UC-NRLF 
 
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AN ECHO OF PASSION 
 
AN ECHO OF 
 PASSION 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP 
 
 Author s Edition 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET 
 i 884 
 
(Etunburgfj ^mbersttg IBress: 
 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY. 
 
AUTHOR S NOTE. 
 
 MR. DAVID DOUGLAS having thought it 
 worth while to reprint in England this little 
 book of mine, I avail myself of the oppor 
 tunity to prefix to it these few words, in 
 which I wish to say only that he has kindly 
 remunerated me for that which, under a 
 system of international obliquity ignoring 
 the modest claims of one class of workers, 
 could demand no recompense. I hope that 
 Mr. Douglas s fair dealing will be respected, 
 and that in time it may be emulated in the 
 policy both of England and the United 
 States towards alien authors. 
 
 G. P. LATHEOP. 
 
 NEW YORK, July 1884. 
 
 446685 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 I. 
 
 IN the midst of the stilly afternoon, Ben 
 jamin Fenn, lying on the grassy side 
 of a hill at Tanf ord, looking over a low stone 
 wall through the gap between a clump of 
 light-leaved ash-trees and an oak which had 
 gathered in its arms the shade of two cen 
 turies, gazed at a distant, mist-like sheet 
 of water resting in the wooded hollow far 
 below. Its mild, humid sparkle was like 
 a memory hidden away from the contact of 
 everyday life, a place in the past, where 
 once he might have bathed his heart in a 
 pleasant coolness, but which the dense growth 
 of years had since concealed. 
 
 "It is strange," he said to his wife, 
 * how that little Swallow Pond makes me 
 think of the past, and yet I never saw it 
 before." 
 
 7 
 
8 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 In fact they had but just come to Tanford, 
 to spend the first vacation which the young 
 chemist, employed by a large manufactur 
 ing house, had allowed himself since his 
 marriage, five years before. 
 
 " I know what you mean," said she, look 
 ing up from her novel. She was nestled 
 prettily on a travelling rug nearer the wall, 
 with one of the lowest oak boughs darting 
 out above and stretching its sharp-outlined 
 leaves like a little roof above her pale golden 
 head, a sort of votive image, placed there 
 for her husband to worship. " I have those 
 sensations myself, sometimes, and I don t 
 know what to make of them. How do you 
 explain it, Ben? Isn t there something 
 chemical, or physi physiological about it, 
 or something of that kind ?" 
 
 A little bird in the neighbouring birch-wood 
 gave a loud, bright, astonished whistle at this 
 question, and Mrs. Ethel s husband laughed 
 under his mild reddish beard. 
 
 " There s more or less chemistry in every 
 thing," he answered, " and there s a little of 
 nearly everything in chemistry. But I m 
 afraid it doesn t account for this." 
 
 In his secret mind his mood was by no 
 means a laughing one. Had his wife, he 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. Q 
 
 asked himself, ever really experienced the 
 sensation he had just felt ? Hardly possible. 
 Had she the least idea what he was thinking 
 about ? Equally impossible. Finally, would 
 he be willing to tell her ? To this question 
 he conveniently deferred making any an 
 swer. He relapsed, instead, into the deli 
 cious dreaming quietude of a few minutes 
 before, gazing off again at the glimmer of 
 Swallow Pond, with the rough blue moun 
 tains beyond ; at the clouds which were lazily 
 pulling themselves to pieces in the clear, airy 
 blue above ; at the sweet, fresh quiet of the 
 solitary region that surrounded him. Now 
 and then the definite but muffled sound of a 
 woodman s axe sent its regular "chock ! 
 chock ! " from some remote angle of the up 
 land, ceasing again when the wielder rested 
 his arm ; and several times the rude tinkle 
 of a cow-bell resounded along the shaven 
 curve of the hill, from a pasture nearer the 
 village. One of the cattle lowed. 
 
 "Do you notice, Ethel," Fenn suddenly 
 asked, " that a slight echo or perhaps it is 
 a resonance of that cow s lowing reaches 
 us with the sound, and almost before the 
 direct sound-waves ? " 
 
 She did not respond at once j and when 
 
10 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 she did so it was with a slightly injured tone. 
 " No, I haven t," she said. 
 
 I m not trying to humbug you, " her 
 husband assured her. "It s a very curious 
 fact, which I never happened to observe be 
 fore. In fact, I wouldn t have believed it, 
 if I hadn t just heard it." 
 
 "I suppose you mean / ought to have 
 observed it, " said the little saint under the 
 oak-tree, not very sweetly. 
 
 "Not at all," said Fenn, quickly. "I 
 thought it would interest you. " 
 
 "Well, then," proceeded Ethel, with a 
 light, saucy laugh, * tell the cow to tinkle 
 or make some kind of noise again, and I 11 
 listen." 
 
 " Please be serious," he begged, assuming 
 a methodical expression. "This is a thing 
 I can partly explain, if I couldn t the other. 
 We must be very near the spot where the 
 rebound which makes the echo takes place ; 
 so we hear some reflected wave of sound 
 just before the original pulse can travel away 
 around the curve of the hill. Am I clear ? 
 It s very singular, though very queer," 
 he resumed, in surprise at his discovery. 
 "There ! Didn t you hear it, just then?" 
 
 The cow had lowed a second time, 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. II 
 
 "I think I did," said his wife. Then she 
 burst into a hearty laugh. "What would 
 that cow think, if she knew her own im 
 portance !" she exclaimed. " Do go and 
 thank her, Ben, for her services to science. 
 But no, that will make her too proud ; she 11 
 refuse to give any milk, and will abandon 
 her domestic life, I m afraid." 
 
 Fenn couldn t help laughing too, but his 
 wife s levity irritated him. " How change 
 able you are ! " he remarked, allowing a mild 
 gloom to replace his smile. 
 
 "So are you," said Mrs. Ethel, who also 
 had her reasons for annoyance. "You are 
 always wanting me to be serious, to observe 
 and all that ; and then when I try to as I 
 did just now about that memory of the past, 
 whatever it was you won t encourage me." 
 
 " If that s the trouble, I m very sorry 
 indeed," the husband declared, with a small 
 sigh, but in almost too business-like a way, 
 as if he were accustomed to these disagree 
 ments. 
 
 Mrs. Fenn, however, was not to be paci 
 fied so easily. " I don t know that I mind 
 that so much," she continued, " but I m all 
 out of sorts from reading, or trying to read, 
 this wretched book. I can t imagine why 
 
12 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 you gave it to me. You ll never get over 
 thinking I m something to be experimented 
 upon." 
 
 Fenn glanced carelessly at the volume in 
 her hand. It was a translation of Goethe s 
 Elective Affinities. " Women, nowadays," 
 he said, dryly, " especially the wife of a 
 practical student, a man of serious mind like 
 myself, ought not to shrink from investi 
 gation in any direction. I ve expressed the 
 same thing to you a thousand times before." 
 
 "Yes, a thousand times too often," re 
 torted Ethel, looking prettier than ever in 
 the flush of anger that lit her soft young 
 features. " I think the book is atrocious, 
 unfit to read. It is wicked, and you ought 
 not to have put it into my hands." 
 
 " My dear girl, you will never know the 
 world, you will never be ready to enter 
 general society when I get rich enough for 
 that, if you don t take the trouble to read 
 what I read [and what other people read, 
 and to be versed in what the world talks of. 
 This is only one of a thousand things, and 
 not the most important, by any means. But 
 you must cultivate a spirit of fearlessness, 
 and make your knowledge wide. " 
 
 * I don t want to know the world, if this 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 13 
 
 is part of it," declared the young wife, with 
 spirit. In a moment, she announced, with 
 the air of heralding a fatal catastrophe, " I m 
 going back to the Institute." 
 
 The Institute was a large, nondescript 
 wooden building with an immense colon 
 nade, where they were boarding ; so called 
 because in winter it served the purpose of a 
 country academy for young women. In sum 
 mer it bloomed out as a prosperous hotel 
 and seminary of social gossip, after a short 
 season in the spring when it had no discov 
 erable use of any kind, 
 
 " Don t let s go back yet," Fenn objected 
 patiently. "It is so beautiful here." 
 
 " TOUCSLU stay," said Ethel, still more sol 
 emnly, "and I 11 leave the book with you." 
 
 She had risen as she spoke, and threw the 
 novel down on the rug. Her face, which 
 was fine and agreeable, had something rus 
 tic about it, though serene and luminous in 
 its simplicity. Her eyes were round, rather 
 than oval, above the long, smooth, charm 
 ingly modelled cheeks ; and her eyebrows 
 were of that half-uncertain kind, distinct 
 enough, but altering in the degree of dark 
 ness at different points, almost as if they 
 were shadows thrown by a transient light, 
 
14 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 and passing off into downiness at the ends, 
 which gave such a delicate softness to the 
 brow. As she stood there, with the light 
 hair straying loosely down her neck near her 
 well-turned shoulders, the graceful bow-curve 
 of her lips somewhat constrained by pique, 
 any one examining her critically would have 
 said she was a lovely young woman, more 
 sentimental than accomplished, wanting the 
 polish of a person often in society, but full 
 of character. 
 
 Fenn, however, did not examine her criti 
 cally. He was defending his dignity with an 
 air of coldness ; and as the Institute was not 
 far off he assented to her proposition with 
 an austere " Very well. I shall come before 
 long," he added. 
 
 Then his wife turned and moved silently 
 up the hill, through the birches. 
 
 When people have been married five years, 
 and do not yet understand one another, they 
 must usually either be very happy at the 
 prospect of a continual novelty in their inter 
 course, or else very miserable. Fenn, though 
 devoted, had decided to be miserable. 
 
 He went on looking down into the land 
 scape before him, after being left alone ; but 
 it no longer gave him the pleasure he had 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 15 
 
 just been drawing from it. The fatigue of 
 his life in the city seemed to be returning 
 and resuming its hold on him. He had mar 
 ried a penniless girl when himself almost 
 without resources, and had toiled incessantly 
 and ardently, not only for a support, but also 
 to attain as soon as might be to a compara 
 tive independence, for Fenn was ambitious ; 
 he longed for a time when he might cut 
 more of a figure in the world ; keep a 
 large house ; bring brilliant crowds about his 
 wife and himself ; enter upon chemical re 
 searches which would give him a reputation 
 or professional standing. Though he de 
 scribed himself as a practical man and a per 
 son of serious mind, these visions floated 
 continually before him. He had abstracted 
 hundreds of hours from nights, after his 
 commercial analyses and compoundings were 
 over, to carry on experiments of his own, 
 partly for the sake of knowledge, partly for 
 fame, and partly with the aim of devising 
 useful preparations which would make him 
 rich. But, all this time, Ethel and he had 
 not been entirely happy. They theorised 
 about each other, and ended by having very 
 untheoretical and downright quarrels. His 
 devotion to his profession did not altogether 
 
1 6 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 please her. No child was born, who might 
 have occupied and aided in developing her, 
 and there was little in his life to soothe the 
 overworked, restless man who had under 
 taken so much. Finally, he had broken 
 away from his labours, and brought Ethel to 
 Tanford, among the hills, thinking that they 
 might recover strength and spirits there 
 and make a fresh start. But as he lay here 
 alone under the oak, he began to think the 
 attempt would be a failure. Everything had 
 gone delightfully for two or three days, but 
 now there was a tiff again ; it was always 
 so ; it seemed to him that he should not care 
 any longer for the drowsy rustling of the 
 leaves, the picturesque heights, the billowy 
 farm-lands stretching up and down over the 
 broken country, the thick woods and deep 
 romantic hollows of the place. Even as he 
 looked again at Swallow Pond, in the bottom 
 of the valley, the waters of memory there 
 seemed to be troubled, now, instead of hazily 
 calm and soothing. 
 
 What was this that emerged from his past, 
 and haunted him so ? 
 
 Three years before his marriage, when 
 roaming over the country as an ardent young 
 naturalist, geologising, botanising, ento- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 17 
 
 mologising, by way of diversion from his 
 specialty, he had taken it into his head to 
 go to see a young lady, Miss Evans, whom 
 he had once met in Cambridge, but who 
 lived in the pretty region of Little Falls, in 
 New York. She was a girl of great beauty, 
 and sang (as people said) divinely. This 
 voice of hers, which he had heard, returned 
 to him at times, a clear, vibrating strain, 
 which startled him by ringing in his ears 
 as if it were actually present, even in the 
 quietest, most deserted places, or amid the 
 noise of streets. He seldom thought of her 
 beauty, or incidentally, if at all. It was 
 the sweetness of her tones that enthralled 
 him. And when I say enthralled, I don t 
 mean that there was any touch of love in 
 the spell which she threw over him. He 
 could have listened to her voice for hours, 
 and followed it for unlimited distances ; but 
 that was all he cared for in her. Yet the 
 recollection of its melody had such power 
 over him that he gradually came to rate it 
 among the necessities of his future that he 
 should hear her sing again. This made it 
 easy to yield to the fancy of going to Little 
 Falls. As he thought it over, now, the 
 whole thing brought a smile to his lips ; yet 
 B 
 
1 8 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 it was a half -uneasy smile. Well, she had 
 married, since, and was widowed. It was a 
 Virginian whom she had chosen, with one of 
 those mellow Southern names. Eulow, 
 that was the name. Fenn tried to think of 
 her wonderful voice uttering these syllables, 
 and found that his imagination reproduced 
 the tone vividly. 
 
 On arriving at her father s house, a stately 
 old country home, like many in that rich 
 tract of the Mohawk Valley, the young man, 
 who hadn t much tact, and was led by habits 
 of precise thought to be very explicit always, 
 conceived an astounding plan of action. 
 
 " I dare say you never expected to see me 
 here," he began, when Miss Evans was seated 
 before him. " I have come to hear you sing." 
 
 " All the way from Boston ?" she queried, 
 with a laughing doubt in her dark eyes. 
 And he fancied that her rich colour grew 
 more vivacious. 
 
 He rapidly explained the situation, with 
 what might have been a misleading ardour. 
 It was only his natural eagerness, a little 
 heightened. 
 
 At this moment her father entered ; an 
 elderly, nervous gentleman, with an old- 
 fashioned collar much crumpled under his 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 19 
 
 loose curling hair, and a pair of Lille gloves 
 only half drawn on. An invitation to Fenn 
 to spend several days with them immediately 
 followed. 
 
 " You can sing more than once for him, in 
 that way, Anice," said her father. 
 
 " Perhaps once will be enough," she an 
 swered. "I dare say Mr. Fenn has been 
 adding qualities to my voice, in his fancy, 
 that it never had." 
 
 " I can soon tell whether that s so or not," 
 said he, with unconscious bluntness. 
 
 Anice sang two or three songs, and the 
 young man sat with his reddish beard point 
 ing sidewise and upward, his strong hands 
 pressed upon his chair, the nails all alive 
 with the pink of his vigorous blood, and a 
 light of keen rapture on his handsome, sturdy 
 face. 
 
 " It has not lost a bit ; it has gained in 
 power," he affirmed, decisively, at the end. 
 
 Anice very naturally was pleased ; a fact 
 which she endeavoured to conceal by poking 
 fun at the young enthusiast, in various ways ; 
 while Mr. Evans, seeing nothing dangerous 
 in the posture of affairs, thought Fenn an ex 
 cellent youth. The scientific student, how 
 ever, had considered everything beforehand, 
 
20 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 and, as I have said, determined to be explicit. 
 The next morning Miss Evans took him out 
 for a walk about the farm, and he seized this 
 opportunity, while they were skirting the 
 dewy fields, to explain himself. 
 
 " It has occurred to me," he said, rather 
 gently, that you might not exactly under 
 stand my coming here, this way. You might 
 think there was something underneath it. 
 But my motive was just what I told you 
 yesterday. I almost worship your voice, but 
 I m not a fellow with much sentiment, and I 
 haven t any idea of making love to you. I 
 know it isn t usual to speak plainly about 
 these things," he continued rapidly, seeing 
 a mixed, semi -quizzical look in her face, 
 " but I want to enjoy your singing and your 
 friendship in a fair, straightforward way, 
 and it seemed to me a great deal better to 
 avoid any embarrassments " 
 
 Just here he found that he had precipi 
 tated the embarrassment he wished to avoid, 
 and it tied his tongue. But Anice came to 
 his relief with a laugh. 
 
 " Did you think that idea would ever 
 have entered my head, about you ? " she 
 demanded, giving a fine edge to the last 
 word that cut him a trifle, in spite of her 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 21 
 
 gay good-feeling. "No, Mr. Ferm, there 
 won t be any embarrassment at all. We 
 shall be good friends, just as you propose ; 
 and since I m very fond of singing, I shall 
 give you as much music as you like, while 
 you stay." 
 
 Fenn indulged the absurd belief that 
 everything had now been nicely arranged ; 
 but when he went to bed that night he dis 
 covered that he was in a mood of serious 
 discomfort. The voice which had always 
 hitherto been a pleasure of the ear and the 
 intellect had that day stirred his blood, had 
 thrilled his heart. All his senses were sud 
 denly open to Miss Evans s darkly moving 
 beauty, and he could even fancy how he 
 might be in love with her. The very act of 
 definitely putting her out of the range of 
 sentiment had excited this unexpected im 
 pulse to think of her in the nearer way, or 
 at least had made him long for the liberty 
 so to think of her. 
 
 " What an ass I have been ! " he muttered, 
 as he lay awake in the darkness, gazing at 
 the square of stars framed by his window, 
 with this new current of warm delight at 
 her loveliness stirring in his veins. I have 
 put myself under a sort of bond, now, not 
 
22 AN ECHO OP PASSION. 
 
 to make any approach to admiring her in 
 this way, and my visit is spoiled." 
 
 Possibly Anice suspected this revulsion on 
 his part. At all events, she employed 
 whether voluntarily or not all the power 
 of her personal presence over him, during 
 the succeeding days. In the open hospi 
 tality and free relation that brought them 
 together there was opportunity enough for 
 him to see her in various phases, and the 
 charm of her dark hair, her glowing eyes, 
 and vigorous grace of action grew upon him 
 swiftly, as he watched her at the piano, in 
 their walks, or on their drives with the 
 retired lawyer, her father. One afternoon 
 there was a picnic near the river, with some 
 neighbours, at which Fenn was chagrined by 
 observing the attention paid her by a young 
 railroad officer from Albany. The last day 
 that he remained with them was a Sunday ; 
 and as he sat with Mr. Evans and Anice in 
 their pew in the ugly church, with the 
 warm breathing of the breeze in the horse- 
 chestnut trees heard through the open win 
 dows, he fancied that he must do something, 
 say something, before going away, which 
 should annul the effect of his horrible 
 blunder. He was not sure that he might 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 23 
 
 not even make a move to put himself in the 
 light of a captive heart. At least he might 
 open a correspondence with her. 
 
 But the young mistress of song gave him 
 no chance ; not the least opening for a new 
 explanation. She had taken him at his 
 word, and treated him with a frankness and 
 seeming directness that were more fatally 
 in his way than the most ingenious reserve 
 and coyness could have been ; and she made 
 it impossible for him to depart otherwise 
 than as an eccentric friend, or a cousin from 
 whom nothing in the way of tender regard 
 could possibly be looked for. 
 
 "I have got precisely what I bargained 
 for," he said to himself, as the train bore him 
 away ; " and yet I feel that I Ve been 
 cheated." 
 
 For a time he wondered whether an ap 
 proach by letter would be successful, and 
 whether, after all, that was not what Miss 
 Evans suspected him of intending. What 
 kept him thinking about her was this in 
 ability to fathom her mode of taking him. 
 He w r as almost ready to stake his future for 
 the sake of finding out whether there was 
 a laugh at the bottom of her heart when she 
 thought of him, or something more flattering. 
 
24 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Even at this moment of recalling the affair, 
 "There was always mystery in Anice," he 
 said to himself. "Every woman is some 
 thing of a mystery ; but she had a special 
 mystery within that of her sex. How odd 
 it would have been, if I had followed out 
 that romance ! " But he had not done so. 
 A year later he met Ethel, and then he 
 married her. Anice and her voice became a 
 dream, a vagary which had lost its hold 
 upon him. Yet did he not sometimes re 
 member with a strange thrill how, two 
 nights before he saw her last, she had 
 sung Adelaide, with the moonlight break 
 ing through the vine along the veranda and 
 mingling with those insidiously passionate 
 and touching strains ? 
 
 As he was reminding himself of this, Fenn 
 started up from the grass and listened, with 
 a singular expression almost of fright. He 
 could have sworn that the ghostly voice of 
 eight years ago was floating through the air. 
 First, a faint, momentary hum, then the 
 full voice, freighted with mystic pathos, 
 came around the heavy mass of the hill, 
 from some spot not a quarter of a mile away. 
 
 Yes ; it was true ! The peculiar echo he 
 had noticed had come to him first, like a 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 25 
 
 sound made faint by the years ; and then 
 the voice rang out softly. It was Adelaide. 
 The same tones were embodying the song. 
 Fenn was sure he could not be mistaken in 
 their identity ; and that Anice Evans Anice 
 Eulow had by some chance drifted to Tan- 
 ford, and was at that instant so near him that 
 he could hear her singing. The voice and 
 the blended echo went on, like the past and 
 present mingling in his thoughts. Trem 
 bling, he could not tell why, Fenn threw 
 himself upon the ground once more, and 
 waited in a kind of trance until the breaking 
 melody ceased. 
 
26 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 II. 
 
 FOR a moment or two he listened, to see if 
 it would recommence. There was no further 
 sound. He rose ; he tried to persuade him 
 self that the whole thing had been an hallu 
 cination. But this, again, made him shake 
 his head ; and, gathering up mechanically 
 the rug and the book which had been left by 
 his wife, he climbed over the wall, and set 
 off across the field, in the direction of the 
 songstress s voice, as if obeying it. The sun 
 was getting low, and birds began to dart 
 about above his head ; the cows went on 
 tinkling their bells in a discontented, drowsy 
 manner. Fenn scarcely knew which way his 
 steps were taking him, except that he was 
 moving around the hill. Presently he came 
 to a farm-house, which appeared to be driven 
 into the steep slope like the head or bill of 
 some creature clinging there, with a huge 
 barn spread out disdainfully, tail-like, to 
 wards the landscape. The house had vines 
 and bushes about it, giving it a fresh and 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 27 
 
 pleasant air ; but there was nothing to indi 
 cate that this was the place from which the 
 song had come. The chemist paused never 
 theless, and while he was observing the life 
 less buildings a figure suddenly emerged from 
 the barn, a man carrying a hoe. Fenn saw 
 that he grasped it in a hand only partly thrust 
 into a silk glove ; then the crumpled stock 
 and tumbled hair at the man s neck began to 
 look familiar. It was Mr. Evans. 
 
 The young man did not hasten up to in 
 tercept him. On the contrary, he allowed 
 the lawyer to disappear around the corner of 
 the barn, on some errand of amateur agri 
 culture. Fenn then moved forward with an 
 assured step towards the japonica clump that 
 rose stiffly by the side door of the dwelling. 
 Behind the hedge of branch and leaf that 
 guarded the wide porch there, he felt sure 
 he should find Anice Eulow ; and in another 
 moment he stood face to face with her. 
 
 " Didn t I hear you singing?" he asked, 
 taking off his hat, and bending forward to 
 look at her, with an odd appearance of hav 
 ing just discovered a new creature whose 
 attributes he didn t wholly understand. 
 
 She rose in astonishment from the ham 
 mock where she sat languidly half reclining. 
 
28 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 " Is it possible? Is it you, Mr. Fenn?" 
 In an instant her manner had melted into 
 easy friendliness, like that of the days at 
 Little Falls, as she went on : " You are as 
 abrupt as ever, I see. It was eight oh, it 
 was very long ago you heard me singing. 
 You speak as if a few weeks had passed." 
 
 She offered him her hand, at the same 
 time, and he took it ; noticing as he did so 
 that her beauty had deepened and expanded 
 wonderfully since he had seen her last, a 
 beauty which, being concentrated upon no 
 one object, seemed to exhale itself in a wasted 
 richness about her, like the perfume of vio 
 lets, as she stirred, and spoke, and looked at 
 him. 
 
 "No, I m sure it was a few moments 
 ago," he said, earnestly. "I was half-way 
 round the hill. I was sitting there Yes, 
 a few moments, and yet it is the same song 
 of years ago." 
 
 "Adelaide?" she asked, with a soft, mel 
 ancholy questioning of the eyebrows. And 
 as she said it one would have thought her 
 very eyes might sing. 
 
 Fenn made a silent affirmation. 
 
 " Ah, yes," she returned, " I had just come 
 from the piano a moment, when you ap- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 29 
 
 peared there. Really, you were almost too 
 like a ghost, Mr. Fenn. And so you remem 
 bered ? How curious ! you remembered 
 that that was the song." 
 
 He was surprised that she should suspect 
 him of being able to forget it. Reflecting, 
 in a moment, that she had herself named the 
 melody, he asked, with the old bluntness, 
 which seemed to have returned to plague 
 him, " Remembered ? Of course. And you 
 did, didn t you?" 
 
 She avoided his glance, and, while appar 
 ently hearing him and preparing to answer, 
 glided into reverie, from which she again 
 started. * How absurd this is, to be talking 
 of old songs, when we meet here as friends 
 that might almost have forgotten each other ! 
 You haven t allowed me a single question 
 about yourself yet ; and then why, one 
 would think you would ask a few about we." 
 She said this with such a light, friendly, 
 innocent coquettishness that the young man 
 drew in a new breath of surprise and plea 
 sure, and smiled. She had resumed her 
 graceful pose in the hammock. 
 
 " I never thought of that," he said. " I 
 don t seem to have any questions. I know 
 you were married, and that your name is 
 
3 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Mrs. Eulow, but I always think of you as 
 Anice Evans. You know that s natural 
 enough ; but you mustn t imagine I was dull 
 and unsympathetic about what was hap 
 pening to you. I had been hoping I should 
 meet your husband, some time ; and then, 
 when I heard he was dead " 
 
 He hesitated, as if fearing that he had 
 touched a mournful chord too harshly. 
 
 "Yes, it was very sudden and strange. 
 How little we thought or knew of our lives, 
 you and I, when you came up to the Mohawk 
 to see me ! " murmured Mrs. Eulow. 
 
 " What has impressed me most," he re 
 plied, " was the degree of feeling one person 
 could have for another, in such a sorrow, 
 without being able to express it. I couldn t 
 write to you. I hardly thought I knew you 
 well enough, or that you remembered me 
 enough, to make it acceptable." 
 
 His sincerity of manner roused a fresh in 
 terest in Mrs. Eulow. For men and women 
 who have been apart since the dawn of ma 
 turity to meet thus, after entering separate 
 careers and suffering alteration, is like what 
 we can fancy an encounter would be, in some 
 other world, of two persons who had known 
 each other in this. They are the same, yet 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 3! 
 
 obscurely different. The definiteness of their 
 former relation is gone : an uncertainty takes 
 its place, which may result in attraction, 
 repulsion, or indifference. But in the first 
 moments there is always a pleasant excite 
 ment. Fenn and Mrs. Eulow were both occu 
 pied with this, and little spaces of silence 
 broke their conversation, during which a 
 singular, vague communion of thoughts 
 would establish itself. 
 
 * ( And you had found we were here 
 father and I?" she resumed, as if continuing 
 this mute interchange. 
 
