding of something unhappy and unknown that was going to happen to her; and she looked to right and left to take in the streets of rome. but she saw only houses upon houses, like so many barracks; then a great white palace, the new palazzo piombino, which she knew to contain the juno ludovisi; and then the vettura stopped and a boy in buttons came out to meet her. he showed her into the drawing-room, a gloomy apartment, in the middle of which was a table covered with periodicals, arranged in a regular and unbroken circle. two ladies, obviously english and of the æsthetic type, with loose-fitting blouses and grimy hair, sat in a corner studying their baedekers before going out. cornélie bowed slightly, but received no bow in return; she did not take offence, being familiar with the manners of the travelling briton. she sat down at the table and took up the roman herald, the paper which appears once a fortnight and tells you what there is to do in rome during the next two weeks. thereupon one of the ladies asked her, from the corner, in an aggressive tone: "i beg your pardon, but would you please not take the herald to your room?" cornélie raised her head very haughtily and languidly in the direction where the ladies were sitting, looked vaguely above their grimy heads, said nothing and glanced down at the herald again; and she thought herself a very experienced traveller and smiled inwardly because she knew how to deal with that type of englishwoman. the marchesa entered and welcomed cornélie in italian and in french. she was a large, fat matron, vulgarly fat; her ample bosom was contained in a silk cuirass or spencer, shiny at the seams and bursting under the arms; her grey frizzled hair gave her a somewhat leonine appearance; her great yellow and blue eyes, with bistre shadows beneath them, wore a strained expression, the pupils unnaturally dilated by belladonna; a pair of immense crystals sparkled in her ears; and her fat, greasy fingers were covered with nameless jewels. she talked very fast; and cornélie thought her sentences as pleasant and homely as the welcome of the lame porter in the square outside the station. the marchesa led her to the lift and stepped in with her; the hydraulic lift, a railed-in cage, running up the well of the staircase, rose solemnly and suddenly stopped, motionless, between the second and the third floor. "third floor!" cried the marchesa to some one below. "non c'e acqua!" the boy in buttons calmly called back, meaning thereby to convey that--as seemed natural--there was not enough water to move the lift. the marchesa screamed out some orders in a shrill voice; two facchini came running up and hung on to the cable of the lift, together with the ostensibly zealous boy in buttons; and by fits and starts the cage rose higher and higher, until at last it almost reached the third storey. "a little higher!" ordered the marchesa. but the facchini strained their muscles in vain: the lift refused to stir. "we can manage!" said the marchesa. "wait a bit." taking a great stride, which revealed the enormous white-stockinged calf of her leg, she stepped on to the floor, smiled and gave her hand to cornélie, who imitated her gymnastics. "here we are!" sighed the marchesa, with a smile of satisfaction. "this is your room." she opened a door and showed cornélie a room. though the sun was shining brightly out of doors, the room was as damp and chilly as a cellar. "marchesa," cornélie said, without hesitation, "i wrote to you for two rooms facing south." "did you?" asked the marchesa, plausibly and ingenuously. "i really didn't remember. yes, that is one of those foreigners' ideas: rooms facing south.... this is really a beautiful room." "i'm sorry, but i can't accept this room, marchesa." la belloni grumbled a bit, went down the corridor and opened the door of another room: "and this one, signora?... how do you like this?" "is it south?" "almost" "i want it full south." "this looks west: you see the most splendid sunsets from your window." "i absolutely must have a south room, marchesa." "i also have the most charming little apartments looking east: you get the most picturesque sunrises there." "no, marchesa." "don't you appreciate the beauties of nature?" "just a little, but i put my health first." "i sleep in a north room myself." "you are an italian, marchesa, and you're used to it." "i'm very sorry, but i have no rooms facing south." "then i'm sorry too, marchesa, but i must look out somewhere else." cornélie turned as though to go away. the choice of a room sometimes means the choice of a life. the marchesa caught hold of her hand and smiled. she had abandoned her cool tone and her voice was all honey: "davvero, that's one of those foreigners' ideas: rooms facing south! but i have two little kennels left. here...." and she quickly opened two doors, two snug little cupboards of rooms, which showed through the open windows a lofty and spacious view of the sky, outspread above the streets and roofs below, with the blue dome of st. peter's in the distance. "these are the only rooms i have left facing south," said the marchesa, plaintively. "i shall be glad to have these, marchesa." "sixteen lire," smiled la belloni. "ten, as you wrote." "i could put two persons in here." "i shall stay all the winter, if i am satisfied." "you must have your way!" the marchesa exclaimed, suddenly, in her sweetest voice, a voice of graceful surrender. "you shall have the rooms for twelve lire. don't let us discuss it any more. the rooms are yours. you are dutch, are you not? we have a dutch family staying here: a mother with two daughters and a son. would you like to sit next to them at table?" "no, i'd rather you put me somewhere else; i don't care for my fellow-countrymen when travelling." the marchesa left cornélie to herself. she looked out of the window, absent-mindedly, glad to be in rome, yet faintly conscious of the something unhappy and unknown that was going to happen. there was a tap at her door; the men carried in her luggage. she saw that it was eleven o'clock and began to unpack. one of her rooms was a small sitting-room, like a bird-cage in the air, looking out over rome. she altered the position of the furniture, draped the faded sofa with a shawl from the abruzzi and fixed a few portraits and photographs with drawing-pins to the wall, whose white-washed surface was broken up by rudely-painted arabesques. and she smiled at the border of purple hearts transfixed by arrows, which surrounded the decorated panels of the wall. after an hour's work her sitting-room was settled: she had a home of her own, with a few of her own shawls and rugs, a screen here, a little table there, cushions on the sofa, books within easy reach. when she had finished and had sat down and looked around her, she suddenly felt very lonely. she began to think of the hague and of what she had left behind her. but she did not want to think and picked up her baedeker and read about the vatican. she was unable to concentrate her thoughts and turned to hare's walks in rome. a bell sounded. she was tired and her nerves were on edge. she looked in the glass, saw that her hair was out of curl, her blouse soiled with coal and dust, unlocked a second trunk and changed her things. she cried and sobbed while she was curling her hair. the second bell rang; and, after powdering her face, she went downstairs. she expected to be late, but there was no one in the dining-room and she had to wait before she was served. she resolved not to come down so very punctually in future. a few boarders looked in through the open door, saw that there was no one sitting at table yet, except a new lady, and disappeared again. cornélie looked around her and waited. the dining-room was the original dining-room of the old villa, with a ceiling by guercina. the waiters loitered about. an old grey major-domo cast a distant glance over the table, to see if everything was in order. he grew impatient when nobody came and told them to serve the macaroni to cornélie. it struck cornélie that he too limped with one leg, like the porter. but the waiters were very young, hardly more than sixteen to eighteen, and lacked the waiter's usual self-possession. a stout gentleman, vivacious, consequential, pock-marked, ill-shaven, in a shabby black coat which showed but little linen, entered, rubbing his hands, and took his seat, opposite cornélie. he bowed politely and began to eat his macaroni. and this seemed to be the signal for the others to begin eating, for a number of boarders, mostly ladies, now came in, sat down and helped themselves to the macaroni, which was handed round by the youthful waiters under the watchful eye of the grey-haired major-domo. cornélie smiled at the oddity of these travelling types; and, when she involuntarily glanced at the pock-marked gentleman opposite, she saw that he too was smiling. he hurriedly mopped up his tomato-sauce with his bread, bent a little way across the table and almost whispered, in french: "it's amusing, isn't it?" cornélie raised her eyebrows: "what do you mean?" "a cosmopolitan company like this." "oh, yes!" "you are dutch?" "how do you know?" "i saw your name in the visitors' book, with 'la haye' after it." "i am dutch, yes." "there are some more dutch ladies here, sitting over there: they are charming." cornélie asked the major-domo for some vin ordinaire. "that wine is no good," said the stout gentleman, vivaciously. "this is genzano," pointing to his fiasco. "i pay a small corkage and drink my own wine." the major-domo put a pint bottle in front of cornélie: it was included in her pension without extra charge. "if you like, i will give you the address where i get my wine. via della croce, ." cornélie thanked him. the pock-marked gentleman's uncommon ease and vivacity diverted her. "you're looking at the major-domo?" he asked. "you are a keen observer," she smiled in reply. "he's a type, our major-domo, giuseppe. he used to be major-domo in the palace of an austrian archduke. he did i don't know what. stole something, perhaps. or was impertinent. or dropped a spoon on the floor. he has come down in the world. now you behold him in the pension belloni. but the dignity of the man!" he leant forward: "the marchesa is economical. all the servants here are either old or very young. it's cheaper." he bowed to two german ladies, a mother and daughter, who had come in and sat down beside him: "i have the permit which i promised you, to see the palazzo rospigliosi and guido reni's aurora" he said, speaking in german. "is the prince back then?" "no, the prince is in paris. the palace is not open to visitors, except yourselves." this was said with a gallant bow. the german ladies exclaimed how kind he was, how he was able to do anything, to find a way out of every difficulty. they had taken endless trouble to bribe the rospigliosi porter and they had not succeeded. a little thin englishwoman had taken her seat beside cornélie. "and for you, miss taylor, i have a card for a low mass in his holiness' private chapel." miss taylor was radiant with delight. "have you been sight-seeing again?" the pock-marked gentleman continued. "yes, museo kircheriano," said miss taylor. "but i am tired out. it was most exquisite." "my prescription, miss taylor, is that you stay at home this afternoon and rest." "i have an engagement to go to the aventino...." "you mustn't. you're tired. you look worse every day and you're losing flesh. you must rest, or you sha'n't have the card for the low mass." the german ladies laughed. miss taylor, flattered, in an ecstasy of delight, gave her promise. she looked at the pock-marked gentleman as though she expected to hear the judgement of solomon fall from his lips. lunch was over: the rump-steak, the pudding, the dried figs. cornélie rose: "may i give you a glass out of my bottle?" asked the stout gentleman. "do taste my wine and tell me if you like it. if so, i'll order a fiasco for you in the via della croce." cornélie did not like to refuse. she sipped the wine. it was deliciously pure. she thought that it would be a good thing to drink a pure wine in rome; and, as she reflected, the stout gentleman seemed to read her quick thought: "it is a good thing," he said, "to drink a strengthening wine while you are in rome, where life is so tiring." cornélie agreed. "this is genzano, at two lire seventy-five the fiasco. it will last you a long time: the wine keeps. so i'll order you a fiasco." he bowed to the ladies around and left the room. the german ladies bowed to cornélie. "such an amiable man, that mr. rudyard." "what can he be?" cornélie wondered. "french, german, english, american?" chapter ii she had hired a victoria after lunch and had driven through rome, to make her first acquaintance with the city for which she had longed so eagerly. this first impression was a great disappointment. her unspoiled imagination, her reading, even the photographs which she had bought in florence and studied with the affection of an inexperienced tourist had given her the illusion of a city of an ideal antiquity, an ideal renascence; and she had forgotten that, especially in rome, life has progressed pitilessly and that the ages are not visible, in buildings and ruins, as distinct periods, but that each period is closely connected with the next by the passing days and years. thus she had thought the dome of st. peter's small, the corso narrow and trajan's column a column like any other; she had not noticed the forum as she drove past it; and she had been unable to think of a single emperor when she was at the palatine. now she was home again, tired, and was resting a little and meditating; she felt depressed, yet she enjoyed her vague reflections and the silence about her in the big house, to which most of the boarders had not yet returned. she thought of the hague, of her big family, her father, mother, brothers and sisters, to whom she had said good-bye for a long time to go abroad. her father, a retired colonel of hussars living on his pension, with no great private means, had been unable to contribute anything to the fulfilment of her caprice, as he called it; and she would not have been able to satisfy that caprice, of beginning a new life, but for a small legacy which she had inherited some years ago from a godmother. she was glad to be more or less independent, though she felt the selfishness of her independence. but what could she have done for her family-circle, after the scandal of her divorce? she was weak and selfish, she knew it; but she had received a blow under which she had at first expected to succumb. and, when she found herself surviving it, she had mustered such energy as she possessed and said to herself that she could not go on existing in that same narrow circle of her sisters and her girl friends; and she had forced her life into a different path. she had always had the knack of creating an apparently new frock out of an old dress, transforming a last year's hat into one of the latest fashion. even so she had now done with her distraught and wretched life, all battered and broken as it was: she had gathered together, as in a fit of economy, all that was left, all that was still serviceable; and out of those remnants she had made herself a new existence. but this new life was unable to breathe in the old atmosphere: it felt aimless in it and estranged; and she had managed to force it into a different path, in spite of all the opposition of her family and friends. perhaps she would not have succeeded so readily if she had not been so completely shattered. perhaps she would not have felt this energy if she had suffered only a little. she had her strength and she had her weakness; she was very simple and yet she was very various; and it was perhaps just this complexity that had been the saving of her youth. besides, she was actually very young, only twenty-three; and in youth one possesses an unconscious vitality, notwithstanding any apparent weakness. and her contradictory qualities gave her equilibrium and saved her from falling over into the abyss.... all this passed vaguely through her mind as clouds pass before the eyes, not with the conciseness of words but with the misty indefiniteness of a dreamy fatigue. as she lay there, she did not look as if she had ever exerted the strength to give a new path to her life: a pale, delicate woman, slender, with drooping movements, lying on a sofa in her not very fresh dressing-gown, with its faded pink and its rumpled lace. and yet there was a certain poetical fragrance about her personality, despite her weary eyes and the limp outlines of her attire, despite the boarding-house room, with its air of quickly improvised comfort, a comfort which was a matter of tact rather than reality and could be packed away in a single trunk. her frail figure, her pale and delicate rather than beautiful features were surrounded, as by an aura, by that atmosphere of personal poetry which she unconsciously radiated, which she shed from her eyes upon the things which she beheld, from her fingers upon the things which she touched. to those who did not like her, this peculiar atmosphere, this unusualness, this eccentricity, this unlikeness to the typical young woman of the hague, was the very thing with which they reproached her. to those who liked her, it was partly talent, partly soul; something peculiar to her which seemed almost genius; yet it was perturbing. it invested her with a great charm; it gave pause for thought and it promised much: more, perhaps, than could be realized. and this woman was the child of her time but especially of her environment and therefore so unfinished, revealing disparity against disparity, in an equilibrium of opposing forces, which might be her undoing or her salvation, but were in either case her fate. she felt lonely in italy. she had stayed for weeks at florence, where she tried to lead a full life, enriched by art and history. there, it was true, she forgot herself to a great extent, but she still felt lonely. she had spent a fortnight at siena, but siena had depressed her, with its sombre streets, its dead palaces; and she had yearned for rome. but she had not found rome yet that afternoon. and, though she felt tired, she felt above all things lonely, terribly lonely and useless in a great world, in a great town, a town in which one feels the greatness, uselessness and vast antiquity of things more perhaps than anywhere else. she felt like a little atom of suffering, like an insect, an ant, half-trodden, half-crushed, among the immense domes of rome, of whose presence out of doors she was subtly conscious. and her hand wandered vacantly over her books, which she had stacked punctiliously and conscientiously on a little table: some translations of the classics, ovid, tacitus, together with dante, petrach, tasso. it was growing dusk in her room, there was no light to read by, she was too much enervated to ring for a lamp; a chilliness hovered in her little room, now that the sun had quite gone down, and she had forgotten to ask for a fire on that first day. loneliness was all about her, her suffering pained her; her soul craved for a fellow-soul, but her mouth craved for a kiss, her arms for him, once her husband; and, turning on her cushions and wringing her hands, she prayed deep down in herself: "o god, tell me what to do!" chapter iii at dinner there was a buzz of voices; the three or four long tables were all full; the marchesa sat at the head of the centre table. now and then she beckoned impatiently to giuseppe, the old major-domo, who had dropped a spoon at an archducal court; and the unfledged little waiters rushed about breathlessly. cornélie found the obliging stout gentleman, whom the german ladies called mr. rudyard, sitting opposite her and her fiasco of genzano beside her plate. she thanked mr. rudyard with a smile and made the usual remarks: how she had been for a drive that afternoon and had made her first acquaintance with rome, the forum, the pincio. she talked to the german ladies and to the english one, who was always so tired with her sight-seeing; and the germans, a baronin and the baronesse her daughter, laughed with her at the two æsthetes whom cornélie had come upon that morning in the drawing-room. the two were sitting some distance away, lank and angular, grimy-haired, in curiously cut evening-dress, which showed the breast and arms warmly covered with a jaeger undervest, on which, in their turn, lay strings of large blue beads. their eyes browsed over the long table, as though they were pitying everybody who had come to rome to learn about art, because they two alone knew what art was. while eating, which they did unpleasantly, almost with their fingers, they read æsthetic books, wrinkling their brows and now and then looking up angrily, because the people about them were talking. with their self-conceit, their impossible manners, their worse than tasteless dress and their great air of superiority, they represented types of travelling englishwomen that are never met except in italy. they were unanimously criticized at the table. they came to the pension belloni every winter and made drawings in water-colours in the forum or the via appia. and they were so remarkable in their unprecedented originality, in their grimy angularity, with their evening-dresses, their jaegers, their strings of blue beads, their æsthetic books and their meat-picking fingers, that all eyes were constantly wandering in their direction, as though under the influence of a medusa spell. the young baroness, a type out of the fliegende blätter, witty and quick, with her little round, german face and arched, pencilled eyebrows, was laughing with cornélie and showing her a thumb-nail caricature which she had made of the two æsthetic ladies in her sketch-book, when giuseppe conducted a young lady to the end of the table where cornélie and rudyard sat opposite each other. she had evidently just arrived, said "evening" to everybody near her and sat down with a great rustling. it was at once apparent that she was an american, almost too good-looking, too young, to be travelling alone like that, with a smiling self-possession, as if she were at home: a very white complexion, very fine dark eyes, teeth like a dentist's advertisement, her full breast moulded in mauve cloth plentifully decorated with silver braid, on her heavily-waved hair a large mauve hat with a cascade of black ostrich-feathers, fastened by an over-large paste buckle. at every movement the silk of her petticoat rustled, the feathers nodded, the paste buckle gleamed. and, notwithstanding all this showiness, she was child-like: she was perhaps just twenty, with an ingenuous expression in her eyes. she at once spoke to cornélie, to rudyard; said that she was tired, that she had come from naples, that she had been dancing last night at prince cibo's, that her name was miss urania hope, that her father lived in chicago, that she had two brothers who, in spite of her father's money, were working on a farm in the far west, but that she had been brought up as a spoilt child by her father, who, however, wanted her to be able to stand on her own feet and was therefore making her travel by herself in the old world, in dear old italy. she was delighted to hear that cornélie was also travelling alone; and rudyard chaffed the ladies about their modern views, but the baronin and the baronesse applauded them. miss hope at once took a liking to her dutch fellow-traveller and wanted to arrange joint excursions; but cornélie, withdrawing into herself, made a tactful excuse, said that her time was fully engaged, that she wanted to study in the museums. "so serious?" asked miss hope, respectfully. and the petticoat rustled, the plumes nodded, the paste buckle gleamed. she made on cornélie the impression of a gaudy butterfly, which, sportive and unthinking, might easily one day dash itself to pieces against the hot-house windows of our cabined existence. she felt no attraction towards this strange, pretty little creature, who looked like a child and a cocotte in one; but she felt sorry for her, she did not know why. after dinner, rudyard proposed to take the two german ladies for a little walk. the younger baroness came to cornélie and asked if she would come too, to see rome by moonlight, quite close, from the villa medici. she felt grateful for the kindly suggestion and was just going to put on her hat, when miss hope ran after her: "stay and sit with me in the drawing-room." "i am going for a walk with the baronin," cornélie replied. "that german lady?" "yes." "is she a noblewoman?" "i presume so." "are there many titled people in the house?" asked miss hope, eagerly. cornélie laughed: "i don't know. i only arrived this morning." "i believe there are. i heard that there were many titled people here. are you one?" "i was!" cornélie laughed. "but i had to give up my title." "what a shame!" miss hope exclaimed. "i love titles. do you know what i've got? an album with the coats of arms of all sorts of families and another album with patterns of silk and brocade from each of the queen of italy's ball-dresses. would you care to see it?" "very much indeed!" cornélie laughed. "but i must put on my hat now." she went and returned in a hat and cloak; the german ladies and rudyard were waiting in the hall and asked what she was laughing at. she caused great merriment by telling them about the album with the patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. "who is he?" she asked the baronin, as she walked in front with her, along the via sistina, while the baronesse and rudyard followed. she thought the baronin a charming person, but she was surprised to find, in this german woman, who belonged to the titled military-class, a coldly cynical view of life which was not exactly that of her berlin environment. "i don't know," the baronin answered, with an air of indifference. "we travel a great deal. we have no house in berlin at present. we want to make the most of our stay abroad. mr. rudyard is very pleasant. he helps us in all sorts of ways: tickets for a papal mass, introductions here, invitations there. he seems to have plenty of influence. what do i care who or what he is! else agrees with me. i accept what he gives us and for the rest i don't try to fathom him." they walked on. the baronin took cornélie's arm: "my dear child, don't think us more cynical than we are. i hardly know you, but i've felt somehow drawn towards you. strange, isn't it, when one's abroad like this and has one's first talk at a table-d'hôte, over a skinny chicken? don't think us shabby or cynical. oh, dear, perhaps we are! our cosmopolitan, irresponsible, unsettled life makes us ungenerous, cynical and selfish. very selfish. rudyard shows us many kindnesses. why should i not accept them? i don't care who or what he is. i am not committing myself in any way." cornélie looked round involuntarily. in the nearly dark street she saw rudyard and the young baronesse, almost whispering and mysteriously intimate. "and does your daughter think so too?" "oh, yes! we are not committing ourselves in any way. we do not even particularly like him, with his pock-marked face and his dirty finger-nails. we merely accept his introductions. do as we do. or ... don't. perhaps it will be better form if you don't. i ... i have become a great egoist, through travelling. what do i care?..." the dark street seemed to invite confidences; and cornélie to some extent understood this cynical indifference, particularly in a woman reared in narrow principles of duty and morality. it was certainly not good form; but was it not weariness brought about by the wear and tear of life? in any case she vaguely understood it: that tone of indifference, that careless shrugging of the shoulders.... they turned the corner of the hotel massier and approached the villa medici. the full moon was pouring down its flood of white radiance and rome lay in the flawless blue glamour of the night. overflowing the brimming basin of the fountain, beneath the black ilexes, whose leafage held the picture of rome in an ebony frame, the waste water splashed and clattered. "rome must be very beautiful," said cornélie, softly. rudyard and the baronesse had come nearer and heard what she said: "rome is beautiful," he said, earnestly. "and rome is more. rome is a great consolation to many people." his words, spoken in the blue moonlit night, impressed her. the city seemed to lie in mystical billows at her feet. she looked at him, as he stood before her in his black coat, showing but little linen, the same stout, civil gentleman. his voice was very penetrating, with a rich note of conviction in it. she looked at him long, uncertain of herself and vaguely conscious of an approaching intimation, but still antipathetic. then he added, as though he did not wish her to meditate too deeply the words which he had uttered: "a great consolation to many ... because beauty consoles." and she thought his last words an æsthetic commonplace; but he had meant her to think so. chapter iv those first days in rome tired cornélie greatly. she did too much, as every one does who has just arrived in rome; she wanted to take in the whole city at once; and the distances, although covered in a carriage, and the endless galleries in the museums resulted in producing physical exhaustion. moreover she was constantly experiencing disappointments, in respect of pictures, statues or buildings. at first she dared not own to these disappointments; but one afternoon, feeling dead-tired, after she had been painfully disappointed in the sistine chapel, she owned up to herself. everything that she saw that was already known to her from her previous studies disappointed her. then she resolved to give sight-seeing a rest. and, after those fatiguing days, when every morning and every afternoon was spent out of doors, it was a luxury to surrender herself to the unconscious current of daily life. she remained at home in the mornings, wrapped in a tea-gown, in her cosy little bird-cage of a sitting-room, writing letters, dreaming a little, with her arms folded behind her head; she read ovid and petrarch, or listened to a couple of street-musicians, who, with their quavering tenors, to the shrill whining of their guitars, filled the silent street with a sobbing passion of music. at lunch she considered that she had been lucky in her pension, in her little corner at the table. she was interested in baronin von rothkirch, with her indifferent, aristocratic condescension towards rudyard, because she saw how residence abroad can draw a person out of the narrow ring of caste principles. the young baronesse, who cared nothing about life and merely sketched and painted, interested her because of her whispering intimacy with rudyard, which she failed to understand. miss hope was so ingenious, so childishly irrational, that cornélie could not imagine how old hope, the rich stockinet-manufacturer over in chicago, allowed this child to travel about alone, with her far too generous monthly allowance and her total ignorance of the world and people; and rudyard himself, though she sometimes felt an aversion for him, attracted her in spite of that aversion. although she had so far formed no deeper friendship with any of her fellow-boarders, at any rate they were people to whom she was able to talk; and the conversation at table was a diversion amid the solitude of the rest of the day. for in the afternoons, during this period of fatigue and disappointment, she would merely go for a short walk by herself down the corso or on the pincio and then return home, make her own tea in her little silver tea-pot and sit dreaming by the log fire, in the dusk, until it was time to dress for dinner. and the brightly-lit dining-room with the guercino ceiling was gay and cheerful. the pension was crammed: the marchesa had given up her own room and was sleeping in the bath-room. a hum of voices buzzed around the tables; the waiters rushed to and fro; spoons and forks clattered. there was none of the melancholy spirit of so many tables-d'hôte. the people knew one another; and the excitement of roman life, the oxygen in the roman air seemed to lend an added vivacity to the gestures and conversation. amidst this vivacity the two grimy æsthetic ladies attracted attention by their unvarying pose, with their eternal evening-dress, their jaegers, their beads, the fat books which they read, their angry looks because people were talking. after dinner they sat in the drawing-room or in the hall, made friends here and there and talked about rome, rome, rome. there was always a great fuss about the music in the different churches: they consulted the herald; they asked rudyard, who knew everything, and gathered round him; and he, fat and polite as ever, smiled and distributed tickets and named the day and hour at which an important service would be held in this church or in that. to english ladies, who were not fully informed, he would now and then, as it were casually, impart details about the complexities of catholic ritual and the catholic hierarchy; he explained the nationalities denoted by the various colours of the seminarists whom you met in shoals of an afternoon on the pincio, staring at st. peter's, in ecstasy over st. peter's, the mighty symbol of their mighty religion; he set forth the distinction between a church and a basilica; he related anecdotes of the private life of leo xiii. his manner of speaking of all these things possessed an insinuating charm: the english ladies, greedy for information, hung on his lips, thought him too awfully nice, asked him for a thousand particulars. these days were a great rest for cornélie. she recovered from her fatigue and felt indifferent towards rome. but she did not think of leaving any the sooner. whether she was here or elsewhere was all the same to her: she had to be somewhere. besides, the pension was good, her fellow-boarders pleasant and cheerful. she no longer read hare's walks in rome or ovid's metamorphoses, but she read ouida's ariadne over again. she did not care for the book as much as she had done three years before, at the hague; and after that she read nothing. but she amused herself with the von rothkirch ladies for a whole evening, looking over miss hope's album of seals and collection of patterns. how mad those americans were on titles and royalties! the baronin good-naturedly contributed an impression of her own arms to the album. and the patterns were greatly admired: gold brocades; silks heavily interwoven with silver; spangled tulles. miss hope related how she had come by them: she knew one of the queen's waiting-women, who had formerly been in service with an american; and this waiting-woman was now able to procure the patterns for her at a high price: a precious bit of material picked up while the queen was trying on, or sometimes even cut out of a broad seam. the child was prouder of her collection of patterns than an italian prince of his paintings, said baronin von rothkirch. but, notwithstanding this absurdity, this vanity, cornélie came to like the pretty american girl because of her candid and unsophisticated nature. she looked most attractive in the evening, in a black low-cut dress, or in a rose chiffon blouse. for that matter, it was a different frock every night. she possessed a kaleidoscopic collection of dresses, blouses and jewels. she would walk through the ruins of the forum in a tailor-made suit of cream cloth, lined with orange silk; and her white lace petticoat flitted airily over the foundations of the basilica julia or the temple of vesta. her gaily-trimmed hats introduced patches of colour from regent street or the avenue de l'opéra into the tragic seriousness of the colosseum or the ruined palace of the palatine. the young baronesse teased her about her orange silk lining, so in harmony with the forum, about her hats, so in keeping with the seriousness of a place of christian martyrdom, but she was never angry: "it's a nice hat anyway!" she would say, in her yankee drawl, which always afforded a good view of her pretty teeth but made her strain her mouth as though she were cracking filberts. and the child enjoyed everything, enjoyed the baronin and the baronesse, enjoyed being at a pension kept by a decayed italian marchioness. and, as soon as she caught sight of the marchesa belloni's grey, leonine head, she would make a rush for her--because a marchioness is higher than a baroness, said madame von rothkirch--drag her into a corner and if possible monopolize her throughout the evening. rudyard would then join them; and cornélie, seeing this, wondered what rudyard was, who he was and what he was about. but this did not interest the baronin, who had just received a card for a mass in the papal chapel; and the young baronesse merely said that he told legends of the saints so nicely, when explaining the pictures to her in the doria and the corsini. chapter v one evening cornélie made the acquaintance of the dutch family beside whom the marchesa had first wished to place her at table: mrs. van der staal and her two daughters. they too were spending the whole winter in rome: they had friends there and went out visiting. the conversation flowed smoothly; and mevrouw invited cornélie to come and have a chat in her sitting-room. next day she accompanied her new acquaintances to the vatican and heard that mevrouw was expecting her son, who was coming to rome from florence to continue his archæological studies. cornélie was glad to meet at the hotel a dutch element that was not antipathetic. she thought it pleasant to talk dutch again and she confessed as much. in a day or two she had become intimate with mrs. van der staal and the two girls; and on the evening when young van der staal arrived she opened her heart more than she had ever thought that she could do to strangers whom she had known for barely a few days. they were sitting in the van der staal's sitting-room, cornélie in a low chair by the blazing log-fire, for the evening was chilly. they had been talking about the hague, about her divorce; and she was now speaking of italy, of herself: "i no longer see anything," she confessed. "rome has quite bewildered me. i can't distinguish a colour, an outline. i don't recognize people. they all seem to whirl round me. sometimes i feel a need to sit alone for hours in my bird-cage upstairs, to recollect myself. this morning, in the vatican, i don't know: i remember nothing. it is all grey and fuzzy around me. then the people in the boarding-house: the same faces every day. i see them and yet i don't see them. i see ... i see madame von rothkirch and her daughter, i see the fair urania ... and rudyard ... and the little englishwoman, miss taylor, who is always so tired with sight-seeing and who thinks everything most exquisite. but my memory is so bad that, when i am alone, i have to think to myself: madame von rothkirch is tall and stately, with the smile of the german empress--she is rather like her--talking fast and yet with indifference, as though the words just fell indifferently from her lips...." "you're a good observer," said van der staal. "oh, don't say that!" said cornélie, almost vexed. "i see nothing and i can't remember. i receive no impressions. everything around me is colourless. i really don't know why i have come abroad.... when i am alone, i think of the people whom i meet. i know madame von rothkirch now and i know else. such a round, merry face, with arched eyebrows, and always a joke or a witticism: i find it tiring sometimes, she makes me laugh so. still they are very nice. and the fair urania. she tells me everything. she is as communicative ... as i am at this moment. and rudyard: i see him before me too." "rudyard!" smiled mevrouw and the girls. "what is he?" cornélie asked, inquisitively. "he is so civil, he ordered my wine for me, he can always get one all sorts of cards." "don't you know what rudyard is?" asked mrs. van der staal. "no; and mrs. von rothkirch doesn't know either." "then you had better be careful," laughed the girls. "are you a catholic?" asked mevrouw. "no." "nor the fair urania either? nor mrs. von rothkirch?" "no." "well, that is why la belloni put rudyard at your table. rudyard is a jesuit. every pension in rome has a jesuit who lives there free of charge, if the proprietor is a good friend of the church, and who tries to win souls by making himself especially agreeable." cornélie refused to believe it. "you can take my word for it," mevrouw continued, "that in a pension like this, a first-class pension, a pension with a reputation, a great deal of intrigue goes on." "la belloni?" cornélie enquired. "our marchesa is a thorough-paced intrigante. last winter, three english sisters were converted here." "by rudyard?" "no, by another priest. rudyard is here for the first time this winter." "rudyard walked quite a long way with me in the street this morning," said young van der staal. "i let him talk, i heard all he had to say." cornélie fell back in her chair: "i am tired of people," she said, with the strange sincerity which was hers. "i should like to sleep for a month, without seeing anybody." and, after a short pause, she got up, said goodnight and went to bed, while everything swam before her eyes. chapter vi she remained indoors for a day or two and had her meals served in her room. one morning, however, she was going for a stroll in the villa borghese, when she met young van der staal, on his bicycle. "don't you ride?" he asked, jumping off. "no." "why not?" "it is an exercise which doesn't suit my style," cornélie replied, vexed at meeting any one who disturbed the solitude of her stroll. "may i walk with you?" "certainly." he gave his machine into the charge of the porter at the gate and walked on with her, quite naturally, without saying very much: "it's beautiful here," he remarked. his words seemed to convey a simple meaning. she looked at him, for the first time, attentively. "you're an archæologist?" she asked. "no," he said, deprecatingly. "what are you, then?" "nothing. mamma says that, just to excuse me. i am nothing and a very useless member of society at that. and i am not even well off." "but you are studying, aren't you?" "no. i do a little casual reading. my sisters call it studying." "do you like going about, as your sisters do?" "no, i hate it. i never go with them." "don't you like meeting and studying people?" "no. i like pictures, statues and trees." "a poet?" "no. nothing. i am nothing, really." she looked at him, with increased attention. he was walking very simply by her side, a tall, thin fellow of perhaps twenty-six, more of a boy than a man in face and figure, but endowed with a certain assurance and restfulness that made him seem older than his years. he was pale; he had dark, cool, almost reproachful eyes; and his long, lean figure, in his badly-kept cycling-suit, betrayed a slight indifference, as though he did not care what his arms and legs looked like. he said nothing but walked on pleasantly, unembarrassed, without finding it necessary to talk. cornélie, however, grew fidgety and sought for words: "it is beautiful here," she stammered. "oh, it's very beautiful!" he replied, calmly, without seeing that she was constrained. "so green, so spacious, so peaceful: those long avenues, those vistas of avenues, like an antique arch, over yonder; and, far away in the distance, look, st. peter's, always st. peter's. it's a pity about those queer things lower down: that restaurant, that milk-tent. people spoil everything nowadays.... let us sit down here: it is so lovely here." they sat down on a bench. "it is such a joy when a thing is beautiful," he continued. "people are never beautiful. things are beautiful: statues and paintings. and then trees and clouds!" "do you paint?" "sometimes," he confessed, grudgingly. "a little. but really everything has been painted already; and i can't really say that i paint." "perhaps you write too?" "there has been even more written than painted, much more. perhaps everything has not yet been painted, but everything has certainly been written. every new book that is not of absolute scientific importance is superfluous. all the poetry has been written and every novel too." "do you read much?" "hardly at all. i sometimes dip into an old author." "but what do you do then?" she asked, suddenly, querulously. "nothing," he answered, calmly, with a glance of humility. "i do nothing, i exist." "do you think that a good mode of existence?" "no." "then why don't you adopt another?" "as i might buy a new coat or a new bicycle?" "you're not speaking seriously," she said, crossly. "why are you so vexed with me?" "because you annoy me," she said, irritably. he rose, bowed civilly and said: "then i had better go for a turn on my bicycle." and he walked slowly away. "what a stupid fellow!" she thought, peevishly. but she thought it tiresome that she had wrangled with him, because of his mother and his sisters. chapter vii at the hotel, however, he spoke to cornélie politely, as though there had been no embarrassment, no wrangling interchange of words between them, and he even asked her quite simply--because his mother and sisters had some calls to pay that afternoon--whether they should go to the palatine together. "i passed it the other day," she said, indifferently. "and don't you intend to see the ruins?" "no." "why not?" "they don't interest me. i can't see the past in them. i merely see ruins." "but then why did you come to rome?" he asked, irritably. she looked at him and could have burst into sobs: "i don't know," she said, meekly. "i could just as well have gone somewhere else. but i had formed a great idea of rome; and rome disappoints me." "how so?" "i find it hard and inexorable and devoid of feeling. i don't know why, but that's the impression it makes upon me. and i am in a mood at present which somehow makes me want something less insensible and imperturbable." he smiled: "come along," he said. "come with me to the palatine. i must show you rome. it is so beautiful." she felt too much depressed to remain alone; and so she put on her things and left the hotel with him. the cabmen outside cracked their whips: "vole? vole?" they shouted. he picked out one: "this is gaetano," he said. "i always take him. he knows me, don't you, gaetano?" "si, signorino. cavallo di sangue, signorina!" said gaetano, pointing to his horse. they drove away. "i am always frightened of these cabmen," said cornélie. "you don't know them," he answered, smiling. "i like them. i like the people. they're nice people." "you approve of everything in rome." "and you submit without reserve to a mistaken impression." "why mistaken?" "because that first impression of rome, as hard and unfeeling, is always the same and always mistaken." "yes, it's that. look, we are driving by the forum. whenever i see the forum, i think of miss hope and her orange lining." he felt annoyed and did not answer. "this is the palatine." they alighted and passed through the entrance. "this wooden staircase takes us to the palace of tiberius. above the palace, on the top of the arches, is a garden from which we look down on the forum." "tell me about tiberius. i know that there were good and bad emperors. we were taught that at school. tiberius was a bad emperor, wasn't he?" "he was a dismal brute. but why do you want me to tell you about him?" "because otherwise i can take no interest in those arches and chambers." "then let us go up to the top and sit in the garden." they did so. "don't you feel rome here?" he asked. "i feel the same everywhere," she replied. but he seemed not to hear her: "it's the atmosphere around you," he continued. "you should try to forget our hotel, to forget belloni and all our fellow-visitors and yourself. when anybody first arrives here, he has all the usual trouble about the hotel, his rooms, the table-d'hôte, the vaguely likable or dislikable people. you've got over that now. clear your mind of it. and try to feel only the atmosphere of rome. it's as if the atmosphere had remained the same, notwithstanding that the centuries lie piled up one above the other. first the middle ages covered the antiquity of the forum and now it is hidden everywhere by our nineteenth-century craze for travel. there you have miss hope's orange lining. but the atmosphere has always remained the same. unless i imagine it...." she was silent. "perhaps i do," he continued. "but what does that matter to me? our whole life is imagination; and imagination is a beautiful thing. the beauty of our imagination is the consolation of our lives, to those of us who are not men of action. the past is beauty. the present is not, does not exist. and the future does not interest me." "do you never think about modern problems?" she asked. "the woman question? socialism? peace?" "well, yes, for instance." "no," he smiled. "i think of them sometimes, but not about them." "how do you mean?" "i get no further. that is my nature. i am a dreamer by nature; and my dream is the past." "don't you dream of yourself?" "no. of my soul, my inner self? no. it interests me very little." "have you ever suffered?" "suffered? yes, no. i don't know. i feel sorry for my utter uselessness as a human being, as a son, as a man; but, when i dream, i am happy." "how do you come to speak to me so openly?" he looked at her in surprise: "why should i be reticent about myself?" he asked. "i either don't talk or i talk as i am doing now. perhaps it is a little odd." "do you talk to every one so intimately?" "no, hardly to anybody. i once had a friend ... but he's dead. tell me, i suppose you consider me morbid?" "no, i don't think so." "i shouldn't mind if you did. oh, how beautiful it is here! are you drinking rome in with your very breath?" "which rome?" "the rome of antiquity. under where we are sitting is the palace of tiberius. i see him walking about there, with his tall, strong figure, with his large, searching eyes: he was very strong, he was very dismal and he was a brute. he had no ideals. farther down, over there, is the palace of caligula, a madman of genius. he built a bridge across the forum to speak to jupiter in the capitol. that's a thing one couldn't do nowadays. he was a genius and a madman. when a man's like that, there's a good deal about him to admire." "how can you admire an age of emperors who were brutes and mad?" "because i see their age before my eyes, in the past, like a dream." "how is it possible that you don't see the present before you, with the problems of our own time, especially the eternal problem of poverty?" he looked at her: "yes," he said, "i know. that is my sin, my wickedness. the eternal problem of poverty doesn't affect me." she looked at him contemptuously: "you don't belong to your period," she said, coldly. "no." "have you ever felt hungry?" he laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "have you ever pictured yourself leading the life of a labourer, of a factory-girl who works until she's worn out and old and half-dead for a bare crust of bread?" "oh, those things are so horrible and so ugly: don't talk about them!" he entreated. the expression of her eyes was cold; the corners of her lips were depressed as though by a feeling of distaste; and she rose from her seat. "are you angry?" he asked, humbly. "no," she said, gently, "i am not angry." "but you despise me, because you consider me a useless creature, an æsthete and a dreamer?" "no. what am i myself, that i should reproach you with your uselessness?" "oh, if we could only find something!" he exclaimed, almost in ecstasy. "what?" "an aim. but mine would always remain beauty. and the past." "and, if i had the strength of mind to devote myself to an aim, it would above all be this: bread for the future." "how abominable that sounds!" he said, rudely but sincerely. "why didn't you go to london, or manchester, or one of those black manufacturing towns?" "because i hadn't the strength of mind and because i think too much of myself and of a sorrow that i have had lately. and i expected to find distraction in italy." "and that is where your disappointment lies. but perhaps you will gradually acquire greater strength and then devote yourself to your aim: bread for the future. i sha'n't envy you, however: bread for the future!..." she was silent. then she said, coldly: "it is getting late. let us go home...." chapter viii duco van der staal had taken a large, vault-like studio, with a chilly north light, up three flights of stairs in the via del babuino. here he painted, modelled and studied and here he dragged all the beautiful and antique objects that he succeeded in picking up in the little shops along the tiber or in the mercato dei fiori. that was his passion: to hunt through rome for a panel of an old triptych or a fragment of ancient sculpture. in this way his studio had not remained the large, chilly, vault-like workroom bearing witness to zealous and serious study, but had become a refuge for dim-coloured remnants of antiquity and ancient art, a museum for his dreaming spirit. already as a child, as a boy, he had felt that passion for antiquity developing; he learnt how to rummage through the stocks of old jewish dealers; he taught himself to haggle when his purse was not full; and he collected first rubbish and afterwards, gradually, objects of artistic and financial value. and it was his great hobby, his one vice: he spent all his pocket-money on it and, later, without reserve, the little that he was able to earn. for sometimes, very seldom, he would finish something and sell it. but generally he was too ill-satisfied with himself to finish anything; and his modest notion was that everything had already been created and that his art was useless. this idea sometimes paralysed him for months together, without making him unhappy. when he had the money to keep himself going--and his personal needs were very small--he felt rich and was content in his studio or would wander, perfectly content, through the streets of rome. his long, careless, lean, slender body was at such times clad in his oldest suit, which afforded an unostentatious glimpse of an untidy shirt with a soft collar and a bit of string instead of a tie; and his favourite headgear was a faded hat, battered out of shape by the rain. his mother and sisters as a rule found him unpresentable, but had given up trying to transform him into the well-groomed son and brother whom they would have liked to take to the drawing-rooms of their roman friends. happy to breathe the atmosphere of rome, he would wander for hours through the ruins and see, in a dazzling vision of phantom columns, ethereal temples and translucent marble palaces looming up in a shimmering sunlit twilight; and the tourists going by with their baedekers, who passed this long lean young man seated carelessly on the foundations of the temple of saturn, would never have believed in his architectural illusions of harmonious ascending lines, crowned by an array of statues in noble and god-like attitudes, high in the blue sky. but he saw them before him. he raised the shafts of the pillars, he fluted the severe doric columns, he bent and curved the cushioned ionic capitals and unfurled the leaves of the corinthian acanthuses; the temples rose in the twinkling of an eye, the basilicas shot up as by magic, the graven images stood white against the elusive depths of the sky and the via sacra became alive. he, in his admiration, lived his dream, his past. it was as though he had known preexistence in ancient rome; and the modern houses, the modern capitol and all that stood around the tomb of his forum were invisible to his eyes. he would sit like this for hours, or wander about and sit down again and be happy. in the intensity of his imagination, he conjured up history from the clouds of the past, first of all as a mist, a miraculous haze, whence the figures stepped out against the marble background of ancient rome. the gigantic dramas were enacted before his dreaming eyes as on an ideal stage which stretched from the forum to the hazy, sun-shot azure of the campagna, with slips that lost themselves in the depths of the sky. roman life came into being, with a toga'd gesture, a line of horace, a sudden vision of an emperor's murder or a contest of gladiators in the arena. and suddenly also the vision paled and he saw the ruins, the ruins only, as the tangible shadow of his unreal illusion: he saw the ruins as they were, brown and grey, eaten up with age, crumbled, martyred, mutilated with hammers, till only a few occasional pillars lifted and bore a trembling architrave, that threatened to come crashing to the ground. and the browns and greys were so richly and nobly gilded by splashes of sunlight, the ruins were so exquisitely beautiful in decay, so melancholy in their unwitting fortuitousness of broken lines, of shattered arches and mutilated sculpture, that it was as though he himself, after his airy vision of radiant dream-architecture, had tortured and mutilated them with an artist's hand and caused them to burst asunder and shake and tremble, for the sake of their wistful aftermath of beauty. then his eyes grew moist, his heart became more full than he could bear and he went away, through the arch of titus by the colosseum, through the arch of constantine, on and on, and hurried past the lateran to the via appia and the campagna, where his smarting eyes drank in the blue of the distant alban hills, as though that would cure them of their excessive gazing and dreaming.... neither in his mother nor in his sisters did he find a strain that sympathized with his eccentric tendencies; and, since that one friend who died, he had never found another and had always been lonely within and without, as though the victim of a predestination which would not allow him to meet with sympathy. but he had peopled his loneliness so densely with his dreams that he had never felt unhappy because of it; and, even as he loved roaming alone among the ruins and along the country-roads, so he cherished the privacy of his lonely studio, with the many silent figures on an old panel of some triptych, on a tapestry, or on the many closely hung sketches, all around him, all with the charm of their lines and colours, all with the silent gesture of their movement and emotion and all blending together in twilit corners or a shadowy antique cabinet. and in between all this lived his china and bronze and old silver, while the faded gold embroidery of an ecclesiastical vestment gleamed faintly and the old leather bindings of his books stood in comfortable brown rows, ready to give forth, when his hands opened them, images which mistily drifted upwards, living