." / 
 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN 
 THE WORLDS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALICE BROWN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE PRISONER," "THE BLACK DROP," "BROMLEY 
 NEIGHBORHOOD," "THE FLYING TEUTON," ETC. 
 
 "The wind that blows between the worlds." 
 RUDYARD KIPLING. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1920 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPTBIGHT, 1920, 
 
 BY ALICE BROWN. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published June, igao. 
 
 Nortoooti 
 
 J. S. Cashing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 * O v > 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE 
 WORLDS 
 
 MRS. PETER HARVEY came down at ten o clock in the 
 morning of this winter day of the Boston of 1918, to the 
 second floor sitting-room which was especially hers, and, 
 early though it was, she found her mother, Madam 
 Brooke, a small woman of something over eighty, there 
 before her. Mrs. Harvey, who also was small, with a 
 plump abundance of delicate flesh, her pink face mas 
 saged to the extreme of scientific art unremittingly pur 
 sued, her shining white hair waved in a perfection that 
 flouted nature, hurried up to her mother sitting there by 
 the fire, a table with book, glass and handkerchief at her 
 side, and kissed her soft cheek. 
 
 " Darling," said she, " what does make you get up so 
 early? " 
 
 Madam Brooke owed nothing to massage, beguiling 
 gloss out of a bottle or the best of pink powder. She 
 was, though much given to laces and soft fabrics hung 
 with the faintest garden scent, an old-fashioned old 
 woman, very sweet, from her wholesome habits, but bor 
 rowing nothing from the expedients of age not yet accom 
 modated to itself. She was as different from even a sug 
 gestion of youth as an exquisitely modeled seed vessel, 
 with gossamer wings to carry it in capricious yet decreed 
 wanderings on strong winds, is from the flower that 
 bloomed to make the seed or that other flower, its child. 
 
 B 1 
 
THE W*N:b : ^BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 her da urter^er^ much alike in their delicacy 
 of type, only that Mrs. Harvey had taken on veil after 
 veil of the soft flesh that is so beautifying in its first insid 
 ious advent, and her mother had shrunk to slenderest con 
 tours. They had the same blue of the eyes, the abundant 
 fine white hair, the sweetness of curved lips. But the 
 few deep lines of the older woman s face made a map 
 where you travelled to keener decisions, more unfailing 
 rigors of judgment than you would look for in her daugh 
 ter; her nose was more decidedly aquiline and she had 
 the stronger chin. Perhaps the similarity of their outer 
 lives might have moulded them to some identity of like 
 ness, the winters in Boston, the summers abroad or at 
 their sea-coast home; but it had done nothing of the sort. 
 They were ineradicably different, alike in nothing save 
 that they were gentlewomen, generous, self -forgetful, 
 kind, but exercising even these salient qualities in ways 
 so diverse that in Mrs. Harvey they sometimes seemed 
 faults and in her mother deliberate naughtiness. At her 
 daughter s question Madam Brooke looked up, with a 
 quizzical interrogation of her own, but said nothing. 
 
 " I do like," said Mrs. Harvey, " to feel you re getting 
 your ten hours, at least. And last night you were late. 
 Susanne told me." 
 
 " Susanne s a tattler," said the old lady pleasantly. 
 " Yes, I was late. What was the use of going to bed? 
 I knew you d keep me awake." 
 
 " I? " said Mrs. Harvey, in a perfect surprise. She 
 took a step nearer the fireplace and set her beautifully 
 shod foot on the fender. " Why, I was down here every 
 minute with Miss Bixby." 
 
 " I knew you were. That s what kept me awake and 
 Peter in the library waiting till you d dismissed your 
 spooks and gone to bed." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 3 
 
 "Don t! " said her daughter, with a little unaffected 
 shiver of repudiation. " We were trying to get Philip." 
 
 " I m not including Philip, dear boy," said the old lady. 
 " You didn t get him, did you? " 
 
 " No," said the mother of the dead aviator, in a low 
 tone. " That is, I wasn t sure." 
 
 Her lower lip trembled. It had taken to trembling 
 since the news of Philip s death in France. Her mother, 
 with an inner apprehension of her own, had got into the 
 habit of watching for that trembling. She never could 
 help remembering that her sister Clarissa had these fits of 
 nervous tremor after the death of her husband, and that 
 she never quite got hold of herself again. But she 
 thought it salutary for her daughter to be drawn out of 
 her present habit of action by a robust insistence on the 
 facts of life as they appear in everyday dress. 
 
 " Whom did you get? " she inquired brusquely, in her 
 decisive voice piquingly deepened by a contralto note. 
 
 Her daughter hesitated. 
 
 "Uncle Edgar," she said, "Aunt Clarissa, father" 
 
 " That will do," said the old lady, with a sudden tremu- 
 lousness of her own, either anger or close kin to it. 
 " Don t you take your father s name in vain nor Sister 
 Clarissa s. I won t have it." 
 
 She spoke with authority, as if her daughter were a 
 little girl, and the daughter humbly accepted it. But 
 she did venture, after a minute: 
 
 " They say Philip is there with them. They all ay 
 the same." 
 
 " Then why doesn t Philip speak? " 
 
 " He is too tired. He hasn t recovered yet from his 
 going over." 
 
 " I ll tell you why he doesn t speak," said the old lady 
 fiercely. " Because that Miss Bixby of yours never aw 
 
4 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 him. She can perfectly well risk people that died twenty 
 years ago. But when she s been with you longer and 
 heard you talk about Philip more and gathered up every 
 word into her neat little brain, why, then Philip ll come, 
 too. She s a minx, that Bixby." 
 
 " Mother," said Mrs. Harvey desperately, " I don t 
 care what she is, so long as she can take a pencil and 
 write these wonderful things." 
 
 " They re not wonderful," said the old lady stubbornly. 
 " They re a kind of dribbling philosophy that s neither 
 here nor there. You sit down with your Bible, if you 
 want to read good things in good English, and stop pay 
 ing a girl for turning out this half-baked stuff by the 
 yard. If she s your secretary, let her be your secretary 
 and write your letters and hold her tongue." 
 
 Mrs. Harvey was much cast down. She looked like a 
 child who finds itself deprived of a harmless solace likely 
 to hurt no one. And that she said. 
 
 " If it s a comfort to me, mother, I don t see what harm 
 it does any one else." 
 
 " The whole atmosphere of this house has changed," 
 said her mother vigorously. Hitherto she had been si 
 lent, indicating her opinion of Miss Bixby s spiritual sec 
 retaryship by merely holding herself aloof. But now, 
 after mature deliberation, she had decided to speak, and 
 perhaps her argumentative cohorts rushed on the more 
 wildly for her sleepless night. " Peter and you might 
 remember he s your husband he s got some rights 
 he keeps himself shut up with his grief over Philip because 
 your way of taking it sets his teeth on edge." 
 
 " I never could have believed Peter would take it so 
 quietly." 
 
 The admission leaped from Isabel without her will. 
 It was one of the spectres in her own sleepless nights. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 5 
 
 " That s it," said the old lady. " You ve driven him out 
 of his mind with this spirit writing of yours. No wonder 
 he s as dumb as a fish." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Isabel, with a shade of unaccustomed 
 irony tingeing her soft voice. "Peter may be feeling 
 Philip s death, but he isn t out of his mind." 
 
 " No," said the old lady, with a different irony, one 
 sihe frankly adopted and used for what it was worth, 
 " he s not out of his mind. But you re on the road to 
 being. And if you don t hold your horses you ll what 
 is it Philip himself would say? you ll go dotty your 
 self. Lord! there s that girl." 
 
 Madam Brooke was exceedingly irritated when she 
 could run the risk of letting her daughter s secretary hear 
 herself called " that girl " with the tone of an imprecation. 
 But if Miss Bixby, entering, did hear, she gave no re 
 sponsive sign. She came in alert though subdued, the 
 perfect secretary, concentrated purpose and yet decent 
 readiness to take orders and obliterate all initiative of 
 her own. She was a small woman, white-faced, heavy- 
 browed, black-eyed, with a head made unsymmetrically 
 large by the quantity of fine shining black hair she evi 
 dently disposed to look as inconsiderable as she might, 
 and that yet showed its weight in every contour. She 
 Wore black, neat to the last point of care, and exquisitely 
 kept collar and cuffs. At first it had rather distressed 
 Mrs. Harvey to find she dressed like a maid, because she 
 thought it must indicate some mental repression that gave 
 the girl pain. But when Miss Bixby, with an air of not 
 finding the topic of any consequence, told her it was a 
 matter of economy, she rather liked it. For Mrs. Harvey 
 did, deep down in her kindly heart, love the ritual of 
 things. She found it soothing to have servitors defined, 
 just as she liked chapter headings in her novels. They 
 
6 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 told you without trouble where to begin and where to 
 leave off. 
 
 This room, perhaps sixteen feet square, had a large 
 mullioned window making a recess, and in the recess was 
 a good sized table, in an austere order of rolls of paper 
 and a pencil tray. This was the corner where she and 
 Miss Bixby sat hour after hour now, putting down com 
 munications from the skies by the hand, though not the 
 brain, Mrs. Harvey could swear, of Miss Bixby. It was 
 an ideal corner for work, commanding the room and all 
 who entered and yet, by reason of the recess, secluded, 
 and they had the window light by day and a perfectly 
 placed electric bulb after dark. These were its obvious 
 advantages; but Mrs. Harvey knew she had placed the 
 table just at that point because, from her seat, her eyes 
 looked into the pictured eyes of Philip, her son who had 
 died, from the big framed portrait over Miss Bixby s 
 head. Miss Bixby went on to the table and dallied 
 slightly with the position of paper and pencils. She had 
 left them in order last night, but one of her secretarial 
 virtues was not only inflexible insistence on leaving her 
 tools exactly disposed but the further precaution of run 
 ning them over as a pianist tries his keys, when she came 
 back to them again. 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Harvey, in a rather shaken voice that 
 drew a quick inquiring look from Miss Bixby, instantly 
 withdrawn, " we won t write this morning. I d like you 
 to go out and do a little shopping. The list is on my 
 dressing-table. I meant to go myself, but I " She 
 stopped there, turning her back on Miss Bixby, who 
 knew, in her accurate habit of getting at the inner mind 
 of the woman who was her daily bread, that there were 
 tears in her eyes as well as her voice. Madam Brooke 
 knew it, too, and when Miss Bixby had vanished out of 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 7 
 
 the room, in her noiseless way, she put out a thin lace- 
 veiled old hand and took a fold of her daughter s skirt. 
 She twitched it a little as an unregarded child might have 
 done. 
 
 " Made you cry, didn t I? " she said, in her deep-tontd 
 voice that showed an emotion of its own far more devas 
 tating than tears. " I s pose I m an old cat." 
 
 Mrs. Harvey patted at her eyes with a little ineffectual 
 handkerchief and smiled. 
 
 " I wish," she said, " you didn t think I m a fool." 
 
 "But you are, Isabel," returned her mother conclu 
 sively and also with renewed cheerfulness. She had 
 somewhat the feeling of a man over woman s tears. If 
 Isabel wasn t going to cry she could rally her some more. 
 But cry she mustn t; it was mean, unsportsmanlike. 
 " Isabel," she said, " it s pretty serious. You know you 
 didn t have one son only. You had two." 
 
 Isabel looked at her with an honest, questioning asaer- 
 tiveness. 
 
 " Of course I have two," she said. " Philip over 
 there in spirit life and Brooke on his way home." 
 
 " Sometimes it seems to me," said the old lady, feel 
 ing her way, " as if you d got so into the rut of trying to 
 hear from Philip that you ve forgotten Brooke." 
 
 "Forgotten Brooke?" Her daughter echoed it in 
 amazement. She was too surprised for rebuttal. " How 
 could I forget Brooke? " 
 
 " Well," said the old lady, watching her and thinking 
 she was perhaps making some headway into her closed 
 mind, " Brooke s alive. He s an aviator, too. And he s 
 escaped his awful perils and he s coming home. That s a 
 wonderful thing, Isabel. Flying in France and getting out 
 of it alive and coming home." 
 
 " Why, of course it is," breathed her daughter, still in 
 
8 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 a confusion of surprise. " Don t you suppose I m thank 
 ful Brooke s coming home? " 
 
 " Then why don t you talk about it? " insisted the old 
 lady. " Instead you sit down at that table and let that 
 Bixby creature write you things out of a trashy romance 
 and say your father my husband wrote them, about 
 Philip." 
 
 Isabel, seeing now how inadequately mother had un 
 derstood it all, became softly argumentative. 
 
 " But that, dear," said she, " is because Brooke is alive 
 and Philip is over there. " 
 
 " Don t say over there, " interjected the old lady, 
 with a sudden brutality startling even to herself. " Say 
 he s dead dear Philip, dear boy ! use the good old- 
 fashioned terms." 
 
 Isabel was hurt now beyond the power of soft words 
 to mollify, and her mother knew it. But in proportion 
 to Madam Brooke s exasperated remorse, it only made 
 her the more ruthless. She had a quick, deep nature that 
 was forever fighting down these softer impulses and try 
 ing, at all costs, to come at the realities of things. 
 
 "Don t you see, Isabel," she began, "that s what it 
 does to you to dabble in this unhealthy sort of business? 
 You don t get any nearer what you call over there/ and 
 you entirely unfit yourself for here. And whatever you 
 may think of this world, here you are now; and what do 
 you call yourself when you don t do the work of the place 
 where you re put? I know what Philip would call it. 
 A slacker! That s what Philip would say, Philip and 
 Brooke. A slacker, a quitter, that s what they d say." 
 
 " It is something to do for this world," said Isabel, in 
 a soft monotone of resistance. " Do you know any bigger 
 thing than proving spiritual communication between this 
 world and the next? Think of all the mothers 
 mother, how can you! " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 9 
 
 " And yet," said Madam Brooke astutely, " Brooke is 
 coming home. He s coming now. You expect him any 
 day." 
 
 " Why, yes," said Isabel a little wildly, as if something 
 had been proved against her at last. " Of course we 
 expect him." 
 
 " And yet you re not even going on to New York to 
 meet him. You re going to sit here watching that Bixby 
 write on wall paper." 
 
 " Well," said Isabel, leaping at an excuse, though she 
 knew and was crushed by the sudden realisation of it, 
 that deeply as she was moved by the thought of her son s 
 return she had not thought of meeting him, " Peter isn t 
 going either. He hasn t mentioned it." 
 
 " Mentioned it," mocked the old lady, now angry in 
 deed at such lack of comprehension of the man they had 
 both known for thirty years. " Do you suppose he d 
 mention it when you didn t, and let you think he d got 
 more heart than you? That s not Peter. I ve a good 
 mind to go on to New York myself. Only he d be bored 
 to death at having to take care of me. I m glad I didn t 
 invent old age. It must have been the devil." 
 
 And then came a diversion greatly needed. A girl s 
 young and resonant voice called from the doorway: 
 
 " May I come in? " 
 
II 
 
 THIS was Beatrice Hayden, an intimate of the family, 
 the familiar friend of Philip and of Brooke. The voice 
 told a little about her in advance, outwardly cool, with a 
 more than youthful self-possession never, from lack of a 
 fine decorum, leaping the border into assertiveness, a clear 
 eye for the values of life and an ordered precision in 
 maintaining them. She had the beauty flowered out of 
 the right kind of fine descent. An English girl she might 
 have been, long limbed, velvet cheeked, thin from an ath 
 letic hardness, with sweet blue eyes and a firm yet smil 
 ing mouth. Madam Brooke s eyes dwelt on her as if she 
 were a flower bordered spring in a dry land. 
 
 " Come along in," said she. " What do you mean by 
 staying away all day yesterday? " 
 
 Beatrice, entering, laughed and, though she was not for 
 ward with proffers of tenderness, kissed them both, for 
 they evidently expected it. She was dressed in gray with 
 gray furs. She completed the group beautifully. They 
 were very pleasing to the eye, three ladies in the gray 
 room. Then, seating herself at Mrs. Harvey s inviting 
 gesture, she looked from one to the other in doubtful 
 expectation. She had come with a definite purpose. That 
 was evident. And it was like her to begin at once, with 
 no indirection. 
 
 " I saw by the paper," she said, " you may expect 
 Brooke." 
 
 " At once," announced Brooke s grandmother with em- 
 
 10 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 11 
 
 phasis, as if she had to insist on it when there was so much 
 wobbling over the return of living sons. Her daughter 
 commented with a little involuntary sigh, and Madam 
 Brooke was glad to hear it. Sometimes, like all men and 
 women of a mind like a sharp-edged sword, she was a 
 little cruel to less definite minds. Now a deeper flush 
 came into Beatrice s cheeks and her eyes dilated in a 
 way they had, startling you with the vividness of their 
 added beauty. But their gaze did not waver in the min 
 ute while she pondered just what she should say and how 
 to say it. Meantime Isabel had proffered gently, as a 
 way of telling her how dear she was to them, how imme 
 diate to their hearts: 
 
 " You ll run over, Bee? We ll telephone you when we 
 know more definitely. I d like you to be here when he 
 comes." 
 
 That gave Beatrice the opening she needed. She 
 laughed a little and this with some indication of embar 
 rassment. 
 
 " No, Mrs. Harvey," she said. " It s dear of you, but 
 I won t come over. And what I really came now to ask 
 you is, don t mention me to Brooke." 
 
 Grandmother looked at her with a sudden keen glance, 
 but Mrs. Harvey said impetuously: 
 
 " We shouldn t have time to mention you. He ll ask 
 for you the first thing." 
 
 Beatrice accepted that gravely, and passed on to the 
 next step of her argument. 
 
 " Yes, of course he ll ask for me. But don t speak of 
 me in connection with Philip." 
 
 Madam Brooke nodded. 
 
 " I see," she said. " That is, I guess I do. You want 
 to begin with Brooke where you left off. You don t 
 mean to bring up any of the things we ve got hold of 
 
12 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 since Phil died. He s got to catch on first. That s what 
 he d say. You d rather we d go into it with him first, and 
 tell him " 
 
 She hesitated, and Isabel went on as if she were adjust 
 ing something for the girl, burying the outlines of it under 
 layers of soft affection. 
 
 " Yes, of course we should tell him you re one of the 
 family now and have been ever since that day " 
 
 " The day the news came about Phil," said Beatrice, 
 " and I went to pieces in this very room and you saw how 
 I felt about him." She said it with a perfect composure 
 of voice and look. And yet the next sentence came im 
 petuously, and her eyes were wet. " Oh, haven t you 
 been good to me, all you Phil s folks ! If I d really known 
 he liked me " here she hesitated and went over the 
 jolt bravely "if he d said it before he went and left 
 me well, as I wish he had if we d thought more about 
 such things anyway ! " 
 
 She ended with a dash of brave audacity. 
 
 " If you d been married," said Madam Brooke. " Yes, 
 that would have been the way. But it s just as I told 
 you, just like Phil, like Brooke, too. Dear darling fools, 
 both of them, born romancers and not finding the road 
 other men take till they ve stumbled and picked them 
 selves up a dozen times and banged their noses and their 
 shins. Isabel, I don t see where you got two such scat 
 ter-brains. You re commonplace enough. So m I. So s 
 Peter. No," she added, with an afterthought, " Peter s 
 a little queer himself, though he keeps it under pretty 
 well." 
 
 " I believe," said Beatrice, with a little smile, her trib 
 ute to their unexcelled dearness, " you meant just what 
 you said, that first day, when you asked me to throw over 
 Auntie and come here and live." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 13 
 
 " We certainly did mean it," said Isabel. She had pos 
 sessed herself of the girl s hand. " That s one reason why 
 I m so anxious to get a satisfactory message from Phil. 
 He must have something to say " 
 
 She stopped, for Beatrice had winced and, with the 
 slightest involuntary movement, freed her hand. Isabel 
 Harvey, in her own immediate household, was surrounded 
 by the unbelieving. 
 
 " But," Madam Brooke began, " aren t you cutting it a 
 little bit fine, this leaving Brooke in the dark? He knew 
 Phil as well as if they d been twins. They don t look so 
 much alike for nothing. He knew just what sort of a 
 dreamy, unpractical lad the lad was, and that he could 
 have loved a girl down to the ground " 
 
 " Yes, Bee, I m sure he did love you," interrupted Isa 
 bel, " now I think back." 
 
 " And not say a word to her when he went away. 
 Brooke s the last person not to understand." 
 
 " Oh, he d understand," said Beatrice, " old Brooke. 
 Only Brooke s dreamy, too, Brooke s imaginative, though 
 it s in another fashion." She gazed at them intently, a 
 beautiful look of frowning earnestness. She hoped to 
 impress them with her view of the event. " I want you 
 to promise not to talk to Brooke about me. I don t want 
 him to be influenced into taking your attitude. I don t 
 want him to say, They ve adopted Bee for their daugh 
 ter because they think Phil was in love with her. For 
 he d come into the combine like a shot, and I want him 
 unprejudiced. Because, you see, he might happen to think 
 of something. He might say, Phil said so and so about 
 Bee. " 
 
 Madam Brooke nodded her perfect understanding, but 
 Isabel commented in a worried tone: 
 
 " He d say that anyway." 
 
14 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Oh," said Beatrice, as if now she had something to 
 combat that would make it all the plainer, " that s just 
 the point. He s such a dear fellow he d go too far. 
 He d be most awfully sorry for me and imagine what 
 message he d send a girl if he were in love with her, and 
 then he d think Phil sent one." 
 
 Isabel looked as if something might be resented here. 
 
 " I don t think," she said, " that s quite fair to Brooke." 
 
 " Of course it s fair," said her mother promptly. " She 
 isn t saying Brooke would invent anything consciously. 
 She s only remembering he can write stories and act 
 plays." 
 
 Beatrice smiled at her, thanking her as she often did 
 for their communion of understanding. 
 
 " But if," she said, " no matter how long I waited, we 
 were sitting here by the fire, for instance, and something 
 began to knock in his brain and he burst out, that way 
 he has, One night Phil said to me, " Bee s the only girl 
 I ever liked," why, then I should know it was true." 
 
 This was Isabel s opportunity, the sort she was seizing 
 upon a dozen times a day, only to be rebuffed by one or 
 another of them, and she embraced it the more fervently 
 because it was so often checked. 
 
 " my darling," she said, " why not try the automatic 
 writing and get Phil to tell you himself? " 
 
 Bee looked at her sorrowfully and shook her head. 
 
 " Couldn t believe it, dear. I couldn t help thinking 
 the pencil stole it out of my brain. But now promise. 
 You re not to speak of me unless he asks." 
 
 " Of course he ll ask," Isabel insisted all over again, in 
 her jealously affectionate antiphony. 
 
 " And when he does, you re not to speak with special 
 affection special anything. Just say, Bee s well. 
 Great strong moose of a creature, she s always well. " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 15 
 
 " You ll have to speak to Peter," said Madam Brooke, 
 remembering her son-in-law s intimate understanding of 
 the girl and his silent tenderness over her in her strange 
 position of having confessed her love for a man who might 
 not have recognized his own for her. 
 Beatrice turned on her the clear sincerity of her look. 
 
 " I have told him," she said. " I stopped in the library, 
 and he agreed with me perfectly." 
 
 " Yes, he would," said his wife, in that helpless admi 
 ration she had for him, always, as he was, taking short 
 cuts along the unobtrusive way of his intuition and being 
 to people the comforter she herself aspired to be: only 
 she had to have everything explained. The two sons 
 were like their father. They were altogether what was 
 a mere strain in him. Somebody had once named it 
 poetic, and she had felt a relief in hearing it classified and 
 being able to put it away as something she need not try 
 to understand. But heretofore she had acquiesced in it 
 and followed humbly on. 
 
 " All right, Bee," she said, " we ll do our best." Then 
 Susanne appeared with a card, and she read aloud: " Miss 
 Andrea Dove. Do I know her? " she added, to herself, 
 and sat a moment mutely interrogating her memory. 
 
 " The young lady said," Susanne offered, " it was some 
 thing connected with psychical research." 
 
 Susanne was not more learned than became her posi 
 tion, but she rattled off the last words glibly. She had 
 heard them a great deal in this house, within the past 
 weeks, and they had a confused yet vivid meaning for her. 
 She saw ladies sitting at a table persuading ouija and 
 planchette, or latterly a common pencil. She heard Mrs. 
 Harvey proposing this or that excursion to other tables 
 and other pencils, and Mr. Harvey s tentative objection, 
 " Must you, dear? " To her tolerant mind, used to the 
 
16 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 vagaries of the employer class, which might wallow in 
 idleness if it chose, but mysteriously preferred eccentric 
 activities, psychical research was no more important than 
 any other plaything of an empty day. But her delivery 
 of this added elucidation had upon Mrs. Harvey an imme 
 diate determining effect. 
 
 " Yes, indeed, I ll see her," she said. " Show her up 
 here." 
 
 After Susanne had left the room, Madam Brooke, who 
 was always most careful to preserve the decent reticences 
 between the family and " below stairs," forbore to sniff 
 until the maid had got well outside the door; then she 
 did it with somewhat diminished effect, owing to the de 
 lay. This she realised. A sniff, she knew, had to be 
 served up hot. But her daughter looked at her with an 
 undiminished sweetness of appeal. 
 
 " I shouldn t dare," she said, " turn any one away. It 
 might be a message. It might be Phil." 
 
 " It might be a gold brick," said Madam Brooke ruth 
 lessly, " or a messenger from Mars selling stock in the 
 canals." 
 
 " I ll run along," said Beatrice. She couldn t forbear 
 touching Madam Brooke on the hand, in passing, a tiny 
 admonitory tap telling her how naughty she was and yet 
 so much in the nature of a caress that it emphasized her 
 dearness also. " Love to Brooke when he does ask 
 for me, you know." 
 
 She snatched up her stole and muff and was gone, and 
 presently there was Susanne again, vanishing at the en 
 trance of Andrea Dove, who paused just over the thresh 
 old as if not so much mutely interrogating those who 
 were in the room as presenting herself for scrutiny and, 
 if it might be, acceptance. The mother and daughter 
 gave her a look of inquiry which settled at once into sat- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 17 
 
 isfied approval. Andrea Dove had beauty of a high 
 type. She was tall and slim and moved with an easy 
 grace. Her hair was the rarest bright gold touched with 
 red and her skin a faintly flushed perfection fitted to it. 
 She was as unlike the girl who had just gone out as it is 
 possible for two individuals of evidently the same social 
 plane to be. Beatrice, in her gallant bearing, suggested 
 the conventional, the rightly " placed," and Andrea looked 
 as if she had seen strange circumstance, perhaps been 
 driven too hard and too far and felt a little breathless with 
 it all. Madam Brooke found herself thinking she looked 
 as if she had been out in the wind and it had swept and 
 buffeted her until her eyes ached with it and her nostrils, 
 when she turned to face it, were blown wider. There was 
 something apprehensive in her gray-eyed glance. She 
 looked, indeed, as Madam Brooke also concluded, highly 
 nervous, as if strung up to a task she feared. All this 
 was in the instant she stood there, before Mrs. Harvey, in 
 a forward movement, indicated a chair and spoke her 
 name, again with reference to the card. Andrea Dove 
 took the chair and began at once in a low, painfully hesi 
 tating voice: 
 
 " Mrs. Harvey, I hoped you might be in need of a 
 secretary." 
 
 Mrs. Harvey s expectant gaze cooled. " This," it 
 seemed to say, " is not connected with psychical research." 
 But she answered promptly: 
 
 " I have a secretary. She is entirely satisfactory." 
 
 " Let s hear what the young lady has to say," put in 
 Madam Brooke. " I m not sure your Bixby s so satis 
 factory you never want to think of anybody else." 
 
 " How did you hear of me? " inquired Mrs. Harvey, 
 who was always loath to dismiss a suppliant unsatisfied. 
 
 Her husband often told her, with the tender under- 
 
18 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 standing he had of her, that she believed in cutting off the 
 dog s tail an inch at a time. The moment she asked the 
 question it seemed to ease Andrea off on the second lap of 
 her dreaded task. It looked as if in a moment, now that 
 the interview had begun to move as she imagined it, she 
 might be in full swing. 
 
 " I saw your name/ she said, " as giving a large sum 
 of money to psychical research." 
 
 " Are you," Mrs. Harvey asked, the keenness of her 
 interest whetted again by this slightest of hints, " inter 
 ested in psychical research? " 
 
 " More," said Andrea, " than anything else in the 
 world almost." 
 
 The last word seemed to be an afterthought, springing 
 from some deep imperative memory. But Madam 
 Brooke hardly took note of the word and all it might im 
 ply, so discouraged was she by the girl s confessed interest 
 in things unseen. As they pervaded this house they were, 
 to the old lady, no more than an unpicturesque and dis 
 orderly form of witchcraft. There could be no doubt of 
 the honesty of the girl s enthusiasm. Her face glowed 
 under it. Her eyes met Isabel Harvey s brilliantly. She 
 smiled a little, as if turning aside from a too eager pur 
 suit of her aim, and said: 
 
 " I ve been studying stenography and typewriting. I 
 hoped you wanted a secretary. Then when you knew me 
 I could ask you for what I really want." 
 
 " And what do you want? " prompted Mrs. Harvey. 
 
 The girl answered directly: 
 
 " Money." 
 
 Madam Brooke drew a quick breath which was not a 
 snort but very near it. She found everybody nowadays 
 seeking, with a sad unanimity, this one medium of 
 worldly advantage, money. Sometimes they veiled their 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 19 
 
 purpose and seemed to seek something else while they at 
 the same time put out the stealthy claw of cupidity. 
 But this girl frankly wanted it and said so. Madam 
 Brooke was neither surprised nor disappointed as her 
 daughter was. 
 
 " I suppose," said Mrs. Harvey, temporizing, " that wa 
 what you learned stenography for." 
 
 " Yes," said Andrea. " We ve almost nothing to live 
 on and I thought " 
 
 " We? " put in Madam Brooke. 
 
 " My father and I. I thought, if I could be your secre 
 tary you might pay me six hundred dollars a year. And 
 if you would advance me a part of it, my father could 
 use it in his work. We could live on what I got by copy 
 ing in the evening. I should think I might get copying, 
 shouldn t you? " 
 
 This she addressed to Madam Brooke as if her harder 
 surface indicated a faculty for pronouncing on the valid 
 ity of a copyist s ambition. But the old lady was 
 ready for her. 
 
 " Undoubtedly," she answered. 
 
 She simply couldn t help it, the girl seemed to her so 
 honest and indeed compelling in her clarity. 
 
 " How much do you want in advance? " Mrs. Harvey 
 asked, almost fretfully. 
 
 She too believed in the girl, but she felt no confidence 
 in her own nose for bargains. She knew how inevitably 
 she was allowing herself to be led or, indeed, wander 
 ing wilfully into one of those paths from which her hus 
 band had to pluck her at intervals, for invariably they 
 ended in purlieus where the undeserving flourish on 
 ill-gotten gains. Now Andrea did recoil from her task. 
 
 " Quite a large sum," she faltered. 
 
 " How large? " asked Madam Brooke. 
 
20 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Five hundred dollars." 
 
 " But why," again Mrs. Harvey asked, " why come to 
 me?" 
 
 " Because," said the girl again, " you are interested in 
 psychical research." Then ghe laughed a little sudden 
 laugh, as if finding herself more stupid than she had 
 imagined. " How badly I do it! " she said, with an hon 
 est directness they both found charming. " You see I 
 ought to have told you first about father, not about me. 
 My father is a scientist. He has always believed in com 
 munication with another world." 
 
 " Wait," said Mrs. Harvey. She got up, pressed an 
 electric button and Susanne appeared. " Susanne, ask 
 Mr. Harvey to come here." Then, as Susanne departed, 
 she turned to Andrea and explained, with no diminution 
 of excitement: " I feel as if you were going to say some 
 thing very interesting. I want my husband to hear." 
 
Ill 
 
 WHEN Peter Harvey came in, he found his wife and 
 Andrea Dove both standing, faces turned expectant 
 toward the door. Madam Brooke had wheeled round to 
 the fire and sat rigidly erect, back obliquely to the room, 
 as if tacitly repudiating whatever might occur. Peter 
 Harvey was a man something over fifty, of middle height, 
 generously but not heavily built. His large-featured 
 face, blue-eyed and florid, was arresting from its expres 
 sion of an anxious tenderness, a look that dealt with life as 
 it did with individuals, as if he had reflected deeply upon 
 the phenomena of things human, found them inscrutable 
 and despairingly given them up: but not renounced them 
 in any sense of shirking the anxiety of still further coping 
 with a system not understood. On the contrary, he was 
 instant in eager service at even the unspoken appeal of 
 the fellow wonderer, and now he came forward to his 
 wife with the look of receptive inquiry he so often found 
 her challenging. She was flushed and eager, a little 
 nervous, and he recognized the look sadly as one he had 
 become used to. She had, he was resignedly sure, dis 
 covered a new medium of communication with another 
 world. 
 
 " Peter," she said, " Miss Dove Miss Dove, this is 
 my husband Miss Dove has come to tell us about her 
 father s work in psychical research." 
 
 Mr. Harvey bowed gravely to Miss Dove, recognizing 
 in her face the reaction his wife too often roused in her 
 
 21 
 
22 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 psychic ministrants. She went too fast for them. If 
 they showed her a hope, she transmuted it into a cer 
 tainty; she assumed they could work with the lightning 
 rapidity of a magician stocked up with elixirs. This 
 grave-eyed girl, whom he at once liked and, in spite of 
 her tiresome errand, trusted in a surprising way, had come 
 to bring them something, but not a master key to open 
 all locks. That he knew, from long dwelling on the 
 puzzle. There was no such key. Andrea, feeling the 
 meeting was embarrassingly in her hands, plunged des 
 perately. 
 
 " My father is a scientist." 
 
 This seemed to be the preamble she had provided her 
 self with, the spring-board for her leap. 
 
 "Sit down," said Mrs. Harvey. Already her voice, 
 in its premature certainty, was exultant. " Peter, sit 
 here." 
 
 But Peter elected to sit elsewhere, so that he might get 
 the light more fully on Miss Dove s face. She sat where 
 Mrs. Harvey had indicated, clasping her hands in her 
 lap. And the hands trembled. But Peter Harvey, his 
 gaze on her face, absently remarked, in a way he had of 
 putting down mental notes, that her eyes, lifted to his, 
 wore an almost commanding look of sincerity. They 
 bade you believe in her. They did not plead for it, in 
 any way of ingenuous appeal. They made a calm state 
 ment of her worth. 
 
 " Since my mother died," she began, with a perfectly 
 apparent effect of controlling her breath which had begun 
 to come unevenly, " my father has been trying to get 
 into communication with another world." 
 
 " Oh ! " breathed Mrs. Harvey, in a rush of abandon 
 ment to this new solace. " You see, Peter. We were the 
 very ones for Miss Dove to come to." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 23 
 
 " How long ago was that? " Mr. Harvey asked of 
 Andrea. 
 
 " That mother died? Nearly twelve years. Father 
 isn t old, but he looks like an old man. All that time he s 
 never stopped believing that some day he will do it." 
 
 " Establish communication? " Harvey prompted her. 
 
 " Yes. I tell it badly. I don t know just how far to 
 go back. But father is a scientist, you see. He used to 
 teach. He is a professor chemistry. But about the 
 time mother died my grandfather her father left us 
 quite a lot of money and a place on Long Island, and 
 father stopped teaching and gave all his time to trying 
 to get into communication with the other world." 
 
 11 Then you have money? " said Isabel impulsively. 
 
 Andrea smiled slightly, a sad little smile, and her 
 brows were wistful. 
 
 "We had it, but father used it all up in his experi 
 ments. And the house burned down the Long Island 
 house. It caught from his laboratory." She shook her 
 head, smiling in a rueful way. " I do tell it badly," she 
 said. " I wish you d ask me questions." 
 
 " These investigations you speak about," s^id Harvey, 
 " what were they? " 
 
 " That s it," she said, with an air of relief. " The very 
 thing it all hangs on I ve left out. You see father be 
 lieves that communication will come in a perfectly simple 
 scientific way. He believes it will come suddenly, with 
 some new discovery, and that it will seem no more mirac 
 ulous than the telephone, for instance, or wireless." 
 
 Madam Brooke hitched her chair to an angle that im 
 plied a willingness to renew communication with this 
 world if the other was to be so reasonably introduced. 
 
 " That," said she, pointedly addressing her son-in-law, 
 " sounds more like it." 
 
24 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Yes," said he, " there s some degree of reason in that. 
 At least, if you re going to play with the idea in any 
 form, it s less offensive." 
 
 " Play with it! " echoed his wife, in a tone of passionate 
 rebuttal. " Peter, we re not playing." 
 
 Her husband was near enough to reach out his hand 
 and give hers, on the arm of her chair, a kindly touch. 
 It admonished her to remember that, whatever road of 
 investigation he had to take, he was always with her in 
 the undeviating effort of protecting her from her creduli 
 ties and guarding the path to her desire. Andrea, having 
 now reached the point where she could whole-heartedly 
 back her mission, threw off her air of studied concentra 
 tion and spoke impetuously. 
 
 " And now he has done it." 
 
 " Has he heard from your mother? " cried Isabel Har 
 vey. 
 
 She was keyed to an extreme of agitation. 
 
 " What is it he has done? " inquired Harvey, with his 
 patient, unflinching moderation. 
 
 Andrea addressed herself to him. 
 
 " He has discovered a new element. It is something like 
 radium, only, he says, in every way more powerful." 
 
 Isabel s face had fallen. A new element, an element 
 sounding to her something like a feature of the weather, 
 seemed to her far from the magnificent climax of her 
 hopes. 
 
 " Where did he discover it? " pursued Harvey, looking 
 at her intently from under wrinkled brows. 
 
 She stood his scrutiny. Madam Brooke noted that, 
 wind-blown as she was, she seemed for the moment to be 
 standing in some sheltered corner where she could collect 
 herself and think. 
 
 " In pitchblende." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 25 
 
 " Where they found radium." 
 
 "Yes. And he had to have tons and tons of pitch 
 blende and other things that used up our money." 
 
 " What reason has he for thinking it has anything to 
 do with another world? " 
 
 Andrea looked at him with an intensifying of that 
 compelling sincerity of her eyes. 
 
 " Why," she said, " he s got flashes." 
 
 " What do you mean by flashes? " 
 
 " They re long and short. They spell out words, just 
 as the telegraph does." 
 
 Peter Harvey sat looking at her, more and more sorry 
 for her. " Poor child! " was coming from his lips, but he 
 shut them on the words. 
 
 " From your mother? " his wife was asking, in the 
 mounting excitement he knew. " Were the messages 
 from her? " 
 
 " No," said Andrea. " Not from anybody we know 
 about. That s what drives father almost wild. He can t 
 get connected sentences. They re words here and there. 
 But they all say the same thing. And he is perfectly sure 
 they mean he hasn t enough olympium that s what 
 he s named it to work with. They re urging him to get 
 more." 
 
 " How much of this thing has he? " inquired Harvey. 
 " Not that it would mean anything to me." 
 
 " A quarter gramme. And he must have more. Don t 
 you see he must have more? " 
 
 Here was an appeal from the real heart of her, no 
 ordered argument she might have brought from some one 
 else, but the cry of protecting love for the creature it 
 nurtures and succors. 
 
 " You say," Harvey began hesitatingly, with the deli 
 cacy of one forced to tread ground not yet firm under him, 
 
26 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " your house on Long Island burned. You still have the 
 land? " 
 
 " Oh, no," said Andrea, in a perfect clarity. " That 
 was mortgaged. They ve done what do they call it? 
 taken it away from us. It isn t ours." 
 
 " And why did you come on here? " 
 
 He asked the question with an almost conciliatory gen 
 tleness, as if begging her to remember he was considering 
 her side of the question and not his own incidental con 
 nection with it at all, and that he was trying to give her 
 a just hearing, that he meant even to be generous. 
 
 " Father thought it might be less expensive. Besides," 
 her look of liquid appeal resting on him with a confi 
 dence he was quick to interpret, as indicating she believed 
 there was no need of concealing anything from his sym 
 pathetic gaze, " we knew you lived here." 
 
 I? 
 
 The word betrayed his perfect wonderment. 
 
 " You, your family," she said gently. " We knew Mrs. 
 Harvey had given all that money for psychical research." 
 
 Harvey rose, took a quick turn about the room and 
 came back. He could have groaned, in futile despair 
 over it all. Yet he was glad he hadn t indulged himself 
 in that bodily easement of the natural man. He wouldn t 
 for worlds have had her repent her ingenuous disclosure. 
 So they had come on, attracted by the lure of the gift he 
 had so unwillingly allowed his wife to make to a new and 
 obscure association of dabblers in mysteries they knew not 
 what. It was one of his temporising concessions, buoyed 
 by the despairing hope that it might solace Isabel and 
 let her get breath until he could draw her at least a step 
 away from these anomalous explorations. And now a 
 father and daughter, the daughter at least appealingly 
 honest, had caught the gleam of the benefaction and 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 27 
 
 dumped themselves on him in a trustful expectation of 
 more. 
 
 " If," said he weakly, seeking another avenue some 
 where, he did not know where, " your father is a scientist, 
 he must have a wide acquaintance among men of his 
 own profession. He must have told them all this." 
 
 " No," said she, in a depressed tone, as if this were 
 another of the discouragements involved. " Father 
 hasn t had anything to do with scientific men for a good 
 many years." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Harvey. And all that occurred to him 
 to add was, " I m sorry for that." 
 
 But she had her answer brightly ready. It came to 
 him that she had needed to repeat it to herself at moments 
 of her own inevitable questioning. That was why it came 
 so pat. 
 
 " Don t you see? " she said. " They didn t believe in 
 him. They couldn t, literal men like that." 
 
 " But," said Harvey, " there s been a good deal of 
 romance in scientific research. In a way, it s a sort of 
 guessing, full of surprises, if you come to that. Literal 
 chaps have had to get used to it. A scientific man ought 
 to be the sort of fellow that s prepared for anything." 
 
 " Oh, but they re not," she said, with a conclusive cer 
 tainty. " Father says so. He s explained it to me." 
 
 So, Harvey thought again, she had had to go to him 
 for her own reassuring. 
 
 " He says," she went on, " that they won t accept any 
 thing but proof." 
 
 " No, of course not," put in Harvey, and Madam 
 Brooke offered an impatient: 
 
 " Why, no, child, that s what science is." 
 
 " I mean," she said, flushing, as if, though she knew 
 exactly what point she meant to make, she found herself 
 
28 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 blocked by some incredulity of her own in offering it, 
 " they re not sympathetic. When you ve only half proved 
 something, they ve no use for you until you give them the 
 whole." 
 
 " Nevertheless," said Harvey, " I should say a scientific 
 man would find his colleagues helpful to him." 
 
 " And," she continued, lifting her head a little as if this 
 might not be a peculiarity to advance and yet she wai 
 determined to be proud of it, " maybe father wanted to 
 keep his own discovery to himself till he could offer it to 
 the world. It would be a shame if he should work all 
 these years and then have some other man step in and 
 take the credit, now wouldn t it? " 
 
 " Most unfortunate," said Harvey gravely. " Yet it 
 happens." 
 
 And now Isabel, who had been looking from one to the 
 other in a seething impatience, found herself unable to 
 leave the issue at this lagging pace. 
 
 " But Peter," she said, " whatever scientific men might 
 feel, it s perfectly clear what we ought to do." 
 
 He had known she would say that, though he couldn t 
 have told at what point it would come, and he accepted 
 it patiently. Madam Brooke used to repeat to herself, 
 with the relish an accurate mind has for definitions of 
 uncharted emotions: "That slow courage known as 
 patience." It was the efflorescence of his feeling to 
 ward his wife, whom he loved with an unwavering devo 
 tion and protected at every turn from the consequences of 
 her own gentle rashness. Now he gave her hand an 
 other warning touch and, instead of answering her di 
 rectly, said: 
 
 " I should think the most practical thing is for me 
 for us to see Mr. Dove." 
 
 Isabel nodded triumphantly. So assured was he of 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 29 
 
 the integrity of the issue that she felt perfectly certain 
 the day was won. If Peter saw him, he would write a 
 cheque. Harvey, glancing at Andrea to see how she 
 took it, found himself warming at the eager delight that 
 overspread her face. It was queer, he told himself in 
 wardly, with a whimsical perplexity, how bent they 
 three were on having her come out right, she and her 
 mission. It seemed as if they had a recognised compact 
 of belief in her. And as if joy brought its own intoxica 
 tion she burst out into a little cascade of talking, telling 
 them what they never would have thought of asking her: 
 all about the everyday fortunes of olympium and how 
 they guarded it from covetous hands. The world was 
 against them, she implied, but smilingly, as if she did 
 not fear it any more, now she had found them; and her 
 father had invented the simplest as well as the cleverest 
 scheme for hiding it. When she told them what it was, 
 they admired it sufficiently and always the figure in the 
 foreground, her father, with it. Then, without warning, 
 the tears rushed into her eyes. 
 
 " It s wonderful," she said frankly, " to talk with some 
 body again, somebody like you. And father ll feel so, 
 too. You ll question him and he ll tell you everything 
 you want to know. It ll do him so much good. We ve 
 been very much alone." 
 
 " Then," said Harvey, pulling out his watch, " what 
 if we should take you round there now, my wife and I? " 
 
 Mrs. Harvey made a little murmurous sound of ap 
 proval and came to her feet, eager, Madam Brooke saw, 
 with an inward lament over her credulity, to lose no time 
 in getting her hat and cloak. But Andrea hesitated. 
 She was demurring. 
 
 " If you don t mind," she said apologetically, " not just 
 now. Not to-day." 
 
30 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 Harvey felt rebuffed. She wasn t meeting them with 
 the satisfactory promptness he had expected. 
 
 " Oh, very well," he said, and Andrea, seeming t guess 
 how she had impressed him, at once explained: 
 
 " Father s not strong. It would startle him. Do you 
 see? " 
 
 " Perfectly/ said Harvey, relinquishing his plan. " It 
 doesn t matter. We ll go another day." 
 
 But he was plainly aware that he had wanted to come 
 upon father before the scene could be set to influence or 
 hamper him in any way. There might not be any such 
 way, but he was hard-headed and keen in the measure 
 of his kindliness, and if he was to help father along the 
 difficult road of achievement, he could do it only accord 
 ing to his own consistencies. 
 
 " But," said Andrea, rising, " if you could come to 
 morrow? Could you? " 
 
 She looked at him in anxious expectation. It was per 
 fectly apparent she had weighed the value of Isabel s 
 enthusiasm, and knew there was no need of whipping it 
 up further. But Isabel answered: 
 
 " Yes. To-morrow morning. You could, Peter, could 
 n t you? " 
 
 " Yes," said her husband, rather drily. " In case 
 Brooke isn t due. But he ll telephone us, no doubt, from 
 New York." 
 
 Madam Brooke gave a little murmur, a commentary, 
 Isabel knew, on the incredible fact that she had become 
 so absorbed in this chase of the unknown that she had 
 forgotten her son s return. Isabel flushed. 
 
 " Of course," she said, in a low tone, as if she defended 
 herself and was ashamed of the necessity. " Of course I 
 meant if he doesn t come." 
 
 " Then," said Harvey, " shall we say ten? eleven? " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 31 
 
 " Ten, please," said Andrea, and rose to go. 
 
 But as she turned, her eyes fell for the first time on the 
 picture by the window niche, the young man in his avi 
 ator cap and coat. She stood, blanched and petrified, 
 staring, and Harvey took a step forward, thinking she 
 was going to fall. He had no experience of the modern 
 girFs fainting, but for that instant he was sure the girl 
 before him had lost her grip on conscious life. But she 
 evidently got hold of something vitally controlling. She 
 swayed, recovered herself and stood for a moment as if 
 she were commanding her blood back to its task. But 
 her eyes did not leave the picture. She spoke in a 
 choked yet steady voice: 
 
 " Who is that? " 
 
 " Why," said Isabel, " that is my son. You knew 
 I had lost my son." 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Harvey," said Madam Brooke inexo 
 rably, as if she were reminding her daughter that she was 
 not alone in the rich heritage of grief, " have lost their 
 son." 
 
 Andrea spoke again, and now as if from a horror she 
 could not accept: 
 
 " Was he your son? " 
 
 " Yes," said Harvey patiently, " this was our son. He 
 was an aviator. He was killed." 
 
 He had never shirked direct statement of that fact. 
 Perhaps he was the more unflinchingly direct because his 
 wife indulged herself in all the palliating divagations to 
 indicate death. One of them, at which Peter shuddered, 
 was that Philip had " passed over into spirit life." His 
 curtness was the dignified reaction from her dodging the 
 stark issue. Only so, it seemed to him in his unspoken 
 protest against draping death with the tinsel of revolt, 
 could he preserve his awe before the wonder of it and bear 
 
32 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 the anguish of it at all. Andrea gave a little moan, in 
 stantly suppressed. In spite of her determined quietude, 
 she had become wild-eyed. Her face was drawn and 
 white. 
 