 Not until I heard you sing. I caught 
 sight of your father as I came towards the 
 house. I haven t the least idea what brought 
 you here ; yet, after the first instant of sur 
 prise, it seemed perfectly natural. The fact 
 is," Fenn bent his head and brushed his 
 fingers together, with a nervous laugh, but 
 went on boldly, as if there could be nothing 
 compromising in the announcement, I 
 happened to be thinking about you, just 
 before your voice reached me. " 
 
 Mrs. Eulow s eyes flashed, softly, in the 
 gathering dimness of the porch. Or was it 
 a wandering spark of the sunset, which at 
 this moment began to fill the liquid air ? 
 
3 2 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 " And now please to account for yourself, " 
 the widow demanded gaily. " * What have 
 been your adventures ? as they used to say, 
 in the old romances. Why should you have 
 come to Tanford, any more than I ? Your 
 wife is with you, of course." She glanced 
 at the rug and the book, silent witnesses of 
 Ethel s existence. 
 
 Fenn, too, looked at these objects, with 
 foolish fear that they might reveal the cause 
 of his wife s not being present. " Oh yes," 
 he said. " We are staying in Tanford, 
 up at the Institute, if you ve heard of that. 
 We shall be here a number of weeks." 
 
 "I shall be so glad to see her," Anice 
 assured him. "And your children. Oh 
 have you children?" 
 
 Fenn felt a burning sensation in his eyes. 
 The suddenness of this had brought a bitter 
 moisture to them, which he was wholly un 
 used to. "No," he answered, in a strong, 
 deep voice; "Ethel and I have only each 
 other." 
 
 " Ah, think how much more that is than 
 I have!" exclaimed Mrs. Eulow, with a 
 swift tenderness of sympathy, a genuineness 
 of tact, which went to his heart. " I hope 
 Mrs. Fenn and I shall have some nice talks 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 33 
 
 and drives together. Papa and I hired this 
 whole house for the summer, from a good 
 farmer who has mortgaged his very bones, I 
 believe ; and he goes on with the farm, but 
 lives in another house, so we are very com 
 fortable. But you have more people to see 
 at your Institute." 
 
 "Yes, We don t know many of them, 
 though, and summer boarders don t always 
 show to advantage." 
 
 " Just the thing ! I was hoping it would 
 be so ! " cried Mrs, Eulow. " Now you and 
 Mrs. Fenn will come down often. And I 
 have a good saddle horse." 
 
 " I don t think Ethel rides," said Fenn, 
 awkwardly. 
 
 " But she reads. You won t think me too 
 curious, will you, if I ask what that book 
 is?" she went on, pointing to the grey mus 
 lin-covered volume, which he had laid on a 
 chair. "I m always so interested in what 
 people are reading." 
 
 He took it up and handed it to her, rather 
 reluctantly. I must say, Ethel doesn t 
 like it." 
 
 Mrs. Eulow read the title. * Nor I. Do 
 you?" Her tone was quite simple and 
 direct. 
 
34 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 "Oh, it s worth while reading. It s 
 curious," said Fenn. 
 
 "Yes; but that s all. I don t detest 
 Goethe, as so many people do," she ex 
 plained. " But then this story is so cold and 
 mechanical. It chills you, like a talking 
 automaton. His mind must have been a 
 strange one, I think, a sort of stoniness in 
 it. The idea of a poet making a cold theory 
 of these things, a chemical law of human 
 passions ! You can t put down mysteries in 
 terms of arithmetic." 
 
 "I think you re right, no doubt," said 
 Fenn. * Love and science don t always go 
 well together." And he fell to thinking 
 whether this remark had not a special bear 
 ing on his life. 
 
 " So you see, Mrs. Fenn and I shall agree, 
 exactly. " 
 
 "You remind me that I must go," he 
 said, making haste to get up from his chair, 
 "The sunset is almost gone over Sheep s 
 Back." 
 
 But you must speak to papa. How queer 
 that I didn t think of calling him ! All this 
 is such a surprise. " She rose, returning him 
 the book as she moved towards the steps, 
 with a lingering movement of the arm that 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 35 
 
 produced an effect as if she were dropping 
 her hand gently into his, although she was 
 evidently unconscious of this. His own fin 
 gers closed upon the volume, but his eyes 
 watched the hand, white, firm, and beauti 
 ful, yet with a sadness, he chose to think, in 
 all its motions and even its contour. 
 
 She called Mr. Evans, in her sweet voice, 
 which retained all its vernal strength. I 
 don t believe he will hear me," she said, after 
 waitmg ; and Fenn wondered if any one else 
 could be so deaf. 
 
 "Shall we go and find him?" he sug 
 gested. 
 
 Oh yes ; and then I will show you my 
 horse, just like old times," said Mrs. 
 Eulow, taking up her noiseless cool black 
 skirt in one of those sad hands, and descend 
 ing the steps. 
 
 Finding the barn open and deserted, they 
 went in. The further end gave upon the 
 rugged woody valley, which fell away almost 
 cavernously in the gathering twilight, show 
 ing the pond far below, gleaming faintly like 
 a pearl from the depths. Over Sheep s Back 
 mountain the sunset was slowly dissolving 
 into the mysterious green pallor of a linger 
 ing summer evening. Without a word, they 
 
36 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 traced their way to the wide doors, and 
 looked out at the landscape. "Ah, how 
 peaceful and fresh it is here ! " she sighed at 
 last. 
 
 They had quite forgotten Mr. Evans. 
 
 A horse was whinnying and pawing in 
 one of the stalls, and this sound recalled 
 her. " Poor Star ! " she said. " He knows 
 I m here. Shall we go back and look at 
 him ? I can t conceive where father is ; but 
 you know how restless he was, always half 
 doing things, and trying to feel very busy. 
 He s just the same now, and greatly agitated 
 just at present about the badness of your 
 New England farming." 
 
 So they went in and saw Star, a fine bay 
 stallion, who put his nose down to be stroked 
 by his mistress. She fed him with hay, 
 through the crib ; and then Fenn also patted 
 him on the nose. As he did so, his usually 
 firm hand trembled. He drew it away 
 quickly . 
 
 " Well, I must give up seeing Mr. Evans 
 to-night," he said abruptly, almost with 
 irritation. " Please remember me very 
 warmly to him, Mrs. Eulow." 
 
 He was about to go by way of the house ; 
 but, remembering that the road wound 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 37 
 
 around just below the barn, he turned in 
 that direction again. " Good night," he 
 said, but was afraid to offer his treacherous 
 hand. 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Fenn. Father will be so 
 glad to hear of your being here, I m sure, " 
 She accompanied him to the door ; but he 
 leaped down at once to the bank below. 
 Then he turned. 
 
 You must come up to the Institute. 
 Ethel, will be greatly pleased." 
 
 "I shall come to-morrow," said Mrs. 
 Eulow, in her gentlest tone, " if she will let 
 me. Tell her how much I m looking for 
 ward to it." 
 
 He waved another farewell, with his hat, 
 and walked briskly up the road. 
 
 When he had got as far as the bend 
 towards the village, an irresistible desire to 
 look around seized him. Anice was no longer 
 in the wide doorway. He was relieved, yet 
 disappointed. But why, " he asked himself, 
 "should I feel either way about it? She 
 couldn t possibly stand there gazing after 
 me. What sense would there be in it?" 
 Nevertheless, he sat down on the road-bank, 
 a little further on, and mused. He pretended 
 to himself that he wanted to cut a walking- 
 
38 AN ECHO OP PASSION. 
 
 stick, and selected a straight wild cherry, 
 which he attacked vigorously ; and then, 
 having severed it, he held it idly in his hand. 
 If he had been able to pronounce upon the 
 feeling with which he had looked up at Anice 
 Eulow when he left her, he would have 
 known that it was not as he believed a 
 wave of compassion for her loneliness and 
 possible suffering that had beaten against 
 his heart, but a sudden pity for himself be 
 cause he could not touch her, could not raise 
 her hand to his lips or press them upon her 
 forehead. To what end ? So far was he 
 from any thought of profanation, that he did 
 not at the moment even suspect the real 
 scope of that dim longing which her deep 
 and friendly eyes had awakened in him. . . . 
 He gave up the attempt to unravel his con 
 fused reverie ; lopped a few twigs from the 
 cherry ; threw it away, and took up the bur 
 den of the rug and the book. But before he 
 reached the hotel he had come to this con 
 clusion : " It is not in Anice that the mys 
 tery is which I was thinking of, just now. 
 It must be in me. She is a sweet, natural, 
 true-hearted woman ; that s all. It s very 
 simple. " 
 
 " I was getting very anxious about you," 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 39 
 
 said his wife as he stepped within the big 
 colonnade, which was adorned by a number 
 of listless figures, in chairs or promenading, 
 among them being two or three young men 
 in straw hats, seated with piratical reckless 
 ness on the railings at each end. "Have 
 you been under the oak all this time? " 
 
 " No ; but it s hard saying what I haven t 
 done. I ve visited a house and a barn, 
 taken a new walk, cut a cane, and met a 
 friend whom I hadn t seen for years." 
 
 " Do I know his name ? " asked Ethel, as 
 they went through the hall to the tea-room. 
 The angry ripple of their small dispute had 
 passed away completely. 
 
 " It s not my luck that she should be 
 a man," said Fenn. "But you will have 
 a delightful companion, now, Ethel. It s 
 Mrs. Eulow. I don t think I Ve ever men 
 tioned her to you, have I? Did you ever 
 hear me speak of her singing ? " 
 
 "No. At least I don t remember it. 
 But I hope she 11 sing for us here if she s 
 going to stay." 
 
 The tea-room, which had about it the de- 
 solateness of a recent battle-field, still con 
 tained one tardy occupant, a collegian with 
 bent shoulders, frouzy hair, and eye-glasses, 
 
4O AN ECHO OF PASSIOX. 
 
 whose lean awkwardness made him look like 
 a harmful beetle with prominent vitreous 
 eyes suddenly stiffened in alcohol so that 
 he couldn t unbend. His rigid presence 
 restrained their conversation for a few mo 
 ments, and gave Fenn time to reflect with 
 satisfaction upon his wife s lenient mode of 
 accepting his absence and of treating his 
 friend the widow as a matter of course. 
 Whatever else they had passed through, 
 these companions had never yet been vexed 
 by even the most evanescent fear that they 
 were not bound up in one another ; and the 
 man, remembering this, was at once aware 
 that a flaw in their trust at this particular 
 moment would be inopportune and, in some 
 indirect way not clear to him, exceedingly 
 perilous. When the noxious student had 
 at last carried himself stiffly out of the 
 room, Fenn answered Ethel s question 
 about Anice with great vivacity and a 
 steady conscience. 
 
 "It s very simple," Fenn had informed 
 himself. But when, before retiring to rest, 
 he went out alone upon the balustraded roof 
 of the colonnade, and stood for a moment 
 under the warm, thick stars, he suffered 
 a renewed palpitation of those wayward 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 4! 
 
 ardours which had first thrilled him when 
 looking at the starry field through his win 
 dow in the old Evans home. What did this 
 mean ? He told himself that it was wrong ; 
 more than that, it was unreal, impossible. 
 He was sure that he loved his wife as de 
 voutly as ever. The wedded affection of 
 five years could not waver or yield in an 
 afternoon to the mere resuscitation of a 
 chimera. And yet here were these old 
 emotions pushing themselves upward and 
 blossoming again like flowers in an early 
 spring. This same fancy of the flowers 
 brought him some relief ; for at least, he 
 argued, he was no more responsible for any 
 reviving sentiment than he was for the blos 
 soms of spring. Every season must bring 
 back its old associations, and at any moment 
 there might float across his heart some wild 
 fragrance of a forgotten passion, like that 
 of the hidden arbutus. Acquitting him 
 self thus with a simile, he went off to his 
 room. 
 
 Sleep and the malicious frankness of 
 dreams had something else in store for him. 
 Far on towards dawn he found himself 
 standing where the solid ground fell away 
 into darkness and mist, in the lower spaces 
 
42 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 of which he discerned a pearl of fabulous 
 size. It appeared to him that he plunged 
 downward to secure it, and when he rose 
 again to where he had been standing, Anice 
 Eulow was beside him. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 43 
 
 III. 
 
 THERE can be few positions more comfort 
 less and provoking for a man than to be 
 present at the first meeting of two women 
 in whom he is deeply interested, feeling that 
 he must observe what impression they are 
 making on each other. Fenn began to see 
 this before the expected call took place. 
 Yet why should he pay any heed to their 
 mutual impressions ? He was satisfied with 
 his wife, was he not ? And the fact of his 
 having chosen her ought alone to command 
 the respect of any other woman who pro 
 fessed a friendship for him. Then again, 
 if Ethel shouldn t happen to like Mrs. 
 Eulow, why need that prevent his rejoicing 
 as much as ever in his old friend? This 
 kind of reasoning was all very well ; but it 
 did not allay his discomfort. Lay our plan 
 of action never so nicely, determine our 
 relations to people with what independence 
 we will, industrious fancy will break in and 
 demolish in a single hour the whole struc- 
 
44 AN ECHO OF PASSIOX. 
 
 ture. Fancy is perpetually playing with 
 things as they are, and arranging them as 
 they ought to be ; and by-and-by this play 
 is found to be the most palpable and terribly 
 effective earnest. 
 
 The first interview, however, passed off 
 easily enough. Mr. Evans was greatly ex 
 hilarated at meeting again the stalwart en 
 thusiast about his daughter s singing ; the 
 two women glided together without any 
 visible shock, Mrs. Eulow s gloved hand 
 clasping Ethel s bare and unsophisticated 
 little fingers with soft cordiality. 
 
 We came early, " said the widow at length, 
 breaking through the busy web of miscella 
 neous talk, " for two reasons : we thought we 
 should be more likely to find you ; and then 
 father wants you both to come and take an 
 early dinner with us, at the farm-house." 
 
 Ethel s round eyes brightened, and she and 
 her husband settled the thing by a glance. 
 
 " You will come, then ?" said Mrs. Eulow, 
 with a smile that would have convinced the 
 most hardened social sceptic. 
 
 We will all walk down together, if you 
 say so," put in her father. 
 
 " Can you get ready, Ethel ? " Fenn asked, 
 with a singular desire to appear indifferent. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 45 
 
 His wife rose. "It s only putting on a 
 bonnet and something," she said ; and then 
 she turned to Anice. "Would you like to 
 see our beautiful apartment ? Will you 
 come up ? " she suggested. 
 
 Fenn was afraid this was too familiar ; but 
 country boarding makes its own standard of 
 manners, and besides Anice assented so 
 promptly that the movement was sponta 
 neous. As they went out, he saw that it 
 was an excellent chance : it put him wholly 
 at ease. It is generally a good sign for newly 
 acquainted women to run off together in this 
 way. What can the mysterious initiation be, 
 the informal freemasonry by which, with the 
 aid of a looking-glass and a little millinery 
 and a few aimless sentences, they establish 
 an understanding, when closeted in a room 
 by themselves ? I should hardly dare to ask, 
 and I don t believe they could explain ; but 
 if they come down looking highly pleased 
 with themselves, you may be sure the rite 
 has succeeded. It was so in this instance. 
 Neither Anice nor Ethel would be likely to 
 deploy the least " gush ; " the widow made 
 no claim upon the wife on the score of old 
 acquaintance with her husband, and Ethel 
 did not offer the smallest pretence of having 
 
46 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 frequently heard of Mrs. Eulow, because in 
 fact she never had heard of her until the day 
 before, and contented herself with suppres 
 sion of that truth. But as they came out 
 from the room, and were about to descend 
 the bleak, uncarpeted stairs, Mrs. Eulow put 
 her arm for an instant around her compan 
 ion s girlish figure, and Ethel gave her a 
 quick affectionate glance before the pressure 
 was withdrawn again, not a syllable being 
 uttered on either side. 
 
 The little wife looked wonderfully pretty 
 in her cream-tinted cr^plisse with bands of 
 black lace coming down over the front. She 
 carried a brilliant Japanese sunshade, and 
 walked in advance with Mr. Evans. 
 
 " You are very happy to have found such 
 a wife," said Mrs. Eulow, whom Fenn was 
 attending. "You must allow me to say 
 that much." 
 
 "I m glad you agree with me," he an 
 swered, hardly knowing what to say. No 
 thing is more welcome to a man than a com 
 pliment upon his wife, and yet when it comes 
 from another woman he is embarrassed by 
 not being able to utter all that he feels. At 
 this moment, notwithstanding those freaks 
 of sentiment which had troubled him the day 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 47 
 
 before, Benjamin Fenn worshipped Ethel, 
 and would have felt a fierce indignation at 
 any doubt cast upon his loyalty to her. 
 
 Yet as he moved along side by side with 
 Anice, he was thinking continually about 
 the husband whom he had never seen. He 
 had tried to sound her father on the subject, 
 in the few moments they had had alone ; but 
 he fancied the old gentleman did not want to 
 talk about Eulow. " What a pity that I 
 never saw your husband ! " he now said 
 abruptly. 
 
 A slight cloud crossed her face. " You 
 may think it strange," she said, "but I m 
 not certain that you would have liked him. 
 He was so different." 
 
 " From me, you mean ? Or from you ? " 
 
 "Both," was the reply, after a slight 
 hesitation. Anice began to see her mistake 
 in saying too much. 
 
 "I m afraid I have done wrong to talk of 
 it," said he. "The thought crossed me, 
 and I m for ever thinking aloud. But as to 
 difference, you and I are a good deal unlike, 
 and yet we have been good friends, when 
 we knew each other." 
 
 " When we knew ? You speak as if it were 
 all over." She half smiled, yet as she turned 
 
48 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 her eyes toward his, under the shade of 
 her parasol, there was an intensity in them, 
 unexpected to both. 
 
 " Oh no," he assured her. ** That was a 
 careless phrase. I hope we are only begin 
 ning. " 
 
 The tone was that of compliment, and 
 he, too, smiled. But neither of them could 
 forget that swift exchange of glances which 
 revealed something under the words. 
 
 "Don t let us talk of those times," she 
 said, with the first trace of confusion she 
 had betrayed. tl At least, not of what we 
 have just spoken about. I like to remember 
 your coming to Little Falls ; but you must 
 take me now just as I am. When one has 
 suffered, and everything has changed, it is 
 pleasant to meet an old acquaintance, and 
 have it go on as if nothing had happened." 
 
 Again she seemed to have said too much, 
 or to have said what might bear too much 
 meaning. But it couldn t be helped. 
 
 "Every one suffers," said Fenn, un 
 guardedly. Then, after an instant, And 
 do I seem the same to you that I used to ?" 
 
 " Almost exactly, returned the widow. 
 The announcement seemed to give her nearly 
 as much pleasure as it gave him. Her colour 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 49 
 
 was rising, from the exercise perhaps ; and 
 her eyes beamed. 
 
 Fenn glanced from her to his wife, and 
 unconsciously compared them. Ethel was 
 like some gay tropical bird, in her light 
 dress and bright colours. With Anice, the 
 black walking garb, touched here and there 
 with dark violet, though wrought with not 
 a little elegance, was a mere accompaniment 
 to her superb figure and the face so gentle 
 but commanding. They were silent for 
 some time, until Fenn, in his rapid, investi 
 gating way, declared : "I smell English 
 violets. Don t I ? " 
 
 "Do you want me to deny it?" asked 
 Anice, laughing, and quite at ease again. 
 
 He answered seriously and in surprise : 
 "No. Why?" 
 
 " I thought you were determined to have 
 an argument, you began so vigorously," said 
 she, still with humour. "Besides, it s a 
 maxim, isn t it, for men of science to deny 
 until a thing is proved ? and I might 
 supply the denial, at any rate." 
 
 "But really," he resumed, "I felt sure 
 of it. Perhaps you use violet for a per 
 fume." 
 
 "I don t think I m bound to tell you 
 
 D 
 
5O AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 that," she returned. " But I will, since 
 you re so puzzled." 
 
 "Then that s the explanation. You do 
 use it." 
 
 "No." 
 
 He appeared greatly mystified, and she 
 made no secret of enjoying his bewilder 
 ment. 
 
 "You have violet ribbon, at any rate," 
 he presently discovered, with amusing satis 
 faction, after carefully surveying her. 
 
 " Yes ; but it s not so life-like as to have 
 a perfume. " 
 
 Well, I give it up, then, " said Fenn, in 
 assumed despair. * * The colour is an aniline 
 dye. But even that doesn t explain my 
 perfume. I must have imagined it, I sup 
 pose." 
 
 And they had now arrived at the farm 
 house, where Mr. Evans and Ethel, who 
 had been chatting all the way with much 
 animation, were waiting for them. The 
 dinner, taken in a room which looked out 
 on Sheep s Back and the valley, was simple, 
 but remarkably good ; it was evident from 
 all the appointments that father and daugh 
 ter had plenty of money, and they were so 
 far lifted above the average American lot as 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 5! 
 
 to have good servants. Mr. Evans even 
 opened a bottle of champagne, for which 
 the circumstance of his having got it ex 
 traordinarily cheap served as an indirect 
 apology. 
 
 " When Anice and I went abroad with 
 Eulow for his health it didn t avail after 
 all, poor fellow ! we stopped one day at a 
 little village in the Champagne country, 
 and" 
 
 His daughter here interrupted, by talking 
 to Fenn, possibly not liking the odd con 
 junction of Eulow s death and a special im 
 portation of champagne, a case of which had 
 been brought with them for summer use ; so 
 her father continued his narrative to Ethel. 
 There was no interruption of harmony, how 
 ever, and the conversation progressed very 
 entertainingly. As they were finishing des 
 sert, and the young man, lifting his glass, was 
 sipping from it slowly and gazing across the 
 bowl at the hazy hill outside, Mrs. Eulow 
 made some allusion to the garden at Little 
 Falls, " close by where the bed of English 
 violets was, you remember." 
 
 That s it ! " exclaimed Fenn, setting 
 down the glass so sharply as to risk its stem. 
 " I had forgotten all about it. But when I 
 
52 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 met you, last evening, a kind of reminis 
 cence must have come to me : I know I 
 thought there was a violet perfume, then. 
 Ah, yes, that explains it. It was associa 
 tion." 
 
 There was a light, mischievous sparkle in 
 Mrs. Eulow s eyes, as if she had half sus 
 pected the cause of his hallucination about 
 the violets, and had purposely brought out 
 the explanation ; but she smiled with him 
 at the discovery. Ethel and Mr. Evans, no 
 ticing the excitement, were allowed a share 
 in it ; Anice giving the details with a charm 
 ing grace. 
 
 "It s as remarkable in a mental way," 
 said the chemist positively, "as my echo is 
 in acoustics ! " And this gave rise to a fresh 
 explanation on his part. 
 
 During all this Ethel had been looking at 
 her husband a little pensively. He was al 
 ways energetic, but it struck her that just 
 then he was excited. * It was strange to her, 
 also, to find him gliding back into the past so 
 easily, a past of which she knew so little, 
 accompanied by this accomplished woman, of 
 whom she likewise knew almost nothing. It 
 was odd that Ben should have reminiscences, 
 associations with her, so penetrating, of which 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 53 
 
 she, his wife, was ignorant. But the sur 
 prise and slight dissatisfaction aroused by 
 this were only momentary, and faded away 
 in the general good-feeling and interest of 
 the occasion. 
 
54 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 IV. 
 
 AFTER dinner, when they went into the 
 small, unripe-looking parlour, where Anice by 
 her mere presence placed the farmer s plain 
 belongings in an attitude of apology, Mr. 
 Evans began telling how he happened to 
 come to Tanford. "You would suppose that, 
 coming from so far inland, we would go to 
 the sea-coast. But I don t like the sea, 
 the perpetual smell of sea-weed and old fish, 
 which people say is so exhilarating. We Ve 
 been to Lake Ontario and the Wine Islands, 
 and St. Lawrence, and the Delaware Water 
 Gap, and other places " 
 
 "And even tried staying at home," smiled 
 Mrs. Eulow. 
 
 "And we re tired of em all," he con 
 tinued. " JSTow, my father was a farmer in 
 this place for a while, when he was a young 
 man, and it suddenly struck me I d come 
 here." 
 
 "Is this the very same farm?" asked 
 Ethel. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 55 
 
 " Oh, dear, / don t know ! " exclaimed Mr. 
 Evans, his old habit of appearing to be im 
 mersed in details reasserting itself. "I ve 
 inquired around, but can t find out anything. 
 No one has even taken the trouble to re 
 member his existence. I shall look the 
 thing up at the registry of deeds in Worces 
 ter, if I ever get time. But the fact is, my 
 father didn t stay here long; and that s 
 where he showed his sense. It s a fine 
 place for the summer ; beautiful scenery, of 
 course ; but the farming ! " Here he screwed 
 up his sagacious eyes significantly, tumbled 
 his restless hair about with his hands a little 
 more, and abandoned the attempt to express 
 the desperateness of the situation ; but he 
 rehabilitated and paraded an old joke about 
 raising crops of mortgages, which amused 
 Ethel. 
 
 The gentlemen presently removed to the 
 porch in order to smoke, the ladies staying 
 within for a while. " I Ve persuaded our 
 farmer to bring up my horse Star," said Mrs. 
 Eulow, " and then we 11 go out and look at 
 him. I hope you 11 ride him, sometimes." 
 
 " I shall not dare to. I never rode much," 
 said the young matron ; and they settled 
 themselves for a brief feminine chat. Ethel 
 
56 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 was on her guard against allowing it to be 
 seen that her husband had not imparted to 
 her all his memories of the widow ; but Mrs. 
 Eulow soon drew from her the main facts 
 of her own history, learned how arduous 
 Fenn s struggle for existence had been, and 
 was even yet j then sounded her as to her 
 tastes, and talked with her about her favour 
 ite authors, who proved to be Tennyson, 
 Dickens, and Whittier. "You see, I have 
 my piano here," said she. "The room is 
 hardly large enough, but Oh, by the 
 way, will you play for us ? " 
 
 Again Mrs. Ethel s answer was negative. 
 She shook her head, almost like a mortified 
 school-girl. " I used to play a very little be 
 fore I was married," said she ; " but only for 
 myself and for Mr. Fenn, of course. But 
 I don t practise." She would not confess 
 that they had not a piano at home. 
 
 The bay came up at this juncture, and was 
 duly admired. Ethel even became enthusi 
 astic, and secretly thought she would try 
 riding again. Going out to the porch for a 
 better view of Star, they found Mr. Evans 
 and Fenn in the midst of a debate so weighty 
 and earnest that Ethel thought they must be 
 discussing some great political movement. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 57 
 
 " You must make changes here, sir; you 
 must make them. I tell you, it s a great re 
 form !" Mr. Evans was saying with energy. 
 
 1 Our people are conservative in Massa 
 chusetts," Fenn interposed. 
 
 " Politics ? " queried Ethel. 
 
 " No," said Mr. Evans, like a man who has 
 interests on his hands too grave to allow of 
 much interruption from women. " It s beet 
 sugar. " 
 
 " I knew it must be," laughed his daugh 
 ter. 
 
 " Mr. Evans," explained the chemist, with 
 the air of a neutral placed on the defensive, 
 "maintains that the farmers in this State 
 ought to take up the culture of sugar beets 
 on a large scale." 
 
 Giving twenty -five to forty tons to the 
 acre," said the old gentleman, warmly, " at 
 six dollars a ton from the manufacturer ; 
 after which " 
 
 " But I have told you that the Department 
 of Agriculture has found out, by chemical 
 test, that both Indian corn and amber cane 
 yield a larger percentage of sugar than beets 
 do," the other objected. 
 
 The lawyer continued to talk about "re 
 fuse pulp," and two crops in a season, but 
 
$8 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 was gradually led away from his theme by 
 a diversion to small fruits and gem toma 
 toes. 
 