their loves and their sorrows in the tempered browns and reds and golds of the soundless atmosphere of the studio. such was his simple life, without much inward doubting, because he made no great demands upon himself, and without the modern artist's melancholy, because he was happy in his dreams. he had never, despite his hotel life with his mother and sisters--he slept and took his meals at belloni's--met many people or concerned himself with strangers, being by nature a little shy of baedekered tourists, of short-skirted english ladies, with their persistent little exclamations of uniform admiration, and feeling entirely impossible in the half-italian, half-cosmopolitan set of his rather worldly mother and smart little sisters, who spent their time dancing and cycling with young italian princes and dukes. and, now that he had met cornélie de retz, he had to confess to himself that he possessed but little knowledge of human nature and that he had never learnt to believe in the reality of such a woman, who might have existed in books, but not in actual life. her very appearance--her pallor, her drooping charm, her weariness--had astonished him; and her conversation astonished him even more: her positiveness mingled with hesitation; her artistic feeling modified by the endeavour to take part in her period, a period which he failed to appreciate as artistic, enamoured as he was of rome and of the past. and her conversation astonished him, attractive though the sound of it was and offended as he often was by a recurrent bitterness and irony, followed again by depression and discouragement, until he thought it over again and again, until in his musing he seemed to hear it once more on her own lips, until she joined the busts and torsos in his studio and appeared before him in the lily-like frailness of her visible actuality, against the preraphaelite stiffness of line and the byzantine gold and colour of the angels and madonnas on canvas and tapestry. his soul had never known love; and he had always looked on love as imagination and poetry. his life had never known more than the natural virile impulse and the ordinary little love-affair with a model. and his ideas on love swayed in a too wide and unreal balance between a woman who showed herself in the nude for a few lire and petrarch's laura; between the desire roused by a beautiful body and the exaltation inspired by dante's beatrice; between the flesh and the dream. he had never contemplated an encounter of kindred souls, never longed for sympathy, for love in the full and pregnant sense of the word. and, when he began to think and to think long and often of cornélie de retz, he could not understand it. he had pondered and dreamed for days, for a week about a woman in a poem; on a woman in real life never. and that he, irritated by some of her sayings, had nevertheless seen her stand with her lily-like outline against his byzantine triptych, like a wraith in his lonely dreams, almost frightened him, because it had made him lose his peace of mind. chapter ix it was christmas day, on which occasion the marchesa belloni entertained her boarders with a christmas-tree in the drawing-room, followed by a dance in the old guercino dining-room. to give a ball and a christmas-tree was a custom with many hotel-keepers; and the pensions that gave no dance or christmas-tree were known and numbered and were greatly blamed by the foreigners for this breach of tradition. there were instances of very excellent pensions to which many travellers, especially ladies, never went, because there was neither a dance nor a christmas-tree at christmas. the marchesa realized that her tree was expensive and that her dance cost money too and she would gladly have found an excuse for avoiding both, but she dared not: the reputation of her pension, as it happened, depended on its worldliness and smartness, on the table-d'hôte in the handsome dining-room, where people dressed for dinner, and also on the brilliant party given at christmas. and it was amusing to see how keen all the ladies were to receive gratis in their bill for a whole winter's stay a trashy christmas present and the opportunity of dancing without having to pay for a glass of orgeade and a bit of pastry, a sandwich and a cup of soup. giuseppe, the old nodding major-domo, looked down contemptuously on this festivity: he remembered the gala pomp of his archducal evenings and considered the dance inferior and the tree paltry. antonio, the limping porter, accustomed to his comparatively quiet life--fetching a visitor or taking him to the station; sorting the post twice a day at his ease; and for the rest pottering around his lodge and the lift--hated the dance, because of all the guests of the boarders, each of whom was entitled to invite two or three friends, and because of all that tiring fuss about carriages, when a good many of the visitors skipped into their vettura without tipping him. round about christmas, therefore, relations between the marchesa and her two principal dignitaries became far from harmonious; and a hail of orders and abuse would patter down on the backs of the old cameriere, crawling wearily up and downstairs with their hot-water-cans in their trembling hands, and of the young greenhorns of waiters, colliding with one another in their undisciplined zeal and smashing the plates. and it was only now, when the whole staff was put to work that people saw how old the cameriere were and how young the waiters and qualified as disgraceful and shocking the thrifty method of the marchesa in employing none but wrecks and infants in her service. the one muscular facchino, who was essential for hauling the luggage, cut an unexpected figure of virile maturity and robustness. but above everything the visitors detested the marchesa because of the great number of her servants, reflecting that now, at christmas-time, they would have to tip every one of them. no, they never imagined that the staff was so large! quite unnecessarily large too! why couldn't the marchesa engage a couple of strong young maids and waiters instead of all those old women and little boys? and there was much hushed plotting and confabulating in the corners of the passages and at meals, to decide on the tips to be given: they didn't want to spoil the servants, but still they were staying all the winter; and therefore one lira was hardly enough and they hesitated between one lira twenty-five and one lira fifty. but, when they counted on their fingers that there were fully five-and-twenty servants and that therefore they were close on forty lire out of pocket, they thought it an awful lot and they got up subscription-lists. two lists went round, one of one lira and one of twelve lire a visitor, the latter subscription covering the whole staff. on this second list some, who had arrived a month before and who had arranged to leave, entered their names for ten lire and some for six lire. five lire was by general consent considered too little; and, when it became known that the grimy æsthetic ladies intended to give five lire, they were regarded with the greatest contempt. it all meant a lot of trouble and excitement. as christmas drew nearer, people streamed to the presepii set up by painters in the palazzo borghese: a panorama of jerusalem and the shepherds, the angels, the magi and mary and the child in the manger with the ox and the ass. they listened in the ara coeli to the preaching of little boys and girls, who by turns climbed the platform and told the story of the nativity, some shyly reciting a little poem, prompted by an anxious mother; others, girls especially, declaiming and rolling their eyes with the dramatic fervour of little italian actresses and ending up with a religious moral. the people and countless tourists stood and listened to the preaching; a pleasant spirit prevailed in the church, where the shrill young children's voices were lifted up in oratory; there was laughter at a gesture or a point driven home; and the priests strolling round the church wore an unctuous smile because it was all so pretty and so satisfactory. and in the chapel of the santo bambino the miraculous wooden doll was bright with gold and jewels; and the close-packed multitude thronged to gaze at it. all the visitors at belloni's bought bunches of holly in the piazza di spagna to adorn their rooms with; and some, such as the baronin van rothkirch, set up a private christmas-tree in their own rooms. on the evening before the great party one and all went to admire these private trees, going in and out of one another's rooms; and all the boarders wore a kind, festive smile and welcomed everybody, however much at other times they might quarrel and intrigue against one another. it was universally agreed that the baronin had taken great pains and that her tree was magnificent. her bedroom had been cleverly metamorphosed into a boudoir, the beds draped to look like divans, the wash-hand-stands concealed; and the tree was radiant with candles and tinsel. and the baronin, a little sentimentally inclined, for the season reminded her of berlin and her lost domesticity, opened her doors wide to everybody and was even offering the two æsthetic ladies sweets, when the marchesa, also smiling, appeared at the door, with her bosom moulded in sky-blue satin and with even larger crystals than usual in her ears. the room was full: there were the van der staals, cornélie, rudyard, urania hope and other guests going in and out, so that it became impossible to move and they stood packed together or sat on the draped beds of the mother and daughter. the marchesa led in beside her an unknown young man, short, slender, with a pale olive complexion and with dark, bright, witty, lively eyes. he wore dress-clothes and displayed the vague good manners of a beloved and careless viveur, distinguished and yet conceited. and she proudly went up to the baronin, who kept prettily wiping her moist eyes, and with a certain arrogance presented: "my nephew, duca di san stefano, principe di forte-braccio...." the well-known italian name sounded from her lips in the small, crowded room with deliberate distinctness; and all eyes went to the young man, who bowed low before the baronin and then looked round the room with a vague, ironical glance. the marchesa's nephew had not yet been seen at the hotel that winter, but everybody knew that the young duke of san stefano, prince of forte-braccio, was a nephew of the marchesa's and one of the advertisements for her pension. and, while the prince talked to the baronin and her daughter, urania hope stared at him as a miraculous being from another world. she clung tight to cornélie's arm, as though she were in danger of fainting at the sight of so much italian nobility and greatness. she thought him very good-looking, very imposing, short and slender and pale, with his carbuncle eyes and his weary distinction and the white orchid in his button-hole. she would have loved to ask the marchioness to introduce her to her chic nephew, but she dared not, for she thought of her father's stockinet-factory at chicago. the christmas-tree party and the dance took place the following night. it became known that the marchesa's nephew was coming that evening too; and a great excitement reigned throughout the day. the prince arrived after the presents had been taken down from the tree and distributed and made a sort of state entry by the side of his aunt, the marchesa, into the drawing-room, where the dancing had not yet begun, though the guests were sitting about the room, all fixing their eyes on the ducal and princely apparition. cornélie was strolling with duco van der staal, who to his mother's and sisters' great surprise had fished out his dress-clothes and appeared in the big hall; and they both observed the triumphant entry of la belloni and her nephew and laughed at the fanatically upturned eyes of the english and american ladies. they, cornélie and duco, sat down in the hall on two chairs, in front of a clump of palms, which concealed one of the doors of the drawing-room, while the dance began inside. they were talking about the statues in the vatican, which they had been to see two days before, when they heard, as though close to their ears, a voice which they recognized as the marchesa's commanding organ, vainly striving to sink into a whisper. they looked round in surprise and perceived the hidden door, which was partly open, and through the open space they faintly distinguished the slim hand and black sleeve of the prince and a piece of the blue bosom of la belloni, both seated on a sofa in the drawing-room. they were therefore back to back, separated by the half-open door. they listened for fun to the marchesa's italian; the prince's answers were lisped so softly that they could scarcely catch them. and of what the marchesa said they heard only a few words and scraps of sentences. they were listening quite involuntarily, when they heard rudyard's name clearly pronounced by the marchesa. "and who besides?" asked the prince, softly. "an english miss," said the marchesa. "miss taylor: she's sitting over there, by herself in the corner. a simple little soul.... the baronin and her daughter.... the dutchwoman: a divorcée.... and the pretty american." "and those two very attractive dutch girls?" asked the prince. the music boom-boomed louder; and cornélie and duco did not catch the reply. "and the divorced dutchwoman?" the prince asked next. "no money," the marchesa answered, curtly. "and the young baroness?" "no money," la belloni repeated. "so there's no one except the stocking-merchant?" asked the prince, wearily. la belloni became cross, but cornélie and duco could not understand the sentences which she rattled out through the boom-booming music. then, during a lull, they heard the marchesa say: "she is very pretty. she has tons and tons of money. she could have gone to a first-class hotel but preferred to come here because, as a young girl travelling by herself, she was recommended to me and finds it pleasanter here. she has the big sitting-room to herself and pays fifty lire a day for her two rooms. she does not care about money. she pays three times as much as the others for her wood; and i also charge her for the wine." "she sells stockings," muttered the prince, obstinately. "nonsense!" said the marchesa. "remember that there's nobody at the moment. last winter we had rich english titled people, with a daughter, but you thought her too tall. you're always discovering some objection. you mustn't be so difficult." "i think those two little dutch dolls attractive." "they have no money. you're always thinking what you have no business to think." "how much did papa promise you if you...." the music boomed louder. " ... makes no difference.... if rudyard talks to her.... miss taylor is easy.... miss hope...." "i don't want so many stockings as all that." " ... very witty, i dare say.... if you don't care to...." "no." " ... then i retire.... i'll tell rudyard so.... how much?" "sixty or seventy thousand: i don't know exactly." "are they urgent?" "debts are never urgent!" "do you agree?" "very well. but mind, i won't sell myself for less than ten millions.... and then you get...." they both laughed; and again the names of rudyard and urania were pronounced. "urania?" he asked. "yes, urania," replied la belloni. "those little americans are very tactful. look at the comtesse de castellane and the duchess of marlborough: how well they bear their husbands' honours! they cut an excellent figure. they are mentioned in every society column and always with respect." " ... all right then. i am tired of these wasted winters. but not less than ten millions." "five." "no, ten." the prince and the marchesa had stood up to go. cornélie looked at duco. he laughed: "i don't quite understand them," he said. "it's a joke, of course." cornélie was startled: "a joke, you think, mr. van der staal?" "yes, they're humbugging." "i don't believe it." "i do." "have you any knowledge of human nature?" "oh, no, none at all!" "i'm getting it, gradually. i believe that rome can be dangerous and that an hotel-keeping marchesa, a prince and a jesuit...." "what about them?" "can be dangerous, if not to your sisters, because they have no money, but at any rate to urania hope." "i don't believe it for a moment. it was all chaff. and it doesn't interest me. what do you think of praxiteles' eros? i think it the most divine statue that i ever saw. oh, the eros, the eros! that is love, the real love, the predestined, fatal love, begging forgiveness for the suffering which it causes." "have you ever been in love?" "no. i have no knowledge of human nature and i have never been in love. you are always so definite. dreams are beautiful, statues are delightful and poetry is everything. the eros expresses love completely. the love of the eros is so beautiful! i could never love so beautifully as that.... no, it does not interest me to understand human nature; and a dream of praxiteles, lingering in a mutilated marble torso, is nobler than anything that the world calls love." she knitted her brows; her eyes were sombre. "let us go to the dancers," she said. "we are so out of it all here." chapter x the day after the dance, at table, cornélie received a strange impression: suddenly, as she sipped her delicious genzano, ordered for her by rudyard, she became aware that it was not by accident that she was sitting with the baronin and her daughter, with urania and miss taylor; she saw that the marchesa had an intention behind this arrangement. rudyard, always civil, polite, thoughtful, always full of attentions, his pockets always filled with cards of introduction very difficult to obtain--or so at least he contended--talked without ceasing, lately more particularly to miss taylor, who went faithfully to hear all the best church music and always returned home in ecstasy. the pale, simple, thin little englishwoman, who at first used to go into raptures over museums, ruins and the sunsets on the aventine or the monte mario and who was always tired by her rambles through rome, now devoted herself exclusively to the hundreds of churches, visited and studied them all and above all faithfully attended the musical services and spoke ecstatically of the choir in the sistine chapel and the quavering glorias of the male soprani. cornélie spoke to mrs. van der staal and the baronin von rothkirch of the conversation between the marchesa and her nephew which she had heard through the half-open door; but neither of them, though interested and curious, took the marchesa's words seriously, regarding them only as so much thoughtless talk between a foolish, match-making aunt and an unwilling nephew. cornélie was struck by seeing how unable people are to take things seriously; but the baronin was quite indifferent, saying that rudyard could do her no harm and was still supplying her with tickets; and mrs. van der staal, who had been in rome a long time and was accustomed to little boarding-house conspiracies, considered that cornélie was making herself too uneasy about the fair urania's fate. suddenly, however, miss taylor disappeared from the table. they thought that she was ill, until it came to light that she had left the pension belloni. rudyard said nothing; but, a few days later, the whole pension knew that miss taylor had been converted to the catholic faith and had moved to a pension recommended by rudyard, a pension frequented by monsignori and noted for its religious tone. her disappearance produced a certain constraint in the conversation between rudyard, the german ladies and cornélie; and the latter, in the course of a week which the baronin was spending at naples, changed her seat and joined her fellow-countrywomen the van der staals. the von rothkirches also changed, because of the draught, said the baronin; their seats were taken by new arrivals; and urania was left alone with rudyard at lunch and dinner, amid those foreign elements. cornélie reproached herself and one day spoke seriously to the american girl and warned her. but she dared not repeat what she had overheard at the dance; and her warning made no impression on urania. and, when rudyard had obtained for miss hope the privilege of a private audience of the pope, urania would not hear a word against rudyard and considered him the kindest man whom she had ever met, jesuit or no jesuit. but rudyard continued to appear through a haze of mystery; and people were not agreed as to whether he was a priest or a layman. chapter xi "what do those strangers matter to you?" asked duco. they were sitting in his studio: mrs. van der staal, cornélie and the girls, annie and emilie. annie was pouring out the tea; and they were discussing miss taylor and urania. "i am a stranger to you too!" said cornélie. "you are not a stranger to me, to us. but miss taylor and urania don't matter. hundreds of shadows pass through our lives: i don't see them and don't feel for them." "and am i not a shadow?" "i have talked to you too much in the borghese and on the palatine to look upon you as a shadow." "rudyard is a dangerous shadow," said annie. "he has no hold over us," duco replied. mrs. van der staal looked at cornélie. she understood the enquiring glance and said, laughing: "no, he has no hold over me either. still, if i felt the need of a religion, i mean an ecclesiastical religion, i would rather be a roman catholic than a protestant. but, as things are ..." she did not complete her sentence. she felt safe in this studio, in this soft, many-coloured profusion of beautiful things, in the affection of her friends; she felt in harmony with them all: with the worldly charm of that somewhat superficial mother and her two pretty girls, a little doll-like and vaguely cosmopolitan and a trifle vain of the little marquises with whom they danced and bicycled; and with that son, that brother so very different from the three of them and yet obviously related to them, as a movement, a gesture, a single word would show. it also struck cornélie that they accepted each other affectionately as they were: duco, his mother and sisters, with their stories about the princesses colonna and odescalchi; mevrouw and the girls and him, with his worn jacket and his unkempt hair. and, when he began to speak, especially about rome, when he put his dream into words, in almost bookish sentences, which however flowed easily and naturally from his lips, cornélie felt in harmony with her surroundings, secure and interested and to some extent lost that longing to contradict him which his artistic indolence sometimes aroused in her. and, besides, his indolence suddenly seemed to her merely apparent and perhaps an affection, for he showed her sketches and water-colour drawings, not one of them finished, but every water-colour alive with light before all things, alive with all that light of italy: the pearl sunsets over the molten emerald of venice; the campanili of florence drawn vaguely and dreamily against tender tea-rose skies; siena fortress-like, blue-black in the bluish moonlight; the blazing sunshine behind st. peter's; and, above all, the ruins, in every kind of light: the forum in the bright sunlight, the palatine by twilight, the colosseum mysterious in the night; and then the campagna: all the dream-like skies and luminous haze of the glad and sad campagna, with pale-pink mauves, dewy blues, dusky violets or the swaggering ochres of pyrotechnical sunsets and clouds flaring like the crimson pinions of the phoenix. and, when cornélie asked him why nothing was finished off, he answered that nothing was right. he saw the skies as dreams, visions and apotheoses; and on his paper they became water and paint; and paint was not a thing to be finished off. besides, he lacked the self-confidence. and then he laid his skies aside, he said, and sat down to copy byzantine madonnas. when he saw that his water-colours interested her nevertheless, he went on talking about himself: how he had at first raved over the noble and ingenuous primitives, giotto and especially lippo memmi; how, after that, spending a year in paris, he had found nothing that excelled forain: cold, dry satire in two or three lines; how, next, in the louvre, rubens had become revealed to him, rubens whose own talent and whose own brush he used to trace amid all the prentice-work and imitations of his pupils, until he was able to tell which cherub was by rubens himself in a sky full of cherubs painted by four or five disciples. and then, he said, he would pass weeks without giving a thought to painting or taking up a brush and would go daily to the vatican, lost in contemplation of the magnificent marbles. once he had sat dreaming a whole morning in front of the eros; once he had dreamt a poem there, to a very gentle, melodious, monotonous accompaniment, like an inward incantation. on coming home he had tried to put both poem and music on paper, but he had failed. now he could no longer look at forain, thought rubens coarse and disgusting, but remained faithful to the primitives: "and suppose for a moment that i painted a lot and sent a lot of pictures to exhibitions? should i be any the happier? should i feel satisfied in having done something? i doubt it. sometimes i do finish a water-colour and sell it; and then i can go on living for a month without troubling mamma. money i don't care about. ambition is quite foreign to my nature.... but don't let us talk about myself. do you still think of the future and ... bread?" "perhaps," she said, with a melancholy laugh, while the studio around her grew dusk and dim and the figures of his mother and sisters, sitting silent, languid and uninterested in their easy-chairs, gradually faded away and every colour slowly paled. "but i am so weak-minded. you say that you are not an artist; and i ... i am not an apostle." "to give one's life a course: that is the difficulty. every life has a line, an appointed course, a road, a path: life has to flow along that line to death and what comes after death; and that line is difficult to find. i shall never find my line." "i don't see my line before me either." "do you know, a restlessness has come over me. mamma, listen, a restlessness has come over me. i used to dream in the forum, i was happy and didn't think about my line, my appointed course. mamma, do you think about your line? do you, girls?" his sisters giggled in the dark, sunk in their low chairs, like two pussy-cats. mamma got up: "duco dear, you know i can't follow you. i admire cornélie for liking your water-colours and understanding what you mean by that line. my line is to go home at once, for it's very late." "that's the line of the next two seconds. but there is a restlessness about my line that affects it for days and weeks to come. i am not leading the right life. the past is very beautiful and so peaceful, because it has been. but i have lost that peace. the present is very small. but the future! ... oh, if we could only find an aim ... for the future!" they no longer listened; they went down the dark stairs, groping their way. "bread?" he asked himself, wonderingly. chapter xii one morning when cornélie stayed indoors she went through the books that lay scattered about her room. and she found that it was useless for her to read ovid, in order to study something of roman manners, some of which had alarmed and shocked her; she found that dante and petrarch were too difficult to learn italian from, whereas she had only to pick up a word or two in order to make herself understood in a shop or by the servants; she found hare's walks a too wearisome guide, because every cobble-stone in rome did not inspire her with the same interest that hare evidently derived from it. then she confessed to herself that she could never see italy and rome as duco van der staal did. she never saw the light of the skies or the drifting of the clouds as he had seen them in his unfinished water-colour sketches. she had never seen the ruins transfigured in glory as he did in his hours of dreaming on the palatine or in the forum. she saw a picture merely with a layman's eye; a byzantine madonna made no appeal to her. she was very fond of statues; but to fall head over ears in love with a mutilated marble torso, in the spirit in which he loved the eros, seemed to her sickly ... and yet it seemed to be the right spirit in which to see the eros. well, not sickly, she admitted ... but morbid: the word, though she herself smiled at it expressed her opinion better; not sickly, but morbid. and she looked upon an olive as a tree rather like a willow, whereas duco had told her that an olive was the most beautiful tree in the world. she did not agree with him, either about the olive or about the eros; and yet she felt that he was right from a certain mysterious standpoint on which there was no room for her, because it was like a mystic eminence amid impassable sensitive spheres which were not hers, even as the eminence was to her an unknown vantage-point of sensitiveness and vision. she did not agree with him and yet she was convinced of his greater rightness, his truer view, his nobler insight, his deeper feeling; and she was certain that her way of seeing italy, in the disappointment of her disillusion, in the grey light of a growing indifference, was neither noble nor good; and she knew that the beauty of italy escaped her, whereas to him it was like a tangible and comprehensible vision. and she cleared away ovid and petrarch and hare's guidebook and locked them up in her trunk and took out the novels and pamphlets which had appeared that year about the woman movement in holland. she took an interest in the problem and thought that it made her more modern than duco, who suddenly seemed to her to belong to a bygone age, not modern, not modern. she repeated the words with enjoyment and suddenly felt herself stronger. to be modern: that should be her strength. one phrase of duco's had struck her immensely, that exclamation: "oh, if we could only find an aim! our life has a line, a path, which it must follow...." to be modern: was that not a line? to find the solution of a modern problem: was that not an aim in life? he was quite right, from his point of view, from which he saw italy; but was not the whole of italy a past, a dream, at least that italy which duco saw, a dreamy paradise of nothing but art? it could not be right to stand like that, see like that a dream like that. the present was here: on the grey horizon muttered an approaching storm; and the latter-day problems flashed like lightning. was that not what she had to live for? she felt for the woman, she felt for the girl: she herself had been the girl, brought up only as a social ornament, to shine, to be pretty and attractive and then of course to get married; she had shone and she had married; and now she was three-and-twenty, divorced from the husband who at one time had been her only aim and, for her sake, the aim of her parents; now she was alone, astray, desperate and utterly disconsolate: she had nothing to cling to and she suffered. she still loved him, cad and scoundrel though he was; and she had thought that she was doing something very clever, when she went abroad, to italy, to study art. but she did not understand art, she did not feel italy. oh, how clearly she saw it, after those talks with duco, that she would never understand art, even though she used to sketch a bit, even though she used to have a biscuit-group after canova in her boudoir, cupid and psyche: so nice for a young girl! and with what certainty she now knew that she would never grasp italy, because she did not think an olive-tree so very beautiful and had never seen the sky of the campagna as a fluttering phoenix-wing! no, italy would never be the consolation of her life.... but what then? she had been through much, but she was alive and very young. and once again, at the sight of those pamphlets, at the sight of that novel, the desire arose in her soul: to be modern, to be modern! and to take part in the problem of to-day! to live for the future! to live for her fellow-women, married or unmarried!... she dared not look deep down into herself, lest she should waver. to live for the future!... it separated her a little more from duco, that new ideal. did she mind? was she in love with him? no, she thought not. she had been in love with her husband and did not want to fall in love at once with the first agreeable young man whom she chanced to meet in rome.... and she read the pamphlets, about the feminine problem and love. then she thought of her husband, then of duco. and wearily she dropped the pamphlets and reflected how sad it all was: people, women, girls. she, a woman, a young woman, an aimless woman: how sad her life was! and duco: he was happy. and yet he was seeking the line of his life, yet he was looking out for his aim. a new restlessness had entered into him. and she wept a little and anxiously twisted herself on her cushions and clasped her hands and prayed, unconsciously, without knowing to whom she was praying: "o god, tell me what to do!" chapter xiii it was then, after a few days, that cornélie conceived the idea of leaving the boarding-house and going to live in rooms. the hotel-life disturbed her budding thoughts, like a wind of vanity that was constantly blighting very vague and fragile blossoms; and, despite a torrent of abuse from the marchesa, who reproached her with having engaged to stay the whole winter, she moved into the rooms which she had found with duco van der staal, after much hunting and stair-climbing. they were in the via dei serpenti, up any number of stairs: a set of two roomy, but almost entirely unfurnished apartments, containing only the absolute essentials; and, though the view extended far and wide above the house-tops of rome to the circular ruin of the colosseum, the rooms were rough and uncomfortable, bare and uninviting. duco had not approved of them and said that they made him shiver, although they faced the sun; but there was something about the ruggedness of the place that harmonized with cornélie's new mood. when they parted that day, he thought how inartistic she was and she how unmodern he was. they did not meet again for several days; and cornélie was very lonely, but did not feel her loneliness, because she was writing a pamphlet on the social position of divorced women. the idea was suggested to her by a few sentences in a tract on the feminist problem; and at once, without wasting much time in thought, she flung off her sentences in a succession of impulses and intuitions, rough-hewn, cold and clear; she wrote in an epistolary style, without literary art, as though to warn girls against cherishing too many illusions about marriage. she had not made her rooms comfortable; she sat there, high up over rome, with her view across the house-tops to the colosseum, writing, writing and writing, absorbed in her sorrow, uttering herself in her stubborn sentences, feeling intensely bitter, but pouring the wormwood of her soul into her pamphlet. mrs. van der staal and the girls, who came to see her, were surprised by her untidy appearance, her rough-looking rooms, with a dying fire in the little grate and with no flowers, no books, no tea and no cushions; and, when they went away after fifteen minutes, pleading urgent errands, they looked at each other, tripping down the endless stairs, with eyes of amazement, utterly at a loss to understand this transformation of an interesting, elegant little woman, surrounded by an aura of poetry and a tragic past, into an "independent woman," working furiously at a pamphlet full of bitter invective against society. and, when duco looked her up again in a week's time and came to sit with her a little, he remained silent, stiff and upright in his chair, without speaking, while cornélie read the beginning of her pamphlet to him. he was touched by the glimpses which it revealed to him of personal suffering and experience, but he was irritated by a certain discord between that slender, lily-like woman, with her drooping movements, and the surroundings in which she now felt at her ease, entirely absorbed in her hatred for the society--hague society--which had become hostile to her because she refused to go on living with a cad who ill-treated her. and while she was reading, duco thought: "she would not write like that if she were not writing it all down from her own suffering. why doesn't she make a novel of it? why generalize from one's personal sorrows and why that admonishing voice?..." he did not like it. he thought the sound of that voice was hard, those truths so personal, that bitterness unattractive and that hatred of convention so small. and, when she put a question to him, he did not say much, nodded his head in vague approval and remained sitting in his stiff, uncomfortable attitude. he did not know what to answer, he was unable to admire, he thought her inartistic. and yet a great compassion welled up within him when he saw, in spite of it all, how charming she would be and what charm and womanly dignity would be hers could she find the line of her life and moved harmoniously along that line with the music of her own movement. he now saw her taking a wrong road, a path pointed out to her by the fingers of others and not entered upon from the impulse of her own soul. and he felt the deepest pity for her. he, an artist, but above all a dreamer, sometimes saw vividly, despite his dreaming, despite his sometimes all-embracing love of line and colour and atmosphere; he, the artist and dreamer, sometimes very clearly saw the emotion looming through the outward actions of his fellow-creatures, saw it like light shining through alabaster; and he suddenly saw her lost, seeking, straying: seeking she herself knew not what, straying she herself knew not through what labyrinth, far from her line, the line of her life and the course of her soul's journey, which she had never yet found. she sat before him excitedly. she had read her last pages with a flushed face, in a resonant voice, her whole being in a fever. she looked as if she would have liked to fling those bitter pages at the feet of her dutch sisters, at the feet of all women. he, absorbed in his speculations, melancholy in his pity for her, had scarcely listened, nodding his head in vague approval. and suddenly she began to speak of herself, revealed herself wholly, told him her life: her existence as a young girl at the hague, her education with a view to shining a little and being attractive and pretty, with not one serious glance at her future, only waiting for a good match, with a flirtation here and a little love-affair there, until she was married: a good match, in her own circle; her husband a first lieutenant of hussars, a fine, handsome fellow, of a good, distinguished family, with a little money. she had fallen in love with him for his handsome face and his fine figure, which his uniform showed to advantage, and he with her as he might have done with any other girl who had a pretty face. then came the revelation of those very early days: the discord between their characters manifesting itself luridly at once. she, spoilt at home, dainty, delicate, fastidious, but selfishly fastidious and flying out against any offence to her own spoilt little ego; he no longer the lover but immediately and brutally the man with rights to this and rights to that, with an oath here and a roar there; she with neither the tact nor the patience to make of their foundering lives what could still be made of them, nervous, quick-tempered, quick to resent coarseness, which made his savagery flare up so violently that he ill-treated her, swore at her, struck her, shook her and banged her against the wall. the divorce followed. he had not consented at first, content, in spite of all, to have a house and in that house a wife, female to him, the male, and declining to return to the discomfort of life in chambers, until she simply ran away, first to her parents, then to friends in the country, protesting loudly against the law, which was so unjust to women. he had yielded at last and allowed himself to be accused of infidelity, which was not beside the truth. she was now free, but stood as it were alone, looked at askance by all her acquaintances, refusing to yield to their conventional demand for that sort of half-mourning which, according to their conventional ideas, should surround a divorced woman and at once returning to her former life, the gay life of an unmarried girl. but she had felt that this could not go on, both because of her acquaintances and because of herself: her acquaintances looking at her askance and she loathing her acquaintances, loathing their parties and dinners, until she felt profoundly unhappy, lonely and forlorn, without anything or anybody to cling to, and had felt all the depression that weighs down on the divorced woman. sometimes, in her heart of hearts, she reflected that by dint of great patience and great tact she might have managed that man, that he was not wicked, only coarse, that she was still fond of him, or at least of his handsome face and his sturdy figure. love, no, it was not love; but had she ever thought of love as she now sometimes pictured it? and did not nearly everybody live more or less so-so, with a good deal of give and take? but this regret she hardly confessed to herself, did not now confess to duco; and what she did confess was her bitterness, her hatred of her husband, of marriage, of convention, of people, of the world, of all the great generalities, generalizing her own feelings into one great curse against life. he listened to her, with pity. he felt that there was something noble in her, which, however, had been stifled from the beginning. he forgave her for not being artistic, but he was sorry that she had never found herself, that she did not know what she was, who she was, what her life should be, or where the line of her life wound, the only path which she ought to tread, as every life follows one path. oh, how often, if a person would but let herself go, like a flower, like a bird, like a cloud, like a star which so obediently ran its course, she would find her happiness and her life, even as the flower or the bird finds them, even as the cloud drifts before the sun, even as the star follows its course through the heavens. but he told her nothing of his thoughts, knowing that, especially in her present mood of bitterness, she would not understand them and could derive no comfort from them, because they would be too vague for her and too far removed from her own manner of thinking. she thought of herself, but imagined that she was thinking of women and girls and their movement towards the future. the lines of the women ... but had not every woman a line of her own? only, how few of them knew it: their direction, their path, their line of life, their wavering course in the twilight of the future. and perhaps, because they did not know it for themselves, they were now all seeking together a broad path, a main road, along which they would march in troops, in a threatening multitude of women, in regiments of women, with banners and mottoes and war-cries, a broad path, parallel with the movement of the men, until the two paths would melt into one, until the troops of women would mingle with the troops of men, with equal rights and equal fullness of life.... he said nothing to her. she noticed his silence and did not see how much was going on within him, how earnestly he was thinking of her, how profoundly he pitied her. she thought that she had bored him. and suddenly, around her, she saw the dim, barren room, saw that the fire was out; and her zeal subsided, her fever cooled and she thought her pamphlet bad, lacking strength and conviction. what would she not have given for a word from him! but he sat silent, seemed to take no interest, probably did not admire her style of writing. and she felt sad, deserted, lonely, estranged from him and bitter because of the estrangement; she felt ready to weep, to sob; and, strange to say, in her bitterness she thought of him, of her husband, with his handsome face. she could not restrain herself, she wept. duco came up to her, put his hand on her shoulder. then she felt something of what was going on within him and that his silence was not due to coldness. she told him that she could not remain alone that evening: she was too wretched, too wretched. he comforted her, said that there was much that was good, much that was true in her pamphlet; that he was not a good judge of these modern questions; that he was never clever except when he talked about italy; that he felt so little for people and so much for statues, so little for what was newly building for a coming century and so much for what lay in ruins and remained over from earlier centuries. he said it as though apologizing. she smiled through her tears but repeated that she could not stay alone that evening and that she was coming with him to belloni's, to his mother and sisters. and they went together, they walked round together; and, to divert her mind, he spoke to her of his own thoughts, told her anecdotes of the renascence masters. she did not hear what he said, but his voice was sweet to her ears. there was something so gentle about his indifference to the modern things that interested her, he had so much calmness, healing as balsam, in the restfulness of his soul, which allowed itself to move along the golden thread of his dreams, as though that thread was the line of his life, so much calmness and gentleness that she too grew calmer and gentler and looked up to him with a smile. and, however far removed they might be from each other--he going along a dreamy path, she lost in an obscure maze--they nevertheless felt each other approaching, felt their souls drawing nearer to each other, while their bodies moved beside each other in the actual street, through rome, in the evening. he put his arm through hers to guide her steps. and, when they came in sight of belloni's, she thanked him, she did not know exactly for what: for the look in his eyes, for his voice, for the walk, for the consolation which she felt inexplicably yet clearly radiating from him; and she was glad to have come with him this evening and to feel the distraction of the belloni table-d'hôte around her. but at night, alone, alone in her bare rooms, she was overcome by her wretchedness as by a sea of blackness; and, looking out at the colosseum, which showed faintly as a black arc in the black night, she sobbed until she felt herself sinking to the point of death, derelict, lonely and forlorn, high up above rome, above the roofs, above the pale lights of rome by night, under the clouds of the black night, sinking and derelict, as though she were drifting, a shipwrecked waif on an ocean which drowned the world and roared its plaints to the inexorable heavens. chapter xiv nevertheless cornélie recovered her calmness when her pamphlet was finished. she unpacked her trunks, arranged her rooms a little more snugly and, now more at her ease, rewrote the pamphlet and, in the revision, improved her style and even her ideas. when she had done working in the morning, she usually lunched at a small osteria, where she nearly always met duco van der staal and had her meal with him at a little table. as a rule she dined at belloni's, beside the van der staals, in order to obtain a little diversion. the marchesa had not bowed to her at first, though she suffered her to attend her table-d'hôte, at three lire an evening; but after a time she bowed to cornélie again, with a bitter-sweet little smile, for she had relet her two rooms at a higher price. and cornélie, in her calmer mood, found it pleasant to change in the evening, to see mrs. van der staal and the girls, to listen to their little stories about the roman salons and to cast a glance over the long tables. and they saw that the guests were ever again different, as in a kaleidoscope of fleeting personalities. rudyard had disappeared, owing money to the marchesa, no one knew whither; the von rothkirches had gone to greece; but urania hope was still there and sat next to the marchesa belloni. on her other side was the nephew, the prince of forte-braccio, duke of san stefano, who dined at belloni's every night. and cornélie saw that a sort of conspiracy was in progress, the marchesa and the prince laying siege to the vain little american from either side. and next day she saw two monsignori seated in eager conversation with urania at the marchesa's table, while the marchesa and the prince nodded their heads. all the visitors commented on it, every eye was turned in that direction, everybody watched the manoeuvres and delighted in the romance. cornélie was the only one who was not amused. she would have liked to warn urania against the marchesa, the prince and the monsignori who had taken rudyard's place, but especially against marriage, even marriage with a prince and duke. and, growing excited, she spoke to mrs. van der staal and the girls, repeated phrases out of her pamphlet, glowing with her red young hatred against society and people and the world. dinner was over; and, still eagerly talking, she went with the van der staals--mevrouw and the girls and duco--to the drawing-room, sat down in a corner, resumed her conversation, flew out at mevrouw, who had contradicted her, and then suddenly saw a fat lady--the girls had already nick-named her the satin frigate--come towards her with a smile and say, while still at some distance: "i beg your pardon, but there's something i want to say. look here, i have been to belloni's regularly every winter for the last ten years, from november to easter; and every evening after dinner--but only after dinner--i sit in this corner, at this table, on this sofa. i hope you won't mind, but i should be glad to have my own seat now." and the satin frigate smiled amiably; but, when the van der staals and cornélie rose in mute amazement, she dumped herself down with a rustle on the sofa, bobbed up and down for a moment on the springs, laid her crochet-work on the table with a gesture as though she were planting the union jack in a new colony and said, with her most amiable smile: "very much obliged. so many thanks." duco roared, the girls giggled, but the satin frigate merely nodded to them good-humouredly. and, not even yet realizing what had happened, astounded but gay, they sat down in another corner, the girls still seized with an irrepressible giggle. the two æsthetic ladies, with the evening-dress and the jaegers, who sat reading at the table in the middle of the room, closed their two books with one slam, rose and indignantly went away, because people were laughing and talking in the drawing-room: "it's a shame!" they said, aloud. and, angular, arrogant and grimy, they stalked out through the door. "what strange people!" thought duco, smiling. "shadows of people!... their lines curl like arabesque through ours. why do they cross our lines with their petty movements and why are ours never crossed by those which perhaps would be dearest to our souls?..." he always took cornélie back to the via dei serpenti. they walked slowly through the silent, deserted streets. sometimes it was late in the evening, but sometimes it was immediately after dinner and then they would go through the corso and he would generally ask her to come and sit at aragno's for a little. she agreed and they drank their coffee amid the gaiety of the brightly-lit café, watching the bustle on the pavement outside. they exchanged few words, distracted by the passers-by and the visitors to the café; but they both enjoyed this moment and felt at one with each other. duco evidently did not give a thought to the unconventionality of their behaviour; but cornélie thought of mrs. van der staal and that she would not approve of it or consent to it in one of her daughters, to sit alone with a gentleman in a café in the evening. and cornélie also remembered the hague and smiled at the thought of her hague friends. and she looked at duco, who sat quietly, pleased to be sitting with her, and drank his coffee and spoke a word now and again or pointed to a queer type or a pretty woman passing.... one evening, after dinner, he suggested that they should all go to the ruins. it was full moon, a wonderful sight. but mevrouw was afraid of malaria, the girls of foot-pads; and duco and cornélie went by themselves. the streets were quite empty, the colosseum rose menacingly like a fortress in the night; but they went in and the moonlight blue of the night shone through the open arches: the round pit of the arena was black on one side with shadow, while the stream of moonlight poured in on the other side, like a white flood, like a cascade; and it was as though the night were haunted, as though the colosseum were haunted by all the dead past of rome, emperors, gladiators and martyrs; shadows prowled like lurking wild animals, a patch of light suggested a naked woman and the galleries seemed to rustle with the sound of the multitude. and yet there was nothing and duco and cornélie were alone, in the depths of the huge, colossal ruin, half in shadow and half in light; and, though she was not afraid, she was obsessed by that awful haunting of the past and pushed closer to him and clutched his arm and felt very, very small. he just pressed her hand, with his simple ease of manner, to reassure her. and the night oppressed her, the ghostliness of it all suffocated her, the moon seemed to whirl giddily in the sky and to expand to a gigantic size and spin round like a silver wheel. he said nothing, he was in one of his dreams, seeing the past before him. and silently they went away and he led her through the arch of titus into the forum. on the left rose the ruins of the imperial palaces; and all around them stood the black fragments, with a few pillars soaring on high and the white moonlight pouring down like a ghostly sea out of the night. they met no one, but she was frightened and clung tighter to his arm. when they sat down for a moment on a fragment of the foundation of some ancient building, she shivered with cold. he started up, said that she must be careful not to catch a chill; and they walked on and left the forum. he took her home and she went upstairs alone, striking a match to see her way up the dark staircase. once in her room, she perceived that it was dangerous to wander about the ruins at night. she reflected how little duco had spoken, not thinking of danger, lost in his nocturnal dream, peering into the awful ghostliness. why ... why had he not gone alone? why had he asked her to go with him? she fell asleep after a chaos of whirling thoughts: the prince and urania, the fat satin lady, the colosseum and the martyrs and duco and mrs. van der staal. his mother was so ordinary, his sisters charming but commonplace and he ... so strange! so simple, so unaffected, so unreserved; and for that very reason so strange. he would be impossible at the hague, among her friends. and she smiled as she thought of what he had said and how he had said it and how he could sit quietly silent, for minutes on end, with a smile about his lips, as though thinking of something beautiful.... but she must warn urania.... and she wearily fell asleep. chapter xv cornélie's premonition regarding mrs. van der staal's opinion of her intercourse with duco was confirmed: mevrouw spoke to her seriously, saying that she would compromise herself if she went on like that and adding that she had spoken to duco in the same sense. but cornélie answered rather haughtily and nonchalantly, declared that, after always minding the conventions and becoming very unhappy in spite of it, she had resolved to mind them no longer, that she valued duco's conversation and that she was not going to be deprived of it because of what people thought or said. and then, she asked mrs. van der staal, who were "people?" their three or four acquaintances at belloni's? who knew her besides? where else did she go? why should she care about the hague? and she gave a scornful laugh, loftily parrying mrs. van der staal's arguments. the conversation caused a coolness between them. wounded in her touchy over-sensitiveness, she did not come to dinner at belloni's that evening. next day, meeting duco at their little table in the osteria, she asked him what he thought of his mother's rebuke. he smiled vaguely, raising his eyebrows, obviously not realizing the commonplace truth of his mother's words, saying that those were just mamma's ideas, which of course were all very well and current in the set in which mamma and his sisters lived, but which he didn't enter into or bother about, unless cornélie thought that mamma was right. and cornélie blazed out contemptuously, shrugged her shoulders, asked who or what there was for whose sake she should allow herself to break off their friendly intercourse. they ordered a mezzo-fiasco between them and had a long, chatty lunch like two comrades, like two students. he said that he had been thinking over her pamphlet; he talked, to please her, about the modern woman, modern marriage, the modern girl. she condemned the way in which mrs. van der staal was bringing up her daughters, that light, frivolous education and that endless going about, on the look for a husband. she said that she spoke from experience. they walked along the via appia that afternoon and went to the catacombs, where a trappist showed them round. when cornélie returned home she felt pleasantly light and cheerful. she did not go out again; she piled up the logs on her fire against the evening, which was turning chilly, and supped off a little bread and jelly, so as not to go out for her dinner. sitting in her tea-gown, with her hands folded over her head, she stared into the briskly burning logs and let the evening speed past her. she was satisfied with her life, so free, independent of everything and everybody. she had a little money, she could go on living like this. she had no great needs. her life in rooms, in little restaurants was not expensive. she wanted no clothes. she felt satisfied. duco was an agreeable friend: how lonely she would be without him! only her life must acquire some aim. what aim? the feminist movement? but how, abroad? it was such a different movement to work at.... she would send her pamphlet now to a newly founded women's paper. but then? she wasn't in holland and she didn't want to go to holland; and yet there would certainly be more scope there for her activity, for exchanging views with others. whereas here, in rome.... an indolence overcame her, in the drowsiness of her cosy room. for duco had helped her to arrange her sitting-room. he certainly was a cultivated fellow, even though he was not modern. what a lot he knew about history, about italy; and how cleverly he told it all! the way he explained italy to her, she was interested in the country after all. only, he wasn't modern. he had no insight into italian politics, into the struggle between the quirinal and the vatican, into anarchism, which was showing its head at milan, into the riots in sicily.... an aim in life: what a difficult thing it was! and, in her evening drowsiness after a pleasant day, she did not feel the absence of an aim and enjoyed the soft luxury of letting her thoughts glide on in unison with the drowsy evening hours, in a voluptuous self-indulgence. she looked at the sheets of her pamphlet, scattered over her big writing-table, a real table to work at: they lay yellow under the light of her reading-lamp; they had not all been recopied, but she was not in the mood now; she threw a log into the little grate and the fire smoked and blazed. so pleasant, that foreign habit of burning wood instead of coal.... and she thought of her husband. she missed him sometimes. could she not have managed him, with a little tact and patience? after all, he was very nice during the period of their engagement. he was rough, but not bad. he might have sworn at her sometimes, but perhaps he did not mean any great harm. he waltzed divinely, he swung you round so firmly.... he was good-looking and, she had to confess, she was in love with him, if only for his handsome face, his handsome figure. there was something about his eyes and mouth that she was never able to resist. when he spoke, she had to look at his mouth. however, that was all over and done with.... after all, perhaps the life at the hague was too monotonous for her temperament. she liked travelling, seeing new people, developing new ideas; and she had never been able to settle down in her little set. and now she was free, independent of all ties, of all people. if mrs. van der staal was angry, she didn't care.... and, all the same, duco was rather modern, in his indifference to convention. or was it merely the artistic side in him? or was he, as a man who was not modern, indifferent to it even as she, a modern woman, was? a man could allow himself more. a man was not so easily compromised.... a modern woman. she repeated the words proudly. her drowsiness acquired a certain arrogance. she drew herself up, stretching out her arms, looked at herself in the glass: her slender figure, her delicate little face, a trifle pale, with the eyes big and grey and bright under their remarkably long lashes, her light-brown hair in a loose, tangled coil, the lines of her figure, like those of a drooping lily, very winsome in the creased folds of her old tea-gown, pale-pink and faded.... what was her path in life? she felt herself to be something more than a worker and fighter, to be very complex, felt that she was a woman too, felt a great womanliness inside her, like a weakness which would hamper her energy. and she wandered through the room, unable to decide to go to bed, and, staring into the gloomy ashes of the expiring fire, she thought of her future, of what she would become and how, of how she would go and whither, along which curve of life, wandering through what forests, winding through what alleys, crossing which other curves of which other, seeking souls.... chapter xvi the idea had long fixed itself in cornélie's mind that she must speak to urania hope; and one morning she sent her a note asking for an appointment that afternoon. miss hope wrote back assenting; and at five o'clock cornélie found her at home in her handsome and expensive sitting-room at belloni's: many lights, many flowers; urania hammering on the piano in an indoor gown of venetian lace; the table decked with a rich tea, with cut bread-and-butter, cakes and sweets. cornélie had said that she wanted to see miss hope alone, on a matter of importance, and at once asked if she would be alone, feeling a doubt of it, now that urania was receiving her so formally. but urania reassured her: she had said that she was at home to no one but mrs. de retz and was very curious to know what cornélie had come to talk about. cornélie reminded urania of her former warning and, when urania laughed, she took her hand and looked at her with such serious eyes that she made an impression of the american girl's frivolous nature and urania became puzzled. urania now suddenly thought it very momentous--a secret, an intrigue, a danger, in rome!