 " To-morrow then," she said, and, without a civil pre 
 tence of a conventional leave-taking, she wag gone. 
 
IV 
 
 AT the foot of a West End street that runs down hill 
 to the river, where reclaimed old houses stand in neigh 
 borly nearness to queer shops and accommodation for 
 motor cars and beasts, is a stable of no great size which 
 had been taken as a daring speculation by a young deco 
 rator, to do over into a bizarre sort of display and sales 
 room with what might prove, as fortune favored him, 
 janitor s quarters or his own. This was at the beginning 
 of the war, and he went off at once for service, desperately 
 disposing of his holding to a firm that could neither let 
 the place at once as it was nor enter upon the risk of re 
 making. This was the home Professor Dove had fallen 
 upon in his search through the lower streets of the West 
 End for inexpensive quarters that would give him space 
 and privacy. The interior had been cleaned and 
 sheathed, the latter roughly, because the young decora 
 tor had great schemes of stained backgrounds and tapes 
 tries of sorts, the plumbing was honest, and a partition 
 cutting off a third of the floor space ensured domestic 
 privacy to whatever tenant might undertake the care of 
 it. Within that third was now Mr. Dove s laboratory. 
 He worked and slept there. Nobody entered it but him 
 self, and so acutely nervous had he grown in the last 
 weeks that Andrea was sometimes forbidden to enter it 
 from day s end to day s end. He spread up his bed him 
 self. At least she tried to believe he did, but in theo 
 D 33 
 
34 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 last desperate days of his despair over his halting project 
 she thought it more likely that he threw himself down 
 as he was and dozed away such part of the night as he 
 found himself too exhausted for work. But day and 
 night, she felt, in her passionate sympathy, were alike 
 unfriendly to him. The street door opened into a small 
 square hall, which had once been the office of the stable, 
 and that into the room Andrea had fitted up for a general 
 living room. The table at which they ate was in the 
 middle of this room and her couch bed a makeshift she 
 had never heard of until she came within Boston s lodg 
 ing area in one corner. It was a forlorn scene of do 
 mestic expedients, dark, for it fronted north and was in 
 adequately supplied with windows, dulled according to ar 
 tistic theories inadequately carried out, but kept in the 
 order of a ship s cabin and scrubbed exquisitely clean. 
 Here, after her interview with the Harveys and on the 
 heels of her agitation at the end of it, Andrea came, let 
 herself in, stepped from the hall into the living room and 
 began calling: 
 
 " Father! father!" 
 
 This was an almost unknown procedure. He was 
 guarded, and always expected to be, from noise even so 
 slight as that of her footfall outside his door. Sometimes, 
 when he had been quiet too long at his mysterious tasks, 
 she would creep to his threshold to listen and steal away 
 again when she heard him stir. But this he did not know. 
 Indeed, he thought little about Andrea except as another 
 hand that helped him reach up to the sky and pluck down 
 lightning to warm the hearths of men. He was as de 
 pendent on her and as little conscious of his dependence 
 as the child on its mother s breast. Andrea threw off her 
 hat and coat and mechanically put them in their place. 
 But still she summoned him. The excitement that had 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 35 
 
 almost overthrown her before she left the Harveys was 
 mounting higher now. She seemed desperately anxious 
 to find relief from it, and involuntarily she called upon 
 the one being near enough to help her. At her repeated 
 cry, he came out from his room, perplexedly alarmed, ir 
 ritated at the small commotion. 
 
 " Well? well? " said he. " What is it? " 
 
 He stood waiting for her to speak, half turned on the 
 instant of halting, as if uncontrollably impatient to get 
 back to his den. Andrea ran to him. She had lost all 
 sense of his sacred immunity from interruption. 
 
 " Father ! " she said again, in a low, sobbing voice, and 
 clung to him. 
 
 Andrew Dove found himself in such an unfamiliar posi 
 tion that he could only look down at her irresolutely and 
 turn a fraction more to that refuge of the laboratory. 
 He put out one thin hand and touched her shoulder re- 
 mindingly. 
 
 " Well," he said again, " what is it? " 
 
 But Andrea, her head bent until her face was hidden 
 in his sleeve, could not at once reply. As they stood 
 there, she in her trouble and he in a helplessness of per 
 plexity that looked like age as vulnerable to grief as it 
 was unfitted to defend itself, Andrea felt how miserable 
 they were and how alone. Her father was not, as she 
 so often told herself, an old man, yet the task he had set 
 himself and his fevered activity in it had piled years upon 
 him. He was a tall man, slightly bent in the shoulders, 
 as thin as it is possible for the human frame to be. His 
 delicate, high-nosed face was like a skilfully modeled 
 structure, the fine ivory skin clinging, strained yet 
 wrinkled, to the bones. It was a face of beautiful death, 
 a sort of petrifying and marbling of the flesh. Only his 
 eyes, black, burning, passionately fanatical, launched the 
 
36 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 light that repudiated death. They waved the banner of 
 unconquered life. They were so fiercely masterful that 
 it seemed as if they alone might have compelled the frail 
 body to its tasks. But in that moment he stood there, 
 longing to get back to his work, perplexedly collecting his 
 disturbed mind to meet this new onslaught of Andrea, 
 suddenly the whole thing came rushing back upon him, 
 the errand she had gone on, his urgent coaching of her 
 for her part. She had succeeded. Her emotion could 
 have no other cause. He was childishly impervious to 
 the existence of any need but his own, and now, know 
 ing she had come back to him with her errand accom 
 plished, he thrust her from him a pace and shook her arm 
 in impatient reminder. 
 
 " You ve got it," he cried, in a high demanding voice. 
 " You ve got the money." 
 
 Andrea, rebuffed, collected herself in an uncomplain 
 ing way, and wiped her eyes, not looking at him. For a 
 course of years that seemed long in her girl s life she had 
 not demanded anything. In that onslaught of her emo 
 tions she had done it at last unthinkingly, and now he 
 had reminded her that she must get herself in hand. 
 
 " Sit down," he said impatiently. He took a chair and 
 sat resting his hand on the table, the thin fingers tapping. 
 A look of eagerness came into his face. "How much?" 
 he asked. " How much? " 
 
 Andrea, entirely her pitifully composed self, took a 
 chair opposite him, and looked him gravely in the face, 
 as if knowing she had to hold him to a fixed point of view. 
 Else how should she get an instant s consideration of what 
 she had to say? 
 
 " Father," she began, " I ve got something to tell you." 
 
 " Of course you have," he answered. Her slowness 
 irritated him. "Tell me how much." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 37 
 
 She shook her head slightly. To his amazed compre 
 hension she looked obstinate. 
 
 " Father," she said, leaning across the table and speak 
 ing with a determined gentleness of composure, " their 
 son was an aviator. He was killed." 
 
 He looked at her a moment, frowning over the inex 
 plicable change in her. 
 
 " Of course he was," he said. " That s why you went 
 to them. That s why his mother gave the fund for psy 
 chical research." 
 
 " I knew he was killed," she said, " but I didn t know 
 who he was." 
 
 " Why," said Dove quietly, watching her because she 
 seemed so strange, " he was their son." 
 
 " But," she said, paying no attention to his attempts 
 to guide her into a rational channel, " just as I was going 
 out I saw him, his picture. And I knew him. Father, 
 I knew him." 
 
 His interest died. 
 
 " You d seen his picture before," he said. " It must 
 have been in the papers, a prominent family like that. 
 I didn t see it myself, but it must have been there." 
 
 " Over a year ago," said she, in a mounting excite 
 ment that, in spite of his reason, began to communicate 
 itself to him, " I took the long walk to the beach. At 
 home, you know, father. Before the house was burned." 
 
 He nodded. It was all unnecessarily dull. He wanted 
 to know whether she had brought him a promise of money 
 and to go back to his laboratory. 
 
 "I d been watching an air-plane," she said. She 
 talked fast now and with a succinctness that told she had 
 often been over the story in her mind. " It came down. 
 Something was the matter. It didn t crash down. It 
 just came, like a bird with a hurt wing. And I was there, 
 
38 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 and the man in it saw me, and he called to me, and came, 
 and we began to talk, and we talked all that forenoon. 
 And I didn t go to the sea. And then another plane came. 
 He knew the man in that. And I went away. And next 
 morning I went back to the spot and they were gone. 
 Of course they were. I expected it. But father, he was 
 gone." 
 
 The intensity of her voice and the sad wistfulness of 
 her brows might have told another sort of listener that 
 this brief chronicle was the outline of her story of life. 
 To Dove, waiting to get her report of the visit as it 
 touched him, it had no extreme significance. But he was 
 not going to be unkind to her, mysterious as this new 
 mood was. He was never that, except by the indirection 
 of things not done. 
 
 " And I didn t know his name," she said, in a musing 
 wonder, as if now talking to herself. " Wasn t that 
 strange, father? We neither of us told our names. And 
 when he saw the other plane coming he said to me, 
 Wait for me. I ll come back. " 
 
 Dove did look at her now for an instant, keenly. It 
 was dawning on him that this meant a great deal to her. 
 
 "And I see now," she said, with a certain sad trium 
 phant satisfaction, " why he didn t come. He was or 
 dered away to France. And he was killed. And he s 
 their son." 
 
 But though her father had, through that chink of reve 
 lation, caught an instant s understanding of her mood, 
 he had had enough of this purposeless digression. 
 
 " Come, come," he said, kindly but decisively, " don t 
 you see I m waiting for you to tell me about going there 
 and what happened? " 
 
 She was recalled. With a little start she came to her 
 self, seemed to fold away the mourning garb of her re- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 39 
 
 membrance, and settled herself to tell him what he 
 wanted to hear. And now she was a different Andrea. 
 It was all with that fictitious brightness the young so often 
 adopt to cheer the old. The tone of it, the monotonous 
 embellishment, was a fairy story, a " once upon a time." 
 
 " Well," she said, " I went to the house, and Mrs. Har 
 vey saw me. It was in a pretty room and a nice young 
 old lady sat by the fire." 
 
 But Dove was burningly impatient. 
 
 " I don t care anything about the room," he said. 
 " How did you begin? " 
 
 " I don t know." 
 
 Then, as he raised his hand and brought it down on the 
 table in exasperation at her slowness and stupidity, she 
 gathered herself to tell it better and put out her hand to 
 lay it on his, trembling from the blow. 
 
 " Oh, but I told her, dear. I told her you d discovered 
 olympium, and that you d got flashes, and she sent for her 
 husband to come in and he asked me questions " 
 
 " What sort of man is Peter Harvey? " he interrupted, 
 the burning eyes upon her. 
 
 She hesitated, thinking. 
 
 " Kind," she said, " oh, very kind. I loved him, father." 
 
 " What sort of questions? " he pursued. 
 
 " Whether you were in touch with other scientists." 
 
 He gave a little cry of extreme repugnance. 
 
 " I told him so, daddy," she said eagerly. " I said 
 you d got to work it out alone." 
 
 " Well? well? " he prompted. " What s the upshot of 
 it? What will he do? " 
 
 " He s coming here," she said, watching his face in the 
 triumphant certainty that now he would be pleased. 
 
 She never went so far as to think he might praise her. 
 The past had dulled that expectation out of her. 
 
40 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Here? " he cried incredulously. 
 
 " Yes," she nodded at him, smiling as if the climax of 
 the fairy tale had come. " To-morrow." 
 
 " But," he said, in mounting uneasiness, " I can t have 
 those people here." 
 
 The poverty of the place seemed to account for this. 
 
 " They know we re poor," she reminded him. 
 " That s what I told them. That s the point. Do they 
 think we d ask them for money if we had it ourselves, 
 even for a great splendid thing like this? " 
 
 " But what do they want? " he insisted. " What do 
 they expect to get? " 
 
 " Why," said she, " I told them you d had flashes that 
 semed to be from something outside our atmosphere. 
 They want to see them, don t you think? They want to 
 see you and Mr. Harvey wants to hear you talk about it." 
 
 He turned his chair about so that he faced the table, 
 and bent his head in his palms. He was infinitely pa 
 thetic so, the trouble of his face hidden behind the be 
 seeching eloquence of those frail hands. She rose from 
 her seat, in sudden passionate sympathy for him, and 
 came round and touched his shoulder gently. 
 
 " daddy," she said, daring no more than this. " O 
 daddy!" 
 
 But at her voice he pushed his chair back, and hurried, 
 bent and trembling, to his room, went in and shut the 
 door. She stood a moment looking after him, painfully 
 wondering whether her message which seemed to her all 
 hope was in some mysterious way disconcerting to him, 
 or whether he was actually glad and could not bear it. 
 She sat down again at the table and then, her own emo 
 tions imperiously constraining her, put her elbows on 
 the table, buried her face in her hands and in that soli 
 tude of posture gave herself over to the swift tide of re- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 41 
 
 membrance. It had promised joy and it now meant grief. 
 She often had these periods, not of actual solitude, since 
 her father might call upon her at any instant for some 
 service, but solitude of the soul. Often and often she sat 
 down to put her hands before her eyes, withdraw into her 
 self and retrace every step in what she knew to be her 
 love story. It seemed to her the most extraordinary 
 story a girl ever had, like the lover himself, straight out 
 of heaven. Even to her it would have been incredible ex 
 cept that in the upheaval of the world since 1914 strange 
 things had come to pass. The earth seemed to have been 
 rent not only on its surface but from the centre. Mon 
 strous deeds had sprung from the underworld, noisome, 
 fetid deeds cast up from the dregs of life hidden from 
 sight and hearing in calmer times. And strange seeds 
 were ripened, borne on the air from mysterious sources, 
 seeds of self-sacrifice, of a wild hope and a quickly ger 
 minated love. She had been, as she said, taking the long 
 walk to the beach as free from thought of man as any 
 nymph of story, and he had come down from the air, 
 again like legend, one of the gods made manifest. He 
 had not fallen like Icarus, though indeed his magic char 
 iot had perversely failed him. And when he saw her he 
 forgot instantly that he had to repair damage and get 
 away again, and they looked their hunger for each other 
 and talked desperately about nothing, actually noth 
 ing, as she remembered and the other plane came 
 down, she left him and he was gone. Yet his coming had 
 remoulded her, mind and soul. It was plainly love, love 
 at a glance. She had seen men enough to know he was 
 different, of an impetuous clarity of thought and speech, 
 an unworldly belief in the world as immortally young, 
 not falteringly old, and a trust in it such a dear and 
 foolish trust, her own dreary experience told her, in its 
 
42 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 playing fair. They were man and girl as we read about 
 them in stories and poems and never dream of seeing 
 them in the flesh. If we did, what should we do with 
 them, fitting none of our tailor-made conventions? But 
 there they were, he and she, girl and boy, immortal youth 
 pledged instantly to immortal love. Did they say all 
 this? No, not any of it; but she was as sure they had 
 bound themselves by the great contract as if they had 
 kissed and plighted troth. Such things do happen. 
 There is a language of the heart that does not, in the 
 first surprise of meeting, need the substantiation of the 
 tongue. She did not know his name or the place where he 
 belonged, and when he failed to return she only made up 
 epic stories of the needs that kept him. She would not 
 let herself mourn. The sight of him was denied her, but 
 the untarnished image of him lived in her heart, and she 
 gloried in her own faithfulness, which was her part of the 
 epic deeds. And now the dark wings she had never let 
 herself glance up at, though the shadow of them had 
 many times threatened to engulf her, had descended. 
 He was dead. 
 
THE next day Andrea rose early and did anxious tasks 
 about the living room before her father was astir. To 
 the Harveys her little house would be queer enough, and 
 she wanted it to offer a shining face. Her father, too, was 
 early. When he came out, his breakfast of toast and 
 coffee was quickly ready, and while he ate, in the per 
 functory way he had, she sat opposite him and ventured 
 on the ground she knew he would avoid. 
 
 "Daddy, you know they re coming here this fore 
 noon." 
 
 He nodded, breaking his toast and sipping his coffee as, 
 she often had occasion to think, an actor on the stage who, 
 with eating set down in his part, gets it over in a frag 
 mentary way. 
 
 "And," she went on, "they ll want to go into your 
 room." 
 
 He set down his cup and looked at her in a threatening 
 displeasure, as if she alone were responsible for that in 
 cursion. 
 
 " So," she continued, disregarding the look, as she often 
 had to ignore his prohibitions, seldom comprehensible but 
 always inseparable from his dearness to her, " I shall 
 want to have it nice. I won t do much: make your bed, 
 sweep a little, dust. Why don t I do it now? " 
 
 She rose, but he stretched a detaining hand. 
 
 " They re not," he said, " going into my room." 
 
 "But, daddy," she reminded him, "I ve told them 
 
 43 
 
44 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 you re getting calls. They ll want to go and have it ex 
 plained to them. Mr. Harvey will. That s why he s 
 coming, you know." 
 
 He took up his coffee cup and tossed the last of its con 
 tents down his throat. Then he rose. 
 
 " Nobody is going into that room," he said definitively, 
 " nobody." 
 
 " But daddy, I as much as promised them you d show 
 them, you d demonstrate. Is that what you d call it? " 
 
 " Then you d no right to. Why, my experiments " 
 he paused as if the scope of them made it impossible for 
 him to include it in speech she could understand " my 
 experiments won t admit of people crowding in there, 
 peering, handling " 
 
 " Oh, they wouldn t handle," she assured him, with an 
 eager softness. " Mr. Harvey s not that kind. He knows 
 he s ignorant about scientific things. He d own it. And 
 as for Mrs. Harvey, you don t have to convince her. 
 She believes already." 
 
 In that moment of even so slightly interpreting the 
 Harveys, an undercurrent of thought was bidding her 
 remember how strange it was, how marvelous beyond 
 measure, that they should be father and mother of the 
 vanished strength and beauty she had called her lover 
 and that her lover should be dead. 
 
 " Then let her prove it," Andrew Dove cried triumph 
 antly. "If she believes, all she s got to do is to write 
 me a cheque as she did for psychical research." 
 
 Andrea shook her head. She went a little nearer his 
 room with a soft obstinacy that surprised her as it ir 
 ritated him. 
 
 " Only to dust," she said persuasively, " and make your 
 bed." 
 
 But he passed her, went in and shut the door. Andrea, 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 45 
 
 rebuffed and momentarily angry over the obstinacy that 
 threatened to defeat his ends, cleared away his breakfast 
 and again ran over the dustless order of the room. A 
 little after ten, when she could make no further pretence 
 at a regulated scene setting and took up the knitting that 
 often steadied her perturbed mind, she heard a car and, 
 as she reached the door, their knock. There they were, 
 a little disconcerting to her now in their out-door gear. 
 They looked, in every detail, so moneyed that for the 
 moment she forgot their kind faces and wished the old 
 lady had come with them, she was so steadying. Her 
 cards, you saw, were on the table. You knew she would, 
 on exigent occasion, say the most drastic thing there was 
 to be said and relieve you of apprehension of a worse to 
 come. She was just, too, she was kind. There was no 
 harm in that old lady, only a long experience of the world 
 and a settled desire to be square in it, even if that in 
 volved being also a little trying. 
 
 But Andrea, though she was impressed, lacked no out 
 ward composure. She asked them in and was briefly in 
 terested to see the difference in the way they took the 
 quaint bareness of the place. Isabel Harvey was frankly 
 interested and delighted, as one has every right to be de 
 lighted with the queernesses of a spot where one isn t 
 condemned to live; but her husband apparently noticed 
 no difference between this and any conventional entrance 
 and reception room. Yet Andrea was sure he did notice. 
 He was sensitive enough, she knew, for the place to strike 
 him to the bone, to give him an inward shiver at its unre 
 lieved poverty and discomfort, and a pity that must hurt 
 for her who had to deal with it and make it as little as 
 possible like the waste it was. But he apparently saw 
 nothing. He smiled upon her, courteously but not too 
 warmly as indicating any special patronage and, after his 
 
46 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 wife was seated, took the chair Andrea, in her scene set 
 ting, had placed near by. And now Andrea knew she had 
 before her one of the hardest tasks of her strange life. 
 She had to tell him that her father, dishevelled and wan 
 from a night s vigil of work, had shut himself up in the 
 room he called his laboratory, and that he refused to let 
 them cross the threshold of that room where the demon 
 stration for which he begged their money could alone 
 take place. But before she had uttered a word of the 
 dreaded explanation, her father himself gave her a sur 
 prise more complete than any presentation of his previous 
 attitude could have given them. The laboratory door 
 opened and he came out, shaven, composed, his thread 
 bare clothes worn with such dignity that they seemed only 
 to emphasise his deserts and the pity of it that he should 
 be indebted to their forlorn use. He advanced toward 
 the Harveys with a welcoming smile, a sweetness of ex 
 pression indeed that Andrea had not seen for so long that 
 she caught her breath at the memories it awoke. This 
 was her father, as she and her mother had known him, 
 and she saw, with a pang of terror lest he should be dis 
 appointed, how desperately he was clinging to the hope 
 that the Harveys might do something to forward his dear 
 desires. It was so desperate, this hope, that it enabled 
 him to strike deep down into the depths of his forgotten 
 self and drag up every resource he had to charm as well 
 as to persuade. Peter Harvey got up to meet him and 
 Andrea had time to see, as they shook hands, that her 
 father s look was piteous to those discerning eyes. Mrs. 
 Harvey, too, shook hands with him, with a murmurous 
 interest and sympathy. She was making little kind 
 noises in her throat and, though they might be promising 
 she was ready to write the cheque at once, Andrea ceased 
 thinking of her. The contest, if contest it could be called, 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 47 
 
 was, she felt, to be between her father and Mr. Harvey. 
 Even she herself was not likely to be needed. It 
 was all in her father s hands, and his present fitness of 
 aspect seemed to imply that the hands were capable. 
 Mr. Dove motioned Harvey to sit, but himself remained 
 standing. 
 
 " You ll excuse me, won t you," he said, " if I stand? 
 I get so nervous over this thing I have to walk about when 
 I m talking it over. But please sit. Please be comfort 
 able. You ll want to question me. Do so. Ask any 
 thing you like. I ll tell you if I can." 
 
 And now Andrea was even a more absorbed spectator 
 than either of the others. She had to go painfully back 
 again and it seemed very far to go to the days when 
 her father entertained men of a dignified class of mind and 
 manner and could give and take in the conversational 
 exchange with an assured self-possession. And she real 
 ised that, alone with him all these last months, she had 
 allowed herself to see him at the standard of his weak 
 ness. She had protected, served and shielded him. She 
 had not admired and wondered at him as she did now. 
 She leaned back in her chair as if withdrawing definitely 
 from the interview, but she could not deny herself the 
 pleasure of giving Peter Harvey one little triumphing look. 
 " You see," the look said, " I didn t tell you anything 
 really. I couldn t, for I didn t know myself how splendid 
 he was going to be." Mr. Dove was gazing straight into 
 Harvey s face with an unswerving directness that might 
 have indicated he held himself tense by great effort. His 
 hands, one at his side, one behind him, were trembling. 
 That he could not govern, and he kept them closed. And 
 sure as Andrea was that the duel of challenge and proof 
 was between the two men, it was Mrs. Harvey who began. 
 
 " Mr. Dove," she said, with a certain direct acceptance 
 
48 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 of him and his power which, though quieting, was absurd 
 in advance of the first step they were yet to take, " do 
 you think you could do something for us? Don t you 
 think you could get me a message from my son? " 
 
 And her poor lip quivered so that Andrea made a little 
 involuntary movement toward her and then sank back. 
 
 " Isabel! " her husband said, in an undertone. 
 
 Andrea thought, in sharp pity for him, that he almost 
 moaned it, he was so sure his wife would upset all the logic 
 of the event by saying the intemperate thing. 
 
 " But he can," Isabel argued, turning to her husband in 
 a gentle reproach that he could deny her for a moment. 
 " Your daughter said so, Mr. Dove. She said you d got 
 messages." 
 
 Andrew Dove did not answer her. He was interrogat 
 ing her husband: 
 
 "You seem to object?" 
 
 " I do object," said Harvey, as if it hurt him to say it. 
 " My wife is head over ears in automatic writing. But I 
 don t mean to see her drown. I m the life preserver. 
 That s why I m here to-day." 
 
 Mr. Dove s acute glance hardened somewhat. " Then," 
 it seemed to comment, " you re here in her interests, not in 
 mine." But Isabel was speaking, with a piteous persua 
 siveness. 
 
 " You see, Mr. Dove, it s my son." 
 
 " I know," said Dove, with a brevity that sounded curt. 
 Andrea began to see how it was bruising him to meet these 
 people after the manner of their own speech. " The avi 
 ator." 
 
 " Yes. And we do so want to get word from him. We 
 want it terribly." 
 
 " Mrs. Harvey wants it," said Harvey, in a tone that 
 sounded like crisp rebuttal of the whole thing. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 49 
 
 " Don t you? " Dove asked him, as crisply. 
 
 " Not that way." He declared it obstinately as if he 
 knew Isabel was going to be hurt by it and yet it had to 
 be. " I hate the whole thing. If my son is trying to 
 communicate with me, is he going to write poppycock 
 through my wife s secretary, a woman I wouldn t trust 
 round the corner? " 
 
 " But if he is trying," put in Isabel, looking so soft, so 
 beseeching, that it was easy to see how she could persuade 
 her husband, sceptical though he was, to write cheques for 
 indeterminate ends, " oughtn t we to accept it, whatever 
 way it comes? Don t you think so, Mr. Dove? " 
 
 Dove stood looking down at his shabbily shod feet as 
 if they alone held the solution for him. 
 
 " I can tell you," he said slowly, " how the thing pre 
 sents itself to me. I know there s humbuggery. Wait," 
 he added. Isabel was about to speak, and he put up 
 his hand. " The millions of dead they ve gone some 
 where, haven t they? " He was interrogating Harvey, 
 who gave a nod in answer. " They ve gone some 
 where," Dove repeated. " But it s a ramshackle universe. 
 We haven t got it in order yet " 
 
 " God " interrupted Mrs. Harvey timidly, as if the 
 one word were sufficient ; but he did not even hear her. 
 
 " We haven t got it in order. And there are the mem 
 ories of the dead. We re tangled up in em, and they 
 hoodwink us into accepting all sorts of deviltries. Yes, 
 it s deviltry. But there s one thing that will do the trick. 
 Science. Invention. The mind of man. Would you 
 have believed in wireless twenty-five years ago? The 
 time is coming when you ll call the stars as easily as you 
 call England." 
 
 " How long have you believed that? " asked Harvey. 
 
 Dove paused, considering. 
 
50 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Perhaps," he said, " ever since I believed in wireltss. 
 Certainly ever since I discovered olympium." 
 
 " You are perhaps," said Harvey, " using wireless in 
 illustration only. But you are also using radium as a 
 means of describing your olympium. Now you don t 
 mean wireless has anything to do with radium? " 
 
 " No," said Dove, with a carelessness almost contemp 
 tuous. " I don t mean that." 
 
 " But you do say your olympium has something to do 
 with this interplanetary wireless of yours. And yet your 
 olympium is of the nature of radium. I m only blunder 
 ing along in this, you see. I don t know whether I make 
 myself plain." 
 
 " Yes," said Dove, with a tolerance so condescending 
 that Andrea bent slightly toward him and seemed about 
 to speak. " You make yourself plain enough. On the 
 other hand, I shouldn t be able to make myself plain to 
 you. You wouldn t understand." 
 
 Peter Harvey smiled and turned involuntarily to his 
 wife. He wondered if this reminded her of anything, if 
 she remembered how many questions were answered in 
 her precious automatic writing: " Not in your sense. 
 You wouldn t understand." But she was impervious to 
 the implication and he turned back to Dove. The man 
 looked innocent enough and Harvey doubted whether he 
 had meant to be offensive. His eyes were still fixed upon 
 his shabby shoes. Andrew drew a quick breath, thinking 
 father would indeed have to make good, to satisfy that 
 glance of Harvey s, as keen as it was temperate. 
 
 " In one word," Harvey said quietly, " have you got 
 messages? " 
 
 Dove hesitated. Then he lifted his eyes and answered 
 boldly: 
 
 " Yes." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 51 
 
 The keen eyes did not waver from his face. 
 
 " Messages," repeated Harvey, " from some one you 
 knew, it is to be presumed." 
 
 " I can t say," answered Dove, " whether they re from 
 some one I know or not. And the only way I can find 
 out is to put on more power." 
 
 " Why don t you do it then? " 
 
 "That s precisely it," said Dove impatiently and yet 
 with a sort of triumph, as if now they had run the race of 
 conjecture and were at the goal where he had meant to 
 meet them. " We re going round in a circle. I can t get 
 more olympium because I can t get money." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Harvey softly. " Money." 
 
 Andrea, who was going along step by step with him, 
 guessing out his reaction to her father s words, thought 
 the repetition meant, " It s always money they want. 
 Money! " 
 
 " Yes," said Dove violently. " To set my retorts go 
 ing. To make more olympium." 
 
 Mrs. Harvey breathed her husband s name. He knew 
 what that half-persuasive, half-mandatory "Peter!" 
 meant. But now he had Dove upon olympium, 
 he meant to keep him there for a practical interval. 
 
 " Tell us," he said, " all you can about your discovery." 
 
 Dove half closed his eyes and began reciting what he 
 seemed to see inwardly, reading from a page. 
 
 " I ll tell you," he said, " some of the properties of 
 olympium. Briefly, that is: if I went into it more ex 
 haustively you wouldn t understand. And when it comes 
 to that, I don t myself. But these are some of the things 
 it can do. If I take a vacuum vessel of liquid air and 
 drop into it a small glass tube containing a quarter 
 gramme of olympium, the liquid air will boil. But you 
 can t detect the slightest loss of weight in the olympium 
 that has been boiling it." 
 
52 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Do you mean," said Harvey, " it does the stunts of 
 radium? " 
 
 " Practically every one. It has a high degree of radio 
 activity. It ionizes the air." 
 
 Harvey shook his head. 
 
 " Got me there," said he. 
 
 Andrea, before she could stop herself, rushed in. 
 
 " My father means it makes the air a conductor of 
 electricity." 
 
 But Dove ignored her and went on, evidently not pro 
 posing to explain in any amplitude adapted to the lay 
 mind. 
 
 " I have made something that you might call a sort of 
 mechanical toy. It has a plate of zinc sulphide, and that, 
 when I bring olympium near it, gives off flashes. And 
 those flashes are in the Morse code." 
 
 " The devil ! " said Harvey, his mind trying to effect 
 the conjunction Dove was evidently implying: a celestial 
 telegraphy and the Morse code. " How do you account 
 for that? " 
 
 " The Morse code," said Dove, " would be the logical 
 result of some one who had at one time lived on this 
 earth trying to communicate with it again." 
 
 " Peter ! " said Isabel. Her hands were gripped on each 
 other, and he knew what his name, in that low imploring, 
 meant. " Write a cheque," it meant, " and don t lose 
 time over this sluggish coil of testimony." 
 
 "Yes, dear, yes," he soothed her, and then, to Dove: 
 " Go on." 
 
 " I leave it to you," said Dove. " If a spirit, we ll say 
 shall we say spirit? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," breathed Isabel. 
 
 "Yes, if you like," said her husband, with an air of 
 accepting anything in the way of a theorem to be demon- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 53 
 
 strated. " It s immaterial. That s not a pun." For Isa 
 bel had given a little sound of shocked dissent. " Lord, 
 dear, no! " 
 
 " A spirit," said Dove, " that left this earth after teleg 
 raphy came into use, would know we had the Morse code. 
 What is more logical than for the spirit who knew the 
 code on earth to remember it? That is, if memory per 
 sists. What is more logical than for them the scien 
 tific minds, still if their memory persists to use the code 
 they know we are accustomed to? " 
 
 " What about Socrates, for instance? " Harvey offered, 
 with the air of himself finding it rather feeble. " Or 
 William Shakespeare? They never used the Morse 
 code." 
 
 " I can only say," returned Dove, with the dignity 
 suited to a trifling interruption, " one has to start some 
 where. I start with the Morse code." 
 
 " Peter," said Mrs. Harvey, bringing up her argument 
 of a soft voice and glance, " Mr. Dove must go on with 
 his investigations." 
 
 "Yes, dear," said Harvey. "But before I can act I 
 must know more about it." 
 
 " But we can know," she insisted. " Can t we know, 
 Mr. Dove? You can prove it. Why not bring your 
 what is it you bring near the olympium? " 
 
 " Zinc sulphide, madam," said Dove. 
 
 " Yes. And you could let us see the flashes. My hus 
 band isn t a scientific man, but I m sure if you explained 
 it, he d understand something." 
 
 Dove had had from the first an air of considering her 
 negligible, even when she made it most apparent that she 
 was eager to mulct her husband of a cheque. Now he ad 
 dressed himself to Harvey. 
 
 " I have never been able to get the slightest sign with 
 
54 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 anything less than a quarter gramme. And even then I 
 couldn t get an extended message." 
 
 " Don t you see," cried Isabel, " it s money he needs? 
 That s all. If you knew you could get a message from 
 Philip, what wouldn t you pay for it? " 
 
 " What, indeed," said Harvey sadly, " if we could I " 
 
 " But the chance," she urged. " Aren t we willing to 
 pay for the chance? " 
 
 Harvey turned to Dove, who stood watching them both, 
 almost as keen-eyed now as he. 
 
 " Where," he asked, " is your olympium? " 
 
 " There in that room." 
 
 He pointed to his laboratory. 
 
 " Let s see it." 
 
 " Mr. Harvey, it wouldn t mean anything to you." 
 
 " You know," said Harvey bluntly, " I can t put money 
 on a dark horse. At least, willingly: sometimes I ve had 
 to," he added, his mind reverting to the sops he had thrown 
 Isabel s devouring beast of credulity. 
 
 " But a chance," she was urging. "A chance! " 
 
 " The trouble is," said Harvey frankly, " one trouble 
 it s distasteful to me. Sorry, Mr. Dove, but it is dis 
 tasteful." 
 
 " What," said Dove, " can I do to meet you? " 
 
 " For one thing, let me see your olympium, touch it, 
 handle it." 
 
 " And get a hole burnt in you? " Dove pulled up his 
 sleeve and showed his wrist. " See there and there. 
 I m as careful as any man in my profession, but I m afraid 
 of it. The thing is caustic as hell fire." 
 
 " Let me go into that room." 
 
 " That is my laboratory." 
 
 " Never mind. It isn t the black art, is it, divination 
 and all that? Can t you let me stand in the doorway and 
 see the thing work? " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 55 
 
 " You d laugh at me. The whole business is so primi 
 tive, just as I told you, a mere mechanical toy. And the 
 thing it can do that is one of the surprises that are al 
 ways happening in science." 
 
 " Let me see your retorts." 
 
 " They are not here." 
 
 "Pardon me. You said you d found this element. 
 You spoke of retorts." 
 
 Dove seemed to shrivel and fade in this air of incredu 
 lity. It was to his daughter he turned, and her heart 
 ached for him. 
 
 " Andrea," he said, " he doesn t believe me. Tell him." 
 
 "I have told him," she said, with some indignation. 
 " I did tell you," she insisted, to Harvey. " I told you 
 we lived on Long Island. We had our house then. It 
 was there my father discovered olympium. He mort 
 gaged the house and land to buy stock in the market " 
 
 " Ah ! " interrupted Harvey, " speculated." 
 
 " It was a sure thing," said Dove uneasily. 
 
 He had ceased governing the situation, Andrea saw. 
 
 " Yes," said Harvey smiling, though compassionately. 
 " It always is." 
 
 " I was cleaned out," said Dove irritably. " But I d 
 made my quarter gramme of olympium." 
 
 " Well," said Harvey, after a pause, " well ! " This was 
 as if he abandoned the steps that led to the present mo 
 ment and was ready to deal with the moment itself, take 
 it on its own nterit as an isolated argument without gene 
 sis or conclusion. " You ve got your olympium. That 
 is, you ve a quarter gramme. Now turn on your power, 
 set your mechanical toy going and let us see if you get 
 a flash." 
 
 Isabel put the tips of her small gloved hands together 
 in an ingenuous appeal. 
 
56 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Dove," she implored, " if it s not too much 
 to ask. They will help us." 
 
 " They? " repeated Dove, staring. 
 
 " Those that have passed over. My son," she said. 
 " He must know. I have the strongest evidence that he 
 is keeping in touch with us all the time. Peter, you know 
 he ll help." 
 
 Again Harvey gave the little sound that, to Andrea, 
 was like a lament over his wife s incorrigible belief; but 
 either Isabel s plea or the decision he had come to deter 
 mined Dove and he said, in a firmer tone than he had 
 used: 
 
 " Will you stay here? " 
 
 " Yes," said Harvey, but he and his wife involuntarily 
 rose from their chairs. 
 
 "I am going into that room," said Dove, pointing. 
 " It is, as I told you, my laboratory. You must not fol 
 low me." 
 
 " Is the room dark? " inquired Harvey. 
 
 " Darker than this. You will have no difficulty in see 
 ing the flashes from where you stand." 
 
 " Is there a sound? " 
 
 " Yes, there is a sound similar to wireless. It accom 
 panies the flashes." 
 
 " Are the sounds in the nature of a code? " 
 
 " Yes, dots and dashes. If you can t read them I will 
 write them out for you, and you can take them away to be 
 verified." 
 
 Dove crossed the room to the laboratory door, and 
 with so light a step that Andrea gazed after him in won 
 der. She seemed to be looking on at the rejuvenation of 
 what had, only a couple of hours before, been life failing 
 to its close. He entered, leaving the door open behind 
 him, and she saw that he must have pulled down the 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 57 
 
 shade at the one window, for the room was dark. There 
 they stood, she and the Harveys, and so tense was their 
 expectancy that she could not ask them to sit down again. 
 For one reason, there seemed to be a lack of decorum in 
 saying another word on the heels of the order her father 
 had issued; it was only fitting that they should stand, in 
 deference to the mystery about to be unveiled to them, 
 their eyes upon the obscurity within the room. 
 
VI 
 
 THE three stood there in silence, and for a long moment 
 there was answering silence within. The situation told 
 upon Mrs. Harvey, and she caught a gasping breath. 
 Her husband moved nearer and put his hand over hers as 
 it rested on the back of her chair. She gave him a quick 
 grateful glance and a little smile and, feeling the trem 
 bling of the hand in his, he lifted it, and held it in a firm 
 clasp under his arm. At the first flash she started, but 
 obedient to his admonitory pressure, prevailed on herself 
 to keep her eyes unflinchingly on the darkness through 
 the open door. Now the flashes came fast, of irregular 
 length and so impetuously that it was impossible to keep 
 tally of them. Accompanying them was a zipping sound 
 like wireless, after that silence for a tense moment that 
 did much to heighten expectancy, and then a series of 
 sounds like the clicking from a telegraphic apparatus re 
 peated over and over in the same order. These had 
 hardly begun when Harvey started, raised his head 
 slightly, frowned and seemed to key himself up to a 
 more intent listening. He gripped his wife s hand so 
 tightly that she thought at first it was a signal and looked 
 at him as if begging him to interpret. But his face was 
 so concentrated in its attention that she perceived he was 
 thinking solely of the machine. And suddenly the click 
 ing ceased, there was silence in the dark room and 
 Dove came out, walking no longer like a young man in 
 his strength but faltering, even swaying slightly as if he 
 
 58 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 59 
 
 had taxed himself too far. Andrea started forward, and 
 as quickly stopped. The inward monitor ever standing 
 guard for him in her mind warned her that solicitude over 
 him would be a species of betrayal. They must not see 
 him at his weakest, now that he had called so desperately 
 upon hidden reserves she had not suspected in him, for 
 one last bit of serviceable bravado, one brave argument 
 the more. He was proving himself in every nerve and 
 muscle worthy of all the help they could give him. Isabel 
 Harvey was speaking. 
 
 " What was it, Mr. Dove? " she besought him. " What 
 did it say? " 
 
 He ignored her. He might not even have heard her at 
 all. He was looking straight at Harvey, challenging, 
 persistently confident. 
 
 " Well," he said, " you heard? " 
 
 " But we don t know," said Isabel, her delicate brows 
 coming together, " what it said." 
 
 " I know," said her husband. 
 
 He looked disquieted. He had been prepared for 
 fraud, but he was in no sense ready for the mysteries at 
 tendant on the man s making his claim good. 
 
 " Why, no, dear," said his wife. " It s like telegraph 
 ing. You don t know telegraphy." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do," he said, with a rueful look that seemed 
 to say he wished he didn t recognize this implication of 
 a supernatural alphabet, " the rudiments anyhow. Before 
 I was sixteen I was in an office. Mr. Dove? " 
 
 " Well? " said Dove expectantly. 
 
 A brighter spark lit up his eyes, or the spark that lived 
 there had flickered into flame. Andrea hated to see it, 
 meaning, as she knew it did, an intensity of expectation 
 that might easily be dashed. 
 
 " Jou read it, of course? " 
 
60 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Yes," said Dove. " It said " 
 
 " Wait," Harvey interrupted him. " Let me get my 
 note-book." He drew it from his pocket, tore out a page 
 and slit that in half. " Take this bit of paper. Here s 
 a pencil. Write down what your flashes said. Done 
 it? Give me the pencil and I ll write it, too. Now we ll 
 pass the papers to my wife and she ll tell us how they 
 agree." 
 
 He took Dove s folded paper and gave it, with his own, 
 to Isabel who, after some fumbling, found her lorgnon 
 and opened one after the other. 
 
 "Why," she said, "they re just the same: Increase 
 your power. " And then the significance of it cleared be 
 fore her and she added: " But of course they re the same. 
 I don t see why you did it that way, Peter. I should have 
 been just as well satisfied to have Mr. Dove tell us or 
 to have you, dear, of course." 
 
 " But it s proved," cried Dove, in a wildness of delight 
 that drew the renewed inquiry of Harvey s glance. " He g 
 proved it, don t you see? " 
 
 Isabel was puzzled at so exact a precision over so slight 
 a thing when great issues were at stake. 
 
 " But I wish," she said, " we could have had something 
 positive, something from Phil. Don t you think you 
 could try it again, Mr. Dove? If you tried definitely now 
 to get my son " 
 
 " Wait, dear," said her husband gently. " We haven t 
 proved anything except what the flashes say. They do 
 read: Increase your power, but we don t know any more 
 than we did before about the way they are made." 
 
 "Why, Mr. Dove has told us. You may not under 
 stand it. I don t either. But I don t see any need of 
 our understanding it, if we can get the message." 
 
 " Mr. Dove," said Harvey, " I suppose you have some 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 61 
 
 theory of the meaning of those words, * Increase your 
 power ? " 
 
 " It means," said Dove without hesitation, " that with 
 a quarter of a gramme of olympium I can get that message 
 from somewhere outside our atmosphere, and if I had 
 more olympium and increased my power I should get 
 other messages, maybe fuller ones, maybe from farther 
 away. I am willing to swear I should hear what some 
 other world is waiting to say to this one." 
 
 " Oh," said Isabel, trembling so that her husband and 
 Andrea, whose eyes were on her now, felt a new pity for 
 her, " that s the very thing he s trying to prove to us. 
 He must have money to make more olympium and in 
 crease his power. Peter, it isn t possible you don t 
 see." 
 
 " Wait, dear," said her husband patiently. " We haven t 
 come to that yet." 
 
 But her desire was so overwhelming that she pushed on, 
 past his entreaties, past his known desires. 
 
 "We mustn t be blind," she said, her pathetic lip 
 trembling. " How often have we said we wouldn t shut 
 ourselves up in our prejudices. Even mother owns that, 
 though it s about other things. We re not the only ones 
 waiting for news. It s the whole world. Mothers, Peter, 
 waiting for their sons! " 
 
 Harvey yielded to a counter deduction long enough for 
 a little whimsical twist to curl the corners of his mouth. 
 " Fathers, too, perhaps " was the inevitable retort if he 
 had permitted himself one ; but indeed there was no slight 
 est temptation. She was too deep in her bewildered 
 misery. 
 
 " Why," she was saying now, in an impulsive conviction 
 impressive even to Dove, so that his eyes left Harvey and 
 toned searchingly on her, " if giving him every cent we ve 
 
62 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 got would bring such a discovery one minute nearer, 
 don t you see we re bound to give it? " 
 
 " She understands," broke in Dove, as if he felt his 
 triumph already in his hands. " Women don t reason; 
 they see. My daughter has seen from the first. She has 
 devoted herself to carrying it through." 
 
 Andrea gave him a grateful but also a wondering glance. 
 This was the first time she had known him to commend 
 the quality of her devotion. Harvey had stood thinking 
 while these last things were said, his wife s persuasions 
 and Dove s response. Now he turned to Dove with a 
 business man s succinctness when he comes to terms. 
 
 " I ll make you," he said, " a proposition." 
 
 Isabel Harvey, throwing Andrea a little smile, impul 
 sively put out her hand. Andrea, grasping it, again 
 thought for a bewildering instant that shot into this pres 
 ent interview like a ray of unexpected light, how strange 
 it was that this should be the mother of her lover who 
 had died. They clasped hands and stood there as if 
 allied in their impatience and their hope. But Dove, to 
 Andrea s amazement, expecting, as she had, to see him 
 give some sign of unequivocal joy, looked merely thought 
 ful. 
 
 " I will bring," Harvey went on, " three scientific men 
 of the highest standing to this room to-morrow morning, 
 and you shall give them a demonstration." 
 
 " What do you mean by a demonstration? " asked 
 Dove, frowning. 
 
 " Very little. I m prepared to accept a minimum of 
 proof. If you get the message we have just read and 
 they agree that you get it legitimately " 
 
 " What do you mean by legitimately? " put in Dove. 
 
 " I hardly know how to tell you," said Harvey frankly, 
 " without being offensive. For I m not, as you see, a 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 63 
 
 scientific man. You could anybody could impose 
 almost any sort of ingenious trick on me " 
 
 " Peter! " cried his wife. " Oh, you don t mean that! 
 No, Mr. Dove, he doesn t, not in the way it sounds." 
 
 She was begging Mr. Dove, it seemed, to show a leni 
 ency of judgment her husband might not deserve but that 
 should benevolently be shown him on the score of his 
 ignorance of scientific values. But Dove took no notice 
 of her, only repeating thoughtfully to himself: 
 
 " A trick! " and then concluding: " What then? " 
 
 " If," continued Harvey, " they agree that, to the best 
 of their knowledge and belief, the flashes and accompany 
 ing use of the code constitute a message, and that the 
 message cannot be accounted for by any data known to 
 them, I will stake you to the extent of five thousand 
 dollars." 
 
 The two women, with an according impulse, smiled at 
 each other, Mrs. Harvey tearful in her gratitude and 
 Andrea glowing. But Dove, looking deeply thoughtful, 
 repeated, as if to himself: 
 
 " Five thousand dollars." 
 
 He showed no sort of recognition of the offer in any per 
 sonal sense, either gratitude or relief, and the two women, 
 surprised, each after the nature of her interest in the 
 question, turned to him with an identical desire of saving 
 the situation by prompting him to some sort of adequate 
 response. But Harvey had not looked for an impetuous 
 acceptance. He might not have been surprised at it, had 
 it come, but he was simply making a business proposition 
 and in the world where such things are commonplaces, 
 men hardly make an emotional matter of them. He con 
 tinued: 
 
 " If within the next three months after receiving the 
 five thousand dollars you come upon any further result 
 
64 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 that, by a consensus of scientific opinion to be determined 
 on later, is declared to be valid, I will form a company to 
 finance your work for the next ten years." 
 
 Again the two women mutely interrogated Dove who 
 still remained staring down at his shabby shoes and work 
 ing his mouth, as if he had words but could not manage 
 them. 
 
 " Father! " Andrea said remindingly and left her plae 
 at Mrs. Harvey s side to touch him on the arm. 
 
 Isabel, her face sweetly suffused, looked at her husband 
 gratefully. 
 
 " I knew you would/ she said. " Phil knew it, or he 
 wouldn t have brought us here." 
 
 " Father! " Andrea prompted him. " You heard what 
 Mr. Harvey said." 
 
 " I heard him," said Dove, and though it was under his 
 breath it must have sounded ungracious to any hearers 
 less determined, for varying reasons, to show him 
 the tenderest consideration. Whatever his attitude might 
 be toward them and all the world beyond his laboratory, 
 his great need was apparent enough to ensure him special 
 privilege. 
 
 " Well," said Andrea, hesitating, " oughtn t you to 
 I m sure we re so grateful, aren t we father? we re so re 
 lieved." 
 
 Dove made no direct answer. He only repeated to 
 himself: 
 
 "A consensus of opinion of scientific men." 
 