 There was a moment of silence, and Ethel 
 turned to Mrs. Eulow. "Won t you sing me 
 something ? " she asked. " I want so much 
 to hear you, after what my husband has 
 said. " She spoke in so low a tone that the 
 two men could not hear. 
 
 Anice looked at her in an odd, semi-in 
 dulgent way, apparently about to comply ; 
 the young wife s manner was so confiding, 
 so gentle. Suddenly, however, her glance 
 passed on to Fenn, who was still soothing 
 the disputant with raspberries, and particu 
 larly the raising of Pride of the Hudson on 
 warm, moist soils ; and she changed her 
 mind. "Not now, Mrs. Fenn," she said; 
 " wait till another time ; I m not in the 
 right mood. Besides, we re going to take 
 you to drive, soon." 
 
 Did she refuse because it was not Fenn 
 who had asked her? Possibly. She was 
 usually very complaisant and ready to exer 
 cise her voice ; and either his indifference 
 at the moment affected her, or else a whim 
 to please herself with reserving for the 
 present, intact, the charm which had first 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 59 
 
 won her the admiration of Ethel s husband. 
 It was significant, too, that Fenn, who in a 
 moment or two more had exhausted tempor 
 arily the soil for small fruits, did not think 
 of asking to hear her. He had always been 
 eager to do so hitherto when he imagined 
 himself to have no deeper interest. Mrs. 
 Eulow observed it, and a quick intuition 
 told her that his unconscious indifference to 
 her voice now might mean that another kind 
 of interest had sprung up, or revived, within 
 him. It took only a moment for these little 
 impulses and perceptions to pass through 
 her mind ; instinct and passion, like light, 
 travel with incalculable swiftness. The 
 cigars were finished, and the group returned 
 to the parlour, where Anice quietly sat 
 down at the piano, and began stealing from 
 the instrument minor chords of a Song 
 Without Words, in which many black keys 
 were involved. Ethel, who had followed 
 with a disappointed air, thought that her 
 wish was to be gratified, after all. But 
 Anice noticed that Fenn was abstractedly 
 glancing over some books on the table, and 
 she continued to weave the voiceless har 
 mony in a subdued volume, with light and 
 remote touches. 
 
60 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 "Ah," remarked the young man, all at 
 once, I see you are looking into chemistry 
 yourself, Mr. Evans." He held up a scien 
 tific journal, which he had found. 
 
 "Oh no. Those are of my daughter s 
 collection." 
 
 Anice stopped playing, and looked around. 
 "You see," she said, rather archly, " I knew 
 what you meant by an aniline dye. Twelve 
 parts carbon, seven of hydrogen, and one of 
 nitrogen ! " 
 
 Fenn was evidently pleased. "So you 
 really have been studying it ? " 
 
 " Not studying, only reading," the widow 
 said, apologetically. 
 
 He turned over three or four other pam 
 phlets and books, and came upon one thin 
 report on a special subject, bearing his own 
 name, at which he uttered a cry of surprise 
 and satisfaction. Ethel went hastily to see 
 what it was. " Where did you ever pick 
 this up?" he inquired. 
 
 " Oh," said Anice, carelessly, " I found out 
 accidentally that you had written it, and sent 
 for a copy." She did not tell him that her 
 whole interest in the science had sprung up 
 from the knowledge that he pursued it ; and 
 perhaps, under the circumstances, silence on 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION 6 1 
 
 this point was the better honesty ; but the 
 chemist, without egotism, instantly suspected 
 the truth. 
 
 "I shall take a new interest in what I 
 write now." he said, in a tone of quiet en 
 joyment, but without raising his glance to 
 her. You must have found it pretty dry, 
 though," he added, with a significant look 
 at his wife. 
 
 You mustn t ask me too much," said 
 the widow, as if inclined to snub him a 
 little. 
 
 Ethel laughed in great glee. " You didn t 
 get your compliment, Ben, did you ? Served 
 him right," she confided to Mr. Evans, who 
 had somehow pleased her from the begin 
 ning, and given her an agreeable sense of 
 sympathy. 
 
 " It s compliment enough that she should 
 have read it at all," retorted Fenn, some 
 what nettled. 
 
 Anice rose from the piano with a vague 
 air of triumph about her, which no one 
 especially noticed. "I hear the carry-all 
 coming," she announced to them. 
 
 " And I have an idea !" said Mr. Evans, 
 starting up with unusual energy. " It isn t 
 very hot to-day, and a short walk wouldn t 
 
62 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 do me any harm, after dinner. I propose 
 that we go and try Mr. Fenn s echo." 
 
 "Capital !" cried the widow, becoming 
 almost the young girl again in her vivacity. 
 You mean we will walk over ? And how 
 shall we try it ? Some one must start the 
 echoing from here, you know." 
 
 "Oh, we ll have the farm horn tooted," 
 said her father. " How will that do, Mrs. 
 Fenn ? " 
 
 "I would rather hear Mrs. Eulow sing," 
 Ethel said, timidly. 
 
 "You shall, then," declared the old gentle 
 man, firmly, as if he had taken her under 
 special protection, and was going to make 
 her a sort of pet. 
 
 Fenn did not altogether like the notion of 
 Anice s singing for the experiment. He 
 was as much averse to it as if he had had 
 a peculiar ownership in her melodious capa 
 bility. It struck him that she herself didn t 
 like the idea ; but, after a brief hesitation, 
 she assented. 
 
 Accordingly, the remaining three set out 
 across the fields. The modest and unstylish 
 carry-all, suited to the hilly roads, was to 
 meet them at a point below the oak, near 
 the foot of the hill, whither Fenn was con- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 63 
 
 fident they could go by the birch-path. The 
 signal of their arrival at the echo ground was 
 to be a blast on the horn, which they took 
 with them for that purpose. Mr. Evans s 
 pace was slow ; Fenn was aware of a curious 
 blankness and suspense coming over him, as 
 soon as they had got away from Anice ; and 
 Ethel was in haste to hear those magical 
 notes : so that when they reached the tree 
 by the wall they were an impatient trio. 
 
 The horn sounded. 
 
 After a few seconds a faint thread of mel 
 ody reached them, swelling, after a scarcely 
 perceptible break, almost at once into a 
 louder but still distant strain. The air, as 
 Mr. Evans told them, when a few bars had 
 been given, was one which Anice had heard 
 in the mountains of Tyrol. 
 
 " It doesn t sound right, though," Fenn 
 observed. " Could I have been deceived 
 about that echo ? It was a very subtle, elu 
 sive thing." 
 
 " I didn t half believe in it, even yester 
 day," said Ethel, smiling. "But oh, Mr. 
 Evans, how beautiful your daughter s voice 
 is ! I should think you would be very 
 proud." 
 
 " So proud, madam," he answered with a 
 
64 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 good deal of elaborateness, "that I have 
 never been willing to have her appear in 
 opera." 
 
 " What a pity ! " was Ethel s first, impul 
 sive utterance. "But no ; perhaps it isn t. 
 That voice is too lovely for most people to 
 be fit to hear it. Does she want to ? " 
 
 * Go upon the stage ? No ; I m glad to 
 say not. But she has been urged to, con 
 tinually, both here and abroad." 
 
 Fenn had listened attentively, and was 
 more pleased than there was any occasion 
 for being, that his wife liked Anice s sing 
 ing. He said nothing about this, however. 
 " Let s try it again," he proposed, taking up 
 the horn. 
 
 The second signal was answered as the 
 first had been, except that the responsive 
 strain was now a hunting-song, which came 
 to them in this wild, half -sylvan spot with 
 an inspiriting motion. 
 
 But the man of science was dissatisfied. 
 "I can t make it out," he said to the other 
 two. "Doesn t it seem to you more as if 
 the sounds came from the birches, up above 
 here ? It isn t like yesterday, at any rate, " 
 
 "It did sound nearer," Mr. Evans agreed. 
 " To tell the truth, Mr. Fenn, I m not en- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 65 
 
 tirely satisfied with your discovery. " It was 
 plain that Mr. Evans had not forgotten the 
 younger man s opposition on the sugar-beet 
 question. 
 
 Just then a rich peal of laughter, a melody 
 in itself, sounded forth not far from the 
 group ; and, turning in that direction, they 
 saw Anice standing in the fluttering shadow 
 of the white-stemmed birches, a few yards 
 away. "Was I a good echo?" she called 
 out, merrily. " I ve been here all the time, 
 since you came." At this there was a 
 general hilarity. Anice had, in fact, taken 
 the upper part of the hill, and made her way 
 to a convenient shelter, while the rest were 
 walking slowly over, below. 
 
 "And you made all those changes of dis 
 tance just by altering your voice ? " asked 
 Ethel. 
 
 " Oh, that s very easy," said Mrs. Eulow. 
 " I really didn t think I could deceive you 
 all." 
 
 " But where are we to meet the carriage ? " 
 her father inquired, practically. 
 
 " Just where we said. I Ve sent it down." 
 
 As they took their way to the ap 
 pointed place, Fenn wondered at the change 
 that had gradually made itself visible in 
 
66 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Anice since their unexpected encounter, 
 scarcely twenty-four hours earlier. On 
 leaving her then, he had thought of her as 
 sad and statuesque, a form placed in some 
 shadowy corner of life, and with all its love 
 liness veiled in sorrow, which he had been 
 permitted to gaze upon once more, but which 
 could perhaps never come again into the 
 circle of intimate and usual realities. To 
 day, on the contrary, nay, within the two 
 hours just past, she had become a joyous 
 and hopeful presence ; she was even spor 
 tive ; those fair hands, which had seemed to 
 move with so mournful a languor in the 
 departed twilight, now expressed buoyancy. 
 It might have been a thoroughly happy 
 woman who followed the narrow pathway 
 with him, and he was within a little of 
 doubting the justness of his first impression. 
 This quick transition was exhilarating, 
 alluring. He may have felt that his own 
 appearance on the scene had something to 
 do with it, and this again may have led 
 him to walk faster, so that Anice and he 
 drew away from Ethel, who came behind 
 with Mr. Evans. 
 
 The track grew fainter ; the ground was 
 roughened by roots that struggled to escape 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 67 
 
 from their smothered underground existence. 
 Finally, the pair were confronted by a loose 
 stone wall. Fenn leaped over, and extended 
 his hand. Mrs. Eulow mounted adroitly, 
 and accepted his aid ; then, as she gave a 
 slight spring to the ground and withdrew 
 her hand from his, he received an unmis 
 takable but fleeting pressure from her clasp. 
 Coming at the instant after she had touched 
 the grass and no longer needed support, it 
 was hard to believe it had not been inten 
 tional, evanescent though it was. 
 
 Anice walked rapidly on over the open 
 but uneven space they had entered ; then 
 stopped, waiting, holding up her parasol, 
 perfectly self-possessed, and apparently 
 searching for Ethel and her father. 
 
 Fenn had paused instinctively by the wall, 
 intending to assist his wife when she should 
 come. The first definite result of the sur 
 prise which Anice s touch had caused was 
 indignation mixed with alarm. She was 
 doing an injustice, he felt, both to herself 
 and him. In another moment he dismissed 
 as unworthy and unlawful the suspicion that 
 she had meant to establish a mute communi 
 cation with him in this way ; besides, it was 
 childish. When, in boyish years, this press- 
 
68 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 ing of the hand had been a received method 
 of indicating preference among little girls of 
 his acquaintance, he had always considered 
 it especially senseless ; and it was quite un 
 likely that Mrs. Eulow would resort to it. 
 "Some nervous movement; that was all," 
 he said to himself. But curiosity ensued. 
 If the gentle impact of that hand had been 
 intentional, how much, after all, did it sig 
 nify ? A fine pulsation, a momentary delight 
 and unexpected defiance, struck through his 
 veins, and his heart beat tumultuously. 
 
 The whole situation did not last a minute. 
 Fenn experienced these graduated phases so 
 swiftly that he could not consciously register 
 them. Who knows what corresponding ac 
 tivity took place under the impassive ex 
 terior and behind the frank, luminous eyes 
 of the woman standing a few paces away ? 
 Yet time enough even for embarrassment 
 had not passed, and nothing appeared to 
 have happened. They looked precisely as 
 they had done before ; the bare and rocky 
 ground, the clear hot sky, the trees, were 
 not more natural and unchanged. But the 
 blue of the sky seemed to rain a tingling 
 fire into Fenn s breast ; the very odours of 
 the ground and the woods, the searching 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 69 
 
 perfume of the sweet-fern, were laden now 
 with a secret and inspired sweetness he had 
 not detected before. He was resolved to 
 learn more ; he felt himself challenged to 
 conquer some admission or some denial from 
 this strangely fascinating friend of his. 
 
 " Let us wait a moment," he said. Anice 
 smiled pleasantly. 
 
 Ethel arrived, and was assisted by him : 
 her hand was strong and trusting, but it 
 certainly did not impart that peculiar pres 
 sure which had just now influenced him so 
 potently. 
 
 It haunted him throughout the drive, 
 which was long and beautiful, leading 
 through a singular region of low land 
 between the Tanford plateau and another 
 wilder ridge : a region thickly wooded, with 
 plunging descents down steep and bowery 
 declivities, abrupt turns to this and that 
 side of the valley, and encounters with 
 a streamlet, alternately flowing in bright 
 shallows, where the sunlight made amber 
 of it, and lost in deep trout-pools, which 
 Ethel said would be just the place for little 
 Mr. Sharon Reeves, a wandering Episcopal 
 clergyman at the Institute, who was trying 
 to acquire a worldly air by practising with 
 
70 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 the rod and line. At another point, some 
 unforeseen ascent would bring them to a 
 line of maples, a few fields, and a farm 
 house, which appeared to be utterly lost 
 to the world, but boasted a stunted little 
 croquet-ground, with hoops set all awry, 
 like skeleton grave-stones. 
 
 "I should think the people here," said 
 Ethel, "would have some difficulty in find 
 ing even themselves, to say nothing of the 
 world." 
 
 But these little homes were happily un 
 conscious of their obscurity, and presented 
 a serene front to the flying critics in the 
 carry-all. 
 
 Mr. Evans had exploredlthe route before ; 
 but it was new to Fenn, and the absence of 
 knowledge as to what lay ahead suited his 
 mood. Besides, the beauty of the sun- 
 dazzled curtain of leaves through which 
 they peered on either side ; the lance-like 
 thrust of long beech boughs and infinite 
 tracery of finer branches in the depth of the 
 wood ; the pale reminiscence of autumn in 
 the rain- flattened dead leaves on the earth, 
 from which the trunks rose erect, or steadied 
 themselves at strange angles, like bodies 
 poised for swimming ; the dull or twinkling 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 71 
 
 shadows ; the tints of green and grey, dim 
 blue, lilac, and gold, that trembled in and 
 out among the clean, strong forms of growth, 
 these things alone gave an active stimulus 
 to the senses. A cool, spicy incense rose to 
 meet them from the coverts of undergrowth 
 and vine, or was distilled by the sunbeams 
 from gaunt and noiseless ranks of pine on 
 sandy banks above the road; clumps of 
 hardback, 1 with its panicles of hoary rose, 
 and stretches of chicory, with its hardy 
 purple-blue, seemed to float past them as 
 they rolled on. They branched from one 
 narrow way into another, enjoying it all 
 with that zest belonging to American scenery 
 away from towns which comes from the im 
 possibility of taking anything for granted 
 about it. 
 
 " Is this a park, or a forest, or an English 
 estate in an unkempt, second-growth con 
 dition, or what, may I ask ? " said Fenn, at 
 last. 
 
 "It s nothing particular," answered 
 Anice, "and it rejoices in the name of 
 Tom s Swamp." 
 
 "I don t think we ve seen Tom or the 
 
 i Hardback (Spircea tomentosa), an astringent plant 
 common in pastures. 
 
72 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 swamp yet," said he. " Where do you keep 
 them, Mr. Evans?" 
 
 "Tom himself is a myth," began Mr. 
 Evans; "or an historical person 
 
 " Which is the same thing nowadays," 
 Ethel cynically remarked, to her husband s 
 surprise. 
 
 "Yes, that s true. As for the swamp, 
 you 11 see a little corner of it before long. " 
 
 It was merely a gleam of low, watery 
 ground, with the pale purple clusters and 
 flat leaves that belonged there, seen among 
 the trees ; and from here the horse was 
 guided to scale the Tanford ridge once more, 
 the top of which was coursed along for miles 
 by the broad turnpike that had once been a 
 post-road, and was lined with towering elms, 
 suggesting endless relays of couriers. They 
 passed an old house, deserted like many 
 others in the township, where marigolds and 
 satin-flowers, balsams and hollyhocks, were 
 growing in the midst of rank weeds and wild 
 creepers that were slowly tugging at the 
 roof to get it down. 
 
 "Do you think that could have been your 
 father s ?" asked Ethel, to whom the coinci 
 dence relating to the dead Evans appeared 
 romantic. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 73 
 
 " Very likely," returned the lawyer, be 
 coming harassed with imaginary business 
 again, and touching up the mare. 
 
 In this way the drive continued, Anice 
 and Fenn the same as ever in their bearing 
 toward one another, in spite of those tran 
 sient and silent passages which, several 
 times since morning, had appeared to be pre 
 paring the way for some changed attitude. 
 And, in truth, what was there to make 
 them alter their bearing, as yet ? Decidedly 
 neither had any definite assurance that the 
 other had any thought which would have 
 been better away, or concealed spark that 
 might break into a dangerous blaze. As for 
 Fenn, he would have asked, had there 
 been any reasoning upon such a theme, 
 What is a man to do in his position ? Must 
 he say openly to the lady immediately con 
 cerned that he finds himself imprudently 
 interested in her, and thinks it best that 
 they should not encounter often? At one 
 time it would have been according to his code 
 to speak in this fashion, attacking the matter 
 directly, but the time had rather gone by 
 for those ideas. He had told Anice, once, 
 that he did not mean to make love to her, 
 and it was questionable whether any good 
 
74 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 had been accomplished by it ; possibly much 
 harm was to come of that verdant confidence. 
 These reflections passed through his mind 
 in detached order, at intervals of the drive ; 
 but, above all, Fenn was sound-hearted and 
 healthy, and the rush of pure air against his 
 cheeks, the sweet odours of the country, tem 
 pered the slow fever which had set in at that 
 critical moment in the rocky field, where 
 Anice and he had waited for Ethel. He 
 enjoyed, too, his wife s keen pleasure in this 
 simple after-dinner diversion, and the sight 
 of it did him good. Mr. Evans struck off 
 from the old post-road again, through broad, 
 cultivated acres, hedged with single lines of 
 ash and maple bordering the rough walls, 
 and so down into another wild trough, on the 
 opposite and southern side of Tanford, quite 
 unlike the swamp ; more open, breezier, con 
 taining houses of a more prosperous aspect, 
 and occasional orchards. Here, too, at the 
 very bottom, was a saw-mill, in a state of dead 
 quiescence, like most small mills of its kind 
 for a great part of the year. The only prac 
 tical purpose it served was an adventurous 
 perch for the Rev. Mr. Reeves, who, fish-pole 
 in hand, was humming a lively popular ditty, 
 upon which, he prided himself as marking his 
 
AN ECHO OP PASSION. 75 
 
 rapid advance in broad and manly culture, 
 allowing his hook, meanwhile, to dangle cau 
 tiously in the rough water. 
 
 This was the last point of interest, for it 
 was followed by a long and painfully slow 
 climb on the part of the fagged mare up to 
 wards Tanford, her head being pointed for 
 the top of the church spire, the only object 
 in the village plainly discernible from this 
 depth. The ascent was so steep as to re 
 semble a flight upward in the air ; but when 
 they reached the hill -top they were at the 
 base of the spire, instead of its summit, a 
 fact at which Mrs. Ethel professed to be 
 much astonished. And " you dreary old 
 Institute, " she said, addressing the blank and 
 dusty front of the academic hotel, when they 
 had alighted in front of it, "I feel as if I d 
 been away for a week ! " 
 
76 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 V. 
 
 THERE is said to have existed among the 
 Jews an oracle of echoes, and although its 
 responses and prophecies must have been 
 somewhat vague, Fenn could at this time 
 have believed that they were impressively 
 minatory, in cases of predicted danger. An 
 echo is in itself a mock, which seems to fling 
 back upon you something of its own hollow- 
 ness and transiency. What could more ap 
 propriately bring home to a human being 
 his own fleeting, perishable, and fateful state 
 than a helpless rebounding of sound thrown 
 from surface to surface, and lost in space? 
 Then, as to prophetic tone, this ghostly 
 repetition symbolises well the truth that 
 what has been will be again ; that the future 
 has in store for us some exact return of good 
 or evil for what we are now doing ; or that a 
 result impending at the current hour is often 
 the direct consequence of an act or utterance 
 preceding it by a long time, the echo of 
 which is only just reaching us. Of some 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 77 
 
 such oracle Fenn was beginning to take 
 counsel. His own consciousness was full of 
 mysterious reverberations, which were re 
 peated or accompanied in the coincidences 
 surrounding him. There was the striking 
 accident of Anice s voice breaking into his 
 reverie at the instant when he had been re 
 calling it ; there was the unbidden return 
 of excitement as he watched the stars and 
 thought of her face ; and, again, the furtive, 
 unconscious association with her of the odour 
 of violets in the old garden. Going over the 
 incidents of the day, and thinking of these 
 things, he was forced to ask what they por 
 tended. Like muffled echoes they responded, 
 and he understood the answer, although it 
 was not given in words. 
 
 " What did you think of Mrs. Eulow ?" he 
 asked his wife, when they were alone in 
 their room. 
 
 "Oh, I think she s remarkably hand 
 some." 
 
 " Yes, she is, rather," he admitted, as if 
 he had not previously quite made up his 
 mind about this. 
 
 "It s more than rather, " said Ethel. 
 " Can t you be a little more enthusiastic?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
7 AN ECHO OF PASSION 
 
 "Because if you re not impressed by her 
 I shall begin to think you Ve never really 
 seen anything pretty about me." She was 
 fastening a jewel-pin at her throat, and gave 
 him a half-coquettish look, yet there was a 
 touch of seriousness in her sweet, simple 
 face. 
 
 " What nonsense, Ethel ! I don t like you 
 even to hint that you re not the loveliest 
 woman I know. " And it was true that she 
 was so to Fenn. He went on : " Mrs. Eulow 
 is a beauty, there s no doubt of that ; but it 
 is only one kind of beauty. She is the sort 
 of woman I would like to pay compliments 
 to." 
 
 "I should say that s a pleasant kind of 
 woman to be." 
 
 "No; compliments are not the highest 
 form of admiration. But Mrs. Eulow would 
 have such a way of receiving them not be 
 lieving them exactly, you know, but under 
 standing that they were the best a man could 
 offer her that it would be a pleasure to 
 give them. Don t you see how there are 
 some people who compel just that form of 
 tribute?" 
 
 " I suppose I can understand," said Ethel. 
 " But you speak as if you d never tried it 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 79 
 
 with her, or hadn t known her such a long 
 time." 
 
 Her husband perceived that his theory did 
 not apply very well. " The fact is," he ac 
 knowledged, " I never did do that sort of 
 thing, the few times I met her. " 
 
 " But I thought you had seen a good deal 
 of her." 
 
 "No; not much." 
 
 " Mr. Evans said she saw you as long ago 
 as ten years." 
 
 " That s a mistake. It wasn t more than 
 eight." 
 
 " Well, I think it s very queer you never 
 talked to me about her. I was dreadfully 
 put out when he began speaking as if I 
 knew all about the acquaintance. Of course 
 I had to pretend I did, and then get him to 
 tell me ; and I don t like to do that. It s 
 deceptive." 
 
 "Never mind," said Fenn, seeing that 
 she was nettled, and at once becoming so 
 himself. "We can t be for ever telling 
 people the exact truth. If we did they 
 wouldn t care anything about us." 
 
 " Then I suppose it was all a fib when Mr. 
 Evans said they thought of you so often, and 
 had hoped they might meet me some time." 
 
80 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 "Not necessarily. I can conceive," said 
 Fenn, sarcastically, " of their taking some 
 mild interest in me and my affairs. " 
 
 "Yes," said Ethel, veering around at once, 
 for the sake of the advantage ; * but I think 
 it would have been better taste if she had 
 kept those chemical books out of sight, 
 at any rate, for a while." 
 
 Fenn got up angrily, and took his hat. 
 "Do you mean to say you think she put 
 them there on purpose to impress me ? " he 
 demanded. 
 
 "Ben, I forbid you to speak to me that 
 way. It s just as improper as your not 
 telling me about your friends beforehand. 
 And what difference does it make to you 
 whether she put them in sight purposely 
 or not?" 
 
 " Poh ! " said he. " It s ridiculous even 
 to suggest that I care. But I detest seeing 
 you allow yourself such petty ideas." He 
 took a few steps towards the door, but his 
 wife hardly thought he would go ; the dis 
 pute was at too interesting a stage to be 
 dropped. 
 
 She made a slight concession, and started 
 afresh. "I didn t say I thought so," she 
 reminded him. " But I do think it would 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 8 1 
 
 have been nicer not to thrust her interest in 
 chemistry at you the first thing." 5 
 
 " She didn t," said Fenn, settling down 
 to a methodical altercation. " It would 
 have argued a horrible self-consciousness if 
 she had packed them all away before invit 
 ing us to dinner." The truth was he had 
 been more pleased with the episode of the 
 books than he at all knew, until its charm 
 was so rudely lessened. 
 
 " The secret of all this," his wife returned, 
 "is that you want me to be just like her. 
 You are never satisfied ; you never will be." 
 He made a sound of vigorous impatience, 
 but allowed her to proceed. "You know, 
 Ben, that I am very proud of your being a 
 scientific man, and I listen to everything you 
 say, and try to understand it. I like to have 
 you explain ; but I didn t fall in love with 
 chemistry and marry it. I like it because 
 it s you that explain it to me. But if I went 
 and made myself a woman of science, what 
 need should I have of a man of science ? " 
 
 " You couldn t be a woman of science, 
 unless you soaked your whole mind with 
 things in my laboratory, just as I do," he 
 retorted, rather vindictively, though what 
 she had said had pleased him. 
 
82 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 "Then Mrs. Eulow can t, either," de 
 clared Ethel, with- an air of finality. 
 
 "No, she can t," he assented, " and she 
 doesn t pretend to. But it s a very good 
 thing for her to read about anything of the 
 kind that she s interested in ; and so it 
 would be for you." Upon this, Ethel, toss 
 ing some small articles into a drawer, and 
 shutting it with slight emphasis, effected a 
 movement of the head which meant that 
 she would do exactly as she pleased about 
 that. Her husband, however, felt that it 
 was time for him to respond to the kind 
 things she had said about him, and he added 
 more gently, You know, my dear, I ap 
 preciate you and delight in you as you are. 
 If I hadn t Well, I think I gave the most 
 substantial proof of it that I could, some 
 time ago." 
 
 "Yes, you did," she said, with a loving 
 glance. Everything was in train for a re 
 conciliation. "I wish I could make myself 
 more interesting," she went on humbly. 
 "Very likely I shall succeed, one of these 
 days." She was silent a moment, and he 
 took her hand, smiling. By some unex 
 plained connection of ideas, she returned 
 to Anice. "Did you know Mrs. Eulow 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 83 
 
 wouldn t sing for me?" she asked. "I 
 wanted her to, at the house, and she 
 wouldn t. Then, when we were going to 
 try the experiment, she sang close to us, 
 just because we didn t want her to. Don t 
 you think that was queer? I was really 
 hurt when she refused me." 
 
 Fenn quietly relinquished the hand. 
 "You are very critical this evening," he 
 said, coldly. But he was annoyed at him 
 self for having forgotten so important a 
 thing as asking the widow to sing for his 
 wife. 
 