--and they whispered together. and cornélie, no longer feeling anxious amid this increasing intimacy, confessed to urania what she had heard through the half-open door: the marchesa's machinations with her nephew, whom she was absolutely bent on marrying to a rich heiress at the behest of the prince's father, who seemed to have promised her so much for putting the match through. then she spoke of miss taylor's conversion, effected by rudyard: rudyard, who did not seem able to achieve his purpose with urania, failing to obtain a hold on her confiding, but frivolous, butterfly nature, and who, as cornélie suspected, had for that reason incurred the disfavour of his ecclesiastical superiors and vanished without settling his debt to the marchesa. his place appeared to have been taken by the two monsignori, who looked more dignified and worldly and displayed great unctuousness, were more lavish in smiles. and urania, staring at this danger, at these pit-falls under her feet which cornélie had suddenly revealed to her, now became really frightened, turned pale and promised to be on her guard. really she would have liked to tell her maid to pack up at once, so that they might leave rome as soon as possible, for another town, another pension, one with lots of titled people: she adored titles! and cornélie, seeing that she had made an impression, continued, spoke of herself, spoke of marriage in general, said that she had written a pamphlet against marriage and on the social position of divorced women. and she spoke of the suffering which she had been through and of the feminist movement in holland. and, once in the vein, she abandoned all restraint and talked more and more emphatically, until urania thought her exceedingly clever, a very clever girl, to be able to argue and write like that on a ques-tion brû-lante, laying a fine stress on the first syllables of the french words. she admitted that she would like to have the vote and, as she said this, spread out the long train of her lace tea-gown. cornélie spoke of the injustice of the law which leaves the wife nothing, takes everything from her and forces her entirely into the husband's power; and urania agreed with her and passed the little dish of chocolate-creams. and to the accompaniment of a second cup of tea they talked excitedly, both speaking at once, neither listening to what the other was saying; and urania said that it was a shame. from the general discussion they relapsed to the consideration of their particular interests: cornélie depicted the character of her husband, unable, in the coarseness of his nature, to understand a woman or to consent that a woman should stand beside him and not beneath him. and she once more returned to the jesuits, to the danger of rome for rich girls travelling alone, to that virago of a marchesa and to the prince, that titled bait which the jesuits flung to win a soul and to improve the finances of an impoverished italian house which had remained faithful to the pope and refused to serve the king. and both of them were so vehement and excited that they did not hear the knock and looked up only when the door slowly opened. they started, glanced round and both turned pale when they saw the prince of forte-braccio enter the room. he apologized with a smile, said that he had seen a light in miss urania's sitting-room, that the porter had told him she was engaged, but that he had ventured to disobey her orders. and he sat down; and, in spite of all that they had been saying, urania thought it delightful to have the prince sitting there and accepting a cup of tea at her hands and graciously consenting to eat a piece of cake. and urania showed her album of coats of arms--the prince had already contributed an impression of his--and next the album with patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. then the prince laughed and felt in his pocket for an envelope; he opened it and carefully produced a cutting of blue brocade embroidered with silver and seed-pearls. "what is it?" asked urania, in ecstasy. and he said that he had brought her a pattern of her majesty's last dress; his cousin--not a black, like himself, but a white, belonging not to the papal but to the court party and a lady-in-waiting to the queen--had procured this cutting for him for urania's album. urania would see it herself: the queen would wear the dress at next week's court ball. he was not going, he did not even go to his cousin's officially, not to her parties; but he saw her sometimes, because of the family relationship, out of friendship. and he begged urania not to give him away: it might injure him in his career--"what career?" cornélie wondered to herself--if people knew that he saw much of his cousin; but he had called on her pretty often lately, for urania's sake, to get her that pattern. and urania was so grateful that she forgot all about the social position of girls and women, married or unmarried, and would gladly have sacrificed her right to the franchise for such a charming italian prince. cornélie became vexed, rose, bowed coldly to the prince and drew urania with her to the door: "don't forget what we have been saying," she warned her. "be on your guard." and she saw the prince look at her sarcastically, as they whispered together, suspecting that she was talking about him, but proud of the power of his personality and his title and his attentions over the daughter of an american stockinet-manufacturer. chapter xvii a coolness had arisen between mrs. van der staal and cornélie; and cornélie no longer went to dine at belloni's. she did not see mevrouw and the girls again for weeks; but she saw duco daily. notwithstanding the essential differences in their characters, they had grown so accustomed to being together that they missed each other if a day passed without their meeting; and so they had gradually come to lunch and dine together every day, almost as a matter of course: in the morning at the osteria and in the evening at some small restaurant or other, usually very simply. to avoid dividing the bill, duco would pay one time and cornélie the next. generally they had much to talk about: he taught her rome, took her after lunch to all manner of churches and museums; and under his guidance she began to understand, appreciate and admire. by unconscious suggestion he inspired her with some of his ideas. she found painting very difficult, but understood sculpture much more readily. and she began to look upon him as not merely morbid; she looked up to him, he spoke quite simply to her, as from his exalted standpoint of feeling and knowledge and understanding, of very exalted matters which she, as a girl and later as a young married woman, had never seen in the glorious apotheosis which he caused to rise before her like the first gleam of a dawn, of a new day in which she beheld new types of life, created of all that was noblest in the artist's soul. he regretted that he could not show her giotto in the santa croce at florence and the primitives in the uffizi and that he had to teach her rome straight away; but he introduced her to all the exuberant art-life of the papal renascence, until, under the influence of his speech, she shared that life for a single intense second and until michael angelo and raphael stood out before her, also living. after a day like that, he would think that after all she was not so hopelessly inartistic; and she thought of him with respect, even after the suggestion was interrupted and when she reflected on what she had seen and heard and really, deep down in herself, no longer understood things so well as she had that morning, because she was lacking in love for them. but so much glamour of colour and the past remained whirling before her eyes in the evening that it made her pamphlet seem drab and dull; and the feminist movement ceased to interest her and she did not care about urania hope. he admitted to himself that he had quite lost his peace of mind, that cornélie stood before him in his thoughts, between him and his old triptychs, that his lonely, friendless, ingenuous, simple life, content with wandering through and outside rome, with reading, dreaming and now and then painting a little, had changed entirely in habit and in line, now that the line of his life had crossed that of hers and they both seemed to be going one way, he did not really know why. love was not exactly the word for the feeling that drew him towards her. and just very vaguely, inwardly and unconsciously he suspected, though he never actually said or even thought as much, that it was the line of her figure, which was marked by something almost byzantine, the slenderness of the frame, the long arms, the drooping lily-line of the woman who suffered, with the melancholy in her grey eyes, overshadowed by their almost too-long lashes; that it was the noble shape of her hand, small and pretty for a tall woman; that it was a movement of her neck, as of a swaying stalk, or a tired swan trying to glance backwards. he had never met many women and those whom he had met had always seemed very ordinary; but she was unreal to him, in the contradictions of her character, in its vagueness and intangibility, in all the half-tints which escaped his eye, accustomed to half-tints though it was.... what was she like? what he had always seen in her character was a woman in a novel, a heroine in a poem. what was she as a living woman of flesh and blood? she was not artistic and she was not inartistic; she had no energy and yet she did not lack energy; she was not precisely cultivated; and yet, obeying her impulse and her intuition, she wrote a pamphlet on one of the most modern questions and worked at it and revised and copied it, till it became a piece of writing no worse than another. she had a spacious way of thinking, loathing all the pettiness of the cliques, no longer feeling at home, after her suffering, in her little hague set; and here, in rome, at a dance she listened behind a door to a nonsensical conspiracy, hardly worthy of the name, he thought, and had gone to urania hope to mingle with the confused curves of smaller lives, curves without importance, of people whom he despised for their lack of line, of colour, of vision, of haze, of everything that was dear as life to him and made up life for him.... what was she like? he did not understand her. but her curve was of importance to him. she was not without a line: a line of art and line of life; she moved in the dream of her own indefiniteness before his gazing eyes; and she loomed up out of the haze, as out of the twilight of his studio atmosphere, and stood before him like a phantom. he would not call that love; but she was dear to him like a revelation that constantly veiled itself in secrecy. and his life as a lonely wanderer was, it was true, changed; but she had introduced no inharmonious habit into his life: he enjoyed taking his meals in a little café or osteria; and she took them with him easily and simply, not squalidly but pleasantly and harmoniously, with an adaptability and with just as much natural grace as when she used to dine of an evening at the table-d'hôte at belloni's. all this--that contradictory admixture of unreality, of inconsistency; that living vision of indefiniteness; that intangibility of her individual essence; that self-concealment of the soul; that blending of her essential characteristics--had become a charm to him: a restlessness, a need, a nervous want in his life, otherwise so restful, so easily contented and calm, but above all a charm, an indispensable every-day charm. and, without troubling about what people might think, about what mrs. van der staal thought, they would one day go to tivoli together, or another day walk from castel gandolfo to albano and drive to the lago di nemi and picnic at the villa sforza-cesarini, with the broken capital of a classic pillar for a table. they rested side by side in the shadow of the trees, admired the camellias, silently contemplated the glassy clearness of the lake, diana's looking-glass, and drove back over frascati. they were silent in the carriage; and he smiled as he reflected how they had been taken everywhere that day for man and wife. she also thought of their increasing intimacy and at the same time thought that she would never marry again. and she thought of her husband and compared him with duco, so young in the face but with eyes full of depth and soul, a voice so calm and even, with everything that he said much to the point, so accurately informed; and then his calmness, his simplicity, his lack of passion, as though his nerves had schooled themselves only to feel the calmness of art in the dreamy mist of his life. and she confessed to herself, there, in the carriage beside him, amid the softly shelving hills, purpling away in the evening, while before her faded the rose-mallow of a pale gold sunset, that he was dear to her because of that cleverness, that absence of passion, that simplicity and that accuracy of information--a clear voice sounding up out of the dreamy twilight--and that she was happy to be sitting beside him, to hear that voice and by chance to feel his hand, happy in that her line of life had crossed his, in that their two lines seemed to form a path towards the increasing brightness, the gradual daily elucidation of their immediate future.... chapter xviii cornélie now saw no one except duco. mrs. van der staal had broken with her and would not allow her daughters to have any further intercourse with her. a coolness had arisen even between the mother and the son. cornélie saw no one now except duco and, at times, urania hope. the american girl came to her pretty often and told her about belloni's, where the people talked about cornélie and duco and commented on their relations. urania was glad to think herself above that hotel gossip, but still she wanted to warn cornélie. her words displayed a simple spontaneity of friendship that appealed to cornélie. when cornélie, however, asked after the prince, she became silent and confused and evidently did not wish to say much. then, after the court ball, at which the queen had really worn the dress embroidered with seed-pearls, urania came and looked cornélie up again and admitted, over a cup of tea, that she had that morning promised to go and see the prince at his own place. she said this quite simply, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. cornélie was horrified and asked her how she could have promised such a thing. "why not?" urania replied. "what is there in it? i receive his visits. if he asks me to come and see his rooms--he lives in the palazzo ruspoli and wants to show me his pictures and miniatures and old lace--why should i refuse to go? why should i make a fuss about it? i am above any such narrow-mindedness. we american girls go about freely with our men friends. and what about yourself? you go for walks with mr. van der staal, you lunch with him, you go for trips with him, you go to his studio...." "i have been married," said cornélie. "i am responsible to no one. you have your parents. what you are thinking of doing is imprudent and high-handed. tell me, does the prince think of ... marrying you?" "if i become a catholic." "and ...?" "i think ... i shall. i have written to chicago," she said, hesitatingly. she closed her beautiful eyes for a second and went pale, because the title of princess and duchess flashed before her sight. "only ..." she began. "only what?" "i sha'n't have a cheerful life. the prince belongs to the blacks. they are always in mourning because of the pope. they have hardly anything in their set: no dances, no parties. if we got married, i should like him to come to america with me. their home in the abruzzi is a lonely, tumbledown castle. his father is a very proud, stand-offish, silent person. i have been told so by ever so many people. what am i to do, cornélie? i'm very fond of gilio: his name is virgilio. and then, you know, the title is an old italian title: principe di forte-braccio, duca di san stefano.... but then, you see, that's all there is to it. san stefano is a hole. that's where his papa lives. they sell wine and live on that. and olive-oil; but they don't make any money. my father manufactures stockinet; but he has grown rich on it. they haven't many family-jewels. i have made enquiries.... his cousin, the contessa di rosavilla, the lady in waiting to the queen, is nice ... but we shouldn't see her officially. i shouldn't be able to go anywhere. it does strike me as rather boring." cornélie spoke vehemently, blazed out and repeated her phrases: against marriage in general and now against this marriage in particular, merely for the sake of a title. urania assented: it was merely for the title; but then there was gilio too, of course: he was so nice and she was fond of him. but cornélie didn't believe a word of it and told her so straight out. urania began to cry: she did not know what to do. "and when were you to go to the prince?" "this evening." "don't go." "no, no, you're right, i sha'n't go." "do you promise me?" "yes, yes." "don't go, urania." "no, i sha'n't go. you're a dear girl. you're quite right: i won't go. i swear to you i won't." chapter xix the undertaking which urania had given was so vague, however, that cornélie felt uneasy and spoke of it to duco that evening, when she met him at the restaurant. but he was not interested in urania, in what she did or didn't do; and he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. cornélie, on the other hand, was silent and absent-minded and did not listen to what he was talking about: a side-panel of a triptych, undoubtedly by lippo memmi, which he had discovered in a little shop by the tiber; the angel of the annunciation, almost as beautiful as the one in the uffizi, kneeling with the stir of his last flight yet about him, with the lily-stem in his hands. but the dealer asked two hundred lire for it and he did not want to give more than fifty. and yet the dealer had not mentioned memmi's name, did not suspect that the angel was by memmi. cornélie was not listening; and suddenly she said: "i am going to the palazzo ruspoli." he looked up in surprise: "what for?" "to ask for miss hope." he was dumb with amazement and continued to look at her open-mouthed. "if she's not there," cornélie went on, "it's all right. if she is, if she has gone after all, i'll ask to speak to her on urgent business." he did not know what to say, thinking her sudden idea so strange, so eccentric, thinking it so unnecessary that her curve should cross the curves of insignificant, indifferent people, that he did not know how to choose his words. cornélie glanced at her watch: "it's past half-past nine. if she does go, she will go about this time." she called the waiter and paid the bill. and she buttoned her coat and stood up. he followed after her: "cornélie," he began, "isn't what you are doing rather strange? it'll mean all sorts of worries for you." "if one always objected to being worried, one would never do a good action." they walked on in silence, he moving irritably by her side. they did not speak: he thought her intention simply crazy; she thought him wanting in chivalry, not to wish to protect urania. she was thinking of her pamphlet, of her fellow-women; and she wanted to protect urania from marriage, from that prince. and they walked through the corso to the palazzo ruspoli. he became nervous, made another attempt to restrain her; but she had already asked the porter: "is il signore principe at home?" the man looked at her suspiciously: "no," he said, curtly. "i believe he is. if so, ask if miss hope is with his excellency. miss hope was not at home; i believe that she was coming to see the prince this evening; and i want to speak to her urgently ... on a matter which will not brook delay. here: la signora de retz...." she handed him her card. she spoke with the greatest self-possession and referred to urania's visit calmly and simply, as though it were an every-day occurrence for american girls to call on italian princes in the evening and as though she were persuaded that the porter knew of this custom. the man was disconcerted by her attitude, bowed, took the card and went away. cornélie and duco waited in the portico. he admired her calmness. he considered her behaviour eccentric; but she carried out her eccentricity with a self-assurance which once more showed her in a new light. would he never understand her, would he never grasp anything or know anything for certain of that changeful and intangible vagueness of hers? he could never have spoken those few words to that porter in just that tone! where had she got that tact from, that dignified, serious attitude towards that imposing janitor, with his long cane and his cocked hat? she did it all as easily as she ordered their simple dinner, with a pleasant familiarity, of the waiter at their little restaurant. the porter returned: "miss hope and his excellency beg that you will come upstairs." she looked at duco with a triumphant smile, amused at his confusion: "will you come too?" "why, no," he stammered. "i can wait for you here." she followed the footman up the stairs. the wide corridor was hung with family-portraits. the drawing-room door was open and the prince came out to meet her. "please forgive me, prince," she said, calmly, putting out her hand. his eyes were small and pinched and gleamed like carbuncles; he was white with rage; but he controlled himself and pressed his lips to the hand which she gave him. "forgive me," she went on. "i want to speak to miss hope on an urgent matter." she entered the drawing-room; urania was there, blushing and embarrassed. "you understand," cornélie said, with a smile, "that i would not have disturbed you if it had not been important. a question between women ... and still important!" she continued, jestingly; and the prince made an insipid, gallant reply. "may i speak to miss hope alone for a moment?" the prince looked at her. he suspected unfriendliness in her and more, hostility. but he bowed, with his insipid smile, and said that he would leave the ladies to themselves. he went to another room. "what is it, cornélie?" asked urania, in agitation. she took cornélie's two hands and looked at her anxiously. "nothing," said cornélie, severely. "i have nothing to say to you. only i had my suspicions and felt sure that you would not keep your promise. i wanted to make certain if you were here. why did you come?" urania began to weep. "don't cry!" whispered cornélie, mercilessly. "for god's sake don't start crying. you've done the most thoughtless thing imaginable...." "i know i have!" urania confessed, nervously, drying her tears. "then why did you do it?" "i couldn't help it." "alone, with him, in the evening! a man well-known to be a bad lot." "i know." "what do you see in him?" "i'm fond of him." "you only want to marry him for his title. for the sake of his title you're compromising yourself. what if he doesn't respect you this evening as his future wife? what if he compels you to be his mistress?" "cornélie! don't!" "you're a child, a thoughtless child. and your father lets you travel by yourself ... to see 'dear old italy!' you're an american and broad-minded: that's all right; to travel through the world pluckily on your own is all right; but you're not a woman, you're a baby!" "cornélie...." "come away with me; say that you're going with me ... for an urgent reason. or no ... better say nothing. stay. but i'll stay too." "yes, you stay too." "we'll send for him now." "yes." cornélie rang the bell. a footman appeared. "tell his excellency that we are ready." the man went away. in a little while the prince entered. he had never been treated like that in his own house. he was seething with rage, but he remained very polite and outwardly calm: "is the important matter settled?" he asked, with his small eyes and his hypocritical smile. "yes; thank you very much for your discretion in leaving us to ourselves," said cornélie. "now that i have spoken to miss hope, i am greatly relieved by what she has told me. aha, you would like to know what we were talking about!" the prince raised his eyebrows. cornélie had spoken archly, holding up her finger as though in threat, smiling; and the prince looked at her and saw that she was handsome. not with the striking beauty and freshness of urania hope, but with a more complex attractiveness, that of a married woman, divorced, but very young; that of a fin-de-siècle woman, with a faintly perverse expression in her deep grey eyes, moving under very long lashes; that of a woman of peculiar grace in the drooping lines of her tired, lax, morbid charm: a woman who knew life; a woman who saw through him: he was certain of it; a woman who, though disliking him, nevertheless spoke to him coquettishly in order to attract him, to win him, unconsciously, from sheer womanly perversity. and he saw her, in her perverse beauty, and admired her, sensitive as he was to various types of women. he suddenly thought her handsomer and less commonplace than urania and much more distinguished and not so ingenuously susceptible to his title, a thing which he thought so silly in urania. he was suddenly at his ease with her, his anger subsided: he thought it fun to have two good-looking women with him instead of one; and he jested in return, saying that he was consumed with curiosity, that he had been listening at the door but had been unable to catch a word, alas! cornélie laughed with coquettish gaiety and looked at her watch. she said something about going, but sat down at the same time, unbuttoned her coat and said to the prince: "i have heard so much about your miniatures. now that i have the chance, may i see them?" the prince was willing, charmed by the look in her eyes, by her voice; he was all fire and flame in a second. "but," said cornélie, "my escort is waiting outside in the portico. he would not come up: he doesn't know you. it is mr. van der staal." the prince laughed as he glanced at her. he knew of the gossip at belloni's. he did not for a moment doubt the existence of a liaison between van der staal and signora de retz. he knew that they did not care for the proprieties. and he began to like cornélie very much. "but i will send to mr. van der staal at once to ask him to come up." "he is waiting in the portico," said cornélie. "he won't like to...." "i'll go myself," said the prince, with obliging vivacity. he left the room. the ladies stayed behind. cornélie took off her coat, but kept on her hat, because her hair was sure to be untidy. she looked into the glass: "have you your powder on you?" she asked urania. urania took her little ivory powder-box from her bag and handed it to cornélie. and, while cornélie powdered her face, urania looked at her friend and did not understand. she remembered the impression of seriousness which cornélie had made on her at their first meeting: studying rome; afterwards, writing a pamphlet on the woman question and the position of divorced women. then her warnings against marriage and the prince. and now she suddenly saw her as a most attractive, frivolous woman, irresistibly charming, even more bewitching than actually beautiful, full of coquetry in the depths of her grey eyes, which glanced up and down under the curling lashes, simply dressed in a dark-silk blouse and a cloth skirt, but with so much distinction and so much coquetry, with so much dignity and yet with a touch of yielding winsomeness, that she hardly knew her. but the prince had returned, bringing duco with him. duco was nervously reluctant, not knowing what had happened, not grasping how cornélie had acted. he saw her sitting quietly, smiling; and she at once explained that the prince was going to show her his miniatures. duco declared flatly that he did not care for miniatures. the prince suspected from his irritable tone that he was jealous. and this suspicion incited the prince to pay attentions to cornélie. and he behaved as though he were showing his miniatures only to her, as though he were showing her his old lace. she admired the lace in particular and rolled it between her delicate fingers. she asked him to tell her about his grandmothers, who used to wear the lace: had they had any adventures? he told her one, which made her laugh very much; then he told an anecdote or two, vivaciously, flaming up under her glance, and she laughed. amid the atmosphere of that big drawing-room, his study--it contained his writing-table--with the candles lighted and flowers everywhere for urania, a certain perverse gaiety began to reign, an airy joie de vivre. but only between cornélie and the prince. urania had fallen silent; and duco did not speak a word. cornélie was a revelation to him also. he had never seen her like that: not at the dance on christmas day, nor at the table-d'hôte, nor in his studio, nor on their excursions, nor in their restaurant. was she a woman, or was she ten women? and he confessed to himself that he loved her, that he loved her more at each revelation, more with each woman that he saw in her, like a new facet which she made to gleam and glitter. but he could not speak, could not join in their pleasantry, feeling strange in that atmosphere, strange in that atmosphere of buoyant animal spirits, caused by nothing but aimless words, as though the french and italian which they mixed up together were dropping so many pearls, as though their jests shone like so much tinsel, as though their equivocal playing upon words had the iridescence of a rainbow.... the prince regretted that his tea was no longer fit to drink, but he rang for some champagne. he thought that his plans had partly failed that evening, for, fearing to lose urania, he had intended to compel her; seeing her hesitation, he had resolved to force the irreparable. but his nature was so devoid of seriousness--he was marrying to please his father and the marchesa belloni rather than himself; he enjoyed his life quite as well with a load of debts and no wife as he could hope to do with a wife and millions of money--that he began to consider the failure of his plans highly amusing and had to laugh within himself when he thought of his father, of his aunt, the marchesa, and of their machinations, which had no effect on urania, because a pretty, flirtatious woman had objected. "why did she object?" he wondered, as he poured out the foaming monopole, spilling it over the glasses. "why does she put herself between me and the american stocking-seller? is she herself in italy hunting for a title?" but he did not care: he thought the intruder charming, pretty, very pretty, coquettish, seductive, bewitching. he fussed around her, neglecting urania, almost forgetting to fill her glass. and, when it grew late and cornélie at last rose to go and drew urania's arm through hers and looked at the prince with a glance of triumph which they mutually understood, he whispered in her ear: "i am ever so grateful to you for visiting me in my humble abode. you have defeated me: i acknowledge myself defeated." the words appeared to be merely an allusion to their jesting discussion about nothing; but, uttered between him and her, between the prince and cornélie, they sounded full of meaning; and he saw the smile of victory in her eyes.... he remained behind in his room and poured himself out what remained of the champagne. and, as he raised the glass to his lips, he said, aloud: "o, che occhi! che belli occhi!... che belli occhi!..." chapter xx next day, when duco met cornélie at the osteria, she was very cheerful and excited. she told him that she had already received a reply from the woman's paper to which she had sent her pamphlet the week before and that her work was not only accepted but would be paid for. she was so proud at earning money for the first time that she was as merry as a little child. she did not speak of the previous evening, seemed to have forgotten urania, but felt an exuberant need to talk. she formed all sorts of great plans: to travel about as a journalist, to fling herself into the movement of the great cities, to pursue every reality, to have herself sent by some paper as a delegate to congresses and festivals. the few guilders which she was earning already made her intoxicated with zeal; and she would like to make a lot of money and do a great deal and consider no fatigue. he thought her simply adorable: in the half light of the osteria, as she sat at the little table eating her gnocchi, with in front of her the mezzofiasco of pale-yellow wine of the country, her usual languor acquired a new vivacity which astonished him; her outline, half-dark on the left, lighted on the right by the sunshine in the street, acquired a modern grace of drawing which reminded him of the french draughtsmen: the rather pale face with the delicate features, lit up by her smile, faintly indicated under the sailor hat, which slanted over her eyes; the hair, touched with gold, or a dark light-brown; the white veil raised into a rumpled mist above; her figure, slender and gracious in the simple, unbuttoned coat, with a bunch of violets in her blouse. the manner in which she helped herself to wine, in which she addressed the cameriere--the only one, who knew them well, from seeing them daily--with a pleasant familiarity; the vivacity replacing her languor; her great plans, her gay phrases: all this seemed to shine upon him, unconstrained and yet distinguished, free and yet womanly and, above all, easy, as she was at her ease everywhere, with an assimilative tact which for him constituted a peculiar harmony. he thought of the evening before, but she did not speak of it. he thought of that revelation of her coquetry, but she was not thinking of coquetry. she was never coquettish with him. she looked up to him, regarded him as clever and exceptional, though not belonging to his time; she respected him for the things which he said and thought; and she was as matter of fact towards him as one chum towards another, who happened to be older and cleverer. she felt for him a sincere friendship, an indescribable something that implied the need of being together, of living together, as though the lines of their two lives should form one line. it was not a sisterly feeling and it was not passion and to her mind it was not love; but it was a great sense of respectful tenderness, of longing admiration and of affectionate delight at having met him. if she never saw him again, she would miss him as she would never miss any one in her life. and that he took no interest in modern questions did not lower him in the eyes of this young modern amazon, who was about to wave her first banner. it might vex her for an instant, but it did not carry weight in her estimation of him. and he saw that, with him, she was simply affectionate, without coquetry. yet he would never forget what she had been like yesterday, with the prince. he had felt jealousy and noticed it in urania also. but she herself had acted so spontaneously in harmony with her nature that she no longer thought of that evening, of the prince, of urania, of her own coquettishness or of any possible jealousy on their side. he paid the bill--it was his turn--and she gaily took his arm and said that she had a surprise in store for him, with which he would be very pleased. she wanted to give him something, a handsome, a very handsome keepsake. she wanted to spend on it the money she was going to receive for her article. but she hadn't got it yet ... as though that mattered! it would come in due time. and she wanted to give him his present now. he laughed and asked what it could be. she hailed a carriage and whispered an address to the driver. duco did not hear. what could it be? but she refused to tell him yet. the vetturino drove them through the borgo to the tiber and stopped outside a dark little old-curiosity-shop, where the wares lay heaped up right out into the street. "cornélie!" duco exclaimed, guessing. "your lippo memmi angel. i'm getting it for you. not a word!" the tears came to his eyes. they entered the shop. "ask him how much he wants for it." he was too much moved to speak; and cornélie had to ask the price and bargain. she did not bargain long: she bought the panel for a hundred and twenty lire. she herself carried it to the victoria. and they drove back to his studio. they carried the angel up the stairs together, as though they were bearing an unsullied happiness into his home. in the studio they placed the angel on a chair. of a noble aspect, of a somewhat mongolian type, with long, almond-shaped eyes, the angel had just knelt down in the last stir of his flight; and the gold scarf of his gold-and-purple cloak fluttered in the air while his long wings quivered straight above him. duco stared at his memmi, filled with a two-fold emotion, because of the angel and because of her. and with a natural gesture he spread out his arms: "may i thank you, cornélie?" and he embraced her; and she returned his kiss. chapter xxi when she came home she found the prince's card. it was an ordinary civility after yesterday evening, her unexpected visit to the palazzo ruspoli, and she did not give it a second thought. she was in a pleasant frame of mind, pleased with herself, glad that her work would appear first as an article in het recht der vrouw [ ]--she would publish it as a pamphlet afterwards--and glad that she had made duco happy with the memmi. she changed into her tea-gown and sat down by the fire in her musing attitude and thought of how she could carry out her great plans. to whom ought she to apply? there was an international women's congress sitting in london; and het recht der vrouw had sent her a prospectus. she turned over the pages. different feminist leaders were to speak; there would be numbers of social questions discussed: the psychology of the child; the responsibility of the parents; the influence on domestic life of women's admission to all the professions; women in art, women in medicine; the fashionable woman; the woman at home, on the stage; marriage- and divorce-laws. in addition the prospectus gave concise biographies of the speakers, with their portraits. there were american, russian, english, swedish, danish women; nearly every nationality was represented. there were old women and young women; some pretty, some ugly; some masculine, some womanly; some hard and energetic, with sexless boys' faces; one or two only were elegant, with low-cut dresses and waved hair. it was not easy to divide them into groups. what impulse in their lives had prompted them to join in the struggle for women's rights? in some, no doubt, inclination, nature; in an occasional case, vocation; in another, the desire to be in the fashion. and, in her own case, what was the impulse?... she dropped the prospectus in her lap and stared into the fire and reflected. her drawing-room education passed before her once more, followed by her marriage, by her divorce.... what was the impulse? what was the inducement?... she had come to it gradually, to go abroad, to extend her sphere of vision, to reflect, to learn about art, about the modern life of women. she had glided gradually along the line of her life, with no great effort of will or striving, without even thinking much or feeling much.... she glanced into herself, as though she were reading a modern novel, the psychology of a woman. sometimes she seemed to will things, to wish to strive, as just now, to pursue her great plans. sometimes she would sit thinking, as she often did in these days, beside her cosy fire. sometimes she felt, as she now did, for duco. but mostly her life had been a gradual gliding along the line which she had to follow, urged by the gentle pressure of the finger of fate.... for a moment she saw it clearly. there was a great sincerity in her: she never posed either to herself or to others. there were contradictions in her, but she recognized them all, in so far as she could see herself. but the open landscape of her soul became clear to her at that moment. she saw the complexity of her being gleam with its many facets.... she had taken to writing, out of impulse and intuition; but was her writing any good? a doubt rose in her mind. a copy of the code lay on her table, a survival of the days of her divorce; but had she understood the law correctly? her article was accepted; but was the judgement of the editress to be trusted? as her eyes wandered once again over those women's portraits and biographies, she became afraid that her work would not be good, would be too superficial, and that her ideas were not directed by study and knowledge. but she could also imagine her own photograph appearing in that prospectus, with her name under it and a brief comment: writer of the social position of divorced women, with the name of the paper, the date and so on. and she smiled: how highly convincing it sounded! but how difficult it was to study, to work and understand and act and move in the modern movement of life! she was now in rome: she would have liked to be in london. but it did not suit her at the moment to make the journey. she had felt rich when she bought duco's memmi, thinking of the payment for her article; and now she felt poor. she would much have liked to go to london. but then she would have missed duco. and the congress lasted only a week. she was pretty well at home here now, was beginning to love rome, her rooms, the colosseum lying yonder like a dark oval, like a sombre wing at the end of the city, with the hazy-blue mountains behind it. then the prince came into her mind and for the first time she thought of yesterday, saw that evening again, an evening of jesting and champagne: duco silent and sulky, urania depressed and the prince small, lively, slender, roused from his slackness as an aristocratic man-about-town and with his narrow carbuncle eyes. she thought him really pleasant; once in a way she liked that atmosphere of coquetry and flirtation; and the prince had understood her. she had saved urania, she was sure of that; and she felt the content of her good action.... she was too lazy to dress and go to the restaurant. she was not very hungry and would stay at home and sup on what was in her cupboard: a couple of eggs, bread, some fruit. but she remembered duco and that he would certainly be waiting for her at their little table and she wrote him a note and sent it by the hall-porter's boy.... duco was just coming down, on his way out to the restaurant, when he met the little fellow on the stairs. he read the note and felt as if he was suffering a grievous disappointment. he felt small and unhappy, like a child. and he went back to his studio, lit a single lamp, threw himself on a broad couch and lay staring in the dusk at memmi's angel, who, still standing on the chair, glimmered vaguely gold in the middle of the room, sweet as comfort, with his gesture of annunciation, as though he sought to announce all the mystery that was about to be fulfilled.... chapter xxii a few days later, cornélie was expecting a visit from the prince, who had asked her for an appointment. she was sitting at her writing-table, correcting proofs of her article. a lamp on the writing-table cast a soft glow over her through a yellow silk shade; and she wore her tea-gown of white crêpe de chine, with a bunch of violets at her breast. another lamp, on a pedestal, cast a second gleam from a corner; and the room flickered in cosy intimacy with the third light from the log-fire, falling over water-colours by duco, sketches and photographs, white anenomes in vases, violets everywhere and one tall palm. the writing-table was littered with books and printed sheets, bearing witness to her work. there was a knock at the door; and, at her "come in," the prince entered. she remained seated for a moment, laid down her pen and rose. she went up to him with a smile and held out her hand. he kissed it. he was very smartly dressed in a frock-coat, with a silk hat and pale-grey gloves; he wore a pearl pin in his tie. they sat down by the fire and he paid her compliments in quick succession, on her sitting-room, her dress and her eyes. she made a jesting reply; and he asked if he was disturbing her: "perhaps you were writing an interesting letter to some one near your heart?" "no, i was revising some proofs." "proofs?" "yes." "do you write?" "i have just begun to." "a story?" "no, an article." "an article? what about?" she gave him the long title. he looked at her open-mouthed. she laughed gaily: "you would never have believed it, would you?" "santa maria!" he murmured in surprise, unaccustomed in his own world to "modern" women, taking part in a feminist movement. "dutch?" "yes, dutch." "write in french next time: then i can read it." she laughed and gave her promise, poured him out a cup of tea, handed the chocolates. he nibbled at them: "are you so serious? have you always been? you were not serious the other day." "sometimes i am very serious." "so am i." "i gathered that. if i had not come that time, you might have become very serious." he gave a fatuous laugh and looked at her knowingly: "you are a wonderful woman!" he said. "very interesting and very clever. what you want to happen happens." "sometimes." "sometimes what i want also. sometimes i also am very clever. when i want a thing. but generally i don't want it." "you did the other day." he laughed: "yes! you were cleverer than i then. to-morrow perhaps i shall be cleverer than you." "who knows!" they both laughed. he nibbled the chocolates in the dish, one after the other, and asked if he might have a glass of port instead of tea. she poured him out a glass. "may i give you something?" "what?" "a souvenir of our first acquaintance." "it is very charming of you. what is it to be?" he took something wrapped in tissue-paper from his pocket and handed it to her. she opened the little parcel and saw a strip of old venetian lace, worked in the shape of a flounce, for a low bodice. "do accept it," he besought her. "it is a lovely piece. it is such a pleasure to me to give it to you." she looked at him with all her coquetry in her eyes, as though she were trying to see through him. "you must wear it like this." he stood up, took the lace and draped it over her white tea-gown from shoulder to shoulder. his fingers fumbled with the folds, his lips just touched her hair. she thanked him for his gift. he sat down again: "i am glad that you will accept it." "have you given miss hope something too?" he laughed, with his little laugh of conquest: "patterns are all she wants, patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. i wouldn't dare to give you patterns. to you i give old lace." "but you nearly ruined your career for the sake of that pattern?" "oh, well!" he laughed. "which career?" "oh, don't!" he said, evasively. "tell me, what do you advise me to do?" "what do you mean?" "shall i marry her?" "i am against all marriage, between cultivated people." she wanted to repeat some of her phrases, but thought to herself, why? he would not understand them. he looked at her profoundly, with his carbuncle eyes: "so you are in favour of free love?" "sometimes. not always. between cultivated people." he was certain now, had any doubt still lingered in his mind, that a liaison existed between her and van der staal. "and do you think me ... cultivated?" she laughed provocatively, with a touch of scorn in her voice: "listen. shall i speak to you seriously?" "i wish you would." "i consider neither you nor miss hope suited for free love." "so i am not cultivated?" "i don't mean it in the sense of being civilized. i mean modern culture." "so i am not modern." "no," she said, slightly irritated. "teach me to be modern." she gave a nervous laugh: "oh, don't let us talk like this! you want to know my advice. i advise you not to marry urania." "why not?" "because you would both of you have a wretched life. she is a dear little american parvenue...." "i am offering her what i possess; she is offering me what she possesses...." he nibbled at the chocolates. she shrugged her shoulders: "then marry her," she said, with indifference. "tell me that you don't want me to and i won't." "and your father? and the marchesa?" "what do you know about them?" "oh ... everything and nothing!" "you are a demon!" he exclaimed. "an angel and a demon! tell me, what do you know about my father and the marchesa?" "for how much are you selling yourself to urania? for not less than ten millions?" he looked at her in bewilderment. "but the marchesa thinks five enough. and a very handsome sum it is: five millions. which is it, dollars or lire?" he clapped his hands together: "you are a devil!" he cried. "you are an angel and a devil! how do you know? how do you know? do you know everything?" she flung herself back in her chair and laughed: "everything." "but how?" she looked at him and shook her head tantalizingly. "tell me." "no. it's my secret." "and you think that i ought not to sell myself?" "i dare not advise you as regards your own interest." "and as regards urania?" "i advise her not to do it." "have you done so already?" "once in a way." "so you are my enemy?" he exclaimed, angrily. "no," she said, gently, wishing to conciliate him. "i am a friend." "a friend? to what length?" "to the length to which i wish to go." "not the length to which i wish?" "oh, no, never!" "but perhaps we both wish to go to the same length?" he had stood up, with his blood on fire. she remained seated calmly, almost languidly, with her head thrown back. she did not reply. he fell on his knees, seized her hand and was kissing it before she could prevent him: "oh, angel, angel. oh, demon!" he muttered, between his kisses. she now withdrew her hand, pushed him away from her gently and said: "how quick an italian is with his kisses!" she laughed at him. he rose from his knees: "teach me what dutchwomen are like, though they are slower than we." she pointed to his chair, with an imperious gesture: "sit down," she said. "i am not a typical dutchwoman. if i were, i should not have come to rome. i pride myself on being a cosmopolitan. but we were not discussing that, we were speaking of urania. are you thinking seriously of marrying her?" "what can i do, if you thwart me? why not be on my side, like a dear friend?" she hesitated. neither of these two, urania or he, was ripe for her ideas. she despised them both. very well, let them get married: he in order to be rich; she to become a princess and duchess. "listen to me," she said, bending towards him. "you want to marry her for the sake of her millions. but your marriage will be unhappy from the beginning. she is a frivolous little thing; she will want to cut a dash ... and you belong to the blacks." "we can live at nice: then she can do as she pleases. we will come to rome now and again, go to san stefano now and again. and, as for unhappiness," he continued, pulling a tragic face, "what do i care? i am not happy as it is. i shall try to make urania happy. but my heart ... will be elsewhere." "where?" "with the feminist movement." she laughed: "well, shall i be nice to you?" "yes." "and promise to help you?" what did she care, when all was said? "oh, angel, demon!" he cried. he nibbled at a chocolate. "and what does mr. van der staal think of it?" he asked, mischievously. she raised her eyebrows: "he doesn't think about it. he thinks only of his art." "and of you." she looked at him and bowed her head in queenly assent: "and of me." "you often dine with him." "yes." "come and dine with me one day." "i shall be delighted." "to-morrow evening? and where?" "wherever you like." "in the grand-hôtel?" "ask urania to come too." "why not you and i alone?" "i think it better that you should invite your future wife. i will chaperon her." "you are right. you are quite right. and will you ask mr. van der staal also to give me the pleasure of his company?" "i will." "until to-morrow then, at half-past eight?" "until half-past eight to-morrow." he rose to take his leave: "propriety demands that i should go," he said. "really i should prefer to stay." "well, then stay ... or stay another time, if you have to go now." "you are so cold." "and you don't think enough of urania." "i think of the feminist movement." he sat down. "i'm afraid you must go," she said, laughing with her eyes. "i have to dress ... to go and dine with mr. van der staal." he kissed her hand: "you are an angel and a demon. you know everything. you can do anything. you are the most interesting woman i ever met." "because i correct proofs." "because you are what you are." and, very seriously, still holding her hand he said, almost threateningly: "i shall never be able to forget you." and he went away. as soon as she was alone, she opened all her windows. she realized, it was true, that she was something of a coquette, but that lay in her nature: she was like that of herself, to some men. certainly not to all. never to duco. never to men whom she respected. whereas she despised that little prince, with his blazing eyes and his habit of kissing people.... but he served to amuse her.... and she dressed and went out and reached the restaurant long after the appointed hour, found duco waiting for her at their little table, with his head in his hands, and at once told him that the prince had detained her. chapter xxiii duco had at first wished to decline the invitation, but cornélie said that she would think it pleasanter if he came. and it was an exquisite dinner in the restaurant of the grand-hôtel and cornélie had enjoyed herself exceedingly and looked most charming in an old yellow ball-dress, dating back to the first days of her marriage, which she had altered quickly here and there and draped with the prince's old lace. urania had looked very handsome, with her clear, fresh complexion, her shining eyes and gleaming teeth, clad in a close-fitting frock in the latest fashion, blue-black spangles on black tulle, as though she were moulded in a cuirass: the prince said, a siren with a mermaid's tail. and the people at the other tables had stared across at theirs, for everybody knew virgilio di forte-braccio; everybody knew that he was going to marry a rich american heiress; and everybody