 " Can you think of anything better? " asked Harvey. 
 " Isn t that what you d want yourself? " 
 
 But now, to Andrea s unspeakable alarm, her father s 
 face settled into the querulous lines she knew. In the re 
 juvenation he had been able to compass, at the beginning 
 of the interview, those lines had disappeared and, with 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THB WORLDS 65 
 
 the piteous proneness of the human heart to accept joy 
 as permanent, she had thought them gone for good. And 
 now he was speaking, not to Harvey but to her, in the 
 old complaining key: 
 
 " Shouldn t you think there d be enough faith left in 
 this world to take a man s own word, a man that s worked 
 as I have, that s stripped himself of everything " 
 
 " You don t accept my conditions? " Harvey s voice 
 came in curtly. 
 
 " I don t say that," said Dove, still with the inexpli 
 cable implication of being driven to the wall. " I don t 
 say I don t accept them." 
 
 " If you can suggest anything fairer " Harvey began, 
 and Dove answered querulously: 
 
 " Oh, they re fair enough from your point of view." 
 
 " But, father," Andrea prompted him, " they re all we 
 could ask for, all anybody could ask. They re splen 
 did." 
 
 " Well, then," he said, in an angry desperation, " they 
 are splendid. I suppose you know." 
 
 "And," she still prompted him shyly but with persis 
 tence, she was so desperately afraid of losing what he had 
 his hand on, " you accept them, don t you? Father! " 
 
 " Yes," he responded grudgingly, " I accept." 
 
 Peter Harvey, little as he expected outspoken gratitude, 
 did look at him in a humorous questioning. Still he did 
 not allow himself to be surprised. These might be the 
 ways of scientific men, queer ducks like artists and fel 
 lows of that ilk, specially endowed. 
 
 " Then," he said, " I ll scare up my three scientists and 
 fetch them here for the first demonstration. To-mor 
 row? " 
 
 " No," cried Dove, in a shrill violence, " not to-morrow." 
 
 "Ah!" said Harvey interrogatively, as if delay bred 
 
66 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 doubt. " When shall I bring them? if not to-morrow the 
 day after? " 
 
 " No, no," said Dove, as if he had a right to fretful- 
 ness, he was being tried so far. 
 
 " Very well then, in a week? " 
 
 But instead of answering Dove turned to Andrea and 
 asked piteously, in the tone of a child who may on the in 
 stant break down and sob from sheer tiredness : 
 
 " Don t you see I m all in? " 
 
 " Peter ! " said Isabel remindingly , and he at once took 
 up his hat to go. He was often bewildered by the out 
 come of what he considered his commonplace endeavors 
 to make the way plain before some stumbling fellow who 
 couldn t find it. Here he was smoothing the path for this 
 irascible old gentleman who, instead of electing to go on 
 in it, was sitting down by the roadside bewailing the hard 
 ships he had undergone in getting thus far. Yet there 
 was something perversely devilish in being " all in." It 
 came when you could least afford it. He d seen men, 
 knocked out in that way, lose all their chances, too, poor 
 chaps ! through not being strong enough to ride the wave 
 when it came. Though maybe the man wasn t so old, 
 after all, not older than Harvey himself. It was a brute 
 of a world, he reflected, when a finely strung creature 
 could be worn to such unserviceable shreds. 
 
 " He s been working too hard," Isabel was saying to 
 Andrea, who, bewildered between the necessity of sooth 
 ing her father and at the same time pressing him to his 
 own advantage, was merely looking piteous and saying 
 nothing. 
 
 " Working? " Dove cried in the strident voice of acute 
 self-pity. " Of course I ve worked too hard. Did you 
 ever hear of a man s discovering anything and not work 
 ing himself into his grave?" He swayed a little and 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 67 
 
 turned again to Andrea as if he were frightened at his own 
 unstable poise. " I m lightheaded," he muttered. 
 " Things look strange to me." 
 
 Isabel was bent on getting away as soon as possible. 
 Nothing, she saw, would compose him but Andrea with 
 whatever arts of soothing her accustomed tasks had 
 taught her. But when they were at the door and Harvey, 
 holding it open for his wife, turned to bow a grave fare 
 well, Dove started forward. 
 " Don t forget," he cried, " I ve accepted." 
 " Very well," said Harvey. " The offer s open." 
 " But give me a week," said Dove, in an inexplicable 
 tone of beseeching, " only a week." 
 
 " Of course," said Harvey kindly, " you shall have a 
 week." 
 
VII 
 
 ANDREA stood at the door watching them while they got 
 into the car and looked back to wave a last good-bye. It 
 was, she gratefully felt, to assure her of their wordless 
 sympathy, to offer a renewed promise that whatever her 
 father would allow them to do, in the only way they 
 could do it, on that she might count. She closed the door 
 and came back to him where he stood clenching his hands 
 and ejaculating a word or two she could not catch. She 
 went up to him and gently touched one of the tense hands. 
 
 " Come, dear," she said, " lie down and let me cover 
 you. It s all settled. Don t you know it is? " 
 
 " Settled? " he threw at her. " They drive me into a 
 corner and you call it settled." 
 
 She had recovered her composure. It was necessary, 
 as necessary as that the nurse s calmness should keep pace 
 with the patient s mounting delirium. 
 
 " Never mind," she said. " Let s not argue it now." 
 
 " No," he said bitterly, " accept it. Accept anything 
 they offer, and say Thank you to them. But don t tell 
 me to lie down and sleep. What time have I for sleep 
 when I ve got to be ready for them in a week from to 
 day? " 
 
 "You were wise," she cajoled him, "to say a week. 
 That gives you time to get a little rested and me to ar 
 range the rooms. We ll carry it off with a high hand. 
 You must have some clothes, dad. I see you, new trous 
 ers, not those old shiny legs, new cravat " 
 
 68 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 69 
 
 He was not looking at her. 
 
 " God in heaven! " he exclaimed, not wildly but con 
 versationally and looking up as if quite sure the God in 
 heaven heard, " what shall I do? " 
 
 " You dread it, don t you? " she asked tenderly. " I 
 wish you didn t. It doesn t seem as if you need." 
 
 " Who will they be? " Again, though without looking 
 up, this time, he seemed to be interrogating the God in 
 heaven Who alone could sound his mortal misery. 
 " Scientists. Three scientists of standing." 
 
 She laughed a little, as if amusedly, but really coaxing 
 him to that plane of hope where the sanity of Harvey s 
 plan had led her, leaving her there secure with that last 
 reassuring wave from the car. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " who do you suppose they ll be? 
 Some of those young professors you used to have down 
 at Long Cliff when you talked about iodides and I had to 
 go to bed, you got so dull? Dad, I almost think you 
 made a mistake shutting yourself up years ago and not 
 seeing them any more. Perhaps this will start you off 
 and you ll begin again." 
 
 " Begin again! " he repeated, staring at her. " Take a 
 lot of sceptics on board, just when I m setting out on my 
 big adventure? " 
 
 " That s a pretty way to put it," said she, still coaxing 
 him along as you might coax a child into a flowery mea 
 dow out of the dusty road where the trials of the way 
 have been too much for him. " Sailing an adventure, 
 that s what it is. And you re Columbus and Mr. Harvey 
 is Queen Isabella and he s going to sell his jewels to fit 
 you out and presently you ll be calling Land hoi 
 You re the captain, dad. You re the lookout, too; you re 
 the whole show." 
 
 " This next week," he said, " don t speak to me, don t 
 
70 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 look at me, don t ask me to leave the house. I ve got 
 the most damnable problem to work out that ever a man 
 had, and in one week." 
 
 " But dearest," said she, wondering, " you re ready for 
 them now. You ve only to say how d ye do to his pro 
 fessors, or whatever they are, and take them in there and 
 let them see the thing work. They ll get the flashes, at 
 least, just as the Harvey s did, and hear it click out In 
 crease your power. I trust it to do that. It wouldn t 
 fail us the one day when it could earn all that money 
 for you to go on with. It never d be so mean as that." 
 
 Her father turned to her and regarded her steadily, a 
 look that reassured her as his manner of receiving the 
 Harveys had done, showing him so capable of the self- 
 control he lacked in his desultory intercourse with her 
 that she could believe him to be still a man of strength 
 and power. 
 
 " Andrea," said he, as if he were bent on impressing her 
 with the extreme importance of what he had to say, 
 " I ve got nothing to show them; nothing, that is, a trained 
 mind would accept." 
 
 " But," she said, bewildered, " it said, Increase your 
 power. " 
 
 " It said it," he repeated bitterly. " Yes. And who 
 prompted it? who made it rap out the Morse code? I 
 did." 
 
 " You did? Then that means you ve more control over 
 it than I thought. You can summon them, whoever they 
 are, and make them answer, and because they can t an 
 swer fully they say, Increase your power. " 
 
 He stood looking at her a full minute, considering. 
 Perhaps he was wondering whether it was not wasteful, 
 one of those terrible traffics where we barter gold for 
 dross, to run the risk of losing her untouched belief in 
 him. But she was only an atom, as he was himself com- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 71 
 
 pared with the colossal good he meant to bring about. 
 And at this stage she could help him more by acting with 
 him, her eyes open, than by following blindly on, armed 
 only with her unsupported confidence. That he might 
 lose her, he never for a moment guessed. 
 
 " Andrea," he said, "when I tell you I did it, I mean I 
 did it by a trick, a trick a mere student of the a b c s of 
 physics would detect at once." 
 
 " A trick? " she repeated, only puzzled, as yet. It 
 must be, she thought, some eccentricity of what he was 
 pleased to call his mechanical .toy. 
 
 " A trick," he said. " Nobody has called me from any 
 mysterious source. Nobody has asked me to increase 
 my power. But " and now his gravity of composure 
 disappeared. The light she knew and dreaded had come 
 back into his eyes " but it remains just as much a fact 
 that that s what I ve got to do. I ve got to increase my 
 power. And what difference does it make whether I tell 
 a literal, hard-headed fellow like Harvey that I know 
 it s so, or whether I convince him by a harmless demon 
 stration? " 
 
 " But, father," said Andrea, struggling with her dismay 
 and a growing terror of his mental processes, " you 
 wouldn t deceive those two." 
 
 " Wouldn t I? " said he grimly. " There isn t the man 
 or woman living I wouldn t deceive to bring me an inch 
 nearer my result. I don t know whether there s a man 
 or woman I wouldn t kill." 
 
 And, blankly thrown back upon her unprepared self, 
 all that occurred to her to say, was: 
 
 " Daddy, won t you lie down? " 
 
 Then ensued one of the strangest interviews she had 
 ever had with him. Up to this time she had known him 
 as children know their elders, without analysing, without 
 question. It had been the inherited partnership of love. 
 
72 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 But now, of fixed purpose, he set out to translate himself 
 to her, to impress on her mind his real image because the 
 moment had come when only so, he believed, could she 
 serve his tremendous project. He sat down and pointed 
 to her chair and she was glad to take it. 
 
 " Andrea," said he, with that unchanged air of holding 
 her to an intent consideration of the fact before them, 
 " did you ever think what it is to be a scientist? " 
 
 " A scientist? " she repeated wearily. 
 
 She was disinclined to enter upon abstract explications. 
 It seemed to her he might give her a few sane facts to 
 feed on and prevent her life from being so unpalatably 
 queer as it was, so unlike the lives of other daughters who 
 had not incurred the fate of genius in a father. This was 
 the first time she had retreated from him far enough to 
 conceive their interests as separate and perhaps conflict 
 ing. Up to this time she had not allowed herself to rec 
 ognise any just desires of her own; but the moment of 
 facing Philip Harvey s picture had awakened in her a 
 bitterness of revolt that she, so young, had been called 
 upon to suffer such unformulated griefs. If she had 
 known the Harveys before their son died, known them as 
 his father and mother, so that she could have had some 
 friendly intercourse with them, a staff for her grief to 
 lean upon, then there would have been something natural 
 and bearable in it all. But he had come to her from the 
 skies, he had been withdrawn into the skies again, and the 
 familiar places that had known him on earth were closed 
 to her. And all this had stung her into a madness of re 
 volt. For the first time she felt her youth had had its 
 rights and chance denied them to her. But she repeated 
 her father s word and, scarcely waiting for it, he wnt 
 on in his argument, desperately calculated, she saw, from 
 point to point, to move her. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 73 
 
 " Yes, a scientist. Being a scientist is fighting your 
 way through every difficulty to the closed door." 
 
 " The closed door," she repeated, again wearily. 
 
 " That s what science does. She lets you open one door 
 after another; but you have to reach the door with such 
 struggling, and you re so weakened by the long way, by 
 hunger, by thirst! Andrea, think of the men that have 
 opened doors, and how they suffered, most of them, and 
 nobody believed and nobody cared. But they never 
 stopped for an instant trying to reach the one door they 
 were making for, to drag it open, so that others could 
 go through even over the dead body of the one that 
 opened it out into the light." 
 
 Still he was not moving her from her trance of self- 
 pity and he saw it and called on himself the more mightily, 
 with a louder voice. She did speak, but faintly and with 
 only a sad interest in what he said: 
 
 "Poor little father!" 
 
 " You don t see it yet," he insisted, " that picture of 
 the door that ll stay closed till somebody offers up him 
 self to open it. That s where I ve got, Andrea, don t you 
 see? Right up to the door, and now, when my strength 
 is gone from fighting my way along, comes the hardest 
 task of all. I ve got to fling myself at the door. I ve got 
 to batter it down." 
 
 " Well, dear," she answered, " that s what I say. 
 You ve made the long journey. We ve made it together. 
 I ve been there, too. I haven t left you for a minute." Her 
 mouth quivered, as if she wished he might remember this 
 again without her prompting. " And now," she said, call 
 ing on her old cheerfulness, " Mr. Harvey is going to help 
 you batter down the door." 
 
 " Is he? " said Dove ironically. " Yes, I suppose he is. 
 He s going to work by these modern methods on a gi- 
 
74 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 gantic scale everything in terms of horsepower and 
 fetch an armored tank and ram at the door and burst it 
 through. But I ve got to stand with an electric torch in 
 front of it, to show the way. And the tank is going to 
 be full of his damned professors, and if I don t hold the 
 torch to suit em they ll run me down." 
 
 " Father," said Andrea, " I don t understand you." 
 
 " You ll understand me soon enough," he said drily. 
 " Harvey wants proof. Well, I ve given him proof up to 
 his capacity for understanding it." 
 
 " You mean you showed him something you expected 
 him to take for truth." 
 
 "In a way, yes. An illustration it was, an illustra 
 tion. If I could satisfy him to the point where he d fi 
 nance me, I could keep on in the line where I m work 
 ing and that would take me, not to any illustration, mind 
 you, but since we ve talked of the door, to the open 
 door." 
 
 " It s a long way, little father," she said, with a wistful 
 tenderness. He had won her. She was not thinking of 
 herself now but altogether of him. " It s full of briers." 
 
 " I did trick him," he said, in a bitterness of retrospect. 
 " I turned out of my path for a minute, only a minute, and 
 took a short cut to satisfy a fool. Do you blame me for 
 taking a short cut when it was going to set me a million 
 miles further on? And now I m back in the same old 
 path again, where the briers are, you said; and I m far 
 ther back than I was before, and the briers have grown. 
 My God! they ve grown." 
 
 " You mean," said Andrea, puzzling him out, with diffi 
 culty dragging after his wild lead, " that you deceived him 
 to persuade him into giving you the money and that now 
 he wants to put you to the proof and you can t " she 
 stopped. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 75 
 
 If she said it, she was childishly afraid she might make 
 it so. 
 
 " Precisely/ said he. " I can t make good." 
 
 " Father," said she, in a passion of revolt, " I can t be 
 lieve it. I can t believe " 
 
 There she stopped, but his mind went on, supplying 
 the suppressed conclusion. 
 
 " You couldn t," he translated, " have believed I d sell 
 myself to the devil. Well, I would for a ticket to par 
 adise." 
 
 He was morally indifferent to the values they both had 
 in mind, tossing them lightly off as negligible, reckless 
 as youth, and she loved him suddenly with a heart beat 
 ing in new understanding of his arrogance. He was not 
 pathetic to her; he was picturesque. 
 
 " But," she ventured to object, " that s not science." 
 
 " What s not science? " 
 
 " What you ve done, taking your short cut. Science 
 you ve said it yourself is truth, the only truth there is." 
 
 " There s more than one road to truth." And then, his 
 mind, in the intensity of its working, waking to imagery: 
 " When you ve got to truth herself, you can shine up your 
 shield till she sees her face in it; but while you re fighting 
 your way to her it gets as battered as an old moon." 
 
 Andrea s head was strained and dazed by these verbal 
 complexities, and she took refuge in fact. 
 
 " Well," she said, " we can t see them again." 
 
 " See whom? " 
 
 " The Harveys." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 " If we ve cheated them " It was impossible to re 
 gard herself except as part of him. 
 
 " Good God! " he cried exasperated, " I m not going to 
 keep on cheating them. What good would that do me, 
 
76 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 with his scientists coming to paw me over? He s as 
 sharp as lightning " 
 
 " You said he was a fool," she put in irrepressibly. 
 
 Already she loved the Harveys. 
 
 " Then/ said he, " I lied. He s a fool in a laboratory, 
 but that s only because he s had no training. I tell you 
 the man s bright as lightning. I ve got to make good, 
 and I ve got to do it in this one week. I ve shown him the 
 flashes. I ve faked a message. I ve got to get that mes 
 sage by some legitimate means that will satisfy his 
 three spies." 
 
 " How can you? " she wondered. 
 
 " How can I? If you re drowning, you swim. You 
 don t say, How can I? If a man hits out at you, you 
 strike first. You can because you must. I ve got to sat 
 isfy his conditions and, by God! I will." 
 
 "Father," said she, entirely bewildered now in her 
 search for the tortuous line between what she might and 
 might not believe, " isn t any of it true? " 
 
 " Any of it? " he repeated, staring at her. 
 
 " Yes. Haven t you really discovered olympium? " 
 
 He gave a cry, an inarticulate sound, stronger than 
 she could have imagined coming from his shrunk throat. 
 
 " Of course I have discovered olympium," he panted. 
 " It is a fact, as much a fact as radium. And it has 
 mysterious reactions, mysterious, I tell you. There s no 
 way to account for them, no w r ay but one. They come 
 from outside our atmosphere. They are the work of 
 other intelligences trying to make themselves known. 
 I d stake my life on it." 
 
 Heretofore she had accepted every statement he made 
 her in its simplest, most obvious form. If he told her what 
 he believed to be true, she assumed it was true. Now, 
 though in a painfully ignorant fashion, she had begun to 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 77 
 
 weigh and balance. And not this evidence alone: the 
 mere human quality of it hurtled at her, hit her with a 
 tremendous impact and left her trembling before life it 
 self and its shifting values. Up to the day when she had 
 come on the picture of Philip Harvey in the library, she 
 had thought as a child. Facts were facts, always com 
 prehensible if you chose to prove them. You might look 
 at them from one angle or you might measure them on all 
 sides to see how, in this strange fluid medium called life, 
 they were made to fit the truth that is more than fact. 
 But always they did fit. And now the sense of life it 
 self, that obscure, multi-colored complexity, was upon her, 
 and she had an overpowering desire to understand her 
 father, to see how the facts he had distorted fitted the 
 truth within him. 
 
 " Father," said she, " it s true, isn t it, there s nothing 
 on this earth you want so much as to establish communi 
 cation between this world and another?" 
 
 He answered gravely. 
 
 " Yes. I d give everything I have, if I had anything 
 left to give. I d give my life, your life, everybody s life. 
 It s the next link in the chain. We can speak from one 
 continent to another. We re going to speak from one 
 planet to another. And that wireless will be known by 
 my name." 
 
 The subterfuge of his short cut was forgotten. She 
 gloried in him. When he said he would sacrifice her, she 
 gloried the more. And it was not alone because he was 
 ready to enter the noble army of martyrs who have laid 
 down their lives for the truth. In the heightened ecstacy 
 of her love for a dead lover, she saw him not only as the 
 martyr pioneer striving for the common good, but himself 
 the constant lover, love itself. 
 
 " Father," she ventured, for they had not talked of her 
 
78 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 mother for a long time, " do you suppose she knows? Do 
 you think she s trying on the other side of the door to get 
 at you as you are trying to get at her? " 
 
 He looked at her in complete wonder and then asked 
 her the astonishing question in one word: 
 
 " Who? " 
 
 " Why," said she, hardly believing she had heard him, 
 " mother. That s what you re doing it for, of course, 
 to talk to mother. And after all these years." 
 
 He sat perfectly still and looked before him. She 
 waited and her heart beat hard. It had begun to be 
 frightened, her heart, it had met so many scarcely compre 
 hended things this day. 
 
 " Andrea," said he, at last, " I am not trying to com 
 municate with your mother." 
 
 She could not answer. Her throat grew dry and she 
 hated the picture her mind was conjuring up. He was, 
 that cruel insight told her, recalling, and with difficulty, 
 the vision of her mother, sleeping now for years. He be 
 gan as if he, under the mandate of inexorable truth, were 
 painfully collating evidence. " I suppose," he said, " it 
 was so at first. Yes, I know it was. I felt as a man 
 does when he loses his wife. I wanted to know. I had to 
 know. But afterward " he seemed to gain in actual 
 physical presence and towered with the growth of his 
 waxing egotism " afterward I just wanted to throw the 
 line across. Anybody might answer. It might be your 
 mother, it might be a man or woman that died a thousand 
 years ago. Only I d got to throw the line." 
 
 A woman understands a man when he speaks in terms 
 of her own realities. But when he mounts his horse of 
 endeavor to ride out against the dragons of ignorance 
 and superstition that have kept even her own hearth 
 stone dark, she may understand him or she may not. She 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 79 
 
 may glory in that wild ride, or even spring up behind and 
 brave the darkness too. But for the instant she feels the 
 lonesomeness of seeing him off upon strange quests, hallo 
 ing to the silence in a language not by inheritance her 
 own. 
 
VIII 
 
 ANDREA, seeing her father as she never had before, a 
 man insanely bent upon his task for no reward beyond 
 the laurels that adorn illustrious names, felt dulled and 
 cold. Through all the years when he had been growing 
 more irascible, more outwardly remote from her, she had 
 felt the inner heart of him beating on in unchanged con 
 stancy. Of late, especially since she had met her lover 
 from the skies, she had thriven on the belief that here at 
 her hand was love itself. Other homes might be set to 
 the tune of a sweet daily intercourse, but on her father s 
 hearth lived the consecrated flame: the unflagging devo 
 tion of a man to his desire of speaking once more with 
 his dead wife. His present purpose might be greater, his 
 trembling grasp upon the unfading laurels, his desire to 
 assure immortal certainties to a world of men bereft; but 
 it was colder, and before the frigid greatness of it she was 
 shivering. He saw that and felt he had lost her, or at 
 least her old belief in him; and he felt, by contrast, how 
 heartening it had been, that unquestioning belief where 
 he had warmed himself as a man hovers over the fire on 
 the hearth without thought of the faithful hands that 
 built it there. He was himself suddenly bereft. He de 
 spaired of her. What argument was here to bind her to 
 him again? 
 
 " Wouldn t you," she hesitated, " if they brought a 
 scientific man here, wouldn t you show him what you 
 called your mechanical toy? " 
 
 80 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 81 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " But," he qualified, " if they ll give me a chance I can 
 show them something better than a mechanical toy." 
 
 " When? " she asked fearfully. 
 
 "When!" 
 
 He looked back over the years behind him, months of 
 dark discouragement, an hour of unbelievable happiness 
 when mysterious things had happened in this fumbling 
 after the secrets nature was guarding with a cruelty so in 
 exorable that it seemed personal to him alone and he had 
 the dark solace of feeling himself under the ban of the 
 gods. Yet through the obscurity of that time ran a 
 golden thread: his belief that communication was possible, 
 his resolve, stronger than past love or present despair, to 
 find it. And now he broke down in a perfectly honest 
 misery of beseeching. As she thought, in her compas 
 sionate mind, he went all to pieces. 
 
 " Andrea," said he, " I know it is possible for this earth 
 to communicate with the rest of the universe if there is 
 life enough in the universe to answer us. And I believe 
 there is. Whether it has anything to do with this planet 
 I don t know. But communication will come, and it 
 won t come through half-baked mediums and fakers. It 
 will come exactly like every other advance on this earth, 
 through science. Some slave of his own insight and his 
 own determination will open the door." 
 
 She was looking at him reflectively and he turned his 
 eyes away. She was musing over him, he saw, she was 
 reasoning and, like her, he felt himself grow cold. An 
 drea was telling herself that he had two parallel lines of 
 argument. But did they, at any point, meet? He as 
 serted that interplanetary communication was possible 
 and declared himself the man to establish it. He asserted 
 that he had discovered olympium and that olympium did 
 
82 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 inexplicable things. Therefore and here she balked 
 the things it did were in the line of his theory of com 
 munication. Was he clear-headed there? was this logic, 
 defective to her only because she was unpractised in its 
 art? Once it would have been impossible to set up her 
 poor reason in opposition to his trained intelligence. Now 
 she was hot upon penetrating the maze of probabilities. 
 
 " Father," she said, " I don t understand. You say 
 olympium makes the dots and dashes. But you say, when 
 you tried to get the dots and dashes to convince the Har- 
 veys, you played a trick." 
 
 " I don t always," said he, " get my dots and dashes 
 when I expect them. I had to have them at that particu 
 lar minute because the Harveys were here and the Har- 
 veys wanted them. So I helped them." 
 
 " But how? " said she, in despair. " If you don t un 
 derstand how they come, how could you help them? You 
 said the working of your mechanical toy was outside your 
 control. How could it have been in your control this 
 morning? " 
 
 " Simply," said he, " because I didn t do it by the use 
 of my mechanical toy." 
 
 And now he looked so sly that she believed him. And 
 the perfidy of that was so sickening upon her that she 
 was about to tell him she repudiated the whole thing both 
 from the Harveys standpoint and her own, when he faced 
 about mentally and made a last assault upon her loyalty. 
 
 " Andrea, you don t understand these things. I tell 
 you something, and you think I m a fraud. I m not. 
 I m only taking one of the short cuts to what I ve got to 
 do. You must leave all that right here. You couldn t 
 judge me justly to save your life. You haven t the knowl 
 edge. Those Harveys couldn t. They haven t the knowl- 
 $dge either. I ve just one thing for you to do." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 83 
 
 " What is it, father? " she asked him, as he paused, 
 evidently to whip his arguments into line. 
 
 " If I don t make my discovery before I die, you ve 
 got to make it for me." 
 
 She was greatly startled. 
 
 " But, father," she said, " how could I? You say your 
 self I ve not the knowledge, not the training " 
 
 "You don t need them. You may work better from 
 your ignorance. It ll keep you passive. Do you see? If 
 I die and sometimes I think I sha n t live long my 
 heart s not strong if I die, I shall be at the other end 
 of the line. Wherever they go spirits I shall be 
 there. I shall work through you. Don t let your mind 
 wander," he cried peremptorily. " Listen to me. In that 
 room, in the upper right hand drawer of the desk, is a set 
 of directions, very short. They tell you where to find it 
 olympium, I mean." 
 
 " Isn t it in the case? " she asked. 
 
 They had taken great precautions to keep it packed 
 when it was not in use, so that in emergency they could 
 lay their hands on it. He looked shrewdly at her, as if 
 he wished to seem inscrutable. 
 
 " It is now," he said. " If I made up my mind to take 
 myself off the planet I might put it somewhere else. It s 
 too easy to snatch up the case anybody coming in 
 here " 
 
 He was wandering off now, and she recalled him. 
 
 " But nobody does come when we re not here." 
 
 " My directions," he said, waking again to this last 
 imagined crisis, " will tell you what to do. It s a simple 
 formula. You won t understand, but do it. When I die, 
 don t leave me for an instant. Stay in that room there, 
 follow the written directions and wait till I communicate. 
 For I can communicate. I can! I willl " 
 
84 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 His voice rose from the level of reasonable speech into 
 the shrill staccato that always terrified her ; it meant that 
 he was as she always explained it to herself, " too tired." 
 
 " But father," she began, " there must be something for 
 me to learn " 
 
 " Nothing," he cried, in a child s passion, " nothing but 
 the Morse code. You shall learn that to-day. Then all 
 you need to do is to sit down and wait for news from me. 
 I ll write out the message you are to expect and seal it 
 with my seal and lock it up in the top drawer on the left. 
 But they wouldn t believe you," he added, dropping into 
 an apathy of discouragement. " They d say it was a 
 put-up job." 
 
 " We mustn t plan such things," she said, adding that 
 old futility of tenderness, " You re not going to die." 
 
 This he did not notice. He had roused again. 
 
 " You will take the message," he said. " You will 
 write it down. And you ll send for Peter Harvey. He 
 must have the key of the drawer. Ah, but how are you 
 going to send? " he cried, in great irritation. " After it 
 happens you re not to leave me. He must have the key 
 now. He must have a latch key, too, so you needn t even 
 let him in. Aha! I know. We ll put in a telephone. 
 Then you can summon him. He will let himself in, he ll 
 unlock the drawer and take away the message and yours 
 with it, and he will break the seal in the presence of wit 
 nesses." 
 
 It occurred to her that, after all, it would come back to 
 her own good faith, since he might be supposed to have 
 told her what the message was. But this she would not 
 say: he was too tired. Instead, she assured him gently: 
 
 " Daddy, you re not going to die." 
 
 " I don t know," he answered. " It might be the last 
 sacrifice. If I felt sure I should work better from that 
 end of the line " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 85 
 
 Here he paused, and she cried out: 
 
 " father, no ! you wouldn t do that. You mustn t 
 even think it." 
 
 " What else can I do? " he demanded angrily. " This 
 man puts on me a condition I can t fulfil." 
 
 " Can t? " she repeated, with a sinking heart. " You 
 said you must." 
 
 " It isn t possible," he declared, again out of deepest 
 gloom. " I must work in my own way or not at all. As 
 for these people, give them up. I ve no use for a man 
 who s so infernally particular about seeing where his 
 money goes." 
 
 " But," said Andrea, " I don t want to give them up." 
 
 She was bringing her own poor little desires into this 
 drama between worlds, simply, she knew, because she 
 ached with loneliness. 
 
 " You know," she said, " I told you it was their son who 
 came down and talked with me that day on the way to 
 Long Beach." 
 
 " What day? " 
 
 He was looking at her in absolute lack of understand 
 ing. He had forgotten, and the stab of it stung her to 
 cry out: 
 
 " father, I told you. He is the only one I ever cared 
 about, and he was their son." 
 
 " Then tell them so," he threw back at her, " and get 
 something out of them. Get Harvey to say he ll stake 
 me for three months, a year, without driving any sort of 
 Shylock bargain with me." 
 
 She was aghast at the effrontery of it. 
 
 " But I can t," she said. " I ve no claim on them. 
 You talk as if we d been engaged and even then I 
 couldn t or married to him." 
 
 " You should have married him," he said, impervious to 
 
86 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 possibilities, ignoring them, thrusting them out of the way, 
 and dashing on to his own ends. " Then you could have 
 demanded something of them and they wouldn t have had 
 the face to refuse you." 
 
 " Do you mean " she began, and stopped. 
 
 " I mean," said he, " if you were so selfish as to let a 
 rich man s son make love to you and leave you when we re 
 on this awful road, this briery path you said it yourself 
 never once telling him he could save us, you d better 
 sacrifice your pride and save us now yourself. Tell them 
 he was in love with you. He was, wasn t he? Tell them 
 he married you. Tell them anything. Only, for God s 
 sake, get the money, or you ll force me into making my 
 last sacrifice. Yes, as God s my witness, I swear I ll kill 
 myself." 
 
 She stood staring at him and he stared back at her and 
 then, enraged at her silen.ce, he went into his room and 
 shut the door. 
 
IX 
 
 MADAM BROOKE was by the fire in her daughter s sit 
 ting-room, her chair turned at an angle to command the 
 room. Miss Bixby, the noiselessly competent secretary, 
 who came in to gather up some papers from the table, 
 gave her a respectful glance, but brief as it was, it enabled 
 her to snatch a complete volume of enlightenment from the 
 old lady s attitude, her head bent slightly as she addressed 
 herself to the morning paper. Madam Brooke stayed in 
 her own room, Miss Bixby knew, unless the family gov 
 ernment was in some sort of agitation, and then she came 
 down and seated herself nearer the centre of things. This 
 discovery had dawned on Miss Bixby only since Philip s 
 death and the wave of automatic writing that had en 
 gulfed the house, and she was the more alive to its sig 
 nificance because she herself ruled these psychic waves. 
 The old lady made Miss Bixby uneasy. Her glance, sa 
 tirical on occasion, pitilessly sharp, threw the wrong light 
 upon the vague outlines Miss Bixby saw growing under 
 her pencil as it sketched another world conformable to 
 the dreams of mourning mortals. Mrs. Harvey, too, felt 
 the power of that glance, Miss Bixby knew, and had sent 
 her now to fetch their ghostly tools to the room below, on 
 the transparent pretext that it was warmer there. The 
 instant she had gone, Madam Brooke confirmed her diag 
 nosis. She let her paper slide to the floor, rose and, with 
 her stiff sprightliness, something like a bird s movement 
 on the ground, went to the table, pushed the electric but- 
 
 87 
 
88 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 ton beside it, and had just returned to her chair when Su- 
 sanne answered it. 
 
 " Is Mr. Harvey in the library? " asked Madam 
 Brooke. 
 
 Susanne was sure of it. She had just taken him the 
 mail. 
 
 " Ask him to come here," said Madam Brooke. " Tell 
 him to read his letters first, if he wants to. I may keep 
 him some time." 
 
 It seemed Mr. Harvey did not want to read his letters, 
 for he appeared at once, cast a glance toward the table 
 in the window recess and then came on to Madam 
 Brooke. 
 
 " Draw up," said she. " You were afraid Isabel wanted 
 you." She too glanced at the table in the alcove, one 
 eyebrow lifted and a half developed smile. " I ll war 
 rant you re never asked to enter this room now without 
 wondering if it s a message through that woman that ll 
 cost you half your income." 
 
 Harvey also smiled, but in a rueful way. Although it 
 was the morning he looked tired, and now he passed his 
 hand over his forehead to mitigate the feeling of the lines 
 there that would never be actually smoothed out. 
 
 " Oh," he said, " I m pretty well prepared for anything 
 that s likely to happen on the score of " Again, by 
 a glance, he indicated the table, but he didn t like to re 
 fer to its uses with the emphasis he felt. They were un 
 holy to him. It was a banal form of meddling, but after 
 all it meant Philip and if he flouted it he seemed to be 
 flouting Philip also. The old lady put out her hand ana 
 touched his with one finger. 
 
 " Peter," said she, " you ought to turn that Bixby out 
 of the house." 
 
 " Well," said he, " what can I do? " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 89 
 
 " After all," she remarked, " you re the head of the 
 house. You needn t be afraid of Isabel. She s gentle as 
 a lamb. That is, she is by nature. Isabel s not quite 
 the same since she s taken up planetary communication. 
 Still, I fancy she d do anything you say." 
 
 " But," said he, " she gets some comfort out of it." 
 
 "So she would out of a drug," returned the old lady 
 bluntly. " But she d have to pay for it in the end. And 
 if she wants to drug herself, let her go out of the house 
 to do it, or have in somebody, somebody that s square, if 
 any of them are. She isn t square, Peter, that Bixby 
 isn t. You can tell it by her eye." 
 
 " No," he said reflectively, " I shouldn t say she was. 
 But she might be any kind of a crook and yet do a per 
 fectly square stunt of automatic writing." 
 
 " Is anybody square," she challenged him, " when 
 they ve let themselves loose in all creation? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," said he, " I m perfectly sure of that, dozens 
 and dozens, hundreds even." 
 
 " You don t mean to tell me," she countered, " you be 
 lieve there s anything in it." 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I m inclined to think there may be 
 something." 
 
 " Do you believe my husband is writing all that stuff 
 about spheres and meeting Philip and warning you to look 
 out the malicious spirits don t cut in -do you believe 
 that? " 
 
 " No," said he, as if it gave him hearty relief to repu 
 diate something, " not for a moment." 
 " Then, if it isn t spooks, what is it? " 
 " I haven t the least idea." 
 
 " Do you think Bixby may be possessed by some power 
 she doesn t understand, or do you believe she s fraud right 
 through? " 
 
90 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " I should say," he answered, smiling at her because he 
 knew he was about to give her the special pleasure of cor- 
 roboration, " if I m to trust the evidence of my senses 
 that sort of mental nose we have for smelling out the kind 
 of person a person is I should say the hated Bixby is 
 pretty well tinctured with fraud." 
 
 "There!" cried the old lady, in high triumph. 
 " There! and yet you won t get rid of her." 
 
 " I won t give Isabel the shock of doing it at present, 
 not till she s a little less broken over Phil. I have an 
 idea Brooke s coming home will make some difference 
 about that, talking with him, seeing him round the 
 house, you know. It ll occupy her mind more and more, 
 and she ll gradually give up her drug." 
 
 " And yet," said the old lady ruthlessly, " she s so taken 
 up with it that she s almost indifferent to Brooke s com 
 ing home." 
 
 This he knew, and yet he winced under it. 
 
 " She may seem so," he said, " but that s partly becaust 
 she s so determined to have news of Phil to give him when 
 he comes. That takes in both the boys, you see." 
 
 She reflected for a moment. 
 
 " So," she said, " it seems you do see through Bixby." 
 
 " Well, at least I fancy I do. I suppose I could be con 
 vinced I d done her an injustice. But that Miss Dove 
 now, you couldn t convince me I don t understand her." 
 
 " What," said the old lady, her belief in his perspicacity 
 scattering, " you don t mean to tell me you distrust Miss 
 Dove? " 
 
 "Distrust her? Heavens, no! I believe in her down 
 to the ground. If she told me she d had a message from 
 my first wife I should swallow it implicitly." 
 
 " Why," said Madam Brooke, " you never had a first 
 wife. That is I mean " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 91 
 
 " Precisely," said he. " But if Miss Dove brought me 
 a message from my first wife I should take it and say 
 Thank you/ " 
 
 " It s the way her eyebrows act," said Madam Brooke 
 conclusively. " I feel just the same. Don t mention her 
 in the same day with the Bixby woman. That s quite 
 another pair of sleeves. Peter, if you actually caught 
 Bixby at her tricks, would you dismiss her then? " 
 
 " I fancy so. Yes, I would. I d send her packing, on 
 the spot." 
 
 " Well," said Madam Brooke, " I ve got a plan." 
 
 He loved her plans, they seemed to put such energy of 
 youth into her. He had had moments, in these last weeks, 
 of wishing Isabel were growing a little more like her 
 mother, that there was a spark more intellect and fun in 
 her soft adhesiveness. 
 
 " I thought it out last night," she said, " when I wag 
 saying my prayers." 
 
 " Do you say your prayers? " he inquired. 
 
 She was so uncompromising that he expected her to 
 demand proof of the heavenly powers before she recog 
 nized them. 
 
 " Silly ! " said she. " Of course I say my prayers. I 
 pray for my dead, too. Not many of you do that, I bet a 
 dollar. Well, last night just as I finished you all up 
 here, you know, you and Isabel and Brooke and Bee 
 and got to Philip it came into my head what I could do 
 and I laughed right out. Isabel s door was open and she 
 called: Mother, was that you? " 
 
 " I heard her," said Harvey. " You didn t answer." 
 
 " Of course I didn t. I was saying my prayers, wasn t 
 I? But this was what I thought. That woman sits in 
 the alcove there by the hour, addressing notes, doing ac 
 counts, all sorts of things when she isn t at her automatic 
 
92 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 writing. She flits in and out like a shadow. She doesn t 
 like me very well. She knows I m onto her." 
 
 Peter laughed out. It was at the last excellent phrase 
 and she, too, smiled at it. 
 
 " Oh, I can t help it," said she. " I got it from the boys. 
 Well, the next time I hear her coming I ll doze in my 
 chair. You ll see her going by the library door, and you 
 run up here, pass her without speaking and you and I ll 
 fall into talk. And I ll tell you a yarn about my brother 
 who died " 
 
 " Your brother," said Peter, " is as hypothetical as my 
 first wife." 
 
 " Of course he is. Do you s pose I d meddle with the 
 dead? No! but I ll tell you what he used to say to me, 
 and I ll bet Aunt Clarissa s snuff box against your gold 
 pencil that baggage ll write it out as a message within a 
 week." 
 
 " Done," said Peter. " She couldn t. It s too child 
 ish. She s not more than half dishonest. She may give 
 the pencil the least little push, but she doesn t make up 
 whole histories. I don t believe that of her." 
 
 " Very well," said Madam Brooke, " we shall see. 
 You d better be in the library. Isabel s going out at 
 eleven and she ll send her up here to work at that table. 
 I ll fall asleep in my chair." 
 
 Harvey went down to the library smiling at her ancient 
 guile and not greatly interested in the outcome. But it 
 happened as she had foretold. Busy over his papers, he 
 heard a step along the hall, looked up and saw Miss 
 Bixby s trig black figure pass his door. He laid his papers 
 on one side and, still smiling at the persistent gamesome- 
 ness of his old friend, went up to his wife s sitting-room. 
 And there again it happened as she had foretold. The 
 window where Miss Bixby sat was not in direct range of 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 93 
 
 the door, but he was aware of her. Madam Brooke, bent 
 absurdly double, was asleep in her chair. He advanced 
 toward her, stopped at a dozen paces and called her 
 name. She recovered herself with a jerk. 
 
 " Stand there," she bade him crisply, " right where you 
 are while I tell my dream. If you come any nearer, 
 you ll make me forget. I was dreaming," she recited, in a 
 voice calculated to carry, " of my brother Samuel, dead 
 long ago. YouVe heard me speak of him. He was the 
 only one that called me Ellen. Ellen, he used to say, 
 if I can come back I will, and I ll remind you of the 
 time we chased the spotted cow to put a wreath of daisies 
 round her horns/ But he never came," she concluded 
 mournfully. " He never came." 
 
 Whether Miss Bixby pricked up her ears or not, neither 
 of them knew. Peter Harvey, feeling very much of a 
 fool, duly waited for the conclusion of Madam Brooke s 
 rhapsodising and then advanced and took the languid 
 hand she gave him. She drew him to her and cocked an 
 eye. 
 
 " How was that? " she queried. " I hope I ve made 
 myself clear." 
 
 " You have," said he, " you serpent of old Nile." 
 
 She raised her voice and went on improvising. Peter 
 was ashamed of her, he told her in an aside, and ashamed 
 of himself for humoring her, and presently she resumed 
 her natural tone. 
 
 " There," she said, " now we ll stop playing the fool. 
 She s gone." 
 
 He turned to look. The table was in order, the chair 
 before it empty. 
 
 " You ve the ears of a cat," said he. " I didn t hear 
 her." 
 
 " Hear her! " said she, in her abiding scorn of the un- 
 
94 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 ready. Was it necessary, she seemed to ask, to lag so 
 by the way? " Nor I either. I felt her. Don t you 
 suppose I know when such a creature as that comes and 
 goes? It s the pricking of my thumbs." 
 
IT lacked a day of the week Peter Harvey had given 
 Andrew Dove to prepare for him and his committee of 
 investigation. Again Madam Brooke had settled herself 
 in Isabel s sitting-room. These were troublous times in 
 the house and she hovered more persistently about the 
 probable scene of action. And to-day, as time passed and 
 it began to look unlikely that anything significant would 
 happen, even the usual programme at the table, Isabel 
 came in with the evident purpose of seeking her. Some 
 thing was on her mind. 
 
 " Mother," said she, " who was Samuel? " 
 
 Madam Brooke, stiff as a soldier on parade, stared up 
 at her. Some fiery stimulus might have run over her 
 nerves, she looked so incredulous of the words, so moved 
 in her welcome of them, so altogether gay. 
 
 " Isabel," said she, " will you oblige me by ringing that 
 bell and calling Peter? " 
 
 " What do you want of Peter? " asked his wife. " He 
 doesn t know. At least I suppose he doesn t. It evi 
 dently happened a long time ago, before Peter d even met 
 us. Anybody named Samuel who died, you understand. 
 He called you Ellen." 
 
 " Isabel," said Madam Brooke, making an upward 
 move to leave her chair, " will you send for Peter or shall 
 I?" 
 
 " I ll call him myself, dear," said Isabel. 
 
 She left the room and was back presently with Peter, 
 
 95 
 
96 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 to whom she had confided that mother was very much ex 
 cited. 
 
 He found her so, but his eyes told him the excitement 
 was rejuvenating and delightful. 
 
 " Now," said Madam Brooke to her daughter, coinci 
 dent with the little triumphant nod she had given Peter, 
 as if to bid him take note how indubitably she had come 
 out on top, " now Isabel, what was it you had to say? " 
 
 " Why," returned Isabel, " it may be nothing you know 
 anything about, only I was interested in it because 
 well, you know I m interested. I just asked you, who was 
 Samuel? " 
 
 Peter gave a little involuntary sound and Madam 
 Brooke shook her head at him. 
 
 " Be quiet, Peter," she adjured him. " Go ahead, Isa 
 bel. I know all about Samuel. What have you got to 
 tell me? " 
 
 " It s simply queer," said Isabel. She consulted a paper 
 in her hand. " It s very much like nonsense, and I had 
 Miss Bixby write it off so I should be sure to get it right. 
 It s something about a spotted cow." 
 
 " Yes," said Madam Brooke, " a spotted cow. What 
 else? " 
 
 She would not look at Peter. He was making more 
 sounds and suppressing them with difficulty, so that his 
 wife looked at him now and asked sympathetically: 
 
 " Have you taken a cold, dear? " 
 
 " The spotted cow," insisted Madam Brooke, tapping 
 impatient fingers on the stand. " What else? " 
 
 Isabel consulted her paper. 
 
 " You and Samuel," said she, and paused to look up in 
 terrogatively " I don t know who Samuel was you 
 chased her and tried to put a wreath of daisies round her 
 horns. There! I can t make anything of it ; but that s 
 the way it came." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 97 
 
 At this point Peter Harvey took a gold pencil from 
 his pocket and laid it in Madam Brooke s extended 
 hand. 
 
 " I suppose/ said the old lady, in an ecstasy of delight 
 her daughter could not fail to see, " I suppose it came 
 through in the usual way? " 
 
 " Yes," said Isabel deprecatingly. 
 
 She was a sweet person who, in spite of the late change 
 in her, still shrank from strife. But her mother pursued 
 her catechism, now evoking the hated name. 
 
 "Through Miss Bixby? " 
 
 " Yes," said Isabel faintly and Harvey was moved, as 
 he always had to be when the tide set against his wife, to 
 save her actual mischance. 
 
 " There, Mother Brooke," said he, under his breath, 
 " it s funny. It s tremendously funny, but there! " 
 
 " You needn t there me! " said the old lady, abating 
 none of her delight. " You can t stop me by any of your 
 there-ing. Isabel, I sha n t tell you who Samuel is. Or 
 rather I sha n t tell you now; but I give you my word 
 this is a perfectly grand message." 
 
 " Is it authentic? " asked Isabel, in a fearful delight 
 of her own, incredulous of anything so marvelous as that 
 her mother should consider evidence. " Does it prove 
 anything? " 
 
 " It proves a good deal," said the old lady, still in high 
 feather. " Authentic? Well, in a sense it is. You let 
 me think it over, Isabel, and I ll tell you all about it." 
 
 The chances were that Harvey, in his compassion for 
 his wife s perplexity, would have put forth some sort of 
 immediate explanation, but at that moment Susanne ap 
 peared with the announcement that Miss Dove was be 
 low, to see Mr. and Mrs. Harvey. 
 
 " Of course," said Isabel at once, diverted to a more 
 
 H 
 
98 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 feasible hope. " Ask her to come up." And in the two or 
 three minutes before Andrea appeared they did not, for 
 varying reasons, recur to Samuel again. 
 
 When Andrea came in, they were, in their several ways, 
 shocked, almost to the point of outcry, by her look. She 
 was haggard. Her youth had gone, unless indeed what 
 she had kept was the look of youth that has suffered phys 
 ical mischance. Isabel hurried to meet her and took her 
 hands and Peter, following, found himself uttering " Poor 
 child! " a repetition not intended to be heard, but only 
 for the relieving of his kindly heart. They led her to the 
 fireplace where Madam Brooke, having put her triumph 
 and her pencil by, regarded her with a concern Andrea 
 was grateful for, and brought her a chair so that they 
 formed a little group there before the old lady. The girl s 
 face quivered pathetically as she glanced again at the 
 faces that seemed to promise such kindness of heart. For 
 the first time in the week she had not seen them she began 
 to feel warmth in her veins. She began abruptly. 
 
 " It s no use. My father won t do it. He can t." 
 
 She stopped there and Harvey prompted her. 
 