 "Good gracious!" exclaimed Ethel. 
 "What harm have I done? Mayn t I say 
 anything at all about Mrs. Eulow ? " 
 
 Why, yes ; yes. It s to be hoped we 
 can tell each other what we think. But 
 Fenn would have found some difficulty in 
 stating what he held his wife to blame for. 
 He half lifted his hat again, in a preparatory 
 way, and burst out, with more irritation 
 than was common in him, " I can t stand 
 this, Ethel, positively. Here are these two 
 people, old friends : they Ve done as much 
 as they could to make things pleasant for 
 us to-day ; and, besides that, Mrs. Eulow is 
 a charming woman, well worth knowing. 
 
84 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Yet the first thing to be done is to pick 
 her to pieces." 
 
 The criticism was not altogether ill 
 founded, but Ethel merely laughed, and 
 said, with exasperating acuteness, "You 
 began with being almost apathetic, yourself, 
 about her beauty, and you said she didn t 
 command the highest kind of admiration ; 
 and now, when I have said one or two little 
 things" 
 
 "Oh, well," interrupted her husband, in 
 a desperate tone, if you want to spoil the 
 whole pleasure of an acquaintance that 
 might have made our vacation more agree 
 able, go ahead ! You will lose as much as I 
 shall. But of course, if you choose to have 
 it this way, you must. Only, you both 
 appeared to like each other so much, and I 
 thought you were having such a good time, 
 that I m naturally a little surprised and 
 disgusted." 
 
 And with this very moderate description 
 of his feelings he left the room abruptly. 
 
 Ethel followed in a moment, passed 
 through the large corridor below, and 
 vainly scanned the increasing darkness 
 without for some trace of him. She was 
 very anxious for him to come back now. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 85 
 
 In reality she liked her new acquaintance 
 more than she did most women, and the 
 tone she had taken was entirely due to 
 her annoyance at not having known more 
 about her. But as Fenn did not reappear 
 promptly, to receive her apology, she went 
 into the dining-room alone. 
 
 She had nearly finished supper, and he 
 had not returned, when two ladies coming 
 by, from another table, stopped to speak. 
 One was stout, in a baggy skirt profusely 
 trimmed, and carried on her head a variety 
 of puffs and ribbon ; she had numerous 
 downward wrinkles about the mouth, indi 
 cating an exuberant, contented, confidential, 
 bent. The other was small, dry even to 
 gauntness : she wore a vast number of arti 
 ficial seed-pearls sewn on to her scrimped 
 black dress ; which furnished Ethel with 
 an amusing fancy that they represented 
 fruit hanging to a prematurely withered 
 bough. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Fenn ! " exclaimed the comfort 
 ably confidential lady, with a cheap imitation 
 of a wicked smile. " So glad to get at you 
 without your husband ! Isn t that naughty 
 of me ? " 
 
 "Why, Mrs. Dadmuii?" 
 
86 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 "We had a little plan to propose," said 
 Mrs. Whidden, the thin companion, taking 
 the answer upon herself, "and we should 
 hardly have dared to do it if he had been 
 here." Whereupon they both laughed, ap 
 parently from pride in their audacious anti- 
 marital manoeuvre. 
 
 " I don t see how that could have pre 
 vented, if it s anything I can do at all," 
 said Ethel. 
 
 "It s nothing in the world but this," 
 Mrs. Dadmun responded, becoming matter 
 of fact: "there is a picnic party for to 
 morrow, and we have just one place left in 
 the carriages. We got as far as that, and 
 then everybody decided that we must have 
 you and Mr. Fenn ; but as there s only 
 one place, we re obliged to ask you alone, 
 and leave your husband to come on horse 
 back, or something of that sort." 
 
 "Two of the gentlemen are going to 
 walk ; they start earlier than the rest of 
 us," Mrs. Whidden volunteered. "You 
 won t disappoint us, Mrs. Fenn, will you ? 
 There s Miss Ibbot and Miss Hamill, 
 they re going ; and Sharon Reeves, and 
 Kingsmill You ought to know Mr. Kings- 
 mill better, Mrs. Fenn. He s quite an 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 87 
 
 admirer of yours ! " And Mrs. Whidden 
 put a starved smile on duty as she ended. 
 
 " Let me think "began Ethel. 
 
 "Have you been to Temple Lake yet?" 
 asked Mrs. Dadmun, disposing her wrinkles 
 in amiable array. 
 
 "No; and I should like very much to 
 join your picnic if Ben were only here." 
 The thought that he was not there, and that 
 he ought to be, brought out a rebellious 
 impulse to accept the invitation, and go 
 without him. 
 
 " He will come if you consent, of course," 
 said Mrs. Dadmuu. 
 
 "I don t know," Ethel answered, seizing 
 more firmly the project of going alone ; " he 
 has been saying there was some work that 
 he must do in a day or two, to send off to 
 the city. But you are all so kind to have 
 thought of me that I think I 11 decide to go, 
 any way." 
 
 You re a dear ! How very nice ! " said 
 the ladies. "At nine o clock, so as to get 
 there before it s too hot, you know." 
 
 As they passed out of the dining-room, 
 Fenn came in, and they accorded him a 
 very suave greeting. His boots were dusty, 
 and the moisture on his face showed that he 
 
88 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 had been walking fast. He had gone out 
 in a fit of intense vexation, and had been 
 walking along the old post-road, without 
 much idea what he wanted to do. With a 
 conscience slightly disturbed, he had been 
 quick to suppose that Ethel was a shade 
 jealous of Anice (though that was in fact 
 far from being the case), and he resented 
 this in proportion to the secret knowledge 
 he possessed of there being some justification 
 for such jealousy. But perhaps his acutest 
 displeasure arose from the added peril in 
 which that sentiment on his wife s part 
 would place him. It was bad enough to be 
 afflicted with the recrudescence of a passion 
 which it was wrong for him to think twice 
 of ; to have it aggravated by a hostility on 
 Ethel s part, which would inevitably drive 
 him more irresistibly towards Anice, was 
 unendurable. A taper held above the chan 
 nelled heat of a lamp becomes the axis of a 
 tiny aurora, which flashes volatile blue flame 
 all around it in the air, yet does not ignite 
 the scroll itself. By a slight change in its 
 position, a little altering of the draught of 
 air, the taper itself breaks into clear fire. 
 Fenn s mind was in the incipient stage : 
 his suppressed ardour towards Anice did not 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSIOX. 5Q 
 
 yet seem wholly to possess him ; the flame 
 was visionary and hovering, did not reach 
 quite to his heart. But he feared that the 
 unexpected ground Ethel had assumed in 
 their conversation this evening made the 
 trifling change that would cause that pre 
 monitory gleam of infatuation to puff out in 
 an actual blaze. 
 
 Restless and suffering, he thought he 
 would not rejoin his wife, but would go 
 dov/n to the other end of the village, where 
 Fincott, an artist of mild and genial tem 
 perament, was boarding with his family in a 
 private house, and try the soothing effect of 
 the painter s good-fellowship. He went as 
 far as the gate, and caught sight of Pincott 
 sitting in a rocking-chair outside of the 
 house, where the lamplight from behind a 
 sunflower-studded window-curtain fell on 
 his grey hair, and showed the smoke floating 
 idly up from his meerschaum. The figure 
 was so peaceful, it did him good to see it : 
 a gush of tenderness poured back into his 
 heart. " Dear old Pincott ! " he murmured ; 
 and as the painter fortunately did not dis 
 cover him, he turned and went quickly back 
 to the hotel. 
 
 So both husband and wife had relented, 
 
9O AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 and both saw that their petty discord had 
 been absurd ; but Ethel had on her mind the 
 affair of the picnic, of which she preferred 
 to say nothing at present, and there was 
 therefore a reserve between them. Ethel 
 waited for him graciously, at the table ; they 
 did not talk much, but as they went out to 
 the portico she said, " I don t think you un 
 derstood, Ben, how much I like Mrs. Eulow. 
 I expect to enjoy her immensely. Really, 
 for the little I know about her, I think more 
 of her than I ever did of any woman on a 
 first introduction, and I won t say anything 
 mean about her again." 
 
 "That s right," he said, gratefully. 
 " You re always good in the end." 
 
 They sat down in a corner under the col 
 onnade, and amused themselves talking of 
 Mr. Evans, and about the people in the hotel 
 and Pincott s pictures. But at last young 
 Kingsmill came up to them. He was one of 
 the handsome young men, it should be ex 
 plained, who were given to taking pictur 
 esque positions on the railing. He had dark 
 grey eyes and a very magnificent moustache, 
 and when he talked, the Adam s apple in his 
 throat moved with great activity and promi 
 nence. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 9! 
 
 "I m so delighted to hear that you re 
 going with us to-morrow," he said, address 
 ing them both. 
 
 Fenn was completely surprised, and 
 while his wife was saying, Yes, it ought 
 to be very pleasant," he began with, " To 
 morrow? what comes off then? I hadn t 
 heard" 
 
 Why, the picnic. Temple Lake, you 
 know," said Kingsmill. 
 
 "I didn t know whether you could go, 
 Ben," said Ethel, turning to Fenn. "Mrs. 
 Dadmun and Mrs. Whiclden were speaking 
 about it before you came in." 
 
 " Oh ! Yes, I ve heard that it s a beauti 
 ful spot," he returned, directing his words 
 at Kingsmill, and stifling his dissatisfaction 
 at not having been told about the excursion 
 before. 
 
 " Shall you go ? " the young man inquired, 
 with a concentrated glance. 
 
 Fenn perceived that Kingsmill was not so 
 anxious for his company as he might have 
 been. " It s pretty far," he answered, "and 
 I Ve been meaning to get some papers ready 
 for my firm soon. I may not be able to give 
 the time." 
 
 When Ethel explained to him, afterward, 
 
92 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 that he would have to get a horse, he gave 
 up the plan decisively. 
 
 In the morning, however, when he had 
 watched the party drive off, a great depres 
 sion fell upon him. He kept thinking of 
 Kingsmill and his air of attention towards 
 Ethel ; then it occurred to him that he was 
 missing a rather pleasant affair, and his 
 work was not so very pressing. He made in 
 quiries about a horse, but found the limited 
 stable of the Institute exhausted ; where 
 upon he became determined, and searched 
 the village for a steed. He obtained one, 
 after some effort, bony and unaristocratic, 
 but able to carry him, and started in the 
 direction of Temple. An eighth of a mile 
 brought him to a fork of the road, Temple 
 being on the line of one branch : the other 
 led to Mr. Evans s house. He stopped the 
 horse s trot as he approached, and a weak 
 disinclination to go to the picnic beset him. 
 " Ethel almost arranged it so that I shouldn t 
 go," he reflected ; and by the time he reached 
 the fork he had pressed the rein which would 
 turn his horse towards Evans s. The next 
 moment he was cantering briskly thither, 
 and when he left the highway for the wind 
 ing drive up to the farm-house his spirits 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 93 
 
 had so risen that he hummed to himself 
 blithely, " Should auld acquaintance be for 
 got?" 
 
 Anice had an enthusiasm for the very 
 footfall of a horse, and came at once to the 
 porch. She was clad in white, this morning, 
 and bloomed against the woodbine-covered 
 trellis like a morning-glory or petunia. 
 
 " Are you alone ? " she cried, as if disap 
 pointed. " Where is Mrs. Fenn ? " 
 
 " She has gone to a picnic. They hadn t 
 room for me." 
 
 " And you are going to ride after them ? " 
 
 "I had thought of it." 
 
 The widow paused an instant. "I should 
 like to take Star out," she said. 
 
 "Just what I was going to propose," Fenn 
 assured her, with vivacity, dismounting. I 
 will wait for you to get ready." 
 
 " But I can hardly go to the picnic," said 
 Anice. " I haven t been invited." 
 
 I shall be happy to go in any direction 
 you like," he said, more seriously than he 
 had spoken before. 
 
 She answered quickly that they would ride 
 where he had intended, and that she would 
 come back alone. In a few minutes she re 
 turned from her room, transformed, habited 
 
94 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 in a green-black riding-suit and a small cap 
 suited for the country, which set off her 
 beauty in a novel aspect. How they darted 
 off over the white turnpike ; the umbrageous 
 elms waiting to cool them with momentary 
 darkness ! In other places spindling maples, 
 newly set out, recorded their rapid flight in 
 vertical lines which fell behind, one after an 
 other, and were gone, while the wide coun 
 try sparkled on either hand in multitudinous 
 greens, among interblended tints of fields 
 with their wild-flowers, or distant hill-sides 
 left red from the cutting of a buckwheat har 
 vest. The steady earth seemed to fly, and 
 only the moving clouds appeared motionless. 
 It was very exhilarating ; and when they 
 struck off where a huge butternut-tree 1 and 
 a paintless house marked the junction of two 
 roads, and entered a silent pine wood, they 
 w r ere glad to go more slowly, and enjoy the 
 glow of their first gallop at rest. 
 
 " My rickety beast is stimulated by the 
 example of Star, I think," observed the 
 cavalier. 
 
 Anice laughed freshly and heartily, as if 
 she had been sending forth a roulade of 
 notes in a song. "Don t be too hard on 
 1 Juglans cinerea, or white walnut. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 95 
 
 your nameless grey," said she. " He brings 
 you along very well, and you ought to be 
 grateful. I m sure / am." 
 
 " He appreciates his good luck in having a 
 companion, as I do mine. " Fenn got this off 
 gracefully. 
 
 " Oh, listen !" exclaimed Anice, abruptly, 
 reining Star in. "I hear a beautiful note 
 in the woods." 
 
 Fenn stopped also. The note was that of 
 a wood -thrush. Its lonely, exquisite refrain 
 made the listeners think of a shattered ray of 
 sunlight falling pensively into the recesses 
 of greenery whence the notes issued ; and a 
 blending of sorrow, or it may be of longing, 
 streamed into the light mood of the previous 
 moment. They went on through the piece of 
 pines without further conversation ; an iden 
 tical train of feeling possessed each mind. 
 
 The horseman was careful not to keep up 
 too rapid a pace, and they followed the wind 
 ing road up hill and down, with numerous in 
 tervals of slow walking and agreeable talk, 
 arriving at Temple, six miles away, without 
 having overtaken the larger party. The lake 
 was at a short distance from this village, and 
 Mrs. Eulow said she must turn Star s head, 
 without going farther. 
 
96 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 " I shall not allow you to ride home alone," 
 said Fenn. 
 
 " That s hardly fair," she answered. " I 
 really can t go on to the lake, and if I take 
 you back with me Mrs. Fenn will be disap 
 pointed." 
 
 " To tell you the truth," he informed her, 
 " they don t expect me at the picnic, for I 
 gave it up this morning, and I believe I 
 should enjoy riding a good deal better." 
 
 " Oh, well, then, if it s not interfering with 
 any plan " she began. 
 
 " No ; I thought it was just as well to come 
 this way, and then we could decide." Fenn 
 had had an additional reason, which he did 
 not disclose ; and this was that it would have 
 been undesirable to be seen riding from Tan- 
 ford in any other than the direction of the 
 picnic. "I have a notion," he concluded, 
 energetically, " that we can get home by an 
 other way, coming down to your house 
 over Sheep s Back." 
 
 " Isn t that too long ? " she asked. 
 
 " It can t be more than a mile or two 
 further." 
 
 "Then I should like it ever so much," said 
 Anice, with great vim. 
 
 He fancied he saw in her face a new ex- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 97 
 
 pression of pleasure, softer than any he had 
 noticed there before, as they moved away 
 again. It made him tingle with a mad, for 
 bidden delight. 
 
 They succeeded in finding the road which 
 led over the mountain-side. It was rough 
 and solitary, but at every rod it grew more 
 delightful, rising to a climax of grandeur 
 where it cut into the lofty crown of the hill, 
 and was embowered like a leafy gallery in 
 young beeches and chestnuts and other 
 forest trees. But the Nameless Grey, as 
 Anice had called him, gave signs of disas 
 trous fatigue when they reached this point. 
 Several times Fenn had dismounted and led 
 him up severe inclines, and now, in going 
 down to the valley, he was obliged to repeat 
 the process. 
 
 " This is tedious work," he said, at length, 
 " and I m getting very hungry." 
 
 " You see you will be sorry, after all, that 
 you didn t go to the lake," Anice observed, 
 with possibly a trace of malice. * It s a 
 little after twelve, and they 11 soon be eat 
 ing." 
 
 "Don t make fun of my masculine appe 
 tite," he implored. "I don t regret the 
 picnic a bit, but I am hungry ; and it s very 
 G 
 
98 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 hot, besides. Suppose we have a little pic 
 nic of our own." 
 
 "With all my heart; but where are the 
 provisions ? " 
 
 " I see a small house down there. We 11 
 stop and get something." 
 
 It was true there was a house, crowded 
 down among the wild trees as if it had been 
 put there for squirrels ; but when they came 
 down to it, no tokens of inhabitancy were 
 found ; it was deserted. A wilderness of 
 blackberry bushes, however, surrounded the 
 place, and they at once decided to tether 
 their horses out of sight from the path, and 
 make a lunch of fruit. Fenn held threaten 
 ing branches aside, here and there, and 
 found the largest clusters of berries for Anice. 
 There was a good deal of excitement as to 
 which should make the most striking dis 
 coveries in this line. 
 
 " Oh, how pleasant this is ! " cried the 
 widow, merrily. " I feel as if I were a girl 
 again." 
 
 " Yes," said her friend, " this is a magic 
 fruit that takes away all care, and restores 
 happiness to the sorrowful." 
 
 While they were engaged in the primitive 
 and refreshing pursuit of this innocent food, 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 99 
 
 several thrushes began singing with indolent 
 sweetness in a thick covert, not far away. 
 Anice let a heavy-laden branch slip from 
 her fingers and spring back to its place. 
 
 Those birds again ! How wonderful 
 they are ! Why, this place seems to be full 
 of them. Couldn t we see one, Mr. Fenn ? " 
 
 "It s very hard to get near them. I 
 never saw but one, though I Ve tried a good 
 many times. But I should like nothing 
 better than to try it again with you. 
 Come." 
 
 She hesitated briefly ; perhaps a sense 
 that they were proceeding a little carelessly 
 for persons in their position restrained her. 
 But in a moment, with a slight air of de 
 fiance, she collected the long riding-skirt 
 more firmly in her hand, and joined her 
 companion. A few steps brought them to 
 an abandoned track, the mossy ruts of which 
 were soft and refreshing to the foot, and led 
 downward towards the haunt of the thrushes. 
 It was broken by large stones in places, and 
 there Fenn offered the help of his hand ; at 
 first with a faint trembling in his voice, and 
 afterwards in silence. 
 
 "We must move very carefully," he 
 whispered, as they came to a small glade, 
 
100 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 more open than the surrounding forest, " or 
 the birds will be frightened and fly away." 
 
 The mystery and caution of their advance 
 pleased Mrs. Eulow. But, notwithstanding 
 their care, the thrushes stopped singing be 
 fore they had come very near. 
 
 "It s always so," murmured her escort. 
 " But they 11 begin again ; and we might as 
 well stop and rest. Besides, the longer we 
 wait, the better for my poor old grey." 
 He dropped easily upon the ground while 
 giving this advice, and Anice followed his 
 example, 
 
 " I wonder what has become of the people 
 who lived up in that old house," she said ; 
 " and I wonder whether they liked to hear 
 the thrushes. I dare say they were very 
 prosaic, and have gone off somewhere and 
 become thriving hucksters ; but don t you 
 always speculate about such things, and 
 imagine some very mournful fate connected 
 with these empty houses ? " 
 
 " I think I do," Fenn replied. " And I 
 suppose it s better to do that than to be 
 thinking mournful things about ourselves. " 
 
 They had continued, without noticing it, 
 to speak in the low tones adopted out of 
 consideration for the timid songsters ; and 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. IOI 
 
 this insensibly gave what they said an inti 
 mate and almost tender quality 
 
 " Yes, indeed. But you don t do that, at 
 any rate." 
 
 " No, not much ; though a man with any 
 go in him is generally dissatisfied about 
 something. " 
 
 * Women sometimes have go in them 
 too," hinted the widow, smiling. 
 
 " That s true," he admitted. He had be- 
 gnn to roll a cigarette "Well, are you ever 
 dissatisfied ? " he asked, looking up, 
 
 She gave a subdued laugh "You are 
 never afraid to say things plainly, " was what 
 she said, 
 
 " I m not sure about that. I think I am 
 sometimes." And Fenn felt that she must 
 know what he referred to in his own mind. 
 
 " You used to be very direct, in old days," 
 she returned, teasingly , * But, at any rate, 
 there s no reason why / shouldn t speak 
 frankly too Yes, I am dissatisfied, and very 
 often. My life is not a success ; my memo 
 ries are sad ones, and I have nothing to look 
 forward to." 
 
 "I don t know," said he, "why you 
 haven t anything to look forward to. You 
 have money, and you have strong intellectual 
 
102 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 tastes. You can study, work, write ; help 
 mankind, and especially womankind, along." 
 
 * I would like to do that ; sometimes I 
 imagine I am preparing for it. But then at 
 other times I think I would prefer to come 
 away and live completely isolated, in some 
 place like this deserted house." At these 
 words a dizzying, faithless vision came to 
 the man at her feet of the life he might 
 lead in some profound seclusion with such a 
 woman. At those times everything seems 
 to be over," she added. 
 
 " Did you love your husband so deeply, 
 is that it ? " Fenn was impelled to ask, by a 
 strange conglomerate desire. Among other 
 things, he was troubled by an unreasonable 
 jealousy, which he had no right to feel, of 
 the hold which the dead Eulow might have 
 had upon her. 
 
 Anice surprised him by her simple answer. 
 No. I was young when I married. I was 
 mistaken." 
 
 There was so much quiet sadness in the 
 way she said this, so much of self-respect 
 and of respect for the husband she had lost, 
 mingled with an unusual frankness accorded 
 to the friend whom she considered worthy to 
 hear this secret, that Fenn received no shock. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 103 
 
 Her manner was very far removed from that 
 dank and earthy sentimentality in favour 
 with certain women, who are for ever dis 
 closing their disappointments in order to win 
 male sympathy. 
 
 He looked gravely into her face, and her 
 eyes met his. He wished to take her hand, 
 and soothe her and pity her, saying to him 
 self that this at least could be done without 
 danger. But something kept him from at 
 tempting it. 
 
 A fruitful silence succeeded, during which 
 he looked up between the trees, and contem 
 plated a huge white cloud that moved luxu 
 riously through the ether, with sides made 
 dazzling by the sunlight, yet easy for the 
 eye to rest on. It brightened and darkened, 
 according to the changing poise of the fleecy 
 mass, and, from being speckless white, soft 
 ened into the dim tints of the shaded feathers 
 on a dove s breast. The image of Ethel 
 in Fenn s mind was brightening and fading 
 alternately like this cloud, floating away, 
 insubstantial and remote. His love for her, 
 which he had held on to so firmly under the 
 first stress of temptation, was slipping from 
 his grasp. Could it be, he asked himself in 
 drowsy wonder, that it was an illusion, which 
 
104 AN ECHO OF PASSIOX. 
 
 was being dispelled by the contact of a more 
 vital fervour ? It might be well to test this 
 by some hardy utterance to Anice, throwing 
 off all concealment recklessly. 
 
 Suddenly he got up and stood before 
 her, his eyes glowing with suppressed fire. 
 " You ought not to think everything is over ! 
 There is much in store for you," he said to 
 her. " Ah, I could help you, I could show 
 you how to live for something ! " 
 
 The exclamation seemed to come without 
 his will ; but when it had escaped, he thought 
 he had said everything, that he had disclosed 
 his heart, and stood on the verge of a crisis. 
 
 He was wrong. 
 
 " Will you do it give me some direc 
 tion, and put purpose into my days ? " Anice 
 asked, grateful and eager. 
 
 The fire faded from his glance, and he 
 looked down. "I wish I could. I will try. 
 I hardly knew what I was promising," he 
 answered, in a tone so changed that she was 
 bewildered. 
 
 At this moment the thrushes once more 
 began swaying their slow, ecstatic yet 
 melancholy notes on the tree-tops. But this 
 time they were much further away. 
 
 "Ah," said she, "they have commenced 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 05 
 
 again. But we shall never find them, Mr. 
 Fenn." 
 
 The same thought struck them both : that 
 there was something in their lives which 
 they were trying to find, but which was 
 always beyond them, unattainable, like this 
 elusive music of the woods. 
 . Fenn resumed his place on the moss near 
 her, with a pained and brooding look. I 
 can t help anybody," he said, despondently. 
 "I can t even manage myself. There is 
 something the matter, and yet I am what is 
 called a happy man. " 
 
 " You have reason to be," said the widow, 
 gently. 
 
 " I know I have." He said no more, and 
 the thrushes song resounded faintly through 
 the silence, expressing the longing within 
 him. In a few moments Anice reminded 
 him that they must go. 
 
 "Wait a minute," he urged. "There is 
 something I want to speak of. You have 
 never mentioned, since, the extraordinary 
 thing I said to you when I made my visit at 
 your father s house. " 
 
 The colour in her cheeks receded a little, 
 but she responded with seeming ease. 
 * About not making love to me ? Oh, 
 
106 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 that there could have been no reason or 
 possibility for mentioning that. Don t you 
 think it was one of those things that is com 
 plete at one stroke ? " 
 
 " I want to know what you really thought 
 about it," said Fenn, with a sort of breath - 
 lessness, and gazing at her intently, 
 
 She did not laugh contemptuously, as he 
 had feared she might. "It was so long 
 ago," was her reply, "you can t expect my 
 impression to be fresh ; and it may not be 
 best to say much about it, any way. I 
 didn t think it was the wisest thing that 
 could be done. " 
 
 For a second time he had the premonition 
 that a great crisis was at hand. " It was a 
 terrible mistake ! " he declared vehemently, 
 feeling that the statement implied all his 
 latent passion about her. 
 
 " Yes ; as a matter of prudence, you may 
 call it a mistake," said Anice, calmly. For a 
 second time, the crisis had come to nothing. 
 
 "And you thought me a great fool?" he 
 inquired, after a short, dazed pause at her 
 mode of taking it. 
 
 " No. That would have been rather con 
 ceited. I didn t consider every young man 
 under obligation to be an adorer. And I 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 07 
 
 think I liked your sincerity, all things con 
 sidered." 
 
 There was but one question more that 
 Fenn could have put ; and that was whether 
 there had been any regret because of his 
 announcement that he should not make love. 
 The desire to know this tortured him ; but 
 of course it was impossible to ask it. Thus 
 the situation was presented, that her frank 
 replies excited his importunate questioning 
 tendency still more deeply. 
 
 He remained thinking; but, seeing that 
 she waited for him to take the lead in re 
 turning to the horses, he unwillingly made 
 a start. When they came to the rough 
 places, he attempted to aid her, as before, 
 but she thanked him, and went on by 
 herself ; it was not until she nearly stumbled 
 to the ground, in the folds of her habit, 
 that she took his hand. Fenn was filled 
 with trepidation. Could it be that she was 
 offended with him ? He knew that to ask 
 her that would simply place him at a fresh 
 disadvantage, and he was forced to keep the 
 doubt to himself ; but how unlike was this 
 return to the one he had half imagined as 
 possible ! When they had entered this 
 secluded place, he had had a dim presenti- 
 
J08 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 ment that the growing current of his feeling 
 for her would carry away some barrier, and 
 place them in a new relation ; that it might, 
 in fact, lead to some mutual discovery, for 
 the sake of which they would be willing to 
 set aside everything else in the world, so 
 intoxicated was he. Their dialogue in the 
 glade of the thrushes had seemed to him 
 charged with intensive meaning, as if at any 
 moment the great climax might come. Yet 
 it had all passed away into the air, and 
 nothing had happened ; except, perhaps, 
 that he had forfeited something of her 
 regard and confidence. He emerged from 
 the solitude with the sensations of a man 
 who has shouted aloud in his dreams, and 
 waked to find his imaginary cry the exag 
 geration of a feeble moan. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 09 
 
 VI. 
 