had noticed that he was paying great attention to the slender, fair-haired woman whom nobody knew. she had been married, they thought; she was chaperoning the future princess; and she was very intimate with that young man, a dutch painter, who was studying art in italy. they had soon found out all that there was to know. cornélie had thought it pleasant that they all looked at her; and she had flirted so obviously with the prince that urania had become angry. and early next morning, while cornélie was still in bed, no longer thinking of last night but pondering over a sentence in her pamphlet, the maid knocked, brought in her breakfast and letters and said that miss hope was asking to speak to her. cornélie had urania shown in, while she remained in bed and drank her chocolate. and she looked up in surprise when urania at once overwhelmed her with reproaches, burst into sobs, scolded and raved, made a violent scene, said that she now saw through her and admitted that the marchesa had urged her to be careful of cornélie, whom she described as a dangerous woman. cornélie waited until she had had her say and replied coolly that she had nothing on her conscience, that on the contrary she had saved urania and been of service to her as a chaperon, though she did not tell her that the prince had wanted her, cornélie, to dine with him alone. but urania refused to listen and went on ranting. cornélie looked at her and thought her vulgar in that rage of hers, talking her american english, as though she were chewing filberts; and at last she answered, calmly: "my dear girl, you're upsetting yourself about nothing. but, if you like, i will write to the prince that he must pay me no more attentions." "no, no, don't do that: it'll make gilio think i'm jealous!" "and aren't you?" "why do you monopolize gilio? why do you flirt with him? why do you make yourself conspicuous with him, as you did yesterday, in a restaurant full of people?" "well, if you dislike it, i won't flirt with gilio again or make myself conspicuous with him again. i don't care twopence about your prince." "that's an extra reason." "very well, dear, that's settled." her coolness calmed urania, who asked: "and do we remain good friends?" "why, of course, my dear girl. is there any occasion for us to quarrel? i don't see it." both of them, the prince and urania, were quite indifferent to her. true, she had preached to urania in the beginning, but about a general idea: when afterwards she perceived urania's insignificance, she withdrew the interest which she took in her. and, if the girl was offended by a little gaiety and innocent flirtation, very well, there should be no more of it. her thoughts were more with the proofs which the post had brought her. she got out of bed and stretched herself: "go into the sitting-room, urania dear, and just let me have my bath." presently, all fresh and smiling, she joined urania in the sitting-room. urania was crying. "my dear child, why are you upsetting yourself like this? you've achieved your ideal. your marriage is as good as certain. you're waiting for an answer from chicago? you're impatient? then cable out. i should have cabled at once in your place. you don't imagine, do you, that your father has any objection to your becoming duchess di san stefano?" "i don't know yet what i myself want," said urania, weeping. "i don't know, i don't know." cornélie shrugged her shoulders: "you're more sensible than i thought," she said. "are you really my friend? can i trust you? can i trust your advice?" "i won't advise you again. i have advised you. you must know your own mind." urania took her hand: "which would you prefer, that i accepted gilio ... or not?" cornélie looked her straight in the eyes: "you're making yourself unhappy about nothing. you think--and the marchesa probably thinks with you--that i want to take gilio from you? no, darling, i wouldn't marry gilio if he were king and emperor. i have a bit of the socialist in me: i don't marry for the sake of a title." "no more would i." "of course, darling, no more would you. i never dreamt of suggesting that you would. but you ask me which i should prefer. well, i tell you in all sincerity: i don't prefer either. the whole business leaves me cold." "and you call yourself my friend!" "so i am, dear, and i will remain your friend. only don't come overwhelming me with reproaches on an empty stomach!" "you're a flirt." "sometimes. it comes natural to me. but, honestly, i won't be so again with gilio." "do you mean it?" "yes, of course. what do i care? he amuses me; but, if it offends you, i'll gladly sacrifice my amusement for your sake. i don't value it so much." "are you fond of mr. van der staal?" "very." "are you going to marry him, cornélie?" "no, dear. i sha'n't marry again. i know what marriage means. are you coming for a little walk with me? it's a fine day; and you have upset me so with your little troubles that i can't do any work this morning. it's lovely weather: come along and buy some flowers in the piazza di spagna." they went and bought the flowers. cornélie took urania back to belloni's. as she walked away, on the road to the osteria for lunch, she heard somebody following her. it was the prince. "i caught sight of you from the corner of the via aurora," he said. "urania was just going home." "prince," she said at once, "there must be no more of it." "of what?" "no more visits, no more joking, no more presents, no more dinners at the grand-hôtel, no more champagne." "why not?" "the future princess won't have it." "is she jealous?" cornélie described the scene to him: "and you mayn't even walk with me." "yes, i may." "no, no." "i shall, for all that." "by the right of the man, of the strongest?" "exactly." "my vocation is to fight against it. but to-day i am untrue to my vocation." "you are charming ... as always." "you mustn't say that any more." "urania's a bore.... tell me, what do you advise me to do? shall i marry her?" cornélie gave a peal of laughter: "you both of you keep asking my advice!" "yes, yes, what do you think?" "marry her by all means!" he did not observe her contempt. "exchange your escutcheon for her purse," she continued and laughed and laughed. he now perceived it: "you despise me, perhaps both of us." "oh, no!" "tell me that you don't despise me." "you ask me my opinion. urania is a very sweet, dear child, but she ought not to travel by herself. and you ..." "and i?" "you are a delightful boy. buy me those violets, will you?" "subito, subito!" he bought her the bunch of violets: "you're crazy over violets, aren't you?" "yes. this must be your second ... and your last present. and here we say good-bye." "no, i shall take you home." "i'm not going home." "where are you going?" "to the osteria. mr. van der staal is waiting for me." "he's a lucky man!" "why?" "he needs must be!" "i don't see why. good-bye, prince." "ask me to come too," he entreated. "let me lunch with you." "no," she said, seriously. "really not. it's better not. i believe...." "what?" "that duco is just like urania." "jealous?... when shall i see you again?" "really, believe me, it's better not.... good-bye, prince. and thank you ... for the violets." he bent over her hand. she went into the osteria and saw that duco had witnessed their leave-taking through the window. chapter xxiv duco was silent and nervous at table. he played with his bread; and his fingers trembled. she felt that he had something on his mind: "what is it?" she asked, kindly. "cornélie," he said, excitedly, "i want to speak to you." "what about?" "you're not behaving properly." "in what respect?" "with the prince. you've seen through him and yet ... yet you go on putting up with him, yet you're always meeting him. let me finish," he said, looking around him: there was no one in the restaurant save two italians, sitting at the far table, and they could speak without being overheard. "let me finish," he repeated, when she tried to interrupt him. "let me say what i have to say. you of course are free to act as you please. but i am your friend and i want to advise you. what you are doing is not right. the prince is a cad, a low, common cad. how can you accept presents from him and invitations? why did you compel me to come yesterday? the dinner was one long torture to me. you know how fond i am of you: why shouldn't i confess it? you know how high i hold you. i can't bear to see you lowering yourself with him. let me speak. lowering, i say. he is not worthy to tie your shoe-strings. and you play with him, you jest with him, you flirt--let me speak--you flirt with him. what can he be to you, a coxcomb like that? what part can he play in your life? let him marry miss hope: what do you care about either of them? what do inferior people matter to you, cornélie? i despise them and so do you. i know you do. then why do you cross their lives? let them live in the vanity of their titles and money: what is it all to you? i don't understand you. oh, i know, you're not to be understood, all the woman part of you! and i love everything that i see of you: i love you in everything. it doesn't matter whether i understand you. but i do feel that this isn't right. i ask you not to see the prince any more. have nothing more to do with him. cut him.... that dinner, last night, was a torture to me...." "my poor boy," she said, gently, filling his glass from their fiasco, "but why?" "why? why? because you're lowering yourself." "i do not stand so high. no, let me speak now. i do not stand high. because i have a few modern ideas and a few others which are broader-minded than those of most women? apart from that i am an ordinary woman. when a man is cheerful and witty, it amuses me. no, duco, i'm speaking now. i don't consider the prince a cad. i may think him a coxcomb, but i think him cheerful and witty. you know that i too am very fond of you, but you are neither cheerful nor witty. now don't get angry. you are much more than that. i'm not even comparing il nostro gilio with you. i won't say anything more about you, or you will become conceited, but cheerful and witty you are not. and my poor nature sometimes feels a need for these qualities. what have i in my life? nothing but you, you alone. i am very glad to possess your friendship, very happy in having met you. but why may i not sometimes be cheerful? really, there is a little light-heartedness in me, a little frivolity even. am i bound to fight against it? duco, am i wicked?" he smiled sadly; there was a moist light in his eyes; and he did not answer. "i can fight, if necessary," she resumed. "but is this a thing to fight against? it is a passing bubble, nothing more. i forget it the next minute. i forget the prince the next minute. and you i do not forget." he was looking at her radiantly. "do you understand that? do you understand that i don't flirt and fence with you? shake hands and stop being angry." she gave him her hand across the table and he pressed her fingers: "cornélie," he said, softly. "yes, i feel that you are loyal. cornélie, will you be my wife?" she looked straight in front of her and drooped her head a little and stared before her earnestly. they were no longer eating. the two italians stood up, bowed and went away. they were alone. the waiter set some fruit before them and withdrew. they both sat silent for a moment. then she spoke in a gentle voice; and her whole being displayed so tender a melancholy that he could have burst into sobs and worshipped her where she sat. "i knew of course that you would ask me that some day. it was in the nature of things. a great friendship like ours was bound to lead to that question. but it can't be, dearest duco. it can't be, my dear, dear boy. i have my own ideas ... but it's not that. i am against marriage ... but it's not that. in some cases a woman is unfaithful to all her ideas in a single second.... then what is it?..." she stared wide-eyed and passed her hand over her forehead, as though she did not see clearly. then she continued: "it is this, that i am afraid of marriage. i have been through it, i know what it means.... i see my husband before me now. i see that habit, that groove before me, in which the subtler individual characteristics are effaced. that is what marriage is: a habit, a groove. and i tell you candidly: i think marriage loathsome. i think passion beautiful, but marriage is not passion. passion can be noble and superhuman, but marriage is a human institution based upon our petty human morality and calculation. and i have become frightened of those prudent moral ties. i promised myself--and i believe that i shall keep my promise--never to marry again. my whole nature has become unfitted for it. i am no longer the hague girl going to parties and dinners and looking out for a husband, together with her parents.... my love for him was passion. and in my marriage he wanted to restrict that passion to a groove and a custom. then i rebelled.... i'd rather not talk about it. passion lasts too short a time to fill a married life.... mutual esteem to follow, etcetera? one needn't marry for that. i can feel esteem just as well without being married. of course there is the question of the children, there are many difficulties. i can't think it all out now. i merely feel now, very seriously and calmly, that i am not fit to marry and that i never will marry again. i should not make you happy.... don't be sad, duco. i am fond of you, i love you. and perhaps ... had i met you at the right moment. had i met you before, in my hague life ... you would certainly have stood too high for me. i could not have grown fond of you. now i can understand you, respect you and look up to you. i tell you this quite simply, that i love you and look up to you, look up to you, in spite of all your gentleness, as i never looked up to my husband, however much he made his manly privilege prevail. and you are to believe that, very firmly and with great certainty, and you must believe that i am true. i am coquettish ... only with gilio." he looked at her through his silent tears. he stood up, called the waiter, paid the bill absent-mindedly, while everything swam and flashed before his eyes. they went out of the door and she hailed a carriage and told the man to drive to the villa doria-pamphili. she remembered that the gardens were open. they drove there in silence, steeped in their thoughts of the future that was opening tremulously before them. sometimes he heaved a deep breath and quivered all over his body. once she fervently squeezed his hand. at the gate of the villa they alighted and walked up the majestic avenues. rome lay in the depths below; and they suddenly saw st. peter's. but they did not speak; and she suddenly sat down on an ancient bench and began to weep softly and feebly. he put his arm round her and comforted her. she dried her tears, smiled and embraced him and returned his kiss.... twilight fell; and they went back. he gave the address of his studio. she accompanied him. and she gave herself to him, in all her truthful sincerity and with a love so violent and so great that she thought she would swoon in his arms. chapter xxv they did not alter their mode of life. duco, however, after a scene with his mother, no longer slept at belloni's but in a little room adjoining his studio and at first filled with trunks and lumber. cornélie was sorry about the scene: she had always had a liking for mrs. van der staal and the girls. but a certain pride arose in her; and cornélie despised mrs. van der staal because she was unable to understand either her or duco. still, she would have been pleased to prevent this coolness. at her advice duco went to see his mother again, but she remained cool and sent him away. thereupon cornélie and duco went to naples. they did not do this by way of an elopement, they did it quite simply: cornélie told urania and the prince that she was going to naples for a little while and that van der staal would probably follow her. she did not know naples and would appreciate it greatly if van der staal showed her over the town and the surrounding country. cornélie kept on her rooms in rome. and they spent a fortnight of sheer, careless and immense happiness. their love grew spacious and blossoming in the golden sunlight of naples, on the blue gulfs of amalfi, sorrento, capri and castellamare, simply, irresistibly and restfully. they glided gradually along the purple thread of their lives, they walked hand in hand down their lines now fused into one path, heedless of the laws and ideas of men; and their attitude was so lofty, their action so serene and so certain of their happiness, that their relations did not degenerate into insolence, although within themselves they despised the world. but this happiness softened all that pride in their soaring souls, as if their happiness were strewing blossoms all around it. they lived in a dream, first among the marbles in the museum, then on the flower-strewn cliffs of amalfi, on the beach of capri or on the terrace of the hotel at sorrento, with the sea roaring at their feet and, in a pearly haze, yonder, vaguely white, as though drawn in white chalk, castellamare and naples and the ghost of vesuvius, with its hazy plume of smoke. they held aloof from everybody, from all the people and excursionists; they had their meals at a small table; and it was generally thought that they were newly married. if others looked up their names in the visitors' book, they read two names and made whispered comments. but the lovers did not hear, did not see; they lived their dream, looking into each other's eyes or at the opal sky, the pearly sea and the hazy, white mountain-vistas, studded with towns like little specks of chalk. when their money was almost exhausted, they smiled and went back to rome and resumed their former lives: she in her rooms and he, now, in his studio; and they took their meals together. but they pursued their dream among the ruins in the via appia, around and near frascati, beyond the ponte molle, on the slopes of the monte mario and in the gardens of the villas, among the statues and paintings, mingling their happiness with the roman atmosphere: he interweaving his new-found love with his love for rome; she growing to love rome because of him. and because of that charm they were surrounded by a sort of aura, through which they did not see ordinary life or meet ordinary people. at last, one afternoon, urania found them both at home, in cornélie's room, the fire lighted, she smiling and gazing into the fire, he sitting at her feet and she with her arm round his neck. and they were evidently thinking of so little besides their own love that neither of them heard her knock and both suddenly saw her standing before them, like an unexpected reality. their dream was over for that day. urania laughed, cornélie laughed and duco pushed an easy-chair closer. and urania, blithe, beautiful and brilliant, told them that she was engaged. where on earth had they been hiding, she asked, inquisitively. she was engaged. she had been to san stefano, she had seen the old prince. and everything was lovely and good and dear: the old castle a dear old house, the old man a dear old man. she saw everything through the glitter of her future princess' title. princess and duchess! the wedding-day was fixed: immediately after easter, in a little more than three months therefore. it was to be celebrated at san carlo, with all the splendour of a great wedding. her father was coming over for it with her youngest brother. she was obviously not looking forward to their arrival. and she never finished talking: she gave a thousand details about her bridal outfit, with which the marchesa was helping her. they were going to live at nice, in a large flat. she raved about nice: that was a first-rate idea of gilio's. and incidentally she remembered and told them that she had become a catholic. that was a great nuisance! but the monsignori saw to everything and she allowed herself to be guided by them. and the pope was to receive her in private audience, together with gilio. the difficulty was what to wear at the audience: black, of course, but ... velvet, satin? what did cornélie advise her? she had such excellent taste. and a black-lace veil on her head, with brilliants. she was going to nice next day, with the marchesa and gilio, to see their flat. when she was gone, after begging cornélie to come and admire her trousseau, cornélie said, with a smile: "she is happy. after all, happiness is something different for everybody. a trousseau and a title would not make me happy." "these are the small people," he said, "who cross our lives now and again. i prefer to get out of their way." and they did not say so, but they both thought--with their fingers interlaced, her eyes gazing into his--that they also were happy, but with a loftier, better and nobler happiness; and pride arose within them; and they beheld as in a vision the line of their life winding up a steep hill. but happiness snowed blossoms down upon it; and amid the snowing blossoms, holding high their proud heads, with smiles and eyes of love, they walked on in their dream remote from mankind and reality. chapter xxvi the months dreamed past. and their happiness caused such a summer to bloom in them that she ripened in beauty and he in talent; the pride in them broke into expression: in her it was the blossoming of her being, in him it was energy; her languid charm became transformed into a proud slenderness; her contour increased in fullness; a light illumined her eyes, a gladness shone about her mouth. his hands quivered with nervous emotion when he took up his brushes; and the skies of italy arched firmaments before his eyes like a canopy of love and fervid colour. he drew and completed a series of water-colours: hazes of dreamy atmosphere which suggested turner's noblest creations; natural monuments of sheer haze; all the milky blue and pearly mistiness of the bay of naples, like a goblet filled with light in which a turquoise is melted into water; and he sent them to holland, to london, found that he had suddenly discovered his vocation, his work and his fame: courage, strength, aim and conquest. she too achieved a certain success with her article: it was discussed, contested; her name was mentioned. but she felt a certain indifference when she read her name in connection with the feminist movement. she preferred to live with him his life of observation and emotion; and she often imparted to all the haze of his vision, to the excessive haziness of his colour-dream a lustre of light, a definite horizon, a streak of actuality which gave realism to the mist of his ideal. she learnt with him to distinguish and to feel nature, art, all rome; and, when a symbolic impulse overmastered him, she surrendered herself to it entirely. he planned a large sketch of a procession of women, mounting along a line of life that wound up a hill: they seemed to be moving out of a crumbling city of antiquity, whose pillars, joined by a single architrave, quivered on high in a violet haze of evening dusk; they seemed to be releasing themselves from the shadow of the ruins fading away on the horizon into the void of night; and they thronged upwards, calling to one another aloud, beckoning to one another with great waving gestures of their hands, under a mighty fluttering of streamers and pennants; they grasped hammer and pick-axe with sinewy arms; and the throng of them moved up and up, along the line, where the light grew whiter and whiter, until in the hazy air there dimly showed the distant vista of a new city, whose iron buildings, like central stations and eiffel towers in the white glimmer of the distance, gleamed up very faintly with a reflection of glass arches and glass roofs and, high in the air, the musical staves of the threads of sound and accompaniment.... and to so great an extent did their influences work upon each other's souls that she learnt to see and he learnt to think: she saw beauty, art, nature, haze and emotion and no longer imagined them but felt them; he, as in his sketch, a very vague, modern city of glass and iron, saw a modern city rising out of his dream-haze and thought of a modern question, in accordance with his own nature and aptitudes. she learnt above all to see and feel like a woman in love, with the eyes and heart of the man she loves; he thought out the question plastically. but whatever the imperfection in the absoluteness of their new spheres of feeling and thought, the reciprocal influence, through their love, gave them a happiness so great, so united, that at that moment they could not contemplate it or apprehend it: it was almost ecstasy, a faint unreality, in which they dreamed, whereas it was all pure truth and tangible actuality. their manner of thinking, feeling and living was an ideal of reality, an ideal entered and attained, along the gradual line of their life, along the golden thread of their love; and they scarcely apprehended or contemplated it, because the every-day life still clung to them. but only to the smallest, inevitable extent. they lived apart; but in the morning she went to him and found him working at his sketch; and she sat down beside him and leant her head on his shoulder; and they thought it out together. he sketched each figure in his procession of women separately and sought for the features and the modelling of the figures: some had the mongolian aspect of memmi's angel of the annunciation, others cornélie's slenderness and her later, fuller wholesomeness; he sought for the folds of the costumes: the women escaped from the violet dusk of the ruined city in pleated pepli; and farther on their garments altered as in a masquerade of the ages: the long trains of the medieval ladies, the veils of the sultanas, the homespun of the workwomen, the caps of the nursing sisters, the attire becoming more modern as the wearer personified a more modern age. and in this grouping the draughtsmanship was so unsubstantial and sober, the transition from drooping folds to practical stiffness so careful and so gradual, that cornélie hardly perceived the transition, that she appeared to be contemplating one style, one fashion in dress, whereas each figure nevertheless was clad in a different stuff, of different cut, falling into different lines.... the drawing displayed an old-mastery purity, a simplicity of outline, which was nevertheless modern, nervous and morbid, but without the conventional ideal of symbolical human forms; the grouping showed a raphaelite harmony, the water-colour tints of the first studies the haze of italy: the ruined city loomed in the dusk as he saw the forum looming; the city of iron and glass gleamed up with its architecture of light, such as he had seen from sorrento shining around naples. she felt that he was creating a great work and had never taken so lively an interest in anything as she now did in his idea and his sketches. she sat behind him silent and still and followed his drawing of the waving banners and fluttering pennants; and she did not breathe when she saw him, with a few dabs of white and touches of light--as though light were one of the colours on his palette--make the glass city emerge as from a dream on the horizon. then he would ask her something about one of the figures and put his arm around her and draw her to him; and they would long sit scrutinizing and thinking out lines and ideas, until evening fell and the evening chill shuddered through the studio and they rose slowly from their seats. then they went out and in the corso they returned to real life: silently, sitting at aragno's, they watched the bustle outside; and in their little restaurant, with their eyes absorbing each other's glance, they ate their simple dinner and looked so obviously and harmoniously happy, that the italians, the two who also always sat at the far table, at that same hour, smiled as they bowed to them on entering.... chapter xxvii at the same time duco developed great powers of work: so much thought dimly took shape before him that he was constantly discovering another motive and symbolizing it in another figure. he sketched a life-size woman walking, with that admixture of child, woman and goddess which characterized his figures, and she walked slowly down a descending line towards a sombre depth, without seeing or understanding; her eyes towards the abyss in magnetic attraction; vague hands hovered around her like a cloud and softly pushed and guided her; on the hill-top, on high rocks, in the bright light, other figures, holding harps, called to her; but she went towards the depth, pushed by hands; in the abyss blossomed strange purple orchids, like mouths of love.... when cornélie came to his studio one morning, he had suddenly sketched this idea. it came upon her as a surprise, for he had not mentioned it to her: the idea had sprung up suddenly; the quick, spontaneous execution had not taken him an hour. he was almost apologizing to her when he saw her surprise. she certainly admired it, but shuddered at it and preferred the banners, the great water-colour, the procession of the women marching to the battle of life. and to please her he put the straying woman aside and worked on solely at the striving women. but constantly a fresh thought came and disturbed him in his work; and in her absence he would sketch some new symbol, until the sketches accumulated and lay spread on every side. she put them away in portfolios; she removed them from easel and board; she saved him from wandering too far from the banners; and this was the one thing that he completed. thus smoothly did their life seem willing to run, along a gracious line, in one golden direction, while his symbols blossomed like flowers on either side, while the azure of their love seemed to form the sky overhead; but she plucked away the superfluous flowers and only the banners waved above their path, in the firmament of their ecstasy, even as they waved above the militant women. they had but one distraction, the wedding of the prince and urania: a dinner, a ball and the ceremony at san carlo, attended by all the roman aristocracy, who however welcomed the wealthy american bride with a certain reserve. but, when the prince and princess di forte-braccio left for nice, all distraction was at an end; and the days once more glided along the same gracious golden line. and cornélie retained only one unpleasant recollection: her meeting during those festive days with mrs. van der staal, who cut her persistently, turned her back on her and succeeded in conveying to her that the friendship was over. she had accepted the position; she had realized how difficult it was--even if mrs. van der staal had been willing to speak to her--to explain to a woman like this, rooted in her social and worldly conventions, her own proud ideas of freedom, independence and happiness. and she had avoided the girls also, understanding that mrs. van der staal wished it. she was not angry at all this nor hurt; she could understand it in duco's mother: she was only a little sad about it, because she liked mrs. van der staal and liked the two girls. but she quite understood: it had to be so; mrs. van der staal knew or suspected everything. duco's mother could not act differently, though the prince and urania, for friendship's sake, overlooked any liaison between duco and cornélie; though the roman world during the wedding-festivities accepted them simply as friends, as acquaintances, as fellow-countrymen, whatever they might whisper, smiling, behind their fans. but now those festivities were over, now they had passed that point of contact with the world and people, now their golden line once more sloped gently and evenly before them.... then cornélie, not thinking of the hague at all, received a letter from the hague. the letter was from her father and consisted of several sheets, which surprised her, for he never wrote. what she read startled her greatly, but did not at first dishearten her altogether, perhaps because she did not realize the full import of her father's news. he implored her forgiveness. he had long been in financial difficulties. he had lost a great deal of money. they would have to move into a smaller house. the atmosphere at home was unpleasant: mamma cried all day; the sisters quarrelled; the family proffered advice; the acquaintances were disagreeable. and he implored her forgiveness. he had speculated and lost. and he had also lost her own little capital, which he managed for her, her godmother's legacy. he asked her not to think too hardly of him. things might have turned out differently; and then she would have been three times as well off. he admitted it, he had done wrong; but still he was her father and he asked her, his child, to forgive him and requested her to come home. she was at first greatly startled, but soon recovered her calmness. she was in too happy a mood of vital harmony to be depressed by the news. she received the letter in bed, did not get up at once, reflected a little, then dressed, breakfasted as usual and went to duco. he received her with enthusiasm and showed her three new sketches. she reproached him gently for allowing himself to be distracted from his main idea, said that these distractions would exhaust his activity, his perseverance. she urged him to keep on working at the banners. and she inspected the great water-colour intently, with the ancient, crumbling forum-like city and the procession of the women towards the metropolis of the future, standing high in the dawn. and suddenly it was borne in upon her that her future also had fallen into ruins and that its crumbling arches hung menacingly over her head. then she gave him her father's letter to read. he read it twice, looked at her aghast and asked what she proposed to do. she said that she had already thought it over, but so far decided only upon the most immediate thing to be done: to give up her rooms and come to him in his studio. she had just enough left to pay the rent of her rooms. but, after that, she had no money, no money at all. she had never consented to accept alimony from her husband. all that was still due to her was the payment for her article. he at once put out his hands to her, kissed her and said that this had been also his idea at once, that she should come to him and live with him. he had enough: a tiny patrimony; he made a little money in addition: there would be enough for the two of them. and they laughed and kissed and glanced round the studio. duco slept in a small adjoining den, a sort of long wall-cupboard. and they glanced round to see what they could do. cornélie knew: here, a curtain draped over a cord, with her wash-hand-stand behind it. that was all she needed, only that little corner: otherwise duco would not have a good light. they were very merry and thought it a jolly, a capital idea. they went out at once, bought a little iron bedstead and a dressing-table and themselves hung up the curtain. then they both went to pack the trunks in the via di serpenti ... and dined at the osteria. cornélie suggested that they should dine at home now and then: it was cheaper. when they returned home, she was enchanted that her installation took up so little room, hardly six feet by six, with that little bed behind the curtain. they were very cheerful that evening. the bohemianism of it all amused them. they were in italy, the land of sunshine, of beauty, of lazzaroni, of beggars who slept on the steps of a cathedral; and they felt akin to that sunny poverty. they were happy, they wanted for nothing. they would live on nothing, or at any rate on very little. and they saw the future bright, smiling. they were closer together now, they would live more closely linked together. they loved each other and were happy in a land of beauty, in an ideal of noble symbolism and life-embracing art. next morning he worked zealously, without a word, absorbed in his dream, in his work; and she, likewise, silent, contented, happy, examined her blouses and skirts attentively and reflected that she would need nothing more for quite another year and that her old clothes were amply sufficient for their life of happiness and simplicity. and she answered her father's letter very briefly, saying that she forgave him, that she was sorry for all of them, but that she was not coming back to the hague. she would provide for her own maintenance, by writing. italy was cheap. that was all she wrote. she did not mention duco. she cut herself off from her family, in thought and in fact. she had met with no sympathy from any of them during her unhappy marriage, during the painful days of her divorce; and now, in her turn, she felt no affection for them. and her happiness made her partial and selfish. she wanted nothing but duco, nothing but their harmonious life in common. he sat working, laughing to her now and then as she lay on the couch and reflected. she looked at the women marching to battle; she too could not remain lying on a couch, she too would have to sally forth and fight. she foresaw that she would have to fight ... for him. he was at present in the first fine frenzy of his art; but, if this slackened, momentarily, after a result of some kind, after a success for himself and the world, that would be commonplace and logical; and then she would have to fight. he was the noble element in their two lives; his art could never become her bread-winner. his little fortune amounted to hardly anything. she would have liked to work and make money for both of them, so that he need not depart from the pure principle of his art. but how was she to strive, how to work, how to work for their lives and their bread? what could she do? write? it brought in so little. what else? she was overcome by a slight melancholy, because she could do so little. she possessed minor talents and accomplishments: she wrote a good style, she sang, she played the piano, she could make a blouse and she knew something about cooking. she would herself do the cooking now and then and would make her own clothes. but that was all so small, so little. strive? work? in what way? however, she would do what she could. and suddenly she took up a baedeker, turned over the pages and sat down to write at duco's writing-table. she thought for a moment and began a casual article, a travel-picture for a newspaper, about the environs of naples: that was easier than at once beginning about rome. and in the studio, filled with a faint warmth of the fire, because the room faced north and was chilly, everything became still and silent, save for the occasional scratching of her pen or the noise made by him when fumbling among his chalks and paint-brushes. she wrote a few pages but could not hit upon an ending. then she got up; he turned round and smiled at her, with his smile of friendly happiness. and she read to him what she had written. it was not in the style of her pamphlet. it contained no invective; it was a pleasant traveller's sketch. he thought it very nice, but nothing out of the way. but that wasn't necessary, she said, defending herself. and he kissed her, for her industry and her pluck. it was raining that day and they did not go out for their lunch; there were eggs and tomatoes and she made an omelette on an oil-stove. they drank water, ate quantities of bread. and, while the rain outside lashed the great curtain-less window of the studio, they enjoyed their repast, sitting like two birds that huddle side by side, against each other, so as not to get wet. chapter xxviii it was a couple of months after easter, in the spring days of may. the flood of tourists had ebbed away immediately after the great church festivities; and rome was already very hot and growing very quiet. one morning, when cornélie was crossing the piazza di spagna, where the sunshine streamed along the cream-coloured front of the trinita de' monti and down the monumental staircase, where only a few beggars and the very last flower-boy sat dreaming with blinking eye-lids in a shady corner, she saw the prince coming towards her. he bowed to her with a smile of gladness and hastened up to speak to her: "how glad i am to meet you! i am in rome for a day or two, on my way to san stefano, to see my father on business. business is always a bore; and this is more so than usual. urania is at nice. but it is too hot there and we are going away. we have just returned from a trip on the mediterranean. four weeks on board a friend's yacht. it was delightful! why did you never come to see us at nice, as urania asked you to?" "i really wasn't able to come." "i went to call on you yesterday in the via dei serpenti. they told me you had moved." he looked at her with a touch of mocking laughter in his small, glittering eyes. she did not speak. "after that i did not like to commit a further indiscretion," he said, meaningly. "where are you going?" "to the post-office." "may i come with you? isn't it too hot for walking?" "oh, no, i love the heat! come by all means, if you like. how is urania?" "very well, capital. she's capital. she's splendid, simply splendid. i should never have thought it. i should never have dared to think it. she plays her part to perfection. so far as she is concerned, i don't regret my marriage. but, for the rest, gesu mio, what a disappointment, what a disillusion!" "why?" "you knew, did you not--i even now don't know how--you knew for how many millions i sold myself? not five millions but ten millions. ah, signora mia, what a take in! you saw my father-in-law at the time of our wedding. what a yankee, what a stocking-merchant and what a tradesman! we're no match for him: i, papa, or the marchesa. first promises, contracts: oh, rather! but then haggling here, haggling there. we're no good at that: neither papa nor i. aunt alone was able to haggle. but she was no match for the stocking-merchant. she had not learnt that, in all the years during which she kept a boarding-house. ten millions? five millions? not three millions! or yes, perhaps we did get something like that, plus a heap of promises, for our children's children, when everybody's dead. ah, signora, signora, i was better off before i was married! true, i had debts then and not now. but urania is so economical, so practical! i should never have thought it of her. it has been a disappointment to everybody: papa, my aunt, the monsignori. you should have seen them together. they could have scratched one another's eyes out. papa almost had a stroke, my aunt nearly came to blows with the monsignori.... ah, signora, signora, i don't like it! i am a victim. winter after winter, they angled with me. but i didn't want to be the bait, i struggled, i wouldn't let the fish bite. and then this came of it. not three millions. lire, not dollars. i was so stupid, i thought at first it would be dollars. and urania's economy! she allows me my pocket-money. she controls everything, does everything. she knows exactly how much i lose at the club. yes, you may laugh, but it's sad. don't you see that i sometimes feel as if i could cry? and she has such queer notions. for instance, we have our flat at nice and we keep on my rooms in the palazzo ruspoli, as a pied-à-terre in rome. that's enough: we don't come often to rome, because we are 'black' and urania thinks it dull. in the summer, we were to go here or there, to some watering-place. that was all right, that was settled. but now urania suddenly conceives the notion of selecting san stefano as a summer residence. san stefano! i ask you! i shall never be able to stand it. true, it's high up, it's cool: it's a pleasant climate, good, fresh mountain air. but i need more in my life than mountain air. i can't live on mountain air. oh, you wouldn't know urania! she can be so awfully obstinate. it's settled now, beyond recall: in the summer, san stefano. and the worst of it is that she has won papa's heart by it. i have to suffer. they're two to one against me. and the worst of it is that urania says we shall have to be very economical, in order to do san stefano up a bit. it's a famous historical place, but fallen into grisly disrepair. it's not our fault: we never had any luck. there was once a forte-braccio pope; after that our star declined and we never had another stroke of luck again. san stefano is the type of ruined greatness. you ought to see the place. to economize, to renovate san stefano! that's urania's ideal. she has taken it into her head to do that honour to our ancestral abode. however, she has won papa's heart by it and he has recovered from his stroke. but can you understand now that il povero gilio is poorer than he was before he acquired shares in a chicago stocking-factory?" there was no checking his flow of words. he felt profoundly unhappy, small, beaten, tamed, conquered, destroyed; and he had a need to ease his heart. they had passed the post-office and now retraced their steps. he looked for sympathy from cornélie and found it in the smiling attention with which she listened to his grievances. she replied that, after all, it showed that urania had a real feeling for san stefano. "oh, yes!" he admitted, humbly. "she is very good. i should never have thought it. she is every inch a princess and duchess. it's splendid. but the ten millions: gone, an illusion!... but tell me: how well you're looking! each time i see you, you've grown lovelier and lovelier. do you know that you're a very lovely woman? you must be very happy, i'm certain! you're an exceptional woman, i always said so. i don't understand you.... may i speak frankly? are we good friends, you and i? i don't understand. i think what you have done such a terrible thing. i have never heard of anything like it in our world." "i don't live in your world, prince." "very well, but all the same your world must have much the same ideas about it. and the calmness, the pride, the happiness with which you do, just quietly, as you please! i think it perfectly awful. i stand aghast at it.... and yet ... it's a pity. people in my world are very easy-going. but that sort of thing is not allowed!" "prince, once more, i have no world. my world is my own sphere." "i don't understand that. tell me, how am i to tell urania? for i should think it delightful if you would come and stay at san stefano. oh, do come, do: come to keep us company. i entreat you. be charitable, do a good work.... but first tell me, how shall i tell urania?" she laughed: "what?" "what they told me in the via dei serpenti, that your address was now signor van der staal's studio, via del babuino." laughing, she looked at him almost pityingly: "it is too difficult for you to tell her," she replied, a little condescendingly. "i will myself write to urania and explain my conduct." he was evidently relieved: "that's delightful, capital! and ... will you come to san stefano?" "no, i can't really." "why not?" "i can no longer move in the circle in which you live, after my change of address," she said, half laughing, half seriously. he shrugged his shoulders: "listen," he said. "you know our roman society. so long as certain conventions are observed ... everything's permitted." "exactly; but it's just those conventions which i don't observe." "and that's where you are wrong. believe me, i am saying it as your friend." "i live according to my own laws and i don't want to move in your world." he folded his hands in entreaty: "yes, yes, i know. you are a 'new woman.' you have your own laws. but i beseech you, take pity on me. be an angel of mercy and come to san stefano." she seemed to hear a note of seduction in his voice and therefore said: "prince, even if it agreed with the conventions of your world ... even then i shouldn't wish to. for i will not leave van der staal." "you come first and let him come a little later. urania will be glad to have his advice on some artistic questions, concerning the 'doing up' of san stefano. we have a lot of pictures there. and old things generally. do let's arrange that. i am going to san stefano to-morrow. urania will follow me in a week. i will suggest to her to ask you down soon." "really, prince ... it can't happen just yet." "why not?" she looked at him for some time before answering: "shall i be candid with you?" "but of course!" they had already passed the post-office twice. the street was quite silent and deserted. he looked at her enquiringly. "well, then," she said, "we are in great financial difficulties. we have no money at present. i have lost my little capital; and the small sum which i earned by writing an article is spent. duco is working hard, but he is engaged on a big work and making nothing in the meantime. he expects to receive a bit of money in a month or so. but at the moment we have nothing, nothing at all. that is why i went to a shop by the tiber this morning to ask how much a dealer would give for a couple of old pictures which duco wants to sell. he doesn't like parting with them, but there's no help for it. so you see that i can't come. i should not care to leave him; besides, i should not have the money for the journey or a decent wardrobe." he looked at her. the first thing that he had noticed was her new and blooming loveliness; now he noticed that her skirt was a little worn and her blouse none too fresh, though she wore a couple of roses in the waist-band. "gesu mio!" he exclaimed. "and you tell me that so calmly, so quietly!" she smiled and shrugged her shoulders: "what would you have me do? moan and groan about it?" "but you are a woman ... a woman to revere and respect!" he cried. "how does van der staal take it?" "he is a bit depressed, of course. he has never known money trouble. and it hinders him from employing his full talent. but i hope to help him bear up during this difficult time. so you see, prince, that i can't come to san stefano." "but why didn't you write to us? why not ask us for money?" "it is very nice of you to say that, but the idea never even occurred to us." "too proud?" "yes, too proud." "but what a position to be in! what can i do for you? may i give you two hundred lire? i have two hundred lire on me. and i will tell urania that i gave it to you." "no, thank you, prince. i am very grateful to you, but i can't accept it." "not from me?" "no." "not from urania?" "not from her either." "why not?" "i want to earn my money and i can't accept alms." "a fine principle. but for the moment ..." "i remain true to it." "will you allow me to tell you something?" "what?" "i admire you. more than that: i love you." she made a gesture with her hand and wrinkled her brows. "why mayn't i tell you so? an italian does not keep his love concealed. i love you. you are more beautiful and nobler and superior to anything that i could ever imagine any woman to be.... don't be angry with me: i am not asking anything of you. i am a bad lot, but at this moment i really feel the sort of thing that you see in our old family-portraits, an atom of chivalry which has survived by accident. i ask for nothing from you. i merely tell you--and i say it in urania's name as well as my own--that you can always rely on us. urania will be angry that you haven't written to us." they now entered the post-office and she bought a few stamps: "there go my last soldi," she said, laughing and showing her empty purse. "we wanted the stamps to write to the secretary of an exhibition in london. are you seeing me home?" she saw suddenly that he had tears in his eyes. "do accept two hundred lire from me!" he entreated. she smilingly shook her head. "are you dining at home?" he asked. she gave him a quizzing look: "yes," she said. he was unwilling to ask any further questions, was afraid lest he should wound her: "be kind," he said, "and dine with me this evening. i'm bored. i have no friends in rome at the moment. everybody is away. not at the grand-hôtel, but in a snug little restaurant, where they know me. i'll come and fetch you at seven o'clock. do be nice and come! for my sake!" he could not restrain his tears. "i shall be delighted," she said, softly, with her smile. they were standing in the porch of the house in the via del babuino where the studio was. he raised her hand to his lips and pressed a fervent kiss upon it. then he took off his hat and hurried away. she went slowly up the stairs, mastering her emotion before she entered the studio. chapter xxix she found duco lying listlessly on the sofa. he had a bad headache and she sat down beside him. "well?" he asked. "the man offered me eighty lire for the memmo," she said, "but he declared that the panel was not by gentile da fabriano: he remembered having seen it here." "the man's crazy," he replied. "or else he is trying to get my gentile for nothing.... cornélie, i really can't sell it." "well, duco, then we'll think of something else," said she, laying her hand on his aching forehead. "perhaps one or two smaller things, a knickknack or two," he moaned. "perhaps. shall i go back to him this afternoon?" "no, no, i'll go. but, really it is easier to buy that sort of thing than to sell it." "that is so, duco," she agreed, laughing. "but i asked yesterday what i should get for a pair of bracelets; and i'll dispose of those to-day. and that will keep us going for quite a month. but i have some news for you. do you know whom i met?" "no." "the prince." he gave a scowl: "i don't like that cad," he said. "i've told you before, duco. i don't consider him a cad. and i don't believe he is one either. he asked us to dine with him this evening, quite quietly." "no, i don't care about it." she said nothing. she stood up, boiled some water on a spirit-stand and made tea: "duco dear, i've been careless about lunch. a cup of tea and some bread-and-butter is all i can give you. are you very hungry?" "no," he said, evasively. she hummed a tune while she poured out the tea into an antique cup. she cut the bread-and-butter and brought it to him on the sofa. then she sat down beside him, with her own cup in her hand. "cornélie, hadn't we better lunch at the osteria?" she laughed and showed him her empty purse: "here are the stamps," she said. disheartened, he flung himself back on the cushions. "my dear boy," she continued, "don't be so down. i shall have some money this afternoon, for the bracelets. i ought to have sold them sooner. really, duco, it's not of any importance. why haven't you been working? it would have cheered you up." "i didn't feel inclined and i had a headache." she waited a moment and then said: "the prince was angry that we didn't write and ask him to help us. he wanted to give me two hundred lire...." "you refused, surely?" he asked, fiercely. "well, of course," she answered, calmly. "he invited us to stay at san stefano, where they will be spending the summer. i refused that too." "why?" "i haven't the clothes.... but you wouldn't care to go, would you?" "no," he said, dully. she drew his head to her and stroked his forehead. a wide patch of reflected afternoon light fell through the studio-window from the blue sky outside; and the studio was like a confused swirl of dusty colour, in which the outlines stood forth with their arrested action and changeless emotion. the raised embroideries of the chasubles and stoles, the purples and sky-blues of gentile's panel, the mystic luxury of memmi's angel in his cloak of heavily-pleated brocade, with the golden lily-stem between his fingers, were like a hoard of colour and flashed in that reflected light like so many handfuls of jewels. on the easel stood the water-colour of the banners, with its noble refinement. and, as they sat on the sofa, he leaning his head against her, both drinking their tea, they harmonized in their happiness with that background of art. and it seemed incredible that they should be worried about a couple of hundred lire, for they were surrounded by colour as of precious stones and her smile was still radiant. but his eyes were dejected and his hand hung limply by his side. she went out again that afternoon for a little while, but soon returned again, saying that she had sold the bracelets and that he need not worry any longer. and she sang and moved gaily about the studio. she had made a few purchases: an almond-tart, biscuits and a small bottle of port. she had carried the things home herself, in a little basket, and she sang as she unpacked them. her liveliness cheered him; he stood up and suddenly sat down to the banners. he looked at the light and thought that he would be able to work for an hour longer. he was filled with transport as he contemplated the drawing: he saw a great deal that was good in it, a great deal that was beautiful. it was both spacious and delicate; it was modern and yet free of any modern trucs; there was thought in it and yet purity of line and grouping. and the colours were restful and dignified: purple and grey and white; violet and pale-grey and bright white; dusk, twilight, light; night, dawn, day. the day especially, the day dawning high up yonder, was a day of white, self-conscious sunlight: a bright certitude, in which the future became clear. but as a cloud were the streamers, pennants, flags, banners, waving in heraldic beauty above the heads of the militant women uplifted in ecstasy.... he selected his colours, chose his brushes, worked zealously, until there was no light left. then he sat down beside her, happy and contented. in the falling dusk they drank some of the port, ate some of the tart. he felt like it, he said; he was hungry.... at seven o'clock there was a knock. he started up and opened the door; the prince entered. duco's forehead clouded over; but the prince did not perceive it, in the twilit studio. cornélie lit a lamp: "scusi, prince," she said. "i am positively distressed: duco does not care to go out--he has been working and is tired--and i had no one to send and tell you that we could not accept your invitation." "but you don't mean that, surely! i had reckoned so absolutely on having you both to dinner! what shall i do with my evening if you don't come!" and, bursting into a flow of language, the complaints of a spoiled child, the entreaties of an indulged boy, he began to persuade duco, who remained unwilling and sullen. at last duco rose, shrugged his shoulders, but, with a compassionate, almost insulting smile, yielded. but he was unable to suppress his sense of unwillingness; his jealousy because of the quick repartees of cornélie and the prince remained unassuaged, like an inward pain. at the restaurant he was silent at first. then he made an effort to join in the conversation, remembering what cornélie had said to him on that momentous day at the osteria: that she loved him, duco; that she did not even compare the prince with him; but ... that he was not cheerful or witty. and, conscious of his superiority because