 " He isn t ready to see me again? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Or," he went on gently but inexorably, for though 
 his heart was softness itself he could not yet abandon the 
 business man s obstinate acumen in dealing with business 
 usages, " he won t let me bring somebody to him one 
 man even, who knows more about these things than I 
 do, to tell me where we stand, so I can start the ball roll 
 ing if I can." 
 
 Again she shook her head. 
 
 " He can t," she protested. " He simply can t." 
 
 " Well," said Harvey patiently, " now why can t he? 
 what s your opinion? Is it that " he put it quite cas- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 99 
 
 ually not to affront her " is it that there s nothing 
 there? " 
 
 But instead of breaking into the passionate avowal he 
 expected, she looked at him mournfully and said, as if 
 she had repeated the same thing over and over to herself 
 until she was tired of the sound of it: 
 
 "I ve given up thinking of that. What I m thinking of 
 now is father himself. I m afraid something will happen 
 to him. I m afraid he ll kill himself." 
 
 " Peter ! " cried Isabel, and he knew what it meant. 
 It stood for a whole page of expostulation and entreaty. 
 If money would save a man from the despair of threat 
 ening to end his life, if money would save this girl from 
 the terror of listening to such threats, the money must be 
 forthcoming. But Peter Harvey was not so readily con 
 vinced. He did not over-prize his money, but he felt it 
 was an important ministrant of life, and he liked recog 
 nised ways of giving it. He meant to add to the world s 
 soundness, not its folly. 
 
 " Tell us," he said to Andrea, " precisely what your 
 father says." 
 
 She began and told him with a perfect clarity how he 
 had threatened, as a last resort, to quit work at this end 
 of the line he believed to exist between the earth and 
 something outside its atmosphere and, leaving her here, 
 to take himself elsewhere. She told him of the message 
 locked in the drawer of the desk which Peter Harvey alone 
 was to open, and she took from her purse the key of the 
 drawer and a key to the house and gave them to him. 
 Her father, she said, on this day, which had been one of 
 unusual violence of despair, had ordered her to bring the 
 keys and make this explanation, because there was no 
 knowing how soon the keys would be needed, and when 
 that time came she would be at her station in his labor- 
 
100 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 atory waiting for the message he was sure to send. Har 
 vey took the keys and sat holding them as if, though he 
 was tempted to repudiate the argument they implied, he 
 could not pain her by refusal. Then, to give her the com 
 fort of at least a temporary acceptance, he got up and 
 dropped them in the table drawer. 
 
 " The amount of it is," he began, and then stopped. 
 What he had been about to add was: " The man s dotty." 
 
 But Madam Brooke said it for him in another form. 
 She was an exceedingly gentle old lady when actual mis 
 ery appealed to her. 
 
 " Miss Dove," said she, " I m afraid your father has 
 been working too hard. You find that, I dare say. He s 
 not himself, and it worries you." 
 
 Andrea met this with a wholesale assent. 
 
 " Oh, he s not at all himself. Or rather he s been like 
 this for a long time, nervous, excitable, not eating or 
 sleeping. Only now it s worse. It s so bad that I don t 
 see " she hesitated and her pale face became even more 
 haggard "I don t see," she ended, " how we can go on." 
 
 They understood that this covered the terrified belief 
 she could put in no more explicit terms; she did not see 
 how her father could go on without breaking in some tragic 
 way. 
 
 " He talks about it all the time," she said. " This week 
 has been especially bad. I get so well, I do get fright 
 ened," she added, with a little smile appealing to them 
 for tolerance of her inadequacy. " You see, I m afraid 
 he ll do something terrible to himself." 
 
 " Of course you re frightened," said Harvey. " Any 
 body would be. He must see a doctor. There s not the 
 slightest doubt about that." 
 
 " And go away from there," said Isabel, the vision of 
 the desolate room rising up before her. " My dear, why 
 won t you let us " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN MS tJfaRIOte 101 
 
 "Oh, no, no," said Andrea, terrified now from another 
 angle of circumstance. It was appalling to her that 
 strange hands should perhaps constrain him, unfamiliar 
 voices, however kind, counsel him in conventional ways 
 of getting well. " He wouldn t live a minute, if you took 
 him away from his work." 
 
 " Well," said Harvey, " then try to make him ease up. 
 If he s under a strain getting any sort of demonstration 
 ready for the test I proposed to him, tell him that s off. 
 I sha n t think of it again and he mustn t. When he s 
 good and ready he can call on me again." 
 
 Andrea s courage, the small wave of it she was conscious 
 of that morning, receded and left her breathless on the 
 sandy beach of her despair. She had the distraught feel 
 ing of the expert who knows every wheel and bolt and nut 
 of a racked mechanism and sees ignorant hands about to 
 meddle with it, whereas if the hands would only lend her 
 the tools and guarantee her silence and leisure, she could 
 put it in order herself. She had gone a long distance 
 since she had seen them last. Now her one thought was 
 money, the angelic ministrant which, though it might not 
 advance her father on his distracted way, would at least 
 save his poor mind. And before she knew it she was en 
 treating them. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " you wouldn t say these things, if you 
 knew. You d do things. You d do the only thing that 
 would save him." 
 
 Harvey was about to assure her he would do whatever 
 she counselled, in her emergency, for the case had passed 
 far beyond any consideration of supernatural agencies; 
 but the flood of her desperation was unloosed and she 
 went on, not heeding. 
 
 u You don t know," she was proclaiming excitedly, 
 " you don t know. I am your son s " here her father s 
 
102 tf-Hff WIN!) BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 reproach came upon her like a whirlwind and blew her 
 into that no man s land where the lie reigns in a sinister 
 kingdom of its own and she concluded, " I am your 
 son s wife." 
 
 And, having said it, she was calm. She had made her 
 wild leap into the chaos of that country and her love and 
 her despair combined into a tenacity of purpose to hold 
 her place there. The effect of her declaration was not 
 startling at all. The words were followed by a complete 
 silence, except for a slight rustle when Madam Brooke 
 turned in her chair to face them more exactly. Andrea 
 looked from one to the other and they were, she saw, com 
 passionate. 
 
 " You don t believe me," she cried, undaunted now in 
 the fury of the warfare she was waging for her father s 
 easement. " I knew your son. I married him. And 
 for his sake for his sake " 
 
 Her voice sounded strangely in her ears and she rose 
 and grasped the chair back to sustain herself. Suddenly, 
 by a sheer effort of will, she knew she had got hold of 
 herself, and at the same moment she saw, with a wild 
 triumph, that she had got hold of them. They might not 
 believe her, but they did see that something of a grave 
 import was in her words and must be met. And giving 
 herself no time for reaction to the ordinary intercourse 
 of life, she poured out her story, not as she had told it to 
 her father but in a swift eloquence that never halted for 
 a word. And when she paused, Madam Brooke spoke in 
 a curt commentary: 
 
 " Just like him." 
 
 " Just like him, mother? " Isabel found voice to say. 
 " Just like Philip to make a secret marriage and say noth 
 ing about it to me? " 
 
 Even at that moment, Peter, with his mind bent on 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 103 
 
 Andrea s testimony, had time for a little rueful commen 
 tary that the mother in her took no cognisance of any 
 allegiance save to her. 
 
 " You say," he began, addressing Andrea, " you met by 
 chance." 
 
 " Yes," she answered steadily. " There was something 
 the matter with his plane and he came down in the field 
 where I was walking." 
 
 " That was the first time? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How many times did you see him in all? " 
 
 " Six." 
 
 She was answering concisely, for she had leaped at that 
 first lesson of the liar, that plausibility is chiefly a mat 
 ter of quick wit. And suddenly she trusted her wits im 
 plicitly. 
 
 " On which occasion," he asked, " were you married? " 
 
 " The last." 
 
 " You had a license, of course? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Where is it? " 
 
 " He gave it to me to keep." 
 
 " Yes, but where is it, my husband asked you," Isabel 
 echoed sharply. 
 
 " It was burned," said Andrea, " when my father s 
 house was burned." 
 
 " I am lost," she was telling herself inwardly, without 
 any particular sorrow for it. " Probably I was lost from 
 the beginning or I couldn t say these things. I couldn t 
 think of them." 
 
 " Did you go with him to get the license? " Harvey was 
 asking. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I have an idea it s necessary." 
 
104 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " I believe it was necessary. But he arranged it." 
 
 " Yes." muttered Madam Brooke. " He could arrange 
 it if anybody could." 
 
 " Were you married in a church? " Peter continued. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Where then? " 
 
 " In a field." 
 
 " Just like him," nodded Madam Brooke. " I could be 
 lieve it of him." 
 
 " Who married you? " 
 
 " A minister who afterward went to France." 
 
 " What was his name? " 
 
 " Barry." 
 
 " She could have seen that in the newspapers," said 
 Isabel. 
 
 Her tone had chilled to ice. 
 
 " What became of him? " asked Peter, laying a hand 
 on his wife s arm. 
 
 " He was killed." 
 
 " She could have learned that from the newspapers," 
 said Isabel stonily. 
 
 " What was the date of your marriage? " asked Peter. 
 
 She was ready for that also. Time had meant little to 
 her of late, her days slipped so monotonously by ; but one 
 date, the day she saw her lover, was burnt into her by 
 many fires. 
 
 " August tenth," she answered, " 1917." 
 
 "The day before he sailed," said Isabel. "Two 
 months before he was killed." 
 
 " Why do you suppose," Harvey was asking her 
 gravely, " Philip didn t speak of this to us? " 
 
 " You didn t know me," she said readily. 
 
 " Why hadn t he made you known to us? " 
 
 " There wasn t time. There was no time for anything 
 then." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 105 
 
 " Why shouldn t he have written us," said Harvey, 
 gravely persuasive now, as if he begged her also to weigh 
 these problems with him. " Do you think he didn t con 
 sider the possibility of not coming back? Why didn t he 
 write me and ask me to look out for the girl he " 
 
 There he stopped. In his heart, so implicit was his 
 faith, he did believe her, but he hated the disorderly 
 method of it all. He wished his son had played the man. 
 
 " He thought," said Andrea, " he would come back." 
 
 "Did your father know him? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " In those six times of his coming you didn t take him 
 to your house to see your father? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 " My father," said Andrea, trembling now, for she felt 
 she was being carried with an alarming rapidity out to a 
 rougher sea, " was worried about his own affairs. I 
 couldn t have told him a thing like that. It would have 
 been cruel." 
 
 Why? " 
 
 " He would have thought I had another interest. He d 
 have thought he d lose me. Why, I ve kept my father 
 alive. When he s worked eighteen hours at a stretch, 
 I ve kept him going by just holding him up in my hands. 
 You don t know what my father is to me." 
 
 " You speak of him," said Isabel bitterly, " with more 
 affection than you seem to feel toward my son." 
 
 " You don t want me to speak to you of your son," said 
 Andrea. What little light remained in her face faded out 
 and left it gray. " Besides, I must conquer that. I must 
 stop thinking of him or " Here she paused and got 
 hold of herself by an effort. " But my father is alive." 
 
 " What do you want of us? " asked Isabel, in a voice 
 
106 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 keyed to such a strident pitch that her husband, in a 
 warning undertone, spoke her name. But she continued, 
 " Money? " 
 
 " Yes," said Andrea desperately. " You said," she con 
 tinued, turning to Harvey, " it was strange your son had 
 not provided for me " 
 
 "Philip," he corrected her. "Why don t you say 
 Philip? " 
 
 She bowed slightly in sign of accepting the correction, 
 and continued: 
 
 " I don t ask you to provide for me. I couldn t take it 
 if you offered it. But I ask you, because your son " 
 
 " Philip," he insisted, watching her. 
 
 And then she did cry out, as if she were beside herself: 
 
 " Why do you want to drive me crazy? " 
 
 " I don t," he said. " Go on. Say what you were going 
 to say." 
 
 " I ask you, because your son married me, to give my 
 father the money you would be willing to give me." 
 
 " It s only another way of putting it," said Isabel. 
 
 " I have made your father," said Harvey, " a fair offer." 
 
 " Yes," she said, " to bring in three men, cut and dried 
 professors, wet blankets " 
 
 " They won t put out the fire if the fire s there," said 
 Harvey quietly. "But we needn t discuss that. As 
 suredly I ll provide for you, at least while we re learning 
 more about all this." 
 
 It had been too incredibly easy. The surprise of it 
 swept her off her feet. The pity of it did not strike her 
 then that it was out of the man s great goodness of heart 
 she had been able to persuade him. But before she could, 
 in her new craft, determine what words it would be wise 
 to use in gratitude or whether she should let herself go in 
 the overwhelming relief she felt, Susanne turned the cur- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 107 
 
 rent of their thoughts. She rushed in, herself a-twitter 
 with her news, every canon of the serving maid s trade 
 forgotten. 
 
 " He s come," she cried, and kept on saying it. " He s 
 come! he s come! " 
 
 " Who s come? " inquired Isabel, profoundly shocked 
 by this reversal of tradition. 
 
 " Why," said Madam Brooke composedly, though with 
 a thrill in her voice, " Brooke, of course." 
 
XI 
 
 A VOICE had followed Susanne into the room, a man g 
 voice, young, full of excited laughter: 
 
 " Susanne, shut up. Is that any way " 
 
 The four people in the room, silenced by the interrup 
 tion three of them understood at once, turned to the door. 
 Madam Brooke had, at the first syllable, risen and stood 
 erect, exultant in the consciousness that, although this was 
 scarcely less moving than a return from the dead, she was 
 not bowled over by it. And then he was in the room, 
 making for his mother with a couple of strides and Su 
 sanne, secure of nobody s notice, indulged herself in an 
 unrestrained cry of laughter and ran out to tell the news 
 below. Andrea, at the sound of the voice, stiffened and 
 stood staring, and when Brooke actually entered the room 
 she collapsed into a chair, saying to nobody in particular: 
 
 " I m dying." 
 
 But nobody heard her except Madam Brooke and she 
 paid no attention, reasoning, if her lightning processes 
 could be called reason, that fainting girls must be sacri 
 ficed to giving Brooke his adequate welcome. Even then 
 she wasn t sure it would be possible, Isabel was so be 
 fuddled by Andrea s staggering disclosure. She could 
 imagine her passing it over to Brooke at once, possibly 
 with marginal notes of the psychic communications she 
 had been reserving for him. But Isabel was sufficiently 
 moved by the presence of her son to satisfy the most 
 exacting standard. Brooke had passed his father with a 
 
 108 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 109 
 
 clap on the shoulder, a snatch at his hand and a cry of 
 "Dad! " that seemed to imply enough to content Har 
 vey, who responded with something inarticulate. Brooke 
 strode on to his mother, enveloped her in khaki, escaped 
 long enough to give grandmother a kiss on each pink 
 cheek and her smiling lips and then returned to his mother 
 for the renewed hug of an impetuous affection. He was 
 a tall, lithe, brown fellow, with whitest teeth, a deter 
 mined chin and laughter forever in his eyes, even when 
 he thought he felt most pathetic, though this, too, was in 
 a whimsical, droll way of deprecating such mortal folly. 
 For he, like Philip who was gone, had a wistful sad streak, 
 something like the melancholy of the Celt; and yet the 
 eyes laughed at that also when it came uppermost. He 
 stood there patting his mother s back, murmuring silly 
 things to her and laughing, giving her the outspoken af 
 fection she would not do without. It was not that Isa 
 bel was a tyrannical woman, at least in obvious ways; 
 but she knew very accurately what expressed measure of 
 fondness would satisfy her, and the men of her family 
 were such good fellows they took scrupulous kind care 
 to give it to her. Andrea opened her eyes and there he 
 was before her, still clasping his mother and wordlessly 
 convincing her she was the only mother in the world, the 
 top notch of motherhood. He was terrible to Andrea in 
 his beauty, the beauty she remembered and the strength 
 she exulted in. At once, in a dull way, without any spe 
 cial wonder at it, she understood how stupid she had been 
 to assume there was one son only. The picture fronting 
 her was, she saw, a resemblance, not the perfect image of 
 the man before her. The likeness was there and it was 
 marvelous, but in that instant she caught the differences 
 that stamped the strongest individuality on each. And 
 now she was terrified. Coming in upon this battle ground 
 
110 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 where she had fought her father s battle with a lying 
 tongue, he frightened her, shocked her out of the pale of 
 her base excuses; he was a young St. George, the militant 
 hero come to slay the dragon of her lie. She turned in 
 the chair meaning to rise with her back to him and get 
 out of the room unseen; but suddenly his eyes were upon 
 her and he loosed his mother and cried out: 
 
 " How did you come here? " 
 
 Andrea sat there trembling and could not tell him. 
 But the others were recalled to the scene he had inter 
 rupted and Isabel, her head high in proud possession of 
 this living son, called out so commandingly that he had 
 to listen, and, in spite of his amazement over Andrea, an 
 swer her explicit question. 
 
 " Brooke, you were with Philip that last day. Did 
 he say anything to you of any woman any girl he 
 cared about? " 
 
 As she said it, she hated the sound of the words, they 
 were so meagre, so unsuited to her son who was immeasur 
 ably exalted now into another state of being. Yet the 
 nobler words she could not use. Love how could she 
 pronounce it as between her dead son and this girl who 
 had testified to incredible things? And if they could be 
 proven they were the more distasteful to her. 
 
 " Why, yes/ said Brooke, his eyes upon Andrea in won 
 der and delight. " He sent her a message. I can t tell 
 you, of course. I ll wait and tell her." 
 
 Then he left his mother, advanced to Andrea and held 
 out his hand. 
 
 " I didn t expect," he said, " to see you yet." 
 
 There was multi-colored feeling in his voice. Isabel 
 gazed at him jealously. Madam Brooke, too, was looking 
 on with a sympathetic quickening of the heart. The 
 words were nothing. The tone was eloquence itself. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 111 
 
 They had never heard his young voice in such a harmony 
 of sweet appeal. To Andrea it brought only pain. She 
 did not take the offered hand. She rose, retreating from 
 him. 
 
 " I must go," she said, her face turned from him to his 
 father and then to Madam Brooke. " My father " 
 
 " Not at once/ said Harvey kindly and yet inflexibly. 
 " Brooke, this lady, Miss Dove that is, we met her as 
 Miss Dove she tells us she and your brother were 
 married just before he went away." 
 
 Brooke stared at her. He seemed bereft of speech. 
 His mother, watching him, gave a little sound of approv 
 ing satisfaction. He was taking, it meant, exactly the 
 attitude she had been obliged to take. It might not be 
 that he disbelieved in Andrea s strange announcement. 
 But at least he was stunned to the point of being unable 
 to express himself in any manner whatsoever. Then he 
 smiled, in a pathetic way, and did speak. 
 
 " Why," he sard, " that s " and he ended impetuously, 
 " I never heard of such a thing." 
 
 " No," said his mother triumphantly. It seemed to 
 her they had advanced a step now that he had come home 
 and taken, at the outset, the right attitude. " I think we 
 are able to say none of us ever heard of such a thing." 
 
 Harvey s warning hand was on her arm. 
 
 " No," he said, with his equable courtesy, " naturally 
 we hadn t heard of it. The marriage was said " and 
 then Andrea s white face so appealed to him in the one 
 glance he cast her that he qualified desperately, " The 
 marriage took place secretly." 
 
 " But," said Brooke, meaning to say nothing and yet 
 entangled by these threads of supposition that seemed to 
 be the ravelling of the web of life, " I should think Phil 
 ^-why," he added, as if he thought Phil himself might 
 
112 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 get him somewhere, " Phil sent his fob back, one he picked 
 up in Paris and left there with his other things while he 
 was flying. We were there in Paris the day before " 
 he stopped and looked at his mother as if wondering what 
 she could bear, and his father put in quietly, with that 
 persistency of his in crowding out fictional values by the 
 stark old terms : 
 
 " The day before he was killed." 
 
 " Yes," said Brooke, obviously relieved. " We looked 
 the things over, not more than half a dozen, and Phil 
 twisted up the fob in a bit of paper, and he said It s for 
 her. " 
 
 " Well? " said Harvey, gently suggesting. 
 
 " Why, yes," said Brooke, confused. " That s it. Of 
 course," he said, turning to Andrea, " it s for you. But 
 I thought "he laughed uneasily and with the bitterness 
 of the man to whom such issues should, in common kind 
 ness, have been made clear. " Yes," he added, " of 
 course it s for you." 
 
 " But Phil didn t say it was for her," announced his 
 mother, in a clear demanding tone. 
 
 Harvey, his brows bent in distress, thought that, for the 
 first time in his knowledge of her, she sounded cruel. 
 
 " No," Brooke owned, confused, " that is, not in those 
 words. He said just what I ve told you, It s for 
 her. " 
 
 "And you thought " said his mother. 
 
 " No, no," put in Harvey, " don t go so fast. No mat 
 ter what he thought." 
 
 " He might," she continued obstinately, " have thought 
 it was intended for me." 
 
 Brooke shook his head ruefully. He was sorry for her. 
 
 " No," he persisted, " for he said something besides. He 
 said: Isn t there a girl anywhere I can take something 
 back to, for you? " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 113 
 
 " He thought " began Harvey. 
 
 " Why, yes/ said Brooke, " we both had an impression 
 something was going to happen. Naturally we didn t 
 know which one of us it would be; but I felt it and I 
 know he did. So we well, we talked things over." 
 
 "But," said his father, "did he assume you d know 
 what he meant when he said what he did? " 
 
 " Evidently," said Brooke. 
 
 He was frowning over the puzzle of it. 
 
 Suddenly Harvey turned to Andrea where she sat now, 
 stark and white, her hopeless gaze bent on the ground. 
 
 " You must," he said, " have had letters from Phil." 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 " Wouldn t it be possible," said he, in the same smiling 
 courtesy that seemed to promise her gentleness at their 
 hands, " wouldn t it give you satisfaction to let us see two 
 or three of Phil s letters to you? Not that it s necessary," 
 he added, the eyes she lifted to his for an instant were so 
 terrible in their dark anguish. " Only it might it 
 would," he ended, " undoubtedly bring about a better state 
 of feeling here." 
 
 " I ve got it," said Brooke, to his father. " He didn t 
 tell me where she was because he knew she d be here. He 
 must have told her to come. Though why old Phil 
 shouldn t have told me," he added, " why you shouldn t 
 any of you have told me How long," he asked An 
 drea, " have you been here? " 
 
 And still she said nothing. 
 
 " The young lady is not living here," said his mother, 
 again that cruel triumph in her voice. " We saw her for 
 the first time a week ago. She has called this morning in 
 connection with some business she called about then." 
 
 Again he was off the track. All these cross currents of 
 supposition were becoming too much for Peter Harvey. 
 
114 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 He was occupied in wondering how he could get Andrea 
 out of the house, draw Brooke off by themselves and tell 
 him the uncompleted story, when suddenly Brooke turned 
 again to Andrea and asked her, in a tone so gentle that 
 his mother noted it bitterly: 
 
 "Would you mind telling me when this happened? 
 \Vhen you were married, I mean? " 
 
 Andrea looked at him with lack-lustre eyes, but still 
 she said nothing. This was of no set purpose, but it ap 
 peared, in that dull chamber of her brain where memory 
 lived, that she had destroyed her own power of ever speak 
 ing again. But his mother was ready. 
 
 "She has told us," Isabel informed him, not cruelly 
 now but with a readiness of accuracy. " August ten, 
 1917." 
 
 " Why," said Brooke loudly now, in his bewilderment, 
 " that was the day " He faced Andrea and spoke im 
 peratively. " Wasn t that the day? " 
 
 " Yes," said she heavily, rousing herself from her leth 
 argy enough to reason that this at least was due him: 
 the slight comfort of knowing she had not forgotten their 
 one day. 
 
 " Then," called Madam Brooke, finding herself irra 
 tionally on the girl s side, " then, Brooke, you did know 
 about the marriage? " 
 
 He smiled a miserable little smile. 
 
 " No," he said, " I didn t know about the marriage. 
 Only, that day " 
 
 There he paused, and now he did not look at Andrea. 
 At this instant Susanne, the keeper of the gate, appeared, 
 and on her heels, as she had come that other day, Bea 
 trice Hayden, who ran up to Brooke and with so impetu 
 ous a welcome that he caught her in his arms and frankly 
 kissed her. She was fresh-cheeked and breathless. She 
 had hurried. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 115 
 
 " I said I wouldn t come," she told Isabel, laughing and 
 crying in a breath, " you remember. But I saw him go 
 by in a taxi and I said to myself I d go home and wait till 
 I was sent for ; but I d no sooner got my things off than I 
 put them on again and ran all the way. Brooke ! " 
 
 " And he s brought you something," said Mrs. Harvey, 
 in a clear tone that meant to make itself heard. " Phil 
 sent you something." 
 
 " Mother! " said Brooke, and no more. 
 
 Beatrice stood perfectly still, a look of incredulous 
 happiness over-spreading her face. Then she turned to 
 him, and spoke with a peculiarly soft gentleness. 
 
 " Really, Brooke? may I have it? " 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 " Is it a letter? " she asked. 
 
 " No," he said, " it isn t a letter. Should you mind, 
 Bee," he hesitated, " if I asked you to wait a bit? I m 
 not sure " 
 
 There he stopped and she thought she understood. 
 She smiled at him. 
 
 " I see," she said. " Your things haven t come. Yes, 
 I can wait, so long as it s not a letter. If it had been a 
 letter, you d have had to stand and deliver or I can t say 
 what I might have done." 
 
 But she could not hide her pleasure. It was a token, 
 it was a message to her who had had none save through 
 the facile hand of Miss Bixby, and those banalities hurt 
 her, in their crudity, beyond her bearing. At once Peter 
 Harvey saw that the scene must be broken up. Andrea 
 must be removed, Brooke himself must be given his exit 
 before any of this dull chaos of unproven disaster fell upon 
 Beatrice and wrought its evil on her as it had done on the 
 rest of them. 
 
 " Miss Dove," he said. There wag something com- 
 
116 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 manding in his tone and she looked up at him with a start. 
 " We ll talk another day. Brooke, take Miss Dove down 
 stairs. Susanne will ring for a taxi. Miss Dove " 
 
 There he paused, for he simply did not know how or in 
 what words to add, " Miss Dove is going home." Andrea 
 rose and, without a glance at any of them, went falter- 
 ingly to the door. Brooke, straight, splendid and moving 
 with the rhythm of the body in perfect condition, walked 
 after her, Beatrice following him with a gaze that loved 
 and mourned over his look, so like that of Philip who was 
 gone. Brooke opened the door and Andrea passed 
 through and he after her. 
 
 As soon as the door had closed, Peter Harvey turned to 
 Isabel. 
 
 " We won t talk any more," he said. " Not just now." 
 
 " No," said Madam Brooke from her corner, " no, Isa 
 bel. Bee will hear all about things in time. Not now." 
 
 But Isabel had no strength for talking. Her jealous 
 cruelty had ebbed, and she sank into a chair and began 
 to cry. No wonder, Beatrice thought. Would not any 
 mother find her joy over the son who had returned shot 
 through with grief over the other who had gone? She 
 looked at Madam Brooke for orders. The old lady pointed 
 a finger at the door, and Bee slipped noiselessly away. 
 
XII 
 
 BROOKE followed Andrea down the stairs and when she 
 would have gone out to the street indicated, with a ges 
 ture, the little reception room at their left. Mechanically 
 she stepped inside, he followed her and closed the door. 
 He stood before her, his whole aspect changed. He was no 
 longer shaken by the impact of unexpected things, but 
 filled with the delight of her as he had been that day to 
 gether in the fields. More dizzying delight indeed it was, 
 for her pallor, the wistful trouble of her face, had drawn 
 him to her in a passion of loyalty compounded of love and 
 pity. And as if the magnetism of his presence had re 
 called her from her poor estate of remorse and fear, she, 
 too, grew before his gaze into more than her former love 
 liness. The blood rushed back into her cheeks and her 
 eyes looked at him adoringly. All the troubled present 
 was swept away by the one thought that he was dead and 
 now he was alive. As their eyes found each other and 
 were drowned, each in the other s mystic beauty, so hands 
 and lips met. He held out his arms to her, and with a 
 little sound of delight she went to them, and they stood 
 reunited. Neither thought for an instant of what should 
 keep them apart. The recognition of that overwhelming 
 beauty, each of the other, which is love, drugged and sol 
 aced them. He was the first to remember. 
 
 " It isn t possible," he said, and she laughed. 
 
 She thought he was remembering it wasn t possible he 
 had come back and had her there in his arms. He put 
 
 117 
 
118 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 her away from him and held her, one taut hand on her 
 shoulder. 
 
 " What did they mean? " he asked her. " About Phil, 
 you know. Are we all crazy together? " 
 
 Then, as if to confirm the cruelty of her answer, he saw 
 the change in her, responsive. He was a fanciful boy, 
 and there flashed into his mind a story he had heard of 
 a woman rejuvenated under a spell and, before her lov 
 er s eyes, falling back into age again. So Andrea, her 
 Maytime grace, the rose bloom of her loveliness, seemed 
 to crumble and grow gray. Again she was the distraught 
 creature who had sat there in the room upstairs, pelted 
 by questions and impassive under them. His hand closed 
 tighter on her shoulder. He wondered afterward if he 
 shook her slightly. 
 
 " Tell me," he said, " whether you d seen Phil before 
 that day you saw me. Why, you must have seen him 
 over and over," he wondered, " for it was that day you 
 were married." And then a solution came to him, and he 
 caught at it, since he must account somehow for their lov 
 er s paradise that day, or cease believing in the earth it 
 self. " Phil and I," he said, in a thin sort of voice he 
 had never heard from his lips before, " Phil and I look 
 alike. We ve been taken for each other. You didn t 
 it couldn t be you took me that day for Phil." 
 
 She shook her head. It was impossible not to answer 
 that. 
 
 " But you " he paused an instant, and then all his 
 common sense of honesty rose up into impetuous accusa 
 tion " but you liked me. It was like it was like the 
 world before the flood," he said, trying to find some ade 
 quate simile for the idyllic beauty of the day. " You 
 loved me, Andrea. If Holton hadn t come so quickly 
 after we d talked all those hours, we should have said it. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 119 
 
 I should have told you and asked you who you were and 
 why, maybe this would have happened then instead of 
 to-day." 
 
 By this he meant their sudden sweet rush together and 
 their kiss. 
 
 The color came back into her cheeks. 
 
 " No," she said, " we shouldn t have said things. We 
 shouldn t have told our names. Because, you see, it was 
 like a dream just as it was. And you said, you know 
 that was when we saw your friend you said: Wait for 
 me. I ll come back/ " 
 
 " But I couldn t," he assured her, and again he took 
 her into his arms. "And I couldn t let you know. 
 That s the disadvantage of playing Garden of Eden." 
 
 " I knew," she said. " I knew you d been sent away. 
 You d gone to France. You d gone too quickly to find 
 me." 
 
 " It wouldn t have been possible to do such fool things," 
 he said, " in any time but such as this. But I did adver 
 tise for you." 
 
 " You did? " 
 
 " Yes, from over there. In three New York papers. 
 Lost, on Long Island, a girl. Property of Of 
 course I gave a fictitious name. Paris bankers." 
 
 " Did anybody answer? " 
 
 " Forty-nine. But not you." 
 
 " I was too busy," she said, " to read personals. We 
 read the war news then, you know. Anyhow, I knew what 
 I was to do. I was to wait." 
 
 That recalled him. He stepped away from her and 
 with distance between them asked her sternly: 
 
 " Wait? And did you wait? In God s name, how did 
 you know Phil? " 
 
 At the instant of saying it he heard a little sound with- 
 
120 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 out, stepped to the door, threw it open and confronted 
 Miss Bixby. Yet her attitude was unimpeachable. She 
 did not look in the least like a person who had been lis 
 tening, but a person who was on her way into the room 
 on some legitimate errand. 
 
 " Excuse me," the said. " How do you do, Lieutenant 
 Harvey? I left Mrs. Harvey s address book in the desk. 
 I was working here this morning." 
 
 She went over to the desk, took a small book from a 
 pigeon hole and returned with it to the door. 
 
 " It s good to se you back, Lieutenant Harvey," she 
 announced, and went away through the hall. 
 
 And immediately appeared Susanne, as if she came un 
 willingly. Susanne understood none of these things, but 
 she was with youth and beauty, and, as she mysteriously 
 knew, the moment of these two was over. 
 
 " Mrs. Harvey," said she, " asked me to call a taxi. 
 She thought perhaps you hadn t understood." 
 
 " Never mind, Susanne," said Brooke. His voice 
 trembled, and again Susanne was sorry for him. " I ll 
 see to the taxi. One minute," he said to Andrea. " I ll 
 tell mother and go with you." 
 
 He ran upstairs, and the minute he passed the turn of 
 the landing Andrea stepped out and closed the door after 
 her. She ran a few paces, turned a corner and took a 
 back street, and when Brooke came out, after his glance 
 into the empty reception room, she was gone. 
 
XIII 
 
 NOT one word was said that night about the happenings 
 of the afternoon. Peter Harvey forbade it, speaking to 
 his household severally and in private. First he went to 
 his wife s room. She was dressing for dinner, and turned 
 from her glass, in her plump prettiness, to greet him with 
 her interrogatory: "Well, dear?" He sat down astride 
 a chair, rested his arms on the back and frowned at her 
 reflectively. She stood there carefully powdering her 
 round neck, with as much absorption, he thought, as if 
 sons did not die and other sons come home to strange do 
 mestic turmoil that seemed to leave no footing for long 
 anticipated intercourse. Then it occurred to him that al 
 though she did do her powdering with a mechanical nicety, 
 she was really tremendously excited, the inmost mind of 
 her. She was still moved at having got her son back, and 
 something in the lifted poise of her head hinted that she 
 was also exulting over having repulsed Andrea ever so 
 slightly on the ground of her presumptuous folly. She 
 turned to him, feminine in every contour, sweet as mother 
 hood and yet angrily triumphant. 
 
 " Well/ said she, " what do you think? " 
 
 " Isabel," he returned, " I m not going to talk about it 
 any more to-night. And you re not either. If Brooke 
 asks questions, put him off." 
 
 But she was too bent on keeping her own impeccable 
 stand to find anything explicit in his. 
 
 121 
 
122 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " He says," she told him, " when he went downstairs 
 again, she was gone." 
 
 " Did he? " answered Peter wearily. " I didn t hear 
 him." 
 
 " Well, no," said his wife, reconsidering. " It may not 
 have been Brooke that said it. Now I think, it was Miss 
 Bixby." 
 
 " Miss Bixby ! " he repeated sharply. He was about to 
 add, " Miss Bixby s got to go. She knows too much about 
 spotted cows." But he refrained. This night of general 
 amnesty was not the time to fight out the question of Miss 
 Bixby. " Isabel," he said, determined to be heard and, 
 though it would be a miracle in that household, to be 
 obeyed exactly, " you re to do as I say. Hear me, old 
 lady? " he added, with a poor attempt at lightness. He 
 was tired to the bone. One didn t have sons come home 
 every day on top of these wearing complications he had 
 been fighting out until it seemed to him life was a psy 
 chological tangle with no solid ground to stand on while 
 you tried to unsnarl the thing. " I mean it," he said. 
 " We re not going to talk until to-morrow at least, even if 
 it involves not talking about Phil. We re not up to it, 
 any of us." 
 
 " I m up to it," she returned. 
 
 He stared at her pink prettiness. Never had he seen 
 her in what struck him as a trivial temper. 
 
 " I want this thing settled," she continued, " and settled 
 now. Do you expect me to believe, if it had been true, 
 even partly true, those who are over there wouldn t have 
 mentioned it through Miss Bixby? " 
 
 " Oh," he groaned, " Miss Bixby! " 
 
 " Yes," she repeated, " Miss Bixby. She s told me 
 wonderful things. You must remember that." 
 
 " You told them to her first," he said ineptly. " Oh no, 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 123 
 
 no, dear," he added, as he read her face. " Not on pur 
 pose of course not. But you don t realise when you re 
 with that kind of a person, how much you tell." 
 
 She was dressed now and standing before him in her 
 shimmering gray. It had been a point of belief with her 
 not to wear black for her son since he was but removed 
 from her a step. She looked so complete and forceful in 
 her delicate perfection that Peter was the more de 
 pressed. She made him feel crumpled, not up to the 
 game, and perhaps she saw that, for she remarked with 
 what sounded like the indifference of triumph: 
 
 " You d better dress." 
 
 Peter got up, and was making his ignominious way to 
 the door, but nearer the sphere of her soft elegance he 
 stopped and said miserably: 
 
 " Old lady, I don t know you. I never " he hesitated 
 "I never ve seen you just like this." 
 
 " You ve never seen me fighting to free my son s mem 
 ory from an unscrupulous woman," she announced, in a 
 tone of such hostility that again he stared and wondered. 
 
 "Isabel," said he, "that girl isn t unscrupulous. She 
 may be dotty. I shouldn t wonder if she was. When I ve 
 been tempted to imagine what she s been through with 
 that old man down there and his one idea, I m quite 
 ready to think she s dotty. But " he recovered himself 
 with a big effort, to call up something strong enough to 
 pit itself against her soft imperturbability, " understand 
 this. We re not going to talk about this to-night. You re 
 not going to have in Miss Bixby to stir up her devil s 
 broth sicken Brooke the first night the boy s at home. 
 Understand me? I won t have it." 
 
 Without looking at her he turned and went to his own 
 room, and there he sat down, because his legs were trem 
 bling. This was the first time he had given his Isabel a 
 
124 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 command, in all their years together, and it sickened him 
 so that he sat there smiling at himself for a fool. But 
 smile as he might, his legs revolted. 
 
 To his own naive astonishment, Peter Harvey was 
 obeyed. The family met at dinner, and though the air 
 was subdued to the memory of Phil who was in all their 
 minds, not a word was said in reference to the strange hap 
 penings of the day. Brooke breathed more and more 
 freely as time went on and he saw an attitude had been 
 taken and was intended to be held. His mind was full of 
 his brother and Andrea, but though he was in a pain of 
 eagerness to penetrate their mystery, it did not seem as 
 if he could bear to talk it over in full conclave. They 
 were too immediate to his heart. Try as he might to ad 
 just himself to the incredible thing that had been waiting 
 to leap on him at the minute of his return, it was im 
 possible to do it, and it was equally impossible to under 
 take its unravelling in the complexity of the family coun 
 cil. Every time his mother opened her lips to speak, he 
 found himself wincing with apprehension. This was after 
 they had withdrawn to the library, for he had expected 
 respite while the servants were in the room. But Isabel 
 was, Peter realised, with an amused surprise, wifely duty 
 itself. She talked freely about Philip and asked wistful 
 questions, but she did not even refer to Miss Bixby, her 
 medium of communication. And the questions touched 
 only the surface of her son s life in France. There were 
 depths none of them dared penetrate that first night, and 
 Brooke inwardly thanked her for her forbearance. It was 
 near eleven when they separated. Isabel rose first and 
 they were relieved to follow her. 
 
 " I m going to stay down a while," said Peter. " I ve 
 got some things to mull over." 
 
 That was what he always said when he wanted to shut 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 125 
 
 himself up, and everybody understood. He was to be let 
 alone. 
 
 " I ll come in a minute," said Isabel to her son, " and 
 have a pow wow." 
 
 Peter frowned. It hadn t done any good then. Her 
 forbearance had been only a truce. She was going to the 
 boy s chamber and, when she had him defenceless, drown 
 him in the flood of her communications and her ire over 
 the claim of Andrea. But Brooke didn t need saving at 
 this point. He saved himself. He turned on his mother 
 the persuasion of his brown eyes, and before he spoke she 
 was yielding. 
 
 " Mother," he said, " I can t. Not to-night. I m just 
 back." 
 
 " Of course he can t," said Madam Brooke. " Isabel, 
 you ought to know better. He s got to get used to being 
 at home. If I d been through what he has, I should cry 
 over the pincushion. You let him have it out alone." 
 
 " That s it, darlin ," said Brooke, turning to her with 
 an eagerness of gratitude that made her press her lips to 
 gether in a resolve she d rescue him, even if she and Isa 
 bel went down with the domestic ship. " You know, don t 
 you, grannie? Mum knows, too, only she s such a dear 
 " He made eyes at Isabel again and neutralised the 
 ill effect of calling grandmother darling. " I can t, mum, 
 I can t talk to-night. To-morrow I shall be as fit you 
 can t think." 
 
 Isabel gave him a smiling nod of apparent understand 
 ing, kissed him good-night and let him go. They stood 
 in silence while he ran up the stairs and then Peter went 
 to his wife and kissed the top of her head, lightly because 
 the hair, shining silver, was so beautifully waved. 
 
 " Good girl! " he said. " That s my darling." 
 
 He didn t often call her sweet names of the highest po- 
 
126 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 tency, but this was meant to counterbalance that " dar 
 ling " of Brooke s to grandmother. Madam Brooke knew 
 it and smiled over the slyness of male diplomacy. It is 
 doubtful whether Isabel saw through it. Indeed she was 
 too pleased to let herself question it and went upstairs 
 with her mother, sweetly chatting over everyday things. 
 
 The house had been quiet perhaps an hour and Peter 
 was still in his library, sitting at the great table, his legs 
 stretched under it, his eyes on the fire opposite. Twice 
 he had risen to throw on a log, but he always returned to 
 the same quiescence. The things he had withdrawn him 
 self to mull over would remain untouched that night. 
 About a quarter after twelve the latch softly lifted and 
 Brooke peered in. His father gave him a nod and a little 
 welcoming motion of the hand. Brooke came in, shut 
 the door quietly, and Peter rose and threw on a handful 
 of cones. They cast up an impetuous flame; it seemed 
 to be in welcome of the boy. Peter did not go back to 
 his table. He drew an arm-chair nearer the fire and indi 
 cated another to his son. 
 
 " I rather thought you d come," he said quietly. 
 
 Brooke seated himself and they began to smoke. Peter 
 was not addicted to his pipe, but he made a guess that 
 they might get on better in that kindred relaxation. 
 Brooke s first question did not surprise him. He found 
 he expected it. Even when he sat there alone, he had 
 heard it coming. 
 
 " What s the matter with mum? " 
 
 The latch of the door lifted for the second time and they 
 turned guiltily. But it was not Isabel. It was grand 
 mother, who shut the door as softly as Brooke had done 
 and advanced composedly. They were on their feet, and 
 Brooke gave her his chair, which would bring her between 
 them, and took another at her side. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 127 
 
 " No use," said she, smiling at them with the bravado 
 of the culprit unashamed. " I heard you slipping by my 
 door, you thief of the world! and I knew if I lay there 
 and screwed my eyelids down I should burst, that s all." 
 
 Peter gravely passed her the cigars, to indicate accept 
 ance into masculine fellowship, the freedom of the city, 
 as it were, and she understood and gave the box a little 
 rejecting flick. 
 
 " Sure you re dressed warm enough? " he asked. " That 
 wrapper thing is quite lacy. What you got on under it? " 
 
 " Plenty," said she. " I got up some time ago and put 
 on my undies. I knew that boy would be coming down. 
 I knew you d need me. How do you expect to find the 
 answers to questions, you poor men things, unless you get 
 an old witch like me to tell you? " 
 
 " Here," said Peter contentedly, " put your feet on the 
 fender how can you wear such foolish slippers, you 
 silly women? and fire away." 
 
 She put her feet on the fender and turned to Brooke, 
 who sat smoking at a mental distance from their affec 
 tionate fooling. 
 
 " I heard you," she said, " when I came in. You d just 
 asked a question." 
 
 He roused himself. 
 
 " A question? " said he. " What <T I ask? Oh, I asked 
 what was the matter with mum." 
 
 " What makes you think anything is the matter? " in 
 sisted the old lady, keeping her eyes on him. 
 
 " Oh," he floundered, " she s so different." 
 
 Madam Brooke nodded. 
 
 " Of course she s different," said she. " Your mother 
 isn t living on this earth just now. She thinks she s 
 rented a mansion in the sky, and there she lives with 
 Philip and her father and Aunt Clarissa, asking outrage- 
 
128 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 ous questions and getting answers a child couldn t mem 
 orise if he found em in his Sunday School lesson. 
 They re too chaotic, too sentimental, too everything that 
 won t stand the light of day." 
 
 Brooke threw his cigar into the fire and sat staring at 
 her. 
 
 " No," she said, " you don t understand. I d an idea 
 she wrote you a lot about it." 
 
 " She wrote she had something to tell me," said Brooke. 
 "Just what do you mean, grannie? You don t mean 
 well, I knew they were bitten by it in England. I didn t 
 think we d got it over here." 
 
 He couldn t bring himself to face it squarely. He felt 
 too much distaste for it. 
 
 " We call it automatic writing," she said. " That 
 Bixby reads her mind and hands her back what she finds 
 there. It s all dressed up, I fancy, in pretty clothes 
 philosophy, religion, faith, hope and charity, chiefly 
 faith. There s no limit to the harm those near-intellec 
 tuals can do." 
 
 " Oh, Bixby s a fraud," said Peter. " I won t say she 
 reads your mother s mind, but she doesn t need to. She s 
 clever as the devil." 
 
 " She s not writing about Phil? " Brooke asked. 
 
 Harvey nodded. There was a great deal to be ex 
 plained to Brooke: his mother s absorption in the son who 
 was lost to her, almost to the dimming of her remem 
 brance of the son who remained, that should be ex 
 plained. It had not become imperative in the first flush 
 of joy at Brooke s coming. To-morrow, when things be 
 gan to settle into their ordinary channels, he was afraid 
 it might. 
 
 " You see, old boy," he said, " your mother has been 
 specially anxious to have this ready for you. She wanted 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 129 
 
 to hand it to you as soon as you got here: that she d es 
 tablished communication with Phil." 
 
 " Communication with Phil? " 
 
 He repeated it, not so much awed as repudiating. 
 
 " Yes," said grandmother, nodding her head like a con 
 firmatory fate. " Perfectly shocking, isn t it? " 
 
 And so shocking did it seem to them that not one of the 
 three remarked the irony of the word. If it were indeed 
 communication with the beloved dead, was it shocking? 
 The task of explanation now passed into Madam Brooke s 
 hands ; perhaps she took it into them as being competent. 
 
 " That s the matter with your mother, Brooke. She s 
 not herself. She s strung up to a most awful pitch, every 
 last nerve of her. She s tyrannical, she s jealous, she s 
 cross, she s a thousand things she never was before, and it s 
 simply because she s lost her head over this infernal writ 
 ing." 
 
 " Poor mum ! " said he, looking into the fire now and 
 trying to fit the outline of this mother to the mother he re 
 membered. " But what," he said, rousing and turning on 
 his father the inquiring glance of his brown eyes, " what 
 do they say? " and he amended it, still with distaste 
 " what does she think Phil says? " 
 
 " Well," said Peter slowly, meaning to put his wife s 
 intellectual acumen in the best light possible, " there s a 
 good deal about spheres and planes of being and the 
 big guns he s seen over there. Shouldn t you say that 
 was it, Mother Brooke? " 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " Yes," she said. " And a good many family details 
 thrown in, all of them, so far as I can see, things Bixby 
 could have informed herself of pretty accurately since 
 she s been here." 
 
 " But," said Brooke, looking from one to the other as 
 
130 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 if he besought their joint testimony, " is there anything 
 in it? Not as to Phil, you know. I couldn t fall to that 
 somehow. But this automatic writing? " 
 
 " There s something mighty queer in it," his father 
 owned. " You can t always account for it by fraud. But 
 I don t believe you can account for it by the other 
 thing." He had a great disinclination to say spirits. 
 He couldn t regard Phil as disembodied with the ease 
 Isabel had found in taking her big leaps. "And," he 
 said, looking across to Madam Brooke, " while I could sit 
 down and cry over their platitudes, I ll be hanged if I 
 think Bixby s an entire fraud." 
 
 " How do you account for her? " she demanded. " Re 
 member " 
 
 " Oh, I know," he said, impatient over his own irresolu 
 tion, " I know all about spotted cows ; but I think when 
 you ve determined to blaze your way into the other coun 
 try the dark continent over there you just lose your 
 bearings. You throw over the rules you ve been living 
 by here, and, if you care enough about proving the thing, 
 you prove it, by hook or by crook. You do what you can 
 honestly, and when you come to the line where that stops 
 you go on doing. And if that means fraud, why fraud looks 
 to you only like one of the roads you ve got to take. It s 
 no use talking, Brooke. It s no use, mother. It s wrong, 
 wrong, wrong, this digging into what s been so well hid." 
 
 He was at least clarifying his own mind. He was 
 nearer seeing where he actually stood than he had been 
 since the beginning of his wife s credulities. 
 
 " Well ! " said Brooke, and fell into silence, thinking. 
 " Well," he repeated, rousing himself, " I can t see why 
 we shouldn t have wireless to another world." 
 
 " Yes," said Madam Brooke, as if to herself, and only 
 Peter noticed because he too had the same thought. 
 " That s what the old man said." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 131 
 
 " I haven t the least doubt it might come," said Brooke, 
 " any hour, any minute. Only, not in this muddling sort 
 of way through Miss Bixby, or most any kind of a Miss 
 Bixby. No, dad, I ll believe in a wireless you prove to 
 me, but not this blasted medium business. It turns the 
 world upside down." 
 