 A FORM was stirring among the tall black 
 berry bushes, when they regained the empty 
 house, which was not that of Star or the 
 Nameless Grey. It proved to be the 
 noxious student with eyes like a beetle s, 
 who had inconvenienced the Fenns at the 
 tea-table, two evenings before, and was now 
 browsing upon the vines with joyless dili 
 gence. 
 
 He looked up, saw them both, recognised 
 Fenn, and resumed his eating. 
 
 " How did that insect ever get up here ? " 
 wondered the chemist. " Can it be his 
 habitat ? " And he was smitten with an 
 unpleasant apprehension as to the rumours 
 which might find their way to the hotel 
 from this source. He made haste to lead 
 up Star for Anice to mount. 
 
 " You will dine with us, won t you ? " she 
 said, when they had ridden a little way. 
 Her cheerfulness was returning. 
 
 Fenn had an uneasy belief that he ought 
 
110 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 not to go again so soon ; but he could not 
 resist. 
 
 1 Thank you," he said. "That will be 
 much pleasanter than waiting alone at the 
 hotel." 
 
 They did not talk much on their way to 
 the farm, but whatever the slight cloud had 
 been which had floated between them, it was 
 gone now ; and this was enough for Fenn. 
 This woman, who had so enthralled him, had 
 already become his conscience. If she was 
 not offended, he did not care what other 
 power or being might condemn him. 
 
 Mr. Evans was at dinner, and to be alone 
 with them in this way carried the young 
 man back to the situation of eight years ago. 
 The elder man s aspect was precisely what 
 it had been at that time ; he may have had a 
 few more wrinkles and become a little dryer 
 in the skin, but he gave the impression of 
 having been thinly coated over with some 
 preservative gum, which produced a wonder 
 ful semblance of arrested maturity that could 
 not alter. Hitherto, Fenn had been aware 
 that Anice and himself had grown older, 
 sadder ; that the texture of their characters 
 was more complex, and a correspondence of 
 sympathies less surely to be relied upon. 
 
AX ECHO OF PASSION. Ill 
 
 But to-day Mr. Evans s air of permanence 
 and fresh conservation put all this in the 
 light of an illusion. Fenn was inspired to 
 be as young and free as he had been long 
 ago. 
 
 As if he, too, shared in this glamour of the 
 moment, and felt bound to trust the young 
 people to their own devices, the father re 
 tired soon after dinner, leaving his daughter 
 and her admirer alone. They talked of his 
 profession for a while : Anice becoming seri 
 ously interested in his account of what he 
 had already done, of his ambitions, and the 
 interest of his studies ; and she in her turn 
 revealed, with greater certainty and a more 
 hopeful eagerness than during their talk in 
 the woods, her own wish to become some 
 thing more than a creature of social accident, 
 an after-thought of fate. 
 
 " Have you ever thought of using your 
 voice on the stage?" Fenn asked, with an 
 absorbed air. 
 
 "Oh, often. I don t underrate the diffi 
 culty of success in that," said she; "but 
 it seems too easy a thing for me individually 
 to enter into. I have the voice, and it may 
 be some of the dramatic gift. But if I failed, 
 I should have lost nothing ; I should still be 
 
112 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 a person of society in New York, with 
 opportunities for entertaining others and 
 being entertained myself. I want to make 
 a sacrifice. If I do anything, it must 
 be an attempt in which failure would be 
 very painful or ridiculous. " 
 
 "Ah, you don t know what you are speak 
 ing of, Anice, " he returned, using her name 
 unconsciously, in the concentration of his 
 thoughts. " With us who have to succeed 
 in order to live at all, there is no need of 
 piling on the agony by making more difficul 
 ties than will come naturally." 
 
 The sound of her name, which he had 
 never uttered before, was welcome to her, 
 much as she might have imagined she would 
 reprove his using it. It struck a slumbering 
 chord. "Ah," she sighed, " that necessity 
 for struggle, that is what I lack ! You 
 don t know what it is to have no one to 
 struggle for or with. I suppose I m wasting 
 my strength on a chimerical idea of what I 
 would like to do. But what is there to 
 live for?" 
 
 It was hard for a man to hear this who 
 found himself all at once ready to tell her 
 to live for his own admiration or devotion. 
 Fenn was greatly agitated. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 113 
 
 "Sing for me, sing forme," he begged, 
 in a stifled voice, rising and going to the 
 piano. 
 
 She obeyed. He could not have given 
 her a better injunction. In dreamy succes 
 sion she recalled and wafted through the 
 room melodies of Abt and Franz and Jenssen 
 and Schumann, poetic and impassioned yet 
 infinitely soothing, which seemed to lift both 
 her and her listener into a more noble and a 
 serener atmosphere. 
 
 " Lean, love, oh lean thy cheek on mine, 
 And let our hot tears flow together." 
 
 These words from one of the songs, shrouded 
 in dim German syllables, unloosed those 
 bonds that tie people down to their own 
 personality : all the anguish and the holy 
 sorrow of doomed or breaking hearts every 
 where flowed through the young man, as, 
 Avith some leaves of music held vacantly in 
 his hands, he sat there and let the yearning 
 harmony steal upon him. 
 
 If they could not exist together otherwise, 
 they could live together for a time in this 
 echoing world of music ; and the flood of 
 emotion it brought did not weaken Fenn, 
 it was purifying. 
 
 II 
 
114 AX ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 When the last strain was over he deter 
 mined to go. Aiiice remained motionless at 
 the piano ; he went towards her and said, 
 " Thank you." Tears were coming into her 
 eyes, but she looked up at him. Impulsively 
 he took her hand, touched it lightly with his 
 lips, and left her. She did not stir ; and in 
 a few moments she heard the clatter of his 
 horse s hoofs dying away on the bend of the 
 road. 
 
 Arrived at his room, he plunged swiftly 
 into his work, writing letters, making esti 
 mates, going through long calculations ; and 
 sooner than he expected the results were 
 ready for mailing to Boston. He took his 
 packets over to the little store scented with 
 molasses and soap, where the dignity of 
 the government was represented by a cage 
 of letter-boxes ; then he returned to the 
 hotel entrance, and in a short time had the 
 luxury of seeing the Athol stage arrive, 
 jouncing on the top of its dusty red body a 
 leather- coloured suit of clothes in which the 
 driver was encased, and several new holiday 
 travellers. 
 
 He wondered when Ethel would return. 
 He did not feel in the least wicked, though 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 115 
 
 he was under peculiar excitement, and he 
 looked forward with entire equanimity to en 
 countering his wife. I shall not pretend to 
 decide whether this indicated a hardened con 
 science. To what he knew were the con 
 ventional requirements he so far deferred as 
 to hold a scattered discussion with himself, 
 during the intervals of watching the stage 
 and the lazy movements of people about the 
 house or in the street. But this discussion 
 was very one-sided. He persuaded himself 
 that the world at large could not understand 
 his particular situation, and therefore had no 
 right to impose upon him arbitrary restric 
 tions calculated on too rough a scale. What 
 had he done ? He loved his wife ; but could 
 he not love Anice in another way ? Poets 
 had been praised for such wealth of passion, 
 and by enlarging it had contributed vastly to 
 the delight and elevation of later genera 
 tions. Society must trust the individual 
 more, he told himself. Neither Goethe s 
 theory of a law of attraction, which Anice 
 and Ethel had both condemned, nor the 
 world s theory of absolutely excluding mys 
 terious unions like this which had grown up 
 between himself and Mrs. Eulow, could be 
 right. There must be a middle ground, 
 
Il6 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 where one could walk safely and with 
 truth. 
 
 This conclusion was much more moderate 
 than the impetuous and reckless visions of 
 that morning, during the ride with Anice. 
 He did not notice the fact ; but doubtless 
 the relief of knowing that he had not re 
 pelled Anice, and the triumph of kissing 
 her hand at parting, had steadied and given 
 poise to his blind longings, and convinced 
 him that he was satisfied with so much 
 liberty. 
 
 It was dusk when Ethel returned with the 
 picnic party. Fenn went forward buoyantly, 
 helped her to alight, and, in the spontaneous 
 pleasure of having her with him again, kissed 
 her on the forehead under protection of the 
 falling darkness. 
 
 " You have been a long time," he said. 
 It even seemed to him that he entertained a 
 new tenderness for her. 
 
 " It has been so delicious," she went on to 
 tell him, as they made their way up-stairs. 
 "The trees come down to the lake all the 
 way around, and make it lovely ; and then 
 we went out sailing, and Mr. Sharon Reeves 
 caught some little bits of fish, the tiniest 
 you ever saw, in a row-boat ; and we had 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 117 
 
 such fun with the lemonade and the ice, and 
 getting all the things ready. And, Ben ! 
 the Pincotts were there, and what do you 
 think ? Mr. Pincott painted a beautiful little 
 picture of the lake, while we watched him ; 
 and when I told him how much I liked it he 
 said he would make me a copy for myself. 
 He wanted that one for a study, but he s 
 going to make me a present of the one he 
 paints from it. Isn t that nice ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Fenn ; " but I shall ask him 
 to do it as a commission." 
 
 " Oh, how delightful ! " exclaimed Mrs. 
 Fenn, in a miniature rapture. " Our first 
 order to a painter ! But I m afraid you 
 can t afford it, Ben." 
 
 " No, I can t. But neither can Pincott 
 afford to give away his pictures. I m afraid 
 he has a hard time of it, supporting his 
 family." 
 
 " Well, you have a pretty hard time too, 
 dear. But it s real kind and good of you to 
 want to pay him. " 
 
 " I would like to own it in that way ? " 
 said her husband candidly, and fully meaning 
 what he said, because then I can feel that 
 I Ve had some share in your happiness to 
 day." 
 
Il8 AX ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Ethel was touched. " That is generous," 
 she said, coming close to him, and putting 
 her head against his shoulder. (They were 
 now in their room.) "Do you know, Ben, 
 I missed you dreadfully, and at first I 
 thought I ought not to have gone without 
 you. I was so sorry, thinking of you all 
 alone here. " 
 
 "Ah, but I haven t been alone all the 
 time," he returned, gaily. 
 
 " Did you get through your work ? " 
 
 " Yes. But first I had a horseback ride." 
 
 " With Mrs. Eulow ? " Ethel guessed, at 
 once ; and as she saw the surprised affirma 
 tive in his face, she went on, "I m so glad ! 
 Then you had a pleasant time too. " 
 
 She patted his bearded cheek with her 
 small hand, as if he were a novel and mys 
 terious object, and she were anxious to find 
 out whether the pleasant time had worked 
 any change in him that contact would dis 
 close. 
 
 Fenn was driven to make excuses. " I 
 enjoyed it very much : but my first idea in 
 getting the horse was to go after you, and 
 spend the day at the lake." 
 
 "Why didn t you? I m sorry you had 
 any second idea, if that was your first. " 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 19 
 
 "Well, I felt rather blue ; and then there 
 was the long ride to be taken alone ; and I 
 didn t feel sure you cared much about it." 
 
 " Oh, never think that, Ben, if I am 
 cross," said she, with a charming reproach- 
 fulness. " But I m glad you did what you 
 felt like doing." 
 
 Fenn was hardly prepared for this cheerful 
 ease. But although in his interior counsels 
 he judged that she would have felt very dif 
 ferently had she known the unspoken his 
 tory of that day s emotions, he was extremely 
 pleased at her behaviour. It bade fair to 
 allow him without a struggle all that liberty 
 which he had been theorising upon as desir 
 able. 
 
 " We both seem to have been very sen 
 sible," he remarked, with a laugh. 
 
 " And the horseback riding is a very good 
 idea," Ethel continued. " I believe I shall 
 try it myself. Mr. Kingsmill and I were 
 talking about it at the picnic, and he says 
 there are no very good horses here, but he s 
 going to have two brought up from his uncle s 
 at Worcester." 
 
 "Oh," responded her husband, not very 
 warmly. For a moment he suspected that 
 this was retaliation, but he soon saw that 
 
120 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 it was no more than a coincidence. More 
 over, it would be in accord with his theory. 
 "What is this Kingsmill, any way?" he 
 asked presently. " Has he any profession ? " 
 
 "His uncle is his profession," said Ethel, 
 laughingly. "He has a large property, and 
 Mr. Kingsmill is going to inherit it, so Mrs. 
 Dadmun tells me. " 
 
 " And what does Mrs. Whidden say about 
 it?" 
 
 "The same." 
 
 "Oh, then it must be true," said Fenn, 
 with as much of a sneer as he thought the 
 subject deserved. "Those females are two 
 negatives, and two negatives, you know " 
 
 "I rather like them, in their way," said 
 his wife. " They re not ill-natured, if they 
 are gossipy." 
 
 " You wouldn t think so, if they happened 
 to select us for an object, " Fenn intimated. 
 He strongly suspected that the much-be- 
 wrinkled Mrs. Dadmun and her scanty little 
 friend would yet give him trouble. 
 
 " But I don t see," objected Ethel, " that 
 their saying Mr. Kingsmill is going to in 
 herit a lot of money is disagreeable, at all." 
 
 " No, it isn t. But that wasn t the point, 
 exactly." 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 121 
 
 They were not to be put out by differ 
 ences of opinion this evening, however. 
 They retained their good spirits. A tre 
 mendous political discussion took place 
 among a group of gentlemen, in the course 
 of the evening, founded on the morning s 
 papers, in which most of the male boarders 
 had been wrapped since the arrival of the 
 stage ; and they took great delight in ad 
 vancing with all the vigour of originality 
 the views contained in the latest editorials 
 of their favourite sheets ; but, singularly 
 enough, no one seemed to be aware of the 
 transparency of this process. One elderly 
 merchant, who at home never read less than 
 six newspapers a day, and generally as many 
 as ten, had in his present remote abode been 
 reduced to a meagre diet or two, and his 
 intellect, in consequence, gave unmistakable 
 signs of shrinkage. Another had been care 
 ful to subscribe to opposite partisan organs, 
 for the campaign then pending ; and, being 
 unable to make up his mind, from the infor 
 mation they gave, that either side was fit to 
 be trusted, he acceded, during the progress 
 of an hour s talk, to nearly every proposition 
 made by the rest of the disputants, and 
 opposed in rotation each one that he had 
 
122 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 acceded to. But most of the controversia 
 lists had a very simple conception of national 
 affairs, which was that there was a party 
 of atrocious evil, and another so pure and 
 beautiful as to have risen to the summit of 
 human possibilities ; and they invariably 
 considered themselves to belong to the 
 second, to which they gave either name 
 they liked best. But even this assumption 
 did not prevent any of them from admitting 
 that their own party had been guilty of 
 indescribable corruption. 
 
 In all this Fenn thought he saw a reflec 
 tion of the false side of society and human 
 nature, the same side which would oppose 
 itself to his new opinions concerning the re 
 lations of men and women. At all events, if 
 these opinions were deceptive they derived 
 support from the obvious self-delusion of 
 such politics ; and the young chemist found 
 himself straying off into speculation as to 
 whether much of the hypocrisy of certain 
 phases in American life swindling, embez 
 zlement, and false pretences in churches be 
 not aided by the readiness of the people to 
 depend on the factious perversions and crude 
 exaggerations of their political men and sun 
 dry of their journalistic prophets. From 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 123 
 
 time to time he joined in the mSlee of alarms 
 as to a new Southern war, charges of uncon 
 stitutionally, assertions of corruption, local 
 or central tyranny, and clashing financial 
 policies ; and, although he had not read the 
 papers of the morning, he astonished the 
 others by a little freshness and force of 
 insight. But the amount of sham in the 
 subject had a bad effect on him. 
 
124 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE next day rose in cold bluster and rain. 
 The Institute became a scene of desperate 
 idleness ; the wet wind groaned along its 
 wooden sides, shaking blind and sash mono 
 tonously ; and the boarders not only groaned, 
 but also yawned. Imprisoned in the com 
 monplace hostelry, Ethel began to find even 
 Kingsmill wearisome ; and he was wise 
 enough to retreat. She then had recourse, 
 in company with other ladies, to the solace 
 found in working out the soft perplexities of 
 crochet. But Fenn was weighed down by a 
 reaction from the excitement of the previous 
 afternoon. Reading, games in the parlour, 
 the society of a Dadmun or a Whidden, and 
 of Miss Ibbot and Miss Hamill, were ineffec 
 tual to dispel his gloom and weariness. As 
 a last resort, and to relax the stiffness that 
 came from his ride, he got out some rubber 
 boots, and went for a long walk through the 
 wind that still spun across the ridge and 
 slashed the air with sudden bursts of rain 
 
AX ECHO OF PASSION. 12$ 
 
 like fringed whips. But he set himself reso 
 lutely towards the quarter directly opposite 
 to where Anice was. When he came back, 
 late in the afternoon, drenched, glowing and 
 limber, Ethel showed him a note which had 
 been brought up for her by a glistening man 
 in an open cart. 
 
 It was from Mrs. Eulow. If Mr. Fenn 
 is too busy to bring you down," it said, 
 4 why can you not spend the day with me 
 to morrow, if it clears ? " 
 
 Nothing had been said about his expecting 
 to be busy, and the inference was perforce 
 that it would be judicious for him to become 
 so. 
 
 " You will go, of course," he said, 
 " Yes ; I expect to enjoy it immensely." 
 Fenn did not mind this incident much, at 
 first ; but before long it began to annoy and 
 puzzle him, and by the night he was con 
 sumed with a wish to accompany his wife, 
 and see Anice once more. 
 
 At about ten in the morning, Ethel went 
 out, prettily dressed in a dove-like suit, to 
 keep the appointment, and he was left to him 
 self. Ordinarily it would not have been hard 
 for him to find employment for a few vacant 
 hours ; and, in fact, having come to the coun- 
 
126 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 try to rest, it would have been sufficient 
 occupation to lie on the ferns under the 
 shady side of a rock and watch the changing 
 shadows and colours of the hills, had his 
 mind been at ease. But he could not compose 
 himself to anything passive. He was obliged 
 to attach himself to Miss Ibbot and Miss 
 Hamill, who, being in several particulars 
 good contrasts for each other, Miss Ibbot 
 pale and her friend pink, for example, had 
 grouped themselves together effectively for 
 the summer. Kingsmill approaching after a 
 time, the deserted husband proposed a game 
 of lawn tennis, and they all went out to the 
 rough sward behind the Institute, where the 
 netting was spread. Fenn came to the con 
 clusion that Kingsmill was a gallant, ami 
 able, and harmless young aristocrat ; but the 
 game did not interest him. If it had been 
 dismal work passing a stormy day out of 
 Anice s society, it was still more tedious to 
 undergo this exile under a clear sky. The 
 odour of the hot grass, the well-modulated 
 cries of satisfaction or dismay from the two 
 young ladies, and Kingsmill s painfully 
 scientific play, all wearied the chemist, 
 instead of refreshing him. 
 
 They returned to the house for an un- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 127 
 
 interesting dinner, and then Fenn took a 
 volume of history, and went out to an arbour 
 which stood on a rise beyond the croquet- 
 ground, amid the parched remains of what 
 had once been a flower-garden. He smoked 
 cigarettes and kept his finger in the book, 
 but did not read a word : he had discovered 
 that he could see the roof of the farm-house 
 from the arbour. 
 
 Between four and five o clock he marched 
 in a straight line for the roof, descended the 
 bank, and presented himself at the door. 
 
 "You are late," said the widow, coming 
 out with Ethel ; " but still you are too early 
 for Mrs. Fenn to go. Why didn t you let 
 us see a little of you before ? " 
 
 Fenn was astounded. " I found so much 
 to do" he began, mendaciously, his dig 
 nity so much offended that truth would no 
 longer protect it. " Do you mean to say 
 you expected me sooner ? " he recommenced, 
 turning from one to the other of the two 
 women. 
 
 " I m sure I didn t," said Ethel, provok- 
 ingly, but with a mollifying good-humour in 
 her eyes. "We ve been so busy talking 
 and embroidering and reading and singing 
 that I didn t notice the time." 
 
128 AN ECHO OF PASSIOX. 
 
 "No, it wasn t on our account I meant," 
 said Aiiice, with her arm in her friend s. 
 " I thought you might come for your own 
 sake." 
 
 " Well, here I am, at any rate," returned 
 Fenn, grimly. He was positively raging 
 within. There s no knowing how long I 
 may be at your service, Ethel," he added, 
 with an attempt at a jesting tone, " so 
 you d better seize the opportunity to go 
 home with me now." 
 
 " Upon my word, he s getting very 
 lofty ! " observed Ethel to Mrs. Eulow. 
 " The men have been so political up at the 
 hotel lately, it s too bad. You don t hap 
 pen to know, Ben, that Mrs. Eulow and 
 I have been talking woman s rights this 
 afternoon. " 
 
 4 Ah ? I 11 strike my flag at once, then. 
 Come, Ethel, we really must make haste." 
 And accordingly the champion of feminine 
 independence was taken away to get her 
 things on. 
 
 Fenn was very silent on the way back. 
 He thought he had been trifled with. For 
 a time, he even admitted the suspicion that 
 Mrs. Eulow had betrayed his indiscretion to 
 his wife, and that the two had entered into 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 129 
 
 a scheme for punishing him ; his head was 
 in a whirl, and he was minded to do some 
 thing violent, but the situation was too 
 hopelessly intangible and placid to furnish 
 any chance for this. Ethel s recital of how 
 the day had been passed convinced him that 
 his suspicion was a foolish one. The widow 
 and she had chatted quietly, had picked 
 flowers, and done fancy-work ; and then 
 Anice had sung some plain little English 
 aiic^ American songs, which Ethel liked. 
 "But I didn t think she sang with much 
 spirit," Mrs. Fenn commented. " I wasn t 
 nearly so much impressed with her voice as 
 I was the other day " 
 
 Her husband was secretly flattered : he 
 considered this a proof that Anice could not 
 sing so well out of his presence, or would 
 not do her best for any one but himself. 
 Nevertheless, her manoauvre in dispensing 
 with him during the day remained inex 
 plicable to him. 
 
 Mrs. Eulow s intention had, indeed, been 
 a mixed one. Her recent scenes with Fenn 
 had startled her ; she instinctively sought 
 some means for keeping him at greater dis 
 tance without breaking their intercourse 
 abruptly. She also felt a genuine interest 
 i 
 
13O AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 in Ethel, and some curiosity to know her 
 better ; and to see her alone offered just the 
 temporary protection she wanted. What 
 she should do in the end she did not know ; 
 it was not part of her plan to dispense alto 
 gether with the peculiar relation which had 
 so unexpectedly drawn the chemist and her 
 self closer than they had ever been. It had 
 come spontaneously ; she had not willed it ; 
 it had as much power over her as it had over 
 him. The widow had already gone so far 
 as to think, albeit with no cool deliberation, 
 that she had a certain kind of right to some 
 amends for the inconsiderate plainness with 
 which he had banished sentiment from their 
 view of each other, long ago. If he chose to 
 import it at this late date, she would receive 
 so much of it as might form a proper tribute, 
 without letting it become an embarrassment 
 or a source of pain to any one. It ought, 
 fairly, to be said that she was as honest as 
 most people are in intricate crises where 
 their own passions or pride are actively en 
 gaged ; and she fancied that by strengthen 
 ing a friendship with Ethel she would be 
 able to conduct herself with justice towards 
 her. 
 
 It is easy to see inconsistencies or mis- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 13! 
 
 takes when they are written down plainly, 
 but it is quite another matter to read them 
 as clearly in our own instinctive actions and 
 feelings, or in the casual outside knowledge 
 we get of those with whom we are going 
 through the incidental and unshaped record 
 of daily life. 
 
 The effect of Mrs. Eulow s precaution 
 upon Fenn was dangerous. " If she is 
 making fun of me, or using any artifice," 
 he declared to himself, " I have ended with 
 her ! " He imagined that what she had done 
 diminished his regard for her perceptibly. 
 But, in reality, it only stung him into re 
 newed excitement. His mind became fixed 
 upon the aim of probing to the bottom the 
 nature of her feeling for him. 
 
 In the quiet, sunless hours when Tanford 
 slept, and the wide earth moved noiselessly, 
 bearing along with it the grotesque hotel and 
 all its inmates, and the little room where 
 Fenn and Ethel lay, that was the time 
 when his passion grew. Alone with his wife, 
 whom he would have cherished in any mani 
 fest sorrow as he would a dearly loved child, 
 this dark infatuation asserted itself even 
 more boldly than it might have done in her 
 absence. 
 
132 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Through the open window floated the wan 
 dering perfume of night-scented balsams, in 
 a garden by one of the meek village houses 
 across the road, and the crickets trilled plain 
 tively from further away in the fields, as if 
 with a prevision of summer s transitoriness ; 
 while, lying awake and motionless, Fenn s 
 heart burned with anguish for the wife whom 
 he began to see that he was partially wrong 
 ing, and glowed with an insensate preposses 
 sion when he thought of Anice. Like the 
 flower that delivered its sweetness only to 
 the night, he yielded up his spirit in the 
 darkness to this fatal passion more ardently 
 than in the healthful brightness of daylight. 
 
 Ah, human nature, prosaic, light-hearted, 
 tear-bringing human nature ! how easily we 
 take you up in our hands, and think we un 
 derstand you ; and how easily you evade us, 
 because in you too there is a day-time and a 
 night-time, and we cannot look upon you in 
 both at once ! Fenn had yet to learn that 
 the man who persuades himself that he loves 
 his wife at the same time that he is yielding 
 to another woman s fascination stands in even 
 more seductive peril than he who wholly 
 loses his first affection, while aware of the 
 pitfall prepared for him. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 133 
 
 The storm, by confining the Dadmun and 
 Whidden intellect to the house, had gene 
 rated an atmosphere favourable to gossip. 
 These ladies, with sundry others of a con 
 genial kind who were present, came to the 
 country annually to " recuperate," a pro 
 cess in which so many women pass their 
 entire lives ; but they usually found so much 
 charitable work awaiting them, in the way of 
 regulating the behaviour of their immediate 
 neighbours, that it is doubtful whether they 
 ever got much benefit from their migrations. 
 While Fenn had been playing tennis with 
 Kingsmill and the young ladies, these regu 
 lators were stitching and knitting in the 
 parlour. There was a piano there, which 
 had worn out many young women of the 
 winter academy, who had hammered away 
 valuable hours on its faded key-board, and 
 it had itself been nearly exhausted of tune 
 fulness by these means ; but the stiff young 
 collegian, heretofore mentioned, was playing 
 on it with a specious and unmeaning bril 
 liancy. 
 
 "That young Gregg plays very nicely," 
 remarked Mrs. Whidden. " I think it s a 
 very good thing for young men ; don t 
 you ? " 
 
134 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 " Yes," said the other, catching a stitch. 
 
 "It keeps them," Mrs. Whidden began, 
 "out of " 
 
 " But I don t like them to play too much/ 
 interrupted Mrs. Dadmun, with a severe 
 sense of what was desirable. She always 
 knew exactly what was desirable ftfr every 
 body. 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "Oh no; not to be musicians." Mrs. 
 Dadmun s tone was one of grave disapproval, 
 to be justified only in a person whose stan 
 dard of social dignity was rigid. 
 