of that recollection, he displayed a smiling superciliousness towards the prince, for all his jealousy, condescending slightly and suffering his pleasantry and his flirtation, because it amused cornélie, that clashing interplay of swift words and short, parrying phrases, like the dialogue in a french comedy. chapter xxx the prince was to leave for san stefano next day; and early in the morning cornélie sent him the following letter: "my dear prince, "i have a favour to ask of you. yesterday you were so good as to offer me help. i thought then that i was in a position to decline your kind offer. but i hope that you will not think me very changeable if i come to you to-day with this request: lend me what you offered yesterday to give me. "lend me two hundred lire. i hope to be able to repay you as soon as possible. of course it need not be a secret from urania; but don't let duco know. i tried to sell my bracelets yesterday, but sold only one and received very little for it. the goldsmith offered me far too little, but i had to let him have one at forty lire, for i had not a soldo left! and so i am writing to appeal to your friendship and to ask you to put the two hundred lire in an envelope and let me come and fetch it myself from the porter. pray receive my sincere thanks in advance. "what a pleasant evening you gave us yesterday! a couple of hours' cheerful talk like that, at a well-chosen dinner, does me good. however happy i may be, our present position of financial anxiety sometimes depresses me, though i keep up my spirits for duco's sake. money worries interfere with his work and impair his energy. so i discuss them with him as little as i can; and i particularly beg you not to let him into our little secret. "once more, my best and most sincere thanks. "cornélie de retz." when she left the house that morning, she went straight to the palazzo ruspoli: "has his excellency gone?" the porter bowed respectively and confidentially: "an hour ago, signora. his excellency left a letter and a parcel for me to give you if you should call. permit me to fetch them." he went away and soon returned; he handed cornélie the parcel and the letter. she walked down a side-street turning out of the corso, opened the envelope and found a few bank-*notes and this letter: "most honoured lady, "i am so glad that you have applied to me at last; and urania also will approve. i feel i am acting in accordance with her wishes when i send you not two hundred but a thousand lire, with the most humble request that you will accept it and keep it as long as you please. for of course i dare not ask you to take it as a present. nevertheless i am making so bold as to send you a keepsake. when i read that you were compelled to sell a bracelet, i hated the idea so that, without stopping to think, i ran round to marchesini's and, as best i could, picked you out a bracelet which, at your feet, i entreat you to accept. you must not refuse your friend this. let my bracelet be a secret from urania as well as from van der staal. "once more receive my sincere thanks for deigning to apply to me for aid and be assured that i attach the highest value to this mark of favour. "your most humble servant, "virgilio di f. b." cornélie opened the parcel and found a velvet case containing a bracelet in the etruscan style: a narrow gold band set with pearls and sapphires. chapter xxxi in those hot may days, the big studio facing north was cool while the town outside was scorching. duco and cornélie did not go out before nightfall, when it was time to think of dining somewhere. rome was quiet: roman society had fled; the tourists had migrated. they saw nobody and their days glided past. he worked diligently; the banners was finished: the two of them, with their arms around each other's waists and her head on his shoulder, would sit in front of it, proudly smiling, during the last days before the drawing was to be sent to the international exhibition in knightsbridge. their feeling for each other had never contained such pure harmony, such unity of concord, as now, when his work was done. he felt that he had never worked so nobly, so firmly, so unhesitatingly, never with the same strength, yet never so tenderly; and he was grateful to her for it. he confessed to her that he could never have worked like that if she had not thought with him and felt with him in their long hours of sitting and gazing at the procession, the pageant of women, as it wound out of the night of crumbling pillars to the city of sheer increasing radiance and gleaming palaces of glass. there was rest in his soul, now that he had worked so greatly and nobly. there was pride in them both: pride because of their life, their independence, because of that work of noble and stately art. in their happiness there was much that was arbitrary; they looked down upon people, the multitude, the world; and this was especially true of him. in her there was more of quietude and humility, though outwardly she showed herself as proud as he. her article on the social position of divorced women had been published in pamphlet form and made a success. but her own performance did not make her proud as duco's art made her proud, proud of him and of their life and their happiness. while she read in the dutch papers and magazines the reviews of her pamphlet--often displaying opposition but never any slight and always acknowledging her authority to speak on the question--while she read her pamphlet through again, a doubt arose within her of her own conviction. she felt how difficult it was to fight with a single mind for a cause, as those symbolic women in the drawing marched to the fight. she felt that what she had written was inspired by her own experience, by her own suffering and by these only; she saw that she had generalized her own sense of life and suffering, but without deeper insight into the essence of those things: not from pure conviction, but from anger and resentment; not from reflection, but after melancholy musing upon her own fate; not from her love of her fellow-women, but from a petty hatred of society. and she remembered duco's silence at that time, his mute disapproval, his intuitive feeling that the source of her excitement was not pure, but the bitter and turbid spring of her own experience. she now respected his intuition; she now perceived the essential purity of his character; she now felt that he--because of his art--was high, noble, without ulterior motives in his actions, creating beauty for its own sake. but she also felt that she had roused him to it. that was her pride and her happiness; and she loved him more dearly for it. but about herself she was humble. she was conscious of her femininity, of all the complexity of her soul, which prevented her from continuing to fight for the objects of the feminist movement. and she thought again of her education, of her husband, her short but sad married life ... and she thought of the prince. she felt herself so complex and she would gladly have been homogeneous. she swayed between contradiction and contradiction and she confessed to herself that she did not know herself. it gave a tinge of melancholy to her days of happiness. the prince ... was not her pride only apparent that she had asked him not to tell urania that she was living with duco, because she would tell her so herself? in reality, she feared urania's opinion.... she was troubled by the dishonesty of the life: she called the intersections of the line with the lines of other small people the petty life. why, so soon as she crossed one of these intersections, did she feel, as though by instinct, that honesty was not always wise? what became of her pride and her dignity--not apparently, but actually--from the moment that she feared urania's criticism, from the moment that she feared lest this criticism might be unfavourable to her in one respect or another? and why did she not speak of virgilio's bracelet to duco? she did not speak of the thousand lire because she knew that money matters depressed him and that he did not want to borrow from the prince, because, if he knew about it, he would not be able to work free from care; and her concealment had been for a noble object. but why did she not speak of gilio's bracelet?... she did not know. once or twice she had tried to say, just naturally and casually: "look, i've had this from the prince, because i sold that one bracelet." but she was not able to say it, she did not know why. was it because of duco's jealousy? she didn't know, she didn't know. she felt that it would make for peace and tranquillity if she said nothing about the bracelet and did not wear it. really she would have been glad to send it back to the prince. but she thought that unkind, after all his readiness to assist her. and duco ... he thought that she had sold the bracelets for a good sum, he knew that she had received money from the publisher, for her pamphlet. he asked no further questions and ceased to think about money. they lived very simply.... but still she disliked his not knowing, even though it had been good for his work that he had not known. these were little things. these were little clouds in the golden skies of their great and noble life, their life of which they were proud. and she alone saw them. and, when she saw his eyes, radiant with the pride of life; when she heard his voice, vibrating with his new assured energy and pride; and when she felt his embrace, in which she felt the thrill of his delight in the happiness which she brought him, then she no longer saw the little clouds, then she felt her own thrill of delight in the happiness which he had brought her and she loved him so passionately that she could have died in his arms.... chapter xxxii urania wrote most charmingly. she said that they were having a very quiet time with the old prince at san stefano, as they were not inviting visitors because the castle was too gloomy, too shabby, too lonely, but that she would think it most delightful if cornélie would come and spend a few weeks with them. she added that she would send mr. van der staal an invitation as well. the letter was addressed to the via dei serpenti and forwarded to cornélie from there. she understood from this that gilio had not mentioned that she was living in duco's studio and she understood also that urania accepted their liaison without criticizing it.... the banners had been dispatched to london; and, now that duco was no longer working, a slight indolence and a vague boredom hung about the studio, which was still cool, while the town was scorching. and cornélie wrote to urania that she was very glad to accept and promised to come in a week's time. she was pleased that she would meet no other guests at the castle, for she had no dresses for a country-house visit. but with her usual tact she freshened up her wardrobe, without spending much money. this took up all the intervening days; and she sat sewing while duco lay on the sofa and smoked cigarettes. he also had accepted, because of cornélie and because the district around the lake of san stefano, which was overlooked by the castle, attracted him. he promised cornélie with a smile not to be so stiff. he would do his best to make himself agreeable. he looked down rather haughtily on the prince. he considered him a scallywag, but no longer a bounder or a cad. he thought him childish, but not base or ignoble. cornélie went off. he took her to the station. in the cab she kissed him fondly and told him how much she would miss him during those few days. would he come soon? in a week? she would be longing for him: she could not do without him. she looked deep into his eyes, which she loved. he also said that he would be terribly bored without her. couldn't he come earlier, she asked. no, urania had fixed the date. when he helped her into a second-class compartment, she felt sad to be going without him. the carriage was full; she occupied the last vacant seat. she sat between a fat peasant and an old peasant-woman; the man civilly helped her to put her little portmanteau in the rack and asked whether she minded if he smoked his pipe. she civilly answered no. opposite them sat two priests in frayed cassocks. an unimportant-looking little brown wooden box was lying between their feet: it was the supreme unction, which they were taking to a dying person. the peasant entered into conversation with cornélie, asked if she was a foreigner: english, no doubt? the old peasant-woman offered her a tangerine orange. the remainder of the compartment was occupied by a middle-class family: father, mother, a small boy and two little sisters. the slow train shook, rattled and wound its way along, stopping constantly. the little girls kept on humming tunes. at one station a lady stepped out of a first-class carriage with a little girl of five, in a white frock and a hat with white ostrich-feathers. "oh, che bellezza!" cried the small boy. "mamma, mamma, look! isn't she beautiful? isn't she lovely? divinamente! oh ... mamma!" he closed his black eyes, lovelorn, dazzled by the little white girl of five. the parents laughed, the priests laughed, everybody laughed. but the boy was not at all confused: "era una bellezza!" he repeated once more, casting a glance of conviction all around him. it was very hot in the train. outside, the mountains gleamed white on the horizon and glittered like a fire with opal reflections. close to the railway stood a row of eucalyptus-trees, sickle-leaved, brewing a heavy perfume. on the dry, sun-scorched plain, the wild cattle grazed, lifting their black curly heads with indifference to the train. in the stifling, stewing heat, the passengers' drowsy heads nodded up and down, while a smell of sweat, tobacco-smoke and orange-peel mingled with the scent of the eucalyptuses outside. the train swung round a curve, rattling like a toy-train of tin coaches almost tumbling over one another. and a level stretch of unruffled lazulite--metallic, crystalline, sky-blue--came into view, spreading into an oval goblet between slopes of mountain-land, like a very deep-set vase in which a sacred fluid was kept very blue and pure and motionless by a wall of rocky hills, which rose higher and higher until, as the train swung and rattled round the clear goblet, at one lofty point a castle stood, coloured like the rocks, broad, massive and monastic, with the cloisters running down the slope. it rose in noble and sombre melancholy; and from the train one could hardly distinguish what was rock and what was building-stone, as though it were all one barbaric growth, as though the castle had grown naturally out of the rock and, in growing, had assumed something of the shape of a human dwelling of the earliest times. and, as though the oval with its divine blue water had been a sacred reservoir, the mountains hedged in the lake of san stefano and the castle rose as its gloomy guardian. the train wound along a curve by the water-side, swung round a bend, then round another and stopped: san stefano. it was a small, quiet town, lying sleepily in the sun, without life or traffic, and visited only in the winter by day-trippers, who came from rome to see the cathedral and the castle and tasted the wine of the country at the osteria. when cornélie alighted, she at once saw the prince. "how sweet of you to come and look us up in our eyrie!" he cried, in rapture, eagerly pressing her two hands. he led her through the station to his little basket-carriage, with two little horses and a tiny groom. a porter would bring her luggage to the castle. "it's delightful of you to come!" he repeated. "you have never been to san stefano before? you know the cathedral is famous. we shall go right through the town: the road to the castle runs behind it." he was smiling with pleasure. he started the horses with a click of his tongue, with a repeated shake of the reins, like a child. they flew along the road, between the low, sleepy little houses, across the square, where in the glowing sunlight the glorious cathedral rose, lombardo-romanesque in style, begun in the eleventh and added to in every succeeding century, with the campanile on the left and the battisterio on the right: marvels of architecture in red, black and white marble, one vast sculpture of angels, saints and prophets and all as it were covered with a thick dust of ages, which had long since tempered the colours of the marble to rose, grey and yellow and which hovered between the groups as the one and only thing that had been left over of all those centuries, as though they had sunk into dust in every crevice. the prince drove across a long bridge, whose arches were the remains of an ancient aqueduct and now stood in the river, the bed of which was quite dried up, with children playing in it. then he let the little horses climb at a foot's pace. the road led steeply, winding, barren and rocky, up to the castle, while valleys of olives sank beneath them, affording an ever wider view over the ever wider panorama of blue-white mountains and opal horizons gleaming in the sun, with suddenly a glimpse of the lake, the oval goblet, now sunk deeper and deeper, as in a fluted brim of sun-scorched hills, its blue growing deeper and more precipitous, a mystic blue that caught all the blue of the sky, until the air shimmered between lake and sky as in long spirals of light that whirled before the eyes. until suddenly there drifted an intoxication of orange-blossom, a heavy, sensual breath as of panting love, as though thousands of mouths were exhaling a perfumed breath that hung stiflingly in the windless atmosphere of light, between the lake and the sky. the prince, happy and vivacious, talked a great deal, pointed this way and that with his whip, clicked at the horses, asked cornélie questions, asked if she did not admire the landscape. slowly, straining the muscles of their hind-legs, the horses drew the carriage up the ascent. the castle lay massive, huddling close to the ground. the lake sank lower and lower. the horizons became wider, like a world; a fitful breeze blew away some of the orange-blossom breath. the road became broad, easy and level. the castle lay extended like a fortress, like a town, behind its pinnacled walls, with gate within gate. they drove in, across a courtyard, under an archway into a second courtyard, under a second archway with a third courtyard. and cornélie received a sensation of awe, a vision of pillars, arches, statues, arcades and fountains. they alighted. urania ran out to meet her, embraced her, welcomed her affectionately and took her up the stairs and through the passages to her room. the windows were open; she looked out at the lake and the town and the cathedral. and urania kissed her again and made her sit down. and cornélie was struck by the fact that urania had grown thin and had lost her former brilliant beauty of an american girl, with the unconscious look of a cocotte in her eyes, her smile and her clothes. she was changed. she had "gone off" a little and was no longer so pretty, as though her good looks had been a short-lived pretence, consisting of freshness rather than line. but, if she had lost her bloom, she had gained a certain distinction, a certain style, something that surprised cornélie. her gestures were quieter, her voice was softer, her mouth seemed smaller and was not always splitting open to display her white teeth; her dress was exceedingly simple: a blue skirt and a white blouse. cornélie found it difficult to realize that the young princess di forte-braccio, duchess di san stefano, was miss urania hope of chicago. a slight melancholy had come over her, which became her, even though she was less pretty. and cornélie reflected that she must have some sorrow, which had smoothed her angles, but that she was also tactfully accommodating herself to her entirely novel environment. she asked urania if she was happy. urania said yes, with her sad smile, which was so new and so surprising. and she told her story. they had had a pleasant winter at nice, but among a cosmopolitan circle of friends, for, though her new relations were very kind, they were exceedingly condescending and virgilio's friends, especially the ladies, kept her at arm's length in an almost insolent fashion. already during the honeymoon she had perceived that the aristocracy were prepared to tolerate her, but that they could never forget that she was the daughter of hope the chicago stockinet-manufacturer. she had seen that she was not the only one who, though she was now a princess and duchess, was accepted on sufferance and only for her millions: there were others like herself. she had formed no friendships. people came to her parties and dances: they were frère et compagnon and hand and glove with gilio; the women called him by his christian name, laughed and flirted with him and seemed quite to approve of him for marrying a few millions. to urania they were just barely civil, especially the women: the men were not so difficult. but the whole thing saddened her, especially with all these women of the higher nobility--bearers of the most famous names in italy--who treated her with condescension and always managed to exclude her from every intimacy, from all private gatherings, from all cooperation in the matter of parties or charities. when everything had been discussed, then they asked the princess di forte-braccio to take part and offered her the place to which she was entitled and even did so with scrupulous punctiliousness. they manifestly treated her as a princess and an equal in the eyes of the world, of the public. but in their own set she remained urania hope. and the few other, middle-class millionaire elements of course ran after her, but she kept these at a distance; and gilio approved. and what had gilio said when she once complained of her grievance to him? that she, by displaying tactfulness, would certainly conquer her position, but with great patience and after many, many years. she was now crying, with her head on cornélie's shoulder: oh, she reflected, she would never conquer them, those haughty women! what after all was she, a hope, compared with all those celebrated families, which together made up the ancient glory of italy and which, like the massimos, traced back their descent to the romans of old? was gilio kind? yes, but from the beginning he had treated her as "his wife." all his pleasantness, all his cheerfulness was kept for others: he never talked to her much. and the young princess wept: she felt lonely, she sometimes longed for america. she had now invited her brother to stay with her, a nice boy of seventeen, who had come over for her wedding and travelled about europe a little before returning to his farm in the far west. he was her darling, he consoled her; but he would be gone in a few weeks. and then what would she have left? oh, how glad she was that cornélie had come! and how well she was looking, prettier than she had ever seen her look! van der staal had accepted: he would be here in a week. she asked, in a whisper, were they not going to get married? cornélie answered positively no; she was not marrying, she would never marry again. and, in a sudden burst of candour, unable to conceal things from urania, she told her that she was no longer living in the via dei serpenti, that she was living in duco's studio. urania was startled by this breach of every convention; but she regarded her friend as a woman who could do things which another could not. so it was only their happiness and friendship, she whispered, as though frightened, and without the sanction of society? urania remembered cornélie's imprecations against marriage and, formerly, against the prince. but she did like gilio a little now, didn't she? oh, she, urania, would not be jealous again! she thought it delightful that cornélie had come; and gilio, who was bored, had also looked forward so to her arrival. oh, no, urania was no longer jealous! and, with her head on cornélie's shoulder and her eyes still full of tears, she seemed merely to ask for a little friendship, a little affection, a few kind words and caresses, this wealthy american child who now bore the title of an ancient italian house. and cornélie felt for her because she was suffering, because she was no longer a small insignificant person, whose line of life happened to cross her own. she took her in her arms, comforted her, the weeping little princess, as with a new friendship; she accepted her in her life as a friend, no longer as a small insignificant person. and, when urania, staring wide-eyed, remembered cornélie's warning, cornélie treated that warning lightly and said that urania ought to show more courage. tact, she possessed, innate tact. but she must be courageous and face life as it came.... they stood up and, clasped in each other's arms, looked out of the open window. the bells of the cathedral were pealing through the air; the cathedral rose in noble pride from out of a very low huddle of roofs, a gigantic cathedral for so small a town, an immense symbol of ecclesiastical dominion over the roof-tops of the little town kneeling in reverence. and the awe which had filled cornélie in the courtyard, among the arcades, statues and fountains, inspired her anew, because glory and grandeur, dying but not dead, mouldering but not spent, seemed to loom dimly from the mystic blue of the lake, from the age-old architecture of the cathedral, up the orange-clad hills to the castle, where at an open window stood a young foreign woman, discouraged, although that phantom of glory and grandeur needed her millions in order to endure for a few more generations.... "it is beautiful and stately, all this past," thought cornélie. "it is great. but still it is no longer anything. it is a phantom. for it is gone, it is all gone, it is but a memory of proud and arrogant nobles, of narrow souls that do not look towards the future." and the future, with a confusion of social problems, with the waving of new banners and streamers, now whirled before her in the long spirals of light, which, like blue notes of interrogation, shimmered before her eyes, between the lake and the sky. chapter xxxiii cornélie had changed her dress and now left her room. she went down the corridor and saw nobody. she did not know the way, but walked on. suddenly a wide staircase fell away before her, between two rows of gigantic marble candelabra; and cornélie came to an atrio which opened over the lake. the walls, with frescoes by mantegna, representing feats of bygone san stefanos, supported a cupola which, painted with sky and clouds, appeared as though it were open to the outer air and which was surrounded by groups of cupids and nymphs looking down from a balustrade. she stepped outside and saw gilio. he was sitting on the balustrade of the terrace, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the lake. he came up to her: "i was almost sure that you would come this way," he said. "aren't you tired? may i show you round? have you seen our mantegnas? they have suffered badly. they were restored at the beginning of the century. [ ] they look rather dilapidated, don't they? do you see that little mythological scene up there, by giulio romano? come here, through this door. but it's locked. wait...." he called out an order to some one below. presently an old serving-man arrived with a heavy bunch of keys, which he handed to the prince. "you can go, egisto. i know the keys." the man went away. the prince opened a heavy bronze door. he showed her the bas-reliefs: "giovanni da bologna," he said. they went on, through a room hung with tapestries; the prince pointed to a ceiling by ghirlandajo: the apotheosis of the only pope of the house of san stefano. next through a hall of mirrors, painted by mario de' flori. the dusty, musty smell of an ill-kept museum, with its atmosphere of neglect and indifference, stifled the breath; the white-silk window-curtains were yellow with age, soiled by flies; the red curtains of venetian damask hung in moth-eaten rags and tatters; the painted mirrors were dull and tarnished; the arms of the venetian glass chandeliers were broken. pushed aside anyhow, like so much rubbish in a lumber-room, stood the most precious cabinets, inlaid with bronze, mother-of-pearl and ebony panels, and mosaic tables of lapis-lazuli, malachite and green, yellow, black and pink marble. in the tapestries--saul and david, esther, holofernes, salome--the vitality of the figures had evaporated, as though they were suffocated under the grey coat of dust that lay thick upon their worn textures and neutralized every colour. in the immense halls, half-dark in their curtained dusk, a sort of sorrow lingered, like a melancholy of hopeless, conquered exasperation, a slow decline of greatness and magnificence; between the masterpieces of the most famous painters mournful empty spaces yawned, the witnesses of pinching penury, spaces once occupied by pictures that had once and even lately been sold for fortunes. cornélie remembered something about a law-suit some years ago, an attempt to send some raphaels across the frontier, in defiance of the law, and to sell them in berlin.... and gilio led her hurriedly through the spectral halls, gay as a boy, light-hearted as a child, glad to have his diversion, mentioning without affection or interest names which he had heard in his childhood, but making mistakes and correcting himself and at last confessing that he had forgotten: "and here is the camera degli sposi...." he fumbled at the bunch of keys, read the brass labels till he found the right one and opened the door, which grated on its hinges; and they went in. and suddenly there was something like an intense and exquisite stateliness of intimacy: a huge bedroom, all gold, with the dim gold of tenderly faded golden tissues. on the walls were gold-coloured tapestries: venus rising from the gilt foam of a golden ocean, venus and mars, venus and cupid, venus and adonis. the pale-pink nudity of these mythological beings stood forth very faintly against the sheer gold of sky and atmosphere, in golden woodlands, amid golden flowers, with golden cupids and swans and doves and wild boars; golden peacocks drank from golden fountains; water and clouds were of elemental gold; and all this had tenderly faded into a languorous sunset of expiring radiance. the state bed was gold, under a canopy of gold brocade, on which the armorial bearings of the family were embroidered in heavy relief; the bedspread was gold; but all this gold was lifeless, had lapsed into the melancholy of all but grey lustre: it was effaced, erased, obliterated, as though the dusty ages had cast a shadow over it, had woven a web across it. "how beautiful!" said cornélie. "our famous bridal chamber," said the prince, laughing. "it was a strange idea of those old people, to spend the first night in such a peculiar apartment. when they married, in our family, they slept here on the bridal night. it was a sort of superstition. the young wife remained faithful only provided it was here that she spent the first night with her husband. poor urania! we did not sleep here, signora mia, among all these indecent goddesses of love. we no longer respect the family tradition. urania is therefore doomed by fate to be unfaithful to me. unless i take that doom on my own shoulders...." "i suppose the fidelity of the husbands is not mentioned in this family tradition?" "no, we attached very little importance to that ... nor do we nowadays...." "it's glorious," cornélie repeated, locking around her. "duco will think it perfectly glorious. oh, prince, i never saw such a room! look at venus over there, with the wounded adonis, his head in her lap, the nymphs lamenting! it is a fairy-tale." "there's too much gold for my taste." "it may have been so before, too much gold...." "masses of gold denoted wealth and abundant love. the wealth is gone...." "but the gold is softened now, so beautifully toned down...." "the abundant love has remained: the san stefanos have always loved much." he went on jesting, called attention to the wantonness of the design and risked an allusion. she pretended not to hear. she looked at the tapestries. in the intervals between the panels golden peacocks drank from golden fountains and cupids played with doves. "i am so fond of you!" he whispered in her ear, putting his arm round her waist. "angel! angel!" she pushed him away: "prince...." "call me gilio!" "why can't we be just good friends?" "because i want something more than friendship." she now released herself entirely: "and i don't!" she answered, coldly. "do you only love one then?" "yes." "that's not possible." "why not?" "because, if so, you would marry him. if you loved nobody but van der staal, you would marry him." "i am opposed to marriage." "nonsense! you're not marrying him, so that you may be free. and, if you want to be free, i also am entitled to ask for my moment of love." she gave him a strange look. he felt her scorn. "you ... you don't understand me at all," she said, slowly and compassionately. "you understand me." "oh, yes! you are so very simple!" "why won't you?" "because i won't." "why not?" "because i haven't that feeling for you." "why not?" he insisted; and his hands clenched as he spoke. "why not?" she repeated. "because i think you a cheerful and pleasant companion with whom to take things lightly, but in other respects your temperament is not in tune with mine." "what do you know about my temperament?" "i can see you." "you are not a doctor." "no, but i am a woman." "and i a man." "but not for me." furiously, with a curse, he caught her in his quivering arms. before she could prevent him, he had kissed her fiercely. she struggled out of his grasp and slapped his face. he gave another curse and flung out his arms to seize her again, but she drew herself up: "prince!" she cried, screaming with laughter. "you surely don't think that you can compel me?" "of course i do!" she gave a disdainful laugh: "you can not," she said, aloud. "for i refuse and i will not be compelled." he saw red, he was furious. he had never before been defied and thwarted; he had always conquered. she saw him rushing at her, but she quietly flung back the door of the room. the long galleries and apartments stretched out before them, as though endlessly. there was something in that vista of ancestral spaciousness that restrained him. he was an impetuous rather than a deliberate ravisher. she walked on very slowly, looking attentively to right and left. he came up with her: "you struck me!" he panted, furiously. "i'll never forgive it, never!" "i beg your pardon," she said, with her sweetened voice and smile. "i had to defend myself, you know." "why?" "prince," she said, persuasively, "why all this anger and passion and exasperation? you can be so nice; when i saw you last in rome you were so charming. we were always such good friends. i enjoyed your conversation and your wit and your good-nature. now it's all spoilt." "no," he entreated. "yes, it is. you won't understand me. your temperament is not in harmony with mine. don't you understand? you force me to speak coarsely, because you are coarse yourself." "i?" "yes. you don't believe in the sincerity of my independence." "no, i don't!" "is that courteous, towards a woman?" "i am courteous only up to a certain point." "we have left that point behind. so be courteous again as before." "you are playing with me. i shall never forget it; i will be revenged." "so it's a struggle for life and death?" "no, a struggle for victory, for me." they had reached the atrio: "thanks for showing me round," she said, a little mockingly. "the camera degli sposi, above all, was splendid. don't let us be angry any more." and she offered him her hand. "no," he said, "you struck me here, in the face. my cheek is still burning. i won't accept your hand." "poor cheek!" she said, teasingly. "poor prince! did i hit hard?" "yes." "how can i extinguish that burning?" he looked at her, still breathing hard, and flushed, with glittering carbuncle eyes: "you're a bigger coquette than any italian woman." she laughed: "with a kiss?" she asked. "demon!" he muttered, between his teeth. "with a kiss?" she repeated. "yes," he said. "there, in our camera degli sposi." "no, here." "demon!" he muttered, still more softly. she kissed him quickly. then she gave him her hand: "and now that's over. the incident is closed." "angel! she-devil!" he hissed after her. she looked over the balustrade at the lake. evening had fallen and the lake lay shimmering in mist. she regarded him as a young boy, who sometimes amused her and had now been naughty. she was no longer thinking of him; she was thinking of duco: "how lovely he will think it here!" she thought. "oh, how i long for him!..." there was a rustle of women's skirts behind her. it was urania and the marchesa belloni. chapter xxxiv urania asked cornélie to come in, because it was not healthy out of doors now, at sunset, with the misty exhalations from the lake. the marchesa bowed coldly and stiffly, pinched her eyes together and pretended not to remember cornélie very well. "i can understand that," said cornélie, smiling acidly. "you see different boarders at your pension every day and i stayed for a much shorter time than you reckoned on. i hope that you soon disposed of my rooms again, marchesa, and that you suffered no loss through my departure?" the marchesa belloni looked at her in mute amazement. she was here, at san stefano, in her element as a marchioness; she, the sister-in-law of the old prince, never spoke here of her foreigners' boarding-house; she never met her roman guests here: they sometimes visited the castle, but only at fixed hours, whereas she spent the weeks of her summer villeggiatura here. and here she laid aside her plausible manner of singing the praises of a chilly room, her commercial habit of asking the most that she dared. she here carried her curled, leonine head with a lofty dignity; and, though she still wore her crystal brilliants in her ears, she also wore a brand-new spencer around her ample bosom. she could not help it, that she, a countess by birth, she, the marchesa belloni--the late marquis was a brother of the defunct princess--possessed no personal distinction, despite all her quarterings; but she felt herself to be, as indeed she was, an aristocrat. the friends, the monsignori whom she did sometimes meet at san stefano, promoted the pension belloni in their conversation and called it the palazzo belloni. "oh, yes," she said, at last, very coolly, blinking her eyes with an aristocratic air, "i remember you now ... although i've forgotten your name. a friend of the princess urania, i believe? i am glad to see you again, very glad.... and what do you think of your friend's marriage?" she asked, as she went up the stairs beside cornélie, between mino da fiesole's marble candelabra. gilio, still angry and flushed and not at all calmed by the kiss, had moved away. urania had run on ahead. the marchesa knew of cornélie's original opposition, of her former advice to urania; and she was certain that cornélie had acted in this way because she herself had had views on gilio. there was a note of triumphant irony in her question. "i think it was made in heaven," cornélie replied, in a bantering tone. "i believe there is a blessing on their marriage." "the blessing of his holiness," said the marchesa, naïvely, not understanding. "of course: the blessing of his holiness ... and of heaven." "i thought you were not religious?" "sometimes, when i think of their marriage, i become very religious. what peace for the princess urania's soul when she became a catholic! what happiness in life, to marry il caro gilio! there is still peace and happiness left in life." the marchesa had a vague suspicion that she was mocking and thought her a dangerous woman. "and you, has our religion no charm for you?" "a great deal! i have a great feeling for beautiful churches and pictures. but that is an artistic conception. you will not understand it perhaps, for i don't think you are artistic, marchesa? and marriage also has charms for me, a marriage like urania's. couldn't you help me too some time, marchesa? then i will spend a whole winter in your pension and--who knows?--perhaps i too shall become a catholic. you might give rudyard another chance, with me; and, if that didn't succeed, the two monsignori. then i should certainly become converted.... and it would of course be lucrative." the marchesa looked at her haughtily, white with rage: "lucrative?..." "if you get me an italian title, but accompanied by money, of course it would be lucrative." "how do you mean?" "well, ask the old prince, marchesa, or the two monsignori." "what do you know about it? what are you thinking of?" "i? nothing!" cornélie answered, coolly. "but i have second sight. i sometimes suddenly see a thing. so keep on friendly terms with me and don't pretend again to forget an old boarder.... is this the princess urania's room? you go in first, marchesa; after you...." the marchesa entered all aquiver: she had thoughts of witchcraft. how did that woman know anything of her transactions with the old prince and the monsignori? how did she come to suspect that urania's marriage and her conversion had enriched the marchesa to the tune of a few ten thousand lire? she had not only had a lesson: she was shuddering, she was frightened. was that woman a witch? was she the devil? had she the mal'occhio? and the marchesa made the sign of the jettatura with her little finger and fore-finger in the folds of her dress and muttered: "vade retro, satanas...." in her own drawing-room, urania poured out tea. the three pointed windows of the room overlooked the town and the ancient cathedral, which in the orange reflection of the last gleams of sunset shot up for yet a moment out of its grey dust of ages with the dim huddle of its saints, prophets and angels. the room, hung with handsome tapestries--an allegory of abundance: nymphs outpouring the contents of their cornucopias--was half old, half modern, not always perfect in taste or pure in tone, with here and there a few hideously commonplace modern ornaments, here and there some modern comfort that clashed with the rest, but still cosy, inhabited and urania's home. a young man rose from a chair and urania introduced him to cornélie as her brother. young hope was a strongly-built, fresh-looking boy of eighteen; he was still in his bicycling-suit: it didn't matter, said his sister, just to drink a cup of tea. laughing, she stroked his close-clipped round head and, with the ladies' permission, gave him his tea first: then he would go and change. he looked so strange, so new and so healthy as he sat there with his fresh, pink complexion, his broad chest, his strong hands and muscular calves, with the youthfulness of a young yankee farmer who, notwithstanding the millions of "old man hope," worked on his farm, way out in the far west, to make his own fortune; he looked so strange in this ancient san stefano, within view of that severely symbolical cathedral, against this background of old tapestries. and suddenly cornélie was impressed still more strangely by the new young princess. her name--her american name of urania--had a first-rate sound: "the princess urania" sounded unexpectedly well. but the little young wife, a trifle pale, a trifle sad, with her clipping american accent, suddenly struck cornélie as somewhat out of place amid the faded glories of san stefano. cornélie was continually forgetting that urania was princess di forte-braccio: she always thought of her as miss hope. and yet urania possessed great tact, great ease of manner, a great power of assimilation. gilio had entered; and the few words which she addressed to her husband were, quite naturally, almost dignified ... and yet carried, to cornélie's ears, a sound of resigned disillusionment which made her pity urania. she had from the beginning felt a vague liking for urania; now she felt a fonder affection. she was sorry for this child, the princess urania. gilio behaved to her with careless coolness, the marchesa with patronizing condescension. and then there was that awful loneliness around her, of all that ruined magnificence. she stroked her young brother's head. she spoilt him, she asked him if his tea was all right and stuffed him with sandwiches, because he was hungry after his bicycle-ride. she had him with her now as a reminder of home, a reminder of chicago; she almost clung to him. but for the rest she was surrounded by the depressing gloom of the immense castle, the neglected glory of its ancient stateliness, the conceit of that aristocratic pride, which could do without her but not without her millions. and for cornélie she had lost all her absurdity as an american parvenue and, on the contrary, had acquired an air of tragedy, as of a young sacrificial victim. how alien they were as they sat there, the young princess and her brother, with his muscular calves! urania displayed her portfolio of drawings and designs: the ideas of a young roman architect for restoring the castle. and she became excited, with a flush in her cheeks, when cornélie asked her if so much restoration would really be beautiful. urania defended her architect. gilio smoked cigarettes with an air of indifference; he was in a bad temper. the marchesa sat like an idol, with her leonine head and the crystals sparkling in her ears. she was afraid of cornélie and promised herself to be on her guard. a major-domo came and announced to the princess that dinner was served. and cornélie recognized old giuseppe from the pension belloni, the old archducal major-domo, who had once dropped a spoon, according to rudyard's story. she looked at urania with a laugh and urania blushed: "poor man!" she said, when giuseppe was gone. "yes, i took him over from my aunt. he was so hard-worked at the palazzo belloni! here he has very little to do and he has a young butler under him. the number of servants had to be increased in any case. he is enjoying a pleasant old age here, poor dear old giuseppe.... there, bob, now you haven't dressed!" "she's a dear child," thought cornélie, while they all rose and urania gently reproached her brother, as she would a spoiled boy, for coming down to dinner in his knickerbockers. chapter xxxv they were in the great sombre dining-room, with the almost black tapestries, with the almost black panels of the ceiling, with the almost black oak carvings, with the black, monumental chimney-piece and, above it, the arms of the family in black marble. the light of two tall silver candle-sticks on the table merely cast a gleam over the damask and crystal, but left the remainder of the too large room in a gloomy obscurity of shadow, piled in the corners into masses of densest shadow, with a fainter shadow descending from the ceiling like a haze of dark velvet that floated in atoms above the candlelight. the ancestral antiquity of san stefano hovered above them in this room like a palpable sense of awe, blended with a melancholy of black silence and black pride. here their words sounded muffled. this still remained as it always had been, retaining as it were the sacrosanctity of their aristocratic traditions, in which urania would never dare to alter anything, even as she hardly ventured to open her mouth to speak or eat. they waited for a moment. then a double door was opened. and there entered like a spectral shade an old, grey man, with his arm in the arm of the priest walking beside him. old prince ercole approached with very slow and stately steps, while the chaplain regulated his pace by that stately slowness. he wore a long black coat of an old-fashioned, roomy cut, which hung about him in folds, something like a cassock, and on his silvery grey hair, which waved over his neck, a black-velvet skull-cap. and the others approached him with the greatest respect: first the marchesa; then urania, whom he kissed on the forehead, very slowly, as though he were consecrating her; then gilio, who submissively kissed his father's hand. the old man nodded to young hope, who bowed, and glanced towards cornélie. urania presented her. and the prince said a few amiable words to her, as though he were granting an audience, and asked her if she liked italy. when cornélie had replied, prince ercole sat down and handed his skull-cap to giuseppe, who took it with a deep bow. then they all sat down: the marchesa and the chaplain opposite prince ercole, who sat between cornélie and urania; gilio next to cornélie; bob hope next to his sister: "my legs don't show," he whispered. "ssh!" said urania. giuseppe, revivified in his former dignity, standing at a sideboard, solemnly filled the plates with soup. he was back in his element; he was obviously grateful to urania; he wore a distinguished air, as of one whose mind is at peace, and looked like an elderly diplomatist in his dress-coat. he amused cornélie, who thought of belloni's, where he used to become impatient when the visitors were late at meals and to rail at the young greenhorns of waiters whom the marchesa engaged for economy's sake. when the two footmen had handed round the soup, the chaplain stood up and said grace. not a word had been spoken yet. they ate the soup in silence, while the three servants stood motionless. the spoons clinked against the plates and the marchesa smacked her lips. the candles flickered now and again; and the shadow fell more oppressively, like a haze of black velvet. then prince ercole addressed the marchesa. and turn by turn he addressed them all, with a kindly, condescending dignity, in french and italian. the conversation became a little more general, but the old prince continued to lead it. and cornélie noticed that he was very civil to urania. but she remembered gilio's words: "papa nearly had a stroke, because old hope haggled over urania's dowry. ten millions? five millions? not three millions! dollars? no, lire!" and the prince suddenly struck her as the grey-haired egoism of san stefano's glory and aristocratic pride, struck her as the living shade of the past that loomed behind him, as she had felt it that afternoon, when she stood gazing with urania into the deep, blue lake: an exacting shade; a shade demanding millions; a shade demanding a new increment of vitality; a spectral parasite who had sold his depreciated symbols to gratify the vanity of a new commercial house, but who, in his distinction, had been no match for the merchant's cunning. their title of princess and duchess for less than three million lire! papa had almost had a stroke, gilio had said. and cornélie, during the measured, affable stiffness of the conversation led by prince ercole, looked from the old prince and duke, seventy years of age, to the breezy young far-westerner, aged eighteen, and from him to prince gilio, the hope of the old house, its only hope. here, in the gloom of this dining-room, where he was bored and moreover still out of temper, he seemed small, insignificant, shrunken, a paltry, distinguished little viveur; and his carbuncle eyes, which could sparkle merrily with wit and depravity, now looked dully, from under their drooping lids, upon his plate, at which he picked without appetite. she felt sorry for him; and her mind went back to the golden bridal chamber. she despised him a little. she looked upon him not so much as a man who could not obtain what he wanted but rather as a naughty boy. and he must feel jealous of bob, she reflected: jealous of his young blood, which tingled in his cheeks, of his broad shoulders and his broad chest. but still he amused her. he could be very agreeable, gay and witty and vivacious, when in the mood, vivacious in his words and in his wits. she liked him, when all was said. and then he was good-hearted. she thought of the bracelet and especially the thousand lire, always remembered, with a certain emotion, how touched she had been during that walk up and down past the post-office, how touched by his letter and his generous assistance. he had no backbone, he was not a man to her; but he was witty and he had a very good heart. she liked him as a friend and a pleasant companion. how dejected and moody he was! but then why would he venture on those silly enterprises?... she spoke to him now and again, but could not succeed in rousing him from his depression. for the rest, the conversation dragged on stiffly and affably, always led by prince ercole. the dinner came to an end; and prince ercole rose from his chair. giuseppe handed him his skull-cap; every one said good-night to him; the doors were opened and prince ercole withdrew, leaning on his chaplain's arm. gilio, still angry, disappeared. the marchesa, still terrified of cornélie, also disappeared, making the jettatura at her in the folds of her dress. and urania took cornélie and bob back with her to her own drawing-room. they all three breathed again. they all talked freely, in english: the boy said in despair that he wasn't getting enough to eat, that he dared not eat enough to stay his hunger; and cornélie laughed, thinking him jolly, because of his wholesomeness, while urania hunted out some biscuits for him and a piece of cake left over from tea and promised that he should have some cold meat and bread before they went to bed. and they relaxed their minds after the pompous, stately meal. urania said that the old prince never appeared except at dinner, but that she always looked him up in the morning and sat talking to him for an hour or playing chess with him. at other times he played chess with the chaplain. she was very busy, urania. the reorganizing of the housekeeping, which used to be left to a poor relation, who now lived at a pension in rome, took up a lot of her time. in the mornings, she discussed a host of details with prince ercole, who, notwithstanding his secluded life, knew about everything. then she had consultations with her architect from rome about the restorations to be effected in the castle: these consultations were sometimes held in the old prince's study. then she was having a big hostel built in the town, an albergo dei poveri, a hostel for old men and women, for which old hope had given her a separate endowment. when she first came to san stefano she had been struck by the ruinous, tumbledown houses and cottages of the poorer quarters, leprous and scabby with filth, eaten up by their own poverty, in which a whole population vegetated like toadstools. she was now building the hostel for the old people, finding work on the estate for the young and healthy and looking after the neglected children; she had built a new school-house. she talked about all this very simply, while cutting cake for her brother bob, who was tucking in after his formal dinner. she asked cornélie to come with her one morning to see how the albergo was progressing, to see the new school, run by two priests who had been recommended to her by the monsignori. through the pointed windows the town loomed faintly in the depths below; and the lines of the cathedral rose high into the sultry, star-spangled night. and cornélie thought to herself: "it was not only for a shadow and an unsubstantial shade that she came here, the rich american who thought titles 'so nice,' the child who used to collect patterns of the queen's ball-dresses--she hides the album now that she is a 'black' princess--the girl who used to trip through the forum in her white-serge tailor-made, without understanding either ancient rome or the dawn of the new future." and, as cornélie went to her own room through the silent heavy darkness of the castle of san stefano, she thought: "i write, but she acts. i dream and think; but she teaches the children, though it be with the aid of a priest; she feeds and houses old men and women." then, in her room, looking out at the lake under the summer night all dusted with stars, she reflected that she too would like to be rich and to have a wide field of labour. for now she had no field, now she had no money and now ... now she longed only for duco; and he must not leave her too long alone in this castle, amid all this sombre greatness, which oppressed her as with the weight of the centuries. chapter xxxvi next morning urania's maid was showing cornélie through a maze of galleries to the garden, where breakfast was to be served, when she met gilio on the stairs. the maid turned back. "i still need a guide to find my way," cornélie laughed. he grunted some reply. "how did you sleep, prince?" he gave another grunt. "look here, prince, there must be an end of this ill-temper of yours. do you hear? it's got to finish. i insist. i won't have any more sulking to-day; and i hope that you'll go back to your cheerful, witty style of conversation as soon as possible, for that's what i like in you." he mumbled something. "good-bye, prince," said cornélie, curtly. and she turned to go away. "where are you going?" he asked. "to my room. i shall breakfast in my room." "but why?" "because i don't care for you as a host." "me?" "yes, you. yesterday you insult me. i defend myself, you go on being rude, i at once become as amiable as ever, i give you my hand, i even give you a kiss. at dinner you sulk with me in the most uncivil fashion. you go to bed without bidding me good-night. this morning you meet me without a word of greeting. you grunt, sulk and mumble like a naughty child. your eyes are blazing with anger, you are yellow with spleen. really, you're looking very bad. it doesn't suit you at all. you are most unpleasant, rough, rude and petty. i have no inclination to breakfast with you in that mood. and i'm going to my room." "no," he implored. "yes, i am." "no, no!" "then be different. make an effort, don't think any more about your defeat and be nice to me. you're behaving as the offended party, whereas it is i who ought to take offence. but i don't know how to sulk and i am not petty. i can't behave pettily. i forgive you; do you forgive me too. say something nice, say something pleasant." "i am mad about you." "you don't show it. if you're mad about me, be pleasant, civil, gay and witty. i demand it of you as my host." "i won't sulk any longer ... but i do love you so! and you struck me!" "will you never forget that act of self-defence?" "no, never!" "then good-bye." she turned to go. "no, no, don't go back. come to breakfast in the pergola. i apologize, i beg your pardon. i won't be rude again, i won't be petty. you are not petty. you are the most wonderful woman i ever met. i worship you." "then worship in silence and amuse me." his eyes, his black carbuncle eyes, began to light up again, to laugh; his face lost its wrinkles and cheered up. "i am too sad to be amusing." "i don't believe a word of