 " That," said Madam Brooke, in a tone she was deter 
 mined he should notice, because she had read something 
 not yet explained in his look at Andrea, " that is pre 
 cisely what the old man said." 
 
 " What old man? " he asked indifferently. 
 
 " You tell him, Peter," she prompted. " Tell him all 
 about it from the beginning. It had better be to-night. 
 He ll have to know." 
 
 So Peter began and told him the story of the man who 
 declared he had discovered olympium, who said he had 
 had mysterious messages and who asked to be financed 
 in order to go on with his researches. Brooke listened 
 with a divided mind. His thoughts had gone off to An 
 drea, and it was not until his father had finished and 
 Madam Brooke took up the tale that he came alive to 
 the tremendous import it had for him. 
 
 " The old man your father is telling you about," said 
 Madam Brooke, intent upon his face, " is the father of 
 the young woman who says she was married to your 
 brother on the tenth of August." 
 
 Brooke came upright in his chair. They had dealt 
 him a shock; every muscle in his body responded to it. 
 
 " Her father! " he repeated, out of the daze that settled 
 on him when he first entered the house and had never 
 really lifted since. " How do you know? Who told you? 
 But if she came to you " He lifted his hand to hia 
 forehead with a helpless gesture that told them how tired 
 he was with all these strangenesses. Yet Madam Brooke 
 
132 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 felt he had got to get in line with the changed pattern of 
 their family life. They couldn t have mercy on him yet. 
 He must be prepared with some measure of preconceived 
 opinion before he fell into the hands of his mother with 
 her determination to push them all into the path of her 
 new certainties. Peter was answering. 
 
 " She did come to us," he said, with a musing gravity, 
 as if he were more anxious than anything to be entirely 
 just to her. " She came to borrow money for her father. 
 I offered to go to see him. She agreed. We went, your 
 mother and I, and I offered to stake him rather gener 
 ously, I thought if he d submit to certain tests. He 
 threw me down, much to her disappointment I judged. 
 And then, in a week, she came back." 
 
 " And," said Madam Brooke, " she brought her story 
 of marrying Phil with her." 
 
 Brooke turned from one to the other in an appeal they 
 understood. 
 
 " Why," said the old lady, knowing perfectly well he 
 meant to ask what they thought of it, " I can t help be 
 lieving in the girl. It s her eyebrows, I dare say, the 
 way she looks at you. I never saw anything so honest 
 in my life. Besides, it s just like Phil. It would be just 
 like you. You re vagabonds, both of you, without the 
 slightest idea the Garden of Eden was laid out in build 
 ing lots, with jitneys and plumbing, a million years ago. 
 You d do it, too, Brooke, you know you would. You d 
 pick up a girl out of nowhere and marry her any kind of 
 an old way and think if that wasn t the usual style it ought 
 to be." 
 
 She was guiltless of insinuation, but the shaft struck. 
 He colored, dark betraying red, and she saw his hands 
 clench on the arms of the chair. " Oho ! " thought this 
 knowing old lady, " you ve been up to something your- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 133 
 
 self. What is it, dear boy? Anyway don t you let your 
 mother know till she s got her temperature down a little 
 after this Andrea business." Now his father was regard 
 ing him keenly ; a summons, it seemed to be, recalling him 
 from any inward comments he might be making, to give 
 direct testimony. 
 
 " Brooke," he said, " did Phil ever speak to you of this 
 girl? " 
 
 Brooke could answer that with a perfect candor need 
 ing no added tinge of plausibility. 
 
 " No, father, never." 
 
 " You spoke of a message." 
 
 Brooke hesitated a moment before replying. Then he 
 answered slowly, as if weighing his words and in a fashion 
 that made grandmother say " oho " once more to her 
 clever inward self. 
 
 " He did send his fob. It was just as I told you. Of 
 course," he added irritably, " it was as I told you." It 
 began to seem to him that he might be tempted to shade 
 some statement in Andrea s favor and that he ought not 
 to be defending himself at the outset before he had to. 
 " He simply said it was for her. Of course I didn t ask 
 who it was he meant." 
 
 " You thought you knew," said Peter. " Just as your 
 mother did." 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " You thought it was Bee." 
 
 " Yes," said Brooke, " I did think it was for Bee. I d 
 got so used to thinking " and, not knowing where the 
 sentence would carry him, he ended lamely, " Of course I 
 thought he meant Bee." 
 
 " And yet," said his father, with no definite object but 
 evidently hoping that, if they went beating along on a 
 track of question and answer, they should get somewhere, 
 
134 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " yet you were perfectly ready to give it to Andrea Dove. 
 And you refused it to Bee." 
 
 " But don t you see," said Brooke, " when you told me 
 
 or mum, whichever it was about her and Phil, why, 
 of course I knew what he must have meant. He meant 
 
 well," he added lamely, " he meant the only one he 
 could mean." 
 
 " But if you d never heard of her," pursued Peter inex 
 orably, as much to himself as to his son, " doesn t it seem 
 to you there was something peculiar in his giving you that 
 message without mentioning a name? " 
 
 " Of course it s peculiar," said Brooke. " It s all pe 
 culiar. It s damnable, any way you take it. But there 
 she was in the room, and you d told me about her and 
 Phil and she didn t deny it, and of course I knew it was 
 so." 
 
 This last was in a tone of such despair that grandmother 
 put out a hand toward him and then drew it back. Let 
 the boy keep the solitude of his unspoken misery. 
 
 " You see," she said to Peter, " he has the same impres 
 sion of the girl you and I have. It may be the eyebrows 
 again; but he s perfectly sure she s telling the truth." 
 
 " Why, of course," said Brooke, as if he were outraged 
 at their even stating it, " of course she s telling the truth. 
 What else could she do? " 
 
 " And yet," said Peter, pursuing his own reasoning, 
 trying to force his mind into the dull paths of data where 
 it was loath to go, " there were some strange things about 
 it. When she first came, she said it was because your 
 mother had given money to psychical research. When she 
 came to-day she told us she had married Phil. Wouldn t 
 it seem she d have told us that at first? I don t say 
 there s deception there. Only not quite out in the open, 
 not quite straight." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 135 
 
 To grandmother, looking at Brooke, he had turned so 
 sodden with weariness or emotion that she got up and put 
 her hand on his shoulder. 
 
 " Bed, dear," she counselled. " You re tired out." 
 
 He looked up at her, smiling, but the brown eyes piti 
 ful. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I m all in. Night, dad. I shall be 
 fit again in the morning." 
 
 He got to the door and had his hand on the latch, and 
 suddenly life and eagerness came back into his face. 
 
 " Why," he said, " if you ve been there, you know where 
 she lives." 
 
 " Yes," said his father. " You re right. We ll go round 
 there in the morning." 
 
 Brooke opened the door and took his cautious way up 
 stairs. But grandmother, while she waited a discreet 
 moment before following, thought wisely: 
 
 " Yes, somebody will go there to-morrow, but it s you, 
 my boy, and you ll take good care to go alone. Now 
 why, dear laddie, why? " 
 
 Peter came to her to say good-night, and watch her up 
 the stairs to see she didn t step on her draperies or do 
 any of those disconcerting things the old are supposed, by 
 the somewhat less old, to be perversely liable to. 
 
 " Queer world, mother, isn t it? " he whispered. 
 
 " Yes, Peter," said she, turning upon him a glance full 
 of that speculative humor which is one of the compensa 
 tions of long life. " If I let myself try to unriddle the 
 riddle, I could go as crazy as that old Dove." 
 
XIV 
 
 ANDREA had gone home, her feet winged. On her en 
 trance, as she had before and from an excitement a mil 
 lion times more acute, she began calling: 
 
 "Father! father!" 
 
 At once he appeared from the laboratory, with no ex 
 pectation in his air, only a weary waiting on her will that 
 struck her as sickening in its lassitude. She went up to 
 him and grasping his arm, as if she steadied him to listen, 
 looked up into his face. 
 
 "Daddy," she said, "I m in dreadful trouble. We 
 must go away from here." 
 
 " Of course w r e re in trouble," said he. " Our trouble s 
 the same, those people backing and filling, refusing what 
 they could give me as well as not, and forcing me off this 
 earth. That s what they re doing crowding me off the 
 earth." 
 
 She was shaking with nervous misery. In another mo 
 ment, she felt, her teeth would begin to chatter and she 
 might go all to pieces in that humiliating crisis of shattered 
 nerves. Her grasp on his arm tightened. She seemed to 
 herself not so much upholding her own body as keeping 
 him, by that reminding pressure, subject to the earth and 
 its clean sanities and in a measure responsive to her will. 
 
 " Daddy," she said, " listen to me. We ve got to go 
 away." 
 
 " You said that before," he reminded her fretfully. 
 " Where could we go? What could we go on? You took 
 
 136 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 137 
 
 a long time to practise that stenography of yours, but you 
 don t try to find a job. I send you to these people, to 
 get them to finance me, and you only bungle it. You 
 never ll have such a chance again as long as you live. 
 There s the woman as credulous as any born fool. 
 There s the man as soft as putty over her. You got her 
 at the start. Work through her and you ve got him." 
 
 " But, daddy, I did/ she cried, in an agony of abase 
 ment. " I worked on them both. I was honest at the 
 start, for I thought I d only to tell them what you d done, 
 for them to help us. And when he wanted proof and you 
 wouldn t meet them in that oh, I know, dear, I know 
 you couldn t I lied to them, and maybe that would have 
 succeeded; but I can t lie any more, for he s come back." 
 
 He stared at her, his brows bent. 
 
 " Who has come back? " he asked. 
 
 " Father/ she reminded him, her grasp tightening on 
 his arm and her face pinched and eager in her desire to 
 recall him from that vague region where he lived with 
 the imaginings of his own mind, what he indubitably 
 knew side by side with what he wanted to believe, " don t 
 you remember I told you about the day I took the long 
 walk to the beach and how the man came down from 
 heaven," she added the last in the extremity of her pas 
 sion " and I thought he was their son who died? " 
 
 " No," said he blankly, " I don t remember that." 
 
 " But it was so," she cried, with a sharpness of insist 
 ence that seemed at last, little by little, to be recalling 
 him. " And because he was dead and you threatened me 
 with your dying, too, and I d nothing to lose for with 
 him dead and you dying, what difference did it make 
 about me? I told my lie. I said I d been married to 
 him, and begged them to help me." 
 
 She stopped, for he was not attending. His eyes had 
 
138 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 that inward look she knew so well, when he was pursuing 
 the phantom of scientific guesswork farther and farther 
 into the heart of the universe. The varying look of his 
 face varying but always . tending toward the wildness 
 of downfall and decay had kept her lately in a state 
 of strained expectation; but now she felt herself arrested, 
 stopped by that inner warder of the mind that guards its 
 sanity. It told her, this unseen guardian, that it would 
 not do for her to get so frightened. She was the keeper 
 not only of her own mind but his. She must not let her 
 self explore these strange purlieus of disordered mental 
 action. She must deal with mortal things as the con 
 course of mortal minds had, up to this time, decreed mor 
 tal things to be. And while she was standing there coun 
 selling her wild heart, her remorseful mind, there sounded 
 a knock at the door. Her father at once made as if to 
 escape the pressure of her hand on his arm, preparatory 
 to turning away to his own room; but she held him still. 
 
 " Be quiet," she whispered. " Don t move or he ll hear 
 you." 
 
 " Who ll hear us? " he asked. 
 
 She did not answer, but stood there, one hand on his 
 arm the other at her heart. Brooke Harvey, she thought, 
 had got her address from his father, and he had come, in 
 the wealth of his divine kindness, to take her once more 
 into his arms and tell her the past was still alive. 
 
 " Why," said Andrew Dove, in a sudden comprehension, 
 " it s some of those people. Who else is there to come 
 here? Let them in. If you won t, I will." 
 
 He broke away from her and made a step toward the 
 door, but she slipped before him in the desperate resolve 
 that only she must meet Brooke Harvey. She would tell 
 him to go away, and forbid him ever to come there again. 
 Just as the knocker fell in a second double rap, she opened 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 139 
 
 the door and faced, not Brooke Harvey but a trim figure 
 in black. Andrea involuntarily fell back a step and Miss 
 Bixby took advantage of the interval to put her foot over 
 the sill. 
 
 " May I see your father, Miss Dove? " she asked, in 
 the most commonplace manner, and Andrea shut the door 
 behind her and followed her in. 
 
 Andrew Dove stood there, his head erect, listening. 
 When Miss Bixby walked up to him, he regarded her with 
 palpable disappointment, turned and took a pace toward 
 the laboratory. But she stepped in front of him. Her 
 manner was as contained as her appearance and her voice. 
 
 " Mr. Dove," said she, " I ve a proposition to make to 
 you." 
 
 He looked at Andrea inquiringly, and she explained : 
 
 " This is Mrs. Harvey s secretary." 
 
 " Bixby," said the lady. " My name is Bixby." 
 
 At Andrea s mention of the Harveys, interest reawak 
 ened in him. He looked, Andrea thought, almost as he had 
 when he met the Harveys themselves. He was curt in 
 his excitement. 
 
 " Well," said he, " what is it? You ve a message for 
 me?" 
 
 "Not exactly," she said, holding him by the tempo 
 rising concession, not for a moment risking his interest 
 through denial. " Pardon me, Miss Dove, but it s rather 
 a long story." 
 
 This to Andrea, who had recovered her own composure, 
 was a tentative request to be allowed a sympathetic scene 
 for what she had come to say. Andrea set a chair for 
 her. 
 
 " Miss Bixby wants to say something to you, father/ 
 she told him. It was as if she warned him that she had 
 had enough of these problematic scenes touching the Har- 
 
140 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 veys, and that he must stay and take his share of this, 
 whatever it might prove. " Sit down, please, Miss Bixby. 
 Father and I have a way of dropping down here at the 
 table." 
 
 Miss Bixby sat, and Andrea also, but Dove remained 
 standing, holding his chin meditatively, his eyes upon 
 Miss Bixby. She began in a perfectly commonplace man 
 ner. 
 
 " I know all about you, Mr. Dove. As your daughter 
 told you, I am Mrs. Harvey s secretary, and you do, you 
 know I mean, you do get to know things that happen 
 in the families where you re secretary. Besides, Mrs. 
 Harvey runs on. She never conceals anything, and she 
 never s had anything to conceal." 
 
 There was no implied censure in this. It was offered 
 quite impersonally. She did not seem to be giving away 
 her employer with any intent: only stating the indubi 
 table fact. 
 
 " I ve been doing automatic writing for her," she con 
 tinued, and, turning to Andrea she remarked interroga 
 tively, " Perhaps you know? " 
 
 It had been mentioned; but Andrea thought all Miss 
 Bixby might be entitled to was an acquiescent silence, and 
 the secretary went on, now to Mr. Dove. 
 
 " I know about your discovery. I know what you want 
 to do. You want to establish communication with an 
 other world. I ve heard them talking. You do, you 
 know. In fact, Mrs. Harvey s told me every last word. 
 Now you won t get any money out of them. Never in 
 the world. The son s come home, and just as sure as you 
 live he and his father ll stand in together and make up 
 their minds it s all bad for Mrs. Harvey, and they ll ditch 
 it somehow. You won t get a thing." 
 
 Andrew Dove turned his perplexed glance on Andrea. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 141 
 
 " You said," he began, " the son was dead." 
 
 "That s only a part of the story," she reminded him. 
 " Listen to Miss Bixby now. You shall have mine an 
 other time." 
 
 But could he? her sick heart asked her. Could his poor 
 mind be expected to assort the parti-colored bits of her 
 life and arrange them in the mosaic of credibility she her 
 self almost doubted? She had a question of her own to 
 ask. 
 
 " Is it," she said, turning to Miss Bixby, " bad for Mrs. 
 Harvey? " 
 
 " Oh, unquestionably," said the secretary promptly. 
 " Bad as it can be." 
 
 " Then why," asked Andrea, feeling, as she had before, 
 a warm championship of the Harveys, " why are you do 
 ing it? " 
 
 Miss Bixby stared at her in a frank surprise, as if she 
 wondered how anybody could be so little of a psychical 
 mathematician as to refuse to put two and two together 
 and use the four they made. 
 
 " Why," she said, " if you re working for anybody, you 
 do, you know. You have to. How long do you think 
 I d have kept my jobs if I hadn t got inside and found out 
 what they re thinking and what they want me to help em 
 think? That s what you re there for, you know. The 
 letters and the accounts they re only the smallest part 
 of it. Only you mustn t go too far. I lost three jobs 
 nice jobs they were because I went too far. I knew too 
 much. They couldn t put on any side. But I suppose 
 they only thought it was I that got too fresh." 
 
 The last sounded so frank and was, indeed, so devoid 
 of " side " that it seemed to lubricate her for the moment, 
 and make her less a complete Miss Bixby of black and 
 white surfaces and neat considered movements as a mor- 
 
142 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 tal subject to the variability of mortal minds. But she 
 recovered herself immediately and dropped again into her 
 concise, evidently preconceived form of statement. 
 
 " Now," she said, turning to Mr. Dove, " my time is 
 short there, just as yours is." And as he merely regarded 
 her with a puzzled wistfulness verging on displeasure, she 
 answered the question he might presumably have put. 
 " And for the same reason. While Mrs. Harvey can lay 
 her hands on me, she s going to make me do my automatic 
 writing; and they ve decided, the rest of them, that it s 
 bad for Mrs. Harvey." 
 
 Then, caught by a phrase, he did put a question. 
 
 " I suppose," he said, " you re what they call a me 
 dium." 
 
 " No, sir," said she emphatically, " not on your life. 
 I m a stenographer; but if I couldn t do automatic writing 
 well, I should smile." 
 
 She was fixing his attention more and more. 
 
 " Then," said he, " you are a fraud." 
 
 " No, sir," she said again, and evidently in a perfect 
 sincerity. " I m as honest as you are. Why, Mr. Dove, 
 if you think there s nothing in automatic writing you re 
 way off. It s easy to do it, easy as pie. But how I do 
 it, I know no more than the dead." 
 
 Her voice sank a little here and Andrea had a sense 
 that, although the dead were part of her trade outfit, she 
 still felt scrupulous about invoking them. 
 
 "Do you mean," asked Mr. Dove, in a tone of loud 
 solemnity that startled Andrea, as indicating he took the 
 woman and her work with undue seriousness, " do you 
 mean you never resort to fraud? " 
 
 " Of course I resort to fraud," said Miss Bixby pa 
 tiently. "You do, you know. You have to. Why, if 
 Mrs. Harvey said something that I could put into my next 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 143 
 
 message and get her into a good frame of mind, you know, 
 shouldn t I do it? Of course I should. It s like using a 
 bridge when you want to cross a stream. It s all mixed in 
 together, what I ve heard em say, what I know about the 
 family and the rest that I can t account for. But use 
 what you ve got, use everything, I say. Just to get to 
 going. Why, I ll warrant you would yourself, when 
 you re making some of your experiments. If you wanted 
 a light to see something by, and your electricity gave out, 
 you d throw in anything you d got to make a blaze, like 
 that old potter we used to read about in school that burnt 
 up everything he had to fire his clay. You do, you know." 
 
 Dove groaned, and broke out in a phrasing that was 
 half ridiculous and half terrifying to Andrea, it sounded 
 so Biblical and at the same time like stilted novels and the 
 play. 
 
 " Woman, why do you come here to me? " 
 
 Perhaps it was queer to Miss Bixby also to be ad 
 dressed by her generic name, for her tight mouth did re 
 lax a little. 
 
 " That s it," said she. " Why do I? Now you listen, 
 both of you, and I ll tell you." She glanced from one to 
 the other and saw they were indeed waiting on her words. 
 " You," she said to Mr. Dove, " are entirely original. 
 Haven t I heard it over and over again since the Harveys 
 came here, how you d discovered something new to science 
 and how you were perfectly sure you re on the road to a 
 wireless, we ll call it, between heaven and earth? Mr. 
 Harvey took to it, as I understand, from the first. He 
 says the other things are half baked, trances and auto 
 matic writing and the whole show that depends on any sort 
 of medium. Even the old lady, Madam Brooke, says it ll 
 come your way, if it comes at all, and her head s as hard 
 as a nut. Harder, for a nut you can crack, and I don t 
 
144 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 believe you could make a dent in her if you took a pile 
 driver." 
 
 " Then why," said Dove, his face distorted in a passion 
 of eagerness, " if they believe, won t they help me? " 
 
 " Because you won t play their way," she said quietly. 
 " I understand why. You won t because you can t. 
 There s just enough fraud in what you re doing, as there 
 is in what I am, so you can t come out in the open and 
 offer to give yourself up to the third degree. Why, some 
 times when I see that old lady sitting by the fireplace, 
 looking at me with that look of hers while I m writing for 
 Mrs. Harvey, I feel as if next minute she might begin 
 grilling me and the cold shivers run down my back." 
 
 She was becoming more and more expansive, this com 
 posed creature of the opaque surfaces and resolutely still 
 manner, and Andrea found herself wondering if this were 
 the real woman, relieved to allow herself the natural out 
 let of words, and whether her decorous quiet had been part 
 of the armor she assumed for her professional duties, to 
 know all and yet to avoid being " too fresh." Andrea 
 doubted whether all this could interest her father. She 
 was not sure he quite took it in until he surprised her by 
 answering with an acquiescent sadness: 
 
 " Yes, that s it. I m in the midst of chaos. I know I m 
 right, but I can t prove it. If I tried, they d laugh at me." 
 
 " That s it," said Miss Bixby promptly. " And I tell 
 you again we re in the same box and we ve got to make an 
 alliance, offensive and defensive. Where," she said, so 
 briskly that he started and looked at her apprehensively, 
 she was bringing him down with such a jerk to the concrete 
 terms he hated, " where is your stuff? the thing you ve 
 discovered? " 
 
 He seemed to feel obliged to answer her. 
 
 " In there," he said, in a low tone, turning. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 145 
 
 She was on the point of rising. 
 
 " Want to show it to me? " she asked. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " Want to let me see the flashes you get? You let them 
 see it. Mrs. Harvey said you did." 
 
 Again he shook his head and, after a moment s thought 
 ful consideration of him, she cheerfully acquiesced. 
 
 " Very well," she said. " Suit yourself. Sometime you 
 will. Now this is what I have to propose. I ll give up 
 the Harveys it s only a question of time before they 
 give up me and you and your daughter and I ll go into 
 partnership together. Ever do anything yourself? " she 
 inquired of Andrea, turning upon her with a brisk prac 
 ticality. 
 
 " Do anything? " repeated Andrea. " I ve learned 
 stenography and typewriting. I need practice. I can t 
 work very fast." 
 
 " No, no," said Miss Bixby, with unbroken good humor. 
 " Thought reading, automatic writing, anything of that 
 sort." 
 
 "No," said Andrea, not, she hoped, showing her re 
 pugnance to the imputation. " Never." 
 
 " Well," said Miss Bixby, " no doubt you could. Some 
 day we ll sit down together and you can try. The first 
 thing we ll do is to put a card in the papers ; but only after 
 we ve got you pretty well written up, Mr. Dove, your 
 theory, you know, that communication s coming through 
 science if it comes at all. We can manage that. We ll 
 have you interviewed, photographs of this place it s 
 a dandy place for a big publicity article and then the 
 card, advertising automatic writing and demonstrations of 
 olympium, whatever they are." 
 
 He took fire. The blood ran into his face and his head 
 was high. 
 
146 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me," he said, " you are propos 
 ing an advertising fraud to me, a man that stands as I do, 
 a man whose name is going down " 
 
 There he stuck, in inarticulate anger, and she inter 
 rupted him with a quiet practicality that seemed to prick 
 his heroic decencies. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Dove, I know all about it. You ve got the 
 old idea of the scientist in his laboratory, dying over his 
 retorts, and then the world finding out he was the biggest 
 toad ever and carving his name on friezes of libraries and 
 museums. But it won t work. The world s different 
 now, and it won t wash. There s not a darned thing you 
 can get now without publicity." 
 
 Her qualifying word she used with such a simple belief 
 in its value that it seemed to fit her decorous ensemble. 
 She was convincing in her single-mindedness, and she went 
 on with an added earnestness of persuasion toward the 
 course she was offering them in good faith, for was it 
 not to their advantage as to hers? 
 
 " Now say we put our card in the paper, we start out, 
 you demonstrating your scientific theory and piecing it 
 out, when you come to breaks in it, with whatever you 
 know will piece it out. Science can t be worth much if it 
 hasn t got its own particular frauds, same as everything 
 else. There s the right side of things and there s the 
 wrong side. If there wasn t a wrong there wouldn t be a 
 right. And I do the automatic writing. We d rake in 
 money hand over fist. And you d be at your invention, 
 don t you see, nights and Sundays. Why, you d be made, 
 jve d all be made." 
 
 Mr. Dove walked to the door and opened it. 
 
 " Andrea," he said, " tell her to go." 
 
 Miss Bixby rose, with a composed readiness. She was 
 so used to secretarial obedience that any form of disci 
 pline came easily to her. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 147 
 
 "There s just one thing more, Mr. Dove/ she said. 
 "If your stuff s anything like radium, it s worth thou 
 sands and thousands of dollars. Don t you know it is? " 
 
 He made no reply. She had, too, a word for Andrea, a 
 quick, low word in passing. 
 
 " When s he likely to be out? You let me know and 
 I ll bring my camera and take a picture of the rooms." 
 
 Before Andrea could speak, and perhaps reading her 
 shocked face and unwilling to accept an answer that would 
 have been adequate expression of the look, Miss Bixby 
 passed her and went on to the door where Mr. Dove still 
 stood, erect and vigilant. He looked as if he were guard 
 ing something. It seemed to be his house, but really it 
 was what he remembered as his honor. When she 
 reached him, Miss Bixby hesitated and looked up at him 
 with a word on her lips ; but he made a slight imperative 
 gesture and she went on. He closed the door behind her 
 and then fell to trembling, went to Andrea and said, in a 
 childish way : 
 
 "They mustn t insult us, must they? To think a 
 man like me " 
 
 Andrea put her arms about him and held him to her. 
 What was he, she thought passionately, but an ill-used 
 child? Life itself had broken him. It had made him do 
 himself wrong with the Harveys though they meant him 
 well; but now he had vindicated his honor before this 
 woman who would have corrupted him. 
 
 " Daddy," she said, " we must go away. We ll find a 
 place none of these people know about." Then she made 
 her desperate appeal. " I ve been wicked. I ve lied to 
 them. I must tell them. And after I ve told them, I can t 
 see them ever any more." 
 
 "Yes, yes," he said, in a perfunctory acquiescence. 
 " We ll go away." 
 
148 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 For an instant she believed she could tell him what new 
 actor had come into the confusion of her life: Beatrice, 
 unconsciously disputing with her the allegiance of the 
 dead. She had the page of her own mounting remorses 
 ready for his reading: how she had believed she was 
 wronging only her poor self, and then it was Brooke she 
 had wronged and now it was Beatrice. But what would 
 it mean to him? What would any mortal drama mean? 
 nothing, unless it touched olympium. 
 
XV 
 
 ANDREA slept soundly, but she woke in terror. She was 
 afraid to see her father. He had met Miss Bixby like a 
 man, but if he had now slipped back again to his former 
 state she felt no strength in her to bear it. Her own self- 
 tormenting mind must keep its poise, at least until she 
 had seen what his mental weather was likely to be. It 
 proved very dark and shifty, the sort she dreaded. When 
 he came out, long after she had put the room in order, he 
 was fractious, impatient of delays in even the least par 
 ticulars, and his face told her he had slept but little. He 
 scarcely glanced at her and spoke curtly, as he did when 
 he was deep in experiment, as if she were some unconsid- 
 ered instrument of his will. He drank his coffee hastily, 
 standing, and made no pretence at breaking bread. 
 
 " My packing," said he, " is done. You should have 
 done yours, too, last night. We must be away from here 
 to-day." 
 
 "But father," she reminded him, "we can t go until 
 we ve found a place." 
 
 " I am going up to some of those South End streets," 
 he said, " where we looked first. You can go round here. 
 Take this part of the hill and see if there s anything pos 
 sible. Don t engage it. I can t tell what I shall want 
 to do." 
 
 She made no answer, and he took down his hat and 
 eoat. 
 
 149 
 
150 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 "Daddy," she said, hesitating, "you know you ve 
 always said we mustn t both be away at the same 
 time." 
 
 He paused, hat and coat in hand. 
 
 " I know," he said, " and it s truer than ever. We re 
 not the only ones to know what s in there. We ve given 
 away our secret, Andrea, given it away. Did you hear 
 what that woman said about olympium? She said, If 
 it s anything like radium it s worth thousands of dollars. 
 She s a crook, but she s no fool." 
 
 Andrea was bent only on keeping him at home. 
 
 " Don t go," she said. " Let me try the West End first. 
 After luncheon you ll feel rested. You can go then and 
 leave me here." 
 
 But this seemed only to irritate him into a more urgent 
 haste. 
 
 " I ve got to go," he said. " You stay here and look out 
 for the olympium. The sooner we get away the better. 
 Harvey s a crook. They re all crooks. They ll do us, 
 Andrea, yet. They ll steal it away from us. Last night 
 it came to me Harvey might have sent that woman to get 
 round me. A spy, do you see? Harvey s a rich man. 
 A man that s played the money game as he has, keeps on 
 playing it. My olympium, that s his game now. He 
 wants it, and he means to have it." 
 
 " You didn t think so when you sent him the keys," 
 she reminded him. " And nothing s happened since." 
 
 He waved that away. 
 
 " Yes, there has," he said. " They sent that woman. 
 But they won t find what I called my mechanical toy. 
 I ve taken it apart so the devil himself couldn t put it to 
 gether. I ve packed it in a box and I shall take that with 
 me." 
 
 He went into the laboratory and returned at once, 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 151 
 
 carrying a small wooden box she remembered to have 
 seen in their last moving. 
 
 " Where is the olympium? " she asked him. " In the 
 usual place? " 
 
 " The usual place," he answered, as if he were propiti 
 ating, cajoling her. "Remember the rule, Andrea: if 
 you want to hide a thing, put it in plain sight." 
 
 And now, in the best of spirits, he was hurrying off, 
 laughing softly, as it seemed, at his own cleverness in out 
 witting a world of crooks. But at the door he stopped 
 and considered for a moment, nodding, with lips com 
 pressed. 
 
 " After all," he said, " you re right. You shall go, and 
 when you come back I ll take my turn. Not to go out 
 together," he repeated laughing, in the sly way she hated. 
 " That was it, wasn t it, Andrea? That s what we always 
 said." 
 
 And now that he had bidden her go, she stood a moment, 
 trying to get a grip on her scared nerves, recalling her 
 composure and asking herself what it was her part to do. 
 To go out, she told herself, when the terror he had raised 
 in her died with ebbing heart beats, to do the immediate 
 practical thing and find a place to live. She put on her 
 hat and coat, left the table in disorder and went. And 
 there before her door was the Harveys car and Brooke 
 himself just stepping out. Involuntarily she turned, 
 fumbling for her key, but he was at her side. 
 
 " Would you mind " he began, and she met the sad 
 sincerity of his eyes. 
 
 What was that new look there? Was it all grief over 
 his brother s death, or had she herself darkened those 
 clear wells of light? 
 
 He put his question. 
 
 " Would you mind not going in? " 
 
152 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 He had expected her to open the door for him to enter, 
 and she lacked heart to own she meant to run away from 
 him. 
 
 " Thank you," he said. " If you don t mind talking 
 here a minute. First, I ve brought you what Phil sent." 
 
 She had put Beatrice out of her mind, not to be remem 
 bered again until the moment of confession. But now 
 here was Beatrice, invisible yet no less implacable instru 
 ment of the avenging powers. 
 
 He continued: 
 
 " His fob, you know. I told you. He made me take 
 it that day before. He kept insisting he would come out 
 of it; but that was to keep me from getting rattled. Be 
 sides he did love to play the game. You know Phil." He 
 took a twist of white paper from his pocket and held it 
 out to her. " Just as he gave it to me. I haven t opened 
 it." 
 
 She looked at it in what seemed to him mysteriously 
 like horror. She made no move to take it. 
 
 " Why," she asked, " do you bring it to me? " 
 
 He was amazed. 
 
 " Why? " he said. " You ve told me why. I own I 
 didn t know who it was he meant, though I thought I did, 
 and so I didn t ask him. But you told me yourself yester 
 day. You told all of us. You married Phil and of course 
 he sent his token to you. Of course! " 
 
 She stood looking down at the pavement. He seemed 
 little more than a voice pronouncing judgment on her. 
 She thought a great many things in that instant. It 
 seemed to her that forces were fighting to give her back 
 her old simple honesty; but she was too tired with all 
 that had passed, too torn by anxiety for her father and in 
 ability to judge what was best for him, to know what force 
 was on the side of her sick soul and what was condoning 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 153 
 
 the perjury that had played the devil with her life. And 
 she remembered Beatrice. And suddenly one of the 
 armies fled, in great rout and confusion, and she believed 
 the conquering force was commanding her to confess her 
 lie here, now, and make an end of warfare. She looked 
 up at him with the words ready on her lips, and he was 
 gazing at her in such simple tenderness and compassion 
 that she forbore. 
 
 " You know," he said, stumbling on the words, for he 
 was very boyish when it came to things he felt deeply, 
 " I ought to have given it to you yesterday, the first min 
 ute, but it was all so strange Phil never speaking to me 
 about you and you why, you know I thought I was 
 the one that found you, and it seems it was Phil, after all. 
 So far as I can see, it s all an awful mix-up because we 
 looked alike, though," he added, as if to himself, his 
 brows meeting in perplexity, "we don t look so much 
 alike as all that comes to." 
 
 This told her something else. He was, in his simple 
 honor, snatching at the same justification to account for 
 her coming to his arms. He had been thinking it out, and 
 all he could find to solve the puzzle was this specious sup 
 position that Phil and he were alike and, lacking Phil, she 
 had caught at him. But he was the most normal, though 
 one of the most fanciful of men, and she could see how 
 he would hate the solution even while he caught at it. 
 And she was right. He had been hoodwinking himself 
 into his old belief in her, he had accepted a psychologic 
 melee of the affections, odious to him and yet to be ac 
 cepted like delirium or some temporary disfiguration ill 
 ness might have fastened on her. But there was one thing 
 more she had to know. 
 
 " If you didn t," she said, " believe in me yesterday, 
 why do you believe in me to-day? " 
 
154 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Why/ he said remindingly, with his compassionate 
 smile, " I ve had time to think it over. Yesterday, don t 
 you see, it struck me, biff! it knocked me out. But when 
 I d got my wind back I knew it s so because you say it. 
 We can t go back of that." 
 
 And looking up at him again, that unusual quality of 
 his eyes, the soft sincerity of them, she knew if she de 
 stroyed his belief in her she would be killing something as 
 vital as life itself. It would be a murder of something in 
 his soul that had withstood the cankering force of a good 
 deal of worldly wisdom and first hand contact with the 
 war. 
 
 " And," he was saying, flushing now with the difficulty 
 of it, the flourish of emotions he would have chosen to 
 keep hidden to make themselves apparent only in the acts 
 of every day, " I want to say now and I won t say it 
 again I m right here. I know pretty well what old Phil 
 would want me to do, and so does father. Mother ll see 
 it, too, when she s got hold of herself. Mum isn t herself, 
 you know," he added impulsively. " She s gone daffy 
 over her spirit writing. But she ll wear through that. 
 Dad ll pull her through." 
 
 As she heard the beloved voice promising her the kindly 
 intercourse of common life, her resolution weakened. 
 Perhaps these Harveys were the more enchanting to her 
 because she had lived at such high tension for so many 
 years that life itself seemed daily tragedy Ana she com 
 pounded with that conquering battalion of her mind, be 
 seeching it to spare her action for one hour more. If she 
 confessed now she loosed the spring that held an impene 
 trable wall above her, ready to fall between her and the 
 light of day. Could not Beatrice wait? When at last 
 she had her token, she could triumph for the rest of her 
 life over the woman who had nothing. They had walked 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 155 
 
 away a little, out of the chauffeur s hearing, and contin 
 ued pacing back and forth, and now Brooke put out his 
 hand and again tendered her the twist of paper. 
 
 "So! " he said. It meant a great deal, all they had 
 been formulating. " So," the frank voice told her, " since 
 you are Phil s wife and the thing is yours, take it." 
 
 And that recalled her to the inexorable fact that you 
 can t live upon the abstractions of a chosen course; you 
 have to accept its concrete issues. 
 
 " No," she said violently, " no. Don t let me touch it, 
 don t let me hear it mentioned. Why! " and here her 
 over-driven mind that seemed to have been growing more 
 and more sluggish these last minutes awoke and again re 
 membered Beatrice. " If you thought you knew the girl 
 he was sending it to, why not give it to her? If there is 
 another woman who thinks " 
 
 Here she stopped bewildered at the first turning of the 
 labyrinth. She was about to repeat, " Give it to her, in 
 God s name," but that would be to demolish the credu 
 lities he had pieced together. And even for this last in 
 consistency he had a theory. The mantle of his inven 
 tiveness seemed big enough to cover even her own invol 
 untary testimony. 
 
 " Now," he said, " you mustn t do that, mustn t let 
 yourself. However queer this is, the whole business, 
 there s no room for doubt where Phil s concerned. He 
 wasn t that sort. If he cared enough about you and 
 he did " he added emphatically, as if to assure himself 
 again of his own acquiescence " why, that s all there 
 was to it. He simply did. And if he d ever thought he 
 had a fancy for another girl, that had to go, same as 
 fancies do when the real thing comes along. You re jeal 
 ous, just a little bit. But don t be. Remember, it s old 
 Phil!" 
 
156 THE WIND : BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 But he thrust the twist of paper into his pocket, either 
 to punish her, she thought, as you d pretend to punish a 
 dear child, or because he judged the time for insisting was 
 not yet. He was saying, in the commonplace way he had 
 of putting her at her ease: 
 
 " Almost forgot my errand. My father wants you to 
 come home with me." 
 
 She was at once on the defensive. 
 
 " Oh, no," she said. " I can t do that." 
 
 " He s got a good deal to tell you," Brooke went on, in 
 no slightest doubt of convincing her. " He d have come 
 here, only he had an idea your father s in a bad way, 
 likely to be excited and all that. And I ve an idea he 
 means to propose something very much to your father s 
 advantage." 
 
 Suddenly her heart grew light, as if she had been suffo 
 cating in a fetid place and the cool sweet air had blown on 
 her and her lungs expanded and she was saved. It was 
 Peter Harvey who was saving her, the merciful kindness 
 of him, as she had felt the message his spirit sent forth 
 unconsciously in the first moment she saw him. She could 
 ask to see him alone, she could tell him that she was a liar 
 and beg him, as she knew him to be merciful, to do her 
 the one last mercy of letting her disappear from them 
 completely. He would tell Beatrice. He would take the 
 task of wiping the need of her out of Brooke s mind. It 
 would be as if she were dead; better, for there would be no 
 danger of disquieting rumors from some spirit world to 
 thicken the atmosphere of this. 
 
 " Yes," she heard herself saying, " I should like to see 
 your father. Not your mother, please." 
 
 Brooke answered cheerfully and the more readily be 
 cause he thought she might well dread his mother s jealous 
 unbelief. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 157 
 
 " Mother s gone to a lecture. Wanted me to go with 
 her. Something about the dead surviving. Can t stand 
 it. Dad can t and I can t either. She made me read 
 some of the things Miss Bixby s written down. It adds 
 a horror to death. If that s Phil well! " 
 
 He had put her into the car and taken his place, ram 
 bling on without expecting answers, because he thought 
 they had gone deep enough into the half light between 
 them and she must be left with all possible composure to 
 meet his father. 
 
 " I don t know why," he said, " but every hair on my 
 spine rises when they begin to tell me what Phil says. 
 Like a dog s, you know. Why, I know him as " he 
 paused and quite unconsciously came a simile that made 
 her pulses leap to him "as I know you. And if it s 
 Phil if it could be why, any one of a hundred words 
 he could think of, words I know, too they d mean vol 
 umes they d tell me. Not this popular lecture room 
 slush." But immediately he caught himself up, remem 
 bering her father. " They tell me your father says science 
 is going to do it. I could believe that if I could believe 
 anything." 
 
 Suddenly, for after all she didn t know very much about 
 this young sky god who had come down to her, she wanted 
 to hear what he did believe, not about the dead only, but 
 everything. That unappeased spiritual thirst was upon 
 her which prompts lovers new to each other to desire with 
 passion each other s image and print it on their own. 
 
 " But you do," she said, " believe. You believe they 
 are alive." 
 
 He was silent a moment. Then he said gravely: 
 
 " Yes, I believe they re alive because they can t be 
 dead. I ve seen too many of them. And Phil do you 
 suppose " Suddenly he felt the incongruity of a talk 
 
158 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 like this, whirling along in the brilliant day. " Here we 
 are," he said, and opened the door for her. Then he told 
 the chauffeur he was to go for Mrs. Harvey. It was an 
 hour away, and Andrea made note of it, so that she might 
 herself be gone. Still, she thought drearily, what she had 
 to say would not take long. 
 
XVI 
 
 BROOKE let her in and took her to the library. She en 
 tered the room with relief, because Peter Harvey was 
 there. That meant kindness, an even unreasoning sym 
 pathy. But he was not alone. By the fire sat Madam 
 Brooke, charming in lilac and white, greeting her by a 
 slight movement that seemed to indicate an impulse of 
 rising from her chair and the immediate conclusion that 
 youth would forgive her continued sitting. Peter Harvey 
 came forward and took Andrea s hand. The hearty grasp 
 seemed to promise, at the outset, all those things she knew 
 she might expect of him. He gave her a chair between 
 the library table and the fire and went back to his accus 
 tomed place. There Andrea was, she realised, not alone 
 with him but with three of them ranged, not against her, 
 it was true, but in an unrecognised coalition to interro 
 gate her. They were bent on understanding her and ab 
 solutely unaware that she was not correspondingly eager 
 to be understood. But all their predisposition toward her 
 could not rob the coming inquisition of its menace. She 
 might have asked Brooke to leave her alone with his 
 father ; but it was an impossibility to beg this frail yet in 
 exorably powerful old woman to go out of the room and 
 out of the case. You couldn t do that to old women of her 
 sort; and besides, it wouldn t work. She wouldn t go. 
 She was kindness itself, but she was also unquestioning as- 
 sertiveness. She had reached the point where mortality, 
 under the heel of the tyrant Time, with a smiling arro- 
 
 159 
 
160 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 gance soon to be smothered in dust ; wields unbending au 
 thority over its last brief hour. 
 
 Peter Harvey began at once. 
 
 " My dear, we were upset yesterday, all of us. Then 
 this boy here " he smiled at Brooke, who had seated 
 himself on a couch in the darker background " he came 
 bursting in on us and we hadn t eyes or ears for anything. 
 But I don t want to lose any time in telling you we re with 
 you " he was about to add " all of us " when he re 
 membered his wife and ended, temporising: "Mother 
 Brooke, you re with us, aren t you, Brooke and me? We 
 don t mean to grill you or question you or make you prove 
 things," he went on, so confident of Madam Brooke s 
 answer that he left her no time to make it. " We simply 
 want to do what Phil himself would expect if he d got 
 round to telling us." 
 
 Andrea sat looking at him, lost for a moment in her 
 recognition of his simple human kindness. It was too 
 perfect a thing to be destroyed. She loved it so much that 
 she was drawn on to test it further, the beautiful thing 
 born of his own goodness of heart, fathered by her lie, 
 before her confession beat its bright head down into the 
 dust. 
 
 " Still," she said, " you don t know a single thing about 
 me except what I ve told you." 
 
 Brooke moved suddenly as if he were about to rise and 
 speak, but it was his father who answered, with the ex 
 quisite gentleness that comes only from the heart. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " you carry your credentials with 
 you." 
 
 " A trick of the muscles about the eyes," put in Madam 
 Brooke quietly. 
 
 " So," said Peter Harvey, " I want to tell you I m going 
 to deposit a sum of money where you can draw on it. I 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 161 
 
 sha n t pester your father by talking about syndicates and 
 demonstrations. He s in no condition to be approached 
 in that way. So far as his work is concerned, matters 
 will be left entirely in your hands." 
 
 Andrea spoke in a moved voice that made Madam 
 Brooke look at her curiously. It was a voice of extreme 
 emotion, an ecstasy of gratitude perhaps, yet shot through 
 with fear. 
 
 " But," she said, " I can t take money from you, even 
 for father. I ve come to see that. He can t " she hesi 
 tated and then went on " he can t be allowed to take 
 it." 
 
 " It isn t from me," said Peter Harvey. He always 
 seemed, at these moments of tranquillizing the perturbed 
 human soul, to have unending time at his disposal, an in 
 exhaustible supply of patience. " It is from my son. You 
 would have taken things from him if he had lived. 
 That s all the more reason why I should see you have 
 them now." 
 
 Andrea sat silent looking down at her hands, hard- 
 worked hands, yet still delicate, clasped tightly in her lap. 
 She was smiling a little, too, thinking how capriciously 
 unaccountable life is, and, after all, how kind. Here was 
 she face to face with the moment that should have brought 
 her punishment, and it was offering her instead the sweet 
 est proof she had ever had of the goodness in human 
 hearts. It was a tremendous gift they brought her, these 
 people, the mere knowledge of themselves. She might 
 have lost her belief in herself, but she was gloriously con 
 firmed in her belief in the world. And upon the heels of 
 this, it came to her that the least she could do for them 
 was to save them the reality of their own illusion. If she 
 could leave them now while they still had faith in her, 
 leave them merely to wonder, not to doubt, she would 
 
162 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 have spared them the last injury of all: the knowledge of 
 evil that seemed somehow not yet to have corroded their 
 soft hearts. And she forgot Beatrice. In the moment of 
 her thinking these things she seemed to be removed into 
 that vague distance where the visionary is the only true. 
 Madam Brook recalled her. Here were facts again, the 
 challenge, the demand, and Andrea felt herself flung again 
 upon the spears of sharp interrogation. 
 
 " You said," the old lady remarked quietly, though her 
 authoritative voice was never without an arresting signifi 
 cance, " you were married on the tenth of August." 
 
 Brooke moved slightly, and Peter nodded in his direc 
 tion, as if to say, " I agree with you. Leave it to me. 
 I ll quash it." 
 
 Before Andrea had recovered herself to the point of 
 answering, Peter answered for her: 
 
 " Mother Brooke, I propose leaving all these details for 
 the present. Naturally we want to know how everything 
 came about. It s a part of Phil s life. But we re going 
 to see a lot of this dear girl, and she ll understand how we 
 feel about that and want to tell us, as much as we long to 
 hear. But just now the important thing seems to be to 
 get her father into condition for going on with his work. 
 It s easy to see how much that means to him. I should 
 doubt if he could live without it. Everything else ll come 
 in good time." 
 
 Madam Brooke waited, with no apparent impatience, 
 for him to finish, and then repeated, in a tone perhaps a 
 shade warmer, as if assuring Andrea she might trust the 
 impelling force behind it: 
 
 " I m sure she won t mind telling me whether it was the 
 tenth of August." 
 
 And now to Andrea the world and the laws that gov 
 erned it did not look so irresponsibly kind. The question, 
 
THE [WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 163 
 
 like a huge creature with gigantic wings, seemed to be 
 winnowing her before it into the gulf of lost hopes and 
 tarnished destinies. Yet she must answer, and after that, 
 whatever she said, the wings would beat on her the faster. 
 
 " Yes," she said, her stiff lips trembling, " the tenth of 
 August." 
 
 Here Brooke surprised her. 
 
 " No," he said vehemently. " Think what you mean to 
 say." 
 
 Andrea had no experience of legal procedure, but she 
 did know that a lawyer often has to remind his client that 
 unguarded words may be used against him. It seemed 
 to her Brooke was reminding her, not to tell the truth 
 without fear, but to reflect whether the truth would serve 
 her. Madam Brooke looked at him quietly and perhaps 
 drew some conclusion he detected, for he bit his lip. 
 
 " I gather," said the old lady, " Brooke s memory of 
 the tenth of August, 1917, agrees with mine. I keep a 
 diary." She ignored Andrea now, as if she wanted to 
 spare herself the appeal of the girl s drawn face. " I find 
 that on the tenth of August Phil got a day s leave to take 
 Beatrice for a flight. They went off about nine in the 
 morning and got back at five. Brooke, does your remem 
 brance of the tenth of August agree with mine? " 
 
 Brooke was silent, sitting there on the couch, bent for 
 ward, his hands hanging, his glance on the floor. Andrea 
 knew where his thoughts were, and how his memory went 
 step by step with hers. He recovered himself, straight 
 ened, and faced his grandmother with a smile. 
 
 " A date! " he said, as if he really must beg her to con 
 sider how easy it is to mislay such trifling accuracies. " A 
 day of the month! what difference does it make whether 
 she remembers it was the tenth or one of two or three days 
 the other side of it? " 
 
164 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Her wedding day/ said Madam Brooke. " A girPs 
 wedding day ! " 
 
 And increasingly it seemed to Andrea, turning from 
 Brooke s harassed face to his father s, that she must save 
 their faith in her. She raised her head and looked now 
 at Madam Brooke, and was sure the keen eyes did not yet 
 condemn her and that she could keep her own unflinch 
 ingly upon them. 
 
 " I should like," she began, " to explain " 
 
 But what her next words would have been, she never 
 knew. She was at one of those moments of magnificent 
 audacity when the fighting soul challenges the harassed 
 brain to act. The words were not required. A knock 
 came at the door, sharp, importunate. Brooke rose, the 
 door opened and Beatrice came in. She seemed to see 
 nobody but Brooke whom, her first words made it appar 
 ent, she had come to find. 
 
 " He sent me something," she said. " I told you I could 
 wait for it. I can t. Where is it? " 
 
 They had risen, all but Madam Brooke, and she, after 
 her first glance at Beatrice, sat with her eyes on Andrea. 
 It was not hostile, this look, but it did warn Andrea she 
 was definitely under observation and might be called on at 
 any instant to answer whatever misgivings the shifting 
 aspect of the scene suggested. As for Beatrice, she was all 
 life and loveliness, the red overrunning her cheeks and 
 confidence smiling in her eyes. Brooke came forward to 
 receive her, sorry for her, angry in a way, because she was 
 rushing things, courting the knockout blow of meeting 
 Andrea and hearing what she was to Phil. But Beatrice 
 was not to be warned by any gravity of look or voice. 
 She was in no sort of doubt or boding. She had thrown 
 aside her grief. 
 
 " Where is it? " she insisted. " Brooke, give it to me." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 165 
 
 Brooke, Andrea saw, put his hand to his pocket where 
 he had thrust the twist of paper, and she found herself 
 whispering, this to herself and unnoted by anybody except 
 perhaps Madam Brooke: "Give it to her. Hurry! 
 hurry!" 
 
 Beatrice continued, her shining eyes on Brooke s face, 
 laughter the agitated laugh of those who are unreason 
 ably happy in her voice. 
 
 " I have just had a letter from him. A letter? one line 
 written, I should say, the minute before he went out on 
 that last flight. It says besides a word or two " and 
 here she paused an instant, flushing gloriously, because 
 the unspoken word touched her to flame " It says 
 Brooke will give it to you. Look inside/ And that let 
 ter," she continued, as if amazed that angelic messengers 
 themselves hadn t seen to the delivery of such a letter 
 " that letter s been delayed all these weeks. Brooke " 
 her voice dropped to a whisper, " what is it youVe got for 
 me?" 
 
 Brooke, quite pale now, stood there with the twist of 
 paper in his hand. He turned slowly to Andrea and 
 seemed to ask her counsel in a look. She tried to reach 
 him through the veil that shuts mortal man from man, 
 to will him with her soul, if it could be called her soul, to 
 give the little twist of paper to Beatrice. And at that in 
 stant fate, the sad old kindly mourner over the sorrows 
 of youth which yet insists on their being faced because, 
 after all, it is but youth, spoke from the lips of Madam 
 Brooke. 
 
 " Bee, your note says, Look inside. 7 I suggest Brooke 
 lets you take whatever he s got there and you see what 
 the note means by Look inside/ " 
 
 Brooke put out his hand with the twist of paper and 
 Beatrice took it hungrily. She unrolled the paper and the 
 
166 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 fob dangled from its chain. It was an oblong with three 
 sides of semi-precious stones and the fourth side of gold 
 with florid ornamentation. 
 
 " I think," said Madam Brooke quietly, while Beatrice 
 stood regarding it in a perplexity become suddenly grave, 
 "it is made to open. That gold side is probably on a 
 little hinge. My husband had one something like it. Put 
 your nail under, my dear, and open it." 
 
 Beatrice did it, and the lid came up. Something white 
 lay within. She took it out and unfolded it, a tiny ob 
 long such as a chemist might wrap a powder in. It was 
 covered with finest handwriting. She stood reading it, 
 her face irradiated, forgetful of every living creature, of 
 every fact or argument this might mean to them. She 
 seemed to have been withdrawn from them, and only their 
 silence at last recalled her. She looked from one to the 
 other of the three somehow she did not include Andrea 
 at all or feel it necessary to apologize for the personal 
 character of the interview and laughed a little. 
 
 " It s all right," she assured them, " quite all right. I 
 never shall doubt any more. I shan t even mourn. 
 He has said everything." 
 
 Then, as Brooke s drawn face and Peter Harvey s 
 mysteriously set countenance impressed her, she believed 
 she ought to assure them also. She answered that remon 
 strance from her own mind. 
 
 " I can t," she said. " No, I can t. I d let you see it if 
 I could, but it s his and mine. Not even you " She 
 stopped, her eyes dwelling on Madam Brooke. There was 
 a great tenderness in her gaze. It said she could admit 
 age, its heart and brain scarred by the characters of life, 
 where she could not let in anybody else. The old would 
 take the heavenly secret soon to heaven itself, and with 
 the others it would fade out under a thousand other 
 memories. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 167 
 
 " Yes," she said, with a lovely tenderness. " I ll let 
 you." 
 
 Then she was at Madam Brooke s side, holding the pa 
 per so that she could see, and Madam Brooke, who had 
 sat with her eye-glass dangling from her finger, read in a 
 glance, flushed all over her fine old face and rose and 
 kissed her. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " yes, my darling, that s all you need 
 to know till you go to heaven and find him." 
 
 Beatrice turned her enchanted face from them and was 
 out of the door as quickly as she had come, and all Andrea 
 was conscious of was a despairing certainty that it was 
 sad she had done what she had and that Madam Brooke 
 could never call her darling. But Peter Harvey was on 
 his feet, his face worried, his tone sharp with anxiety, 
 quite unlike the Peter Harvey who had begun the morn 
 ing with a general unworldliness of benevolence. 
 
 " I can t understand it," he said. " I ve got to be told. 
 If Phil " he paused here, evidently realising there must 
 be a big omission of what they had accepted concerning 
 Andrea and adding, after the dubious interval was 
 safely behind him, " Why the devil s he sending notes to 
 Bee? " 
 
 " We don t know," said Brooke savagely. " We don t 
 know anything except that Phil father, Phil never did 
 a thing in his life that wasn t square." 
 
 " And," continued Peter, feeling his way along the lab 
 yrinth, " if he did want to say something to Bee, why not 
 write it and send it through the mails, like any man with 
 his wits about him? " 
 
 11 Because," said Brooke, " that wasn t Phil. Phil had 
 the most disorderly wits I ever saw, where his private 
 affairs were concerned. I don t believe he d ever settled 
 it in his own mind he wanted to write till that last minute 
 
168 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 when he got the hunch he wasn t coming back. And then 
 he d given me the fob and he remembered he hadn t ex 
 plained there was something inside. He couldn t get at me 
 to tell me. I d gone out earlier, you understand. So he 
 wrote that last line. And if it just referred to the other that 
 had been written earlier and didn t say anything particu 
 lar besides, why, that s Phil." 
 
 " Yes," said Madam Brooke quietly, " that s Phil." 
 
 " But," said Peter Harvey, still from his maze, " why 
 Bee? Why not" There he paused, for he could not 
 add, " Why not Andrea? " 
 
 Brooke burst into a laugh. It was one of immense re 
 lief. He put his hand to his forehead wet with the sweat 
 of this last ordeal. 
 
 " What a fool ! " he said, " what a fool I was not to 
 think. Why, what he wrote Bee was asking her to under 
 stand. He d been awfully fond of Bee. At that last min 
 ute he saw things clear. Fellows said they did, other fel 
 lows when they were going in, and he wrote her he d meant 
 to be honest and asked her well, asked her to under 
 stand. And she s so relieved to know he d only been 
 muddle-headed, not what she was afraid no wonder she 
 was half daffy, dear old Bee." 
 
 " Mother," said Peter Harvey, " was that so? You 
 might tell us that much about what you read. Was that 
 so?" 
 
 Madam Brooke paid no attention. She turned to An 
 drea. 
 
 " My dear," she said, " you ve heard what Bee said. 
 She had a letter from Phil, delayed. Phil s father and 
 mother had a letter from him this morning delayed. 
 W T herever those last words he wrote went in their delay, 
 they went together. Now, did you have a letter from Phil 
 this morning? " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 169 
 
 Andrea looked at her in a hopeless silence. And she 
 was aware that Harvey was frowning at her, not yet in 
 displeasure but that attempt to understand. If she was 
 ever to confess her sin toward them, must it not be now? 
 Madam Brooke was speaking quietly, in an expository 
 clearness, not reasoning, not drawing conclusions, but as 
 if she were merely holding up a fabric in the sun and bid 
 ding them look at it. 
 
 " Our dear boy at the last minute before going out to 
 what he thought would be his death, writes two letters 
 two enclosures of a few lines each. He sends one to his 
 father and mother and one to his old playmate. Oughtn t 
 there to have been a third letter? Isn t there anything 
 strange in his not having a word to say to his wife? " 
 
 On the last word she hesitated and offered it, not scepti 
 cally, but in a way Andrea could not endure. To her in 
 flamed mind a whole accusation lay in it, and she called 
 on her coward soul to meet it. She rose to her feet to be 
 ready to go the instant she should have made the short 
 confession the challenge of the words demanded. But sud 
 denly, through her maze of trouble she became aware that 
 Brooke was at her side, that he had taken up her muff and 
 was offering it to her. 
 
 " Not to-day," he was saying, in a voice of heavenly 
 kindness. " Let me take you home now. Dad, we don t 
 need to talk any more to-day? " 
 
 It was a question, but it was a petition also. Peter 
 Harvey would have liked to talk a great deal more to 
 day ; he was feverishly anxious to get these half lights and 
 shadows clarified to fit the field of common vision. But 
 he could read the boy s face and voice. Andrea s too. For 
 some reason they had had enough, these young things, and 
 they mustn t be pressed too far. Doubtless they knew 
 what they could stand. And if the limit had been 
 reached, he wasn t the man to urge them further. 
 
170 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Quite right," he agreed. " No more to-day. Only 
 you re to remember, my dear, that to-morrow morning at 
 the latest there ll be some money in the bank. Every 
 thing shall be written out clearly." 
 
 He offered her his hand, but Andrea, smiling at him 
 her pitiful smile, did not take it. She would have been 
 glad to kiss the merciful hand, but that was foolish, an 
 indulgence she had no claim to. Brooke seemed like a 
 friendly wind blowing her out of the room and out of the 
 house, and when the outer door had closed on them, Peter 
 Harvey turned to Madam Brooke and asked: 
 
 " Well? " Then, as she did not answer: " What do you 
 make of it? " 
 
XVII 
 
 MADAM BROOKE looked at him thoughtfully. 
 
 " I don t know what I make of it," she said. " But 
 there are one or two things I m absolutely sure of. One 
 is that Phil never married her." 
 
 Peter Harvey s eyes started until she laughed out and 
 said: 
 
 "If you stood your hair on end you d look like the 
 funny pictures of a man seeing a ghost." 
 
 " Not married her? " he repeated. " Of course he 
 married her. Hasn t she proved it? " 
 
 " How? " asked the old lady quietly. 
 
 " How? Why, you heard her. You were there when 
 she told us." 
 
 " She proved it because she said so," continued Madam 
 Brooke placidly. " And yet, Peter, you re not a born fool, 
 either." 
 
 His eyes refused to resume their natural size. He sat 
 staring at her in undiminished perplexity, and so sunken 
 into himself, in the confessed inability of coping with the 
 affair, that he looked ten years older. Madam Brooke, 
 regarding him satirically though kindly, thought he was 
 really at least a quarter of a century older than she, be 
 cause she felt herself on the job, as Brooke would say, 
 and Peter was, emotionally speaking, ebbing away from 
 it. 
 
 " I don t see," he said, in an argumentative tone inten 
 sified by his realisation that he had failed so far to see 
 
 171 
 
172 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 anything, " that the fact that she has failed to receive a 
 delayed letter is any evidence at all." 
 
 " It isn t," said Madam Brooke tranquilly. " It s only 
 odd, if she s what she says she is. I didn t say it was evi 
 dence. I said it was odd. And it is." 
 
 " And you mean to tell me," he blustered, " that a girl 
 who looks like that " 
 
 Here he paused, conscious of the absence of argument, 
 and she replied: 
 
 " Just what I told you before : the superciliary muscles." 
 
 " Superciliary muscles ! " he repeated, welcoming a 
 term to vent his spleen on. " It s no sort of argument to 
 use words a fellow never heard of. And what the devil 
 does superciliary mean, anyway? " 
 
 " It s those muscles over the eyebrows," she explained. 
 " The minute the girl had gone, that first day, I looked it 
 up. That s what gives her that look of perfect sincerity 
 limpidity, the Henry Jamesians would call it." 
 
 " So you don t believe in it? " said Peter. " You don t 
 believe in her." 
 
 " Not believe in her? " cried Madam Brooke. " Why, 
 I believe in her down to the ground. I don t care whether 
 it s the superciliary muscles or what. I just believe in 
 hef." 
 
 " You say she s an impostor." 
 
 " I never said any such thing." 
 
 " You implied it. At least you think she s lied." 
 
 " Oh," said Madam Brooke, from an amazing amplitude 
 of tolerance, " if she s lied I don t know why I say if. 
 Of course she s lied. But I ll bet you ten shares of rail 
 road stock, the ones that don t pay I ll bet you it s a 
 nice clean whopper, consecrated as a church." 
 
 "Brooke believes in her," said Peter reflectively. 
 " That s evident." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 173 
 
 " Brooke ! " There was unmeasured scorn in her tone. 
 " Brooke s in love with her." 
 
 " In love with her! " he repeated, so ingenuously horri 
 fied that she burst into a crow of laughter. " His 
 brother s wife? " 
 
 " How often must I tell you," she composed herself to 
 say, " she s not his wife. Lord, Peter! it s well you re not 
 set on being justice of the Supreme Court or any of those 
 things that require an unprejudiced mind." 
 
 " Does he know it? " Peter hurled at her. " Brooke, I 
 mean." 
 
 " I couldn t say. It would be rather queer though if I 
 could see it and he not." 
 
 Then Peter diverged from the matter in hand to wipe 
 his forehead and remark, in an impetuosity between a 
 groan and an imprecation: 
 
 " I m glad you re usually on my side. I shouldn t 
 want to see you trying to lay me by the heels." 
 
 " I trace it back," she told him, " this whole business 
 and the state of mind we ve got into, to this psychical in 
 fection. I don t know what else to call it. Isabel used 
 to be a dove. What is she now? I don t know any bird 
 naughty enough. She pecks your ringer. She s so deter 
 mined to prove there s a continued state of being that 
 she s willing to let this old earth dry up and bust for all 
 the attention she pays to it. She s trying to find her son 
 that s gone, and she s going to give the son that s here a 
 good deal of a jolt, if she doesn t look out, by forgetting 
 all about him." 
 
 " Go ahead," said Peter. " I thought I d escaped the 
 infection, but I s pose I haven t. What s it done to me? " 
 
 She had no idea of sparing him. 
 
 " You? " said she. " You ve lost your grip. If there 
 a prize for absolute mental futility, you d have got it, 
 
174 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 Peter, the way you ve just been going on. That girl s 
 father, now, from all you ve told me, is precisely like the 
 old parties that lost their heads over the elixir of youth. 
 And this girl she s been tried too far. She s devoted 
 herself to her father and he s fed on her like a vampire and 
 now her brain s so wuzzy she doesn t know t other from 
 which." 
 
 " You d say she told the lie to save her father? " 
 
 " I don t know. For how would it save him, when you 
 come to that? " 
 
 " I can t see," he owned helplessly. 
 
 " I can t either. I do see she wants money, but she 
 must have been able to tell by the look of you, Peter, she 
 could get it out of you without any such melodrama as 
 this." 
 
 " She may not be so inventive as you. Melodrama 
 may be the only thing that occurred to her." 
 
 " Maybe. But she s made one big mistake, and I don t 
 see how, with the best will in the world, we can save her 
 from the consequences." 
 
 "A mistake?" 
 
 "Telling her yarn before Isabel. You and I are all 
 right. If she stood up and confessed to us and I could 
 swear she was going to this morning if Brooke hadn t lost 
 his head and dragged her away if she confessed to us 
 we d look at her eyebrows and say: Don t mention it. 
 But Isabel never ll forgive her because she s made light 
 of her son." 
 
 Peter Harvey had long recognized the value of judi 
 cious silences. They were the rests in the harmony of 
 life, particularly marital harmony. 
 
 " I don t see," he ventured, watching Madam Brooke 
 with an inquiring eye, since, if she wasn t with him here, 
 he d better have preserved one of his silences toward her 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 175 
 
 also, " I don t see why Isabel should ever know. The girl 
 will go away " 
 
 " Oh, will she? " scoffed the old lady. " Ask Brooke 
 what he s going to do about that." 
 
 " Well, what the devil " he began, pausing there from 
 sheer inability to find words of a combined adequacy and 
 mildness. 
 
 She echoed him placidly. 
 
 " Yes, what the devil ! The only thing we can do is to 
 form a coalition, you and I. For this girl isn t going, as 
 they say in the books, out of our lives. She ll stay right in 
 em if only by breaking Brooke s heart by going out of his. 
 There s the car. There s Isabel. Look at her, dear little 
 Belle ! she s had some kind of message from that debating 
 society they keep in session in spirit life. That s what 
 some of em call it, you know, passed over into spirit 
 life. Don t you let em say it about me, Peter. Say I m 
 dead." 
 
 " You won t be dead," said Peter, joining her at the 
 window where she stood looking down on Isabel talking 
 to Miss Bixby who had just come up. Miss Bixby had 
 come in a taxi, at high speed, and Peter wondered sadly 
 if her haste had something to do with emergencies in the 
 spirit world. 
 
 "No," said Madam Brooke, "you may bet all your 
 railroad stock on that. But I m not going to join their 
 debating circles, and if they insist on it I sha n t stay, 
 that s all." 
 
 "You said this psychic business had driven us all 
 daffy," said Peter. " What s it done to her, to Bixby? 
 Is she a fraud now? " 
 
 " No," said the old lady. " I m not prepared to go so 
 far as that. Not entirely. She s in it for what she can 
 get; at least that s what she went into it for. But look at 
 
176 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 the spark in her eyes, that fanatical spark. It s come 
 there within a month. Even Bixby s not living entirely 
 in this world. Still, we know she s part fraud or she 
 wouldn t have walked into our trap. Pretty clumsy trap ! 
 but it worked. When you going to tell Isabel? " 
 
 " Not yet, not till some of this has quieted down." 
 
 " Then Bixby ll get her discharge." 
 
 " Yes, she s got to. Only I wish to God I could man 
 age it some way without hurting Belle." 
 
 " I don t know," mused the old lady, " of any possible 
 way of influencing Isabel now unless we could get that 
 infernal spiritual convention on our side. If they d send 
 her a message written by Bixby on a roll of wall paper! 
 But just when they could do you some good they shut up 
 and leave you floundering. I ll go upstairs. I never 
 want to see Isabel when she s been communing with 
 whatever it is. I fly out and she winces." 
 
 She ran up the stairs at her lightest and she was, on 
 occasion, an agile old lady and went on into Isabel s 
 sitting-room. There she stood a moment, and smiled, 
 noting the disorder of the writing table. Miss Bixby, the 
 pattern of exactitude, must, she judged, have been called 
 off in haste after that morning s writing, for the paper lay 
 outspread, the pencil lying on it as if it had fallen after 
 the last words. She went over to the table and this was 
 what she read: 
 
 " Not in your sense of the word. You wouldn t under 
 stand." 
 
 For a long minute she stood thinking. Then she took 
 the pencil and wrote, in the free hand before her: 
 
 " You can understand this. You will be asked to for 
 give. Do it fully, freely. Accept her. Forgive." 
 
 She laid the pencil down, looked round at the door and, 
 struck by the quiet of the room, laughed a little to think 
 how safe it seemed to meddle with mortal minds. 
 
XVIII 
 
 BROOKE walked beside Andrea, for a couple of blocks, 
 not speaking, merely deepening in her the impression that 
 there was no getting rid of him. But that was not, at the 
 moment, of any great concern to her. He was only one 
 wearing force the more, and what did that matter now 
 she had begun to see how all the armies of circumstance 
 are hostile to the evil doer? These powers were not only 
 so malicious but so infernal in their cleverness that they 
 had now conceived the cruelty of taking away her free 
 will. There had been the moment when she thought she 
 could confess to Peter Harvey, and another when she 
 knew, if she could escape the interrogation of mercilessly 
 clear eyes, she could write out her damnation. But she 
 had delayed too long. Even this last coward s makeshift 
 had been taken away from her by the purely accidental 
 circumstance of the delayed letter. Yet was anything 
 ever accidental? Was not this her actual punishment? 
 She had paltered and hidden herself behind her own vain 
 desires of what she would or would not let them think of 
 her. Nemesis, as impersonal as a hound on the scent, 
 did not care what the Harveys thought of her. Nemesis 
 had gone unerringly on, nose to the ground, and now the 
 padding steps were close behind her. Whatever she said 
 now, Brooke and his father could never be sure she had 
 meant to say anything. Her confession had been made 
 for her. What virtue, what decency even would there be 
 N 177 
 
178 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 in her confirming it? Again she saw how terribly she had 
 wanted to convince them that, liar as she was, she had, 
 at the last, turned away from her lie. 
 
 " Too bad! " she said, under her breath. " Too bad! " 
 
 But he heard it. 
 
 " YouVe got to talk this out with me, you know," he 
 told her. " I sha n t let you out of my sight till you do." 
 
 " What would be the use? " she answered drearily. 
 " When a thing is spoiled it s spoiled." 
 
 " Just what are you doing? " he asked her. " What is 
 it, anyhow? Are you giving Phil up to Bee like that 
 sentimental rot we put into books? You re not that kind. 
 I d bet my life you re not that kind." 
 
 " No," she said, and hurried on the faster because it was 
 suddenly unbearable to have him there beside her, ques 
 tioning, pursuing her into the fastnesses of her hidden 
 life, to be gentle with her there, but always with that 
 loving cruelty of trying to see her as she was. She fell 
 into a frenzy of haste. At all costs she must be rid of 
 him. But he had only to quicken his stride, and he had 
 breath in plenty after hers had failed. 
 
 " Or do you think," he pursued, " Phil somehow played 
 it on you? You couldn t think that. Nobody could that 
 knew him ten minutes, let alone " 
 
 " No," she said. 
 
 " You can t have got up some nightmare of his being 
 really fond of Bee and this foolish business of the message 
 proving it and cutting you out altogether." 
 
 " No," she said again, " I don t think that or any 
 thing. Except that I must get home. I ve got to see my 
 father and make our plans. You must let me alone. 
 Please, please let me alone all of you. I ll write you 
 the whole story, every word. But that won t do any good 
 now," she added, to herself. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 179 
 
 "No," said Brooke quietly, "you won t write me. 
 You ll talk to me and you ll do it this very day, and 
 within half an hour. You might as well, for I sha n t 
 leave you if I have to force myself into your house and 
 question you before your father. He ll know, perhaps. 
 He ll tell me if you won t. A man would understand " 
 
 They had turned the corner into the dreary street of 
 stables and she stopped. 
 
 " Do you see that? " she asked. 
 
 " What? " 
 
 " That s your Miss Bixby. She came out of our door." 
 
 This, Brooke saw, annoyed or worried her, and she 
 started on walking slowly, her eyes on Miss Bixby who, 
 in a great hurry, was approaching. She saw them, 
 stopped short as Andrea had, evidently in her turn sur 
 prised, bethought herself and came on rapidly. She was 
 trigly furled as ever, with tight veil and tailored surfaces, 
 and to Brooke, who had not, in these few days, given her 
 a more than casual glance, she looked as usual. He took 
 off his hat and was about to pass when Andrea stopped. 
 Miss Bixby went on a step, thought better of it and also 
 stopped. 
 
 " Did you want to see me? " Andrea asked her. 
 
 Miss Bixby smiled and answered with an airy uncon 
 cern that sat upon her oddly. 
 
 " No, not for anything new. I thought I might talk 
 things over again, on the same lines, you know. I ll try 
 again when I m sure of finding you. Excuse me. I 
 have to run along. Mrs. Harvey will be home." 
 
 She hurried away with the same air of unconcern, and 
 Andrea went on thoughtfully: 
 
 " I m sorry," she said, " to have her go there when my 
 father is alone. I hate to have him bothered." 
 
 At the door she stopped and turned to Brooke, begging 
 
180 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 him, by her glance, most eloquently, to leave her. But 
 he met her eyes unmoved. His mouth was firmly set, his 
 eyes narrowed. He was no longer the sun-god who had 
 come down from the skies. He had even lost that ex 
 traordinary resemblance to Philip who, in the picture, was 
 youth itself at its gayest, running over with the love of 
 life. This was a man of stern decision who knew what 
 he wanted and had sworn to himself either to get it or 
 to detain it, at least, until he had learned every aspect of 
 his title to it. The war had changed him from the sun- 
 god to the fighting man, and if it had left him any vestige 
 of his young joyance, she herself, in these last two days, 
 had taken it from him. Life had hacked at him with her 
 broadsword and the woman had done the rest. 
 
 " Go in," he said. 
 
 " Good-by," she answered, knowing it was futile, and 
 he took the key from her hand, opened the door and 
 signed to her to enter. 
 
 " Go in," he said again, and, in a way mysterious to her, 
 she lost the will to withstand him. She entered. He fol 
 lowed, closed the door behind them and gave her the key. 
 They stood there in the desolate room and she thought 
 how amazing it was to see him there. But he had no eyes 
 for the strangeness of the place. He seemed to have in 
 herited it from her, the rites of hospitality with it and the 
 authority to govern the interview. 
 i " Will you sit down? " he said. " Give me your coat." 
 
 She shook her head, but did take one of the two chairs 
 near the table, signing him to take the other. It seemed 
 as if he would be less terrifying, sitting there where her 
 father so often sat, than he was now standing over her, 
 unmoved in his intention to get at that self she had not 
 yet the strength to show him. But suddenly something 
 signalled her. The room itself seemed to speak, as rooms 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 181 
 
 will when they have known even a desolate companion 
 ship and been left to a deeper desolation. This room 
 spoke. While she thought she was occupied wholly with 
 the tangible terror of coming inquisition, the room 
 knocked on her inner mind. 
 
 " Wait," she said, though Brooke had not yet spoken. 
 She listened. " I don t believe my father is here. Let me 
 see." 
 
 She got up and went into the other room, leaving the 
 door open behind her, and stood there, Brooke watching 
 her and realising, with this snapping of the thread of his 
 assertiveness, how tense he was and how uncertain of his 
 next step. Andrea stood there and gazed about the room, 
 never so bare as now, never, since they had moved into 
 the place, in such order, for her father had evidently not 
 occupied his bed at all the previous night and a litter of 
 rubbish that might have been the by-product of his work 
 had been swept to one side. On the table, ostentatiously 
 alone, stood the case of an ordinary camera, and that she 
 first glanced at, bent to look more closely, went to it, 
 seized and lifted it. And then she gave a low cry that 
 brought Brooke to her side. 
 
 " Look," she panted. " Look! she has taken it and left 
 this in its place." 
 
 He took the case away from her, glanced at it casually 
 and set it down. 
 
 " Didn t you see what she had in her hand when we 
 met her? " Andrea asked him, in such intensity of breath 
 less haste that he put his hand on her shoulder to steady 
 her. She was trembling from head to foot and he drew 
 forward the only chair in the room and signed her to sit 
 down. But she shook her head impatiently. 
 
 " Pay attention," she said imperatively. " Put your 
 mind on this. Didn t you see what she had? " 
 
182 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Miss Bixby, when we met her." 
 
 " No," he said. " I didn t really look at her." 
 
 " She had a camera," said Andrea. " I saw it. I 
 thought she d been here to take pictures. She wanted to. 
 She asked father. To advertise olympium. Publicity, 
 that s what she said. It did look familiar I knew it did 
 then only I didn t see why. You see, she took my 
 father s away and left hers in its place." 
 
 " But," said Brooke, " she couldn t have been in here, if 
 your father wasn t here to let her in. Unless he left her 
 here and went out himself. Or unless she had a key." 
 
 Andrea struck her hands together. 
 
 "That s it," she said. "She had a key your 
 father s." 
 
 " My father s? What do you mean? " 
 
 " I can t tell you. Not now. You must go home. 
 Ask your father if he has the latch key I gave him with 
 the other one. And get my father s case away from her." 
 
 He might have thought she was making this turmoil to 
 divert him from those unclarified issues she was so averse 
 to meeting; but there was the testimony of her face. It 
 was wild with alarm. 
 
 " After all," he ventured, " what s the odds really if she 
 did carry away your father s camera? It s an accident. 
 It can be set right." 
 
 " Open it," said Andrea, pushing the case toward him. 
 " It isn t locked. Then you ll see." 
 
 He did open it, looked inside and said : 
 
 " What s the matter with it? It seems to be the usual 
 thing." 
 
 " That s it," she returned sharply. " It s a camera and 
 my father s was only a case, and we used it to hide his 
 olympium in. When we travelled, he carried it in his 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 183 
 
 hand. He said there was no such hiding-place as in plain 
 sight. If we were both going out, to leave the house alone, 
 one of us took it along. To-day is the first time we failed 
 to do it. I left my father here, and he went out. I sup 
 pose he forgot. He was tired. That s the way accidents 
 happen. You get tired and you lose your grip." 
 
 Brooke looked at her sympathetically. She also was 
 tired, he thought. Let her talk it out and presently her 
 mind would swing back again to actualities. But sud 
 denly and without warning his own mind reversed its at 
 titude. All this, he saw, meant something real. 
 
 " Then/ he said, though bewildered, " the thing for me 
 to do is to get after Miss Bixby." 
 
 " Find her. Take it away from her," said Andrea, in 
 the low tone of a most passionate appeal. " I must be 
 here when my father comes. I can t let him bear it alone. 
 I don t know what would happen to him. Oh, but you ll 
 bring it back! " 
 
 Brooke nodded, snatched his cap and strode out and, 
 when he reached the pavement, found himself tempted, 
 so urgent was the compulsion of her anxiety, to break into 
 a run. He, too, he thought, might reasonably be called 
 hysterical. The fly had bitten him, and when one of his 
 grandmother s friends, of the type known as dear old 
 ladies, stopped him to pronounce a solemnly precise wel 
 come home and feel his mental pulse on the topic of war, 
 he was in a fever to get away from her. And when he 
 managed it, with a short shrift that left her staring, he 
 laughed a little, wondering if he were a fool to let Andrea 
 infect him. For his mother had spoken of Miss Bixby in 
 a hush of gratitude. When he entered the house his father 
 and mother stood just within the doorway of the reception 
 room, and it was evident that his mother had been crying. 
 Her pink face looked blurred and her lip trembled. 
 
184 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 Peter had his hand on her shoulder. Something had 
 happened and she was being comforted. As Brooke ap 
 proached them he saw his grandmother nearer the middle 
 of the room. She stood there, her hand on the table, 
 lightly supporting herself, and she looked both triumphant 
 and satirically amused. Brooke halted, decidedly not 
 wanting to involve his mother in a commotion over Miss 
 Bixby. But the secretary s name was on her lips. 
 
 " We re a good deal upset." She turned slightly to in 
 clude him in the circle of her confidence. " At least I am. 
 Miss Bixby is leaving me." 
 
 " Then," said Brooke, the words leaping out before 
 wiser second thought could interpose, " she was right." 
 
 " Who was right? " his mother asked. 
 
 But now he had himself in hand. 
 
 " Never mind, mum. Nothing much. Miss Bixby s 
 leaving? " 
 
 " You can t imagine," Isabel said, pressing her handker 
 chief to her welling eyes, " what it means to me. It s 
 simply cutting off communication." 
 
 When Isabel cried, she was pathetic, not exasperating. 
 She had none of those tricks of a distorted countenance 
 whereby nature seems maliciously determined on irritat 
 ing the onlooker into becoming the outspoken agent of a 
 speedy drying up. The tears came welling quietly over 
 her quivering face. 
 
 " Isabel," said Madam Brooke, indubitably triumphant 
 in the background, " the woman never did you a better 
 turn than taking it into her own hands and leaving you. 
 You d have had to dismiss her. It was only a question of 
 time." 
 
 "There, there!" said Peter, in a warning undertone 
 meant for the old lady s gentling, " never mind now." 
 
 " I should never have dismissed her," said Isabel, in a 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 185 
 
 passion so foreign to her that Peter and Brooke started in 
 what seemed to the old lady a comical terror. " How 
 strange it is none of you can understand! When I lose 
 her, I lose my one reliable means of reaching Phil. It s 
 as terrible on his side as on mine." 
 
 " Well, dear," said Peter, in a temporising compassion 
 he took at its own value and helplessly despised, " it isn t 
 as if she were the only one doing this kind of thing." 
 
 " She s the only one," said Isabel, " who does it satis 
 factorily. She s so clear, she s so strong on facts. There 
 never was anything like her." 
 
 " That," said Madam Brooke relentlessly, " is because 
 she knew how to piece out her witchcraft with listening 
 and jumping at conclusions. You might as well be told 
 no, Peter, you needn t make faces at me you might 
 as well be told I set a trap for her and she fell into it." 
 
 " Then," said Isabel, her anger so funnily inflating her 
 that she looked like an enraged bird, every feather at 
 unhappy odds with all the rest, " that s why she s leav 
 ing." 
 
 " No, it isn t either," said Madam Brooke, with an air 
 of expertly pricking a bubble and knowing nobody could 
 puncture it with such well-timed neatness. " She didn t 
 know anything about it. That was all her pull on the 
 other world amounted to. It was about the clumsiest 
 trap ever set for an artful dodger, but my lady walked 
 straight into it. And she never knew she was in. You 
 needn t grin at me, Brooke. I m not long on metaphor, 
 as you d say, but never mind. That s how it was." 
 
 Isabel, looking portentously dignified, drew herself up. 
 
 " Then, mother," she remarked, with an icy remoteness 
 Peter felt down his backbone, " if you laid plans to dis 
 grace a secretary as valuable as Miss Bixby is to me, it 
 was an exceedingly unladylike thing to do." 
 
186 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Good for you, Isabel, good for you," said Madam 
 Brooke. " You re a regular little fighting cock." 
 
 She laughed in untinged amusement at the richness of 
 it, but Peter was profoundly discomfited. 
 
 " My dear," he said. " Isabel ! Mother, really now 1 
 don t you see what we re doing? we re having a row. I 
 don t believe such a thing ever " 
 
 " No, it never did," said Madam Brooke, leaving her 
 place by the table and making her softly rustling way 
 to the door. " It never did happen in this house, and it 
 never would in any house that had you for the head of it, 
 Peter. Isabel, I m terribly sorry, but I can t take it 
 back. The girl s a fraud more than half fraud any 
 way and I did tole her into a trap. You sit down with 
 Peter and Brooke and have a nice long talk about Phil. 
 That s better than your messages." 
 
 She passed Brooke with a touch on the hand possibly 
 reminding him that now was his time to press into the 
 darkened void in his mother s heart and recall himself to 
 her by establishing their oneness of grief over Phil. But 
 either he did not understand or the urgency of the mo 
 ment was more immediate to him, for, as his father and 
 mother turned back into the reception room and sat down 
 together, he ran up the stairs after grandmother and fol 
 lowed her into her own room. She knew he was coming, 
 but she did not halt until they were inside the doorway 
 and then he saw how white and worn she was, how for 
 lornly discouraged, as if old age had stolen upon her in 
 the last few minutes, after her gallant stand, and forbid 
 den her such brave fighting. 
 
 " Sit down, dear," he said. " Let me get you some 
 grog." 
 
 She did sit down in an arm-chair that somehow seemed 
 to enthrone her fragile dignity and put out a trembling 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 187 
 
 hand. He took the thin old hand and held it close, 
 with an unformulated desire to give her somehow a por 
 tion of his own vital life and the warmth of his blood. 
 Presently she smiled at him wanly. 
 
 " Your mother," she said, " is very naughty. You ll 
 have patience with her, won t you? " 
 
 " Patience!" he repeated. "With mum? Well, I 
 should say! And after all," he betrayed, "Phil was a 
 hundred per cent more of a fellow than I ever was. No 
 wonder " 
 
 There he paused, seeing suddenly where his hurt affec 
 tion was leading him ; but he had given her her chance. 
 
 " No, dear," said she. You wouldn t have known this 
 was the voice that could thrill with scorn and satire. 
 " Phil wasn t any nearer to her than you. It s the one 
 that was taken that s blotted out everybody else. If it 
 had been you it would have been just the same. She s 
 got a mania. She s determined to hear from Phil. She s 
 lost her balance. Your mother never was an intellectual 
 woman and she s got to be careful. We ve got to be care 
 ful of her, or we shall find her more changed than she is 
 now." 
 
 She sat there, not looking at him, and he was thankful 
 to her. He knew the red had run into his face, it was so 
 hot, and his eyes burned. But grandmother didn t pro 
 pose seeing that, though she was so wise she must have 
 known it. He carried the old hand to his lips and kissed 
 it, and kept on holding it while he leaped to the business 
 in hand, that he ought not, he knew, to have deferred for 
 even this assuaging minute. 
 
 " When is she going? " he asked. " Miss Bixby." 
 
 She thought he was shunting her to a ground less per 
 sonal to him, and she was willing. She respected the 
 boy s dear shynesses. 
 
188 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " At once," she answered, and drew her hand from his. 
 They had to get back into the beaten tracks of custom. 
 It had to be so with people who lived together. " That is, 
 sometime this afternoon." 
 
 " Then," he said, " it s my impression she must be 
 stopped." 
 
 He broke into the tale of the stolen olympium and An 
 drea s belief that Miss Bixby had taken a key entrusted 
 to his father and exchanged the two cases, one with its 
 camera, the other containing the olympium. Madam 
 Brooke watched him, her eyes narrowed, her head up, 
 almost, he thought once, her nostrils widened to scent the 
 trail. 
 
 " Now I m telling it," he said, when he had ended, " it 
 seems a rotten sort of yarn. Perhaps Andrea s gone dotty 
 with all she s been through. Sounds pretty fantastic, 
 doesn t it? Tell me what you really think." 
 
 " No," said the old lady, at once. " It isn t at all fan 
 tastic. When folks begin to play the devil it always 
 seems a little queer, especially if it comes to you in a 
 room like this with innocent white curtains and a fire on 
 the hearth. But if you found another camera there, I wish 
 you d taken it along and we could have plumped it at her 
 and told her she d gone off with the wrong one. Nothing 
 like a finished society manner in these things, behaving 
 like a perfect lady." 
 
 " I wish I had," said Brooke. " But I didn t. What 
 can I do now? Go to her room and ask her if she s 
 pinched a case full of olympium? Good Lord, grannie! 
 I don t know whether there ever was any olympium. And 
 if there was I shouldn t recognize the stuff. She could 
 pass me a tube of tooth paste and say, Here it is. Sorry 
 I made off with it/ and I shouldn t be the wiser. I should 
 have to say, Thanks. That s all right/ " 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 189 
 
 Madam Brooke, with a ready alertness, rose from her 
 chair. 
 
 " You can t do anything/ she said. " You can t go to 
 her room and paw over her things. Your father couldn t. 
 Your mother never d forgive either of you. And you can t 
 call in the police. You run down and get your mother 
 started telling you about automatic writing and I ll beard 
 the Bixby in her den. If I holler you come up. No, I 
 won t holler. That would fetch your mother, too. I ll 
 crow like a rooster. Don t you know how you boys used 
 to keep me at it till I scraped my throat raw? If you hear 
 that, you leg it. You ll know Bixby s got me down, sit 
 ting on my chest." 
 
 Brooke, in spite of his certainty that things were fan 
 tastically wrong, broke into a laugh. Madam Brooke, a 
 queer little smile twisting her mouth, gathered up a frosty 
 looking white shawl from the sofa and adjusted it about 
 her shoulders. 
 
 "Bixby is one of those hardy perennials that like a 
 cold room," said she. " I know that as well as if I d felt 
 it. Hurry up. Run downstairs to your mother and keep 
 her there. But if I crow, you come." 
 
 Brooke, not half believing any efficient system of action 
 was open to her and yet hopefully knowing she would stick 
 at nothing, stood there while she went out of the room, 
 turning at the door to give him a nod of reassurance and 
 the broken end of the queer smile. Then he heard her 
 rustling up the next flight of stairs, her tap at Miss Bix 
 by s door and her voice: 
 
 " May I come in? " 
 
 He thought she spoke with a significant loudness, to as 
 sure him she was carrying out her side of the bargain. 
 And not at all easy in his own part, he went downstairs to 
 find his mother. Of that one thing he was sure. How- 
 
190 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 ever much or little reality might be in it, she must not be 
 allowed to join this grotesque mummery. Mother was 
 not, in these strange days, to be trusted. She might break 
 out, and Isabel mentally on the loose was something he 
 could not prefigure. 
 
XIX 
 
 MADAM BROOKE stopped at Miss Bixby s door and lis 
 tened. There were sounds within, irregular sounds, at 
 intervals, of some one moving about, stopping now and 
 then, it might be to fold articles and dispose of them. 
 Miss Bixby was there and she was packing. Then 
 Madam Brooke knocked and, when the door was opened, 
 as it was almost immediately, put her request: 
 
 " May I come in? " 
 
 Miss Bixby stood before her, a reduced figure in the un 
 dress for exacting deeds that owes nothing to a beguiling 
 negligee. She was in her stout black petticoat, a towel 
 about her hair, emphasizing her precautionary neatness. 
 Seeing her thus shorn of her uniform of the exquisite cuffs 
 and collar and the irreproachable plainness of her dress, 
 Madam Brooke felt the certainty of having the whip- 
 hand. No woman could, she believed, carry out a hostile 
 encounter creditably in such a petticoat. Miss Bixby 
 was taken aback. There could be no doubt about that. 
 Madam Brooke had never come to her door before. Per 
 haps no member of the family ever had. The perfect or 
 der of the room, hardly infringed upon now by neat piles 
 of clothing that lay about on the table and chairs, might 
 have been her own shell for all the invasion that had ever 
 troubled it. 
 
 " I m sorry, Madam Brooke," she declared. "I m in 
 such confusion." 
 
 191 
 
192 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Never mind," said Madam Brooke, smiling at her a 
 social smile, the one she kept for calls and teas of the 
 variety that made her face ache when it was used too long 
 consecutively. " I won t keep you." Which was a lie, she 
 knew, for she meant to keep her precisely as long as she 
 liked. She gave the door the very least pressure against 
 Miss Bixby s repressive hand and stepped in, slight as the 
 space was for her soft slenderness. " No, I won t sit 
 down." Though indeed Miss Bixby had not asked her to. 
 " You re packing, I see. When do you leave? " 
 
 " I leave this afternoon," said Miss Bixby. There was 
 a rasp in her voice, of nervousness, of irritation, it was 
 impossible for the listener to tell which. " And really, 
 Madam Brooke, I m very busy." 
 
 Madam Brooke, the chairs being occupied, perched on 
 the end of a couch, also burdened, at the other end, by 
 books and clothing. She was aware, in the under part of 
 her mind, of a little chorus of comment on these things she 
 saw before her in the exactitude of their order. " Poor 
 devil ! " the chorus was chanting, though not in any way 
 to interrupt the business at hand, " how can she expect 
 to sleep the sleep of natural woman in a nightie like 
 that? " It was before her, topping the pile, unrelieved 
 garments of stout cloth warranted to wear. But to Miss 
 Bixby, she remarked: 
 
 " I wanted to remind you to leave Miss Dove s key. 
 I ll take it now, if you please." 
 
 The slightest possible flicker ran over Miss Bixby s face. 
 
 " My latch key, Madam Brooke? " she asked. 
 " Surely I will leave it. I never for a moment thought of 
 not doing so." 
 
 " Not the key to this house," said Madam Brooke. 
 " Miss Dove s house." 
 
 " I have no key to Miss Dove s house," said she, and 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 193 
 
 her brows contracted slightly. She moistened her lips. 
 " Why should you think I had a key to Miss Dove s 
 house? " 
 
 " I assumed that/ said Madam Brooke frankly. " I 
 guessed at it. I knew you had been in there when no one 
 was at home, and I assumed you took the key she left with 
 Mr. Harvey. However, that s immaterial. I merely 
 thought I d begin with the key. Miss Bixby, if you will 
 kindly give me Mr. Dove s camera I will see that you have 
 yours. No questions asked, you know. Simply give me 
 the camera." 
 
 Now Miss Bixby laughed, whole-heartedly and with 
 relief. 
 
 " Madam Brooke," said she, " I haven t Mr. Dove s 
 camera nor anything that is his. And really you are de 
 laying me a lot about my packing. I hate to say so, but 
 you are, you know." 
 
 " Then," said Madam Brooke, musing, " if it s not here 
 what have you done with it? " 
 
 Miss Bixby did not answer. Madam Brooke rose and 
 the two stood looking at each other, the older woman re 
 flective, Miss Bixby with the light of something growingly 
 confident in her gaze. It looked to her antagonist as if 
 she had suddenly begun to feel herself on top. 
 
 " No," said Madam Brooke, " you act as if you were 
 telling the truth. It may not be here. But if it isn t, 
 where is it? " 
 
 She began to look about the room as if she inventoried 
 its orderly disorder. There were the piles of clothing, the 
 books, Miss Bixby s hat and jacket on a chair by the desk, 
 her little hand-bag on the desk itself; and Madam Brooke 
 absently reflected that she must have been indeed hurried, 
 with all her methodical ways, not to have hung up her 
 coat when she came in. 
 
194 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " Fm sorry," said she. " It ll be an awful job, but I 
 shall have to go through your things." 
 
 " Go through my things? " echoed Miss Bixby. A round 
 red spot had come into each cheek, and Madam Brooke, 
 observing it, approved. She was glad the irreproachable 
 creature had some blood in her. " Go through my 
 things? " she repeated. " I ll call the police." 
 
 " Do," said Madam Brooke, with an air of cheerful re 
 lief. " It s a job I don t hanker for. They ll help me." 
 
 Miss Bixby stood for an instant in silence while Madam 
 Brooke, shaking her head as if she hated the prospect, 
 gave her a glance of apology emphasised by anxious 
 brows, lifted a pile of clothing from a chair and looked 
 under it. Miss Bixby, after that one pause, evidently 
 threw something to the winds, her professional manner, 
 her prudence or her recognition of an antagonist it was 
 not wisdom to defy. She started forward. 
 
 " Madam Brooke," said she, " you just put down my 
 underclothes. Madam Brooke, I won t have it. I shall 
 I shall touch you." 
 
 The last she said breathlessly, but she meant it in all 
 its imaginable entirety. It was a good deal of a threat, 
 and was candidly meant to be. Madam Brooke stood 
 looking at her a moment, considering, it was evident, 
 ways and means. Then she stepped to the door, put her 
 head out, meantime leaving the rest of her slight person 
 in the room in order that the impulse of a push might not 
 force her into the corridor, and crowed, loud and clear. 
 It was a pity she could not, listening as she did after the 
 crow, have seen Miss Bixby s face. It was moved by a 
 deep perplexity and concern. Miss Bixby plainly thought 
 the old lady had lost her wits and was mentally preparing 
 to deal with her now from that angle of psychology. 
 
 "Ah! " breathed Madam Brooke. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 195 
 
 She heard her grandson running up the stairs. And 
 when he had reached the second floor he, too, heard some 
 thing arresting, as Madam Brooke did. It was his mother 
 from below. 
 
 " Brooke," she called, " is that your grandmother crow 
 ing? " 
 
 This enlightened Miss Bixby to the point of allowing 
 her to shift her psychology to the angle prescribed for 
 attacking the technically sane. Evidently that crow was 
 part of the family tradition. It had been heard before. 
 Madam Brooke listened. Brooke paused a moment be 
 fore answering. 
 
 " Yes/ he responded then, " same old performance, re 
 quest programme." 
 
 Madam Brooke was smiling at that when he confronted 
 her after his run up the second flight. 
 
 " I couldn t have her coming up," he explained, " to see 
 what the matter was. I wonder she asked. She knows 
 your crow." 
 
 " Brooke," said his grandmother, " I find myself obliged 
 to look over Miss Bixby s things. I want you " she 
 was about to add, " I want you to come in and stand by 
 me while I do it." But a vision of the austere piles of 
 clothing rose before her and she simply couldn t say that. 
 Should she, a woman merciful in some degree, admit a 
 man, and a young man, into the privacies of Miss Bixby s 
 unadorned life? " You stay here," she said, " just out 
 side- the door. Don t let anybody go out or come in. 
 And if I call you, come." 
 
 The latter she said, with a purpose, loudly enough for 
 Miss Bixby s ears, lest there lingered in that enraged mind 
 the unformulated purpose of touching her. Brooke did 
 not like his job. That was plain, and yet it was also 
 plain, his grandmother reflected, that he would like it 
 
196 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 still less if he crossed the sill and guessed from the tell 
 tale confusion within what course her own activities would 
 have to take. 
 
 " I don t fancy this," he said. " I wish you d keep out 
 of it and let me let things take the usual course." 
 
 By which she understood that he meant the usual course 
 when something had presumably been stolen. In that 
 case you called in the police and refrained from undertak 
 ing possibly unjustifiable courses yourself. But she fore 
 saw her way, and she was also perfectly aware that her 
 own obstinacy of purpose was too well known in the 
 household to need more than simple reiteration. 
 
 " I know what I m doing," she said. " You let me alone 
 and just hang about outside there. And if your mother 
 comes, cut away and don t let her see you. You can run 
 up to the attic and let her find you rummaging old maga 
 zines." She was about turning back to her task when a 
 second thought arrested her. " On the whole," she said, 
 " we d better be locked in, Miss Bixby and I. You take 
 the key " she drew it from the lock and passed it out 
 to him " and lock us in. Then if your mother comes 
 you can be safely up attic, and if she knocks, Miss Bixby 
 and I ll keep still and there won t be any fuss." 
 
 Brooke looked his aversion to locking the door even, 
 but she thrust the key into his unwilling fingers and, like 
 other great commanders, not pausing to see her orders 
 carried out, shut the door. At the same instant she heard 
 behind her a rattle of what might have been falling par 
 ticles and she did start and look over her shoulder with an 
 answering quickness that told her how apprehensive she 
 really was. The next instant she was smiling at her un 
 stable nerves. What would Miss Bixby be likely to do 
 to her here in plain daylight with Brooke outside the 
 door? And Miss Bixby, though glowering, did not look 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 197 
 
 in any lurid sense dangerous. There she stood, her back 
 to the fireplace, that most commanding vantage point in 
 any room, her arms folded, her face dark red. Madam 
 Brooke was not, she told herself, in the least afraid of 
 Miss Bixby, yet underneath the ordered forces of her mind 
 quivered an excited sense that something not to be predi 
 cated would happen if the woman did carry out that 
 vague threat of touching her. and she was quite aware of 
 her state as a frail old lady unused to being jostled. 
 Then, after this slight pause, perhaps emphasising his dis 
 like of doing it, she heard Brooke lock the door. The 
 sound itself, testifying to something done, brought her a 
 breath of relief, and she found herself ready for Miss 
 Bixby who, ready apparently for her, cut in on the old 
 system of getting her blow in first. 
 
 " If anybody knocks, you and I ll keep still, will we? " 
 she inquired, in a smothered voice of such intensity that 
 it sounded, Madam Brooke thought, exactly as her face 
 looked. The face was mahogany red and so was the 
 voice. " You needn t think I shall keep still. I ll scream 
 my head off." 
 
 " Then," said Madam Brooke composedly, " you ll be 
 a silly girl. You heard what my grandson said. He ob 
 jected to my going on with this. He preferred the usual 
 way. You know what the usual way is. The police. 
 Do you want the police muddling over your things? And 
 when youVe called em in, it isn t so easy to get rid of em. 
 Police means the law, and the law is a great automatic 
 dragon made to snap your head off in the end. You d 
 far better trust yourself to a sensible old woman like me 
 who ll just go round lifting up your nighties to see what s 
 under em." 
 
 And she was actually proceeding from chair to chair in 
 vestigating the piles of garments, shaking them out and 
 
198 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 refolding them with the utmost nicety. Miss Bixby made 
 no answer, but her face, Madam Brooke saw, as she lifted 
 her head for a glance at her, did not pale by a shade. 
 Madam Brooke was sorry for that. She was honestly 
 concerned for fear the girl would have what she called 
 a rush of blood to the head. Suddenly she straightened 
 and looked at Miss Bixby in a community of interest. 
 
 " This isn t efficiency," said she. " It was those Ger 
 mans, wasn t it, that were always talking about efficiency? 
 Well, there s something in it, after all, though I fancy you 
 can carry it too far. How silly it is for me to go round 
 handling your clothes over, when you ve got to pack em 
 in the end. Here ! you let me pass em to you as I exam 
 ine em and you put em into the trunk." 
 
 " Madam Brooke," said Miss Bixby violently, " I will 
 not allow you to meddle with my packing. I simply will 
 not allow it." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Madam Brooke. " I never should 
 have suspected you d be such a silly girl. You were as 
 calm as a bureau or a school desk. Now let s begin 
 methodically. What do you want in first? the books? 
 I don t believe I need to shake those. You couldn t hide 
 a couple of thimblefuls of the stuff they ve lost in a book, 
 now could you? Not that I know how the thing looks. 
 I suppose you do. Here, take these." 
 
 She was, with a charming smile, proffering Miss Bixby 
 a pile of books lifted from the floor. Miss Bixby, her 
 arms rigidly folded, refused to take them. Madam 
 Brooke, standing before her, the books held at arm s 
 length, her slender hands trembling upon them, gave a 
 little head-shake of discouragement and then proceeded 
 herself to put them into the trunk. She did it rapidly 
 and with great accuracy of care. It was beautiful pack 
 ing, Miss Bixby unwillingly realised, as she watched her 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 199 
 
 in a scornful repudiation she hoped Madam Brooke would 
 look up and see. Madam Brooke did not look up. She 
 continued her task deftly, and yet with a subtile implica 
 tion of its being too much for her which Miss Bixby could 
 have wept over, it was so odious. When the books were 
 in, a layer of them, Madam Brooke looked about her, con 
 sidering. 
 
 " Now," she said, " the shoes. I believe they come 
 next, though it s so many years since I ve packed I ve for 
 gotten some of the tricks. It s amazing how useless an 
 old woman gets to be with everybody running to pad her 
 against the sharp corners. And if I d realised I was to 
 pack for you, I could have had the trunk set up on some 
 thing. This stooping is the dickens and all." 
 
 She was peering into the shoes, taking out their trees and, 
 with an exaggerated difficulty, putting them back again; 
 Miss Bixby s serviceable calf boots they were, and the girl 
 could have wept anew to see them in those delicate hands. 
 And Madam Brooke, as if doubtful whether she had per 
 formed her task thoroughly, took out the trees again, 
 turned the boots sole upward and shook them vigorously. 
 At this point Miss Bixby could not have been sure she 
 might not have wept at all the various stages of the scene. 
 Perhaps her trained professional decorum was left her 
 unmarred. Perhaps she had enough appreciation of the 
 difference in plumage of an old lady who rustled about in 
 soft silks and of herself tramping in what is known poeti 
 cally as frieze. The age-long frenzies over the inequali 
 ties of life that are responsible, more than individual op 
 pressions, for what is known as class hatred, embittered 
 her. But at any rate, without being conscious of any 
 thing beyond a helpless admiration for Madam Brooke, 
 her address, her practical capabilities, Miss Bixby had a 
 moment now of wishing her unconscious, palsied or 
 
200 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 plainly dead. It is not so culpable to wish a devilishly 
 active enemy dead as might be supposed. The exasper 
 ated sufferer from that enemy s activities is merely seizing 
 the last weapon left him in the psychological armory, 
 and he isn t solemnly consigning his tormentor to the 
 dread ordeal of a theological judgment. He merely 
 means he wishes he were once and for all and absolutely 
 for the general good blotted out as an active force of 
 exasperation. 
 
 " Do you wrap up your shoes? " Madam Brooke was 
 asking practically. " Shoe bags or anything? I have 
 little squares all over roses as bright as I can get. When 
 you re not supposed to so much as dip your finger into the 
 dye pot any more, because you re old, it s a great tempta 
 tion to paint everything up like cockatoos. Perhaps I d 
 better use a bit of paper. I hate to have them touch the 
 books." 
 
 She looked at Miss Bixby brightly, in a waiting deliber 
 ation that seemed to demand even the smallest shade of 
 sympathetic interest in return. But Miss Bixby did not 
 answer. 
 
 " Ah," said Madam Brooke, " now I ve got the cart be 
 fore the horse. Here is a pair without trees. And there 
 are the trees on that chair by you. Hand them to me, 
 like a good girl." 
 
 Still Miss Bixby stood immovable. Still her face was 
 set in its mahogany calm. Madam Brooke gave a little 
 sigh of gentle discouragement. 
 
 " Well, well," she said, " you certainly are a naughty 
 girl, aren t you? When you sat down there at that table 
 writing out headlines from the kingdom of heaven who d 
 have thought " 
 
 She put down the shoes as if it hurt her to do it, crossed 
 the room as if that also hurt, took up the trees, came back 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 201 
 
 and inserted them in the shoes with an amount of difficulty 
 Miss Bixby saw through completely. It hadn t been 
 difficult to cross the room, it hadn t been in the least a 
 complicated task to insert the shoe trees in the shoes. 
 The old lady was acting, and acting to impress her, play 
 ing old age for all it was worth to break down her adver 
 sary s guard. It was simply another way of fighting and 
 Miss Bixby knew it, and yet her guard was broken and 
 she had to yield. 
 
 " Oh," she said, in a voice that defied her and shook 
 with every syllable, " I wouldn t treat anybody so 
 there isn t a person in the world I hate enough to treat 
 em as you re treating me. Here! give me those things. 
 If you ve got to shake em, I ll fold em and put em in." 
 
 Madam Brooke accorded her an approving smile. 
 
 " That s a good girl," said she. " Now we shall get on." 
 
 So they packed together, Madam Brooke apparently 
 absorbed in her task and Miss Bixby silently weeping. 
 Having begun, it seemed as if she couldn t stop, though 
 she caught a great breath, from time to time, with an 
 effort of drawing back a fist to have at her emotion. 
 Madam Brooke, glancing at her once and asking if she 
 didn t think a jacket she was painfully shaking would 
 keep its shape better if it had some crumpled paper in the 
 sleeves, thought she had never seen anybody make such 
 hard work of crying as Miss Bixby. Her face con 
 tracted into lines it was horror to look upon. She pressed 
 her lips together until they got away from her and snarled 
 up into hideous contours, she shut her eyes and the tears 
 somehow got through. It was a crumbled aqueduct of 
 emotion, and Madam Brooke came to the conclusion that 
 the girl, immured in the necessities of her exacting life, 
 had never, perhaps, since she was a child, felt at liberty 
 to cry and this was the raging of a liberated flood. 
 
202 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " It almost seems," said Madam Brooke persuasively, 
 at one point, " as if we d got pretty nearly done and we 
 haven t come on what we re hunting for." 
 
 At this Miss Bixby bit her lip with an unthinking sav 
 agery that squeezed out of her an " Oh ! " of pain. The 
 situation was the more unbearable in that they were not 
 now flashing back the demand and rebuff of declared 
 enemies. Here they were packing in apparent amity and 
 Madam Brooke was pleasantly implying their joint in 
 terest in finding the concealed case. Suddenly she 
 stopped, this terrible old lady, holding a shepherd s plaid 
 waist before her like a cuirass, and, inadvertently though 
 she did it, it seemed to Miss Bixby that it was a part of 
 her astute hatefulness to hold it so that the unbound 
 seams within were shamefully visible. It was an un 
 worthy waist, made by Miss Bixby to wear in her room 
 to save her secretarial uniform, and here it confronted 
 her to loose a deeper depth in the fount of tears. How 
 could you expect a woman who had made such a waist 
 and furthermore worn it, to endure the interrogation of a 
 woman in violet silk? There they stood, the symbolic 
 plaid insignia of their differences between them, the ragged 
 seams turned cruelly to the light. 
 
 " Well," said Madam Brooke, " we ve got the trunk al 
 most packed, haven t we, and we haven t found anything 
 after all. What shall we try next? " 
 
 " We ! " Miss Bixby wanted to cry explosively, to 
 knock some appreciation of the monstrosity of it all into 
 the old lady s head with the sheer satiric weight of the 
 word. But when she would have hurled it forth, her 
 mouth curled up again in continued weeping and the salt 
 flood wet her lips. 
 
 " You see," said Madam Brooke, " I shouldn t have 
 gone to the trouble of shaking all these things if I hadn t 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 203 
 
 thought the stuff might have been taken out of the case 
 and the case thrown away. They do that in books, you 
 know. It would be a shame, now wouldn t it, if I d read 
 so many detective stories for nothing? If I only knew 
 how the stuff looks! it might be dry and you put it into 
 envelopes, or it might be a paste and you packed it in cold 
 cream jars. How the dickens does the thing look? I 
 rather think I Ve got to go over your toilet articles. What 
 do you say? " 
 
 What did she say? Miss Bixby choked upon that. 
 She had a wild suspicion that she d got to hold on to her 
 self or Madam Brooke would have her hypnotised into 
 assuming they were allies in a common cause. Suddenly 
 something queer in the old lady s face struck her with an 
 alarm that dried her tears on the very instant, leaving 
 nothing behind them but an occasional sobbing breath. 
 Madam Brooke, who had been holding the symbolic waist 
 absent-mindedly before her, lowered her hands, mechan 
 ically folded it and laid it on a chair. 
 
 " I believe," she said, " I am a born fool. Anybody d 
 say if my detective stories hadn t done me any more good 
 than this I might as well have been reading the Psalms." 
 
 She crossed the room with a light tread, not at all the 
 tread of an old lady trying to prove by illustration how 
 unable she was, from sheer physical frailty, to pack a 
 trunk, and thrust her hand up the chimney. Miss Bixby, 
 who had turned with her, gave a little smothered excla 
 mation, clenched her hands at her sides and bade herself 
 stand still. From the intensity of her face it might have 
 been said she was praying for something and praying 
 hard. 
 
 " No," said Madam Brooke to herself, " no ! But that s 
 what they d do." 
 
 She felt along the ledge of bricks, and her hand brought 
 
204 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 down a little shower of hardened soot. Her face lighted 
 and she glanced back at Miss Bixby in a child s ingenuous 
 delight. 
 
 " That s the same sound," she said, " the very sound I 
 heard when I was talking with Brooke at the door. And 
 when I turned to look, two or three of these little pellets 
 rolled across the hearth. Oh, we re warm, we re decidedly 
 warm." 
 
 Miss Bixby looked, at that moment, as if she found the 
 praying formula inadequate. But she was not entirely 
 without hope, not until Madam Brooke s hand stopped 
 and her slim shoulders began trembling. She gave a little 
 shrill cry and brought out, in her blackened hand, a bag. 
 Now she was shaking all over and laughing in an excited 
 triumph. 
 
 " Didn t I tell you? " she cried. " They always put it 
 up the chimney. They put the revolver there and the 
 stolen gems. What a fool we were not to look there first." 
 
 The implied community of interest was again too much 
 for Miss Bixby. "We! " her lips rounded to say, and 
 this time they managed it. Madam Brooke was gazing 
 at the bag. 
 
 " But bless me ! " she cried, in a naive astonishment, 
 " it s not a case. It s your hand-bag." Her voice 
 mounted until it was a needle-fine note of shrill interro 
 gation. " That bag was lying on the desk when I came 
 into this room. And I hadn t noticed it was gone. It 
 was only just now I happened to think how the rubble 
 fell down the chimney when I stood there at the door. 
 But of course you threw away the case, didn t you? You 
 put the stuff into your bag. Let s open it and see how 
 their olympium looks." 
 
 She sat down in a chair by the hearth and had her fin 
 gers at the clasp when Miss Bixby made a little rush 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 205 
 
 across the room and stopped beside her. She bent over 
 her and Madam Brooke, inwardly persuaded that she was 
 about to snatch the bag, ceased trying to move the fas 
 tening and put both hands on it, pressing it down upon her 
 knees. But Miss Bixby, who had never lost the con 
 sciousness of Brooke outside the door, had only bent to 
 speak into her ear. She could not hope Brooke had gone 
 away, although at some moments it was so still she al 
 most believed he had. And now, if Madam Brooke could 
 be made to understand how dangerous it was to brave a 
 woman beyond the limits of her endurance, she would 
 try, for both their sakes to make her. For Miss Bixby 
 was frightened, not so much at the prospect of accusations 
 and punishment as at the unleashed possibilities she felt 
 stirring within herself. She was so angry that she was 
 afraid of her own anger. It looked to her, at that last mo 
 ment, like a creature, a demon, that had escaped from her 
 control and might do ungoverned things. 
 
 " Madam Brooke," she said, her voice at the old lady s 
 ear, the low menace of it so arresting that Madam Brooke 
 turned her head to look at her. " Madam Brooke ! " 
 
 There they were, their faces close, gazing into each 
 other s eyes, Miss Bixby afraid of her demon and Madam 
 Brooke, though she was gravely aware of some unformu- 
 lated danger, at last afraid of nothing. But she too had 
 seen Miss Bixby s demon, and she gave it no chance to 
 strike first. She gathered her stiff muscles for a concerted 
 movement, sprang out of the chair and stood in front of 
 the fireplace, her eyes upon Miss Bixby s. 
 
 " Brooke! " she called, in a calm, carrying voice. " Are 
 you there? " 
 
 She had her one moment of nauseating recoil as it oc 
 curred to her that he might not be there. He might not 
 have heard her, he might have walked to the end of the 
 
206 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 hall. And in the moment that would pass before she 
 could call louder, there was Miss Bixby s demon. But 
 the voice came, close by the door, a little anxious, but 
 above all steady. 
 
 "All right. Want me?" 
 
 At the instant, it seemed to Madam Brooke she must 
 yield to the sob that leaped to her throat. But she kept 
 it there. If Miss Bixby got wind of the sob, it must 
 have appeared to her a muscular convulsion only. And 
 Miss Bixby groaned, a long moan like a creature in pain. 
 Her demon was going, exorcised by the voice. And after 
 the physical anguish of the demon s coming, his domi 
 nance over her own nerves and muscles, he had hurt no 
 body but her. 
 
 " No, Brooke," the old lady called, in a voice as steady 
 as his own. " Not yet. Be on hand. When I tell you, 
 come." Then she turned to Miss Bixby. She spoke to 
 her as the cruelly kind speak to the hysterical. " Get 
 hold of yourself. You look a perfect sight. Sit down in 
 that chair, and don t speak another syllable while I open 
 the bag." 
 
XX 
 
 Miss BIXBY sank into the chair. Her demon had left 
 her faint and ill. It was cloudy before her eyes and she 
 felt the nausea of an outraged solar plexus. The sensa 
 tion was so foreign to her that she acquiesced in it and 
 sat staring blankly. Madam Brooke also sat. 
 
 " Now," said she, with the cheerfulness, Miss Bixby 
 drearily thought, of the person who has got his own way, 
 " let s see what we have here." She opened the bag, 
 stretched it to its full capacity and looked. " A hand 
 kerchief," said she, in rising dismay. "A purse. Eye 
 glasses. Nothing else. Not a single thing. Well, I am 
 " What she was she, stopping in utter blankness, left 
 the onlooker to imagine. 
 
 Miss Bixby, with luck coming her way, felt herself 
 recovering. Her blood seemed to resume its normal 
 course and the mist cleared from before her eyes. 
 
 " Now," said she, in a voice she managed to stiffen into 
 its accustomed dry adequacy, " perhaps you ll be kind 
 enough to shut my bag and give it back to me." 
 
 Madam Brooke did partially shut it, only omitting to 
 complete the act by snapping the clasp. She sat looking 
 blankly before her, once or twice, by a movement of the 
 eyes, including Miss Bixby in her field of vision, her fore 
 head taut with concentration. Now, from a growing in- 
 tentness, she regarded Miss Bixby alone. Miss Bixby 
 wouldn t, she began to believe, show quite so eager a re 
 vival of interest in the occasion if it didn t mean some- 
 
 207 
 
208 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 thing significant to her to get the bag back into her own 
 hands. 
 
 " And," said Madam Brooke thoughtfully, " there isn t 
 the leastest mite of a thing here that looks like any of 
 their laboratory stuff. Yet I do feel warm." 
 
 Miss Bixby, watching her, was more and more pal 
 pably coming to life. She was eager now. A light had 
 come into her black eyes. She was not only in suspense; 
 her eagerness was consuming her. 
 
 " There s one thing," said Madam Brooke reflectively, 
 still watching her to see how she took the mounting stages 
 of this fumbling supposition. " The key, the key you 
 stole from Mrs. Harvey s drawer. That isn t important, 
 only we might as well know where that key is. If you ve 
 got it, as we think, at least it ll prove you ve been where 
 you might have taken the other thing. We might as 
 well " 
 
 She opened the bag again to its full capacity and turned 
 it over in her lap. Miss Bixby, with a little exasperated 
 cry, was upon her, crouching at her feet, her hands upon 
 the small confusion of articles released. But though she 
 was the stronger, Madam Brooke was quicker-witted. 
 She sprang to her feet and allowed the things to fall in 
 confusion to the floor, and when they separated there, to 
 roll on their individual ways, stooped like a flash and 
 picked up the purse because Miss Bixby, over-balanced 
 for a moment, also lunged for it. Madam Brooke backed 
 with it to the door, and then she spoke so tartly that Miss 
 Bixby, miserably collecting the disorder of things on the 
 rug, stopped in the act and stared at her. 
 
 " I should think," said Madam Brooke, " you d know 
 better than to make a woman of my age snap round like 
 this and strain her muscles to fiddle strings. Now I ve 
 got it and I shall examine it and you can see me do it." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 209 
 
 She opened the purse, a square wallet of black pebbled 
 leather, and glanced first into the little pocket at the side. 
 That would be the logical place for a key. There was 
 nothing there. She stopped short with a comical air of 
 complete dismay that would have made an onlooker less 
 sore beset than Miss Bixby shout with laughter. She 
 herself laughed. 
 
 " You baggage," said she, " you re a clever one, or else 
 I m not so clever as I thought. You re a regular magpie 
 for hiding, aren t you? You re better than any detective 
 story, standing there looking like a tomb." 
 
 To Miss Bixby, facing her unmoved, she seemed to be 
 enjoying the situation with such open-minded hilarity 
 that the secretary hated her with a rush of energy foreign 
 to her ordered emotions. 
 
 " Perhaps," said she, with acidity, " you might give me 
 back my purse." 
 
 " One moment," said Madam Brooke. " Then I will. 
 And with apologies. Here s this little flap." She turned 
 it back and drew out two pieces of cardboard. The signifi 
 cance of them together there flashed upon her instantly 
 and she gave a little hoot of triumph. " A ticket to New 
 York. A parcel room check, South Station. I know it 
 is, for I left a parcel there myself not ten days ago. I 
 needn t die yet," cried the old lady. " I am as clever as 
 anybody need to be." 
 
 "If you think," said Miss Bixby, now regarding her 
 with a perfect composure, " it s clever to recognise a rail 
 road ticket and a parcel room check, you re easily satis 
 fied." 
 
 "I know the whole business," said Madam Brooke. 
 " I see exactly what you did after you left the Doves 
 with the case. You cut over to the South Station and 
 checked the thing, and being there you bought your ticket, 
 
210 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 for fear you d have to leave here in a rush. And you 
 didn t mean to have that chemical stuff in your possession 
 an instant till you left town for good. I don t know how 
 you did it and got back here so quickly, but that s imma 
 terial. Why, you took taxis. Of course you did." She 
 raised her voice. " Brooke, open the door." 
 
 He did instantly. It might have been fancied that 
 his hand was uneasily upon the key. 
 
 " I want you," said Madam Brooke, meeting him in the 
 doorway, " to take this check, go to the parcel room in 
 the South Station and get the article left there. And 
 bring it here to me." 
 
 Brooke took the check, but he was frowning. Miss 
 Bixby, who had approached the door, was making appeal 
 ing signs to him behind his grandmother s back. He read 
 the sodden misery of the girl s face and wondered whether 
 he ought to be ashamed of himself or even ashamed of 
 grandmother. 
 
 " Lieutenant Harvey," Miss Bixby broke out, in a gulp 
 of emotion, " that check is mine. It represents property. 
 You have no more right to lay hands on it than you have 
 to come in here and take things out of my trunk, or than 
 she has to snatch my purse. She s got my purse. There 
 it is in her hand. Give me back my property, Lieutenant 
 Harvey." 
 
 He hesitated, convinced now that he was ashamed of 
 himself and aghast at the uncontrollable force he knew as 
 grandmother. But grandmother gave him a little manda 
 tory push on the arm and took the key from the door. 
 
 " Here s your purse," she said, thrusting it at Miss 
 Bixby with the other hand. " Do as I tell you, Brooke. 
 You ll find the thing checked at the station is Mr. Dove s 
 olympium. If you don t, I ll go to the Psychopathic and 
 have my head renovated. Cut along." She shut the 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 211 
 
 door on him, turned the key and faced Miss Bixby with 
 a cheerful smile. " Now," said she, " let s sit down and 
 talk it over. I m all of a tremble, aren t you? " 
 
 She did sit down and drew a footstool toward her, put 
 ting up her neat feet to rest them comfortably. Miss 
 Bixby glared at the feet an instant as if she were cursing 
 them. In a sense she was, for she was remembering the 
 stout calf boots at the bottom of the trunk laid there sym 
 metrically by these delicate old hands that were now 
 clasped, yet trembling a little, in Madam Brooke s violet 
 silk lap. There was some satisfaction to Miss Bixby in 
 making sure, by a keener glance, that they did tremble. 
 At least, even if this terrible old lady was on top, she had 
 not got there without some wear and tear of her precious 
 old self. Miss Bixby felt as if she must burst with the 
 disordered force of her own emotions. Yet she could not 
 cry. She had cried herself out, and it had been so an 
 guished an experience that she knew she must guard her 
 self desperately against ever doing it again. She decided 
 that no satiric gibe or cool command of the old lady should 
 induce her to speak, so long as they remained together in 
 this room; but her lips opened, without her volition, and 
 she heard herself saying, in a passionate monotone: 
 
 " It isn t fair. It isn t fair." 
 
 And the exasperating old lady understood. She had 
 followed Miss Bixby s glance from her daintily shod feet 
 to the cognisance of those stout shoes in the trunk, an un 
 erring trail. And she said softly: 
 
 " Why, the shoes are nice, you know. You could have 
 slippers, too, if you wanted them." 
 
 Perhaps her uncanny understanding enraged Miss 
 Bixby more than the matter at issue. 
 
 "No, I couldn t either," she said violently. "You 
 know I couldn t. Where could I wear em? I m on call 
 
212 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 every minute of the day, indoors and then out. You 
 know I am. And I ve got to lay by something, haven t 
 I? and there s my insurance, too." 
 
 " Dear me! dear me! " said the old lady. " Is every 
 body underpaid? Is that it? You re underpaid? " 
 
 " No, I m not," said Miss Bixby belligerently. " I m 
 overpaid, if anything. But when you re in business you 
 work every minute, if there s anything to you. You don t 
 have to, but you do, you know. And there s no time left 
 for slippers and things. I should think you could un 
 derstand that." 
 
 " I thought," said Madam Brooke mildly, " that all 
 young women nowadays had rather nice clothes. Some 
 times I wish they hadn t. They make me uneasy. These 
 reformers, you know, the ones that read papers in par 
 lors, they tell us girls have got to have frillies or they ll 
 stop being good. I don t believe it myself. I think a 
 good girl would rather walk round in gunny-bags, what 
 ever they are, or die in em. But the talk does make me 
 uneasy." 
 
 " You needn t be uneasy about me," said Miss Bixby 
 acridly. "I m good enough. Nobody wants me to be 
 anything else. But I dare say I should be, anyway." 
 
 Madam Brooke shook her head. 
 
 " No, my dear," she said. " You re not any too good, 
 that is if it proves you did steal the old professor s 
 peroxide, or whatever it is. No, you re not conspicuously 
 good. As Brooke would say, not so you d notice it. 7 
 But now Brooke has gone to get the stuff and we re so 
 cosy here, talking it over, why not tell me about the key? 
 Not in the least important, you know, only I m curious 
 as a cat. I suppose you did just help yourself to it, out 
 of the table drawer? " 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Bixby, " I did. Miss Dove was here 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 213 
 
 and I thought I might as well step in and get some pic 
 tures of the room." 
 
 Madam Brooke fixed upon her a gaze unrelenting and 
 yet impersonal. She had no animus against Miss Bixby, 
 but she did not propose letting her off without setting 
 her motives in as rigorous order as the contents of the 
 trunk. 
 
 " Then," said she, " why didn t you go to the door like a 
 Christian and ask? " 
 
 " Because," Miss Bixby answered indifferently, " he d 
 as good as turned me out of the house." 
 
 " Oh ! you d some reason for thinking he was away." 
 
 " No. I didn t think he was away. But I knew if I 
 walked in on him I could say I found a key in the lock. 
 He isn t here on this earth, anyway. He s up in the 
 clouds." 
 
 Madam Brooke felt she was getting somewhere now. 
 She liked this picking her steps along a half blazed trail. 
 
 " And how," she pursued, " did you know the stuff was 
 in that case? " 
 
 Miss Bixby smiled a little. This was a fact not likely 
 to be so palatable, and she delivered it with a demure rel 
 ish of her own. 
 
 " Mrs. Harvey told me." 
 
 It found its mark. Madam Brooke, palpably hit, re 
 peated doubtfully: 
 
 " Mrs. Harvey told you? " 
 
 " Yes. She got it from Miss Dove. Don t you remem 
 ber that first day Miss Dove came here and talked? 
 She d have been surprised at the number of things she told. 
 Well, that was one of them." 
 
 " But Mrs. Harvey " Madam Brooke began, with 
 gravity, and then stopped. 
 
 Actually, there was no limit, she was aware, to what 
 
214 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 Isabel might, in these interplanetary relations of hers, 
 have innocently disclosed. 
 
 " Oh, she didn t actually tell me," responded Miss 
 Bixby, impatiently willing to give Mrs. Harvey her due. 
 " I was writing and she asked questions about it, asked 
 to have it confirmed. Uncle Edgar, you know, Aunt Clar 
 issa. She asked them." 
 
 " In short, she asked you," said Madam Brooke sternly, 
 " you and your wall paper. Well ! what did you say? " 
 
 " What did they say? " amended Miss Bixby, as airily 
 as she could manage. " Oh, they confirmed it." 
 
 Madam Brooke sat and stared at her and Miss Bixby 
 smiled and wished she could assume an air of engaging 
 carelessness by humming a little song. But that wasn t 
 possible. She couldn t even hum. 
 
 " And the key," Madam Brooke suggested. She spoke 
 doubtfully and with some slight hesitation. She was be 
 ginning, Miss Bixby hoped, to find a flaw or two in her 
 own cleverness. " What did you do with the key? " 
 
 " Now what," said Miss Bixby, amiably suggesting 
 another flaw, " should you do with something you d helped 
 yourself to, to use for a certain purpose? If you d used 
 it and didn t expect to have any further use for it and 
 didn t propose being found out, you d put it back in the 
 place you took it from. The key s down there in the table 
 drawer." 
 
 But if she expected Madam Brooke to waste one sigh 
 over her own reverses when the breath of it might be 
 used to acclaim another s prowess, she didn t know her 
 old lady. Madam Brooke smiled a little, then more and 
 more. She even seemed to be proffering Miss Bixby an 
 unbiased admiration. 
 
 " Dear me ! dear me ! " she said, " how much more in 
 teresting life is than circulating libraries. Well, now, Miss 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 215 
 
 Bixby, you ve been so frank about it admirable, I 
 call it do just tell me what you wanted the stuff for. 
 Because you thought it s worth money? " 
 
 " No," said Miss Bixby sulkily, as if, things being at 
 their worst with her, she might as well claim the dreary 
 satisfaction of even unavailing truth, " not altogether." 
 
 " Ah," said the old lady astutely, " then you admit you 
 did steal it. Now what for? " 
 
 Miss Bixby, lowering, stared at her. 
 
 " You never d understand," she said, " never in the 
 world." 
 
 " Try me," said Madam Brooke hopefully. " I under 
 stand about most things. Sometimes I understand too 
 much. That was where I came in on your automatic 
 writing. Mrs. Harvey didn t smell out the hocus-pocus 
 in it. I did." 
 
 " I know what you thought," said Miss Bixby. " You 
 thought I faked it." 
 
 " Well," said the old lady, " I ll give you the very 
 slight benefit of the smallest doubt. Some of it you did 
 fake, for I caught you." 
 
 " How did you catch me? " 
 
 " Never mind. I did. On the other hand, you may be 
 playing the devil s game and think you re doing God serv 
 ice. I don t know. I only know it s a disorderly, mis 
 leading, bedeviling sort of thing, and if you re an honest 
 girl only half honest you d better get out of it." 
 
 " Madam Brooke," said the girl, in such earnest that 
 she was breathless over it, " how do you suppose I can sit 
 down and write things I never heard about in my life and 
 the pencil carrying my hand along with it driving it 
 and not my hand moving the pencil? " 
 
 " I don t know," said the old lady honestly, adding, with 
 a memory of Brooke, " Search me." 
 
216 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " And don t you think," the girl went on, still in impas 
 sioned earnest, " if we find out that s so, we re in honor 
 bound to keep on and follow out the thing wherever it 
 leads us and see where it does lead us? " 
 
 " No, I don t," said Madam Brooke. " That I m sure 
 of. You re only going to debase your energies and weaken 
 your will, forever questioning, forever whining for sym 
 pathy and asking advice, setting up a higher tribunal 
 over there/ as you call it, and lying down on what you 
 think are higher intelligences than your own. No, my 
 girl, you fight it out on this line. Make your decisions, 
 meet your griefs, and toughen your will. That s what the 
 whole business here is for the mystery, the despair 
 to make a man of you and toughen your will." 
 
 Madam Brooke heard herself saying these things in a 
 wondering surprise. She hadn t known she possessed any 
 formulated philosophy, any more than a formulated reli 
 gion, but now she caught her breath a little at the vision 
 before her, that vision which comes to man or woman at 
 least once in a doubting life, of the splendor of the quest 
 here in our darkness, the " ignorant armies " of the mind 
 and soul clashing against evil, to attain at last that un 
 seen glory the freedom of the will. But she had not 
 revealed her vision to Miss Bixby. 
 
 " Why," said the girl, " don t you know what we re in 
 it for, all of us that are in it honestly this psychic 
 business? It isn t only because we ve lost friends and 
 want to hear from em. It s because it s life." 
 
 " What is life? " asked Madam Brooke. 
 
 " It s life that drives us crazy. Why, Madam Brooke, 
 there s nothing to it." 
 
 " Nothing to it? " repeated the old lady, remembering 
 the unnumbered leaves in the book of years from time 
 imimagined to the present hour, hearing the winds of 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 217 
 
 destiny stirring the torn and gorgeous tapestries of the 
 world. " Nothing to life? " 
 
 " There s nothing to it," repeated Miss Bixby obsti 
 nately. " There may be for you. You may make your 
 self think there is. Your slippers and your silks, going 
 to the symphonies and reading Dante, that may carry 
 you along. But when you wake up at three in the morn 
 ing and your feet are cold, don t you know there s nothing 
 to it then? " 
 
 " How the dickens," said the old lady, startled, as if 
 she d been caught by conjuring, " do you know how I feel 
 when my feet are cold? " 
 
 " Because I feel just the same," said Miss Bixby. " It s 
 then I think about life, and I can t help it. And I know 
 it s because my feet are cold, but somehow that seems a 
 part of the whole business, making em cold, that awful 
 time in the morning, so the beasts can get me and I can t 
 fight em off. And I lie there and say to myself, This 
 is life, is it? Well, there s nothing to it. " 
 
 " And then you turn over and get warm," said the old 
 lady, fascinated, " and snuggle a little shawl into bed 
 the one I packed just now is a nice one for that and you 
 drop off and wake at seven and you say, Well, life isn t 
 such a bad old party after all ! " 
 
 " Yes. And maybe there are popovers for breakfast," 
 said Miss Bixby, at once feeling she had betrayed herself 
 and looking foolish. 
 
 Madam Brooke gazed at her in a consuming sympathy. 
 Popovers ! this volcanic person with a crust of ice could be 
 reconciled to the mysterious gods, for a fleeting hour in 
 the morning, by popovers. She broke into a laugh, and 
 Miss Bixby, whose mind may have followed hers through 
 that satiric commentary, laughed also, though grimly. 
 
 " Now," said the old lady, " just what do you find in 
 
218 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 your psychic business? What do you think it s going to 
 do for you? " 
 
 " Why/ said Miss Bixby, now in an absolute agony of 
 wanting to make herself understood, " it s what you said 
 yourself. It s the tribunal. It s knowing there s some 
 where where the accounts are kept and things are justified 
 and the reasons known. It isn t leaving these awful 
 loose ends flying. They re gathered up. They re knit 
 into a web." 
 
 Madam Brooke, looking at her, shrewdly suspected she 
 wanted the universe reduced to a system of obvious order 
 conformable to her own exactness with the tools of her 
 trade. 
 
 "And there s the animals," said Miss Bixby, sitting 
 still, though, in some undesigned way, giving an impres 
 sion of mentally writhing in these agonies she disclosed. 
 " There s got to be something to account for them. Why, 
 don t you know how they suffer? They suffer all the 
 time." 
 
 "There s the Society," said Madam Brooke weakly, 
 knowing this was no answer and yet proffering it as the 
 only palliative at hand. 
 
 " It isn t that," said Miss Bixby scornfully. She seemed 
 to be repudiating the mere parochial system of seeing an 
 imals through their pain, and sweeping out into the waste 
 places of the world on wings of wrathful questioning. 
 " Why, it isn t only we that abuse em. They hunt each 
 other and crunch each other s bones and suck each other s 
 blood, and there isn t one of em that isn t afraid mor 
 tally afraid of something else. What s your tribunal 
 going to say about that? If it s got anything to say I 
 want to hear it, and if automatic writing ll tell me so 
 much as one word a word here and a word there that I 
 can piece together into something that means something 
 well, I want it, that s all." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 219 
 
 Madam Brooke sought about in her mind for those as 
 suagements she had herself often dismissed as platitudes 
 but which, it seemed to her now, had their uses. 
 
 " Of course," said she, " it isn t possible for us to under 
 stand. We must believe. They tell us so. They tell 
 us we must have faith." 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Bixby, dismissing faith with the 
 monosyllable, " but faith isn t anything. It s a lazy man s 
 religion, that s all. You don t know, so you give it up. 
 It s just exactly as if you were doing arithmetic and you 
 said, 1 1 can t find an answer to this, and so I can t plan 
 the measurements of the bridge I ve got to design or the 
 ship I m going to build, but it s a great deal more satis 
 factory than if I could/ Lord! " 
 
 The invocation was not irreverent. It seemed to be an 
 appeal. 
 
 " Do you go to church? " asked Madam Brooke, in a 
 small voice. 
 
 " No," said Miss Bixby shortly. " My Sundays are 
 full. I mend my stockings and rest my back." 
 
 " Have you," again Madam Brooke ventured, " any 
 near family? " 
 
 " I ve got nobody," said the girl. " They died years 
 and years ago, and they might have died sooner for all 
 I m concerned. All but mother; but she died before I d 
 begun to earn, so I could give her things. And now you ll 
 say, Well, if you fell in love you d feel differently. Or 
 if you d married, and had children you d feel differently/ 
 No, I shouldn t. I should only feel more so. Suppose I 
 fell in love, suppose somebody fell in love with me. Not 
 likely, but suppose it, just for fun." It was a bleak word 
 to use at that point, and she used it bleakly. No one 
 could imagine her doing anything for fun. "Would it 
 last? You know it wouldn t. Madam Brooke, there s 
 
220 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 nothing to it. Suppose I had children and thought they d 
 make up to me for my husband s forgetting he d been in 
 love with me. Would that last? No! if we were poor, 
 they d want to get rid of me as soon as I was helpless and 
 old. If we were rich " She remembered there that 
 Madam Brooke herself was old, and qualified it " Well, 
 if you re rich, you can manage to play the game. But 
 there s nothing to it." 
 
 Madam Brooke sat looking at her and thinking so hard 
 it made her tired head ache. The smooth surface of the 
 girl s face was broken up and seamed by the fighting 
 forces within. Her black eyes burned. She was one fire 
 of need and hunger from top to toe. 
 
 "How much did you ever get out of the things you 
 thought you wanted so you d sell your soul for them? " 
 she was asking fiercely. " Nothing, in the end. You 
 know you didn t. Nobody ever does, only they haven t 
 always the sense to see it or the courage to own up. 
 There s nothing to it, I tell you, nothing." 
 
 " So you don t believe," the old lady ventured, " there s 
 anything splendid in fighting here in the dark for the 
 sake of what seems to you good, though you don t know 
 what it is nor exactly why you think it s good? You 
 don t think there s anything fine in crawling along over 
 the stony roadway, trying to smooth it out a little with 
 your bare hands so somebody else will find it easier? " 
 
 " I don t know whether it s fine or not," said Miss 
 Bixby. " I know it s heart-breaking. It s a mean game 
 they re playing with us, they knowing all the cards and we 
 putting em down any old way because we haven t been 
 told what s trumps." 
 
 " Oh yes, we have," said Madam Brooke. " We do 
 know what s trumps." 
 
 " Well, in a Poor Richard sort of way, I suppose we do, 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 221 
 
 B. Franklin, honesty is the best policy and all that. 
 But to know, really to know! just you think of that. To 
 put up with this hole of an earth because we know there s 
 another one, all " 
 
 She hesitated and Madam Brooke supplied, smiling a 
 little: 
 
 " Gold streets and golden slippers." 
 
 " I believe in bookkeeping myself," said Miss Bixby, 
 so emphatically that she seemed to be reciting her earthly 
 creed and closing the covers with a bang. " I believe 
 there s got to be something to explain this, or it s going to 
 keep on making us sick, every child that s born into it, 
 till the end of time. And wouldn t that be a mean trick 
 to play on us? " she asked frankly, with no shade of 
 humor. " Shut us up here and forbid us to peek and 
 keep generation after generation of us finding out there s 
 nothing to it." 
 
 " Miss Bixby," said Madam Brooke frankly, " I wish 
 you and I had got acquainted before. Why didn t you 
 ever talk." 
 
 " I wasn t hired to talk," said Miss Bixby coldly. " I 
 did my work. You do, you know." 
 
 " But now," said Madam Brooke, " if my grandson 
 comes back with the elixir of life, or whatever it is, and 
 we hand it over to the owner and no questions asked 
 and you oblige Mr. Harvey by giving up the automatic 
 writing it upsets my daughter very much, you know 
 don t you think you could stay on and try to find some 
 thing a little more satisfactory with us than you have 
 yet? " 
 
 Miss Bixby stared at her. 
 
 " Give up automatic writing? " she repeated. " Why, 
 that s what I m going to New York for. It wasn t only 
 to run off with the camera case, though that did start me 
 
222 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 off to-day. I m going to launch out. I m going to open 
 an office and give sittings and write myself blind and crazy 
 but what I ll find out what there is to it." 
 
 "That s what you ll do," said Madam Brooke. 
 " You ll addle your brains and weaken your will and 
 you ll get that look they all have that sly, superior sort 
 of smile that says they don t care how soon this old planet 
 goes to pieces so long as they re in on the ground floor of 
 another one." 
 
 The girl rose from her chair. She had ordinarily no 
 personal presence, but now Madam Brooke was surprised 
 to see how tall she looked. 
 
 "I tell you," she said, "I don t care that" she 
 snapped her wiry fingers into the air " what happens 
 to me. I m as much of an adventurer as the men that 
 sailed out discovering continents, two or three hundred 
 years ago. They didn t care that either." And again she 
 snapped the capable fingers. " And they weren t afraid 
 of being roasted by cannibals or drowned in the sea. 
 Why, what s discontent, the eating kind of discontent that 
 made them start out and throw their lives overboard when 
 they had to? They knew there was nothing to it. That s 
 what discontent is. And they were trying to find the 
 other end of things, same as I am and that old Mr. Dove. 
 He s trying, too. Only what we re doing is to find the end 
 that s snarled up off there round Orion or the Milky Way 
 and it s an awful long ways off." 
 
 " My Lord ! " said Madam Brooke, staring at her. 
 "My Lord above!" 
 
 The fire in the girl s face died as suddenly as if a wind 
 had puffed it out. Her body relaxed into a dispirited 
 lassitude. 
 
 "There s Lieutenant Harvey," she said indifferently. 
 " He s just come in. You d better go down and meet him 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 223 
 
 and start him off to Mr. Dove with the stolen goods. 
 IVe got to finish packing. If I don t look out, I sha n t 
 be off to-night." 
 
 Madam Brooke rose and went to the door, unlocked it 
 and stood there waiting. Brooke came up in a hurry and 
 he carried the case. 
 
 " I suppose," he said " this is all right. It has Mr. 
 Dove s name on the bottom and a New York address." 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Bixby. The exchange was as com 
 monplace as if nothing emotional had ever blown through 
 the quiet room. " It s quite all right. You d better take 
 it down to them at once. I suppose they re worried." 
 
 Brooke looked at his grandmother and she nodded her 
 assent, at which he hurried off, his mind full of Andrea. 
 Presently they heard the door close below. Miss Bixby 
 was stirring about the room with her capable, deft move 
 ments picking up smaller articles and putting them in the 
 tray of her trunk. Madam Brooke turned to her, was 
 about to speak and waited. It was evident that Miss 
 Bixby, smiling rather satirically, was also about to 
 speak. 
 
 " Didn t I tell you," she said composedly, meeting 
 Madam Brooke s glance, " there s nothing to it? There s 
 nothing to anything on this beastly earth. Now this 
 here I thought I d got my hands on something that would 
 move. I knew that old man hadn t enough life left in 
 him for anything but muddling away the thing, even if 
 there s anything to it. I knew I could find a way to get 
 it looked into by the right kind of man. And here you 
 take it away from me, back to him, and he ll sit and stare 
 at it till he drops into his grave. And what ll become of 
 it then? The girl will marry and her children will want 
 the case to play with and pour the stuff out into the back 
 yard. There s nothing to it, I tell you life. Or if 
 
224 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 there is, they ve sworn to keep their secret. They re 
 bound we sha n t know." 
 
 The bitterness of this was so poignant that Madam 
 Brooke could not answer even with the last poor palliative 
 on her lips. She turned and went gravely away to her 
 own room on the floor below. But Miss Bixby had not 
 finished packing when she was back again. She came 
 slowly, for she was tired, and she bore in both hands, as 
 if it were a precious offering to be carried ceremoniously, 
 an oblong package done up in soft white paper. 
 
 " You look here, my dear," she said, dropping into a 
 chair and resting the parcel on her knees. " I bought 
 this for Beatrice Hayden, about the beginning of the war. 
 They d just imported it. And then the war began and 
 Phil went off and Bee hadn t any heart for clothes. And 
 I thought I d keep it till she began to live again. The 
 young do, you know. They must. But now I want to 
 give it to you." 
 
 She lifted the folds of paper, and Miss Bixby drew a 
 quick breath at the beauty of the fabric gleaming up at 
 them, gold in hue and of a texture almost impalpable 
 where it was not crusted by the rich embroidery of flowers 
 and leaves. It was queens covering in the days when 
 queens were what they can never be again. 
 
 " What could I do with it? " asked Miss Bixby, in a tone 
 of sad wonder that anybody could think of its pertaining 
 in any propriety to her. " Where could I wear it? " 
 
 " You could wear it in your room," said Madam Brooke 
 hopefully. " It would be something to build up from. 
 You must have more pleasures, my dear, more of the 
 things that take our minds off the bad things in the world. 
 They do keep their secrets, the Ones that arranged the 
 world. I know that, just as well as you do. I don t 
 know that I blame Them. They must have their reasons. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 225 
 
 But you can t dwell on it. If we dwell on it, we get queer. 
 Buy you a flower to smell, or hear some music, or wear a 
 pretty frock. When I look at some of those things 
 They ve given us, I find I can believe They re not so un 
 friendly to us, after all. Now I m going to put this in the 
 top of your trunk. You hang it on a chair in the sun 
 and see how it makes you feel." She got up, laid the 
 package in the tray, and gave it a little affectionate pat 
 of loving farewell. Then she held out her hand. "I m 
 going to lie down awhile," she said. " Perhaps I sha n t 
 see you again." 
 
 Miss Bixby took the fragile hand that had yet such 
 strength of will in it, and involuntarily bent her head a 
 little over it. It looked as if she wanted to kiss it. She 
 did want to, but she simply couldn t do it. The ice of 
 habit had begun to form again about her heart. 
 
 But Madam Brooke did not rest for any space of time. 
 She was lying on her bed, hands folded, her tired body 
 inert, when Brooke knocked and, when she bade him, 
 came in and shut the door behind him. He still carried 
 the case and he looked worried. 
 
 " See here," said he, " what am I going to do with it? 
 I ve knocked and knocked at her door and nobody an 
 swers." 
 
 " Keep it till morning then," she said, " unless you think 
 it ll be too much of a strain for her to wait." 
 
 " Oh, she ll know," said Brooke, " when she comes home. 
 I tucked a card under the door and told her it was found." 
 
 " Open it, dear," said Madam Brooke. She called on 
 her patient inner forces for one thrill more. " I want to 
 see how the thing looks." 
 
 " I can t," said Brooke. " It s locked." 
 
XXI 
 
 THE next step before Andrea was into the brambly 
 thicket of the tortured truth. Yet she took it without 
 hesitating as she would have taken a bigger leap into more 
 dubious ground to serve her father. He must, at all costs, 
 at least until she heard from Brooke, be spared the shock 
 of finding out about Miss Bixby and the olympium. 
 When he came home, he would go at once into the labor 
 atory, and his first glance would be for the case on the 
 table. She must be away, out of reach of questioning. 
 He had told her to look for rooms at the West End. That 
 would account for her. She set out bread and fruit the 
 only food she could persuade him now to touch and left 
 a written message for him in his room. She had gone out, 
 she told him, and it seemed to her safer to take the olym 
 pium with her. It was, she reminded him, what they used 
 to do. Andrea smiled a little, as she read over the mes 
 sage, a least little smile that had no mirth in it, remember 
 ing, but without emotion, the straight lines of her old in 
 tegrity. Once the truth meant naked fact. It still did, 
 for others more heroic than she who had built their houses 
 on that rock where, however the winds beat and the floods 
 come, they fall not. But, as it seemed to her now, when 
 you rest the tottering pillars of your house upon a lie, it 
 is a small matter if you top it with a disorderly brick the 
 more. You build as you can, propping the shameful pile 
 where you must, in the terrified hope of its lasting briefly, 
 
 226 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 227 
 
 but aware that, in the end, foredoomed, it falls. And she 
 had seen enough of Nemesis to believe that, when it does 
 topple to its ruin, with a savage honesty inherent in even 
 the false work of man it traps and crushes him who built 
 it. But that was beside the purpose. She had done her 
 deed and she was ready for her punishment. She went 
 out and up the street the way Brooke would come if he 
 had news for her, walked past the Harveys to the block 
 above and paced up and down, keeping watch of their 
 door and the car before it. Finally, when her tired mind 
 fell into doubt and told her she had somehow missed him, 
 Brooke ran out, got into the car and drove away. She 
 followed and saw it turn to the right at Arlington Street, 
 not to the left, as if he were going to her. Dispirited, she 
 walked back to a corner within sight of her own house, 
 lingered there a little and, with a perfunctory design of 
 accounting to her father for her absence, wandered about 
 the West End for an hour, looking for rooms. Her mind 
 was no longer keen; she could not even set it to work at 
 guessing what might happen. It was too dull and stiff 
 ened. The sight of Brooke whirling away from her had 
 looked final ; it did not seem likely that he would return. 
 She had her luncheon and wandered about again. With 
 the early dusk she was suddenly tired all over, not her 
 mind only but her whole body, and then she did go home 
 and found his card with the message saying the case was 
 found. That was good, she thought, that was temporary 
 comfort, though she would have to explain it all to her 
 father; and how that was to be done, with her mind so 
 tired, she could not see. But he had not come yet, and 
 she got something to eat and arranged a tray for him, hop 
 ing he would lie down and let her bring it to him. And 
 as the dusk deepened and she began to find, with the 
 strength food gave her, that she was strong enough to 
 
228 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS ; 
 
 balance possibilities of accident and yet not strong enough 
 to fight them off, he came. He was tired, more tired even 
 than she had expected. He carried the little box, and he 
 seemed in excellent spirits. He gave her a nod but no 
 word, and went on, as she expected, into the laboratory, 
 and at once she heard him laugh. Had he seen the case 
 was gone? He must have, at the instant of entering. 
 The light from the street lamp was enough to show up 
 every corner. She crept nearer the door and listened, 
 and still he laughed, snatches of low amused laughter, and 
 hummed a little in the intervals between. 
 
 " Andrea ! " he called, and now she knew he would tell 
 her and she must explain to him all that had happened 
 and that the case was safe with Brooke. She braced her 
 self for it, but he called again, lightly, pleasantly, as she 
 hardly remembered he could speak: 
 
 " I ll have a bite of supper now." 
 
 That was reprieve for her and she was glad. She had 
 it ready shortly, and he came out and sat down to it. He 
 was eating with determination, not as if the food ap 
 pealed to him but knowing he must hearten himself, and 
 she wondered if everything was going to frighten her now: 
 for it did frighten her to guess what he might be hearten 
 ing himself for. When he had finished, he sat a moment 
 looking down at his plate and her pulse answered with a 
 leap of fear. He was going, she knew, to tell her some 
 thing for which she was not prepared. He looked up at 
 her, and she shrank a little before the amused, satiric 
 gleam in his black eyes. 
 
 " So," he said, " they ve got it, haven t they, just as I 
 thought they would? " 
 
 " Who? " she managed to ask. 
 
 " The woman that came here, the one that told me it 
 was worth thousands of dollars. Or Peter Harvey. He s 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 229 
 
 probably sitting there in his library planning the pro 
 spectus for his syndicate, so they can exploit it as soon 
 as I m dead. He ll keep it hidden till then." 
 
 " But daddy," she said, as she had said to him before, 
 " you believed in Peter Harvey." 
 
 " He s an honest man," he owned, with an air of magnif 
 icent concession, " as men go. But he believes in business 
 as I believe in another world. Do you suppose he could 
 resist a brilliant opening like that, when he saw it before 
 him, any more than I could resist trying to make my con 
 nection between this world and the other? I don t blame 
 him. It s his form of energy, just as it s mine to bring 
 down fire from God. How did he manage it? " he ended 
 abruptly. "Do you know? Did he come himself, or 
 did he send the woman? " 
 
 She shrank from telling him now while that ungoverned 
 light was playing in his eyes, because if she did offer him 
 the literal fact it would confirm his doubts of Peter Har 
 vey. 
 
 " It s a queer story," she said. " But all that matters 
 to us now is that it s safe." 
 
 He laughed, a low reflective laugh, as if it wouldn t be 
 possible for him to tell or even quite realise himself how 
 humorous he found life and its harsh ironies. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " that s of the utmost importance for 
 us: to know it s safe." 
 
 She wished he would tell her about his day. 
 
 " Did you find anything? " she asked him. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I found something." 
 
 He began smiling in that way she found so repellent: 
 the sly smile of narrowed eyes and half pursed lips, the 
 facial commentary of the egoist who has again vindicated 
 his own astuteness. 
 
 " At the South End? " she pursued. 
 
230 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 He seemed to be thinking it over, weighing what she had 
 best be told. 
 
 "If it isn t the South End, it is sufficiently remote, 
 Andrea, far enough away from here for none of them to 
 think of it, not even you." 
 
 " Think of what? " she asked. 
 
 But that he did not answer. 
 
 " I want you," he said, " to listen to me, listen with all 
 your might, and memorise what I say, so you never will 
 forget. For the time is short." 
 
 " What do you mean? " she asked, her heart sinking, 
 " by saying the time is short? " 
 
 " My time," he said. " My time is short. You will 
 have to take over my work." 
 
 " You mean," she said, trying, with a painstaking in- 
 tentness, to help him clarify his turbid mind " what 
 you said before about watching with you, listening to 
 hear you call? " 
 
 " Partly," he said. " That, too. But let us take it in 
 course. I have had strange intuitions lately. When a 
 thing has happened I have known it in advance. Wlien 
 that woman came here to buy me, I knew she was com 
 ing. I didn t know who it was to be, but I knew some 
 body was coming to get my discovery away from me. 
 That shows my soul has got the better of the body. It s 
 got outside. It isn t going to use the body very much 
 longer." 
 
 " I d rather," said Andrea, with a pitiful attempt to re 
 call him to her own need of him, " I d rather have you in 
 your body, even if you didn t know so much." 
 
 " The woman isn t a bad sort," he said, reflecting. " If 
 she hadn t that mania for writing she d be a very good sort 
 indeed. She s as determined as the devil or as I am. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 231 
 
 But we mustn t think we can believe in her. We know 
 we can t. Dismiss it. The amount of it is, you ve got 
 to take the whole thing on your shoulders." 
 
 "But, father," she ventured, because it did not seem 
 possible to let him persist in building on the weakness of 
 her ignorance, " how could I prove what you haven t 
 proved yourself? " 
 
 " I shall write it out," he said. " I shall begin to-night. 
 And I shall help you from the other end of the line. Don t 
 look like that," he cried, in a nervous gust of impatience 
 at an emotion so far removed from his celestial casuistry. 
 " I m not going to die now. They wouldn t snatch me 
 away with my work half done. But we must prepare, 
 and when we ve moved from here and it s safe to have 
 the olympium by us, you must guard it as you d guard 
 your life. And you must look about until you find some 
 man to help you." 
 
 " To help me, father? help me what? " 
 
 It sickened her to draw him on and yet she knew it was 
 all to be said or she could not quiet him. 
 
 " A scientist," he said, thinking it out as he spoke, " a 
 man young, enthusiastic, imaginative, with an inventor s 
 brain. Make him love you, Andrea, make him love you," 
 he repeated, with a fevered intensity. " You are a beauti 
 ful woman. I ve been watching you lately, studying out 
 what you could do." 
 
 " father! " she cried out, ashamed. 
 
 " Make him insane with wanting you. Insanity s a 
 good thing, my girl, sometimes. It s the only one that will 
 do the things that lie between heaven and earth as this 
 does. Don t let him marry you, for if you do he ll be 
 the one to set the pace and you the one to follow. I see 
 it in you. Your mother was, too. You re like her. It 
 wasn t till she was snatched away from me that I realised 
 
232 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 everything I d got to do, to find her, to tell her I was sorry 
 well, well, all that s long ago, long ago." 
 
 He sank into musing for a moment, his head bent, his 
 face, as she ventured a glance at it, darkened by remem 
 bered grief. 
 
 " Men can t mourn forever," he said. " My trying to 
 speak to her grew into this other thing, speaking to the 
 world where she might be. At first the man tries to fight 
 out the way to his own little wish, and then he sees he s 
 been led on through that to doing the great thing, not for 
 himself but all men." Then his mind reverted to passion 
 ate adjuration. " Don t give him power over you, An 
 drea. Keep your foot on his neck. If you love him bet 
 ter than your life, don t let him know it till he has worked 
 out my problem as I set it down for him. Then do as 
 you like," he ended contemptuously, and though she inev 
 itably shrank, she knew the contempt was not for her but 
 for the pretensions of man in a universe where the atom 
 is but the atom and the whole looms implacably large. 
 " Satisfy your instincts. Pay tribute before you go. But 
 you will have done your task and what becomes of you 
 personally " 
 
 There he stopped, and she wondered if it was because he 
 realised his deduction would sound so monstrous that in 
 voluntarily, in human kindness to her, he spared her the 
 hearing of it. But he had minimised all mortal preten 
 sions until she too felt small and weak. 
 
 " It does make a difference what becomes of me, daddy," 
 she said, recalling him by a touch on his arm. " Not to 
 the other worlds you talk about. I don t know about 
 them. But to you and mother, daddy! remember 
 mother in her blue dress it makes a difference to you." 
 
 He put his hand over the fingers trembling on his arm. 
 
 " Yes, Andrea, yes," he said kindly. But it was a per- 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 233 
 
 functory gentleness, she despairingly felt, a surface sym 
 pathy the reflex of her tone. " Of course your mother d 
 care. She did wear a blue dress," he exclaimed, in a sud 
 den burst of what sounded like alarm at this rising of un- 
 considered trifles from the dead welter of oblivion. 
 " How did you remember that? I hadn t thought of it 
 for years. My God ! " he muttered to himself, as if re 
 turning to the garden of beauty which was his youth and 
 the playtime of his love, dark now under the yews of 
 sorrow and the briers of forgetfulness. " How can such 
 things be!" 
 
 He sat silent for a moment, going back and back, An 
 drea could see, and then snatching himself out of the dark 
 garden in terror at thinking where the paths might lead 
 him. He rose so abruptly that her hand fell from his arm. 
 
 " Go to bed," he said curtly. " You re dog-tired. I 
 shall sit up and write." And he went into the laboratory 
 and shut the door. 
 
 Then the virtue of endurance ran out of her and she 
 knew she was indeed dog-tired. These were things she 
 could not think of any more until her blurred brain was 
 again sentient to impressions. She could not even suffer 
 because he loved the system of worlds God had made too 
 much to love her whom he had himself called into this 
 present life. She could not wonder because he seemed so 
 entirely unmoved by the loss of his olympium nor specu 
 late upon the meaning of that look on his face which 
 seemed to say he knew strange sequels to all mortal hap 
 penings. She got ready for bed in a daze and was more 
 than half asleep when she lay down on her couch there in 
 the living room and floated off into a blank forgetfulness, 
 eased by gratitude that at least none of these things need 
 be thought of any more to-night. 
 
 After a long night, as it seemed to her at the moment, 
 
234 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 she awoke, perhaps at a sound in the room. Or it was 
 not so much a sound as the consciousness of a presence. 
 She raised herself on her elbow, her heart beating thickly, 
 and stared into the half darkness; but nothing moved, and 
 she lay there following familiar outlines and verifying 
 them, calming more and more. But when her darting 
 glance sought to pierce the obscurity by the outer door, 
 she found there a darker shadow, the figure of a man. At 
 the little sound of alarm she made he moved and spoke. 
 It was her father. 
 
 " Go back to sleep again. I m going out." 
 
 "You mustn t, dear," she said, confused. "It s the 
 middle of the night. Or else it s morning. Anyway it s 
 too dark to do anything. Father, please." 
 
 " Lie down," he said, " and get your sleep. You ll 
 need it. I ll tell you about it when I come back." 
 
 He opened the door, went out and shut it with a bang, 
 as if to give her added corroboration, and she heard his 
 steps, quick and light, upon the pavement. She could not 
 follow him, but it was impossible to sleep. Step by step 
 of late she had entered into a state of intense nervousness 
 responsive to every move he made. She was living in a 
 condition of acute alarm, watchful and, at every shift in 
 the current of their lives, reminding herself to be pre 
 pared. She got up, shut her windows, went into the lab 
 oratory and turned on the light. His table was empty ex 
 cept for some loose sheets of paper, pen and ink. The 
 paper was covered with his fine small script. It was, she 
 judged from the first words, a scientific exposition; it had 
 no significance for her. She looked in all possible hiding- 
 places for the box he had carried in his hand that 
 morning. It was not there. He must have taken it with 
 him. She returned to the living room, dressed, put on a 
 coat because her nervousness, rather than the night, had 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 235 
 
 made her cold, and sat down to wait. It was eleven when 
 she finished dressing, and at twelve she lay down on her 
 bed as she was and drew the blankets over her. Now she I 
 was vividly awake, facing the night or the call which i 
 might draw her forth into it, possibly to find him or go 
 with him on some quest. She felt the gradations of 
 squalid misery the watcher always feels: the personal 
 discomfort of meeting the night in disorderly precautions 
 against its chill, the inevitable anger at the rape of those 
 sweet hours. And then, at two, he came. She heard his 
 steps growing along the pavement, she heard his key in 
 the lock, and he came in. When he closed the door be 
 hind him he drew a deep breath. Something, it said, was 
 done. At first she thought she would not speak. He 
 should believe she was asleep and then he might go into 
 his room and sleep also. But he called her. 
 
 " Andrea ! " The tone was short and sharp. " Wake 
 up." 
 
 " Yes, father," she said, threw off her covering and 
 rose. She turned on the light and he gave another sound 
 of satisfaction. 
 
 " You dressed," he said. " That s good. Now sit down 
 and I ll tell you." 
 
 He drew forward one of the chairs from the table and 
 motioned her to take it. He was about to pull off his 
 coat, but she stopped him by a touch. 
 
 " Keep it on," she said. " It s cold." 
 
 He sat down as he was and she took the chair he had 
 indicated. 
 
 " Andrea," said he, " were you surprised when I found 
 the case of olympium had been stolen and was neither 
 taken aback nor nor anything you d have expected me 
 to be? " 
 
 " No," she said stupidly. Then a little outcry against 
 
236 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 the way she found life treating her did leap from her. 
 " Father," she said, " I don t believe there s enough of 
 me left to be surprised at anything." 
 
 " I told you," he said, " I knew it was coming. I knew 
 they were going to break and enter and get it away from 
 me. If they found me watching it, they d kill me. If 
 they found you, and you resisted, they d kill you. So I 
 put it in the box you saw me carry out this morning. I 
 told you it was certain appliances, I don t remember what. 
 I thought you might as well not know. The less you 
 knew, the less they could make you tell. I carried it 
 round with me all day, and that woman came here and 
 stole the case she thought it was in, and Peter Harvey is 
 a fool for his pains. And when I was out to-day, An 
 drea " here his voice rose exultantly and she saw this 
 was the climax of his flamboyant deed "I went through 
 a street where they were laying bricks in front of vacant 
 lots they re filling in. And I went up there to-night and 
 pried up the bricks, and buried my olympium in the sand. 
 It s God s mercy the weather is mild. No frost, Andrea I 
 God meant it, don t you see? " 
 
 "But, father," she cried, "you ve hidden it so you 
 never can get it again. You ve thrown it away." 
 
 " No, I haven t, my girl," said he, and now he looked so 
 sly that he seemed no longer her father but a malevolent 
 intelligence that might easily become dreadful to her. " I 
 have counted the bricks, north, east, south and west. I 
 have measured the distance from the corner. I could go 
 there with a flash-light and dig it up again in twenty 
 minutes. And when weVe found another place where 
 Peter Harvey s spies won t break in and brain us for it, 
 I ll dig it up again and you ll see you ll see! " 
 
 He laughed derisively and long, and she was afraid. 
 
 "Now," he said, "I ll make out my chart, so that 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 237 
 
 whether I m alive or dead, it shaVt be lost. It won t 
 take long." 
 
 He went off into the laboratory, and she heard him 
 laughing in what seemed that terrible derision against 
 the hostile powers he had outwitted. She rose, smoothed 
 the clothing on her bed and suddenly felt, like a tortured 
 child, how bright the light was in the room, but that she 
 had no strength left to turn it off. She lay down and cov 
 ered her eyes and was immediately asleep. As she fell 
 into the gulf of it, she was conscious of but one thing: 
 that she had escaped that torturing light. 
 
XXII 
 
 AGAIN it seemed to Andrea that she had been asleep a 
 long time, more than a night, sunk in the depths of many 
 nights, and that she was slowly and unwillingly coming 
 awake. Yet because it was so still a paradise where she 
 lay, it became the more essential to her to cling there, to 
 whatever she could find belonging to it, and refuse to come 
 awake. She might have been a water creature the slow 
 persistent action of the breathing tide was trying to cast 
 up into an element less friendly, so that she had to lay 
 hold of what she might, possibly the piles of the harbor 
 of that too familiar shore, and sway there, her body laved 
 by the moving water, and yet safe in it so long as she held 
 on. Wherever she was and it seemed mysteriously 
 the room as well as the encompassing tide she was 
 aware, not through hearing or the testimony of her closed 
 eyes, that some one had come in. At first it seemed to 
 be one person and then it was two who were beside her, 
 in some manner contemplating her. It cost her no trouble 
 to reconcile being in the water and at the same time in 
 her bed. It cost her no thought to reconcile the two per 
 sons as being very near, intensely interested in her and 
 so well known to her that she could accept their presence 
 while in no sense defining it. Whether it was dark or 
 light about her she did not know, the artificial brightness 
 of the room where she lay in the surge of sleep presently 
 
 238 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 239 
 
 to break, or the darkness of the water where she hung in 
 that motioned calm. But the two were there. They 
 wished her infinitely well, and though they seemed to 
 have nothing to say to her, their presence alone brought 
 her an exquisite calm. She had, for an instant, the 
 fleeting certainty which comes at moments in the troubled 
 space of a lifetime, of that complete understanding which 
 puts an end to doubt. It is the golden key we are all 
 seeking and are never allowed to possess. But sometimes, 
 for a moment merely, it seems as if we are permitted to 
 hold it in our tired hands. So, for the instant allotted 
 her, she held the key. In trying afterward to remember 
 and weave the moment into the web of certainties so that 
 she might never lose it, she thought of the instant as very 
 short and again that it was long. For it seemed to have 
 lasted from the day when God made man to the day when 
 He meant to gather him up to carry him elsewhere, and 
 the significance of it was: " This is My intention toward 
 you." And the intention was beneficently kind, so kind 
 that there was something ridiculous in the scepticism of 
 a world which had found it anything else. She had 
 nothing to say to the two who were bending over her in 
 this intensity of concern, as if they were bent on stamp 
 ing her individuality on their own memory to keep, a most 
 sacred possession, as one keeps the portrait of the far 
 beloved. She felt no astonishment or gratitude over be 
 ing allowed, for that instant, to hold the golden key. 
 Everything was so inevitably as it had to be, that what 
 was showed her its benign face as the child of what had 
 been and the precursor of what must be. But suddenly 
 something silent in her mind spoke out. She heard it 
 quite plainly, as if a sleeper should wake and unexpectedly 
 throw a word into a theme that was going on without him: 
 , you ve got on your blue dress! " 
 
240 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 And one of the two beside her either laughed or in some 
 way implied a sense of the absurd dearness that leads to 
 such laughing, and the other joined it, and it was appar 
 ent they loved her for that in some special way and that 
 somehow she had shown them their coming meant to her 
 all they could have wished. And then, shattering the 
 stillness of the room, dispelling the dear silent laughter 
 of the two, she heard her father s voice, full, assured, com 
 manding: 
 
 "Andrea! Andrea! Andrea!" 
 
 And her eyes, after that instant when the water cast 
 her up and the stillness and the presences were blotted out, 
 came open to daylight in the room, paling out the gas, and 
 she sat up, her heart suffocating her, and set her feet on 
 the floor. Whether she answered her father she could 
 never afterward be sure. Sometimes she made herself be 
 lieve she did answer, that she cried: 
 
 " Yes, father, yes! I am coming." 
 
 But she did, without longer delay than that one be 
 wildered instant, run to the laboratory door and throw it 
 open on such drearness as the grey dawn seemed to have 
 come to show her. He sat there at his table, his head 
 fallen forward on the scattered sheets of paper under his 
 hand, and the hand had a curious look of possession, of 
 asserting its dominion to the last. She touched him on 
 the shoulder, not to waken him too suddenly, cried out, 
 in spite of herself, and started back. She had never 
 touched a shoulder that felt like that. She had been in 
 the act of bending to look at him more closely, to put her 
 face to his, to call to him. But the touch told her, and 
 she ran out of the room and out of the house and looked 
 along the dreary street just waking. A man was coming 
 toward her, a watchman from night duty at the garage, 
 and she beckoned him, looking so wild of countenance 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 241 
 
 and so strange with her disordered hair and clothes, that 
 he broke into a run. But she told him quietly: 
 
 " Will you get me some one? I can t leave him. He 
 is dead." 
 
XXIII 
 
 LATER that morning, indeed well along in the forenoon 
 to give Andrea time to get her house in order, Brooke set 
 out to deliver the recovered case. He had meant to go 
 immediately after breakfast, and chafed at waiting. 
 But his father, with whom he had had a long session of 
 talk the night before, detained him. Peter was in the 
 library when Brooke came down. 
 
 " I wouldn t go over there now," Peter Harvey said, 
 appearing in the doorway, and yet speaking with lowered 
 voice. His wife did not know what things had come to 
 pass, and it was inexpedient, to his mind, that she should 
 ever know, unless she did sometime return to her old 
 abounding charity. Peter felt he couldn t bear to hear 
 anybody else blamed, at least from Isabel s lips, either 
 Miss Bixby who had stolen the thing or the Doves who 
 had brought such obscure issues into the house which had 
 been confused enough before. 
 
 " She ll be anxious," said Brooke. 
 
 " Not after your note. You said you left one." 
 
 " Still," said Brooke, " I do think she ll be anxious." 
 
 He had what he called a wireless feeling that Andrea 
 needed him, though he had been smiling at himself since 
 the early morning when he woke with it and told himself 
 it was S. 0. S. And yet he knew the probabilities might 
 be it was only because he needed her. All night he had 
 been sending out S. 0. S. to her. 
 
 " Come in here," said his father. 
 
 242 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 243 
 
 Brooke stepped in and Peter shut the library door. 
 
 " Do you know how they live down there? " he asked. 
 " It s a kind of a barn where they eat and one of em 
 eleeps. I don t know what s in behind. You ll only 
 bother her if you go butting in now. Your mother and I 
 went in the morning and it was all right enough because 
 they knew we were coming, but I shouldn t do it again. 
 The place was as neat as wax. The girl s a wonder. 
 But I shouldn t go for a couple of hours at least." 
 
 Brooke fretted away the time for an hour, taking down 
 a book from the shelf, reading it discontentedly, flouting 
 it with inarticulate comment and putting it back. His 
 father, writing with what seemed an unnoting placidity, 
 Bmiled a little, and when Brooke came up to the table 
 and stopped, looking down at him evidently with some 
 thing to communicate, Peter glanced inquiringly up. 
 
 " Dad," said Brooke, with the disproportioned irrita 
 tion of one who finds his task of inaction too much for 
 him, " how can you sit there paying bills? " 
 
 " I feel rather obliged to," said Peter mildly. " We 
 have to, you know pay our bills." 
 
 " You seem to know such a confounded lot," Brooke 
 grumbled, " you and grannie. You go along about your 
 business, both of you, as if nothing was ever going to faze 
 you. She s a regular New England witch and you re a 
 Bphinx, a he-sphinx." Then it came out, what his tumul 
 tuous mind had been hurrying to. " I suppose you know 
 I wanted to marry Andrea." 
 
 " She knew it, anyway," said Peter, " your grandmother 
 did. Only she thinks you want to now." 
 
 " The devil she does!" 
 
 Brooke stared. His father was on the point of adding: 
 
 " She says Phil never married Andrea. What do you 
 say? " 
 
244 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 But he shut his lips on that. With a present befogged 
 to him the future looked too precarious to tamper with. 
 He did not look up at Brooke again and inwardly advised 
 himself to curb his curiosity as to whether Brooke was 
 looking at him. The next moment, when his interest 
 really wouldn t down and he concluded he might as well 
 know how the boy took it, Brooke snatched the case from 
 the table and disappeared with the speed of a wind that, 
 having made all the disturbance that could be expected 
 of its particular velocity might as well hurry on to an 
 other corner of the heavens and new cloud spaces. Peter 
 heard the outer door bang after him, and immediately 
 gave up his work. It had been perfunctory, assumed 
 to give him a not too exigent air and keep Brooke at ease 
 with him. Now he began whistling softly and thought 
 about life. 
 
 Brooke dashed down to the dreary West End street in 
 short order and plied the knocker with determination. He 
 was met at once, not by Andrea but a stout fresh-faced 
 woman with her out-door things on. She looked at him 
 doubtfully and he asked for Andrea. She wasn t sure, 
 she told him, whether Miss Dove would feel like seeing 
 him. Or perhaps he was one of the family. 
 
 " What is it? " asked Brooke. 
 
 His heart sickened. This, he understood, was the 
 meaning of her S. 0. S. The woman answered now with 
 a professional gentleness, seeing he was moved: 
 
 " It s Mr. Dove. He died last night. I m going out 
 now to get in some supplies." 
 
 Brooke motioned her to stand aside and walked into 
 the living room. The laboratory door was open and he 
 could see the outline of something on trestles and a bit of 
 Andrea s skirt where she sat beside it. The woman fol 
 lowed him until he entered and she saw Andrea s face, as 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 245 
 
 she caught sight of him, and then she went out and left 
 them. Brooke felt himself shuddering all over. It was 
 new to him. He had not shuddered in battle, but this 
 present tremor was because he had seen Andrea as dead. 
 She was entirely composed. She even looked up smil 
 ingly. 
 
 " I hoped you d come," she said. " I ve got something 
 to tell you. I shall be going away at once. Father s 
 gone, you see. I couldn t stay here without him." 
 
 For a moment he thought she meant she had resolved 
 to go the road her father had taken, but at once he saw 
 that was not so. She was regarding the world " but as 
 the world." 
 
 " Of course you must go away," he answered. " You ll 
 come to us." 
 
 That she might not have heard, for she paid no atten 
 tion to it. 
 
 " I shall go to New York," she said. " I shall work for 
 speed, my stenography, you know. Then I can get 
 a job. But that isn t it," she continued quickly, to fore 
 stall him. " I sha n t see any of you again, and so I want 
 to say now, while father s here " She paused a moment 
 and put her hand to her throat as if it hurt her. " He 
 never would have let me do it," she went on, " never, 
 never, if he d been himself. Mother never would. But 
 they don t blame me. They ve been lovely " Here 
 she stopped again, with that pathetic hand at her throat, 
 and he advanced a pace and took the hand and held it 
 hard. 
 
 " What s the use of talking," he said, " when I know? 
 There s never anything you need say to me." 
 
 " Oh, yes, there is," said Andrea, smiling at him and 
 leaving the hand in his, very glad it was there to help 
 her through her trial. " You don t know this. I never 
 
246 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 saw your brother. I saw his picture at your house, and 
 I thought it was you and you were killed, and I told your 
 father and mother their son had married me. I did it for 
 money. That was precisely what I did it for, for 
 money." 
 
 She did not look up at him and he stood staring at the 
 line her lashes made. When she did look up, it was not at 
 him but at that covered immobility which had been her 
 father, as if to gain courage from it. 
 
 " And I ve got my father back," she said dreamily and 
 most happily. "He hasn t been himself, not for years; 
 but last night before he called me " There she paused, 
 knowing she could not go into that with any chance of 
 making herself understood, and Brooke gripped her hand 
 and could say nothing. 
 
 " You hurt my hand," said Andrea, with another little 
 smile that thanked him for the hurt. 
 
 His kindness, his dearness in not letting it go as soon 
 as he knew she told lies for money seemed to her some 
 thing to remember afterward with the certainty of the two 
 presences that came to her last night and the feel of the 
 golden key. 
 
 " Why," said Brooke, having not much of a voice to 
 say it, and letting her hand loose a very little, " why, my 
 darling, then you did wait for me, after all." 
 
 She looked at him now, and more and more he seemed 
 a part of the night and the golden key. But there, with 
 the immobile presence beside them, they stopped. Andrea 
 was still sure that although he forgave her she had proved 
 too poor a thing to be admitted again to the heaven where 
 she had lived with him in fancy, and Brooke knew they 
 were already there in the heaven and that he could pres 
 ently tell her so. But this moment belonged not to him 
 but to the dead. The body lying there insisted, by its 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 247 
 
 very presence, on all the rites and oblations due the clos 
 ing of the account of dust with dust. Brooke held up the 
 case before her. 
 
 " What shall I do with it? " he asked. " Let me keep 
 it for you till Father ll put it in the safe." 
 
 At that she had her little rueful smile, and this too was 
 a thing she could not go into now. Why tell him olym- 
 pium had been capriciously, by one of those turns of the 
 hand of fate that seem so idle and yet are full of a deep 
 intent, snatched away again and covered from the eyes of 
 men? Were the gods really jealous, she wondered briefly. 
 Was their only supremacy this secret of the continuance 
 of things, and did they fear for their own godhead if they 
 gave it over into mortal hands? And then for an instant 
 she had again the feel of the golden key. She sat looking 
 at the familiar case, wondering. They had guarded it so 
 long, she and her father, that it seemed to her impossible it 
 should not carry some vast significance. 
 
 " How does it feel? " she asked. " Is it light? Could 
 there be something in it, do you think? " 
 
 "Something in it?" he repeated. "Why, isn t his 
 olympium in it? " 
 
 That she did not answer. 
 
 " Yes, keep it," she said. " Open it when you feel like 
 it and see. And now will you look over those papers on the 
 desk? They were what he was working on last night. See 
 if they are directions. See if you can find a sort of chart." 
 
 He went over to the desk and began examining the pa 
 pers page by page, reading, comparing, frowning more 
 and more. Finally he rose and came to her, evening their 
 edges thoughtfully. 
 
 " I m pretty sure," he hesitated, " I m sorry, but I m 
 sure his mind wasn t working right. They are Andrea, 
 dear, they re not what you d expect." 
 
248 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 That was a long way from describing their madness of 
 confusion, but it was, he felt, all he could say. 
 
 "Aren t they," she seemed begging him to agree, 
 " aren t they scientific data, something like that? " 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " They re theorizings," he said, " about the distances 
 of planets and the influence of elements and the travelling 
 of sound. They re not coherent even. No, there s noth 
 ing, Andrea, nothing." 
 
 " There s a chart," she insisted. " There must be a 
 chart." 
 
 He showed her a sheet traversed by one wandering line. 
 In a corner of the page were figures, the words " ten 
 feet from the corner, thirty bricks west," and then the 
 whole had been effaced by a scrawling network of lines 
 and written under it, as if in a tempest of bewilderment 
 was the word, three times repeated, " no no no." 
 She was right. The gods had hidden the evidence of im 
 mortality under the bricks of an unknown street. But 
 she sought for the feel of the golden key and was con 
 tent. 
 
 " I ll take the whole business away with me," said 
 Brooke. "Andrea! " 
 
 She looked up at him and waited. 
 
 " She s back again," he said, " your woman. Leave her 
 here and come out for a little walk." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Andrea. " I promised him I wouldn t 
 leave him. I did this morning because I had to run out 
 and tell the man to send somebody in. But I couldn t 
 quite help that, and it didn t seem to matter because he 
 had just spoken to me, and they d both been here. I 
 know her dress was blue ! That was the queer part of it. 
 And besides, the olympium wasn t here and he hadn t had 
 time to tell me what to do." 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 249 
 
 All this troubled Brooke exceedingly, because, not un 
 derstanding, she seemed to him light-headed. But the 
 nurse came and stood in the doorway, looking kind and 
 capable, and Andrea smiled at her as if she liked her, and 
 Brooke read the counsel in the woman s eyes, and, with a 
 word to Andrea, took up the case again and went away. 
 
 His father was still in the library and Brooke burst 
 in on him. 
 
 " See here," said he, " why don t we go over to Tech and 
 see what s in this thing? " 
 
 Peter laid down the pen that gave him pretext for his 
 solitude, and rose. 
 
 " What s in it? " he repeated. " Why, don t they know 
 what s in it? " 
 
 " She doesn t," said Brooke. " And he father, he s 
 dead." 
 
 And all that occurred to Peter to say was " Poor devil I " 
 It was not even in his mind to say " Poor girl ! " He 
 could not cajole himself into any decent pretence of think 
 ing Andrea was not most mercifully set free. 
 
 " I thought I d better bring it away with me," said 
 Brooke. " She s in no state to be reminded of it. Now 
 what do you think of taking it over to Tech and getting 
 it analysed? " 
 
 " It s locked, isn t it? " said Peter. " She give you the 
 key? " 
 
 " No. I couldn t bother her. I d rather break it open. 
 I ll take the responsibility. Dad " he hesitated and 
 finished, in a manly way, " you might as well know I m 
 undertaking all sorts of responsibilities for her from now 
 on." 
 
 Peter looked at him, tried to say the proper thing, won 
 dering what it was, failed, got up, put his hand on 
 Brooke s shoulder and asked: 
 
250 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 " She isn t alone down there? " 
 
 " No, there s a nurse with her. That s the best we can 
 do." 
 
 "You run up," said Peter, after another minute of 
 thought, " and tell your grandmother: just that he s dead, 
 you know, and how you left her." 
 
 Brooke found the rest of that forenoon a processional 
 of strange things. He ran up to grandmother, who was 
 in bed, and succinctly reported all he had learned at An 
 drea s, qualifying nothing, and she looked at him out of 
 the lace clouds that obscured the ills time had done her 
 and said: 
 
 " Yes, dear. I ll get up." 
 
 He ran downstairs and found Beatrice standing with 
 his father at the library door, pink from her morning walk 
 and subtly not the Beatrice of yesterday. Brooke stopped 
 with a jolt of the heart, knowing he should never see the 
 Beatrice of yesterday again. She was quietly confident, 
 and, if looks meant anything, what those who have lost 
 the world call happy. She was evidently, at the instant 
 of his downward rush, trying to tell Peter something diffi 
 cult, and the slightly dropped lids gave her face that ex 
 quisite softness and wonder of knowledge mothers wear. 
 But she roused herself for Brooke and gave him, with the 
 old smile of youthful understanding, something ineffably 
 more. 
 
 " Morning, Brooke," said she. " I ve been trying to 
 tell him " with a hand returned to Peter " how differ 
 ent everything is now I ve heard. I was right, you see. 
 He did like me. I was the one. And life isn t so awfully 
 long anyway. I m not going to whimper. I m going to 
 play the game." 
 
 Peter, delighting in her gameness, yet heard the com 
 menting voice of time recognised within him, loving her, 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 251 
 
 lamenting over her and mourning: " Life isn t so very 
 long? Not for old age upstairs there in its bed, fight 
 ing the last gallant inch, not for me at my breathless 
 milestone of middle age. But you, poor flower of youth ! 
 how many mornings have got to shed their dews, how 
 many suns set in lonely beauty on the grave of your re 
 membrance! It s a long pull, dear youth, to that goal 
 of everlasting faithfulness, with oblivion dogging you all 
 the way." But all he said was: 
 
 " That s my girl. Take it standing." 
 
 And Brooke, wishing he could tell her about Andrea 
 and how she and Andrea would like each other, drew back 
 from flouting her with his own and Andrea s consummate 
 bliss, and Beatrice went up to find Isabel, and Brooke and 
 his father set off to Cambridge. 
 
 Peter Harvey had a friend in Technology, an eminent 
 chemist, and him they sought. They gave him no expla 
 nation, no previous history of the leather case. They 
 simply wanted him to tell them what was inside. The 
 eminent chemist stood by while Brooke broke the lock 
 and then took it over to a table under a good light and 
 opened it. There it was, a package done up securely in 
 newspaper, tied with string. His Eminence lifted it out, 
 untied it, opened the paper, looked at the contents, glanced 
 at the two men, went back to the contents again, took up 
 a pinch of it and let it fall. Then he looked at Peter 
 again and inquired pleasantly: 
 
 " What s the joke, old man? " 
 
 " What do you make of it? " Peter asked him. 
 
 " Handle it," said His Eminence. " Look at it. Smell 
 it, if you want to. What do you make of it yourself? " 
 
 " Why," said Peter feeling unwontedly small, " it looks 
 to me like common sand." 
 
 " Yes," said the professor drily, " that s what it is, 
 common sand. Now what s the joke? " 
 
252 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 They never told him. They apologised, Peter so 
 shamefacedly that His Eminence saw there was more be 
 neath than he needed to know, and forgave them. They 
 thanked him and went home. And on the way Brooke 
 talked to him about Andrea. 
 
 Meantime Madam Brooke had got up and seated her 
 self by the fire in her own room waiting until Susanne 
 should tell her Beatrice had gone. When she heard that, 
 she asked Susanne to tell Mrs. Harvey she wanted to see 
 her. Isabel came in, subdued, her pink cheeks paled, 
 her drooping air challenging the kindness the old lady s 
 was not yet prepared to give her. She went to her mother 
 and kissed the old lady s proffered cheek. 
 
 " What is it, dear? " she asked. " I ought to have come 
 earlier but Bee has been in. She kept me." 
 
 " I m all right," said Madam Brooke. " There s your 
 chair. Draw up." 
 
 It was a low rocker, almost, though ordinarily capa 
 cious, like a child s chair, and when Isabel had taken it 
 she felt small and indecisive beside her mother who sat 
 so straight and high and looked so perfectly equipped for 
 the offices of life. Isabel did not feel equipped. She had 
 lost Miss Bixby. She had said good-by to her with sor 
 row immeasurable and tears unrestrained. She had been 
 living on Miss Bixby and the pabulum she brought her 
 from that vague other world. And she sat there and 
 looked absently into the fire and dreaded the impact of 
 her mother s kind intellectuality, and her poor lip 
 trembled. 
 
 " How s Bee? " asked Madam Brooke. 
 
 " Beautiful," said Isabel. She was glad to take a de 
 laying saunter into Bee s psychology. " She doesn t say 
 much. About all she says is she s going to play the game. 
 It s splendid, but I can t help wishing she wouldn t take it 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 253 
 
 just that way, setting her teeth, you know, holding on. 
 She might get such a lot of comfort, such direct inspira 
 tion " 
 
 " Out of automatic writing? " inquired Madam Brooke. 
 " She couldn t. Bee could no more take comfort in that 
 than in the witches that befuddled Macbeth. Now Isabel, 
 how long are you going to keep this house a house of 
 mourning over your explorations of the dark continent? " 
 
 Isabel looked at her with appealing eyes and her lip 
 trembled. 
 
 " Why, mother," she said, " that s exactly what I m 
 trying to prevent. I don t want it a house of mourning. 
 I want it recognised that Phil isn t dead. He s alive and 
 we can hear from him every day." 
 
 " It isn t Phil s death that s made it a house of mourn 
 ing," said the old lady inexorably. " It isn t because the 
 rest of us don t feel his presence, whatever it is, whether 
 it s actually Phil or the beautiful memory of him. It isn t 
 Phil we ve lost. It s you." 
 
 Isabel was unfeignedly surprised. 
 
 "Why," said she, "I m right here. Nothing has 
 changed except for Phil." 
 
 " Your husband," said Madam Brooke, " has lost his 
 wife. You used to be Belle, you never knew very 
 much, but you were a perfect dear to live with. Peter 
 couldn t come into the house without hooting to find out 
 where you were. He couldn t settle to anything till he 
 knew. Now he shuts himself up in the library and pre 
 tends to write." 
 
 " That," said Isabel solemnly, " is his way of meeting 
 it. It s his grief, for Phil." 
 
 " It s grief for you. He misses you like the deuce. He 
 may not know it, but he does." 
 
 " Does he miss me? " she queried, half to herself. 
 
254 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 The pink crept into her cheeks. She looked suddenly 
 charming and, the old lady noted, with a pathetic wonder, 
 young. But she wasn t sparing her. 
 
 " As for Brooke," she said, " you act as if boys came 
 back every day from where he s come from. If it 
 hasn t hurt him more than it has, it s because he s in 
 love." 
 
 " In love? " cried Isabel. " Brooke in love? " 
 
 " Yes, with Andrea Dove. Haven t you seen it? " 
 
 " That girl ! " cried Isabel, the angry spark flitting into 
 her eyes. " That girl that said oh, it wasn t true. She 
 might say it till she dropped dead before me, and I should 
 know it wasn t true." 
 
 " She isn t going to drop dead before anybody," said 
 the old lady. " She s going to get good and rested now 
 her father s gone " 
 
 " Where has he gone? " 
 
 " He s dead," said Madam Brooke. " And we ve got 
 to look out for Andrea till she gets on her feet, and then 
 Brooke ll look out for her." 
 
 " Never ! " said Isabel. She rose from the low chair 
 and stood, making the most of her height. "Never! if 
 she enters this house I shall leave it." 
 
 Madam Brooke sat looking at her for a moment, in deep 
 consideration. 
 
 " Isabel," said she, " if one of your children committed 
 a sin for your sake told a lie for instance, to save your 
 life would you forgive him? " 
 
 "No," said Isabel. 
 
 But she knew, as Madam Brooke did, that she would. 
 And Madam Brooke was prepared to tell her so. 
 
 "Nonsense!" said she. "Of course you would. A 
 sin of love committed for your sake ! there s nothing you d 
 like better. Well, that s what Andrea Dove did. She 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 255 
 
 lied to make you give her money as Phil s wife when it 
 seemed doubtful whether her fathered live to use it if 
 she got it in any reasonable way. And now he s dead she 
 doesn t want your money or anything that is yours. Ex 
 cept Brooke, of course. I m in hopes she ll want him or 
 the poor boy ll break his heart." 
 
 " I was never," said Isabel breathlessly, " so indignant 
 in my life." 
 
 " Yes, you re, indignant," said the old lady sadly, 
 " which means you re plain mad. We never knew you 
 had a temper, Isabel, in the old days before we lost you." 
 
 Isabel turned, without a look at her, and went out of 
 the room. She walked, her mother thought, like Queen 
 Victoria. Madam Brooke sat bending over her trembling 
 hands thinking sadly of the way these groups of mortal 
 atoms fly apart and make their little catastrophes in the 
 complex order of the movement which is life. But she 
 had not sat there long before she heard her daughter s 
 step again, a quick rush unlike her ordinary high-heeled 
 trot. She came in, up to her mother s knee and sank 
 down there. 
 
 " You won t believe it, darling," she cried, between sob 
 bing and excited laughter. " But I ve heard from Phil. 
 Miss Bixby left the last message on the table and I ve 
 just found it. How he managed it I don t know. But 
 if they can move the pencil in the human hand, why 
 shouldn t they pick it up when they find it lying there all 
 ready? Phil has forgiven her. He tells me to forgive 
 her. And I can do it now. I ve heard from him, mother. 
 Don t you realize I ve heard from him? And I ll be good, 
 mother. Oh, truly I ll be good." 
 
 Madam Brooke laid her hand on the beautiful shining 
 hair. Strange things came into this old lady s mind 
 sometimes, and now she was thinking that women in grief, 
 
256 THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 
 
 in antique days, tore their hair and covered it with ashes; 
 but now the despairing mourner omits no last ceremonial 
 of a symmetrical coiffure. Isabel crouched there like a 
 child and cried like a child, no controlled and ordered rite 
 of weeping but honest gulps and floods. When this 
 abated, she got to her feet, wiped her face and asked quite 
 timidly, in a way that made her, like a child, engaging: 
 
 " Shall I go to see her? " 
 
 Madam Brooke shook her head. 
 
 " Not yet," she answered. " Not these first days. You 
 see, you were rather nasty to her. She s in no condition 
 to be blamed, and it mightn t be easy to convince her you 
 didn t mean to be nasty again." 
 
 " I thought," Isabel ventured, " she might come here to 
 us." 
 
 " Certainly," said her mother, " most certainly. It s 
 the only way." 
 
 " And then," Isabel continued, looking down at the toe 
 of her shoe, as if she were most desirous of not encounter 
 ing any possible negative in her mother s face, " I thought, 
 as she s been connected with her father s pursuits in that 
 direction, she might be willing to try the automatic writ 
 ing." 
 
 " Isabel ! " cried the old lady, so stridently that her 
 daughter started. " Do you mean to tell me you re going 
 on with this jugglery that s turned you into a changeling 
 in your husband s house? And after you told me you d 
 be good? " 
 
 Isabel stood there, still regarding the toe of her shoe. 
 
 " Isabel," said Madam Brooke, " come here. Nearer. 
 Yes, come right here to mother. Now, Isabel, I m going 
 to trust you. Do you hear? And you are going to be 
 good." 
 
 " Yes, mother," said Isabel. 
 
THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS 257 
 
 And they talked of other things. 
 
 " But will she? " the old lady wondered, when she was 
 again by herself. " Or will she go on muddling her brains 
 and making her lip tremble so I can t look at it without 
 wanting to cry? It s an awful thing to make an old 
 woman cry." 
 
 And she laughed, so that Susanne, coming in to mend 
 the fire, smiled at her sympathetically. 
 
 " Isn t it, Susanne? " asked the old lady, and Susanne, 
 always blithely willing to accept the immediate point of 
 view, said: 
 
 " Yes, Madam Brooke." 
 
 " Then," said the old lady, rising, " get a taxi, and if 
 anybody asks you who s going in it well, when you ve 
 called it you might bring me my bonnet and my cloak." 
 
 Andrea, sitting at her watch by the dead, heard ques 
 tion and answer in the outer room. In a moment the door 
 opened and the nurse looked in. But before she could an 
 nounce the visitor or explain that she seemed one not to 
 be denied, Madam Brooke came in, signed the nurse to 
 leave them and put her arms about Andrea, as she sat, 
 and kissed her. Andrea thought she had come to tell her 
 it would be better for her to go out into the air, to go out 
 to spend the night, or do other of those precautionary 
 things that are the sane expedients of watchers less ter 
 ribly pledged. 
 
 " I couldn t," she said, rising and holding the dear old 
 hands and looking into the kind eyes. " I promised him. 
 I ve broken a part of it. That may not matter, now he s 
 really gone away. Besides " 
 
 "Besides," said the old lady, "you couldn t bear to. 
 Of course you mustn t leave him. No, my darling! But 
 later later " 
 
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Tb