 " Dear me, no," assented her friend. 
 "But it s a specially nice accomplishment 
 for young men. It occupies them, and keeps 
 them out of " 
 
 Mrs. Whidden here introduced a signifi 
 cant pause, a sort of blank form, which 
 Mrs. Dadmun promptly filled up with an 
 emphatic, " Oh yes ; yes !" 
 
 Having thus whetted their appetites by 
 the contemplation of this innocent and ex 
 emplary young man, they began to discuss 
 the Fenns. 
 
 "It seems a little odd," said one of the 
 other women in the group, " that Mr. Fenn 
 should have stayed away from the picnic, 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 135 
 
 and now here he is passing his time with 
 young unmarried ladies, while his wife has 
 gone away, apparently for the day. " 
 
 Three days earlier, this same critic had 
 been rinding fault because the Fenns were 
 so much wrapped up in each other, and did 
 not join with a community of feeling in the 
 life of the Institute. But that did not pre 
 vent a general ratification of the idea that 
 they were at present going on very unwisely. 
 Several nice ethical and social points were 
 carefully debated in this connection, and 
 settled to the satisfaction of the group, but 
 rather to the damage of Mr. and Mrs. Fenn. 
 
 The collegian of the vitreous eye, whose 
 playing was so entirely mechanical that he 
 had been able to attend to the whole con 
 versation across the room, left the piano and 
 came over to the gossips. 
 
 " Do any of you ladies know this Mrs. 
 Eulow ? " he asked in a scrannel voice. 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Dadmun, composing her 
 wrinkles with comfortable disdain. 
 
 The rest remained silent, leaving it to be 
 presumed that it was a great blessing that 
 they didn t know her. 
 
 "Oh, I m sorry," said Gregg, dropping 
 his eye-glasses. " I was hoping I should be 
 
136 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 able to get an introduction to her." The 
 presumption of this gave a shock even to the 
 critics who heard him. " I would like to 
 know her very much," Gregg went on piping. 
 "She is handsome, you know, very." The 
 ladies were rapidly becoming annoyed at 
 Gregg. " I think I saw her yesterday, with 
 Mr. Fenn," he concluded, reserving this for 
 the last shot. 
 
 The junto, from being disdainful and dis 
 pleased, became all alert. Some looked 
 sharply at one another, and others ex 
 claimed, * < You did ! Where ? " 
 
 The noxious youth enjoyed his momentary 
 power, though he pretended to be unaware 
 of it. He contrived to impart very slowly 
 the story of his discovering Fenn and the 
 widow in their lonely excursion on the moun 
 tain. It was only on sufferance, however, 
 that he was admitted to the confidence of 
 the group even far enough to give them this 
 information ; and when it was done, a tardy 
 sense of the fitness of things caused him to 
 glide away. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 137 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THREE weeks passed, and during that 
 period the watchful eyes of the feminine 
 police had much to observe which was not 
 at all what they would have any one suppose 
 they liked ; but, fortunately or unfortu 
 nately, they were a police without the power 
 of arrest. Otherwise, they must inevitably 
 have taken into custody not only Fenn and 
 Mrs. Eulow, but Mrs. Fenn and Kingsmill, 
 in addition. 
 
 Ethel was a person of little experience, 
 who absorbed whatever came into her life 
 that was agreeable, in an unconscious, dreamy 
 way. She of course did not hesitate to take 
 a drive with the fatherly Mr. Evans in his 
 light buggy, but she had no greater fear of 
 riding on horseback in company with Mr. 
 Arthur Kingsmill. He, on his part, was a 
 chivalrous young man, whose chief defect 
 was that he required several square miles of 
 country, or a crowded drawing-room, to bring 
 him into effective relief, but who took a rea- 
 
138 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 sonable and healthy delight in the society 
 of an unaffected and pretty young married 
 woman. When his uncle s horses came 
 up from Worcester, he considerately placed 
 them at the disposal of Fenn and his wife 
 in the beginning, and Ethel practised a 
 little with her husband, to regain her seat 
 in the saddle. After this, there were one 
 or two parties made, in which both they 
 and Mrs. Eulow and Kingsmill joined. But 
 it was not always easy to form a cavalcade 
 of four at the same time ; and even when 
 they went out together, each pair was alone 
 during so much of the ride that Ethel saw 
 no remarkable difference between this and 
 going with only Kingsmill. 
 
 But somehow it happened too frequently, 
 after this custom had been adopted, that 
 Fenn and Mrs. Eulow went out alone also, 
 when there was no very good reason why 
 they should not have joined the others. Be 
 sides, Ethel took her rides less often, and 
 rather as a diversion forced upon her by 
 Fenn s constant attentions to Mrs. Eulow. 
 When she stayed at home, however, there 
 was no more escape for her from the stric 
 tures of her gossiping acquaintances than 
 when she rode ; for Kingsmill still managed 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 139 
 
 to be near her most of the time : his cus 
 tomary attendance on her being now ren 
 dered more thoughtful by the compassion 
 he began to feel at seeing her comparatively 
 neglected by her husband. 
 
 Anice and her father had been invited to 
 dine at the hotel two or three times, as 
 a meagre recognition of their hospitality. 
 They saw something more of the people 
 there, and liked Kingsmill, who strolled 
 over to the farm for tea with the Fenns. 
 Mrs. Dadmun and some of her friends were 
 asked to call, and always treated Mr. Evans 
 and his daughter with distinguishing cor 
 diality when they met : this gave them a 
 soothing sense of justice in their subsequent 
 severe condemnation of the widow, among 
 themselves. For the four people under sur 
 veillance were of course mingling with the 
 rest all the time, and underwent not even 
 the mildest ostracism. There were more 
 picnics, games of tennis, small teas at dif 
 ferent houses, groups of aBsthetic talkers 
 at Pincott s, in the evening ; there was a 
 choice of two churches on Sunday, and these 
 being only half filled, Sharon Reeves was 
 encouraged to organise an impromptu chapel 
 at the Institute. There was an entertain- 
 
140 AX ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 ment by the village dramatic club, in which 
 "statuary" appeared against a screen of 
 black cambric, in the glare of red or blue 
 fire, while the audience was nearly suffocated 
 with the smoke ; and there were card parties 
 and political discussions at the hotel. These 
 were the social diversions, not the most 
 brilliant in the world, but still offering a 
 good deal of entertainment and relaxation 
 to people who knew how to use them, and 
 who had had enough of stimulation and to 
 spare during the town winters. But the best 
 of the summer was in the rides, the drives, 
 and the walks, the last revealing the most 
 things of natural interest and beauty in 
 the surrounding territory ; and, strange 
 to say, those persons among the floating 
 population who had travelled in Europe, 
 and otherwise cultivated their sensibili 
 ties to good purpose, were among the ones 
 who appeared most contented with simple 
 outdoor enjoyment, watched for the wild 
 American sunsets with the most eagerness ; 
 and found a source of pleasure in the homely 
 barns filling with new hay, the drowsiness 
 of the village, the occasional sheep and 
 numerous cattle grazing on the strongly 
 moulded hills, where perhaps a tall white 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 14! 
 
 birch rose up with classic slenderness to 
 shadow them. 
 
 Pincott, whose gentle eyes had dwelt upon 
 the rich impasting of colour on Roman ruins 
 and the delicate -tinted distances of the 
 Campagna and the Alps, slipped lovingly 
 and quietly as a sunbeam from nook to nook 
 of these unstoried highlands, and, like the 
 sunbeam, made a picture wherever he went. 
 It was in the little parlour at his boarding- 
 place, the walls of which he had coated with 
 a glinting mail of colour-studies, where Mrs. 
 Pincott had also disposed bits of artistic 
 needlework and aesthetic fabrics to conceal 
 the harsh barrenness of the rustic room, that 
 there arose a short discussion, one evening, 
 which had a special meaning for Fenn. 
 
 His wife was there, with Mrs. Eulow and 
 Kingsmill ; and by some chance the incon 
 gruous Mrs. Dadmun was also reposing her 
 baggy skirts in one of the tapestried chairs. 
 The talk turned for a moment to the in 
 stance of some distinguished artistic people 
 abroad, among whom a singular affair had oc 
 curred, one man resigning his wife to another 
 because he found that she loved his friend. 
 
 * I can t understand such a thing, " said 
 Mrs. Pincott. 
 
142 AX ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 " It couldn t happen in this country," the 
 artist observed. " And it seems to me that 
 that proves the advantage of our freer man 
 ners. Where the safeguards are so much 
 more strictly insisted upon, it results often 
 in a violent reaction or an extraordinary 
 assertion of liberty, now and then, among 
 the people of greatest intellect and finest 
 character. " 
 
 " I never heard of a woman giving up her 
 husband in that way," said Fenn, musingly. 
 "It is a great deal harder to imagine that 
 happening. Why is it?" 
 
 * Perhaps women are not so generous as 
 men, " hazarded Ethel, in a tone the distant, 
 interior sadness of which roused her husband 
 to wonder. 
 
 " Do you call it generous ?" Mrs. Dadmun 
 demanded, indignantly. She was scandal 
 ised that such a theme should be discussed 
 at all. Matters of this kind, she held, should 
 be deplored at great length, and with judi 
 cious dwelling upon details, in a select, con 
 fidential circle of women ; but any approach 
 to a philosophical consideration of them she 
 resented as dangerous. 
 
 "I meant, taking it in the noblest sense, 
 supposing it to be done with pure self-sac- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 143 
 
 rifice." Again Fenn was surprised. Could 
 this be his ardent, prejudiced little wife who 
 was speaking ? 
 
 " It might be just as true," suggested Mrs. 
 Eulow, " to say that they are more devoted, 
 and that that makes them more exacting.** 
 
 Ethel looked up at her gently and steadily, 
 and smiled ; but there was a strange pen- 
 siveness in the smile, though she seemed to 
 be thanking Anice for what she had said. 
 
 Mrs. Pincott, who occupied neutral ground, 
 rallied to the attack with, Oh, it s all wrong, 
 very wrong. There is no way of excusing 
 it." 
 
 "A woman who consents to such a very 
 improper thing," asserted Mrs. Dadmun, the 
 ribbons on top of her head frowning loftily 
 as she spoke, " can have no heart. She is 
 not worthy the name. " 
 
 "I think that s too harsh," said Fenn. 
 " Mightn t it be possible that she loved her 
 husband and his friend both, but in different 
 ways ? " 
 
 " If she did, she d better have just turned 
 the ways around, then," said the regulator 
 of society, aptly enough. " But really, Mr. 
 Fenn, I don t see what good these questions 
 do. I can t talk of it." 
 
144 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Pincott yielded to a malicious desire to 
 plague her. "Men," he said, taking up a 
 drawing with which he meant to change the 
 subject, "have been known to be in love 
 with two women at once, or to fancy they 
 were. " 
 
 He had no share in the current gossip of 
 the hotel, and was innocent of any design 
 to reach Fenn with his remark; but the 
 chemist, who was looking at him the in 
 stant, turned cold. His glance moved quickly 
 towards Anice, and from the half shadow 
 where she sat she returned it with a deep 
 gaze, in which he fancied a soft warmth 
 flashed. 
 
 It was the first intimation he had had, 
 since the day of the thrushes song, that 
 she was not using her power over him in a 
 luxurious cruelty. After Ethel s visit to 
 her alone, he had sought in vain for a re 
 newal of that day s mood : he had received 
 no new pressure of the hand, upon which he 
 could fasten, nor any clear glance of mean 
 ing, known only to themselves, though un 
 defined. He had hovered on the borders of 
 a tempting intimacy, interrupted now and 
 then by pangs of doubt and a sense of un- 
 satisfactoriness ; agitated and increasingly 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 145 
 
 captivated ; but now the intoxicating cer 
 tainty of that memorable afternoon seized 
 him again. He awoke from this second s 
 reverie to hear Mrs. Dadmun saying con 
 clusively 
 
 "Occupation, that is what such people 
 need. It keeps them out of out of 
 And, having thus put forward Mrs. Whid- 
 den s blank form, she paused. 
 
 " Heaven knows," said Mrs. Pincott, help 
 ing her along, " artists have plenty of occu 
 pation." 
 
 But if Mrs. Dadmun, who was thinking of 
 Mrs. Whidden s remarks in connection with 
 young Gregg, could have had her way, she 
 would doubtless have prescribed for Fenn a 
 term of hard labour at the exhausted Institute 
 piano. 
 
 Kingsmill had said nothing. 
 
 It was an instance of the coarse injustice 
 of our system of judging people, that Kings- 
 mill and Ethel were placed by the feminine 
 police in the same category with Fenn and 
 Anice. These inquisitors imagined that the 
 wife was retaliating on the husband, and that 
 Arthur Kingsmill was taking an unfair ad 
 vantage of the situation. 
 
 He himself supposed that Ethel was blind 
 K 
 
146 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 to the progress of her husband s infatuation. 
 The gossips were in error about him, and he 
 was mistaken in regard to her. 
 
 Sanity, so long as it is not stolid, is deeper 
 than insanity ; and jealousy, fatal though 
 it may be, is a disease which works in the 
 surface region of character. Ethel was not 
 jealous. She did not even give way to hatred 
 of the woman who she saw was drawing Ben 
 jamin Fenn farther and farther away from 
 her. She had loved Mrs. Eulow from the 
 first ; they had soon learned to call one 
 another "Anice " and "Ethel, " and the young 
 wife felt that the widow was an enlarging 
 influence upon her, which she was glad to 
 have. When she detected the growth of that 
 attraction which was swaying Aiiice towards 
 her husband, her intuitive justice and strong 
 sense of mercy prevented any malignant 
 change in her regard for her new friend : it 
 did not surprise her that Anice should love 
 him. She loved him herself too bitterly 
 well, in the depths of her sweet and vigor 
 ous nature, to be astonished ; and so far 
 as it was possible she forgave her. Neither 
 was she jealous of her husband. Her agony 
 was far more terrible than that. It was a 
 silent, unutterable, radical grief, that seemed 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 147 
 
 to be gradually altering the whole substance 
 of her being, as one can imagine the soft, 
 plant-bearing earth hardening into metal 
 through slow ages, in the midst of hardening 
 rock. A convulsion and change of primeval 
 scope and vast duration, one might say, were 
 compressed for her into a few days of suffer 
 ing. There was no weakness in her accept 
 ance of the situation. Sharp and racking 
 revolt was hers, at times, and it seemed as 
 if the end of the earth had come ; but she 
 had a sublime native fortitude, the extent 
 of which she had not known till now. Once 
 when she was a girl of about twelve, she had 
 been with her father on a steamer in Long 
 Island Sound, and a collision had occurred 
 with a collier. Every one supposed they 
 would sink : people ran for life-preservers, 
 some even jumped overboard, and most of 
 the female passengers huddled together, 
 shrieking. She fully comprehended what 
 awaited her, but remained perfectly dumb, 
 with a look of far-reaching anguish in those 
 trusting eyes and in the face which had 
 that faintly rustic expression ; and she held 
 on to her father s hand with an intense fare 
 well in the grasp. But ah, how different 
 was the present horror ! Her father was 
 
148 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 long since dead, and there was not even a 
 hand to hold in token of her parting from 
 all that made life dear. 
 
 To say that she bore all this without show 
 ing a single trace of it would not be literally 
 true ; but the signs were so indistinct as to 
 escape all observers, excepting Anice, poss 
 ibly, who had begun vaguely to awake to 
 the doom that was settling down upon Mrs. 
 Fenn. Her trouble showed in her eyes. It 
 was not that there was a cloud in them, 
 exactly ; but sometimes you see a soft blue 
 lake darkened by a cloud in the sky, and it 
 was a shadow of woe resembling this that 
 overgloomed her gaze, seeming every moment 
 to pass away, yet returning, and never dis 
 covered by Fenn in his preoccupation. 
 
 She sat, one afternoon, on the high balcony 
 above the hotel colonnade, listless and un 
 employed. In the drowsy silence, an occa 
 sional rapid carriage would suddenly be 
 heard at a little distance, would fly by with 
 a buzz and rattle, and would pass out of 
 hearing in the other direction. Sometimes 
 the vehicles crossed each other in front of 
 the hotel. They came and went so unex 
 pectedly that they seemed to start up out of 
 the ground for the express purpose of amus- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 149 
 
 ing her dull attention, and then to sink into 
 it again, so that they might repeat the per 
 formance. Then she watched the slow life 
 of the post-office store, where dulness and 
 deliberation reached a climax bordering on 
 the sublime. Yet she knew that there was 
 a quick brain inside of the small establish 
 ment, a mind of local enterprise, such as it 
 was, and she thought of the care and energy 
 involved in the business ; all the anticipa 
 tions, too, and petty excitements and droll 
 bargaining attending the purchases made 
 there by the country folk. She tried to 
 think of their existence in all the vivid actu 
 ality it had for them, and wondered if they 
 were happy. There was a wagon without a 
 driver standing at the store steps. There 
 seemed to be always a wagon there. " If I 
 should die," she mused, "it would go on 
 standing there just the same." This contrast 
 of ideas struck her very oddly, and the 
 image of the ugly wagon seemed to give a 
 singular hideousness to the thought of death. 
 The next moment she made a desperate 
 effort to throw aside all belief in the un- 
 happiness that encompassed her, but it would 
 not be shaken off ; and she began to resolve 
 that if she must lose Ben, or even lose his 
 
150 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 love and not his presence, it would be better 
 to kill herself than to go on enduring. For 
 tunately, a few tears fell and relieved the 
 stricture at her heart. The afternoon was 
 waning ; her husband was still absent, tak 
 ing a walk with Mrs. Eulow, from which 
 Ethel had excused herself because she longed 
 for a little solitude in which to face her 
 misery. There could not be any solitude, 
 however, she found : even here on the bal 
 cony she was crowded upon, oppressed by 
 other presences. Nor could she face the 
 future and try to give it any probable shape ; 
 it must all remain vague and dreary. 
 
 A little boy was passing in the street, and 
 some people in a garden called out, * What 
 time does the church say, bub ? " 
 
 He looked long and attentively at the 
 church-clock. At length he drawled, " One 
 hand s way up, and t other s most straight 
 down." 
 
 " Six? No, it must be five," concluded the 
 questioners, too much enervated by the heat 
 to look for themselves. A moment later 
 the bell struck, clear and solemn. 
 
 Ethel was laughing, in spite of her wretch 
 edness, at this mode of telling time, when 
 the warning notes from the tower rang out, 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. !$! 
 
 and seemed to quiver through her, summon 
 ing her back to her agony. 
 
 " I cannot bear this ! I will not ! " she ex 
 claimed, under her breath, and bringing her 
 hands together in a close knot. "I have 
 rights, and I will make Ben remember them. 
 He does not know what he is doing. Oh ! " 
 she moaned, and then passed into silent 
 thought again: "I have been too lenient, 
 too forgetful of myself. And then, Anice, 
 she has conscience ; she will listen to me 
 and bring this to an end." 
 
 But, for the twentieth time, she found her 
 self unable to remain firm in any design of 
 interposing or appealing, or claiming her 
 rights. The stoicism, enshrouded where no 
 one suspected it, in the centre of her heart, 
 restrained her. 
 
 There are people, in meeting whom we are 
 buoyed up to the surface like corks, floating 
 on the wave of casual talk, and unable to get 
 down into profundities of any kind, however 
 much we may see of them. There are others 
 with whom we tend at once towards the 
 core ; it was so with Anice and Fenn. They 
 conversed on large themes, speculating upon 
 society, love, the work of women, poetry, 
 and belief. That in itself might have been 
 
152 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 very well, but everything they said had an 
 indirect, veiled reference to themselves as 
 they now stood, and to their mutual regard. 
 The nature of this regard they did not openly 
 inquire into, but they continually touched 
 the edge of such inquiry in a furtive way, 
 speedily recoiling again. Partly to satisfy 
 the taste for intellectual subjects, and partly 
 also to place some object of attention in the 
 way of this tendency to probe each other s 
 state of mind too directly, they liked to carry 
 a book or magazine with them, in walking, 
 and to diversify the exercise with reading in 
 some sheltered border of the woods. 
 
 On this afternoon they had come up by 
 the path through that rocky pasture where 
 Fenn had had his strange experience of be 
 lieving that Anice had pressed his hand in 
 getting over the wall ; and they settled upon 
 the place under the oak where he had first 
 heard her voice with its echo, to rest in. 
 
 They had with them a little volume of 
 Shakespeare, containing "Much Ado," from 
 which they read alternately. Fenn took the 
 second act. Suddenly he stopped, after re 
 citing these words : 
 
 " For beauty is a witch 
 Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. " 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. I $3 
 
 "Is that always true?" he asked, doubt 
 fully, letting the book drop into a neglected 
 position, as he commanded Anice s atten 
 tion. 
 
 "You ask me to revise Shakespeare s 
 judgment?" she returned. 
 
 "Certainly not; it is only what Claudio 
 says in a hasty moment, when he s sur 
 prised. But I like to weigh how much 
 truth there is in it." 
 
 c< I don t think a woman can tell. I don t 
 think /can." 
 
 " Yet you are very beautiful." 
 
 There was a moment of perfect silence, 
 during which Fenn s ears rang. He could 
 hardly tell why he had said this. 
 
 They looked into each other s eyes steadily. 
 
 " Mr. Fenn," said Anice, when that silent 
 parrying had spent itself, I can t afford 
 to lose a friend. " 
 
 * I don t see why I shouldn t say it," he 
 answered doggedly, looking at the book. 
 " It is true ; and I do not believe that such 
 beauty melts away the impalpable but per 
 sistent thing called faith, though these 
 lines are wonderful, and express the power 
 of a beautiful woman as a poet would natur 
 ally do it." 
 
154 A ^ ECHO OF PASSION". 
 
 He had managed to turn the point of her 
 rebuke ; and besides, she was secretly in 
 fluenced by that centripetal attraction which 
 would not let them remain on the safe ex 
 terior of things. 
 
 1 Are poets so much more faithless than 
 other men ? " she asked. Then, as he did 
 not at once reply, she went on to say : The 
 power of a beautiful woman, which you 
 speak of, is not entirely her own, you know. 
 After a certain point, it is what the person 
 upon whom it falls makes it." 
 
 " Then why shouldn t any honest man be 
 able to feel and respond to those charms, 
 without letting them work witchcraft in his 
 blood ? " cried Fenn, in a glow ; yet at that 
 very instant the stream of passion in his 
 veins was dissolving his faithfulness. " That 
 is what I believe in : the establishing of a 
 clear relation of admiration and devotion, 
 where a man may be more than a common 
 friend, and yet He did not know how 
 to finish. 
 
 "I understand," said Anice in a low voice, 
 that vibrated like the note of some instru 
 ment of fabled sweetness. "I believe in 
 such a thing. I think it is possible." 
 
 They allowed their glance to wander away 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 55 
 
 into the placid scene before them, where the 
 land dipped towards Swallow Pond, and rose 
 again, melting away to a curtain of haze in 
 which one rank of receding mountains stood 
 beyond another. Somewhere in the deep 
 valleys far away, it seemed to Fenn that 
 there must be a place where he could find a 
 new life, a place so secluded that no rumour 
 of conscience could reach him there ; and a 
 desire seized him which belied what he had 
 just been saying, to be lost in such a retreat 
 with Anice. 
 
 " I don t know really what is meant by a 
 Platonic affection," he continued, languidly, 
 half closing his eyes as he looked at the 
 mountains. " But this that I mean needs 
 no artificial name, subject to sneers and 
 misconstruction ; and it has nothing to do 
 with any philosopher. It will come to be 
 recognised, after a while, as something 
 warmer and more real than that, yet " 
 A second time he was at a loss for terms, 
 and let his voice die, 
 
 Anice had thrilled with an unreasoning 
 joy, in which triumph and tenderness were 
 blended, when he had begun describing the 
 relation which was really meant to represent 
 their own. She could not tell precisely 
 
156 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 what she wished that to be. And now a 
 faintness, a gathering desolation, began to 
 come over her. What did it mean? She 
 did not know whether she was glad or 
 sorry ; there was a kind of anger in her at 
 the whole situation, and yet was not this 
 because Fenn was not free ? She trembled. 
 To have answered herself would have been 
 to risk losing his friendship, because in the 
 light of a positive decision her conscience 
 might have forbidden her to continue it. 
 She could not reprove him for what he had 
 said, either ; anger, or any emotion, would 
 be unsafe. 
 
 " I don t believe we will read any more," 
 she said, after a brief deliberation. " I 
 must go back soon and get ready." 
 
 Fenn glanced at her questioningly. " For 
 what ? " he asked. 
 
 " I am going to Boston to-morrow." 
 
 " You are going away ! " he demanded, 
 thunderstruck. " And why to Boston ? " 
 
 She smiled. " Only for a day or two," 
 she explained. " There is a friend of mine, 
 a lady, who was to come up from Newport 
 and be in Boston for two or three days, and 
 this will be my only chance to see her. " 
 
 " Your father will go with you, of course," 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. I $7 
 
 propounded Fenn, out of sorts at the pro 
 spect. 
 
 "No," said Aiiice, faltering. "He is 
 afraid of the heat." 
 
 The chemist s heart bounded. To go 
 with her ! it was like a response to that 
 stifled yearning he had had that they might 
 escape together into some hazy distance. 
 " Will you allow me to be your escort ? " he 
 asked, with an effort to be simply formal. 
 
 " Oh, Ethel mustn t be left ; I couldn t 
 think of your doing it ! " exclaimed Mrs. 
 Eulow. "Besides, there s no reason 
 why I shouldn t travel alone. It is very 
 easy." 
 
 " I have some business there that I ought 
 to attend to," said Fenn. "I had been 
 thinking about it, but didn t want to go." 
 
 She needed no explanation as to what it 
 was that had held him here. But she hesi 
 tated. 
 
 " Well?" said he, waiting for her answer. 
 
 Anice looked at him in a kind of fear. 
 
 " I shall probably go in the next train after 
 yours, any way," he declared. "Wouldn t 
 it be better for me to be at hand, in case I 
 might be of use ? " 
 
 " Very well ; I shall be glad if you will," 
 
1 58 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 she responded, but without energy. She 
 felt that she was a coward. 
 
 But the cowardice had been in letting 
 him know at all that she was going. 
 
 Fenn told his wife, in the evening, that 
 he had engaged a place on the stage, and 
 was going to town on business. " It 
 happens very luckily, too," he added, with 
 factitious ease, " that Anice wants to go 
 down too, to meet a friend of hers." 
 
 Ethel gave a muffled cry. 
 
 He turned from his task of throwing some 
 things together for the journey, acutely 
 alarmed. "What is the matter ?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, no, no! I can t let you go!" she 
 exclaimed, with indescribable pain in her 
 voice, and putting both hands on his shoul 
 ders, as if to assure herself that he was not 
 already gone. Her fair young figure was 
 alive with terror, and the light downy eye 
 brows were puckered in sharp lines upon her 
 forehead. 
 
 Fenn became peculiarly calm. "Ethel, 
 what does this mean ? " he asked, in a tone 
 as if he were drawing his breath in while he 
 spoke. 
 
 She came to herself, like one who has been 
 sleep-walking. Her face relaxed. "Oh, 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 59 
 
 don t think anything of it," she said, softly, 
 smiling. * It was only a sudden feeling I 
 had that I might never see you again." 
 
 " Poh ! " said he, " that was foolish." He 
 kissed her, and said tenderly, " Dear Ethel." 
 Then he seemed to consider, and went to his 
 hand -valise. " Shall I stay ? " he asked. 
 " Would you rather ? " 
 
 "No. If you have business, I must not 
 keep you," she answered, with restored 
 calmness. 
 