it." "honestly, i am full of sorrow and suffering...." "poor prince!" "you just won't believe me. you never take me seriously. i have to be your clown, your buffoon. and i love you and have nothing to hope for. tell me, mayn't i hope?" "not much." "you are inexorable ... and so severe!" "i have to be severe with you: you are just like a naughty boy.... oh, i see the pergola! do you promise to improve?" "i shall be good." "and amusing?" he heaved a sigh: "poor gilio!" he sighed. "poor buffoon!" she laughed. in the pergola were urania and bob hope. the pergola, overgrown with creeping vine and rambler roses hanging in crimson clusters, displayed a row of marble caryatides and hermes--nymphs, satyrs and fauns--whose torsos ended in slender, sculptured pedestals, while their raised hands supported the flat roof of leaves and flowers. in the middle was an open rotunda like an open temple; the circular balustrade was also supported by caryatides; and an ancient sarcophagus had been adapted to serve as a cistern. a table was laid for breakfast in the pergola; and they breakfasted without old prince ercole or the marchesa, who broke her fast in her room. it was eight o'clock; a morning coolness was still wafted from the lake; a haze of blue gossamer floated over the hills, in the heart of which, as though surrounded by a gently fluted basin, the lake was sunk like an oval goblet. "oh, how beautiful it is here!" cried cornélie, delightedly. breakfast was a sunny and cheerful meal, after yesterday's dark and gloomy dinner. urania talked vivaciously about her albergo, which she was going to visit presently with cornélie, gilio recovered his amiability and bob ate heartily. and, when bob went off bicycling, gilio even accompanied the ladies to the town. they drove at a foot-pace in a landau down the castle road. the sun grew hotter and the little old town lit up, with whitish-grey and creamy-white houses like stone mirrors, in which the sun reflected itself, and little open spaces like walls, into which the sun poured its light. the coachman pulled up outside the partly-finished albergo. they all alighted; the contractor approached ceremoniously; the perspiring masons looked round at the prince and princess. the heat was stifling. gilio kept on wiping his forehead and sheltered under cornélie's parasol. but urania was all vivacity and interest; quick and full of energy in her white-piqué costume, with her white sailor-hat under her white sun-shade, she tripped along planks, past heaps of bricks and cement and tubs full of mortar, accompanied by her contractor. she made him explain things, proffered advice, disagreed with him at times and pulled a wise face, saying that she did not like certain measurements and refused to accept the contractor's assurance that she would like the measurements as the building progressed; she shook her head and impressed this and that upon him, all in a quick, none too correct, broken italian, which she chewed between her teeth. but cornélie thought her charming, attractive, every inch the princess di forte-braccio. there was not a doubt about it. while gilio, fearful of dirtying his light flannel suit and brown shoes with the mortar, remained in the shadow of her parasol, puffing and blowing with the heat and taking no interest whatever, his wife was untiring, did not trouble to think that her white skirt was becoming soiled at the hem and spoke to the contractor with a lively and dignified certainty which compelled respect. where had the child learnt that? where had she acquired her powers of assimilation? where did she get this love for san stefano, this love for its poor? how had the american girl picked up this talent for filling her new and exalted position so worthily? gilio thought her admirabile and whispered as much to cornélie. he was not blind to her good qualities. he thought urania splendid, excellent; she always astounded him. no italian woman of his own set would have been like that. and they liked her. the servants at the castle loved her. giuseppe would have gone through fire and water for her; that contractor admired her; the masons followed her respectfully with their eyes, because she was so clever and knew so much and was so good to them in their poverty. "admirabile!" said gilio. but he puffed and blowed. he knew nothing about bricks, beams and measurements and did not understand where urania had got that technical sense from. she was indefatigable. she went all over the works, while he cast up his eyes to cornélie in entreaty. and at last, speaking in english, he begged his wife in heaven's name to come away. they went back to the carriage; the contractor took off his hat, the workmen raised their caps with an air of mingled gratitude and independence. and they drove to the cathedral, which cornélie wanted to see. urania showed her round. gilio asked to be excused and went and sat on the steps of the altar, with his hands hanging over his knees, to cool himself. chapter xxxvii a week had passed. duco had arrived. after the solemn dinner in the gloomy dining-room, where duco had been presented to prince ercole, the summer evening, when cornélie and duco went outside, was like a dream. the castle was already wrapped in heavy repose; but cornélie had made giuseppe give her a key. and they went out, to the pergola. the stars dusted the night sky with a pale radiance; and the moon crowned the hill-tops and shimmered faintly in the mystic depths of the lake. a breath of sleeping roses was wafted from the flower-garden beyond the pergola; and below, in the flat-roofed town, the cathedral, standing in its moonlit square, lifted its gigantic fabric to the stars. and sleep hung everywhere, over the lake, over the town and behind the windows of the castle; the caryatides and hermes--the satyrs and nymphs--slept, as they bore the leafy roof of the pergola, in the enchanted attitudes of the servants of the sleeping beauty. a cricket chirped, but fell silent the moment that duco and cornélie approached. and they sat down on an antique bench; and she flung her arms about his body and nestled against him: "a week!" she whispered. "a whole week since i saw you, duco, my darling. i cannot do so long without you. at everything that i thought and saw and admired i thought of you, of how lovely you would think it here. you have been here once before on an excursion. oh, but that is so different! it is so beautiful just to stay here, not just to go on, but to remain. that lake, that cathedral, those hills! the rooms indoors: neglected but so wonderful! the three courtyards are dilapidated, the fountains are crumbling to pieces ... but the style of the atrio, the sombre gloom of the dining-room, the poetry of this pergola!... duco, doesn't the pergola remind you of a classic ode? you know how we used to read horace together: you translated the verses so well, you improvised so delightfully. how clever you are! you know so much, you feel things so beautifully. i love your eyes, your voice, i love you altogether, i love everything that is you ... i can't tell you how much, duco. i have gradually surrendered myself to every word of you, to every sensation of you, to your love for rome, to your love for museums, to your manner of seeing the skies which you put into your drawings. you are so deliriously calm, almost like this lake. oh, don't laugh, don't make a jest of it: it's a week since i saw you, i feel such a need to talk to you! is it exaggerated? i don't feel quite normal here either: there is something in that sky, in that light, that makes me talk like this. it is so beautiful that i can hardly believe that all this is ordinary life, ordinary reality.... do you remember, at sorrento, on the terrace of the hotel, when we looked out over the sea, over that pearl-grey sea, with naples lying white in the distance? i felt like this then; but then i dared not speak like this: it was in the morning; there were people about, whom we didn't see but who saw us and whom i suspected all around me; but now we are alone and now i want to tell you, in your arms, against your breast, how happy i am! i love you so! all my soul, all that is finest in me is for you. you laugh, but you don't believe me. or do you? do you believe me?" "yes, i believe you, i am not laughing at you, i am only just laughing.... yes, it is beautiful here.... i also feel happy. i am so happy in you and in my art. you taught me to work, you roused me from my dreams. i am so happy about the banners: i have heard from london; i will show you the letters to-morrow. i have you to thank for everything. it is almost incredible that this is ordinary life. i have been so quiet too in rome. i saw nobody; i just worked a bit, not very much; and i had my meals alone in the osteria. the two italians--you know the men i mean--felt sorry for me, i think. oh, it was a terrible week! i can no longer do without you.... do you remember our first walks and talks in the borghese and on the palatine? how strange we were to each other then, not a bit in unison. but i believe i felt at once that all would be well and beautiful between us...." she was silent and lay against his breast. the cricket chirped again, with a long quaver. but everything else slept.... "between us," she repeated, as though in a fever; and she embraced him passionately. the whole night slept; and, while they breathed their life in each other's arms, the enchanted caryatides--fauns and nymphs--lifted the leafy roof of the pergola above their heads, between them and the star-spangled sky. chapter xxxviii gilio hated the villeggiatura at san stefano. every morning he had to be up and dressed by six o'clock, with prince ercole, urania and the marchesa, to hear mass said by the chaplain in the private chapel of the castle. after that, he did not know what to do with his time. he had gone bicycling once or twice with bob hope, but the young far-westerner had too much energy for him, like bob's sister, urania. he flirted and argued a little with cornélie, but secretly he was still offended and angry with himself and her. he remembered her first arrival that evening at the palazzo ruspoli, when she came and disturbed his rendez-vous with urania. and in the camera degli sposi she had for the second time been too much for him! he seethed with fury when he thought of it and he hated her and swore by all his gods to be revenged. he cursed his own lack of resolution. he had been too weak to use violence or force and there ought never to have been any need to resort to force: he was accustomed to a quick surrender. and he had to be told by her, that dutchwoman, that his temperament did not respond to hers! what was there about that woman? what did she mean by it? he was so unaccustomed to thinking, he was such a thoughtless, easy-going, italian child of nature, so accustomed to let his life run on according to his every whim and impulse, that he hardly understood her--though he suspected the meaning of her words--hardly understood that reserve of hers. why should she behave so to him, this foreigner with her demoniacal new ideas, who cared nothing about the world, who would have nothing to do with marriage, who lived with a painter as his mistress! she had no religion and no morals--he knew about religion and morals--she belonged to the devil; demoniacal was what she was: didn't she know all about aunt lucia belloni's manoeuvres? and hadn't aunt lucia warned him lately that she was a dangerous woman, an uncanny woman, a woman of the devil? she was a witch! why should she refuse? hadn't he plainly seen her figure last night going through the courtyard in the moonlight, beside van der staal's figure, and hadn't he seen them opening the door that led to the terrace by the pergola? and hadn't he waited an hour, two hours, without sleeping, until he saw them come back and lock the door after them? and why did she love only him, that painter? oh, he hated him, with all the blazing hatred of his jealousy; he hated her, for her exclusiveness, for her disdain, for all her jesting and flirting, as though he were a buffoon, a clown! what was it that he asked? a favour of love, such as she granted her lover! he was not asking for anything serious, any oath or lifelong tie; he asked for so little: just one hour of love. it was of no importance: he had never looked upon that as of much importance. and she, she refused it to him! no, he did not understand her, but what he did understand was that she disdained him; and he, he hated the pair of them. and yet he was enamoured of her with all the violence of his thwarted passion. in the boredom of that villeggiatura, to which his wife forced him in her new love for their ruined eyrie, his hatred and the thought of his revenge formed an occupation for his empty brains. outwardly he was the same as usual and flirted with cornélie, flirted even more than usual, to annoy van der staal. and, when his cousin, the countess di rosavilla--his "white" cousin, the lady-in-waiting to the queen--came to spend a few days with them, he flirted with her too and tried to provoke cornélie's jealousy. he failed in this, however, and consoled himself with the countess, who made up to him for his disappointment. she was no longer a young woman, but represented the cold, sculptured juno type, with a rather foolish expression; she had juno eyes, protruding from their sockets; she was a leader of fashion at the quirinal and in the "white" world; and her reputation for gallantry was generally known. she had never had a liaison with gilio that lasted for longer than an hour. she had very simple ideas on love, without much variety. her light-hearted depravity amused gilio. and, flirting in the corners, with his foot on hers under her skirt, gilio told her about cornélie, about duco and about the adventure in the camera degli sposi and asked his cousin whether she understood. no, the countess di rosavilla did not understand it any too well either. temperament? oh, yes, perhaps she--questa cornelia--preferred fair men to dark: there were women who had a preference! and gilio laughed. it was so simple, l'amore; there wasn't very much to be said about it. cornélie was glad that gilio had the countess to amuse him. she and duco interested themselves in urania's plans; duco had long talks with the architect. and he was indignant and advised them not to rebuild so much in that undistinguished restoration manner: it was lacking in style, cost heaps of money and spoilt everything. urania was disconcerted, but duco went on, interrupted the architect, advised him to build up only what was actually falling to pieces, and, so far as possible, to confine himself to underpinning, reinforcing and preserving. and one morning prince ercole deigned to walk through the long rooms with duco, urania and cornélie. there was a great deal to be done, duco considered, by merely repairing and artistically arranging what at present stood thoughtlessly huddled together. "the curtains?" asked urania. "let them be," duco considered. "at the most, new window-curtains; but the old red venetian damask; oh, let it be, let it be!" it was so beautiful; here and there it might be patched, very carefully. he was horrified at urania's notion: new curtains! and the old prince was enraptured, because in this way the restoration of san stefano would cost thousands less and be much more artistic. he regarded his daughter-in-law's money as his own and preferred it to her. he was enraptured: he took duco with him to his library, showed him the old missals, the old family books and papers, charters and deeds of gift, showed him his coins and medals. it was all out of order and neglected, first from lack of money and then from slighting indifference; but now urania wanted to reorganize the family museum with the aid of experts from rome, florence and bologna. the old prince's interest revived, now that there was money. and the experts came and stayed at the castle and duco spent whole mornings in their company. he enjoyed every moment of it. he lived in his enchantment of the past, no longer in the days of antiquity, but in the middle ages and the renascence. the days were too short. and his love for san stefano became such that one day an archivist took him for the young prince, for prince virgilio. at dinner that evening prince ercole told the story. and everybody laughed, but gilio thought the joke beyond price, whereas the archivist, who was there at dinner, did not know how to apologize sufficiently. chapter xxxix gilio had followed the advice of his cousin, the countess di rosavilla. immediately after dinner, he had stolen outside; and he walked along the pergola to the rotunda, into which the moonlight fell as into a white beaker. but there was shadow behind a couple of caryatides; and here he hid. he waited for an hour. but the night slept, the caryatides slept, standing motionless and supporting the leafy roof. he uttered a curse and stole indoors again. he walked down the corridors on tiptoe and listened at van der staal's door. he heard nothing, but perhaps van der staal was asleep?... gilio, however, crept along another corridor and listened at cornélie's door. he held his breath.... yes, there was a sound of voices. they were together! together! he clenched his fists and walked away. but why did he excite himself? he knew all about their relations. why should they not be together here? and he went on and tapped at the countess' door.... next evening he again waited in the rotunda. they did not come. but, a few evenings later, as he sat waiting, choking with annoyance, he saw them come. he saw duco lock the terrace-door behind him: the rusty lock grated in the distance. slowly he saw them walk along and approach in the light, disappearing from view in the shadow, reappearing in the moonlight. they sat down on the marble bench.... how happy they seemed! he was jealous of their happiness, jealous above all of him. and how gentle and tender she was, she who considered him, gilio, only good enough for her amusement, to flirt with, a clown: she, the devilish woman, was angelic to the man she loved! she bent towards her lover with a smiling caress, with a curve of her arm, with a proffering of her lips, with something intensely alluring, with a velvety languor of love which he would never have suspected in her, after her cold, jesting flirtation with him, gilio. she was now leaning on duco's arms, on his breast, with her face against his.... oh, how her kiss filled gilio with flame and fury! this was no longer her icy lack of sensuous response towards him, gilio, in the camera degli sposi. and he could restrain himself no longer: he would at least disturb their moment of happiness. and, quivering in every nerve, he stepped from behind the caryatides and went towards them, through the rotunda. lost in each other's eyes, they did not see him at once. but, suddenly, simultaneously, they both started; their arms fell apart then and there; they sprang up in one movement; they saw him approaching but evidently did not at once recognize him. not until he was closer did they perceive who he was; and they looked at him in startled silence, wondering what he would say. he made a satirical bow: "a delightful evening, isn't it? the view is lovely, like this, at night, from the pergola. you are right to come and enjoy it. i hope that i am not disturbing you with my unexpected company?" his tremulous voice sounded so spiteful and aggressive that they could not doubt the violence of his anger. "not at all, prince!" replied cornélie, recovering her composure. "though i can't imagine what you are doing here, at this hour." "and what are you doing here, at this hour?" "what am i doing? i am sitting with van der staal...." "at this hour?" "at this hour! what do you mean, prince, what are you suggesting?" "what am i suggesting? that the pergola is closed at night." "prince," said duco, "your tone is offensive." "and you are altogether offensive." "if you were not my host, i would strike you in the face...." cornélie caught duco by the arm; the prince cursed and clenched his fists. "prince," she said, "you have obviously come to pick a quarrel with us. why? what objection can you have to my meeting van der staal here in the evening? in the first place, our relation towards each other is no secret for you. and then i think it unworthy of you to come spying on us." "unworthy? unworthy?" he had lost all self-control. "i am unworthy, am i, and petty and rude and not a man and my temperament doesn't suit you? his temperament seems to suit you all right! i heard the kiss you gave him! she-devil! demon! never have i been insulted as i have by you. i have never put up with so much from anybody. i will put up with no more. you struck me, you demon, you she-devil! and now he's threatening to strike me! my patience is at an end. i can't bear that in my own house you should refuse me what you give to him.... he's not your husband! he's not your husband! i have as much right to you as he; and, if he thinks he has a better right than i, then i hate him, i hate him!..." and, blind with rage, he flew at duco's throat. the attack was so unexpected that duco stumbled. they both wrestled furiously. all their hidden antipathy broke forth in fury. they did not hear cornélie's entreaties, they struck each other with their fists, they grappled with arms and legs, breast to breast. then cornélie saw something flash. in the moonlight she saw that the prince had drawn a knife. but the very movement was an advantage to duco, who gripped his wrist as in a vice, forced him to the ground and, pressing his knee on gilio's chest, took him by the throat with his other hand. "let go!" yelled the prince. "let go that knife!" yelled duco. the prince obstinately persisted: "let go!" he yelled once more. "let go that knife." the knife dropped from his fingers. duco grasped it and rose to his feet: "get up," he said, "we can continue this fight, if you like, to-morrow, under less primitive conditions: not with a knife, but with swords or pistols." the prince stood panting, blue in the face.... when he came to himself, he said, slowly: "no, i will not fight a duel. unless you want to. but i don't. i am defeated. she has a demoniacal force which would always make you win, whatever game we played. we've had our duel. this struggle tells me more than a regular duel would. only, if you want to fight me, i have no objection. but i now know for certain that you would kill me. she protects you." "i don't want to fight a duel with you," said duco. "then let us look on this struggle as a duel and now give me your hand." duco put out his hand; gilio pressed it: "forgive me," he said, bowing before cornélie. "i have insulted you." "no," said she, "i do not forgive you." "we have to forgive each other. i forgive you the blow you struck me." "i forgive you nothing. i shall never forgive you this evening's work: not your spying, nor your lack of self-control, nor the rights which you try to claim from me, an unmarried woman--whereas i allow you no rights whatever--nor your attack, nor your knife." "are we enemies then, for good?" "yes, for good. i shall leave your house to-morrow." "i have done wrong," he confessed, humbly. "forgive me. i am hot-blooded." "until now i looked upon you as a gentleman...." "i am also an italian." "i do not forgive you." "i once proved to you that i could be a good friend." "this is not the moment to remind me of it." "i remind you of everything that might make you more gently disposed towards me." "it is no use." "enemies then?" "yes. let us go indoors. i shall leave your house to-morrow." "i will do any penance that you inflict upon me." "i inflict nothing. i want this conversation to end and i want to go indoors." "i will go ahead of you." they walked up the pergola. he himself opened the terrace-door and let them in before him. they went in silence to their rooms. the castle lay asleep in darkness. the prince struck a match to light the way. duco was the first to reach his room. "i will light you to your room," said the prince, meekly. he struck a second match and accompanied cornélie to her door. here he fell on his knees: "forgive me," he whispered, with a sob in his throat. "no," she said. and without more she locked the door behind her. he remained on his knees for another moment. then he slowly rose to his feet. his throat hurt him. his shoulder felt as though it were dislocated. "it's over," he muttered. "i am defeated. she is stronger now than i, but not because she is a devil. i have seen them together. i have seen their embrace. she is stronger, he is stronger than i ... because of their happiness. i feel that, because of their happiness, they will always be stronger than i...." he went to his room, which adjoined urania's bedroom. his chest heaved with sobs. dressed as he was, he flung himself sobbing on his bed, swallowing his sobs in the slumbering night that hung over the castle. then he got up and looked out of the window. he saw the lake. he saw the pergola, where they had been fighting. the night was sleeping there; the caryatides, sleeping, stood out white against the shadow. and his eyes sought the exact spot of their struggle and of his defeat. and, with his superstitious faith in their happiness, he became convinced that there would be no fighting against it, ever. then he shrugged his shoulders, as if he were flinging a load off his back: "fa niente!" he said to console himself. "domani megliore...." and he meant that to-morrow he would achieve, if not this victory, another. then, with eyes still moist, he fell asleep like a child. chapter xl urania sobbed nervously in cornélie's arms when she told the young princess that she was leaving that morning. she and duco were alone with urania in urania's own drawing-room. "what has happened?" she sobbed. cornélie told her of the previous evening: "urania," she said, seriously, "i know i am a coquette. i thought it pleasant to talk with gilio; call it flirting, if you like. i never made a secret of it, either to duco or to you. i looked upon it as an amusement, nothing more. perhaps i did wrong; i know it annoyed you once before. i promised not to do it again; but it seems to be beyond my control. it's in my nature; and i shall not attempt to defend myself. i looked upon it as a trifle, as a diversion, as fun. but perhaps it was wrong. do you forgive me? i have grown so fond of you: it would hurt me if you did not forgive me." "make it up with gilio and stay on." "that's impossible, my dear girl. gilio has insulted me, gilio drew his knife against duco; and those are two things which i can never forgive him. so it is impossible for us to remain." "i shall be so lonely!" she sobbed. "i also am so fond of you, i am fond of you both. is there no way out of it? bob is going to-morrow too. i shall be all alone. and i have nothing here, nobody who is fond of me...." "you have a great deal left, urania. you have an object in life; you can do any amount of good in your surroundings. you are interested in the castle, which is now your own." "it's all so empty!" she sobbed. "it means nothing to me. i need affection. who is there that is fond of me? i have tried to love gilio and i do love him, but he doesn't care for me. nobody cares for me." "your poor are devoted to you. you have a noble aim in life." "i'm glad of it, but i am too young to live only for an aim. and i have nothing else. nobody cares for me." "prince ercole, surely?" "no, he despises me. listen. i told you once before what gilio said ... that there were no family-jewels, that they were all sold: you remember, don't you? well, there are family-jewels. i gathered that from something the countess di rosavilla said. there are family-jewels. but prince ercole keeps them in the banco di roma. they despise me; and i am not thought good enough to wear them. and to me they pretend that there are none left. and the worst of it is that all their friends, all their set know that the jewels are there, in the bank, and they all say that prince ercole is right. my money is good enough for them, but i am not good enough for their old jewels, the jewels of their grandmother!" "that's a shame!" said cornélie. "it's the truth!" sobbed urania. "oh, do make it up, stay a little longer, for my sake!..." "judge for yourself, urania: we really can't." "i suppose you're right," she admitted, with a sigh. "it's all my fault." "no, no, gilio is sometimes so impetuous...." "but his impetuousness, his anger, his jealousy are my fault. i am sorry about it, urania, because of you. forgive me. come and look me up in rome when you go back. don't forget me; and write, won't you?... now i must go and pack my trunk. what time is the train?" "ten twenty-five," said duco. "we shall go together." "can i say good-bye to prince ercole? send and ask if he can see me." "what shall i tell him?" "the first thing that comes into your head: that a friend of mine in rome is ill, that i am going to look after her and that van der staal is taking me back because i am nervous travelling. i don't care what prince ercole thinks." "cornélie...." "darling, i really haven't another moment. kiss me and forgive me. and think of me sometimes. good-bye. we have had a delightful time together and i have grown very fond of you." she tore herself from urania's embrace; duco also said good-bye. they left the princess sobbing by herself. in the passage they met gilio. "where are you going?" he asked, in his humble voice. "we are going by the ten twenty-five." "i am very, very sorry...." but they went on and left him standing there, while urania sat sobbing in the drawing-room. chapter xli in the train, in the scorching morning heat, they were silent; and they found rome as it were bursting out of its houses in the blazing sunshine. the studio, however, was cool, solitary and peaceful. "cornélie," said duco, "tell me what happened between you and the prince. why did you strike him?" she pulled him down on the sofa, threw herself on his neck and told him the incident of the camera degli sposi. she told him of the thousand lire and the bracelet. she explained that she had said nothing about it before, so as not to speak to him of financial worries while he was finishing his water-colour for the exhibition in london: "duco," she continued, "i was so frightened when i saw gilio draw that knife yesterday. i felt as if i was going to faint, but i didn't. i had never seen him like that, so violent, so ready to do anything.... it was then that i really felt how much i loved you. i should have murdered him if he had wounded you." "you ought not to have played with him," he said, severely. "he loves you." but, in spite of his stern voice, he drew her closer to him. filled with a certain consciousness of guilt, she laid her head coaxingly on his chest: "he is only a little in love," she said, defending herself feebly. "he is very passionately in love. you ought not to have played with him." she made no further reply, merely stroked his face with her hand. she liked him all the better for reproaching her as he did; she loved that stern, earnest voice, which he hardly ever adopted towards her. she knew that she had that need for flirting in her, that she had had it ever since she was a very young girl; it did not count with her, it was only innocent fun. she did not agree with duco, but thought it unnecessary to go over the whole ground: it was as it was, she didn't think about it, didn't dispute it; it was like a difference of opinion, almost of taste, which did not count. she was lying against him too comfortably, after the excitement of last evening, after a sleepless night, after a precipitate departure, after a three hours' railway-journey in the blazing heat, to argue to any extent. she liked the silent coolness of the studio, the sense of being alone with him, after her three weeks at san stefano. there was a peacefulness here, a return to herself, which filled her with bliss. the tall window was open and the warm air poured in beneficently and was tempered by the natural chilliness of the north room. duco's easel stood empty, awaiting him. this was their home, amid all that colour and form of art which surrounded them. she now understood that colour and form; she was learning rome. she was learning it all in dreams of happiness. she gave little thought to the woman question and hardly glanced at the notices of her pamphlet, taking but a scanty interest in them. she admired lippo's angel, admired the panel of gentile da fabriano and the resplendent colours of the old chasubles. it was very little, after the treasures at san stefano, but it was theirs and it was home. she did not speak, felt happy and contented resting on duco's breast and passing her fingers over his face. "the banners is as good as sold," he said. "for ninety pounds. i shall telegraph to london to-day. and then we shall soon be able to pay the prince back that thousand lire." "it's urania's money," she said, feebly. "but i won't have that debt hanging on." she felt that he was a little angry, but she was in no mood to discuss money matters and she was filled with a blissful languor as she lay on his breast.... "are you cross, duco?" "no ... but you oughtn't to have done it." he clasped her more tightly, to make her feel that he did not want to grumble at her, even though he thought that she had done wrong. she thought that she had done right not to mention the thousand lire to him, but she did not defend herself. it meant useless words; and she felt too happy to talk about money. "cornélie," he said, "let us get married." she looked at him in dismay, startled out of her blissfulness: "why?" "not because of ourselves. we are just as happy unmarried. but because of the world, because of people." "because of the world? because of people?" "yes. we shall be feeling more and more isolated. i discussed it once or twice with urania. she was very sorry about it, but she sympathized with us and wasn't shocked. she thought it an impossible position. perhaps she is right. we can't go anywhere. at san stefano they still acted as though they did not know that we were living together; but that is over now." "what do you care about the opinion of 'small, insignificant people, who chance to cross your path,' as you yourself say?" "it's different now. we owe the prince money; and urania is the only friend you have." "i have you: i don't want any one else." he kissed her: "really, cornélie, it is better that we should get married. then nobody can insult you again as the prince dared to do." "he has narrow-minded notions: how can you want to get married for the sake of a world and people like san stefano and the prince?" "the whole world is like that, without exception, and we are in the world. we live in the midst of other people. it is impossible to isolate one's self entirely; and isolation brings its own punishment later. we have to attach ourselves to other people: it is impossible always to lead your own existence, without any sense of community." "duco, how you've changed! these are the ideas of ordinary society!" "i have been reflecting more lately." "i am just learning how not to reflect.... my darling, how grave you are this morning! and this while i'm lying up against you so deliciously, to rest after all that excitement and the hot journey." "seriously, cornélie, let us get married." she snuggled against him a little nervously, displeased because he persisted and because he was forcibly dissipating her blissful mood: "you're a horrid boy. why need we get married? it would alter nothing in our position. we still shouldn't trouble about other people. we are living so delightfully here, living for your art. we want nothing more than each other and your art and rome. i am so very fond of rome now; i am quite altered. there is something here that is always attracting me afresh. at san stefano i felt homesick for rome and for our studio. you must choose a new subject ... and get to work again. when you're doing nothing, you sit thinking--about social ethics--and that doesn't suit you at all. it makes you so different. and then such petty, conventional ideas. to get married! why, in heaven's name, should we, duco? you know my views on marriage. i have had experience: it is better not." she had risen and was mechanically looking through some half-finished sketches in a portfolio. "your experience," he repeated. "we know each other too well to be afraid of anything." she took the sketches from the portfolio: they were ideas which had occurred to him and which he had jotted down while he was working at the banners. she examined them and scattered them abroad: "afraid?" she repeated, vaguely. "no," she suddenly resumed, more firmly. "a person never knows himself or another. i don't know you, i don't know myself." something deep down within herself was warning her: "don't marry, don't give in. it's better not, it's better not." it was barely a whisper, a shadow of premonition. she had not thought it out; it was unconscious and mysterious as the depths of her soul. for she was not aware of it, she did not think it, she hardly heard it within herself. it flitted through her; it was not a feeling; it only left a thwarting reluctance in her, very plainly. not until years later would she understand that unwillingness. "no, duco, it is better not." "think it over, cornélie." "it is better not," she repeated, obstinately. "please, don't let us talk about it any more. it is better not, but i think it so horrid to refuse you, because you want it. i never refuse you anything, as you know. i would do anything else for you. but this time i feel ... it is better not!" she went to him, all one caress, and kissed him: "don't ask it of me again. what a cloud on your face! i can see that you mean to go on thinking of it." she stroked his forehead as though to smooth away the wrinkles: "don't think of it any more. i love you, i love you! i want nothing but you. i am happy as we are. why shouldn't you be too? because gilio was rude and urania prim?... come and look at your sketches: will you be starting work soon? i love it when you're working. then i'll write something again: a chat about an old italian castle. my recollections of san stefano. perhaps a short story, with the pergola for a background. oh, that beautiful pergola!... but yesterday, that knife!... tell me, duco, are you going to work again? let's look through them together. what a lot of ideas you had at that time! but don't become too symbolical: i mean, don't get into habits, into tricks; don't repeat yourself.... this woman here is very good. she is walking so unconsciously down that shelving line ... and all those hands pushing around her ... and those red flowers in the abyss.... tell me, duco, what had you in your mind?" "i don't know: it was not very clear to myself." "i think it very good, but i don't like this sketch. i can't say why. there's something dreary in it. i think the woman stupid. i don't like those shelving lines: i like lines that go up, as in the banners. that all flowed out of darkness upwards, towards the sun! how beautiful that was! what a pity that we no longer have it, that it is being sold! if i were a painter, i should never be able to part with anything. i shall keep the sketches, to remind me of it. don't you think it dreadful, that we no longer have it?" he agreed; he also loved and missed his banners. and he hunted with her among the other studies and sketches. but, apart from the unconscious woman, there was nothing that was clear enough to him to elaborate. and cornélie would not have him finish the unconscious woman: no, she didn't like those shelving lines.... but after that he found some sketches of landscape-studies, of clouds and skies over the campagna, venice and naples.... and he set to work. chapter xlii they were very economical; they had a little money; and all through the scorching roman summer the months passed as in a dream. they went on living their lonely, happy life, without seeing any one except urania, who came to rome now and again, looked them up, lunched with them at the studio and went back again in the evening. then urania wrote to them that gilio could stand it no longer at san stefano and that they were going abroad, first to switzerland and then to ostend. she came once more to say good-bye; and after that they saw nobody. in the old days duco had known an artist here and there, a fellow-countryman painting in rome; now he knew nobody, saw nobody. and their life in the cool studio was like life in a lonely oasis amid the torrid desert of rome in august. for economy's sake, they did not go into the mountains, to a cooler spot. they spent no more than was absolutely necessary; and none the less this bohemian poverty, in its coloured setting of triptych and chasuble, spelt happiness. money, however, remained scarce. duco sold a water-colour once in a way, but at times they had to resort to the sale of a curio. and it always went to duco's heart to part with anything that he had collected. they had few needs, but the time would come when the rent of the studio fell due. cornélie sometimes wrote an article or a sketch and bought out of the proceeds what she needed for her wardrobe. she possessed a certain knack of putting on her clothes, a talent for looking smart in an old, worn blouse. she was fastidious about her hair, her skin, her teeth, her nails. with a new veil she would wear an old hat, with an old walking-dress a pair of fresh gloves; and she wore everything with a certain air of smartness. at home, in her pink tea-gown, which had lost its colour, the lines of her figure were so charming that duco was constantly sketching her. they hardly ever went to a restaurant now. cornélie cooked something at home, invented easy recipes, fetched a fiasco of wine from the nearest olio e vino, where the cab-drivers sat drinking at little tables; and they dined better and more cheaply than at the osteria. and duco, now that he no longer bought things from the dealer in antiques on the tiber, spent nothing at all. but money remained scarce. once, when they had sold a silver crucifix for far less than it was worth, cornélie was so dejected that she sobbed on duco's breast. he consoled her, caressed her and declared that he didn't care much about the crucifix. but she knew that the crucifix was a very fine piece of work by an unknown sixteenth-century artist and that he was very unhappy at losing it. and she said to him seriously that it could not go on like this, that she could not be a burden to him and that they had better part; that she would look about for something to do, that she would go back to holland. he was alarmed by her despair and said that it was not necessary, that he was able to look after her as his wife, but that unfortunately he was such an unpractical fellow, who could do nothing but splash about a bit with water-colours and even that not well enough to live on. but she said that he must not talk like that; he was a great artist. it was just that he did not possess a facile, money-making fertility, but he ranked all the higher on that account. she said that she would not live on his money, that she wanted to keep herself. and she collected the scattered remnants of her feminist ideas. once again he begged her to consent to their marriage; they would become reconciled with his mother; and mrs. van der staal would give him what she used to give him when he used to live with her at belloni's. but she refused to hear either of marriage or of an allowance from his mother, even as he refused to take money from urania. how often had urania not offered to help them! he had never consented; he was even angry when urania had given cornélie a blouse which cornélie accepted with a kiss. no, it couldn't go on like this: they had better part; she must go back to holland and seek employment. it was easier in holland than abroad. but he was so desperate, because of their happiness, which tottered before his eyes, that he held her tightly pressed to his breast; and she sobbed, with her arms round his neck. why should they part, he asked. they would be stronger together. he could no longer do without her; his life, if she left him, would be no life. he used to live in his dreams; he now lived in the reality of their happiness. and things remained as they were: they could not alter anything; they lived as thriftily as possible, in order to keep together. he finished his landscapes and always sold them; but he sold them at once, much too cheaply, so as not to have to wait for the money. but then poverty threatened once more; and she thought of writing to holland. as it happened, however, she received a letter from her mother, followed by one from one of her sisters. and they asked her in those letters if it was true, what people were saying at the hague, that she was living with van der staal. she had always looked upon herself as so far from the hague and from hague people that it had never occurred to her that her way of life might become known. she met nobody, she knew nobody with dutch connections. anyhow, her independent attitude was now known. and she answered the letters in a feminist tone, declared her dislike of marriage and admitted that she was living with van der staal. she wrote coldly and succinctly, so as to give those people at the hague the impression that she was a free and independent woman. they knew her pamphlet there, of course. but she understood that she could now no longer think of holland. she gave up her family as hopeless. still it tore something in her, the unconscious family-tie. but that tie was already greatly loosened, through lack of sympathy, especially at the time of her divorce. and she felt all alone: she had only her happiness, her lover, duco. oh, it was enough, it was enough for all her life! if only she could make a little money! but how? she went to the dutch consul, asked his advice; the visit led to nothing. she was not suited for a nurse: she wanted to earn money at once and had no time for training. she could serve in a shop, of course. and she applied, without saying anything to duco; but, notwithstanding her worn cloak, they thought her too much of a lady wherever she went and she thought the salary too small for a whole day's work. and, when she felt that she hadn't it in her blood to work for her bread, despite all her ideas and all her logic, despite her pamphlet and her independent womanhood, she felt helpless to the point of despair and, as she went home, weary, exhausted by climbing many stairs and by useless conversations and appeals, the old plaint rose to her lips: "o god, tell me what to do!" chapter xliii she wrote regularly to urania, in switzerland, at ostend; and urania always wrote back very kindly and offered her assistance. but cornélie always declined, afraid of hurting duco. she, for herself, felt no such scruples, especially now that it was being borne in upon her that she would not be able to work. but she understood those scruples in duco and respected them. for her own part, however, she would have accepted help, now that her pride was wavering, now that her ideas were falling to pieces, too weak to withstand the steady pressure of life's hardships. it was like a great finger that just passed along a house of cards: though built up with care and pride, everything fell flat at the least touch. the only things that stood firm and unshakable amid the ruins were her love and her happiness. oh, how she loved him, how simple was their happiness! how dear he was to her for his gentleness, his calmness, his lack of irritability, as though his nerves were strung only to the finer sensibilities of the artist. she felt so deliciously that it was all imperturbable, that it was all settled for good. without that happiness they could never have dragged their difficult life along from day to day. now she did not feel that burden every day, as though they were dragging the load along from one day to the next. she now felt it only sometimes, when the future was quite dark and they did not know whither they were dragging the burden of their lives, in the dusk of that future. but they always triumphed again: they loved each other too well to sink under the load. they always found a little more courage; smiling, they supported each other's strength. september came and october; and urania wrote that they were coming back to san stefano, to spend a couple of months there before going for the winter to nice. and one morning urania arrived unexpectedly in the studio. she found cornélie alone: duco had gone to an art-dealer's. they exchanged affectionate greetings: "i am so glad to see you again!" urania prattled, gaily. "i am glad to be back in italy and to put in a little more time at san stefano. and is everything as it used to be, in your cosy studio? are you happy? oh, i need not ask!" and she hugged and kissed cornélie, like a child, still lacking the strength of mind to condemn her friend's too free existence, especially now, after her own summer at ostend. they sat beside each other on the couch, cornélie in her old tea-gown, which she wore with her own peculiar grace, and the young princess in her pale-grey tailor-made, which clung to her figure in a very up-to-date manner and rustled with heavy silk lining, and a hat with black feathers and silver spangles. her jewelled fingers toyed with a very long watch-chain which she wore round her neck: the latest freak of fashion. cornélie was able to admire without feeling envious and made urania stand up and turn round in front of her, approved of the cut of her skirt, said that the hat looked sweet on her and examined the watch-chain attentively. and she plunged into these matters of chiffons: urania described the dresses at ostend; urania admired cornélie's old tea-gown; cornélie smiled: "especially after ostend, eh?" she laughed, merrily. but urania meant it seriously: cornélie wore it with such chic! and, changing the topic, she said that she wanted to speak very seriously, that perhaps she knew of something for cornélie, now that cornélie would never accept her, urania's, assistance. at ostend she had made the acquaintance of an old american lady, mrs. uxeley, a regular type. she was ninety years of age and lived at nice in the winter. she was fabulously rich: an oil-queen's fortune. she was ninety, but still behaved as if she were forty-five. she dined out, went into society, flirted. people laughed at her but accepted her because of her money and her splendid entertainments. all the cosmopolitan colony visited her at nice. urania produced an ostend casino-paper and read out a journalistic account of a ball at ostend, in which mrs. uxeley was called la femme la plus élégante d'ostende. the journalist had been paid so much for it; everybody laughed and was amused by it. mrs. uxeley was a caricature, but with enough tact to get herself taken seriously. well, mrs. uxeley was looking for somebody. she always had a lady companion with her, a girl, a young woman; and already numberless ladies had succeeded one another in her employ. she had had cousins living with her, distant cousins, very distant cousins and total strangers. she was tiresome, capricious, impossible; everybody knew that. would cornélie care to try it? urania had already discussed it with mrs. uxeley and recommended her friend. cornélie did not feel greatly attracted, but thought it worth thinking over. mrs. uxeley's companion was staying on till november, when the old thing went back through paris to nice. and at nice they would see so much of each other, cornélie and urania. but cornélie thought it terrible to leave duco. she did not think that it would ever work. they were so attached to each other, so used to each other. from the money point of view it would be excellent--an easy life which attracted her, after that blow to her moral pride--but she could not think of leaving duco. and what would duco do at nice! no, she couldn't, she simply couldn't: she must stay with him.... she felt a reluctance to go, like a hand that withheld her. she told urania to put the old lady off, to let her look out for somebody else. she could not do it. what use to her was such a life--socially dependent, though financially independent--without duco? and, when urania was gone--she was going on to san stefano--cornélie was glad that she had at once declined that stupid, easy life of dependence as companion to a rich old dotard. she glanced round the studio. she loved it with its precious colours, its noble antiques and, behind that curtain, her bed, behind that screen, her oil-stove, making the space look like a little kitchen; with the bohemianism of its precious bibelots and very primitive comforts, it had become indispensable to her, had become her home. and, when duco came in, she kissed him and told him about urania and mrs. uxeley. she was glad to be able to nestle in his arms. he had sold a couple of water-colours. there was no reason whatever to leave him. he didn't wish it either, he never would wish it. and they held each other tightly embraced, as though they were conscious of something that would be able to part them, an ineluctable necessity, as if hands hovered around them pushing them, guiding them, opposing and inhibiting them, a contest of hands, like a cloud around them both: hands that strove by main force to sunder their radiant path of life, their coalescent line of life, as if it were too narrow for the feet of the two of them and the hands were trying to wrench it asunder, in order to let the broad track wind apart in two curves. they said nothing: clasped in each other's arms, they gazed at life, shuddered at the hands, felt the approaching constraint which already was clouding more closely around them. but they felt warm in each other's company; they locked up their little happiness tightly in their embrace and hid it between them, so that the hands might not point to it, touch it and thrust it aside.... and under their fixed gaze life softly receded, the cloud dispersed, the hands faded away and disappeared and their breasts heaved a sigh of relief, while she still remained lying against him and closed her eyes, as though in sleep.... chapter xliv but the life of constraint returned, the hovering hands reappeared, like a gentle mysterious force. cornélie wept bitterly and admitted to herself and admitted to duco: it could not go on any longer. at one moment they had not enough to pay the rent of the studio and had to apply to urania. gaps showed in the studio, colours vanished, owing to the sale of things which duco had collected with love and sacrifice. but lippo memmi's angel, whom he refused to sell, still shone as of old, still holding forth the lily, in his gown of gold brocade. around him on every side yawned melancholy spaces, with bare nails showing in the walls. at first they tried to hang other things in the place of those which had gone; but they soon lost the inclination. and, as they sat side by side, in each other's arms, conscious of their little happiness, but also of the constraint of life with its pushing hands, they closed their eyes, that they might no longer see the studio which seemed to be crumbling about them, while in the first cooler days a sunless chill descended shivering from the ceiling, which seemed higher and farther away. the easel stood waiting, empty. and they both closed their eyes and thus remained, feeling that, despite the strength of their happiness and their love, they were gradually conquered by life, which persisted in its tyranny and day by day took something from them. once, while they were sitting thus, their arms relaxed and their embrace fell away, as though hands were drawing them apart. they remained sitting for a long time, side by side, without touching each other. then she sobbed aloud and flung herself with her face on his knees. there was no more to be done: life was too strong for them, speechless life, the life of the soft, persistent constraint, which surrounded them with so many hands. their little happiness seemed to be escaping them, like an angelic child that was dying and sinking out of their embrace. she said that she would write to urania: the forte-braccios were at nice. he listlessly assented. and, as soon as she received a reply, she mechanically packed her trunk, packed up her old clothes. for urania wrote and told her to come, said that mrs. uxeley wanted to see her. mrs. uxeley sent her the money for her journey. she was in a desperate state of constant nervous sobbing and she felt as if she were being torn from him, torn from that home which was dear to her and which was crumbling about her, all through her fault. when she received the registered letter with the money, she had a nervous attack, complaining to him like a child that she couldn't leave him, that she wouldn't leave him, that she could not live without him, that she loved him for ever, for ever, that she would die, so far away from him. she lay on the sofa, her arms stiff, her legs stiff, crying out with a mouth distorted as though by physical pain. he took her in his arms and soothed her, bathed her forehead, gave her ether to drink, comforted her, said that everything would be all right again later.... later? she looked at him vacantly. she was half mad with grief. she tossed everything out of the trunk again, all about the room--underclothing, blouses--and laughed and laughed. he conjured her to control herself. when she saw his frightened face, when he too began to sob on her breast, she drew him tightly to her, kissed him and comforted him in her turn. and everything in her became dulness and lethargy. together they packed the trunk again. then she looked round and, in a gust of energy, arranged the studio for him, had her bed taken away, pinned his own sketches to the walls, tried to build up something of what had gone to pieces around them, rearranged everything, did her best. she cooked their last meal; she made up the fire. but a desperate threat of loneliness and desertion reigned over everything. it was all wrong, it was all wrong.... sobbing, they fell asleep, in each other's arms, close against each other. next morning he took her to the station. and, when she had stepped into her compartment, they both of them lost all their self-control. they embraced each other sobbing, while the guard was waiting to lock the door. and she saw duco run away like a madman, pushing his way through the crowd; and, broken with misery, she threw herself back in her seat. she was so ill and distressed, so near to fainting, that a lady beside her came to her aid and bathed her face in eau-de-cologne.... she thanked the lady, apologized for the trouble she had given and, seeing the other passengers staring at her with compassionate eyes, she mastered herself, sat huddled in her corner and gazed vacantly through the window. she went on, stopping nowhere, only alighting to change trains. though hungry, she had not the energy to order food at the stations. she ate nothing and drank nothing. she travelled a day and a night and arrived at nice late the following evening. urania was at the station and was startled to see cornélie look grey and sallow, dead-tired, with hollow eyes. and she was most charming: she took cornélie home with her, looked after her for some days, made her stay in bed and went herself to tell mrs. uxeley that her friend was too unwell to report herself. gilio came for a moment to pay cornélie his respects; and she could not do other than thank him for these days of hospitality and care under his roof. and the young princess was like a sister, was like a mother and fed cornélie up with milk and eggs and strengthening medicines. cornélie let her do as she liked, remained limp and indifferent and ate to please urania. after a few days, urania said that mrs. uxeley was coming to call that afternoon, being anxious to see her new companion. mrs. uxeley was alone now, but could wait until cornélie's recovery. cornélie dressed herself as well as she could and with urania awaited the old lady's arrival. she entered gushingly, with a torrent of words; and, in the dim light of urania's drawing-room, cornélie was unable to realize that she was ninety years old. urania winked at cornélie, who only smiled faintly in return: she was afraid of this first interview. but mrs. uxeley, no doubt because cornélie was a friend of the princess di forte-braccio, was very easy-mannered, very pleasant and free of all condescension towards her future companion; she enquired after cornélie's health in a wearisome profusion of little exclamations and sentences and bits of advice. cornélie, in the twilight of the lace-shaded standard-lamps, took her in with a glance and saw a woman of fifty, with the little wrinkles carefully powdered over, in a mauve-velvet gown embroidered with dull gold and spangles and beads. on the brown, waved chignon was a hat with a white aigrette. her jewels kept on sparkling, because she was very fussy, very restless in her movements. she now took cornélie's hands and began to talk more confidentially. so cornélie would come the day after to-morrow. very well. she was accustomed to pay a hundred dollars a month, or five hundred francs, never less, but also never more. but she could understand that cornélie would want something now, for new clothes: would she order what she wanted at this address and have it put down to mrs. uxeley's account? a couple of ball-dresses, two or three less dressy evening-frocks, in short, everything. the princess urania would tell her all about it and would go with her. and she rose, affecting the young woman, simpering through her long-handled lorgnette, but meanwhile leaning hard on her sunshade, working herself with a muscular effort along the stick of her sunshade, with a sudden twitch of rheumatism which uncovered all sorts of wrinkles. urania saw her to the hall and came back shrieking with laughter; and cornélie also laughed, but only listlessly. she really didn't care: she was more amazed at mrs. uxeley than amused. ninety years old! what an energy, worthy of a better object, to remain elegant: la femme la plus élégante d'ostende! ninety years old! how the woman must suffer, during the hours of her long toilet, while she was being made up into that caricature! urania said that it was all false: the hair, the bust. and cornélie felt a loathing at having to live for the future beside this woman, as though beside an ignominy. in the happiness of her love, a great part of her energy had become relaxed, as though their dual happiness--duco's and hers--had unfitted her for any further struggle for life and diminished her zest for life; but it had refined and purified something in her soul and she loathed the sight of so much show for so vain and petty an object. and it was only necessity itself--the inevitability of the things of life, which urged and pushed her with a guiding finger along a line of life now winding solitary before her--that gave her the strength to hide within herself her sorrow, her longing, her nostalgia for everything that she had left behind. she did not talk about it to urania. urania was so glad to see her, looked upon her as a good friend, in the loneliness of her stately life, in her isolation among her aristocratic acquaintances. urania accompanied her enthusiastically to dressmakers' establishments and shops and helped her to choose her new outfit. she did not care about it all. she, an elegant woman, a woman of innate elegance, who in her outward appearance had always fought against poverty and who, in the days of her happiness, was able, with the aid of a fresh ribbon, to wear an old blouse gracefully, was utterly indifferent to everything that she was now buying on mrs. uxeley's account. to her it was as though these things were not for her. she let urania ask and choose; she approved of everything. she allowed herself to be fitted as though she had been a doll. she greatly disliked having to spend money at a stranger's expense. she felt lowered and humiliated: all her haughty pride of life was gone. she was afraid of what they would say of her in the circle of mrs. uxeley's friends, afraid lest they knew of her independent ideas, of her cohabitation with duco, afraid of mrs. uxeley's opinion. for urania had had to be honest and tell everything. it was only on urania's eager recommendation that she had been taken by mrs. uxeley. she felt out of place, now that she would once more dare to play her part among all those people; and she was afraid of giving herself away. she would have to make-believe, to conceal her ideas, to pick her words; and she was no longer accustomed to doing so. and all for that money. all because she had not had the energy, living with duco, to earn her own bread and, gaily, independently, to cheer him in his work, in his art. oh, if she could only have managed to do that, how happy she would have been! if only she had not allowed the wretched languor that was in her blood to increase within her like a morbid growth: the languor of her upbringing, her superficial, showy, drawing-room education, which had unfitted her for everything whatsoever! by temperament she was a creature of love as well as a woman of sensuousness and luxury, but there was more of love in her than of luxury: she would be happy under the simplest conditions if only she was able to love. and now life had torn her away from him, gradually but inexorably. and now her sensuous, luxurious nature was gratified, but in dependence; yet it no longer satisfied her cravings, because she could not satisfy her soul. in that lonely soul a miserable dissatisfaction sprang up like a riotous growth. her only happiness was his letters, letters of longing but also letters of comfort. he wrote expressing his longing, but he also wrote enjoining courage and hope. he wrote to her every day. he was now at florence, seeking his consolation in the uffizi, in the pitti palace. he had found it impossible to stay in rome; the studio was now locked up. at florence he was a little nearer to her. and his letters were to her a love-story, the only novel that she read; and it was as though she saw his landscapes in his style, the same dim blending of colour and emotion, the pearly white, misty, dreamy distances filled with light, the horizon of his longing, as though his eyes were ever gazing at the vista in which she, on the night of departure, had vanished as in a mauve-grey sunset, a sky of the dreary campagna. in those letters they still lived together. but she could not write to him in this strain. though she wrote to him daily, she wrote briefly, telling him ever the same things in other words: her longing, her weary indifference. but she wrote of the happiness which she derived from his letters, which were her daily bread. she was now with mrs. uxeley and occupied in the gigantic villa two charming rooms overlooking the sea and the promenade des anglais. urania had helped her to arrange them. and she lived in an unreal dream of strangeness, of non-existence alone with her soul, of unlived actions and gestures, performed according to the will of others. in the mornings she went to mrs. uxeley in her boudoir and read her the french and american papers and sometimes a few pages of a french novel. she humbly did her best. mrs. uxeley thought that she read very nicely, only she said that cornélie must cheer up a bit, that her melancholy days were over now. duco was never mentioned and mrs. uxeley behaved as though she knew nothing. the great boudoir looked through the open balcony-windows over the sea, where, on the promenade, the morning stroll was already beginning, with the gaudy colours of the parasols striking a shrill note against the deep-blue sea, an expensive sea, a costly tide, waves that seemed to exact a mint of money before they would consent to roll up prettily. the old lady, already painted, bedizened and bewigged, with a white-lace wrap over her wig against the draught, lay in the black and white lace of her white-silk tea-gown on the piled-up cushions of her sofa. in her wrinkled hand she held the lorgnette, with her initials in diamonds, through which it amused her to peer at the shrill patches of the parasols outside. now and then, when her rheumatism gave a twinge, she suddenly distorted her face into one great crease of wrinkles, under which the smooth enamel of her make-up almost cracked, like crackle-china. in the daylight she seemed hardly alive, looked like an automatic, jointed, stiff-limbed doll, which spoke and moved mechanically. she was always a trifle tired in the mornings, from never sleeping at night; after eleven she took a little nap. she observed a strict régime; and her doctor, who called daily, seemed to revive her a little every day, to enable her to hold out until the evening. in the afternoon she drove out, alighted at the jetée, paid her visits. but in the evening she revived with a trace of real life, dressed, put on her jewels and recovered her exuberance, her little exclamations and simpers. then came the dances, the parties, the theatre. then she was no more than fifty. but these were her good days. sometimes, after a night of insufferable pain, she remained in her bedroom, with yesterday's enamelling untouched, her bald head wrapped in black lace, a black-satin bed-jacket hanging loosely around her like a sack; and she moaned and cried and shrieked and seemed to be begging for release from her torments. this lasted for a couple of days and occurred regularly every three weeks, after which she gradually revived again. her fussy conversation was limited to a constantly recurrent discussion of all sorts of family-matters, with appropriate annotations. she explained to cornélie all the family-connections of her friends, american and european, but she enlarged more particularly upon the great european families which she numbered among her acquaintances. cornélie could never listen to what she was saying and forgot the pedigrees again at once. it was sometimes unendurably tedious to have to listen for so long; and only for this reason, as though she were forced to it, cornélie found the energy to talk a little herself, to relate an anecdote, to tell a story. when she saw that the old woman was very fond of anecdotes, riddles and puns, she collected as many as she could from the vie parisienne and the journal pour rire and kept them ready to hand. and mrs. uxeley thought her very entertaining. once, as she noticed duco's daily letter, she referred to it; and cornélie suddenly discovered that the old lady was devoured with curiosity. then she quietly told her the truth: her marriage, her divorce, her independent ideas, her meeting and her life with duco. the old woman was a little disappointed because cornélie spoke so simply about it all. she merely advised her to live discreetly and correctly now. what people said about former incidents did not matter so very much. but there must be no occasion for gossip now. cornélie promised meekly. and mrs. uxeley showed her her albums, with her own photographs, dating back to her young days, and the photographs of all sorts of men. and she told her about this friend and that friend and, vain-gloriously, allowed the suggestion of a very lurid past to peep through. but she had always lived discreetly and correctly. that was her pride. and what cornélie had done was wrong.... the hour or so from eleven to half-past twelve was a relief. then the old woman regularly went to sleep--her only sleep in the twenty-four hours--and urania came to fetch cornélie for a drive or a walk along the promenade or to sit in the jardin public. and it was the only moment when cornélie more or less appreciated her new-found luxury and took pleasure in the gratification of her vanity. the passers-by turned round to stare at the two young and pretty women in their exquisite serge frocks, with their fashionable headgear withdrawn in the twilight of their sunshades, and admired the princess di forte-braccio's glossy victoria, irreproachable liveries and spanking greys. gilio maintained a reserved and respectful attitude towards cornélie. he was polite but kept a courteous distance when he joined the two ladies for a moment in the gardens or on the jetée. after the night in the pergola, after the sudden flash of his angry knife, she was afraid of him, afraid also because she had lost much of her courage and haughtiness. but she could not answer him more coldly than she did, because she was grateful to him as well as to urania for the care shown her during the first few days, for their tact in not at once surrendering her to mrs. uxeley and in keeping her with them until she had recovered some of her strength. in the freedom of those mornings, when she felt herself released from the old woman--vain, selfish, insignificant, ridiculous--who was as the caricature of her life, she felt that in urania's friendship she was finding herself again, she became conscious of being at nice, she contemplated the garish bustle around her with clearer eyes and she lost the unreality of the first days. at such times it was as though she saw herself again for the first time, in her light serge walking-dress, sitting in the garden, her gloved fingers playing with the tassels of her sunshade. she could hardly believe in herself, but she saw herself. deep down within herself, hidden even from urania, she concealed her longing, her home-sickness, her stifling discontent. she sometimes felt ready to burst into sobs. but she listened to urania and joined in her laughter and talk and looked up with a smile at gilio, who stood in front of her, mincing to and fro on the tips of his shoes and swinging his walking-stick behind his back. sometimes, suddenly--as a vision whirling through the crowd--she saw duco, the studio, the happiness of the past fading away for one brief moment. then with her finger-tips she felt his letter of that morning, between the strips of gathered lace in front of her bolero, and just crushed the hard envelope against her breast, as something belonging to him that was caressing her. and it was not to be denied: she saw herself and nice around her; she became sensible of new life: it was not unreal, even though it was not actual to her soul; it was a sorrowful comedy, in which she--dismally, feebly, listlessly--played her part. chapter xlv it was all severely regulated, as by rule, and there was no possibility of the least alteration: everything was done in accordance with a fixed law. the reading of the newspaper; her hour and a half to herself; then lunch. after lunch, the drive, the jetée, the visits; every day, those visits and afternoon teas. once in a way, a dinner-party; and in the evening generally a dance, a reception or a theatre. she made new acquaintances by the score and forgot them again at once and no longer remembered, when she saw them again, whether she knew them or not. as a rule people were fairly pleasant to her in that cosmopolitan set, because they knew that she was an intimate friend of the princess urania's. but, like urania herself, she was sometimes conscious, from the feminine bearers of the old italian names and titles which sometimes glittered in that set, of an overwhelming pride and contempt. the men always asked to be introduced to her; but, whenever she asked to be introduced to their ladies, her only reward was a nod of vague surprise. she herself minded very little, but she felt sorry for urania. for she saw at once, at urania's own parties, that they hardly looked upon her as the hostess, that they surrounded and made much of gilio, but accorded to his wife no more than the civility which was her due as princess di forte-braccio, without ever forgetting that she was once miss hope. and for urania this contempt was more difficult to put up with than for herself. for she accepted her rôle as the companion. she always kept an eye on mrs. uxeley, constantly joined her for a minute in the course of the evening, fetched a fan which mrs. uxeley had left in the next room or did her this or that trifling service. then she would sit down, against the wall alone in the busily humming drawing-room, and gaze indifferently before her. she sat, always very smartly dressed, in an attitude of graceful indifference and weary boredom, tapping her little foot or unfolding her fan. she took no notice of anybody. sometimes a couple of men would come up to her and she spoke to them, or danced with one of them, indifferently, as though conferring a favour. once, when gilio was talking to her, she sitting and he standing, and the duchess di luca and countess costi both came up to him and, standing, began to chaff him profusely, without honouring her with a word or a glance, she first stared at the ladies between her mocking lids, eyeing them from head to foot, and then rose slowly, took gilio's arm and, with a glance which darted sharp as a needle from her narrowed eyes, said: "i beg your pardon, but you must excuse me if i rob you of the prince di forte-braccio, because i have to finish a private conversation." and with the pressure of her arm she made gilio move on a few steps, then at once sat down again, made him sit down beside her and began to whisper with him very confidentially, while she left the duchess and countess standing two yards away, open-mouthed with stupefaction at her rudeness, and furthermore spread her train wide between herself and the two ladies and waved her fan to and fro, as though to preserve a distance. she could do this sort of thing so calmly, so tactfully and haughtily, that gilio was tickled to death and sat and giggled with delight: "i wish that urania knew how to behave like that!" he said, pleased as a child at the diversion which she had afforded him. "urania is too nice to do anything so odious," she replied. she did not make herself liked, but people became afraid of her, afraid of her quiet malice, and avoided offending her in future. moreover, the men thought her pretty and agreeable and were also attracted by her haughty indifference. and, without really intending it, she achieved a position, apparently by using the greatest diplomacy, but in reality quite naturally and easily. while mrs. uxeley's egoism was flattered by her little attentions--always dutifully remembered and paid with a charming air of maternal solicitude, in contrast to which mrs. uxeley thought it delightful to simper like a young girl--cornélie gradually gathered a court of men around her in the evenings; and the women became insipidly civil. urania often told her how clever she thought her, how much tact she displayed. cornélie shrugged her shoulders: it all happened of itself; and really she did not care. but still, gradually, she recovered some of her cheerfulness. when she saw herself standing in the glass, she had to confess to herself that she was better-looking than she had ever been, either as a girl or as a newly-married woman. her tall, slender figure had a languorous line of pride that gave her a special grace; her throat was statelier, her bosom fuller; her waist was slimmer in these new dresses; her hips had become heavier, her arms more rounded; and, though her features no longer wore the look of radiant happiness which they had worn in rome, her mocking smile and her negligent irony gave her a certain attraction for those unknown men, something more alluring and provoking than the greatest coquetry would have been. and cornélie had not wished for this; but, now that it came of itself, she accepted it. it was foreign to her nature to refuse it. and, besides, mrs. uxeley was pleased with her. cornélie had such a pretty way of whispering to her: "dear lady, you were in such pain yesterday. don't you think you ought to go home a little earlier to-night?" and then mrs. uxeley would simper like a girl who was being admonished by her mother not to dance too much that evening. she loved these little ways of cornélie's; and cornélie, with careless indifference, gave her what she wanted. and those evenings amused her more than they did at first; only, the amusement was combined with self-reproach as soon as she thought of duco, of their separation, of rome, of the studio, of the happiness of those past days, which she had lost through her lack of fortitude. chapter xlvi two months had passed like this. it was january; and these were busy days for cornélie, because mrs. uxeley was soon to give one of her celebrated evenings and cornélie's free hours in the morning were now taken up with running all sorts of errands. urania generally drove with her; and she came to rely upon urania. they had to go to upholsterers, to pastry-cooks, to florists and to jewellers, where cornélie and urania selected presents for the cotillon. mrs. uxeley never went out for this, but occupied herself with every trifling indoor detail; and there were endless discussions, followed by more drives to the shops, for the old lady was anything but easy to please, vain as she was of her fame as a hostess and afraid of losing it through the least omission. during one of these drives, as the victoria was turning into the avenue de la gare, cornélie started so violently that she clutched urania's arm and could not restrain an exclamation. urania asked her what she had seen, but she was unable to speak and urania made her get out at a confectioner's to drink a glass of water. she was very nearly fainting and looked deathly pale. she was not able to continue her errands; and they drove back to mrs. uxeley's villa. the old lady was displeased at this sudden fainting-fit and grumbled so that urania went off alone to complete the errands. after lunch, however, cornélie felt better, made her apologies and accompanied mrs. uxeley to an afternoon tea. next day, when she was sitting with mrs. uxeley and a couple of friends on the jetée, she seemed to see the same thing again. she turned as white as a sheet, but retained her composure and laughed and talked merrily. these were the days of the preparations. the date of the entertainment drew nearer; and at last the evening arrived. mrs. uxeley was trembling with nervousness like a young girl and found the necessary strength to walk through the whole villa, which was all light and flowers. and with a sigh of satisfaction she sat down for a moment. she was dressed. her face was smooth as porcelain, her hair was waved and glittered with diamond pins. her gown of pale-blue brocade was cut very low; and she gleamed like a reliquary. a triple rope of priceless pearls hung down to her waist. in her hand--she was not yet gloved--she held a gold-knobbed cane, which was indispensable when she wanted to rise. and it was only when she rose that she showed her age, when she worked herself erect by muscular efforts, with that look of pain in her face, with that twinge of rheumatism which shot through her. cornélie, not yet dressed, after a last glance through the villa, blazing with light, swooning with flowers, hurried to her room and, already feeling tired, dropped into the chair in front of her dressing-table, to have her hair done quickly. she was irritable and told the maid to hurry. she was just ready when the first guests arrived and she was able to join mrs. uxeley. and the carriages rolled up. cornélie, at the top of the monumental staircase, looked down into the hall, where the people were streaming in, the ladies in their long evening-wraps--almost more expensive even than their dresses--which they carefully gave up in the crowded, buzzing cloakroom. and the first arrivals came up the stairs, waiting so as not to be the very first, and were beamed upon by mrs. uxeley. the drawing-rooms soon filled. in addition to the reception-rooms, the hostess' own rooms were thrown open, forming in all a suite of twelve apartments. whereas the corridors and stairs were adorned only with clumps of red and white and pink camellias, in the rooms the floral decorations were contained in hundreds of vases and bowls and dishes, which stood about on every hand and, with the light of the shaded candles, gave an intimate charm to the entertainment. that was the speciality of mrs. uxeley's decorations on great occasions: the electric light not used; instead, on every hand candles with little shades, on every hand glasses and bowls full of flowers, giving the effect of a fairy garden. though perhaps the main outlines were broken, a most charming effect of cosiness was gained. small groups and couples could find a place everywhere: behind a screen, in a loggia; you constantly found a spot for privacy; and this perhaps explained the vogue of mrs. uxeley's parties. the villa, suitable for giving a court ball, was used only for giving entertainments of a luxurious intimate character to hundreds of people who were quite unknown to one another. each little set chose itself a little corner, where it made itself at home. a very tiny boudoir, all in japanese lacquer and japanese silk, was aimed at generally, but was at once captured by gilio, the countess di rosavilla, the duchess di luca and countess costi. they did not even go to the music-room, where a concert formed the first item. paderewski was playing, sigrid arnoldson was to sing. the music-room also was lighted by shaded candles; and everybody whispered that, in this soft light, mrs. uxeley did not look a day over forty. during the interval she simpered to two very young journalists who were to describe her party. urania, sitting beside cornélie, was addressed by a frenchman whom she introduced to her friend: the chevalier de breuil. cornélie knew that urania had met him at ostend and that his name was coupled with the princess di forte-braccio's. urania had never mentioned de breuil to her, but cornélie now saw, by her smile, her blush and the sparkle in her eyes, that people were right. she left them to themselves, feeling sad when she thought of urania. she understood that the little princess was consoling herself for her husband's neglect; and she suddenly thought this whole life of make-believe disgusting. she longed for rome, for the studio, for duco, for independence, love and happiness. she had had it all; but it had been fated not to endure. everything around her was like one great lie, more brilliant than at the hague, but even more false, brutal and depraved. people no longer even pretended to believe the lie: here they showed a brutal sincerity. the lie was respected, but nobody believed in it, nobody put forward the lie as a truth; the lie was nothing more than a form. cornélie wandered through the rooms by herself, went up to mrs. uxeley for a moment, in accordance with her habit, whispered to ask how she felt, whether she wanted anything, if everything was going well, then continued on her way through the rooms. she was standing by a vase, rearranging some orchids, when a woman in black velvet, fair-haired, with a full throat and bosom, spoke to her in english: "i am mrs. holt. i dare say you don't know my name, but i know yours. i very much want to make your acquaintance. i have often been to holland and i read dutch a little. i read your pamphlet on the social position of divorced women and i thought a good deal of what you wrote most interesting." "you are very kind. shall we sit down? i remember your name too. you were one of the leaders of the women's congress in london, were you not?" "yes, i spoke about the training of children. weren't you able to come to london?" "no, i did think about it, but i was in rome at the time and i couldn't manage it." "that was a pity. the congress was a great step forward. if your pamphlet had been translated then and distributed, you would have had a great success." "i care very little for success of that kind." "of course, i can understand that. but the success of your book is also for the good of the great cause." "do you really mean that? is there any merit in my little book?" "do you doubt it?" "very often." "how is that possible? it is written with such a sure touch." "perhaps just for that reason." "i don't understand you. there's a vagueness sometimes about dutch people which we english don't understand, something like a reflection of your beautiful skies in your character." "do you never doubt? do you feel sure of your ideas on the training of children?" "i have studied children in schools, in crèches and in their homes and i have acquired very decided ideas. and i work in accordance with these ideas for the people of the future. i will send you my pamphlet, containing the gist of my speeches at the congress. are you working on another pamphlet now?" "no, i regret to say." "why not? we must all fight shoulder to shoulder, if we are to conquer." "i believe i have said all that i had to say. i wrote what i did on impulse, from personal experience. and then ..." "yes?" "then things changed. all women are different and i never approved of generalizing. and do you believe that there are many women who can work for a universal object with a man's thoroughness, when they have found a lesser object for themselves, a small happiness, such as a love to satisfy their own ego, in which they can be happy? don't you think that every woman has slumbering inside her a selfish craving for her own love and happiness and that, when she has found this, the outside world and the future cease to interest her?" "possibly. but so few women find it." "i believe there are not many. but that is another question. and i do believe that an interest in universal questions is a pis-aller with most women." "you have become an apostate. you speak quite differently from what you wrote a year ago." "yes, i have become very humble, because i am more sincere. of course i believe in certain women, in certain choice spirits. but would the majority not always remain feminine, just women and weak?" "not with a sensible training." "yes, i believe that it lies in that, in the training...." "of the child, of the girl." "i believe that i have never been educated and that this constitutes my weakness." "our girls should be told when still very young of the struggle that lies before them." "you are right. we--my friends, my sisters and i--had the 'safety' of marriage impressed upon us at the earliest possible moment. do you know whom i think the most to be pitied? our parents! they honestly believed that they were having us taught all that was necessary. and now, at this moment, they must see that they did not divine the future correctly and that their training, their education was no education at all, because they failed to inform their children of the struggle which was being waged right before their eyes. it is our parents that are to be pitied. they can mend nothing now. they see us--girls, young women of twenty to thirty--overwhelmed by life; and they have not given us the strength for it. they kept us sheltered as long as possible under the paternal wing; and then they began to think of our marriage, not in order to get rid of us, but with a view to our happiness, our safety and our future. we are indeed unfortunate, we girls and women who were not, like our younger sisters, told of the struggle that lay just before us; but i believe that we may still have hope in our youth and that our parents are unhappier and more to be pitied than we, because they have nothing more to hope for and because they must secretly confess that they went astray in their love for their children. they were still educating us according to the past, while the future was already so near at hand. i pity our parents and i could almost love them better for that reason than i ever did before." chapter xlvii she had suddenly turned very pale, as though under the stress of a sudden emotion. she covered her face with her fluttering fan and her fingers trembled violently; her whole body shuddered. "that is well thought on your part," said mrs. holt. "i am glad to have met you. i always find a certain charm in dutch people: that vagueness, which we are unable to seize, and then all at once a light that flashes out of a cloud.... i hope to see you again. i am at home on tuesdays, at five o'clock. will you come one day with mrs. uxeley?" mrs. holt pressed her hand and disappeared among the other guests. cornélie had risen from her chair, while her knees seemed to give way beneath her. she remained standing, half-turned towards the room, looking in the glass; and her fingers played with the orchids in a venetian vase on the console-table. she was still rather pale, but controlled herself, though her heart was beating loudly and her breast heaving. and she looked in the glass. she saw first her own figure, her beautiful, slender outline, in her dress of white and black chantilly, with the white-lace train, foaming with flounces, the black-lace tunic with the scalloped border and sprinkled with steel spangles and blue stones, a spray of orchids in the sleeveless corsage, which left her neck and arms and shoulders bare. her hair was bound with three greek fillets of pearls; and her fan of white feathers--a present from urania--was like foam against her throat. she saw herself first and then, in the mirror, she saw him. he was coming nearer to her. she did not move, only her fingers played with the flowers in the vase. she felt as though she wished to take flight, but her knees gave way and her feet were paralysed. she stood rooted to the floor, hypnotized. she was unable to stir. and she saw him come nearer and nearer, while her back remained half-turned to the room. he approached; and his appearance seemed to fling out a net in which she was caught. he was close by her now, close behind her. mechanically she raised her eyes and looked in the glass and met his eyes in the mirror. she thought that she would faint. she felt squeezed between him and the glass. in the mirror the room went round and round, the candles whirled giddily, like a reeling firmament. he did not say anything yet. she only saw his eyes gazing and his mouth smiling under his moustache. and he still said nothing. then, in that unendurable lack of space between him and the mirror, which did not even give shelter as a wall would have done, but which reflected him so that he held her twice imprisoned, behind and before, she turned round slowly and looked him in the eyes. but she did not speak either. they looked at each other without a word. "you never expected this: that you would see me here one day," he said, at last. it was more than a year since she had heard his voice. but she felt his voice inside her. "no," she answered, at last, haughtily, coldly, distantly. "though i saw you once or twice, in the street, on the jetée." "yes," he said. "should i have bowed to you, do you think?" she shrugged her bare shoulders; and he looked at them. she felt for the first time that she was half-naked that evening. "no," she replied, still coldly and distantly. "any more than you need have spoken to me now." he smiled at her. he stood before her as a wall. he stood before her as a man. his head, his shoulders, his chest, his legs, his whole stature rose before her as incarnate manhood. "of course i needn't have done so," he said; and she felt his voice inside her: she felt his voice sinking in her like molten bronze into a mould. "if i had met you somewhere in holland, i would only have taken off my hat and not spoken to you. but we are in a foreign country...." "what difference does that make?" "i felt i should like to speak to you.... i wanted to have a talk with you. can't we do that as strangers?" "as strangers?" she echoed. "oh, well, we're not strangers: we even know each other uncommonly intimately, eh?... come and sit down and tell me about yourself. did you like rome?" "yes," she said. he had led her as though with his will to a couch behind a half-damask, half-glass, louis-xv. screen; and she dropped down upon it in a rosy twilight of candles, with bunches of pink roses around her in all sorts of venetian glasses. he sat on an ottoman, bending towards her slightly, with his arms on his knees and his hands folded together: "they've been gossiping about you finely at the hague. first about your pamphlet ... and then about your painter." her eyes pierced him like needles. he laughed: "you can look just as angry as ever.... tell me, do you ever hear from the old people? they're in a bad way." "now and then. i was able to send them some money lately." "that's damned good of you. they don't deserve it. they said that you no longer existed for them." "mamma wrote that they were so pushed for money. then i sent them a hundred guilders. it was the most that i could do." "oh, now that they find you sending them money, you'll begin to exist for them again!" she shrugged her shoulders: "i don't mind that. i was sorry for them ... and sorry i couldn't send more." "ah, when you look so thundering smart...." "i don't pay for my clothes." "i'm only stating a fact. i'm not venturing to criticize. i think it damned handsome of you to send them money. but you do look thundering smart.... look here, let me tell you something: you've become a damned handsome girl." he stared at her, with his smile, which compelled her to look at him. then she replied, very calmly, waving her fan lightly in front of her bare neck, sheltering in the foam of her fan: "i'm damned glad to hear it!" he gave a loud, throaty laugh: "there, i like that! you've still got your witty sense of repartee. always to the point. damned clever of you!" she stood up strained and nervous: "i must leave you. i must go to mrs. uxeley." he spread out his arms: "stay and sit with me a little longer. it does me good to talk to you." "then restrain yourself a bit and don't 'damn' quite so much. i've not been used to it lately." "i'll do my best. sit down." she fell back and hid herself behind her fan. "let me tell you that you have positively become a very ... a very beautiful woman. now is that like a compliment?" "it sounds more like one." "well, it's the best i can do, you know. so you must make the most of it. and now tell me about rome. how were you living there?" "why should i tell you about it?" "because i'm interested." "you have no need to be interested." "i dare say, but i happen to be. i've never quite forgotten you. and i should be surprised if you had me." "i have, quite," she said, coolly. he looked at her with his smile. he said nothing, but she felt that he knew better. she was afraid to convince him further. "is it true, what they say at the hague? about van der staal?" she looked at him haughtily. "come, out with it!" "yes." "you are a cheeky baggage! do you no longer care a straw for the whole boiling of them?" "no." "and how do you manage here, with this old hag?" "what do you mean?" "do they just accept you here, at nice?" "i don't brag about my independence; and no one is able to comment on my conduct here." "where is van der staal?" "at florence." "why isn't he here?" "i'm not going to answer any more questions. you are indiscreet. it has nothing to do with you and i won't be cross-examined." she was very nervous again and once more rose to her feet. he spread out his arms. "really, rudolph, you must let me go," she entreated. "i have to go to mrs. uxeley. they are to dance a pavane in the ball-room and i have to ask for instructions and hand them on. let me pass." "then i'll take you there. let me offer you my arm." "rudolph, do go away! don't you see how you're upsetting me? this meeting has been so unexpected. do let me go, or i sha'n't be able to control myself. i'm going to cry.... why did you speak to me, why did you speak to me, why did you come here, where you knew that you would meet me?" "because i wanted to see one of mrs. uxeley's parties and because i wanted to meet you." "you must understand that it upsets me to see you again. what good does it do you? we are dead to each other. why should you want to pester me like this?" "that's just what i wanted to know, whether we are dead to each other...." "dead, dead, quite dead!" she cried, vehemently. he laughed: "come, don't be so theatrical. you can understand that i was curious to see you again and talk to you. i used to see you in the street, in your carriage, on the jetée; and i was pleased to find you looking so well, so smart, so happy and so handsome. you know that good-looking women are my great hobby. you are much better-looking than you used to be when you were my wife. if you had been then what you are now, i should never have allowed you to divorce me.... come, don't be a child. no one knows here. i think it damned jolly to meet you here, to have a good old yarn with you and to have you leaning on my arm. take my arm. don't make a fuss and i'll take you where you want to go. where shall we find mrs. uxeley? introduce me ... as a friend from holland...." "rudolph...." "oh, i insist: don't bother! there's nothing in it! it amuses me and it's no end of a lark to walk about with one's divorced wife at a ball at nice. a delightful town, isn't it? i go to monte carlo every day and i've been damned lucky. won three thousand francs yesterday. will you come with me one day?" "you're mad!" "i'm not mad at all. i want to enjoy myself. and i'm proud to have you on my arm." she withdrew her arm: "well, you needn't be." "now don't get spiteful. that's all rot: let's enjoy ourselves. there is the old girl: she's looking at you." she had passed through some of the rooms on his arm; and they saw, near a tombola, round which people were crowding to draw presents and surprises, mrs. uxeley, gilio and the rosavilla, costi and luca ladies. they were all very gay round the pyramid of knickknacks, behaving like children when the number of one of them turned up on the roulette-wheel. "mrs. uxeley," cornélie began, in a trembling voice, "may i introduce a fellow-countryman of mine? baron brox." mrs. uxeley simpered, uttered a few amiable words and asked if he wouldn't draw a number. the roulette-wheel spun round and round. "a fellow-countryman, cornélie?" "yes, mrs. uxeley." "what do you say his name is?" "baron brox." "a splendid fellow! a handsome fellow! an astonishingly handsome fellow!... what is he? what does he do?" "he's in the army, a first lieutenant...." "in which regiment?" "in the hussars." "at the hague?" "yes." "an amazingly good-looking fellow! i like those tall, fine men." "mrs. uxeley, is everything going as it should?" "yes, darling." "do you feel all right?" "i have a little pain, but nothing to speak about." "won't it soon be time for the pavane?" "yes, see that the girls go and get dressed. has the hairdresser brought the wigs for the young men?" "yes." "then go and collect them and tell them to hurry up. they must be ready within half an hour...." rudolph brox returned from the tombola, where he had drawn a silver match-box. he thanked mrs. uxeley, who simpered, and, when he saw that cornélie was moving away, he went after her: "cornélie ..." "please, rudolph, let me be. i have to collect the girls and the men for the pavane. i have a lot to do...." "i'll help you...." she beckoned to a girl or two and sent a couple of footmen to hunt through the room for the young men and to ask them to go to the dressing-room. he saw that she was pale and trembling all over her body: "what's the matter?" "i'm tired." "then let's go and get something to drink." she was numb with nervousness. the music of the invisible band boom-boomed fiercely against her brain; and at times the innumerable candles whirled before her eyes like a reeling firmament. the rooms were choked with people. they crowded and laughed aloud and showed one another their presents; the men trod on the ladies' trains. an intoxicating, suffocating fragrance of flowers, the atmosphere peculiar to crowded functions and the warm, perfumed odour of women's flesh hung in the rooms like a cloud. cornélie hunted hither and thither and at last collected all the girls. the ballet-master came to ask her something. a butler came to ask her something. and brox did not budge from her side. "let's go now and get something to drink," he said. she mechanically took his arm; and her hand trembled on the sleeve of his dress-coat. he pushed his way with her through the crowd; they passed urania and de breuil. urania said something which cornélie did not catch. the refreshment-room also was chock-full and buzzed with loud, laughing voices. behind the long tables stood the butler, like a minister, supervising the whole service. there was no crowding, no fighting for a glass of wine or a sandwich. people waited until a footman brought it on a tray. "it's very well managed," said brox. "do you do all this?" "no, it's been done like this for years...." she dropped into a chair, looking very pale. "what will you have?" "a glass of champagne." "i'm hungry. i had a bad dinner at my hotel. i must have something to eat." he ordered the champagne for her. he ate first a patty, then another, then a châteaubriant and peas. he drank two glasses of claret, followed by a glass of champagne. the footman brought him everything, dish by dish, on a silver tray. his handsome, virile face was brick-red in colour with health and animal strength. the stiff hair on his round, heavy skull was cropped quite close. his large grey eyes were bright and laughing, with a straight, impudent glance. a heavy, well-tended moustache curled over his mouth, in which the white teeth gleamed. he stood with his legs slightly astraddle, firm and soldierly in his dress-coat, which he wore with an easy correctness. he ate slowly and with relish, enjoying his good glass of fine wine. mechanically she now watched him, from her chair. she had drunk a glass of champagne and asked for another; and the stimulant revived her. her cheeks recovered some of their colour; her eyes sparkled. "they do you damn well here," he said, coming up to her with his glass in his hand. and he emptied his glass. "they are going to dance the pavane almost at once," she murmured. and they passed through the crowded rooms, to a big corridor outside, which looked like an avenue of camellia-shrubs. they were alone for a moment. "this is where the dancers are to meet." "then let's wait for them. it's nice and cool out here." they sat down on a bench. "are you feeling better?" he asked. "you were so queer in the ball-room." "yes, i'm better." "don't you think it's fun to meet your old husband again?" "rudolph, i don't understand how you can talk to me like that and persecute me and tease me ... after everything that has happened...." "oh, well, all that has happened and is done with!" "do you think it's discreet on your part ... or delicate?" "no, neither discreet nor delicate. those, you know, are things i've never been: you used to fling that in my face often enough, in the old days. but, if it's not delicate, it's amusing. have you lost your sense of humour? it's damn jolly humorous, our meeting here.... and now listen to me. you and i are divorced. all right. that's so in the eyes of the law. but a legal divorce is a matter of law and form, for the benefit of society. as regards money affairs and so on. we've been too much husband and wife not to feel something for each other at a later meeting, such as this. yes, yes, i know what you want to say. it's simply untrue. you have been too much in love with me and i with you for everything between us to be dead. i remember everything still. and you must do the same. do you remember when...?" he laughed, pushed nearer to her and whispered close in her ear. she felt his breath thrilling on her flesh like a warm breeze. she flushed crimson with nervous distress. and she felt with her whole body that he had been her husband and that he had entered into her very blood. his voice ran like molten bronze, along her nerves of hearing, deep down within her. she knew him through and through. she knew his eyes, his mouth. she knew his broad, well-kept hands, with the large round nails and the dark signet-ring, as they lay on his knees, which showed square and powerful under the crease in his dress-trousers. and she felt, like a sudden despair, that she knew and felt him in her whole body. however rough he might have been to her in the old days, however much he had ill-treated her, striking her with his clenched fist, banging her against the wall ... she had been his wife. she, a virgin, had become his wife, had been initiated into womanhood by him. and she felt that he had branded her as his own, she felt it in her blood and in the marrow of her bones. she confessed to herself that she had never forgotten him. during the first lonely days in rome, she had longed for his kisses, she had thought of him, had conjured up his virile image before her mind, had persuaded herself to believe that, by exercising tact and patience and a little management, she could have remained his wife.... then the great happiness had come, the gentle happiness of perfect harmony!... it all flashed through her like lightning. oh, in that great, gentle happiness she had been able to forget everything, she had not felt the past within her! but she now felt that the past always remained, irrevocably and indelibly. she had been his wife and she held him still in her blood. she felt it now with every breath that she drew. she was indignant because he dared to whisper about the old days, in her ear; but it had all been as he said, irrevocably, indelibly. "rudolph!" she entreated, clasping her hands together. "spare me!" she almost screamed it, in a cry of fear and despair. but he laughed and with one hand seized both hers, clasped in entreaty: "if you go on like that, if you look at me so beseechingly with those beautiful eyes, i won't spare you even here and i'll kiss you until ..." his words swept over her like a scorching wind. but laughing voices approached; and two girls and two young men, dressed up, for the pavane, as henri iv. and marguerite de valois, came running down the stairs: "what's become of the others?" they cried, looking round in the staircase. and they came dancing up to cornélie. the ballet-master also approached. she did not understand what he said: "where are the others?" she repeated, mechanically, in a hoarse voice. "here they come.... now we're all there...." they were all talking and laughing and glittering and buzzing about her. she summoned up all her poor strength and issued a few instructions. the guests streamed into the great ball-room, sat down in the front chairs, crowded together in the corners. the pavane was danced in the middle of the room, to an old trailing melody: a long, winding curve of graceful steps, deep bows and satin gleaming with sudden lustre like that of porcelain ... with the occasional flutter of a cape ... and a flash of light on a rapier.... chapter xlviii "urania, i beseech you, help me!" "what is it?" "come with me...." she had seized urania by the hand and dragged her away from de breuil into one of the deserted rooms. the suite of rooms was almost entirely deserted; the dense throng of guests stood packed along the sides of the great ball-room to watch the pavane. "what is it, cornélie?" cornélie was trembling in every limb and clutching urania's arm. she drew her to the farthest corner of the room. there was no one there. "urania," she entreated, in a supreme crisis of nervousness, "help me! what am i to do? i have met him unexpectedly. don't you know whom i mean? my husband. my divorced husband. i had seen him once or twice before, in the street and on the jetée. the time when i was so startled, you know, when i almost fainted: that was because of him. and he has been talking to me now, here, a moment ago. and i'm afraid of him. he spoke quite nicely, said he wanted to talk to me. it was so strange. everything was finished between us. we were divorced. and suddenly i meet him and he speaks to me and asks me what sort of time i have had, tells me that i am looking well, that i have grown beautiful. tell me, urania, what i am to do. i'm frightened. i'm ill with anxiety. i want to get away. i should like best to go away at once, to florence, to duco. i am so frightened, urania. i want to go to my room. tell mrs. uxeley that i want to go to my room." she hardly knew what she was saying. the words fell incoherently from her lips, as in a fever. men's voices approached. they were those of gilio, de breuil, the duke di luca and the young journalists, the two who were pushing their way into society. "what is the signora de retz doing?" asked the duke. "we are missing her everywhere." and the young journalists, standing in the shadow of these eminent noblemen, confirmed the statement: they had been missing her everywhere. "fetch mrs. uxeley here," urania whispered to gilio. "cornélie is ill, i think. i can't leave her here alone. she wants to go to her room. it's better that mrs. uxeley should know, else she might be angry." cornélie was jesting nervously, in feverish gaiety, with the duke and with de breuil and the journalists. "would you rather i took you straight to mrs. uxeley?" gilio whispered. "i want to go to my room!" she whispered, in a voice of entreaty, behind her fan. the pavane appeared to be over. the buzz of voices reached them, as though the guests were scattering about the rooms again: "i see mrs. uxeley," said gilio. he went up to her, spoke to her. she simpered at first, leaning on the gold knob of her cane. then her wrinkles became angrily contracted. she crossed the room. cornélie went on jesting with the duke; the journalists thought every word witty. "aren't you well?" whispered mrs. uxeley, going up to her, ruffled. "what about the cotillon?" "i will see to everything, mrs. uxeley," said urania. "impossible, dear princess; and i shouldn't dream of letting you either." "introduce me to your friend, cornélie!" said a deep voice behind cornélie. she felt that voice like bronze inside her body. she turned round automatically. it was he. she seemed unable to escape him. and, under his glance, as though hypnotized, she appeared, very strangely, to recover her strength. it seemed as though he were willing her not to be ill. she murmured: "urania, may i introduce ... a fellow-countryman?... baron brox.... princess di forte-braccio...." urania knew his name, knew who he was: "darling," she whispered to cornélie, "let me take you to your room. i'll see to everything." "it's no longer necessary," she said. "i'm much better. i only want a glass of champagne. i am much better, mrs. uxeley." "why did you run away from me?" asked rudolph brox, with his smile and his eyes in cornélie's eyes. she smiled and said the first thing that came into her head. "the dancing has begun," said mrs. uxeley. "but who's going to lead my cotillon presently?" "if i can be of any service, mrs. uxeley," said brox, "i have some little talent as a cotillon-leader." mrs. uxeley was delighted. it was arranged that de breuil and urania, gilio and the countess costi and brox and cornélie should lead the figures in turns. "you poor darling!" urania said in cornélie's ear. "can you manage it?" cornélie smiled: "yes, yes, i'm all right again," she whispered. and she moved towards the ball-room on brox's arm. urania stared after her in amazement. chapter xlix it was twelve o'clock when cornélie woke that morning. the sun was piercing the golden slit in the half-parted curtains with tiny eddying atoms. she felt dog-tired. she remembered that mrs. uxeley, on the morning after one of these parties, left her free to rest: the old lady herself stayed in bed, although she did not sleep. and cornélie lacked the smallest capacity to rise. she remained lying where she was, heavy with fatigue. her eyes wandered through the untidy room; her handsome ball-dress, hanging listlessly, limply over a chair, at once reminded her of yesterday. for that matter, everything in her was thinking of yesterday, everything in her was thinking of her husband, with a tense, hypnotized consciousness. she felt as if she were recovering from a nightmare, a bout of drunkenness, a swoon. it was only by drinking glass after glass of champagne that she had been able to keep going, had been able to dance with brox, had been able to lead the figure when their turn came. but it was not only the champagne. his eyes also had held her up, had prevented her from fainting, from bursting into sobs, from screaming and waving her arms like a madwoman. when he had taken his leave, when everybody had gone, she had collapsed in a heap and been taken to bed. the moment she was no longer under his eyes, she had felt her misery and her weakness; and the champagne had as it were suddenly clouded her brain. now she lay thinking of him in the dejected slackness of her overwhelming morning fatigue. and it seemed to her as if her whole italian year had been an interlude, a dream. she saw herself at the hague again, with her pretty little face and her little flirting ways and her phrases always to the point. she saw their first meetings and how she had at once fallen under his influence and been unable to flirt with him, because he laughed at her little feminine defences. he had been too strong for her from the first. then came their engagement. he laid down the law and she rebelled, angrily, with violent scenes, not wishing to be controlled, injured in her pride as a girl who had always been spoiled and made much of. and then he subdued her as though with the rude strength of his fist--and always with a laugh on his handsome mouth--until they were married, until she created a scandal and ran away. he had refused to be divorced at first, but had consented later, because of the scandal. she had freed herself, she had fled!... the feminist movement, italy, duco.... was it a dream? was the great happiness, the delightful harmony, a dream and was she awaking after a year of dreams? was she divorced or was she not? she had to make an effort to remember the formalities: yes, they were legally divorced. but was she divorced, was everything over between them? and was she really no longer his wife? why had he done it, why had he pursued her after seeing her once at nice? oh, he had told her, during that cotillon, that endless cotillon! he had become proud of her when he saw how beautiful she was and how smart, how happy she looked driving in mrs. uxeley's or the princess' elegant victoria; it was then that he had seen her, beautiful, smart and happy; and he had grown jealous. she, a beautiful woman, had been his wife! he felt that he had a right to her, notwithstanding the law. what was the law? had the law taught her womanhood or had he? and he had made her feel his right, together with the irrevocable past. it was all irrevocable and indelible.... she looked about her, at her wits' end what to do. and she began to weep, to sob. then she felt something gaining strength within her, the instinctive rebellion that leapt up within her like a spring which had at length recovered its resilience, now that she was resting and no longer under his eyes. she would not. she would not. she refused to feel him in her blood. should she meet him once more, she would speak to him calmly, very curtly, and order him to leave her, show him the door, have him put out of the door.... she clenched her fists with rage. she hated him. she thought of duco.... and she thought of writing to him, telling him everything. and she thought of going back to him as quickly as possible. he was not a dream, he existed, even though he was living so far away, at florence. she had saved a little money, they would find their happiness again in the studio in rome. she would write to him; and she wanted to get away as quickly as possible. with duco she would be safe. oh, how she longed for him, to lie so softly and quietly and blissfully in his arms, against his breast, as in the embrace of a miraculous happiness! was it all true, their happiness, their love and harmony? yes, it had existed, it was not a dream. there was his photograph; there, on the wall, were two of his water-colours--the sea at sorrento and the skies over amalfi--done in those days which had been like poems. she would be safer with him. when she was with duco, she would not feel rudolph, her husband, in her blood. for she felt duco in her soul; and her soul would be the stronger! she would feel duco in her soul, in her heart, in all the most fervent part of her life and gather from him her uppermost strength, like a sheaf of gleaming sword-blades! already now, when she thought of him with such longing, she felt herself growing stronger. she could have spoken to brox now. yesterday he had taken her by surprise, had squeezed her between himself and that looking-glass, till she had seen him double and lost her wits and been defeated. that would never happen again. that was only due to the surprise. if she spoke to him again now, she would triumph, thanks to what she had learnt as a woman who stood on her own feet. and she got up and opened the windows and put on her dressing-gown. she looked at the blue sea, at the motley traffic on the promenade. and she sat down and wrote to duco. she told him everything: her first startled meeting, her surprise and defeat at the ball. her pen flew over the paper. she did not hear the knock at the door, did not hear urania come in carefully, fearing lest she should still be asleep and anxious to know how she felt. excitedly she read out part of her letter and said that she was ashamed of her weakness of yesterday. how she could have behaved like that she herself was unable to understand. no, she herself could not understand it. now that she felt somewhat rested and was speaking to urania, who reminded her of rome, and holding her long letter to duco in her hand ... now she herself did not understand it all and wondered which had been a dream: her italian year of happiness or that nightmare of yesterday.... chapter l she stayed at home for a day, feeling tired and, deep down within herself, almost unconsciously, afraid, in spite of all, of meeting him. but mrs. uxeley, who would never hear of illness or fatigue, was so much put out that cornélie accompanied her next day to the promenade des anglais. friends came up to talk to them and gathered round their chairs, with rudolph brox among them. but cornélie avoided any confidential conversation. some days later, however, he called on mrs. uxeley's at-home day; and, amid the crowd of visitors paying duty-calls after the party, he was able to speak to her for a moment alone. he came up to her with that laugh of his, as though his eyes were laughing, as though his moustache were laughing. and she collected all her thoughts, so that she might be firm with him: "rudolph," she said, loftily, "it is simply ridiculous. if you don't think it indelicate, you might at least try to think it ridiculous. it tickles your sense of humour, but imagine what people would say about it in holland!... the other evening, at the party, you took me by surprise and somehow--i really don't know how it happened--i yielded to your strange wish to dance with me and to lead the cotillon. i frankly confess, i was confused. i now see everything clearly and plainly and i tell you this: i refuse to meet you again. i refuse to speak to you again. i refuse to turn the solemn earnest of our divorce into a farce." "if you look back," he said, "you will recollect that you never got anything out of me with that lofty tone and those dignified airs, but that, on the contrary, you just stimulate me to do what you don't want...." "if that is so, i shall simply tell mrs. uxeley in what relation i stand to you and ask her to forbid you her house." he laughed. she lost her temper: "do you intend to behave like a gentleman or like a cad?" he turned red and clenched his fists: "curse you!" he hissed, in his moustache. "perhaps you would like to hit me and knock me about?" she continued, scornfully. he mastered himself. "we are in a room full of people," she sneered, defiantly. "what if we were alone? you've already clenched your fists! you would thrash me as you did before. you brute! you brute!" "and you are very brave in this room full of people!" he laughed, with his laugh which incited her to rage, when it did not subdue her. "no, i shouldn't thrash you," he continued. "i should kiss you." "this is the last time you're going to speak to me!" she hissed furiously. "go away! go away! or i don't know what i shall do, i shall make a scene." he sat down calmly: "as you please," he said, quietly. she stood trembling before him, impotent. some one spoke to her; the footman handed her some tea. she was now in the midst of a circle of men; and, mastering herself, she jested, with loud, nervous gaiety, flirted more coquettishly than ever. there was a little court around her, with the duke di luca as its ring-leader. close by, rudolph brox sat drinking his tea, with apparent calmness, as though waiting. but his strong, masterful blood was boiling madly within him. he could have murdered her and he was seeing red with jealousy. that woman was his, despite the law. he was not going to be afraid of any more scandal. she was beautiful, she was as he wished her to be and he wanted her, his wife. he knew how he would win her back; and this time he would not lose her, this time she should be his, for as long as he wished. as soon as he was able to speak to her unheard, he came up to her again. she was just going to urania, whom she saw sitting with mrs. uxeley, when he said in her ear, sternly and abruptly: "cornélie...." she turned round mechanically, but with her haughty glance. she would rather have gone on, but could not: something held her back, a secret strength, a secret superiority, which sounded in his voice and flowed into her with a weight as of bronze that weakened and paralysed her energy. "what is it?" she asked. "i want to speak to you alone." "no." "yes. listen to me calmly for a moment, if you can. i am calm too, as you see. you needn't be afraid of me. i promise not to ill-treat you or even to swear at you. but i must speak to you, alone. after our meeting, after the ball last week, we can't part like this. you are not even entitled to show me the door, after talking to me and dancing with me so recently. there's no reason and no logic in it. you lost your temper. but let us both keep our tempers now. i want to speak to you...." "i can't: mrs. uxeley doesn't like me to leave the drawing-room when there are people here. i am dependent on her." he laughed: "you are almost even more dependent on her than you used to be on me! but you can give me just a second, in the next room." "no." "yes, you can." "what do you want to speak to me about?" "i can't tell you here." "i can't speak to you alone." "i'll tell you what it is: you're afraid to." "no." "yes, you are: you're afraid of me. with all your airs and your dignity, you're afraid to be alone with me for a moment." "i'm not afraid." "you are afraid. you're shaking in your shoes with fear. you received me with a fine speech which you rehearsed in advance. now that you've delivered your speech ... it's over and you're frightened." "i am not frightened." "then come with me, my plucky authoress of the social position of the what's-her-name! i promise, i swear that i shall be calm and tell you calmly what i have to say to you; and i give you my word of honour not to hit you.... which room shall we go to?... do you refuse? listen to me: if you don't come with me, it's not finished yet. if you do, perhaps it will be finished ... and you will never see me again." "what can you have to say to me?" "come." she yielded because of his voice, not because of his words: "but only for three minutes." "very well, three minutes." she took him into the passage and into an empty room: "well what is it?" she asked, frightened. "don't be frightened," he said, laughing under his moustache. "don't be frightened. i only wanted to tell you ... that you are my wife. do you understand that? don't try to deny it. i felt it at the ball the other night, when i had my arm round you, waltzing with you. don't try to deny that you pressed yourself against me for a moment. you're my wife. i felt it then and i feel it now. and you feel it too, though you would like to deny it. but that won't help you. what has been can't be altered; and what has been ... always remains part of you. there, you can't say that i am not speaking prettily and delicately. not an oath, not an improper word has escaped my lips. for i don't want to make you angry. i only want to make you confess that what i say is true and that you are still my wife. that law doesn't signify. it's another law that rules us. it's a law that rules you especially; a law which, without our ever suspecting it, brings us together again, even though it does so by a very strange, roundabout path, along which you, especially, have strayed. that law rules you especially. i am convinced that you still love me, or at least that you are still in love with me. i feel it, i know it as a fact: don't try to deny it. it's no use, cornélie. and i'll tell you something besides: i am in love with you too and more so than ever. i feel it when you're flirting with those fellows. i could wring your neck then, i could break every bone in their bodies.... don't be afraid: i'm not going to; i'm not in a temper. i just wanted to talk to you calmly and make you see the truth. do you see it before you? it is in-con-tro-ver-tible. you see, you have nothing to say in reply. facts are facts.... will you show me the door now? do you still propose to speak to mrs. uxeley? i shouldn't, if i were you. your friend, the princess, knows who i am: leave it at that. had the old woman never heard my name, or has she forgotten it? forgotten it, i expect. well, then, don't trouble to refresh her ancient memory. leave things as they are. it's better to say nothing. no, the position is not ridiculous and it's not humorous either. it has become very serious: the truth is always serious. it is strange, i admit: i should never have expected it. it's a revelation to me as well.... and now i've said what i had to say. less than five minutes by my watch. they will hardly have noticed your absence in the drawing-room. and now i'm going; but first give your husband a kiss, for i am your husband ... and always shall be." she stood trembling before him. it was his voice, which fell like molten bronze into her soul, into her body, and lamed and paralysed her. it was his voice of persuasion, of persuasive charm, the voice which she knew of old, the voice that compelled her to do everything that he wanted. under the influence of that voice she became a thing, a chattel, something that belonged to him, once he had branded her for ever as his mate. she was powerless to cast him out of herself, to shake him from herself, to erase from herself the stamp of his possession and the brand which marked her as his property. she was his; and anything that otherwise was herself had left her. there was no longer in her brain either memory or thought.... she saw him come up to her and put his arm around her. he took her to his breast slowly but so firmly that he seemed to be taking possession of her entirely. she felt herself melting away in his arms as in a scorching flame. on her lips she felt his mouth, his moustache, pressing, pressing, pressing, until she closed her eyes, half-fainting. he said something more in her ear, with that voice under which she seemed not to count, as though she were nothing, as though she existed only through him. when he released her, she staggered on her feet. "come, pull yourself together," she heard him say, calmly, authoritatively, omnipotently. "and accept the position. things are as they are. there's no altering them. thank you for letting me speak to you. everything is all right between us now: i'm sure of it. and now au revoir. au revoir...." he kissed her again: "give me a kiss too," he said, with that voice of his. she flung her arm round his body and kissed him on the lips. "au revoir," he said, once more. she saw him laugh under his moustache; his eyes laughed at her with flames of gold; and he went away. she heard his feet going down the stairs and ringing on the marble of the hall, with the strength of his firm tread.... she remained standing as though bereft of life. in the drawing-room, next to the room in which she was, the hum of laughing voices sounded loudly. she saw rome before her, saw duco, in a short flash of lightning.... it was gone.... and, collapsing into a chair, she uttered a suppressed cry of despair, put her hands before her face and sobbed, restraining her despair before all those people, dully, as from a stifling throat. chapter li she had but one thought: to take to flight. to fly from his mastery, to fly from the emanation of that dominion which, mysteriously but irrevocably, wiped away with his caress all that was in her of will, energy and self. she remembered having felt the same thing in the old days: rebellion and anger when he became angry and coarse, but an eclipse of self when he caressed her; an inability to think when he merely laid his hand upon her head; a swooning away into a vast nothingness when he took her in his arms and kissed her. she had felt it from the first time of seeing him, when he stood before her and looked down upon her with that light irony in the smile of his eyes and his moustache, as though he took pleasure in her resistance--at that time prompted by flirting and fun, soon by petulance, later by anger and fury--as though he took pleasure in her futile feminine attempts to escape his power. he had at once realized that he ruled this woman. and she had found in him her master, her sole master. for no other man pressed down upon her with that empire which was of the blood, of the flesh. on the contrary, she was usually the superior. she had about her a cool indifference which was always provoking her to destructive criticism. she had a need for fun, for cheerful conversation, for coquetry, for flirtation; and, always a mistress of quick repartee, she invited the occasion for repartee; but, apart from this, men meant little to her and she always saw the absurd side of each of them, thinking this one too short, that one too tall, a third clumsy, a fourth stupid, finding something in every one of them to rouse her laughter, her mockery or her criticism. she would never be a woman to give herself to many. she had met duco and given herself to him with her love, wholly, as one great inseparable golden gift; and after him she would never fall in love again. but before duco she had met rudolph brox. perhaps, if she had met him after duco, his mastery would not have swayed her. she did not know. and what was the good of thinking about it. the thing was as it was. in her blood she was not a woman for many; in her blood she was the wife, the spouse, the consort. of the man who had been her husband she was in her flesh and in her blood the wife; and she was his wife even without love. for she could not call this love: she gave the name of love only to that other passion, that proud, tender and intense completion of life's harmony, that journey along one golden line, the marriage of two gleaming lines.... but the phantom hands had risen all about them in a cloud, the hands had mysteriously and inevitably divided their golden line; and hers, a winding curve, had leapt back, like a quivering spring, crossing a darker line of former days, a sombre line of the past, a dark track full of unconscious action and fatal bondage. oh, the strangeness, the most mysterious strangeness of those lines of life! why should they curl back, force her backwards to her original starting-point? why had it all been necessary? she had but one thought: to take to flight. she did not see the inevitability of those lines and the fatality of those paths and she did not wish to feel the pressure of the phantom hands that rose about her. to fly, to turn up the dusky path, back to the point of separation, back to duco, and with him to rebraid and twist the two lost directions into one pure movement, one line of happiness!... to fly, to fly! she told urania that she was going. she begged urania to forgive her, because it was she who had recommended her to the old woman whom she was now suddenly leaving. and she told mrs. uxeley, without caring for her anger, her temper or her words of abuse. she admitted that she was ungrateful. but there was a vital necessity which compelled her suddenly to leave nice. she swore that it existed. she swore that it would mean unhappiness, even ruin, were she to stay. she explained it to urania in a single sentence. but she did not explain it to the old woman and left her in an impotent fury which made her writhe with rheumatic aches and pains. she left behind her everything that she had received from mrs. uxeley, all the superfluous wardrobe of her dependence. she put on an old frock. she went to the station like a criminal, trembling lest she should meet him. but she knew that at this hour he was always at monte carlo. nevertheless she went in a closed cab and she took a second-class ticket for florence. she telegraphed to duco. and she fled. she had nothing left but him. she could never again count upon mrs. uxeley; and urania had behaved coolly, not understanding that singular flight, because she did not understand the simple truth, rudolph brox' power. she thought that cornélie was making things difficult for herself. in the circle in which urania lived, her sense of social morality had wavered since her liaison with the chevalier de breuil. hearing the italian law of love whispered all around her, the law that love is as simple as an opening rose, she did not understand cornélie's struggle. she no longer resented anything that gilio did; and he in his turn left her free. what was happening to cornélie? surely it was all very simple, if she was still fond of her divorced husband! why should she run away to duco and make herself ridiculous in the eyes of all their acquaintances? and so she had parted coolly from cornélie; but still she missed her friend. she was the princess di forte-braccio; and lately, on her birthday, prince ercole had sent her a great emerald, out of the carefully kept family-jewels, as though she were becoming worthy of them gradually, stone by stone! but she missed cornélie and she felt lonely, deadly lonely, notwithstanding her emerald and her lover.... cornélie fled: she had nothing in the world but duco. but in him she would have everything. and, when she saw him at florence, at the santa maria novella station, she flung herself on his breast and clung to him as to a cross of redemption, a saviour. he led her sobbing to a cab; and they drove to his room. there she looked round her nervously, done up with the overstrain of her long journey, thinking every minute that rudolph would come after her. she told duco everything, opened her heart to him entirely, as though he were her conscience, as though he were her soul, her god. she nestled up against him, she told him that he must help her. it was as though she were praying to him; her anguish went up to him like a prayer. he kissed her; and she knew that manner of comforting, she knew that tender caressing. she suddenly fell against him, utterly relaxed; and so she continued to lie, with closed eyes. it was as though she were sinking in a lake, in a blue sacred lake, mystic as the lake of san stefano in the sleeping night, powdered with stars. and she heard him say that he would help her; that there was nothing in her fears; that that man had no power over her; that he would never have any power over her, if she became his, duco's, wife. she looked at him and did not understand what he was saying. she looked at him feverishly, as though he had awakened her suddenly while she lay sleeping for a second in the blue calmness of the mystic lake. she did not understand, but, dead-tired, she hid her face against his arm again and fell asleep. she was dead-tired. she slept for two hours immovably, breathing deeply, upon his breast. when he shifted his arm, she just moved her head heavily, like a flower on a weary stalk, but she slept on. he stroked her forehead, her hair; and she slept on, with her hand in his. she slept as if she had not slept for days, for weeks. chapter lii "there is nothing to be afraid of, cornélie," he said, convincingly. "that man has no power over you if you refuse, if you refuse with a firm will. i do not see what he could do. you are quite free, absolutely released from him. that you ran away so precipitately was certainly not wise: it will look to him like a flight. why did you not tell him calmly that he can't claim any rights in you? why did you not say that you loved me? if need were, you could have said that we were engaged. how can you have been so weak and so terrified? it's not like you! but, now that you are here, all is well. we are together now. shall we go back to rome to-morrow or shall we remain here a little first? i have always longed to show you florence. look, there, in front of us, is the arno; there is the ponto vecchio; there is the uffizi. you've been here before, but you didn't know italy then. you'll enjoy it more now. oh, it is so lovely here! let us stay a week or two first. i have a little money; you need have no fear. and life is cheaper here than in rome. living in this room, we shall spend hardly anything. i have light enough through this window to sketch by, now and again. or else i go and work in the san marco or in san lorenzo or up on san miniato. it is delightfully quiet in the cloisters. there are a few excursionists at times; but i don't mind that. and you can go with me, with a book, a book about florence; i'll tell you what to read. you must learn to know donatello, brunelleschi, ghiberti, but, above all, donatello. we shall see him in the bargello. and lippo memmi's annunciation, the golden annunciation! you shall see how like our angel is to it, our beautiful angel of happiness, the one you gave me! it is so rich here; we shall not feel that we are poor. we need so little. or have you been spoilt by your luxury at nice? but i know you so well: you will forget that at once; and we shall win through together. and presently we shall go back to rome. but this time ... married, my darling, and you belonging to me entirely, legally. it must be so now; you must not refuse me again. we'll go to the consul to-morrow and ask what papers we want from holland and what will be the quickest way of getting married. and meanwhile you must look upon yourself as my wife. until now we have been very, very happy ... but you were not my wife. once you feel yourself to be my wife--even though we wait another fortnight for those papers to sign--you will feel safe and peaceful. there is nobody and nothing that has any power over you. you're not well, if you really think there is. and then i'll bet you, when we are married, my mother will make it up with us. everything will come right, my darling, my angel.... but you must not refuse: we must get married with all possible speed." she was sitting beside him on a sofa and staring out of doors, where, in the square frame of the tall window, the slender campanile rose like a marble lily between the dome-crowned harmonies of the cathedral and the battisterio, while on one side the palazzio vecchio lay, a massive, battlemented fortress, amid the welter of the streets and roofs, and lifted its tower, suddenly expanding into the machicolated summit, with fiesole and the hills shimmering behind it in the purple of the evening. the noble city of eternal grace gleamed a golden bronze in the last reflection of the setting sun. "we must get married at once?" she repeated, with a doubting interrogation. "yes, as soon as ever we can, darling." "but duco, dearest duco, it's less possible now than ever. don't you see that it can't be done? it's impossible, impossible. it might have been possible before, some months ago, a year ago ... perhaps, perhaps not even then. perhaps it was never possible. it is so difficult to say. but now it can't be done, really not...." "don't you love me well enough?" "how can you ask me such a question? how can you ask me, darling? but it's not that. it is ... it is ... it can't be, because i am not free." "not free?" "i am not free. i may feel free later ... or perhaps not, perhaps never.... my dearest duco, it is impossible. i wrote to you, you know: that first meeting at the ball; it was so strange; i felt that ..." "that what?" she took his hand and stroked it; her eyes were vague, her words were vague: "you see ... he has been my husband." "but you're divorced from him: not merely separated, but divorced!" "yes, i'm divorced; but it's not that." "what then, dearest?" she shook her head and hid her face against him: "i can't tell you, duco." "why not?" "i'm ashamed." "tell me; do you still love him?" "no, it's not love. i love you." "but what then, my darling? why are you ashamed?" she began to cry on his shoulder: "i feel...." "what?" "that i am not free, although ... although i am divorced. i feel ... that i am his wife all the same." she whispered the words almost inaudibly. "but then you do love him and more than you love me." "no, no, i swear i don't!" "but, darling, you're not talking sense!" "yes, indeed i am." "no, you're not. it's impossible!" "it isn't. it's quite possible. and he told me so ... and i felt it...." "but the fellow's hypnotizing you!" "no, it's not hypnotism. it's not a delusion: it's a reality, deep, deep down within myself. look here, you know me: you know how i feel. i love you and you only. that alone is love. i have never loved any one else. i am not a woman who is susceptible to.... i'm not hysterical. but with him ... no other man, no man whom i have ever met, rouses that feeling in me ... that feeling that i am not myself. that i belong to him, that i am his property, his chattel." she threw her arms about him, she hid herself like a child in his breast: "it is so strange.... you know me, don't you? i can be plucky and i am independent and i am never at a loss for an answer. but with him i am no longer sure of myself, i no longer have a life of my own. and i do what he tells me to." "but that is hypnotism: you can escape that, if you seriously wish to. i will help you." "it is not hypnotism. it is a truth, deep down inside me. it exists inside me. i know that it is so, that it has to be so.... duco, it is impossible. i can't become your wife. i mustn't become your wife ... less now than ever. perhaps...." "perhaps what?" "perhaps i always felt like that, without knowing it, that it must not be. both for you and for me ... and for him too.... perhaps that was what i felt, without knowing it, when i talked as i used to, about my antipathy for marriage." "but that antipathy arose from your marriage ... with him!" "yes, that's the strange part of it. i dislike him ... and yet...." "yet you're in love with him!" "yet i belong to him." "and you tell me that you love me!" she took his head in her two hands: "try to understand. it tires me so, trying to make you understand. i love you ... but i am his wife...." "are you forgetting what you were to me in rome?..." "i was everything to you: love, happiness, intense happiness.... there was the most intense harmony between us: i shall never forget it.... but i was not your wife." "not my wife!" "no, i was your mistress.... i was unfaithful to him.... oh, don't repulse me! pity me, pity me!" he had unconsciously made a gesture that frightened her. "let me stay like this, leaning against you. may i? i am so tired and i feel restful, leaning against you like this, my darling. my darling, my darling ... things will never be as they were. what are we to do?" "i don't know," he said, in despair. "i want to marry you as soon as may be. you won't consent." "i can't. i mustn't." "then i don't know what to do or say." "don't be angry. don't leave me. help me, do, do! i love you, i love you, i love you!" she drew him into her arms, in a close, sudden embrace, as though in perplexity and despair. he kissed her passionately in response. "o god, tell me what to do!" she prayed, as she, lay hopelessly perplexed in his embrace. chapter liii next day, when cornélie walked with duco through florence, when they entered the courtyard of the palazzo vecchio, saw the loggia dei lanzi and looked in at the uffizi to see memmi's annunciation, she felt something like her former sensations irresistibly unfolding within her. they seemed to have taken their lines which had burst asunder and with human force to have bent them together again into one path, along which the white daisies and white lilies shot up with a tenderness of soft, mystic recognition that was almost like a dream. and yet it was not quite the same as before. an oppression as of a grey cloud hung between her and the deep-blue sky, which hung out stretched like strips of æther, like paths of lofty, quivering atmosphere, above the narrow streets, above the domes and towers and turrets. she no longer felt the former apprehension; there was a remembrance in her, a heavy pondering weighed upon her brain, an anxiety for what was about to happen. she had a presentiment as of a coming storm; and when, after their walk, they had had something to eat and went home, she dragged herself up the stairs to duco's room more wearily than she had ever done in rome. and she at once saw a letter lying on the table, a letter addressed to her. but how addressed! it gave her so violent a start that she began to tremble in every limb and managed to thrust the letter away even before duco had followed her into the room. she took off her hat and told duco that she wanted to get something out of her trunk, which was standing in the passage. he asked if he could help her; but she said no and left the room and went into the narrow passage. here, standing by the little window overlooking the arno, she took out the letter. it was the only place where she could read for a moment undisturbed. and she read that address again, written in his hand, which she knew so well, with its great thick, heavy characters. the name which she bore abroad was her maiden name; she called herself madame de retz van loo. but on the envelope she read, briefly: "baronne brox, , lung' arno torrigiani, florence." a deep crimson flush mantled over her face. she had borne that name for a year. why did he call her by it now? where was the logic in that title which, by the law, was hers no longer? what did he mean by it, what did he want?... and, standing by the little window, she read his short but imperious letter. he wrote that he took her flight very much amiss, especially after their last conversation. he wrote that, at this last interview, she had granted him every right over her, that she had not denied it and that, by kissing him and putting her arms around him, she had shown that she regarded herself as his wife, just as he regarded her as his wife. he wrote that he would not now resent her independent life of a year in rome, because she was then still free, but that he was offended at her still looking upon herself as free and that he would not accept the insult of her flight. he called upon her to return. he said that he had no legal right to do so, but that he did it because he nevertheless had a right, a right which she could not dispute, which indeed she had not disputed, which on the contrary she had acknowledged by her kiss. he had learnt her address from the porter of the villa uxeley. and he ended by repeating that she was to return to nice, to him, at the hôtel continental, and telling her that, if she did not do this, he would come to florence and she would be responsible for the consequences of her refusal. her knees shook; she was hardly able to stand upright. should she show duco the letter or keep it from him? she had to make up her mind then and there. he was calling to her from the room, asking what she was doing so long in the passage. she went in and was too weak to refrain from throwing herself on his breast. she showed him the letter. leaning against him, sobbing violently, she heard him fume and rage, saw the veins on his temples swell, saw him clench his fists and roll the letter into a ball and dash it to the floor. he told her not to be frightened, said that he would protect her. he too regarded her as his wife. it all depended upon the light in which she henceforth regarded herself. she did not speak, merely sobbed, broken with fatigue, with fright, with head-ache. she undressed and went to bed, her teeth chattering with fever. he drew her curtains to darken the room and told her to go to sleep. his voice sounded angry and she thought that he was angry at her lack of resolution. she sobbed and cried herself to sleep. but in her sleep she felt the terror within herself and again felt the irresistible pressure. while sleeping she dreamt of what she could reply and wrote to brox, but it was not clear what she wrote: it was all a vague, impotent pleading for mercy. when she woke, she saw duco beside her bed. she took his hand; she was calmer. but she had no hope. she had no faith in the days that were coming. she looked at him and saw him gloomy, stern and self-contained, as she had never seen him before. oh, their happiness was past! on that fatal day when he had seen her to the train in rome, they had taken leave of their happiness. it was gone, it was gone! gone the dear walks through ruins and museums, the trips to frascati, naples, amalfi! gone the dear, fond life of poverty in the big studio, among the gleaming colours of the old brocades and chasubles, of the old bronzes and silver! gone the gazing together at his water-colour of the banners, she with her head on his shoulder, within his arm, living his art with him, enjoying his work with him! gone the ecstasy of the night in the pergola, in the star-spangled night, with the sacred lake at their feet! life was not to be repeated. they had tried in vain to repeat it here, in this room, at florence, in the palazzo vecchio, tried in vain to repeat it even in the presence of memmi's angel emitting his beam of light! they tried in vain to repeat their life, their happiness, their love; it was in vain that they had forced together the lines which had burst asunder. these had merely twined round each other for a moment, in a despairing curve. it was gone, it was gone!... gloomy and stern he sat beside her bed; and she knew it, he felt that he was powerless because she did not feel herself to be his wife. his mistress!... oh, she had felt that involuntary repulsion when she had uttered the word! had he not always wanted to marry her? but she had always felt unconsciously that it could not be, that it must not be. under all the exuberance of her acrid feministic phrases, that had been the unconscious truth. she, railing against marriage, had always, inwardly, felt herself to be married ... not by a signature, in accordance with the law, but according to an age-old law, a primeval right of man over woman, a law and a right of flesh and blood and the very marrow of the bones. oh, above that immovable physical truth her soul had blossomed its blossom of white daisies and lilies; and that blossom also was the intense truth, the lofty truth of happiness and love! but the daisies and lilies blossomed and faded: the soul blossoms for but a single summer. the soul does not blossom for a lifetime. it blossoms perhaps before life, it blossoms perhaps after it; but in life itself the soul blossoms for but a single summer. it had blossomed, it was over! and in her body, which lived, in her being, which survived, she felt the truth in her very marrow! he was sitting beside her bed, but he had no rights, now that the lilies had blossomed.... she was broken with pity for him. she took his hand and kissed it fervently and sobbed over it. he said nothing. he did not know how to say anything. it would all have been very simple for him, if she had consented to be his wife. as things were, he could not help her. as things were, he saw his happiness foundering while he looked on: there was nothing to be done. it was slowly falling to pieces, like a crumbling ruin. it was gone! it was gone!... she stayed in bed these days; she slept, she dreamt, she awoke again; and the dread waiting never left her. she had a slight temperature now and again; and it was better for her to stay in bed. as a rule, he remained by her side. but one day, when duco had gone to the chemist's for something, there was a knock at the door. she leapt out of bed, terrified, terrified lest she should see the man of whom she was always thinking. half-fainting with fright, she opened the door ajar. it was only the postman, with a registered letter ... from him! even more curtly than last time, he wrote that, immediately on the receipt of his letter, she was to telegraph, stating the day when she would come. he said that, if on such and such a day--he would calculate, etc., which--he did not receive her telegram, he would leave for florence and shoot her lover like a dog at her feet. he would not take a moment to reflect. he did not care what happened.... in this short letter, his anger, his fury, raged like a red storm that lashed her across the face. she knew him; and she knew that he would do what he said. she saw, as in a flash, the terrible scene, with duco dropping, murdered, weltering in his blood. and she was no longer her own mistress. the red fury of that letter, dispatched from afar, made her his chattel, his thing. she had torn the letter open hastily, before signing the postman's book. the man was waiting in the passage. her brain whirled, the room spun before her eyes. if she paused to reflect, it would be too late, too late to reflect. and she asked the postman, nervously: "can you send off a telegram for me at once?" no, he couldn't: it wasn't on his road. but she implored him to do it. she said that she was ill and that she must telegraph at once. and she found a gold ten-franc piece in her purse and gave it to him as a tip over and above the money for the telegram. and she wrote the telegram: "leaving to-morrow express train." it was a vague telegram. she did not know by what express; she had not been able to look it up. would it be in the evening or quite early in the morning? she had no idea. how would she be able to get away? she had no idea. but she thought that the telegram would calm him. and she meant to go. she had no choice. now that she had fled in despair, she saw it: if he wanted to have her back, back as his wife, she must go. if he had not wanted it, she could have remained, wherever she might be, despite her feeling that she belonged to him. but now that he wanted it, she must go back. but oh, how was she to tell duco? she was not thinking of herself, she was thinking of duco. she saw him lying before her in his blood. she forgot that she had no money left. was she to ask him for it? o god, what was she to do? she could not go next day, notwithstanding her telegram! she could not tell duco that she was going.... she had meant to slip quietly to the station, when he was out.... or had she better tell him?... which would be the least painful?... or should ... should she tell everything to duco and ... and run away ... run away somewhere with him and tell nobody where they were going.... but supposing he discovered where they had gone! and he would find them!... and then ... then he would murder ... duco!... she was almost delirious with fear, with terror, with not knowing what to do, how to act.... she now heard duco's steps on the stairs.... he came in, bringing her the pills.... and, as usual, she told him everything, too weak, too tired, to keep anything hidden, and showed him the letter. he blazed out, furiously, with hatred; but she fell on her knees before him and took his hands. she said that she had already sent the answer. he suddenly became cool, as though overcome by the inevitable. he said that he had no money to pay for her journey. then, once more, he took her in his arms, kissed her, begged her to be his wife, said that he would kill her husband, even as her husband had threatened to kill him. but she did nothing but sob and refuse, although she continued to cling to him convulsively. then he yielded to the fatal omnipotence of life's silent tyranny. he felt death in his soul. but he wished to keep calm for her sake. he said that he forgave her. he held her, all sobbing, in his arms, because his touch calmed her. and he said that, if she wanted to go back--she despondently nodded yes--it was better to telegraph to brox again, asking for money for the journey and for clear instructions as to the day and time. he would do this for her. she looked at him, through her tears, in surprise. he himself drew up the telegram and went out. "my darling, my darling!" she thought, as he went, as she felt the pain in his torn soul. she flung herself on the bed. he found her in hysterics when he returned. when he had tended her and tucked her up in bed, he sat down beside her. and he said, in a dead voice: "my dearest, be calm now. the day after to-morrow i shall take you to genoa. then we shall take leave of each other, for ever. if it can't be otherwise, it must be like that. if you feel that it has to be, then it must be. be calm now, be calm now. if you feel like that, that you must go back to your husband, then perhaps you will not be unhappy with him. be calm, dear, be calm." "will you take me?" "i shall take you as far as genoa. i have borrowed the money from a friend. but above all try to be calm. your husband wants you back; he can't want you back only to beat you. he must feel something for you if he wants you so. and, if it has to be ... then perhaps it will be the best thing ... for you.... even though i can't see it in that light!..." he covered his face with his hands and, no longer master of himself burst into sobs. she drew him to her breast. she was now calmer than he. and, as he sobbed with his head on her beating heart, she quietly stroked his forehead, while her eyes roamed distantly round the walls of the room.... chapter liv she was now alone in the train. by tipping the guard lavishly, they had travelled by themselves through the night and been left undisturbed in their compartment. oh, the melancholy journey, the last silent journey of the end! they had not spoken but had sat close together, hand in hand, with eyes gazing into the distance before them, as though staring at the approaching point of separation. the dreary thought of that separation never left them, rushed onward in unison with the rattling train. sometimes she thought of a railway-accident and that it would be welcome to her if she could die with him. but the lights of genoa had gleamed up inexorably. then the train had stopped. and he had flung out his arms and they had kissed for the last time. pressed to his breast, she had felt all his grief within him. then he had released her and rushed away, without looking round. she followed him with her eyes, but he did not look back and she saw him disappear in the morning mist, pierced with little lights, that hung about the station. she had seen him disappear among other people, swallowed up in the hovering mist. then the silent and despairing surrender of her life had become so great that she was not even able to weep. her head dropped limply, her arms hung lax. like an inert thing she let the train bear her onward with its rending rattle. a white morning twilight had risen on the left over the brightening sea; and the dawning daylight tinted the water blue and defined the horizon. for hours and hours she travelled on, motionlessly, gazing out at the sea; and she felt almost painless with her impassive surrender of life. she would now let things happen as life willed, as her husband willed, as the train willed. as in a tired dream she thought of the inevitability of everything and all the unconscious life within herself, of her first rebellion against her husband's tyranny, of the illusion of her independence, the arrogance of her pride and all the happiness of her gentle ecstasy, all her gladness because of the harmony which she had achieved.... now it was past; now all self-will was vain. the train was carrying her to where rudolph called her; and life hemmed her in on every side, not roughly, but with a soft pressure of phantom hands, which pushed and led and guided.... and she ceased to think. the tired dream became clouded in the deeper blue of the day; and she felt that she was approaching nice. she returned to the petty realities of life. she felt that she was looking a little travel-worn: and, feeling that it would be better if rudolph did not see her for the first time in so unattractive a light, she slowly opened her bag, washed her face with her handkerchief dipped in eau-de-cologne, combed her hair, powdered her face, brushed herself down, put on a transparent white veil and took out a pair of new gloves. she bought a couple of yellow roses at a station and put them in her waistband. she did all this unconsciously, without thinking about it, feeling that it was best, that it was sensible to do it, best that rudolph should see her like that, with that bloom of a beautiful woman about her. she felt that henceforth she must be above all beautiful and that nothing else mattered. and when the train droned into the station, when she recognized nice, she was resigned, because she had ceased to struggle and had yielded to all the stronger forces. the door was flung open and, in the station, which at that early hour was comparatively empty, she saw him at once: tall, robust, easy, in his light summer suit, straw hat and brown shoes. he gave an impression of health and strength and above all of broad-shouldered virility; and, notwithstanding his broadness, he was still quite thoroughbred, thoroughly well-groomed without the least touch of toppishness; and the ironical smile beneath his moustache and the steady glance of his fine grey eyes, the eyes of a woman-hunter, gave him an air of strength, of the certainty of doing as he wished, of the power to subdue if he thought fit. an ironic pride in his handsome strength, with a tinge of contempt for the others who were less handsome and strong, less of the healthy animal and yet the aristocrat, and above all a mocking, supercilious sarcasm directed against all women, because he knew women and knew how much they were really worth: all this was expressed by his glance, his attitude, his movements. it was thus that she knew him. it had often roused her to rebellion in the old days, but she now felt resigned and also a little frightened. he had come to her; he helped her to alight. she saw that he was angry, that he intended to receive her rudely; then, that his moustache was curling ironically, as though in mockery because he was the stronger. she said nothing, however, took his hand calmly and alighted. he led her outside; and in the carriage they waited a moment for the trunk. his eyes took her in at a glance. she was wearing an old blue-serge skirt and a little blue-serge cape; but, notwithstanding her old clothes and her weary resignation, she looked a handsome and smartly-dressed woman. "i am glad to see that you thought it advisable at last to carry out my wishes," he said, in the end. "i thought it would be best," she answered, softly. her tone struck him; and he watched her attentively, out of the corner of his eyes. he did not understand her, but he was pleased that she had come. she was tired now, from excitement and travelling; but he thought that she looked most charming, even though she was not so brilliant as on that night, at mrs. uxeley's ball, when he had first spoken to his divorced wife. "are you tired?" he asked. "i have been a bit feverish for a day or two; and of course i had no sleep last night," she said, as though in apology. the trunk was brought and they drove away, to the hôtel continental. she did not speak again in the carriage. they were also silent as they entered the hotel and in the lift. he took her to his room. it was an ordinary hotel-bedroom; but she thought it strange to see his brushes lying on the dressing-table, his coats and trousers hanging on the pegs: familiar things with whose outlines and folds she was well-acquainted. she recognized his trunk in a corner. he opened the windows wide. she had sat down on a chair, in an expectant attitude. she felt a little faint and closed her eyes, which were blinded by the stream of sunlight. "you must be hungry," he said. "what shall i order for you?" "i should like some tea and bread-and-butter." her trunk arrived; and he ordered her breakfast. then he said: "take off your hat." she stood up. she took off her cape. her cotton blouse was rumpled; and this annoyed her. she removed the pins from her hat before the glass and quite naturally did her hair with his comb, which she saw lying there. and she settled the silk bow around her collar. he had lit a cigar and was smoking quietly, standing. a waiter came in with the breakfast. she ate a mouthful without speaking and drank a cup of tea. "have you breakfasted?" she asked. "yes" they were silent again and she went on eating. "and shall we have a talk now?" he asked, still standing up, smoking. "very well." "i won't speak about your running off as you did," he said. "my first intention was to give you a regular flaying, for it was a damned silly trick...." she said nothing. she merely looked up at him; and her beautiful eyes were filled with a new expression, one of gentle resignation. he fell silent again, evidently restraining himself and seeking his words. then he resumed: "as i say, i won't speak about that any more. for the moment you didn't know what you were doing and you weren't accountable for your actions. but there must be an end of that now, for i wish it. of course i know that according to the law i have not the least right over you. but we've discussed all that; and i told it you in writing. and you have been my wife; and, now that i am seeing you again, i feel very plainly that, in spite of everything, i regard you as my wife and that you are my wife. and you must have retained the same impression from our meeting here, at nice." "yes," she said, calmly. "you admit that?" "yes," she repeated. "then that's all right. it's the only thing i wanted of you. so we won't think any more now of what happened, of our former unpleasantness, of our divorce and of what you have done since. from now on we will put all that behind us. i look upon you as my wife and you shall be my wife again. according to the law we can't get married again. but that makes no difference. our divorce in law i regard as an intervening formality and we will counter it as far as we can. if we have children, we shall get them legitimatized. i will consult a lawyer about all that; and i shall take all the necessary measures, financial included. in this way our divorce will be nothing more than a formality, of no meaning to us and of as little significance as possible to the world and to the law. and then i shall leave the service. i shouldn't in any case care to stay in it for good, so i may as well leave it earlier than i intended. for you wouldn't find it pleasant to live in holland; and it doesn't appeal to me either." "no," she murmured. "where would you like to live?" "i don't know...." "in italy?" "no," she begged, in a tone of entreaty. "care to stay here?" "i'd rather not ... to begin with." "i was thinking of paris. would you like to live in paris?" "very well." "that's all right then. so we will go to paris as soon as possible and look out for a flat and settle in. it'll soon be spring now; and that is a good time to start life in paris." "very well." he flung himself into an easy-chair; it creaked under him. then he asked: "tell me, what do you really think, inside yourself?" "how do you mean?" "i want to know what you thought of your husband. did you think him absurd?" "no." "come over here and sit on my knee." she stood up and went to him. she did as he wished, sat down on his knee; and he drew her to him. he laid his hand on her head, with that gesture which prevented her thinking. she closed her eyes and laid her head against his cheek. "you haven't forgotten me altogether?" she shook her head. "we ought never to have got divorced, ought we?" she shook her head again. "but we used to be very bad-tempered then, both of us. you must never be bad-tempered in future. it makes you look spiteful and ugly. as you are now, you're much nicer and prettier." she smiled faintly. "i am glad to have you back with me," he whispered, with a long kiss on her lips. she closed her eyes under his kiss, while his moustache curled against her skin and his mouth pressed hers. "are you still tired?" he asked. "would you like to rest a little?" "yes," she said. "i would like to get my things off." "you'd better go to bed for a bit," he said. "oh, by the way, i forgot to tell you: your friend, the princess, is coming here this evening!" "isn't urania angry?" "no, i have told her everything and she knows about it all." she was pleased to know that urania was not angry and that she still had a friend left. "and i have seen mrs. uxeley also." "she must be angry with me, isn't she?" he laughed: "that old hag! no, not angry. she's in the dumps because she has no one with her. she set great store by you. she likes to have pretty people about her, she said. she can't stand an ugly companion, with no chic.... there, get undressed and go to bed. i'll leave you and go and sit downstairs somewhere." they stood up. his eyes had a golden glimmer in them; his moustache was lifted by his ironic smile. and he caught her fiercely in his arms: "cornélie," he said, hoarsely, "i think it's wonderful to have you back again. do you belong to me, tell me, do you belong to me?" he pressed her to him till he almost stifled her with the pressure of his arms: "tell me, do you belong to me?" "yes." "what used you to say to me in the old days, when you were in love with me?" she hesitated. "what used you to say?" he insisted, holding her still more tightly. pushing her hands against his shoulders, she fought to catch her breath: "my rud!" she murmured. "my beautiful, glorious rud!" automatically she now wound her arms around his head. he released her as with an effort of will: "take off your things," he said, "and try to get some sleep. i'll come back later." he went away. she undressed and brushed her hair with his brushes, washed her face and dripped into the basin some of the toilet-water which he used. she drew the curtains, behind which the noonday sun shone; and a soft crimson twilight filled the room. and she crept into the great bed and lay waiting for him, trembling. there was no thought in her. there was in her no grief and no recollection. she was filled only with a great expectancy, a waiting for the inevitability of life. she felt herself to be solely and wholly a bride, but not an innocent bride; and, deep in her blood, in the very marrow of her bones, she felt herself to be the wife, the very blood and marrow, of him whom she awaited. before her, as she lay half-dreaming, she saw little figures of children. for, if she was to be his wife in truth and sincerity, she wanted to be not only his lover but also the woman who gave him his children. she knew that, despite his roughness, he loved the softness of children; and she herself would long for them, in her second married life, as a sweet comfort for the days when she would be no longer beautiful and no longer young. before her, half-dreaming, she saw the figures of children.... and she lay waiting for him, she listened for his step, she longed for his coming, her flesh quivered towards him.... and, when he entered and came to her, her arms closed round him in profound and conscious certainty and she felt, beyond a doubt, on his breast, in his arms, the knowledge of his virile, over-mastering dominion, while before her eyes, in a dizzy, melancholy obscurity, the dream of her life--rome, duco, the studio--sank away.... the end notes [ ] woman's rights. [ ] the nineteenth century.