160 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 IX, 
 
 IT was September now, and for two nights 
 some invisible incendiary had been at work 
 applying the torch of Autumn to a tree or a 
 bough, here and there. In the fresh, dewy 
 haze of morning the glowing foliage lit the 
 village street and the long post-road, and the 
 green-cloaked stretches of the country on 
 either hand, with spots and spires of magical 
 colour. 
 
 When the stage drove up to the hotel, 
 with Mrs. Eulow balanced in a desirable 
 place on the top, there were, fortunately, not 
 many of the remaining boarders at hand to 
 notice that Fenn was going with her. Ethel 
 was there, nevertheless, herself soft as Sep 
 tember, in her leaf-tinted creplisse rosy, 
 calm, and sweet. She bade them good-bye 
 with many good wishes, and then it drove 
 off through the lovely and inspiring land 
 scape. The drive to the railroad was long, 
 but it swept them through many rich con 
 trasts of scene, and they did not tire of it. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. Ibl 
 
 Both were singularly buoyant. There was 
 a stimulus of romance within them which 
 was as exhilarating as the drive. Fenn took 
 a peculiar, and, as he thought, innocent plea 
 sure in the idle fancy that he might be run 
 ning away with this beautiful woman seated 
 beside him. His secret impulse of yesterday, 
 to escape with her into some distant recess 
 of the mountains, had frightened him ; but 
 that did not assail him at present ; and as 
 long as he was not really running away with 
 her, what harm could it do to pretend to 
 himself that he was ? It was the essence of 
 this new kind of love, which he had invented, 
 to indulge such bright hallucinations. He 
 flattered himself that he had plucked the 
 most delicate flower of history, in learning 
 to cherish a passion without any of that 
 fatal turmoil which, in the earlier evolution 
 of love, caused so many clashing and tragi 
 cal incidents. If Paris had been content 
 with coming to the court of Menelaus, and 
 falling in love with Helen, he might have 
 even declared his position ; that at least 
 would have been a satisfaction to both her 
 and himself ; but if he had stopped at that 
 point no ten years tragedy of the Trojan 
 war would have trailed its length of disaster 
 L 
 
1 62 AX ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 through the annals of the time. A few ex 
 cursions with Helen into the country, if 
 imaginatively treated, might have sufficed, 
 and many lives would have been spared. 
 
 I don t mean to say that Fenn drew this 
 contrast quite so lightly ; but he felt the 
 analogy that Anice was his Helen, and that 
 he could enjoy the excitement of carrying 
 her off without assuming the wrong. 
 
 When at last they were snugly bestowed 
 in the train, absorbed in each other, and 
 talking in low tones, other persons in the 
 car, he was conscious, might take them for 
 lovers. 
 
 This fanciful recreation, however, had a 
 curious effect. When they arrived in Bos 
 ton, and he had put her into a carriage to 
 go to her friend s, and was walking away by 
 himself, he found that under this thin mask 
 of imaginary elopement his brain had auto 
 matically prepared a complete plan for flight 
 with Anice, which now presented itself in 
 all its details. 
 
 From that moment he was engaged in a 
 fierce struggle with himself against the desire 
 to propose it to her. He had promised to 
 come and see her at the house where she 
 was staying, and there the opportunity for 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 163 
 
 broaching his treacherous scheme was of 
 fered so exactly in the nick of time that he 
 almost yielded to the temptation. He had 
 also to go about the city a little with Anice 
 and her friend, the next day. It forced 
 itself upon him continually. They were al 
 ready out of the reach of observation ; there 
 need be none of the struggle and horror of 
 breaking away clandestinely from the spot 
 where his wife was. Why should they not 
 make use of the fact? Their destiny or 
 doom whichever it might be called was 
 seemingly fixed ; sooner or later they must 
 be united in some way, no matter what de 
 struction might come of it. He saw that his 
 passion, at least, was no longer a plaything ; 
 it had become an overmastering reality. 
 
 On the third day, which was to be that of 
 their return, Anice s friend had left town. 
 The widow had gone to a hotel. Fenn went 
 there to meet her, and found her in a small 
 parlour. They had some little time to wait 
 before starting for their train. He was 
 under a fatalistic impression that he would 
 not leave the room until she had either 
 accepted his declaration and agreed to go 
 away with him, or else thrown him aside 
 altogether. He had thought of Ethel ; he 
 
164 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 would arrange so that she should be cared 
 for. He must stake all upon this issue. 
 
 He walked about nervously, speaking in 
 short sentences and with great constraint. 
 At last he said, with a sort of violence, " I 
 wish you were never going back to Tan- 
 ford ! " 
 
 "What can you mean?" asked Anice. 
 But she knew. She trembled with the 
 knowledge. 
 
 Watching her fixedly, he observed this 
 "Anice," he said, "give me your hand a 
 moment." 
 
 "You forget, Mr. Fenn ! I am Mrs. 
 Eulow." Her tone was firm, but it was 
 hardly severe enough. 
 
 "Yes, that is what I forget," he cried, 
 vehemently. * And I wish to forget it ! 
 To me you are Anice only, the woman 
 whose voice haunted me and drew me on, 
 years ago, when I ought to have obeyed its 
 spell, and put my life under its command. 
 Do not call me back to the present ; let me 
 go on living in that time." 
 
 The widow s self-control was shaken. 
 Either from mercy or some other sentiment, 
 she could not strike him then with the cold 
 steel of duty. "You must not speak to me 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 165 
 
 of that," she said, with a hurrying accent 
 of grief. " Oh why, why do you do it ? " 
 
 "Did you not tell me yourself, that 
 you would rather think of our friendship of 
 those days than of what has happened 
 since?" he returned, passionately. "I 
 needed no urging. I have thought of it 
 too much for my peace, and I cannot conceal 
 any longer I His voice became con 
 stricted. He walked the room as if caged, 
 clutching his hands together, and tearing 
 them apart, roughly. Then he stopped 
 near her again, and bent over her with 
 such a gaze as if, half -blinded by the whirl 
 of his emotions, he could not see her at all 
 unless he fairly pierced her with his eyes. 
 " Anice," he said, " the fruition of your life 
 is not yet come : you did not love Eulow as 
 you might have 
 
 "Oh, I will not hear it ! " she burst forth, 
 tumultuously. She struggled from her place, 
 but as she rose he caught her hand. For a 
 second or two it seemed to relax and yield 
 itself to his, as a bird tired of flight might 
 have done ; but she drew it away, and 
 crossed the floor. "If I said anything to 
 you about the error of my marriage, it was 
 a trust which you must not violate. " She 
 
1 66 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 stood there near the embrasure of a window, 
 panting, with mingled tears and lightnings 
 in her eyes. He, too, stood motionless, but 
 with a heaving breast. Do you know 
 what you are doing or saying ?" she went on. 
 "Is this the ideal adoration you planned? 
 You are ruining it all." 
 
 "That is not enough," he answered, in a 
 tone growing clear and level from the in 
 tensity of his purpose. " It was beautiful, 
 but it must give way to something greater. 
 It was only the mould 
 
 " What would you have ?" she demanded, 
 as if disdaining to allow any further vague 
 ness or debate. 
 
 It seemed to Fenn as if she were within 
 his grasp. 
 
 The stream of human passion is poured 
 out from unseen sources like a living fire, 
 but hardens on the top in a thin lava sur 
 face, upon which we walk in all the security 
 of convention. It needs only a narrow seam 
 to let the burning reality jet upward and 
 melt away the crust we are treading. A 
 few words had placed these two on a totally 
 altered footing. 
 
 " I would have a new future," said Fenn, 
 advancing. " What if my life, too, has not 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 167 
 
 reached its true fruition ? The world is wide. 
 Development is the supreme law." 
 
 But as he drew nearer to her, she looked 
 so unprotected, it seemed so ruthless to have 
 struck aside all the defences of her integrity, 
 which till then he had respected, that a 
 sudden sense of shame assailed him. He 
 remembered that she had come here under 
 his escort, and he knew that he was doing 
 his manhood wrong in taking advantage of 
 the fact. Yet he would probably have per 
 sisted had it been left to him. 
 
 On her part, she saw this strong man 
 swayed by her, the man she had most ad 
 mired of any she had known. Though the 
 final word had not been uttered, he might 
 be hers by the slightest motion, the drop 
 ping of her eyelids, the touch of a hand, 
 or by mere silence and passivity. 
 
 She lifted her hands to her face, to shut 
 away the sight. ( Leave me ; do not speak 
 again," she groaned, with an effort that 
 might have betrayed to a calmer listener 
 that she was doing violence to her inclina 
 tion, " or I shall hate you!" 
 
 Fenn recoiled. The words struck a blow 
 that riveted home the shame which had 
 already partially fettered him. There was 
 
168 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 the mortification in them attaching to a 
 positive rejection of all that he had meant 
 to say ; for he had actually said enough for 
 her to understand him. In her capacity of 
 conscience to him the only conscience that 
 still controlled him she had the power thus 
 to let in upon him a rush of humiliation at 
 his error and remembrance of his faithless 
 ness to Ethel ; and most deeply of all he 
 suffered from the disgrace of having risked 
 too much with her. 
 
 She turned aside, and looked blindly out 
 of the window ; and he remained silent and 
 stricken where he was. The minutes passed 
 by and fell away like drops distilled from a 
 silent and wasting grief. In a changed 
 voice he asked, at length, * Do you despise 
 me?" 
 
 Facing him again slowly, she surveyed 
 him for an instant. " I cannot, I cannot," 
 she murmured in a tremulous tone. Then, 
 recovering her resolution, she added, "But 
 we must not see each other again." 
 
 Fenn bent his head, without knowing 
 what a pang it gave her to see him do so. 
 But, with a rallying hope, he raised his face 
 presently. "You will not do that?" he 
 pleaded. "It cannot be!" he continued, 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 169 
 
 gathering determination. " Think once 
 more, if I merit anything so doubly bitter. 
 Don t decide it, now, for I must submit to 
 whatever you compel ; but consent to think, 
 and decide after you get to Tanford." 
 
 4 We must go there together, of course," 
 she said, with the languor that follows a 
 forced act of duty. And then She 
 shielded her face again by looking out of 
 the window ; but decision had vanished 
 from her attitude, and her sad white hands 
 looked as they had done in the first meeting 
 at Tanford. 
 
 He left her, and returned in half an hour, 
 everything being ready for departure. 
 
 He was careful to ride in the hotel coach, 
 while she went to the station in a carriage 
 in which he had placed her. He did not 
 engage a chair for himself in the drawing- 
 room car with her, but took a seat in another 
 part of the train, from which he came only 
 at intervals to ask if there were anything he 
 could do for her. 
 
 The drive from Athol back to the heights 
 where Tanford lay was different enough 
 from that which they had taken over the 
 same route in coming. Then, all had been 
 fresh and alluring, and the lucid morning 
 
I7O AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 had lent its spell of youthful grace to his 
 fancies ; but now the horses toiled for the 
 most part up dusty steeps, and the weary 
 heat of afternoon that beat upon the top of 
 the stage burned the reality of his disgrace 
 and weakness into Fenn s brain with unre 
 mitting force. Yet he strove to maintain 
 an air of simple friendliness with Anice, 
 and when she spoke to him it was with a 
 perceptible gentleness : he could see in her 
 eyes that she was sorry for him, and had 
 appreciated his attempt to make his pre 
 sence unobtrusive during their return. 
 
 Meanwhile, after Mrs. Dadmun s friends 
 had discovered Fenn s departure, and the 
 chief of the corps herself had explained 
 Mrs. Eulow s absence (which Ethel had not 
 made known) by a timely call at the farm, 
 there was a commotion among the Institute 
 ladies. The matter was so much discussed, 
 and had come to be talked of so openly, 
 that Sharon Reeves, who by virtue of his 
 cloth had been taken into confidence, re 
 solved to counsel Fenn so soon as he could 
 find an opportunity. 
 
 Ethel greeted her husband with a half- 
 childish burst of joy. Oh, I am so glad ! " 
 she cried, with sparkling eyes. " I was ter- 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 7! 
 
 ribly nervous while you were away : I 
 never felt so before. It seemed to me I 
 couldn t bear it, and this morning such a 
 strange thing happened ! I was reading in 
 our room here, and something made me look 
 up all at once, and for a minute I thought 
 you were standing at the door, and saying 
 good-bye to me. You looked so pale !" 
 Fenn turned his head half away ; there was 
 a stifling sensation in his throat. " You 
 don t look well even now, Ben. You seem 
 sad." 
 
 "I am tired," he said, kindly, feeling a 
 weight like iron on his forehead. " But I 
 shall soon be all right. It is you who 
 need caring for, if you have begun seeing 
 visions. " 
 
 "No. All I need is you," said Ethel, 
 with a kind of timid longing. 
 
 He pressed her to him ; but alas ! he felt 
 that the virtue had gone out of him. He 
 knew that he loved her ; he pitied her more 
 than he did himself ; but the warmth and 
 tenderness that had once been so abundant 
 within him seemed to have dwindled away 
 into obscure crevices of his being, like 
 water-courses dried by the sun. 
 
172 AN ECHO OF PASSIOX. 
 
 THE next day he spent entirely with 
 Ethel. Every moment he exerted himself 
 to please her ; he rode with her in the after 
 noon, and the flush of a returning happiness 
 stole into her face. But he scarcely noticed 
 it ; the ride had been tame and spiritless, 
 compared with those in which Anice had 
 been his companion ; there was a hot rest 
 lessness in his heart. He was continually 
 wondering what Mrs. Eulow s decision 
 would be. 
 
 In the morning he found a note from her 
 in the post-office, the best way of getting 
 it to him unnoticed. He went out to the 
 old arbour, from which he could see her roof, 
 and opened the envelope there. There fell 
 out of the note within two thin disks from 
 the pod of the lunaria, or satin-flower, cul 
 tivated in old country-gardens. Wondering 
 what it meant, he glanced at the letter, 
 which contained but a few words. They 
 were these : 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 173 
 
 DEAR MR. FENN, Bring your wife to see 
 me soon. I have thought once more, as you 
 asked me to, and am willing to believe that 
 I was hasty. I shall put into this note 
 something which I found in the garden to 
 day, which bears a meaning worth remem 
 bering. They are the last fragments left of 
 a flower that blooms in early summer. You 
 have seen others like them, in vases. When 
 the bloom is gone, and all the rest of the pod 
 has fallen away, this remains ; and the old- 
 fashioned name of the flower is Honesty, 
 Common Honesty. Sincerely, 
 
 ANICE EULOW. 
 
 Fenn let his hand fall, with the note in 
 it, and gazed straight before him. Then he 
 stooped and picked up the singular lustrous - 
 fibred disks. His first thought was that 110 
 other woman could have met the emergency 
 in so delicate yet trenchant a way ; and his 
 admiration for her was even heightened. 
 For an instant following, the rebuke of the 
 symbol she had sent cut him. But, after 
 that, he began to be elated. 
 
 Reduced to plain terms, were not the 
 decision and the note which it prompted in 
 the nature of a victory for him ? Was it 
 wholly mercy that dictated them ? In pro 
 portion as the supposed certainty that she 
 
174 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 loved him returned, his misery and remorse 
 grew less. His mind retraced the Boston 
 episode with a new elasticity, and he was 
 not long in proving to his satisfaction that 
 he had been exposed to a great temptation, 
 and had come out of it unscathed ; for, as a 
 matter of fact, it had been the knowledge 
 that Anice was for the time under his pro 
 tection that restrained him, and not any 
 thing which she had said or done. Hence, it 
 was clear that he had shown self-command ; 
 he could trust himself, and all could go on 
 safely, as he had conceived that it might. 
 
 So when the Rev. Sharon Reeves met him, 
 on his re-entering the hotel, and proposed a 
 little secular expedition in search of fish, he 
 accepted the idea with a good-humoured 
 contempt for it. Mr. Reeves seldom caught 
 fish, and he scorned to buy them ; but Fenn 
 might go and catch them for him. It was 
 agreeable also, to test his power of staying 
 away from Anice for a while. 
 
 Ethel was glad to have him go. "Are you 
 going to try the brook in Tom s Swamp ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 "Yes ; but it s no use going after trout 
 till afternoon, and, besides, we can only get 
 small ones at this season." 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION, 175 
 
 "That s just the thing for Mr. Reeves," 
 she laughed. " He s so small himself that 
 he can t manage a very big fish, I should 
 say : at least, they seem to think so, and 
 don t even give him the chance of trying." 
 
 They went, without waiting for afternoon ; 
 but when they had come to the neighbour 
 hood of the favourable pools and bends in 
 the brook, Fenii repeated to the clergyman 
 what he had said to Ethel about the season. 
 
 "Dear me," cried Reeves, "I never 
 thought of that ! I believe we have no 
 right to take them now." He pulled from 
 an inner pocket a narrow pamphlet contain 
 ing the fish and game laws. "It s so," he 
 remarked, after scanning the pages. "It 
 would be against the law. We ought to 
 have gone over to the mill for horn-paout, 
 as they call them here. " 
 
 " A cast or two won t matter," answered 
 Fenn ; and now that we have come so far, 
 I must get something out of it." He ap 
 proached the stream cautiously, and tossed 
 his hook into a promising place. 
 
 The young clergyman looked on sadly. 
 " It is a part of his inborn lawlessness," he 
 said to himself, contemplating this breach 
 of a legislative enactment. 
 
176 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Fenn found nothing in the spot where he 
 had made his first cast, and as he drew away 
 from the bank, in order to cut across and 
 work noiselessly up to another bond, "I," 
 said Reeves, " sha n t fish." 
 
 "I dare say it isn t worth the trouble," 
 Fenn agreed, halting. 
 
 "How long are you going to keep at it, 
 then?" asked his companion with a degree 
 of solemnity. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know. If I once taste 
 blood, I shall follow the thing up all day, 
 very likely." 
 
 " But it s against the law," reiterated the 
 clerical sportsman, in a tone of rebuke. 
 
 " I know it, my dear fellow ; but no one 
 obeys that law until a little later. The in 
 ertia of freedom to fish can t be overcome at 
 once, and I believe even the local fish com 
 missioners allow themselves some latitude." 
 
 Reeves grounded his rod with an air of 
 resolution. "Mr. Fenn," said he, "I have 
 something I ought to say to you, and I 
 think it might as well be said now." 
 
 "It seems from your manner," remarked 
 the other, casually, "to be disagreeable. 
 Is it ? " 
 "Not necessarily, that is, not altogether. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 177 
 
 To begin with, you must remember the ob 
 ligations of my calling ; and, in the second 
 place, that I m trying to do you a service. " 
 
 4 Well, I m ready. Go ahead. " 
 
 "There has been a great deal of unplea 
 sant gossip about you at the hotel for some 
 time past," began Reeves, steadily. 
 
 " And do you think you will do me a ser 
 vice by repeating it ? " Fenn inquired, not 
 very well pleased. " Let me tell you in ad 
 vance that I think that idea is one of the 
 two or three radical errors by which the 
 human race has been so infernally warped 
 out of happiness ; and that I don t care to 
 hear a word of your gossip." 
 
 " It isn t mine," said the little man, gal 
 lantly sticking to his point. It s a great 
 deal more yours, because your conduct has 
 been sufficient cause for it." 
 
 "Hullo!" cried Fenn, angrily; "you 
 wish to do me a service, and yet you have 
 condemned me in advance, eh ? " 
 
 Mr. Sharon Reeves set his face sternly 
 against the offender. " Yes," he retorted, 
 " I do condemn " 
 
 "That is reason enough for refusing to 
 hear you," interrupted the chemist. "But 
 even on general grounds I wish you to 
 M 
 
178 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 understand that I won t listen to a word of 
 this tittle-tattle, whatever it is." 
 
 "I condemn the conduct of a man who 
 exposes himself and his wife," Reeves pro 
 ceeded, without heeding him, "exposes 
 himself and his wife to injurious criticism, 
 by paying such extraordinary attentions to 
 another lady as you have been doing to Mrs. 
 Eulow." 
 
 By this time Fenn was furious. " Mrs. 
 Eulow," said he, "is an old friend of mine, 
 whom it is presumption in you to mention 
 in such a way. As to Mrs. Fenn and myself, 
 we attend to our own affairs. You, sir, are 
 an entire stranger ; but as you invited me to 
 come fishing, and have decided to give that 
 up, I will now say good -morning." 
 
 Whereupon he strode off towards the 
 stream, entirely forgetting the usual elabo 
 rate approaches of a trout-fisher. 
 
 Reeves stared after him for a moment, 
 in honest distress ; but, seeing that it was 
 useless to go further, and reflecting that he 
 had at least forced one point of his discourse 
 upon him, he decided to retrace his steps, 
 and seek his favourite saw-mill. 
 
 " It was an outrage," the chemist said to 
 himself, when he turned his back. And as 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 179 
 
 he trudged along mechanically through the 
 alder-brake, now plunging into a wet hole 
 among the tall grass, and sinking over his 
 shoes ; now forcing his way through a bar 
 rier of twigs, with his pole at a "carry," 
 he muttered angrily : " Little jackanapes ! " 
 " Simply because he wears a coat of a par 
 ticular cut," and similar phrases. The fact 
 that his relations with Anice Eulow had 
 been made the theme of impertinent com 
 ment was new to him ; for a full comprehen 
 sion of what people are saying about us 
 thanks to the pleasant padding of self- 
 esteem with which nature provides the most 
 humble being is the most difficult thing 
 for us to grasp in daily life, always. When 
 he had gone some distance, and had recov 
 ered the true fishing instinct, this fact began 
 to thrust itself upon him more distinctly. 
 It increased his indignation. Now that he 
 was cooler, he was willing to admit that, 
 although the Reverend Sharon had displayed 
 a fatal want of tact, he had shown a praise 
 worthy conception of duty ; and he was 
 even willing to respect him, which he had 
 never done till then. But the meddling 
 attempt of idle people at the hotel to take 
 charge of his welfare and his wife s galled 
 
l8o AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 him intolerably. He had but just got rid of 
 the humiliation which had hung about him 
 on the way back from Boston, and to have 
 to contemplate this outside criticism revived 
 it. He became defiant. He did not care 
 what happened. Being convinced of his 
 strength, he resolved that he would show it, 
 expressly to discomfit the scandal-mongers 
 to whom Reeves had alluded. 
 
 Two or three young trout took his bait, 
 but he threw them back into the water. 
 Midday came, and he went out to the road, 
 where he succeeded in getting some milk 
 and brown bread at one of the lost farm 
 houses he had so often noticed. The soft 
 gloom of the woods, the wimpling brook, 
 the swaying of grasses, soothed him, and he 
 returned to his sport with new zeal, securing 
 towards evening a respectable string of dark, 
 pink-spotted fish, with which he returned 
 to the Institute in time to have them cooked 
 for supper. He was willing to make amends 
 for his sharpness towards Reeves by sending 
 him some of the fried trout ; but the clergy, 
 man s strict obedience to constituted autho 
 rity forced him to decline the offering. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION, l8l 
 
 XL 
 
 LITTLE opportunity offered for Fenn to 
 throw out challenges to his gossiping enemies 
 by any new overt act of daring. He took 
 Ethel with him in going to see Anice for 
 the first time since their return, and the 
 widow afterward avoided that free habit 
 of wandering about in pairs which had 
 previously been indulged in. There were 
 driving parties, in which Mr. Evans who 
 had now got around to the autumnal topics 
 of ensilage and winter feed for cattle was 
 included ; and all the gazings at sunsets and 
 other pastoral amusements of the place were 
 carried on in groups. Kingsmill had not 
 yet gone, and had come to look, by reason of 
 his flannel shirts and the deeper tan on his 
 face, increasingly piratical. Ethel had been 
 scrupulous in letting him see almost nothing 
 of her during the short time that her husband 
 had been away ; but Kingsmill was pleased 
 with the changed condition of things, be 
 cause he perceived that she was much 
 
1 82 AN ECHO OF PASSION, 
 
 happier as a consequence of it. For some 
 days everything went on peacefully, and 
 without furnishing material for Mrs. Dad- 
 mun, who finally took her leave, with a 
 conviction that she would not be needed 
 for any terrible crisis. 
 
 But Fenn was still irritated and defiant ; 
 and it must be added that when the old 
 confidence and safety seemed to have been 
 restored to them Ethel became less pensive, 
 less haunted by thoughts of a possible sac 
 rifice, and their usual abrupt collisions of 
 ideas began again. 
 
 They went with Mr. Evans and Anice, one 
 Sunday evening, to the Orthodox church. 
 A wave of warmer weather had reached 
 these Massachusetts hills from the central 
 furnace of the West, and the night had more 
 of midsummer than of autumn in it. Fenn 
 sat lazily observing the interior of the meet 
 ing-house, with its empty walls, its pews 
 filled with a straggling congregation, among 
 whom were young women of the neighbour 
 hood, marked by a singular variation in 
 degrees of style as to costume ; and elder 
 people, in all stages of weather-beaten 
 vicissitude ; with here and there a hearty 
 farmer in his prime, and a few youths in 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 183 
 
 uneasy black suits. The shuttered windows 
 made dark spaces on the walls, in the dim 
 light of a few oil-lamps ; but the sashes 
 being raised, the hot, unquiet chirring of 
 the grass insects could be heard from with 
 out. Two long stove-pipes, black and bony, 
 with numerous elbows, made their way on 
 either side from the front wall of the church 
 to the rear one, and suddenly dived into it 
 near the pulpit, as if the serpent of sin 
 had been making plunges at the minister, 
 and had been effectually trapped by acci 
 dentally sticking his fangs into the lath and 
 plaster. On a table just below the pulpit 
 were a few additional hand-lamps ; and a 
 very bent old man with a cane obtained one 
 of them, which he carried back into the 
 central body of the pews, w T here it irra 
 diated his hymn-book and several ancient 
 faces near his own with a ghastly shine. 
 The whole scene struck Fenn as unneces 
 sarily dismal ; and when the minister had 
 risen and read out the first hymn, there 
 was a long pause, no music being provided. 
 At last the grey-haired preacher appealed 
 from the silence. 
 
 "Will some one lead the tune?" he re 
 quested. 
 
184 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 Another pause, worse than the first, 
 ensued ; but, just as Fenn was struggling to 
 repress a desire to laugh, Anice s voice rose, 
 easily and with measured volume, giving 
 the quaint melody. Fenn was annoyed at 
 his own boyish levity, and in a moment fol 
 lowed her with a clear but not very forcible 
 baritone. Ethel joined too ; but from all 
 around them there was heard an odd 
 jangling of inharmonious notes, like the 
 twanging of disordered piano-strings. There 
 were a few good singers, nearly lost in the 
 lagging mass of false tones. The old bent 
 man with the lamp supplied a deep bass, 
 which he exercised with bold originality. 
 He avoided all the needless difficulties of 
 counterpoint by striking at once the note 
 next to the lowest in his register (if he had 
 a register), and remaining steadily poised 
 upon it, except when a whim of genius 
 prompted him to descend for a moment to 
 the note which was absolutely his lowest. 
 
 Notwithstanding these choral peculi 
 arities, Fenn was exalted by the song. 
 Anice s "voice rose and fell without perturba 
 tion from the stumbling efforts of the 
 congregation : it was full of peace, and 
 though she carefully reserved its power, it 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 185 
 
 seemed to take the melody to itself involun 
 tarily, gathering up all that was best in the 
 chant from different parts of the room, and 
 incorporating these strains with its own 
 resonance. The bleak and sordid interior 
 no longer obtruded itself on Fenn. The 
 place settled itself into propriety before his 
 eyes, under the influence of Anice s singing. 
 
 The preacher came to his sermon. He 
 was a hard-headed, practical man, accus 
 tomed to the exactions of a shrewd farming 
 population, and had a bargaining way of 
 putting things to his hearers. He held his 
 chin slightly forward, and nodded his head 
 in a sharp manner when he made his chief 
 points, as if dickering. He evidently 
 thinks," was Fenn s inward commentary, 
 * that if he is to make any of us sharers in 
 the kingdom of heaven it must be done on 
 close trading principles." It will be seen 
 that he was not profoundly moved by the 
 divine ; and under the influence of the 
 sermon, the meeting-house rapidly resumed 
 its unbeautiful aspect, and the smell of 
 kerosene from the lamps became painfully 
 noticeable. 
 
 Once more that impression was removed, 
 when another hymn was sung. This time 
 
1 86 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 the melody bore him away in thought to the 
 church at Little Falls. 
 
 It was a strange thing that the voices of 
 these three persons Ethel, Anice, and 
 Fenn should be blended in a religious 
 chant. It would have seemed still stranger, 
 had it been known to those who heard them, 
 that Fenn was at that moment thinking of 
 the time when he had sat with Anice and 
 her father in another house of prayer, listen 
 ing to the warm breeze in the horse-chest 
 nuts ; that time when he had been strongly 
 moved to place himself at her feet as a 
 lover. 
 
 Another echo from that past ! It swept 
 over him with conquering sadness and un 
 rest. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 187 
 
 XII. 
 
 " WE shall probably stay until some time 
 in October," said Mr. Evans, as they walked 
 along the street together, after the service. 
 1 But as Mr. Fenn says you return to town 
 before many days, I propose to get up some 
 special excursion or picnic, by way of f clos 
 ing the season/ What do you say ? " 
 
 "It s a charming idea!" cried Ethel. 
 "Do you hear, Ben? It really seems so 
 mournful, giving up this lazy outdoor life, 
 and going back to the driving city." 
 
 " What sort of thing had you in mind, 
 father ? " asked Mrs. Eulow. 
 
 " Well, what do you say to an afternoon 
 tea at Temple Lake ? " 
 
 There was a reactionary silence. This 
 scheme was not strikingly novel. But 
 Anice suddenly suggested, "And return 
 by moonlight ? " which met with prompt 
 approval from Ethel and Fenn. 
 
 "The moon rises early now," said the 
 chemist. 
 
1 88 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 I don t know about the wisdom of that, " 
 Mr. Evans rejoined, growing prudent. 
 " I m afraid you will all catch colds." He 
 was thinking it highly probable that he 
 should catch cold himself. 
 
 But the moonshine having once got into 
 the project could not be got out again, and 
 he was compelled to submit. 
 
 Arrangements were made the next day, 
 and as the moon would soon have changed 
 its hour of rising, they determined to go 
 that afternoon. The Pincotts, Kingsmill, 
 Miss Ibbot and Miss Hamill, and a number 
 of others, were invited, making nearly 
 twenty in all. Mr. Evans had copious 
 hampers prepared, into which most of his 
 remaining champagne was put, and there 
 was much hurly-burly in effecting a dis 
 tribution of the merry-makers among the 
 several equipages. Kingsmill, Anice, and 
 Fenn found it best that they should ride, 
 but Ethel thought the trip too long for her 
 to take in the saddle. 
 
 They started early, and the whole thing 
 passed off successfully. Some of the young 
 men entered into an impromptu boat-race 
 on the lake ; then Pincott hastily organised 
 a dramatic troupe, and gave a small charade 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 189 
 
 entertainment under the trees, with cos 
 tumes improvised from variegated wraps, 
 and a curtain of thick-leaved boughs held 
 up by his two boys between the trunks of 
 two trees. And lastly they sat down by the 
 lake-beach, lit some small fires on the sand, 
 and sang in chorus, while the moon rose 
 and gradually wrought a mysterious change 
 on them and everything around them ; so 
 that it might have been imagined they were 
 not the same people who had come from the 
 Institute, but had imperceptibly altered 
 into a more romantic sort, existing in a 
 world of dusk- dimmed silver. 
 
 I think we may as well start on, " said 
 Fenn to Anice, when they were all getting 
 ready to go back. The carriages were being 
 packed, and this process was tedious to the 
 equestrians, whose horses were restive. 
 
 "Very well. Where is Mr. Kings - 
 mill?" 
 
 "Here I am," said the heir, trotting up 
 from behind the carriages. * Some of them 
 are going back by the other road, around 
 by the old tannery, you know. Wouldn t 
 that be better?" 
 
 " It is much farther," objected Anice. 
 
 "Well, I must leave you, then. I pro- 
 
I9O AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 mised them." Kingsmill moved away on 
 his horse. 
 
 Anice had begun to follow. 
 
 " You will be tired out if you go by that 
 road," said Fenn, coming up beside her. 
 "Let us go on." He thought she was re 
 luctant for a moment ; but in the next she 
 turned Star s head without debate. Ethel 
 was to drive with Mr. Evans : Fenn rode up 
 and ascertained that they were coming by 
 the usual road ; then Anice and he set off. 
 
 Was that transformation of the moon 
 light something more than a fantasy ? As 
 they flew forward under the moon, with 
 large stars waiting for them in advance, 
 just above the sweep of the hills, Fenn was 
 imbued with a kind of illusion that they 
 had been released for the time being from 
 their ordinary selves, and were gliding into 
 some other phase less sharply denned, and 
 not hedged around with too many stubborn 
 realities. Yet he thought of how soon he 
 must cease to see Anice, and this lent a 
 poignancy to the pleasure of the ride. It 
 recalled him to himself, and quickened into 
 more acute pain the dull heartache into 
 which the wrath that followed Reeves s at 
 tack had soon subsided. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. IQI 
 
 When they rode more slowly, they talked 
 of the beauty of the night and of incidents 
 at the picnic. The memories of both, how 
 ever, were busy with that day when they 
 had first ridden over this road ; and, through 
 the unseen agency that was always at work 
 between them, each was aware that the 
 other s thoughts were taking this direction. 
 
 We are getting very far ahead of the 
 rest," said Anice, as they ascended one of 
 the many rises they had to traverse. Let s 
 stop a moment and listen. " 
 
 They reined in, and gazed back over the 
 lower ground. The road was empty ; the 
 moonlight looked as if it had lain for ever on 
 the woods and passive earth, and as if it 
 would never go away. Transient as it is, 
 there is more of eternity in this calm illumi 
 nation than in the swift and stimulating 
 light of the sun. Fenn thought, " What if 
 we two were to be stricken by some lasting 
 change, here in this pale light, and kept 
 together for ever in it, dead, or mute and 
 blind, yet conscious of our companion 
 ship ! " It was an unearthly fancy, but his 
 heart throbbed warmly and fiercely under 
 it. He felt an insatiable desire for some 
 isolating fate which should separate them 
 
192 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 from everybody else. Yet there was a some 
 thing within him that remonstrated against 
 this desire : for an instant, he even felt the 
 despair of a drowning man, and struggled 
 within himself for something to hold by and 
 keep himself from being drawn under. In 
 vain! 
 
 Such silence was in the air that they 
 could hear the whistle of a locomotive at 
 some great distance, so far that it was 
 hardly louder than the coo of a bird. But 
 nearer and slighter sounds from the road 
 they had been travelling, as is sometimes 
 the case, did not reach them. 
 
 " It is strange," said Fenn, in a dry tone 
 that gave no hint of what was going on in 
 his mind, " that we don t hear them coming." 
 
 "Very," said Anice. "How fresh and 
 sweet it is here ! " 
 
 Their voices sounded cold in the moon 
 light. 
 
 "Ah, what was that? Isn t it the car 
 riages ? " 
 
 A faint rumbling of the vehicles could be 
 detected. "Yes; that s they at last," 
 assented Fenn, and immediately touched 
 his horse. 
 
 They did not wait again, and when they 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 193 
 
 entered the village they were far in advance. 
 As they came up the hill to the junction 
 of roads which formed an irregular common 
 among the houses, some men moving across 
 this space, with their legs very black against 
 the moonlight, presented a queer appearance. 
 
 "Up so far above us, they look like in 
 sects crawling on the top of the hill," Fenn 
 observed ; and Anice laughed. They tried to 
 put themselves at ease, with trifles of this sort. 
 
 He accompanied her at a light trot to the 
 farm-house, where Star was housed by the 
 man, and Fenn s grey hitched in the barn. 
 "I shall wait here," Fenn had explained, 
 " until Mr. Evans comes. I don t like to 
 leave you quite alone." 
 
 " Let us go around into the garden, then, r 
 said Anice. "There are some seats, and it 
 will be pleasanter there." She was nervous 
 at being thus thrown passively alone with 
 him, and fancied that going into the house 
 would increase her constraint. 
 
 The garden lay in an angle between the 
 house and the bank formed by the cutting 
 of the hillside. There were trees here and 
 there ; among them one that was dead ; and 
 their shadows fell with soft abundance on 
 the brightly flooded paths and beds. 
 
194 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 "This is where you found those flower- 
 pods that you sent me ? " he asked. It was 
 the first allusion he had made to them. 
 
 "Yes," she replied, her voice coming much 
 fainter than she wished. She would have 
 offered some remark to divert him, but her 
 wit failed her. 
 
 Fenn stopped abruptly. They were 
 under the shadow of the dead tree. 
 
 1 I cannot be bound by that symbol, " he 
 declared, with resistless impetuosity. " I 
 have thrown those skeletons of flowers away, 
 for my honesty is more than a common one ; 
 and before I go I must speak." She drew 
 back, terrified ; but he went on crying, 
 ; No, no ! Anice Aiiice ! don t judge me 
 as you would other men. There is some 
 fate upon me ; I don t know what ; I cannot 
 resist it. Oh, I have tried ! But the passion 
 that was beginning and never had free play, 
 when I knew you so long ago, has come 
 again, and will not be stifled. I love you, 
 Anice ! You cannot tell me of faiths and 
 duties. I only know this one thing, and it 
 is truer than all others. " 
 
 "This is cowardly," she gasped, when 
 she could. " It is unworthy of you." 
 
 "No, it is not cowardly," he answered, pale 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 195 
 
 and determined. " It is braver than to keep 
 a lying face,. Have you not seen, have we 
 not both known for weeks what was growing 
 up around us ? And is it better to part, with 
 that knowledge smouldering in us, than to 
 face it and speak of it faithfully ? " 
 
 She collected all her force, and said coldly, 
 " If you knew this, you should have gone 
 away long ago, never to see me on earth 
 again. And will you tell me what you think 
 is to be gained by declaring to me now a love 
 that dishonours us all ? It is a sin against 
 yourself, and an unpardonable wrong to me." 
 
 He looked at her in rigid silence. " You 
 may deceive yourself, " he said ; but you 
 cannot me. You know well, very well, 
 the power you have had over me. I fancied 
 it was a thing that could be turned into 
 some new kind of devotion, like that we 
 talked of. But you saw how it was over 
 coming me, and you forbade me to see you 
 again. Why do you accuse me, when you 
 had it all in your hands, and allowed our 
 acquaintance to continue ? " 
 
 " Because I trusted you, and wished you 
 well," Anice returned, with less firmness. 
 Then, seeing that the only hope was in an 
 immediate parting, she added, "I shall not 
 
1 96 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 leave this garden, Mr. Fenn. It is for you 
 to go ! " She pointed commandingly towards 
 the entrance by which they had come in. 
 
 For an instant all his strength forsook him. 
 Then he burst into a fierce, broken laugh. 
 
 "I understand at last," he said, with a 
 bitter intensity she had never even dreamed 
 of. " You have taken a terrific and skilful 
 vengeance. Out of resentment for a clumsy, 
 boyish mistake, you have deliberately ruined 
 a man s heart, and made him put his honour 
 in the dust before you. Yes, I ll go." He 
 turned, so dizzy that he could hardly see the 
 path, and began to move away. 
 
 There was a moment of passionate effort 
 on her part to repress the storm within her 
 self ; but as she beheld him receding she 
 yielded, and made a detaining gesture. He 
 saw it, and came back rapidly. 
 
 "Am I wrong?" he cried, searching her 
 face. "You felt more than that ; you you 
 loved ! Tell me it was so." 
 
 She tried to steady herself by putting her 
 hands out into the air. Then she gasped, 
 "No no !" 
 
 "You did not?" he repeated. 
 
 But she could no longer reply. She was 
 on the point of falling ; and with an instinct 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. IQ7 
 
 of protection he stretched out his arms, 
 almost enfolding her in them. As they 
 stood thus for an instant, the shadow of the 
 dead tree lay motionless upon them, and the 
 icy moonlight around gave visible bounds to 
 that isolation for which he had so lately 
 wished. 
 
 She had confessed nothing ; but at that 
 instant Fenn felt that all had been confessed 
 between them. He saw, with a pity that 
 wrung his heart, what her struggle had 
 been ; and remorse struck through him like 
 a sword, for his own sin against Ethel, and 
 for the attitude into which he had forced 
 this woman who stood with him here. Was 
 this the joy of liberation he had looked for 
 ward to ? 
 
 Anice recovered herself at once. She 
 drew away from his contact, and held on to 
 the bench near at hand. "This will kill 
 me ! " she was moaning, like one only half 
 conscious, "All these years No ; oh no ! 
 You must leave me instantly. For Ethel s 
 sake go ; go ! Tell her all you have said, 
 everything." 
 
 "Thank God, Anice, you are nobler than 
 I ! " Uttering these words with lips that 
 seemed chilled by a frost, he fled. 
 
198 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 UP the bank and through the fields satu 
 rated with a cold dew, he hurried, flying 
 and stumbling, forgetting the horse he had 
 left tied in the barn ; and only when he 
 reached the old arbour, with its early-flam 
 ing woodbines looking ashen in the light of 
 the moon, he paused, and strove to collect 
 his senses. 
 
 When he came into the hotel, those who 
 saw him wondered at the breathless and ex 
 hausted appearance about his face, ordina 
 rily so strong and composed and glowing 
 with healthy colour ; but they attributed it 
 to anxiety, for his first words were an in 
 quiry about his wife. 
 
 "No, she hasn t come back," answered 
 one of the ladies of the lake party, who had 
 returned, as he stood with his hand on the 
 stair-rail, about to go up and look for her in 
 their room. 
 
 "That s strange. What road did you 
 come by, the tannery ? " he asked her. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 1 99 
 
 " No ; the usual one." 
 
 " And you didn t see her, driving with 
 Mr. Evans ? " 
 
 " No. They were behind us, I think." 
 
 Fenn went on into the empty sitting-room, 
 where the over-fatigued piano stood, with 
 its cover thrown back as usual, and exposing 
 the perpetual grin of its white keys. He 
 was at a loss to understand Ethel s failure 
 to arrive. Time enough had passed, he 
 thought, for them to make up the distance 
 by which Anice and he had outstripped 
 them, and Mr. Evans would naturally bring 
 Ethel to the Institute first. 
 
 Some newspapers were lying on a side- 
 table, and he picked up one, thinking to 
 allay his feverishness and divert a growing 
 anxiety about his wife. The first paragraph 
 that took his notice was one which recorded 
 with business-like vigour the pursuit and 
 arrest of a man who had abandoned his wife 
 and attempted an elopement. He threw the 
 sheet down in disgust. " Great heaven ! 
 what have I not been saved from?" he mut 
 tered, as he went out. He knew, from the 
 shock of remorse that had pierced him there 
 in the garden, what a frightful deception he 
 had subjected himself to. He had not in- 
 
200 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 tended, at the worst, to do what this man 
 in the newspaper was guilty of ; his original 
 plan of flight, which he had been on the 
 point of broaching to-night, had conformed 
 to a species of propriety. Anice and he were 
 to disappear separately ; they were to wait 
 till he could obtain a release from his legal 
 ties ; or, he had even said to himself that if 
 he could only offer her his devotion unre 
 strainedly, and live near her, seeing her every 
 day, no other step should be taken. But 
 now all this plausible refinement settled 
 down, in his view, to the vulgar level of the 
 criminal he had just read about. His limbs 
 shook with the horror in which he held him 
 self, at recognising what he had been drift 
 ing to. He wished that he might be torn 
 in pieces, annihilated. But he saw that his 
 punishment was worse than that : it lay in 
 continuing to breathe and being forced to 
 contemplate himself. 
 
 One of the young men sitting on the colon 
 nade suggested that perhaps Mr. Evans had 
 changed his mind after starting, and had 
 turned off on to the tannery road. This 
 afforded Fenn a slight relief ; but he went 
 on pacing up and down, his mind busy with 
 possible catastrophes, an attack by tramps, 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 2OI 
 
 a runaway, a broken bridge, or something 
 else that he could not imagine. It occurred 
 to him to go back for his horse and ride out 
 along the regular road, to meet the belated 
 team ; but the bare possibility that Mr. 
 Evans might have taken the other route 
 overruled this plan. He had come to the 
 point when to have Ethel arrive while he 
 should be out searching for her would be an 
 additional distress, of which he did not want 
 to run the risk. By a considerable effort, 
 however, he decided to go over to Pincott s, 
 and ask questions there. 
 
 " Oh, they must have gone the other way," 
 the artist s wife said, confidently. "Don t 
 look so worried, Mr. Fenn. I don t believe 
 anything has happened." 
 
 He thanked her, and went back to the 
 hotel, saying that it was very likely she was 
 there even now. But she had not come. It 
 was growing late, and the boarders who had 
 not retired gave all their attention to the 
 source of his alarm. 
 
 * Miss Hamill has just gone up-stairs,"^the 
 same young man informed him who had 
 before offered a hint. " She came by the 
 tannery, and says Mr. Kingsmill left them, 
 and trotted back to join Mr. Evans s car- 
 
202 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 riage ; and he hasn t come back yet. So it 
 must be all right. " 
 
 "Oh," said Fenn, with an air of being 
 obliged. But the news excited still more 
 apprehension in his mind. 
 
 Thinking that he was giving his nervous 
 ness too much prominence, he went out into 
 the road, and walked quickly towards the 
 point where the carriage must enter the vil 
 lage if it had not followed in the course he 
 had taken with Anice. Kingsmill s absence 
 filled him with a sickening dream of w T hat 
 his condition might have been if this rich 
 young man had drawn Ethel into any such 
 insane bewilderment as that in which he 
 himself had so lately stood with Anice. 
 Fortunately, that had not happened, and 
 Mr. Evans s being with Ethel prevented his 
 conjuring up any phantasm of jealousy ; but 
 he felt a vague, unreasoning anger against 
 Kingsmill for being away with Ethel at this 
 crisis. 
 
 He stood still in the street, and noticed 
 all at once that the moonlight had nearly 
 waned, the weird illumination which, an 
 hour or two before, had seemed so perma 
 nent. It gave him a bitter satisfaction to 
 think how his madness had crumbled and 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 203 
 
 slipped away with it. A huge field of cloud 
 was rising, and had swallowed half the stars. 
 
 " my God ! If I should never see 
 Ethel again? What if some accident has 
 happened, from which she will die ? " 
 
 This was the cry in his heart. 
 
 A horse and rider springing out of the 
 feeble light a little way off, and dashing by, 
 roused him. It had been but a flash, but 
 the face of Kingsmill seemed to be printed 
 on the night air, and to be lingering behind 
 like a vision, while the rider swept on. 
 
 Fenn ran after him towards the hotel, at 
 his greatest speed. The young man was 
 there already, dismounted, quivering with 
 excitement, and talking to a little dusky 
 group of men. 
 
 " What is it ? " cried Fenn, with an awful 
 fear, as the others fell back before him. 
 
 " There has been an accident," said Kings- 
 mill, rapidly. 
 
 Where ? Tell me where ? 
 
 " The railroad crossing " 
 
 " Is she killed ? " The words burst from 
 Fenn like the red drops that spurt from a 
 knife-thrust. 
 
 " She was not badly hurt," said Kingsmill. 
 " The cars struck them just as they had got 
 
204 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 over, and they were thrown out. But some 
 people are taking care of them." 
 
 " I must go !" cried Fenn, wildly, rushing 
 to get Kingsmill s horse, which was being 
 led away. 
 
 "Not that one!" exclaimed the owner. 
 " I have a fresh one in the stable." 
 
 There was a sharp scurry to saddle the 
 fresh steed, and just as Fenn put his foot 
 in the stirrup the farmer from Mr. Evans s 
 came up with the tired grey and a message 
 from Anice, who had also become alarmed. 
 
 " For God s sake, go and tell her, Kings - 
 mill !" shouted Fenn, mounting. 
 
 The next instant his horse had shot away, 
 under spur, for the tannery road. 
 
 It was a solemn group that wound up the 
 highway from the railroad crossing, coming 
 back. 
 
 By the time the wagon that had been 
 obtained was ready to start, Anice, also, 
 had arrived on horseback ; and the two 
 mounted figures moved at a funereal pace 
 beside the cart. Ethel had fainted at first, 
 but was restored ; and, unless she had suf 
 fered internal hurt, was judged to be the 
 worse only for a few bruises. Mr. Evans 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 2O$ 
 
 had not come off so well. He had a broken 
 arm, and was prostrated by the shock he 
 had sustained. His light carriage was left 
 behind, a partial wreck, and the borrowed 
 wagon had to proceed slowly, in order to 
 avoid possible injury to the sufferer. 
 
 Fenn and Anice did not exchange a word, 
 but both were lost in wonder at the chance 
 that had thus brought them together again 
 on this same night, under such altered con 
 ditions. From time to time Fenn, bringing 
 his horse close to the wheels on Ethel s side, 
 spoke some low word of inquiry or soothing, 
 as indistinguishable to any but her ear as 
 the murmur of the night breeze in the pines. 
 Sometimes, when he fell back and watched 
 the muffled forms reclining in the wagon, 
 a picture presented itself to him in which 
 he saw Ethel as she might have been, motion 
 less and darkly covered, and insensible to 
 the jolting of the springs, a picture of the 
 dead being brought home silently from the 
 place of her death ; and then he would turn 
 away and curse himself, in the midst of a 
 mute thanksgiving. 
 
 The chemist sat by his wife all night and 
 watched, while she slept, after many vain 
 attempts. In the morning, the physician 
 
206 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 who had been telegraphed for from a dis 
 tance arrived, and pronounced with some 
 confidence that she had no unseen injuries. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon that Fenn 
 knelt by his wife s bed, while a soft light 
 from the fading west pervaded the room. 
 Seeing that she was strong and recovered, 
 he spoke: "Ethel, I cannot put off any 
 longer the confession I must make of the 
 wrong that has been in my heart these last 
 few weeks." 
 
 "I have been afraid," she answered calmly. 
 " Oh yes, I knew ; " and the tears rose in 
 her eyes. But I must not hear it. I can 
 not." 
 
 The blood mounted to his face. "How 
 despicable I am?" he groaned. "But you 
 don t know all, Ethel. You cannot know 
 that I told her" 
 
 She covered her face with her hands, cry 
 ing, " Oh, why must I believe this ! Why 
 can t I forget it all, pretend that I did not 
 see?" Then, with a hot beating in her 
 temples, she took away her hands, and said 
 with forced deliberation, "Never tell me 
 any more. I cannot promise to be the 
 same to you or to hold you so ; but_ I 
 will hear nothing. Only tell me, did you 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSION. 207 
 
 mean to do me a wrong ? Are you true to 
 
 me?" 
 
 "The wrong," he replied, "was a mad 
 ness, an infatuation. That was all. But I 
 am not fit, now, even to say I am true to 
 you." He lifted his eyes to hers. 
 
 She looked into them with a calm, just 
 scrutiny; and Fenn thought that he knew 
 what the light in the recording angel s eyes 
 must be like. But it was only the glance of 
 a tender woman possessing deep intuitions. 
 She said at length : "I will believe in you." 
 
 Ethel put her hand upon his head, with a 
 touch so simple and gentle that it was the 
 best of benedictions. 
 
 He had held, once, that there was a pecu 
 liar mystery about Anice, and the belief 
 had made her the more dangerously fasci 
 nating. Ethel was transparent enough, ex 
 teriorly ; but the mystery of her nature lay 
 deeper down, and he was only just begin 
 ning to apprehend it. The quality in Anice 
 served merely as a unit of measure for its 
 larger presence in Ethel. Kneeling here 
 before his wife, with too much humility in 
 him even to put his lips to hers, Fenn saw 
 that he was touching the mystery which is 
 profounder than intellectual choice ; which 
 
208 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 diffuses itself through earth and heaven, 
 and solves all but explains nothing, pure 
 love. 
 
 They went on living. That is generally 
 the way with people. 
 
 If we were constructing an ideal drama 
 from their lives, it might be said that 
 Fenn s punishment was too light ; but we 
 do not altogether know what that punish 
 ment was. Fenn and Ethel grew better, 
 though I will not say happier. For, in 
 opposition to formal moralists, I maintain 
 that people are often less happy as they 
 grow better. Something, indeed, had gone 
 from their lives, which would never come 
 again ; but Ethel s great love and generosity 
 restored Fenn s self-respect as far as any 
 thing could restore it. The highest that 
 remained to him was so to live every day 
 as to become worthier of her love. 
 
 Three years after the summer at Tanford, 
 when he had prospered and become part 
 owner in some profitable chemical works, 
 Ethel and Fenn, being in New York, un 
 expectedly encountered Mrs. Eulow at a 
 crowded evening reception. 
 
AN ECHO OF PASSIOX. 2OQ 
 
 " Does she sing as beautifully as ever ? " 
 Mrs. Fenn asked their hostess. 
 
 " More beautifully than ever, I believe," 
 was the answer. " But she can never be 
 induced to let us hear her ; at least, not in 
 companies. There are a few ladies to whom 
 she .has sung, and she will take part in a 
 charity concert very rarely. But if you 
 want to hear her, you must go to some of 
 the homes for poor children. She has 
 regular days which she gives to them, and 
 there she will pour out her voice for an hour 
 or two at a time." 
 
 " How singular ! " 
 
 * Yes, it is very eccentric. But since her 
 father died she spends more of her time 
 here, and has been devoted to good works. 
 She has entered into benefaction as a sort 
 of career, I fancy. Some of us predicted, 
 when she began, that she would be a failure, 
 she was not the sort of person. But we 
 were wrong. She seems to be completely 
 in earnest, and does a great deal of good." 
 
 When Fenn heard this, he remembered 
 what had been said by Anice so long ago, 
 that she wanted him to put purpose into 
 her life, and that to have a career she must 
 make a sacrifice. Her sacrifice had been the 
 o 
 
210 AN ECHO OF PASSION. 
 
 relinquishing of her destructive power over 
 him. Her purpose? It gave him a very 
 strange feeling to reflect that in this, too, he 
 had aided, without his will ; for her devo 
 tion to merciful deeds certainly implied a 
 memory of him which shut out for her any 
 further seeking after personal happiness. 
 
 He stood a little way from Ethel, and 
 when Mrs. Eulow came by, simply dressed 
 in black, she bowed to him in passing. In 
 her eyes there was a light of conquest, but 
 it was of conquest over herself. To Ethel, 
 also, she bowed. " I am just going," she 
 said, with a slight quivering in the tone, 
 and the glance with which she accompanied 
 this was one of melancholy and appeal ; yet 
 it was trustful. Ethel saw in it something 
 which meant, " You at least are a woman 
 who can forgive a woman, and you under 
 stand me." 
 
 Then, as the figure in black turned away, 
 Ethel responded gravely and sweetly, in a 
 way that satisfied the widow s appeal : 
 "Good-bye !" 
 
 CEtuntmrglj 23nibersttg 
 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY. 
 
An echo 
 
 of passion 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY