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 THE 
 SANCTUARY 
 
 53 
 
 I
 
 THE 
 SANCTUARY 
 
 BY 
 MAUD HOWARD PETERSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE POTTER AND THE CLAY " 
 
 BOSTON 
 LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY 
 LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD Co. 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, 
 London 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 THE SANCTUARY
 
 fl 
 
 To 
 
 "ALLADIN" 
 Cor unum via una 
 
 2137S37
 
 " And the house, when it was in 
 building, was built of stone made 
 ready before it was brought thither: 
 so that there was neither hammer 
 nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in 
 the house, while it was in building." 
 I. Kings VI, 7.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 MB 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 
 Outside the Gates 15 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 The Inner Court 179 
 
 BOOK THREE 
 
 The Temple's Steps 239 
 
 BOOK FOUR 
 
 The Sanctuary 285
 
 BOOK ONE 
 OUTSIDE THE GATES
 
 The SANCTUARY 
 
 I. 
 
 BLAIR MARTIN stood in the big doorway 
 looking at the gay scene before her. She 
 was tired and glad to get away from the 
 fashionable crowd for a little while, and grateful 
 that the doorway shaded her from curious eyes. 
 Since a small child, and all through the years that 
 her father had been amassing his vast fortune, she 
 had resented and shrunk from the often overheard 
 remarks and the curious gaze people had bestowed 
 upon her. Her sensitiveness to public comment was 
 oddly at variance with the natural independence and 
 frankness of speech she had inherited from her 
 father, Andrew Martin. It was perhaps a legacy 
 from the dead mother whose memory she adored, 
 as a woman of eight and twenty adores a memory 
 cherished by a girl somewhat over seventeen. 
 
 The incessant noise of the touring cars and road- 
 sters annoyed her as they swept up the long drive- 
 way and deposited their gaily dressed occupants by 
 the main tent where Mrs. Weston-Smith received 
 her guests. An unceasing hum of voices, from the 
 low masculine bass to the clearer feminine treble 
 a gamut of human sound came to her from the 
 throng scattered over the wide lawns and from the 
 bazaar tables that stood nearer to the trees. From 
 the immense temporary pavilion to the right came 
 the clatter of dishes and again the same incessant 
 noise. She sighed wearily.
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " I suppose I must go back," she said, unconscious 
 that she had spoken aloud. 
 
 " Is it so distasteful as that? " 
 
 She started at the voice, strange and yet, in an 
 indefinable way, familiar. 
 
 It seemed to come from the shadow of the hall 
 behind, but when she turned quickly and peered in- 
 side she could see no one. She laughed nervously. 
 
 " Now I am certainly going back," she said, but 
 this time not aloud. 
 
 She passed down the steps of the wide porch 
 slowly, and slowly crossed the lawn to the bazaar 
 table of which she was in charge. Now and then 
 some one stopped to speak with her and again some 
 passed her with only a bow of recognition. She 
 was grateful when sheer politeness did not make it 
 necessary to stop. The late spring day was intol- 
 erably warm in spite of the sheltering trees, and the 
 inertia that she had felt before crept over her again 
 as she threw herself m a chair near her table and 
 watched the throng in the distance. Most of the 
 buying was over indeed, her own table of fancy 
 wares was nearly empty and she was glad and 
 grateful for the fact. In an indifferent sort of way 
 she watched the sun filtering through the trees and 
 touching the gay dresses and parasols of the women 
 as they lazily walked to and fro or ate their ices, 
 bought at exorbitant charity prices, in the shade of 
 the heavy shrubbery. Over to the left behind a 
 screen of trees were the tennis courts, lying warm 
 and deserted in the sunshine. As she watched, the 
 
 16
 
 slow movements of the crowd took on new impetus, 
 and she could see it as with a settled purpose, 
 making its way in the direction of the courts. From 
 behind the pavilion some men and girls emerged in 
 immaculate flannels with tennis racquets in their 
 hands, and she knew that the much talked of feature 
 in the much talked of charity fete at Mrs. Weston- 
 Smith's, the finals in the tournament, had begun. 
 She sat still in the shadow of the trees, her elbow 
 on the edge of the bazaar table, her chin in her hand. 
 
 " My dear child, aren't you going over to the 
 courts ? " said the voice of Mrs. Weston-Smith be- 
 hind her. 
 
 She arose slowly, with the simple deference with 
 which she addressed people older than herself. 
 
 " I think not," she said, " I am very tired and 
 I shall not be missed." 
 
 " Nonsense ! fiddlesticks and rubbish ! You know 
 quite well every one looks for you at affairs of this 
 kind, and it is proverbial how people stare at you. 
 Really I don't know why ! " 
 
 Blair Martin smiled in spite of herself at the 
 twinkle in the older woman's eyes. 
 
 " You know as well as I do," she said with a 
 short laugh. " The women all want to see if I have 
 on a new gown and if I am wearing my famous 
 string of pearls. If I haven't the gown or the pearls 
 they whisper I am mean or attempting the classical 
 or simple style of dress if I have, they guess at 
 the price and comment on my extravagance. As for 
 the men " Miss Martin broke off impatiently. 
 
 17
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " My, but you're bitter to-day, my dear ; what 
 about the men?" Mrs. Weston-Smith eyed her 
 curiously from beneath a hat wonderfully wrought, 
 heavily priced. 
 
 Miss Martin turned away with an impatient ges- 
 ture. 
 
 " Oh, the men don't count," she said. 
 
 " I fancy I know of one who will," said Mrs. 
 Weston-Smith. " He has asked to be presented. 
 May I go and find him? He refused to enter the 
 tennis contest although I understand he plays a fine 
 game. The last time I came across him he was in 
 the shadow of the hall and he seemed like a fish out 
 of water. I fancy he's a little different from the 
 usual run we are accustomed to." 
 
 "In the hall! Who is he?" 
 
 " Men call him Hector Stone, but he might be 
 any of half a dozen of those big odd creatures in 
 history and mythology I used to read about in my 
 school books as a child." 
 
 " Indeed ! Hector Stone I rather like the 
 name. It doesn't tell one anything as to nationality 
 or caste." 
 
 " He's as cosmopolitan as his name. He says his 
 home is the world and his books men. There's been 
 some talk about him lately in connection with labor 
 questions and clean government and all the rest of 
 those wonderful and queer questions I know nothing 
 about. He has the manners when he chooses 
 of a Chesterfield and the clothes of a rich man's son 
 and the hands of a laboring man." Mrs. Weston- 
 
 18
 
 JIB THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Smith smoothed out her long glove carefully, pleas- 
 antly conscious that she had aroused Blair Martin's 
 interest in a man at last. But the latter's words 
 and the veil of indifference that fell across her face 
 came almost as a blow. 
 
 " I don't care for freaks. I am very tired, and 
 when I see there is no chance of selling the rest of 
 these things, I shall gather them up and take them to 
 the library and with your permission go home." 
 
 " You're impossible ! I'm not going to let you go 
 and you've got to have some diversion. I'm due 
 now at the courts. Why, the man asked to meet 
 you. What can I tell him ? " 
 
 " That I'm not receiving to-day," said Blair Mar- 
 tin with a slow smile. 
 
 " I won't tell him anything of the kind. I shall 
 bring him up and you will charm him into buying to 
 help the poor babies along. You can tell him one 
 dollar's worth will give two children a part of a shoe 
 apiece ; five dollars will give twenty children a joy- 
 ous but uncomfortable hay ride, and ten dollars, 
 one small boy three weeks in the country where he 
 will mope and pine for ' de gang.' ' 
 
 " I can't remember all those statistics," said Miss 
 Martin, " but here is a fat pink pincushion marked 
 at fifteen dollars, but worth about three, that you 
 might persuade him to buy, only you must excuse 
 me." 
 
 " My dear, I won't excuse you ; and never let 
 Maria Linwood hear you revile the work of her 
 hands like that. Maria slaved a week over that 
 
 19
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 cushion and put in one dollar and seventy-six cents 
 worth of choice powder to make it smell sweet." 
 
 " Which will undoubtedly enhance it in the eyes 
 of Mr. Stone," said Blair Martin, drawing down 
 the corners of her mouth. 
 
 " There ! you're getting human again. Just sit 
 down and rest and I'll hunt him up. I once found 
 a gold dollar in a haystack when I was a child, 
 though how the dollar came there I never could 
 explain." 
 
 Without waiting for an answer Mrs. Weston- 
 Smith and her immense hat sailed away. 
 
 Blair Martin resumed her seat with a long sigh. 
 
 " It's her affair and I suppose it's rude to be so 
 unsociable, but if this is charity then " 
 
 Exactly what she wanted or intended to say is 
 not known, for just here Blair Martin fell to musing 
 and she was only aroused by hearing Mrs. Weston- 
 Smith's voice at her elbow. 
 
 " Here she is a regular Casabianca and true 
 to her trust. Now I hope you're going to buy some- 
 thing. It's for the poor babies, you know, and you 
 mustn't mind being robbed. My dear, let me pre- 
 sent Mr. Hector Stone Mr. Stone Miss Mar- 
 tin." 
 
 Blair Martin raised her head slowly and the move- 
 ment gave no hint of the odd nervousness that crept 
 over her when she heard his voice. It seemed to 
 come to her strong with the strength of ages. 
 
 " I am glad to meet you indeed I have been 
 wanting to, and asked Mrs. Weston-Smith to find 
 
 20
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 a way. I know you must be tired though, and if 
 you don't want company you must tell me." 
 
 Mrs. Weston-Smith, with a barely concealed smile 
 of satisfaction slipped away unnoticed. Blair Mar- 
 tin uttered some worn, polite platitude, and was 
 acutely conscious that she had heard the voice 
 before. 
 
 " You will forgive me for talking to you in the 
 hall, won't you? I am afraid I am not much on 
 conventionalities. I knew you were tired before 
 you spoke there, and I believe there is no fatigue 
 so great as that which society exacts as toll." 
 
 Miss Martin watched him as he spoke and she 
 could not have told the color of his eyes or described 
 any one feature of his face. She was conscious of a 
 nameless charm and frankness she had never met 
 before of an understanding that was separate 
 and distinct from time and place and sex. 
 
 " You don't care for society then? " she asked. 
 
 " That's a very much abused term, Miss Martin," 
 he said with a slow smile, " and there is much to 
 be said for and against it as there is of every- 
 thing else. With your permission I will sit down. 
 I understand I am expected to buy something. 
 What kind of things must I get? " 
 
 A sudden hot flush of shame swept over her as 
 she viewed the table before her with its dainty use- 
 less trifles of lace and silk. What part could lace 
 and silk, be they on inanimate things or women, 
 play in his life, she wondered, and for the first time 
 she was ashamed of an exquisite gown. 
 
 21
 
 4ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 "I I am afraid this is all I have," she said 
 a little shyly. " They are all quite useless, you see 
 for practical use for a man." 
 
 " I don't suppose that ought to matter in an affair 
 like this. It isn't what we buy, but how much we 
 spend for the poor babies isn't it?" he asked. 
 
 " I suppose so, only " Blair Martin broke off, 
 oddly confused. 
 
 " Only what ? " 
 
 " Oh, it doesn't seem quite right, does it ? 
 Something is wrong in the scheme of the thing, I 
 think. We all sit around for months and wear our 
 fingers sore and our tempers to a sharp edge, and 
 we spend a lot in buying yards of lace and silk to 
 make into things people never use and don't want, 
 and it's all written up in the papers, and expensive 
 engraved invitations are issued, and people all get 
 together and buy the things because they must, and 
 eat of the refreshments, and gossip, because they 
 want to." She broke off and began to twist a fine 
 sapphire ring around and around her finger. She 
 did not want to meet his eyes. She knew now that 
 they were gray and the deepest that she had ever 
 seen. 
 
 "That's heresy isn't it?" 
 
 She tried to speak lightly. 
 
 " I suppose it is." 
 
 A silence fell between them. They could, in a 
 dim way not to be explained, feel the weight of it 
 on them. The shade around the big tree under 
 which they sat grew denser and the shadows of the 
 
 22
 
 * THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 other trees near by crept to meet it across the sun- 
 touched lawn. 
 
 " Let me see," said Stone, rising slowly and be- 
 ginning to examine the few articles remaining on 
 the table. " What is this and how much ? " 
 
 " That," said Blair Martin with a laugh, " is a 
 very fine article the only one of its kind any- 
 where, I know. It is a pincushion and was made by 
 a cousin of Mrs. Weston-Smith's. It's marked for 
 fifteen dollars, but since the day is late and cus- 
 tomers few I will let it go for ten." 
 
 He met her eyes and his own began to twinkle. 
 
 " But think of the poor babies I would not rob 
 the poor babies." 
 
 " I think I can say with truth it would not rob the 
 poor babies," she replied. 
 
 " Well of course if that's the case, I'll take it, 
 although what I'm to do with it I don't know." 
 
 " You might give it to a sister, perhaps, or a 
 cousin or a friend," she suggested. 
 
 " I have no sister or cousin," he said simply. 
 " Might might I offer the beautiful thing to you 
 as a memento of our first meeting? " 
 
 " I cannot take it," she replied almost brusquely. 
 It was not what she had intended to say, but she 
 was conscious of speaking only the truth to him, un- 
 varnished by conventionalities. 
 
 For a moment he smiled; then he said gravely, 
 " I beg your pardon. I offered it more in sport 
 as one would offer a toy than as a gift of any 
 worth. And what does the Poor Babies' Bazaar 
 
 23
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 want for this ? It is a clothes-bag isn't it ? The 
 colors are pretty." 
 
 She smiled as she did up the pincushion in white 
 tissue paper. 
 
 " No, indeed how blind you men are. That is 
 a shirt-waist holder. Its price is - let me see 
 seven five it can't be. Yes, it is. It's actually 
 seven-fifty." She laughed. " Couldn't you use it 
 for your dress shirts ? " she asked with pretended 
 anxiety. 
 
 " Not possibly. I admire your ability as a sales- 
 woman, Miss Martin." 
 
 " Here's a work-bag all fitted up with cunning 
 little scissors and an emery everything complete. 
 It's really one of the prettiest things that came in 
 to-day. I wonder it was not sold before. I had 
 thought of buying it myself." 
 
 " Perhaps you had better since it is of no use 
 to me as a present or otherwise," said Stone, a 
 shadow creeping over his bright face. " You sew ? " 
 
 "I love it," she said like a little child. "My 
 mother taught me years before she died." 
 
 " Ah," he said. " 
 
 She handed him the pincushion, and as he thanked 
 her he saw in her eyes the shadow of a grief that 
 had never quite lifted from her life. 
 
 " It is a great thing for a man or woman to re- 
 member a mother that was a mother in some- 
 thing more than name. We do not often meet with 
 it in the upper circles, but I had such a mother too, 
 once." 
 
 24
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Her eyes dropped their gaze on the table, and her 
 fingers began to nervously gather the remaining 
 trifles together. 
 
 " In her girlhood and early married years my 
 mother had to sew," she said a little proudly, " and 
 
 and when the money came it made no difference 
 to her, she sewed still she made many of my 
 things she taught me. Her needle was her pleas- 
 ure and her solace." 
 
 She stopped and bit her lip. Why had she spoken 
 to a stranger so, she wondered. Yet was he quite a 
 stranger after all? 
 
 She put the unsold things one by one into a 
 basket until the table was all cleared, and he did 
 not speak as he watched her at her task. 
 
 "May I carry it for you?" he asked when she 
 had finished. 
 
 " If you will. I shall leave it in the library. 
 Then I must get my wraps and go home. It is get- 
 ting late and I have always tried to make it a point 
 to be on hand for my father's dinner. It is so deso- 
 late alone." 
 
 " Yes," said Stone, picking up the basket. 
 
 She led the way to the house through the glow 
 of approaching sunset. To the right, from the ten- 
 nis courts, came loud applause and voices calling 
 out the final scores. To the left stood the pavilion 
 
 deserted now, as was the house that loomed be- 
 fore them. 
 
 " What a pity," said Stone irrelevantly. 
 " What ? " she asked curiously. 
 
 25
 
 *R THE SANCTUARY %& 
 
 " That such a naturally beautiful spot should be 
 so spoiled." 
 
 " You mean this mix-up don't you the 
 Italian pergola and the Chinese pagoda summer- 
 house, and the mixture of fret-work and Corinthian 
 pillars on the house itself ? " 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 " I have often noticed it, but you are the only 
 one that has ever spoken of it." 
 
 " It seems rather rude, doesn't it, with the owner 
 not two hundred yards away, but I am thinking of 
 it quite impartially and aside from Mrs. Weston- 
 Smith. It does seem that we should make money 
 stand for beauty at least, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said briefly, as she led the way into 
 the library. 
 
 He put the basket down. 
 
 " May I wait until you get your wraps and hunt 
 up your team or car ? " 
 
 " Thank you. It is a little blue roadster. You 
 will find it apart from the others. I left it so that 
 I could get it out easily. It has narrow gold out- 
 lining and the license number is two hundred and 
 eighteen." 
 
 He lingered at the library door watching her 
 mount the stairs. 
 
 Ten minutes later, when she came down to the 
 library it was empty, and on going out to the porch 
 she saw him at the foot of the steps waiting for her 
 with the car. 
 
 " I found it without any trouble," he said as he 
 
 26
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 helped her in. "Are are you sure you can manage 
 alone ? There is a bad stretch of road a mile away 
 from here." 
 
 " I can take the other by Brooke's Crossing," 
 she said with a slow smile. 
 
 " And go three miles out of your way when your 
 father will be waiting dinner ? " 
 
 " How do you know the road that leads to The 
 Anchorage ? " she asked. " Do you know my 
 father?" 
 
 He smiled in an odd way. 
 
 " I have heard of him," he said. " Are you all 
 right?" 
 
 " Quite all right," she laughed in answer, her 
 foot on the clutch pedal. " Good-bye." 
 
 He lifted his hat and held it in his hand. 
 
 " Good night," he said. 
 
 She started to turn the steering-wheel. 
 
 He handed her some money. 
 
 " Why, what is this for? " she asked. " You paid 
 for the wonderful pincushion." 
 
 " But not for the little work-bag. I have decided 
 to take that and help the poor babies a little 
 more." 
 
 Through the glow of fading sunset she drove the 
 car down the long winding carriage road looking 
 straight ahead of her. She was conscious that he 
 was still standing on the lower step watching her 
 that he stood there until the tall trees and the curve 
 had hidden her from his sight. Suddenly he 
 stooped and picked up something from the stone 
 
 27
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 step. It was one of her long white gloves that she 
 had worn earlier in the day. It had dropped when 
 she was replacing it with the heavier ones she used 
 when driving. He looked around him and saw that 
 he was quite alone. For a moment he held the 
 glove and slowly smoothed out the creases. A faint 
 odor of violets exuded from it as permeating as 
 it was evasive, an ounce of which was worth a 
 weeks' pay to a working girl. Then he folded it 
 and placed it in an inner pocket of his coat before 
 he turned away. 
 
 Along the country road, Blair Martin meanwhile 
 drove her car, past luxurious homes of the rich 
 hidden behind stone walls and great trees, over the 
 " bad stretch," which she took carefully, remember- 
 ing his warning, and on into the falling dusk of 
 twilight until the lights from the lodge of the 
 Anchorage streamed out as she neared the gates. 
 
 " He only said ' Good night/ but he never asked 
 to call," she thought as she descended later and 
 turned the car over to a waiting groom. 
 
 In silence she passed through the wide hall and 
 climbed the stairway to her rooms.
 
 II. 
 
 A MONTH later Hector Stone turned his car 
 in at the great gates of the Anchorage. It 
 was a powerful six-cylinder machine, in- 
 conspicuous in color and in outline; perfect in its 
 mechanism and fitness for realizing the purpose of 
 its makers. It vaguely suggested its owner. At 
 first he looked around him curiously as he drove up 
 the wide carriage road. Stretches of woodland lay 
 on either side and in their dense growth the after- 
 noon shadows rested deep and still. The way was 
 long and the house hidden from his view. After a 
 while the sense of curiosity vanished and he glanced 
 around him as though seeking some one he did not 
 find. A mile from the big gates the house itself 
 stood. He came upon it suddenly and unexpectedly 
 and for a moment he slowed down in surprised 
 wonder and delight. 
 
 " Beautiful," he said aloud. " Yet who would 
 have expected it of Andrew Martin ? " 
 
 The house a fine modification of the mission 
 style, with all the mission charm and none of its in- 
 convenience stood in its stuccoed beauty and tiled 
 roof on an eminence of ground. Wide, perfect 
 lawns, unadorned except by splendid trees, stretched 
 <lown to meet him on three sides. In the rear he 
 
 29
 
 *B THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 could see the garden that sloped to an orchard in a 
 hollow. Beyond the orchard ran a cooling stream 
 where cows were grazing, and then the land went 
 up again, and he caught a glimpse of dotted cot- 
 tages, the homes of the farm-hands, and then 
 a faint outline of dim hills against a summer sky. 
 
 Without the odd haste he had felt earlier in the 
 day and with the surprised wonder still upon him, 
 he drove his car into the Spanish courtyard en- 
 trance. There at the front door he stopped and 
 dismounted and turned to ring the bell. The place 
 was deserted and if he had hoped to see any one he 
 was disappointed. He looked at the courtyard 
 critically and with an eye trained to the best in 
 beauty and in art, as he waited for an answer to his 
 ring. He was conscious that his exacting taste was 
 satisfied that each detail on inspection was as 
 perfect as he had thought it at first glance. . . . 
 An hour later, seated in the great library, he spoke 
 of it to Andrew Martin with the candor that char- 
 acterized him. 
 
 " Yes, most people feel that way about it. I do 
 myself, only none of us have ever said it like that. 
 It's Blair's work my daughter, you know, Mr. 
 Stone the architect said he never saw such a head 
 for building on a woman." 
 
 " Indeed," said Stone aloud. To himself he said, 
 " I might have known." 
 
 " You have a great way of saying things, Mr. 
 Stone in fact I might say a most strong and 
 persuasive way. I suppose you have been told that 
 
 30
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 before ? I expect it has helped you in your ah 
 your work. Now for my part I'm not very much 
 on talk, I've been too busy all my life for that." 
 
 Stone smiled good-naturedly. 
 
 " Not but what a tongue is a gift a great gift," 
 went on the elder man hastily. " Why, you've al- 
 most persuaded me about the changes in the mill " 
 He broke off, conscious that the smile on Stone's 
 face had faded and that he was regarding him 
 anxiously. 
 
 " They are very necessary, sir." 
 
 " How do you know so much about my mills ? " 
 
 An odd look crept for a moment into Stone's 
 eyes. 
 
 " I am a member of a board of investigation as 
 to the sanitary and safety conditions of the mills in 
 New England." 
 
 " It strikes me you see and know more than the 
 usual investigator," said Andrew Martin shrewdly. 
 
 " Perhaps I do my work a little more thoroughly." 
 
 " Too damned thorough I beg your pardon 
 for the owners to altogether relish. It's a good 
 thing for us you are not one of the inspectors." 
 
 " It might come a trifle hard on the owners, but 
 it would mean a great deal to the working force." 
 Stone spoke quickly. 
 
 Martin moved impatiently. 
 
 ' There's a good deal of tommy-rot about the 
 
 working forces. I've been one of the working 
 
 forces all my life, sir. I'm one of the working 
 
 forces now, and I always expect to be. I've served 
 
 31
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 my apprenticeship at tougher labor than you ever 
 tried." 
 
 The odd look crept back into Stone's eyes. 
 
 " Then you doubtless know all your men all 
 their needs." 
 
 " Not at all. Not at all ! " said Martin, and 
 his manner was disconcerted. " I leave all that to 
 the managers and the foremen now, and a pretty 
 good lot I have, too. The output of the mills has 
 been greater than ever before." 
 
 " Then it would seem that I could not have sug- 
 gested the improvements at a better time." 
 
 " I'm not so sure of that. What's the good of all 
 the increased profits if you've got to put thousands 
 back into the work again? The mills are good 
 enough to stand on their own feet now, sir. That's 
 what I say and that's what the inspector said last 
 week. The official state inspector ought to know. 
 He said nothing about the safety devices you seem 
 to think so necessary, or the repairs in the engine 
 room. I guess his word goes." 
 
 Stone rose wearily. The fruitlessness of his er- 
 rand and all that the failure meant oppressed 
 him. He picked up his hat. 
 
 Andrew Martin rose too, smiling genially. 
 
 " I like you," he said, " first rate, only I like you 
 better than I do your views, and I admire your 
 tongue." 
 
 Stone looked at him with anxious, tired eyes. 
 
 " I would prefer you to like .me less and my views 
 more," he answered. 
 
 32
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 The Scotchman winced a little. 
 
 " You'd better leave social conditions alone and 
 enjoy your money," he said. " That's a job for any 
 man." 
 
 " Yes," said Stone significantly, " that's a job for 
 any man." 
 
 " Great heavens ! you've been left a fortune as 
 big as the one it's taken me years to amass by work 
 work, sir. Make use of it in the right way." 
 
 " I am making use of it, Mr. Martin, in my way. 
 Your work is your mills. Mine is men." 
 
 " Just the same I could give you pointers on those 
 men. I've never reduced, or closed down on them. 
 They've always gotten their money promptly. I've 
 never had a strike but once." 
 
 " No doubt, Mr. Martin. Yet that prompt pay 
 has not always been enough to meet their needs. In 
 sickness the pay has stopped in death the families 
 have been forgotten is it not so ? " 
 
 Stone's eyes compelled an answer. 
 
 " Have you been talking to my men have they 
 been complaining to you ? As far as what you say is 
 concerned, I don't know. I leave such details to the 
 managers. They are tried and trusted men, Mr. 
 Stone, and I have had no cause to complain of the 
 way my business has been conducted." There was 
 a note of warning and of finality in the Scotchman's 
 voice. 
 
 Stone bowed. 
 
 " I understand, Mr. Martin. Good day." 
 
 " Good-bye good-bye. As I said before, I like 
 
 33
 
 you, but not your views. If you could come again 
 dine with us, perhaps, and meet my daughter 
 but leave your views behind, we might get on bet- 
 ter." The Scotchman's good humor had returned. 
 
 " Thank you, but my views and myself are one. 
 I do not wantonly intrude them except where I feel 
 I can help those less fortunate than myself." 
 
 Andrew Martin shook his head. 
 
 " You're following a beautiful bubble, young 
 man, and by and by it will burst." 
 
 " It is not a bubble, Mr. Martin, it is rather a part 
 of a vast avalanche that gathers strength with every 
 effort. Some day the avalanche will crush those 
 beneath, as some day the boiler in mill fifteen will 
 burst as some day men will be crushed and in- 
 jured for lack of safety devices on the machinery 
 on the third floor. The inspector will not escape." 
 
 The Scotchman's face flushed hotly. 
 
 " I'm not used to threats. Still, I like you. Will 
 you come again ? " 
 
 Stone smiled a little. 
 
 " Would it do any good ? " 
 
 " You'll never make me change my mind, if that's 
 what you mean. I fancy I know more about the 
 mills than you do however close and thorough 
 your inspection. I fancy the managers who have 
 run things for years to my satisfaction, know still 
 more. If you'd come now and talk cars with me 
 I'm in the market for a new one, and I see you are 
 a good judge of cars at least I'd be glad to see 
 you and have you meet my daughter." 
 
 34
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " I have met Miss Martin." 
 
 " You have met Blair? She never told me." 
 
 " She probably does not remember me. It was 
 at that wonderful charity bazaar given at Mrs. 
 Weston-Smith's." 
 
 " Oh, I remember. A very fine affair I believe it 
 was. Didn't have time to go myself. I rarely do. 
 To tell you the truth I don't care much for those 
 things neither does Blair, but I make her go. 
 Mrs. Weston-Smith has been very kind to my 
 daughter. I admire Mrs. Weston-Smith very much 
 a fine woman." 
 
 " Your daughter has been kind to Mrs. Weston- 
 Smith," said Stone significantly. 
 
 The Scotchman laughed, pleased, and quick to 
 catch the inference. 
 
 " There isn't any one better than Blair," he said. 
 " She's the image of her mother and like her in 
 many ways. I've given her all I could, but it's been 
 her mother that left her the blood, Mr. Stone 
 and the breeding I've been too busy to learn." 
 
 The Scotchman turned abruptly and looked out 
 of the window toward the Spanish courtyard where 
 Stone's car still stood. He seemed to see neither 
 the courtyard nor the car. 
 
 Stone broke the silence. 
 
 " Good-bye," he said, but his voice was kinder 
 than it was before. " Perhaps some day I will come 
 to the Anchorage again." 
 
 The Scotchman watched him as he got into the 
 car and went off down the winding driveway. 
 
 35
 
 * THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Then he went back to the library and his easy chair 
 and his electric fan and sat down to think. By and 
 by he rang a bell, and when the silent butler ap- 
 peared in the doorway he ordered a Scotch and 
 soda. 
 
 " I didn't even offer him a drink," he thought, 
 as he sipped it slowly and with relish. " He was 
 altogether a rather upsetting young man. Yet he 
 doesn't look so young either, and his face shows 
 trouble. Now what on earth could trouble a healthy 
 man under forty, and a millionaire at that? Prob- 
 ably never did a stroke of work in his life either, 
 with his big car and his immaculate dress. Wonder 
 what happened to his hands ! They're rough-look- 
 ing for a man of leisure. Wonder how he knows 
 so much about my mills! Guess Jenkins knows 
 more, though. Perhaps Jenkins has had my in- 
 terests a bit too much at heart perhaps. That's 
 nonsense, though. The mills were never more pros- 
 perous or the men more contented. Jenkins told 
 the inspector so last week. ... I wonder how the 
 wives and bairns do get along, though, when the 
 men are sick or dead. . . . And I wonder why 
 that young man didn't shake my hand."
 
 m. 
 
 IN July Hannah, Miss Martin's faithful maid, 
 packed innumerable trunks and followed her 
 mistress to Bar Harbor, where she had gone 
 to visit an old school friend. Blair had been loath 
 to go, for some reason other than leaving him, 
 Andrew Martin shrewdly guessed, but just what 
 that reason was he had been unable to find out. 
 He knew a good deal more about mills than about 
 women indeed he had never understood women 
 very well, not even the dark-eyed, soft-voiced woman 
 from the far South he had married years ago when 
 they were both penniless, but a certain instinct 
 he had inherited from his own country and its 
 people, told him that his daughter had grown un- 
 naturally quiet; had often seemed distracted and 
 preoccupied when he had tried to interest her in his 
 new plans and projects, and took little interest in 
 what went on around her. So when the invitation 
 came one morning and she had shown it with an 
 indifferent smile to her father, the Scotchman had 
 jumped at it as the solution to the trouble, had per- 
 emptorily insisted on her going, and had, in spite 
 of remonstrances, written her a check of four fig- 
 ures, over and above her allowance, to be spent on 
 new clothes. 
 
 37
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 "I'm a blind old fool it's only change she 
 needs," he told himself late one afternoon on return- 
 ing to the great house after seeing her off. " Eight 
 weeks with those of her own age will set her on 
 her feet again. It's hard to remember she needs 
 some one besides myself to talk to every day, but 
 my, how still the house seems ! Suspect I'll have to 
 get used to it Blair'll be marrying some day and 
 leaving me in earnest." And Martin smiled grimly 
 to himself as he sat down in lonely state to a long 
 course dinner in the big wainscoted dining-room 
 hung with fine tapestries and flanked by two butlers 
 to heed his every want. He remembered suddenly 
 and quite irrelevantly a humble one he had known 
 eight and twenty years before, and how a frail sweet- 
 eyed woman with a voice like liquid music had 
 served him with broiled mackerel and corn pone. 
 He remembered it quite well. It was the night 
 before Blair had been born. 
 
 He rose suddenly from the half touched entree 
 with a strange taste and a stranger name, left his 
 Madeira untouched and walked out into the summer 
 night. 
 
 Once he stopped in his pacing to and fro and 
 thought of ordering out the car and driving 'over 
 to Mrs. Weston-Smith's, who had decided not to 
 open her Lenox house that season. Then he shook 
 his head. 
 
 " I don't know what I want," he said with an in- 
 decision foreign to him. " Wonder what's become 
 of that fellow Stone. I'll ring him up and ask him 
 
 38
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 to come to a bachelor dinner to-morrow night. I'll 
 never agree with him, but that rather adds interest 
 to the game." 
 
 Stone had accepted with alacrity after first making 
 sure, for some odd reason, that the Scotchman's 
 daughter was away, and that dinner was the fore- 
 runner of many others that he ate at Andrew Mar- 
 tin's home during the weeks before Blair Martin 
 returned. Sometimes Martin had asked Stone to 
 spend an afternoon with him and take a run down 
 to the North Shore in the car, but Stone always 
 pleaded an excuse of something else to do with a 
 geniality that made offense impossible. He always 
 kept his dinner appointments of half past seven 
 punctually at the Anchorage, which pleased Mar- 
 tin's business sense, and he was always faultlessly 
 dressed and generally drove himself in his dark 
 colored car. There he would sip the Scotchman's 
 wine and let the Scotchman talk until he grew 
 weary of his own voice, or deftly draw him into an 
 argument in which the Scotchman, worsted, would 
 take refuge behind a quantity of worn platitudes, 
 hoping they would make up for Stone's quality of 
 reasoning. For the most part they were good- 
 natured bouts of the tongue, for Stone never al- 
 lowed himself to forget that the Scotchman was his 
 host, or that there was much to gain in Martin's 
 final acceptance of his views. He talked, he argued, 
 he ridiculed, he cajoled with an outward calm and 
 patience that perfectly concealed the inner anxiety 
 and weariness of failure that he often felt; and 
 
 39
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Martin grew to look for his comings with an eager- 
 ness of which he himself was only barely conscious, 
 and through the day to go over with himself Stone's 
 line of reasoning in order to find the weak points 
 in his own defense. 
 
 Stone interested him. There was much about him 
 that puzzled the Scotchman, and an enigma held a 
 certain charm for Martin, be it a mill proposition or 
 a man. His own experience with life taught him 
 to know the lines of anxiety and care when he met 
 with them in other men, and while he rarely sought 
 to analyze the cause, or thought of offering help, he 
 found his curiosity aroused. He knew a good ar- 
 gument when he heard it even while he strenuously 
 defended the other side, and from the lowlands of 
 his somewhat irascible temper he viewed the heights 
 of Stone's control with interest and with envy. One 
 by one, through those dinners and in the long talks 
 in the grounds afterwards over their Havanas, he 
 started to put the pieces of the enigma together until 
 he became engrossed in the task. His conclusions 
 more or less correct left him dissatisfied with 
 himself, for while many of the pieces matched, the 
 keynote of the picture seemed always lacking. He 
 thought much about the keynote away from Stone 
 and while with him, and from the dim recesses of 
 his active brain, he connected it in some way with 
 the odd appearance of Stone's hands. He found 
 himself regarding them first curiously, then in- 
 tently, and always he felt that in them lay much of 
 the solution to this man's life and past. 
 
 40
 
 *R THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Once, in a carefully framed speech of apparent 
 unconcern, he laughingly alluded to them, and won- 
 dered how Stone would take the personality. 
 
 Stone laid down his cigar and stretched both his 
 hands before him, fingers spread. Then he slowly 
 turned them and regarded them, palms uppermost, 
 so long that Andrew Martin broke the oppressive 
 silence with a short, nervous laugh. At the sound 
 Stone dropped his hands and quietly resumed his 
 cigar. Then he looked into Andrew Martin's eyes 
 and smiled inscrutably. The Scotchman waited for 
 him to speak, but he did not, and by and by the smile 
 got on Martin's iron nerve. He never ventured a 
 personality again. 
 
 In thinking of Stone he never cared to remember 
 the incident, nor did he mention it in his infrequent 
 letters to his daughter. The letters, when they did 
 reach her, were mostly filled with accounts of Stone, 
 and sometimes the accounts were irritable and 
 sometimes sarcastic. There was in them open 
 and frank curiosity, but always respect, and an 
 interest, the extent of which Martin himself did 
 not realize. 
 
 He would have been oddly diverted could he have 
 guessed just how eagerly Blair watched for letters 
 that she usually found so brief and dry and full 
 of business plans. He rarely mentioned or quoted 
 Stone's views; he studiously avoided any mention 
 of mill fifteen or the safety devices Stone talked of 
 for the third-floor machinery; and thereby he un- 
 consciously gave his daughter that which she then 
 
 41
 
 most longed for a picture of the man himself. 
 She too took to building puzzles, and the odd bits 
 dropped by her father's letters fitted in a wonderful 
 way into an outline drawn by herself from her brief 
 knowledge of him. Instinct added to the bits that 
 were making up the picture and a strange reti- 
 cence concerning him whenever she heard his name 
 mentioned, and her own slow heart-beats when she 
 thought of him, helped to make the crooked bits fit 
 better. 
 
 At the end of August her father wrote her again. 
 It was a bulky letter, written in an unformed hand, 
 but one of strength, and she took it out upon the 
 rocks at sunset to read alone. 
 
 " Stone is all right," it ran towards the close, 
 " but I'm counting the days until I get you back 
 again. Heaven knows what I'll ever do without 
 you, Lassie, when the right man comes along. 
 Stone has helped the loneliness wonderfully, but he'll 
 never convert me to his views, which are socialistic 
 and barbaric. I shall be curious to see what you 
 think of him. I have a pretty good opinion of your 
 judgment of men and women, although why you 
 don't take more to Mrs. Weston-Smith puzzles me. 
 When you come home and get to know Mr. Stone 
 better, as I hope you will " 
 
 Blair Martin stopped in her reading, folded up 
 the unfinished letter and put it back in its envelope, 
 and stared out across the bay to the woods and 
 mountains beyond. Then it was that a peace not 
 wholly of the sunset hour crept over her, and she 
 
 42
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 closed her eyes and for a moment laid the traveled 
 paper to her cheek. 
 
 " When I go home and get to know him bet- 
 ter " she murmured, not questioning the awaken- 
 ing from her dream.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE day had been one of intolerable heat. It 
 had left its blighting mark everywhere. In 
 the dust of the city thoroughfares men and 
 women walked inertly beneath the burden of its 
 sting, and the city children paddled their scorched 
 feet in the water from a leaking main, their pale, 
 pinched faces smiling with relief. Out through the 
 well-kept country roads that were the Common- 
 wealth's pride, oil had laid the dust but could not 
 touch to brightness again the drooping half-parched 
 boughs that bent and tried to give shade to the 
 wilting wayside flowers which Stone noticed as he 
 passed in his big car. 
 
 " All a type of the same great humanity," he 
 mused, driving slowly from sheer fatigue, " the 
 working men and women on the city streets like 
 these suffering trees taking the burden of the 
 heat and giving us with our millions the shade ; the 
 flowers withering and yet smiling gratefully 
 God knows for what like the children playing by 
 the water-main." 
 
 The weariness, the disappointment, the discour- 
 agement of years was m his eyes. The remem- 
 brance of the day lay upon him like a pall. He 
 looked down at his perfectly fitting clothes, his im- 
 
 44
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 maculate linen, fresh and new, at the great car he 
 drove, and then at his stained and blackened hands, 
 and he smiled grimly. 
 
 He had been on the point of telephoning Andrew 
 Martin that he could not come that night, and then 
 he remembered Martin's loneliness and what a 
 last effort for his cause would mean, although the 
 hopelessness of the latter lay heavily on him now 
 and he had returned to his apartments, as perfect in 
 their way as were his clothes or car, where the man 
 who had served him for years, close-mouthed and 
 watchful-eyed, had laid out all his things in readi- 
 ness. There were other reasons that had decided 
 him to come to-night. The Scotchman's daughter 
 was expected back the next day. He would not be 
 coming to the Anchorage now with the same free- 
 dom as of old. After all he had failed in his 
 quest for the men. Did anything else matter, he 
 wondered, remembering Blair Martin's eyes. 
 
 He turned in at the big gate and drove slowly up 
 the driveway with the stretches of woodland on 
 either side until he came within sight of the house. 
 He recalled the first time he had come here, and he 
 sometimes wondered why the scene was ever newly 
 pleasing to his eyes. To-day he looked for no one, 
 knowing that Andrew Martin was always to be 
 found at such an hour in the great library, and that 
 the mistress was away. He drove slowly up the 
 driveway the better to drink in the peaceful beauty 
 of the scene. To the right, up in the soft sky over 
 the garden, hung the faint outline of a young moon. 
 
 45
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Near by a great mimosa tree stood out in bloom, and 
 the pale faces of moon-flowers, shining out against 
 the deeper tone of the green leaves, covered a quaint 
 pergola-shaped arbor leading to the garden. 
 
 He entered the courtyard and the big car made 
 no noise. He was dimly conscious of her presence 
 before he saw her. She was seated in a low wicker 
 chair, an unopened book lying idly in her lap. Her 
 elbow was resting on the arm of the chair and her 
 chin was in her hand. So deep was her revery that 
 she did not even hear him descend, and it was not 
 until he was close to her that she looked up. 
 
 She rose suddenly, the book falling to the ground. 
 Her summer gown, exquisitely wrought, of sheerest 
 fabric, fell about her in soft folds. No added color 
 betrayed emotion or surprise, but he saw as in a 
 trance the white throat throbbing above the square- 
 necked dress, and a fleeting wonder sweep through 
 her eyes. She came towards him, one hand out- 
 stretched, and the voice in which she spoke was the 
 voice in which her mother, years ago, had welcomed 
 Andrew Martin. 
 
 " You ! " she said quite simply. 
 
 " I did not expect to see you to-night, Miss Mar- 
 tin. You were not due until to-morrow at least 
 that is what I understood your father to tell me the 
 last time I came." 
 
 She gave a low, amused laugh. 
 
 " That need not worry or alarm you. I shall not 
 interfere with your long business talk. But unless 
 you want to go into the library alone and amuse 
 
 4 6
 
 ^ THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 yourself, you'll have to put up with my company for 
 a little while. Dinner is not for another hour and 
 father is late." 
 
 " Your first night home ! " 
 
 " Oh, I've seen him. He met me at the train. 
 He forgot to tell me that you were coming to-night 
 but he did say that he might be detained." She 
 stopped a moment and frowned a little. " He works 
 very hard, I think." 
 
 " There are many men who do, Miss Martin." 
 
 " I suppose so. Do you want to go into the 
 library alone or stay out here with me?" 
 
 " What could I answer to that ? " a little more 
 gravely than her bantering speech had called for, 
 " I suppose I must say here, if I want to speak the 
 truth." 
 
 " Then come and sit down and watch the daylight 
 fade. Or would you rather go into the garden for a 
 little while?" 
 
 " Let us sit here." 
 
 She leaned back in her low chair, while he picked 
 up the forgotten book for her, before taking a chair 
 himself. 
 
 " Some friends of mine were coming on the Port- 
 land boat last night, so I decided to come earlier. 
 My father seemed glad to see me. I fear it has been 
 rather lonely for him in my absence. Your visits 
 have been a great pleasure to him, Mr. Stone." 
 
 " Say rather a diversion," said Stone, with a slow 
 smile. 
 
 " It's strange how you two get on together at all," 
 
 47
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 said Blair Martin thoughtfully. " It's a case of ex- 
 tremes, I suppose. He wrote me once that your 
 views of life were socialistic and barbaric." 
 
 "Did he indeed?" 
 
 She suddenly resumed the old thoughtful position 
 he had seen on entering the courtyard, and she 
 looked at him with wide, earnest eyes. 
 
 " Do you know, Mr. Stone, it all rather interests 
 me your views, I mean. I've never known any 
 one before that was both socialistic and barbaric." 
 
 " Do you want to know anything so strange and 
 crude?" he asked in a low voice. 
 
 She did not answer at once, and took to twisting 
 the sapphire ring she wore a habit of hers when 
 preoccupied. 
 
 " I am not quite sure. I have only heard of such 
 things vaguely. They have never meant anything 
 to me but mobs, violence and disorder, but I sup- 
 pose there is another side." 
 
 He leaned forward eagerly. 
 
 " There is another side, Miss Martin." 
 
 " So I suppose yet from the point of view we 
 hold we who have the money " she broke off. 
 
 " That is not the point of view of all who have 
 money, Miss Martin," he replied, significantly. 
 
 She flushed a little. 
 
 " I know," she said, " that you have great wealth, 
 too, and yet your views are different. I think it is 
 that fact that interests me in your work. You live 
 as we do and you seem to think like them." 
 
 He leaned forward in his chair and stretched out
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 his hands as he had done one night in the big library 
 with Andrew Martin, but to-night the look in his 
 eyes was different. 
 
 " I do not always live ' like folks/ " he said, his 
 grave smile returning. " I could not altogether feel 
 for them as I do unless " He broke off and he 
 stretched out one hand across the space that sepa- 
 rated them for her to see. For a moment she re- 
 garded it in silence its roughened texture, its 
 blunted finger ends, its stained and darkened hue, a 
 slow wonder growing in her eyes. 
 
 " You work with them ? " she breathed. 
 
 " For months at a time, Miss Martin." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 " Can we learn the lay of a country the flora 
 and the fauna something more than maps and 
 guide-books can give us how the natives dress 
 and live and why the language that they speak, 
 unless we go there and see it for ourselves and learn 
 the language, too?" 
 
 She shook her head slowly. 
 
 " I never thought," she said. 
 
 " So few do, Miss Martin I mean those like 
 us with millions. I did not think myself until one 
 day a friend of mine a young physician took 
 me with him on his rounds. His practice was not 
 a fashionable one. His pay consisted mostly of 
 blessings sometimes curses. I saw a dying crip- 
 ple give his last crust to a starving child " 
 
 She sat quite still, looking at him. Her face was 
 very white. 
 
 49
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 "Are such things really true?" 
 
 " Do you want to see for yourself? " he asked. 
 
 " I am not sure. The thought frightens me a 
 little. It seems as though I could never be happy 
 again if if I saw a thing like that." 
 
 " You will learn to be happy." 
 
 " Will I ? I suppose you know." 
 
 " Some day, if you want to, I will give you a 
 letter to a friend of mine a woman. She lives 
 among them. She has given up her life to them. 
 She will teach you, if you really care to learn 
 slowly, and not more than you can bear at a time." 
 He was watching her closely. 
 
 A faint color crept into her Cheeks. She did not 
 question nor understand the dim resentment she 
 suddenly felt towards this other woman. 
 
 " Perhaps. Could she teach me more than 
 you ? " she asked a little shyly. 
 
 He rose quickly. Could he teach her? If he 
 only might! 
 
 " I am not sure. Perhaps in some ways she 
 knows more about them than I do. Her woman's 
 intuition often discerns things where I fail And 
 I I am busy most of the day," he looked down 
 with a slight smile at his discolored hands. 
 
 She saw the smile the look. Again she wished 
 he had not mentioned this co-worker. What could 
 the lives of those she knew her own life hold 
 of interest to him when there lived women like the 
 one of whom he spoke ? 
 
 "I forgot. Your hours are long?" 
 
 50
 
 *g THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " Not so long for one looking for experience 
 who can give it up at any .time although, strong 
 as I am, I get very tired sometimes but very long 
 for the others who know they cannot rest for a day, 
 an hour, for fear of want to others. Then I have 
 thought as I watched them that their fatigue must 
 sometimes become an agony that only death can 
 end." 
 
 " Where do you work? " she questioned. 
 
 " In some mills, Miss Martin," he answered. 
 
 Something in his voice forbade further ques- 
 tioning. She was silent. 
 
 " I do not go by my own name, of course. I am 
 registered on the books as one Joe Blackburn. The 
 men call me Joe Blackie. Not altogether so incon- 
 gruous." He laughed a little. 
 
 The laugh jarred on her. 
 
 " How can you jest ! Yet surely they must see 
 and feel and know the difference, the difference 
 between you and themselves." 
 
 " Perhaps, but some of them have seen before the 
 strange phenomenon of a gentleman forced to work 
 his money gone ; or of a man having to begin at 
 the bottom and working upward by sheer force of 
 will." 
 
 " That's what my father did," she said, lifting 
 her head a little, " I am very proud of my father." 
 
 " One of the best fellows I ever knew," he went 
 on, apparently not hearing her remark, " was a man 
 born to the best of everything. The crash came 
 and found him, as it finds so many rich men's sons, 
 
 51
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 unprepared for any real work in life, and because he 
 was too much of a man to live by debt he drove a 
 milk wagon for four years until he could start a 
 dairy of his own." 
 
 " You live in a very different world from mine, 
 Mr. Stone," she said, rising from her chair. " I 
 shall always remember that. I must tell the house- 
 keeper to be very careful how she addresses the 
 tradespeople after this." A faint smile crept around 
 her mouth. " I cannot think what is detaining my 
 father. Shall we walk out in the grounds for a 
 little while ? And tell me the name of this friend 
 who is to show me things I have never dreamed 
 existed except in the brains of madmen and social- 
 ists and the writers of sensational books ? " 
 
 He followed her out of the courtyard into the 
 wide grounds beyond, and they crossed the lawn 
 together. 
 
 " Her name is as simple as her life almost as 
 plain as her face Miss Smith Georgiana 
 Smith." He smiled as at a remembrance that made 
 him glad. She had glanced once into his face. 
 Then with lips that went suddenly white she looked 
 away. 
 
 " She is unmarried ? " 
 
 Her voice was a monotone. 
 
 " Yes, and always will be," he said gently. 
 " Some one told me once about her life one who 
 had known her always. She and happiness passed 
 each other on the road, but she never called ' quits/ 
 and when you see her you will understand how, 
 
 52
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 further on, she found peace waiting for her at the 
 turn." 
 
 Blair Martin clasped and unclasped her fingers 
 tightly in the falling dusk. 
 
 " O-h ! " she breathed with the hushed pity one 
 will show for something hurt. And then the pity 
 slowly died from her eyes and something else crept 
 there instead a look of which she was not aware. 
 
 " Let me go to her." 
 
 " I will," he answered. 
 
 Hurried footsteps came to them from the drive- 
 way. Instinctively both turned. 
 
 Brewster, the butler, was coming hastily towards 
 them. When he was close to them he stopped and 
 stood waiting. 
 
 "Well, Brewster?" 
 
 " If you please, Miss Martin," said Brewster, very 
 much flushed from his hasty search for them, 
 " there's a telephone message from your father. 
 He says he's been detained so late, he's dining in 
 town with Mr. Jenkins. He says please not to wait 
 dinner for him, and for Mr. Stone to be sure and 
 stay. He's something very important to talk over 
 with him when he gets back. That's all, Miss Mar- 
 tin." 
 
 " Very well, Brewster. You may go." 
 
 After he was out of hearing she turned to Stone. 
 
 "You heard?" 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 " Do you want to stay ? " 
 
 He looked at her quite steadily. 
 
 S3
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Do you want me to stay? " he asked. 
 
 " Is it what I want? " she asked evasively. " My 
 father will be disappointed to come and find you 
 gone. It is it must be past the dinner hour now. 
 You must be hungry." 
 
 " That is kind of you to think of me perhaps 
 I am. I have worked pretty hard to-day." 
 
 But later, at the table, he only played with his 
 dinner, and he wondered why she scarcely touched 
 her own. Odd thoughts, strangely unattached to 
 the courses laid out before them one by one, beset 
 him. Who could care for a transparent soup when 
 from the shadows of the lighted candles in their 
 great silver sconces, her eyes shone out, veiled and 
 shining, at the table's head ? While the butlers with 
 deft hands and silent feet brought and carried the 
 courses that they scarcely tasted, he talked the small 
 talk of the hour; and Georgiana Smith, living in 
 the settlement house, and the cripple and the starv- 
 ing child receded into the shadows of memory, as 
 the objects without the arc of the candle's light were 
 lost in the far dim corners of the room. And yet 
 beneath the small talk, like the faint wind that can- 
 not stir the great depths, his inner thoughts flowed 
 on. She became part and parcel of that room to 
 him, and he never entered it again without seeing 
 her there as he saw her now leaning back in the 
 great carved chair of blackened oak, her arm lying 
 on the chair's arm, white and still those veiled 
 wistful shadows in her eyes her exquisite gown 
 shining in the light and lying in soft folds at her 
 
 54
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 feet. Like a lost mariner who for a moment, at 
 sight of some enchanted isle, forgets the perils and 
 fatigue, the thirst and hunger of the days gone 
 of those ahead so he sat and looked and thought 
 of her, for a brief time unmindful that he was drift- 
 ing towards harm. 
 
 For her neither time nor place existed. As in a 
 dream she listened to his voice, replied to his ques- 
 tions, laughed at some light remark, mechanically 
 by a word or nod communicated with the servants 
 in the room. 
 
 After the fruit had been passed which they 
 both refused she pushed back her chair and rose. 
 
 " In summer we always have the coffee on the 
 terrace," she said simply, " or do you prefer it 
 here?" 
 
 " I have always had it on the terrace," he said, 
 rising too. " It is too perfect a night to stay in- 
 doors. May I get a wrap for you ? " 
 
 " I do not think I need one." 
 
 " You had better." 
 
 Her heart beat wildly at the simple words. Was 
 it only a formality or did he care if she were cold? 
 
 She led the way to the terrace, stopping to gather 
 from the hall settle a soft silk shawl which she threw 
 around her shoulders. Together they stepped out 
 upon the terrace, where, in a low wicker chair, she 
 sat down. 
 
 " How still the night is," he said ; " how far off 
 the stars ! " 
 
 She leaned back, looking up to the night skies. 
 
 55
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 It was quite dark now except for the starlight and 
 the young moon that hung above the garden like a 
 celestial lamp. 
 
 She did not answer him. To herself she said, 
 " How sweet the night is and how bright the stars." 
 
 In an abstracted way she shook her head when 
 Brewster passed the coffee on a silver tray, watch- 
 ing Stone as he took his cup in silence. He was 
 still standing, and he looked upon the fragile bit of 
 Minton for a moment with unseeing eyes. Was 
 anything quite real? Was the garish day, with all 
 its labor and distress and heat, a dream was this 
 the reality this ? 
 
 She did not speak as he slowly drank the coffee 
 and put the cup down on a wicker table near by. 
 
 "May I smoke?" 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 He drew a cigar-case out of his pocket. In the 
 light streaming out to them from the great hall, she 
 could see that it was of lizard skin with a fine bind- 
 ing of gold, his initials in one corner. His indi- 
 viduality was stamped upon it as clearly as the let- 
 ters. There was nothing out of place in it to her 
 no remembrance just then of the discolored hands 
 that touched it, or of Joe Blackie. Other men had 
 smoked in her presence before from cigar-cases that 
 had probably cost double what his did. Yet she had 
 not even noticed them. It is probable that if Joe 
 Blackburn in his coarse jeans had stood before her 
 then, she would have taken his rough clothes and 
 tattered hat and cigarette much as she was taking 
 
 56
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the cigar-case bound in gold as a matter of 
 course. Wealth and position were as things apart. 
 His face his voice were the only really prom- 
 inent things to her. 
 
 The faint flare of the match gave an added color 
 to his face as he lighted his cigar slowly. He drew 
 on it a moment, then regarded its lighted end with 
 feigned interest and put it back in his mouth. He 
 smoked but seldom. To-night he was conscious 
 that he needed the stimulant and the comfort of a 
 cigar. 
 
 He paced up and down in front of her in silence, 
 and in silence she watched him. The things of 
 speech seemed far away as far away as the stars 
 in the night sky. 
 
 By and by he stopped before her. 
 
 " Your father will be here soon. Will you enter- 
 tain me just a little longer will you come into the 
 garden with me ? I can see it from here I can 
 smell the roses. The moon-flowers are in bloom, 
 and the mimosa tree how pink it is ! " 
 
 " The mimosa tree came from my mother's home 
 in the far south. It seems a part of her." 
 
 " Beautiful ! How have you ever raised it here ? " 
 
 " Under glass at first. Thomas's care did much 
 the love my father and I gave it more." She 
 smiled faintly. To-night even her grief for her 
 mother was lulled to rest. Had not her father first 
 seen her mother under a mimosa tree? 
 
 Then his voice came to her. 
 
 "Will you come?" 
 
 57
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She rose as one still in a dream, and as in a 
 dream she followed him, and she never paused to 
 wonder that he, here in her own home, was leading 
 and directing her. 
 
 Stiller than the hush of sunrise, the night lay 
 above, around them, and stiller than the night were 
 their mute lips. Once he paused and leaned down 
 to free her dress carefully from the thorns of a rose- 
 bush growing by the path. She looked down at his 
 bent head and her eyes grew darker and deeper than 
 the night. After a while they began to walk again. 
 Once she shivered and drew the shawl a little closer. 
 
 "You are cold?" 
 
 She shook her head. Would she ever be cold 
 again, she wondered. 
 
 He turned toward the house. How like her face 
 were the moon-flowers they had left ! 
 
 The sudden sound of heavy wheels and an auto- 
 mobile horn broke discordantly upon their senses. 
 
 " It is my father," she said. 
 
 Under the mimosa tree they paused. The thick 
 shade hid his ashen face his deep-set eyes. He 
 spoke as a man speaks who has suddenly awa- 
 kened. 
 
 " You will say nothing to any one about Joe 
 Blackie? Only a very few know the real truth." 
 
 " I will not betray you," she said very gently, 
 wondering what made his voice so strange. 
 
 The words cut him as a sudden thrust cuts 
 sharp and deep. 
 
 "I can trust you always," he said, and then as 
 
 58
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 by a mute consent he turned and left her beneath the 
 mimosa tree, and made his way slowly towards the 
 house. 
 
 For a little while she stood where he had left her, 
 looking out on the garden, and then up to the far- 
 off worlds in space. She had never known before 
 all that beauty stood for, and she knew it to-night 
 as she never would again. 
 
 By and by she crept into the house, the soft white 
 shawl about her, her hands clasped against her 
 breast. She walked as one might walk who bears 
 an alabaster vase of priceless ointment as though 
 one misstep or any undue haste might shatter the 
 treasure at her feet. . . . She went the length of 
 the great hall, passing the library, from where she 
 heard his voice. She smiled. Then she mounted 
 the big staircase, and still smiling she reached her 
 room. She did not turn on the lights but crossed 
 the space to the window and sat looking over the 
 garden again and waited to see his car go down 
 the long driveway. 
 
 How long she was there she did not know. For 
 her, time no longer existed. By and by her ears, 
 acutely keen, heard her father's footsteps and his 
 descend into the courtyard. Then there came to 
 her their voices in parting she was conscious of 
 only his and then the sound of his car as it 
 emerged and started down the driveway. 
 
 Stone, his hand on the steering-wheel, looked 
 neither to the right nor the left. The breath of the 
 late roses from the garden came to him upon the 
 
 59
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 night's breeze and turned him sick. Could he ever 
 see or smell a rose again, he wondered. 
 
 Once past the entrance gates and out on the main 
 road he slowed down and looked up at the white 
 cold stars. How fearfully cold they were, he 
 thought, how infinitely far away. 
 
 " My God ! " he said. Then more slowly, " Oh 
 my God!" 
 
 And up in her room, Blair Martin stood by the 
 window before she drew the white curtains to, look- 
 ing out on the garden where stood the mimosa tree 
 and where the moon-flowers cast their shade. 
 
 60
 
 V. 
 
 THE summer sun rose warm and bright and 
 lay in patches on the lawn shaded by the 
 trees. A soft breeze stirred their branches 
 and played among the flowers in the garden where 
 Thomas worked uninterrupted by his mistress. 
 
 At ten, Andrew Martin drove off to the mills in 
 his car. At one, the maid brought his daughter a 
 lunch in her room on a big silver tray, which she 
 allowed to be carried off half an hour later, un- 
 touched. As the sun began to sink and the shadows 
 to creep over the garden and the lawn, she dressed 
 herself for the evening and went downstairs. All 
 day she had kept her room, living in the dream of 
 the night before and watching the turn in the long 
 carriage drive from her window. Once she glanced 
 from the west window towards the garden. She 
 would go into the garden again with him 
 when he came. At five she heard her father return- 
 ing and went to meet him. It might be that he had 
 picked up some friend and brought him out to din- 
 ner; but her father descended from the automobile 
 alone, and had he not been so preoccupied with 
 thoughts of business he would have been struck 
 with a new look in her face. 
 
 At half after seven they went into the big dining- 
 
 _ 61
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 room and sat down. She had never noticed before 
 how big and lonely it was, and she began to shiver 
 in spite of the warm evening, and sent Brewster 
 for a shawl. He brought her the white silk one 
 from the settle in the hall and she trembled as she 
 put it around her. It helped her, though, as a 
 human touch helps when one is in need. 
 
 Later, Brewster brought the coffee out on the 
 terrace, and she sat by her father, not heeding what 
 he said and looking far off toward the driveway. 
 After a while the Scotchman rose and went into the 
 library, where he sat down to smoke and read the 
 papers. Now and then as he turned the pages he 
 paused to wonder what made Blair's face so white. 
 For a while she sat with him and then crossed the 
 hall to the music room, where she took her violin 
 from its case and abstractedly drew the bow across 
 the strings. One low sweet tone came forth from the 
 inanimate thing like a human call. It startled her 
 and she put the instrument back and closed the lid. 
 She could not play to-night. She could not go into 
 the garden. She turned off the lights and stood in 
 the darkness by the window. It seemed to her that 
 all day, and now, she could do nothing but watch 
 the driveway and its turn. 
 
 The night passed she knew not how and 
 day succeeded day and night succeeded night, and 
 a whole week passed and still Stone did not come. 
 The week slipped into two and the two weeks into a 
 month. September came and brought cooler days 
 and nights, and from her west window she watched 
 
 62
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 the moon rise to its full, then wane. Some of the 
 trees began to turn their leaves, and in the garden, 
 in spite of the able care of Thomas and his assist- 
 ants, the moon-flowers and the roses drooped and 
 faded. 
 
 She never questioned her father as to his where- 
 abouts exactly why, she did not know. One 
 night in October the Scotchman looked over his 
 glasses at his daughter as he laid his paper down, 
 with the remark : 
 
 " Did I tell you Stone went away last month ? " 
 
 He watched her closely and she was conscious of 
 the glance. After a little she picked up some fancy 
 work lying idly in her lap and commenced slowly 
 to sew. 
 
 " Is that so? Where did he go? " 
 
 "How should I know?" said the Scotchman, a 
 little shortly. He had noticed that Blair's hands 
 were trembling in spite of her quiet voice. " We had 
 a disagreement when he was here last oh, noth- 
 ing serious," he added hastily, seeing his daughter 
 look up in surprise, " only I couldn't agree with him 
 in detail as to some of his views. I never will. 
 He's socialistic and barbaric, as I've said before 
 and that's all there is about it." 
 
 She was silent. What could she say and hide her 
 secret still? 
 
 " He's visionary and dreamy and unpractical, as 
 they all are," went on the Scotchman irritably: 
 " think they can tell us, men double their age, with 
 five times their experience, how to run our jobs, 
 
 63
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 and all the time they dress immaculately and drive 
 expensive cars." 
 
 She opened her lips in quick defense, remember- 
 ing the discolored hands. Then she shut them again 
 and went on with her work. 
 
 " It's ridiculous that's what it is and it puts 
 me out of all patience." 
 
 Some personal note in her father's voice arrested 
 her. She put her work down in her lap and looked 
 at him from across the library table. 
 
 " Has he said anything about the mills ? " 
 
 Martin picked up his paper suddenly. He was 
 acutely conscious that his daughter was looking at 
 him and waiting for an answer. 
 
 " Oh, he talked a lot of rot he knew nothing 
 about. Don't worry your pretty head over it, my 
 dear." 
 
 She said no more and he was grateful. Blair 
 had an uncomfortable way sometimes of plying one 
 with questions. He sighed a little in relief as he 
 turned to the political news, and by and by, when 
 she left him to practise for a while, he thought she 
 had forgotten. 
 
 She did not pay much attention to the exercises 
 that evening, and for the first time in weeks was 
 absorbed in something other than Stone's comings 
 and goings. She had not questioned her father 
 further for two reasons. Experience had taught her 
 no information could be extracted from him in such 
 a mood, and again she had no desire to have him 
 learn by long discussion just what was in her heart.
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 But she pondered over his remarks to the exclusion 
 of her music, and she was still thinking of them 
 when, at half past ten, she went upstairs to bed. 
 
 In the big library Martin laid his thoroughly 
 read paper down, and replaced his glasses in their 
 case. He sat for a long while staring straight ahead 
 of him. In the last month, in the stress of increased 
 activities at the mills, he had almost forgotten 
 Stone until to-day he had seen in the papers an 
 item as to his return. He had not shown it to his 
 daughter for various reasons. He was trying to 
 fit the pieces together in the enigma once more 
 a task that he had for a while abandoned. He was 
 remembering his daughter's face as it had looked 
 to-night, and how white it was. With an impatient 
 gesture he rose quickly. 
 
 " Damn that man," he said.
 
 VL 
 
 OXE morning towards die end of October, 
 Blair Martin came down the steps of the 
 Conservatory, noon-case in fcami^ and 
 crossed die pavement where her roadster stood by 
 the curb. Two or three of die other pupus, shab- 
 bily enough dressed, nudged each other as she 
 passed in her plain well-fitting tailor suit. Two 
 small boys of die streets were standing by the car 
 talking in earnest voices. They jumped quickly to 
 one side as she came towards diem and stowed the 
 violin case under die seat, and then proceeded to tie 
 on her big brae vefl. She had not heeded die other 
 students on die steps, but something in these chil- 
 dren's faces arrested her attention, 
 
 *" Want me to crank up, Miss? " asked the eldest. 
 
 The younger pulled at his coat. 
 
 " Say, there! Leave de lady alone." 
 
 Blair Martin looked toward die first 
 
 "Do you know how?" she asked. 
 
 "Sure I do. Give me a try?" 
 
 The eagerness die pride 
 
 Hfcjir flflartm smiled. 
 
 "AD right. Go ahead," she said. 
 
 The boy went to his task with a win, his com- 
 panion and Miss Martin watching him with vary- 
 
 66
 
 *g THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 ing emotions. How shabby his shoes were how 
 thin his coat how rough his hands something 
 like like Hector Stone's hands. 
 
 The engine began its familiar pulsing tune and 
 Miss Martin started to step into the car. A fee was 
 in her hand. Then she saw the other boy the 
 smaller of the two. If possible he was shabbier than 
 his companion and there was a look in his eyes she 
 had once remembered seeing in those of Ajax, her 
 prize St. Bernard, when he had been stolen and had 
 not been recovered for a week. She remembered 
 hearing Brewster say he had been starved. 
 
 With a sudden impulse she turned to the two 
 children. 
 
 "Want a ride?" 
 
 They glanced at each other, a queer look slowly 
 spreading over their faces. Then the eldest gave a 
 nervous laugh. 
 
 " A-h quit kiddin' us," he said. 
 
 Something in his twitching lips belied the bravado 
 of his words. 
 
 " I'm not fooling indeed I'm not," said Miss 
 Martin. She was hardly aware herself how earnest 
 was her voice. 
 
 They looked at each other again. Then with a 
 defiant shake of the shoulders the eldest stepped 
 in and took the seat beside her. 
 
 The smaller boy watched his companion half 
 fearfully, then he hopped into the rumble and Miss 
 Martin let in the clutch and started. 
 
 In silence they passed the Children's Hospital on 
 
 67
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the corner, some of the little patients watching them 
 curiously from their wheel-chairs on the black iron 
 porches. Miss Martin glanced away as they passed. 
 She had always given liberally to the children's 
 cause on the first of the year, and on Christmas Eve 
 she had gone there and distributed a big basketful 
 of toys. At Easter she had sent ice-cream and 
 oranges and gone herself in the afternoon to see that 
 no one was forgotten, but it seemed to her she had 
 never known what the children's cause might mean 
 in all its entirety until to-day. She turned a corner 
 carefully, remembering the boy in the rumble, and 
 then, as block after block they left the city streets 
 behind, she let the car out to greater speed, but her 
 thoughts ran faster still. So engrossed was she 
 with them that she was not aware she had not 
 spoken since the ride began, and it never occurred 
 to the children to break the silence. 
 
 By and by she was aroused by seeing the boy 
 beside her lean forward intently and look down the 
 long winding suburban road in front of him. 
 
 " What is it? " she asked. " What do you see? " 
 
 He looked at her, a quizzical smile breaking over 
 his face. 
 
 "I 'spect it ain't anything wonderful to you, but 
 gee them houses and them trees ! " 
 
 She stared a little. Was it possible he was in 
 earnest ? And she had seen those houses and those 
 trees nearly all her life. 
 
 " Are you brothers ? " she asked irrelevantly. 
 
 " Naw " apparently surprised at her lack of 
 
 68
 
 g THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 discernment. " Tim's just my pal even if he is 
 little that's all." 
 
 " So you're just friends. Good friends are pretty 
 nice things to have." 
 
 " You bet yer life." Then hesitatingly, " Do you 
 care if I chew gum? " 
 
 " Why why, I suppose not, but we can't get 
 any around here." 
 
 " Oh, me and Tim picked some up on the street 
 while we was watching de car." And the boy beside 
 her took something out of his pocket and put it in 
 his mouth. She was conscious that Tim, behind 
 her, was following his example. She slowed down 
 a little, a sick feeling in her stomach. 
 
 " How old are you ? " she asked, keeping her 
 eyes rigidly in front of her. 
 
 " I'm eight my name's Chris. It's really Chris- 
 topher Columbus, you know, but I don't let de gang 
 know 'cept Tim, of course dey'd guy me. 
 Tim's six," and Chris settled further down in his 
 seat and began to munch on his gum in earnest. 
 His attitude and face suggested that he did not wish 
 to be further disturbed. Still Tim in the rumble 
 said nothing, but he could have told you the exact 
 shade of Miss Martin's veil and how many hat-pins 
 were hidden beneath it. 
 
 Miss Martin turned to him suddenly so sud- 
 denly that Tim, who had been counting the polka 
 dots on the two neat quills of her hat, jumped and 
 nearly lost his balance. 
 
 " Take care, Sonny." 
 
 69
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Tim smiled tremulously. It seemed to Miss Mar- 
 tin she had never seen a smile like that on a child's 
 face certainly she had never seen the children of 
 her friends smile so. It lighted up the pinched face 
 as a ray of sunlight lights up the grayness of a 
 cloud. She could not meet his eyes. 
 
 " A little way from here there is a drug store. 
 How would you and Chris like to have some soda 
 water?" She mentioned them both, but she was 
 thinking just then of Tim. " Have you ever had 
 any soda water ? " she asked gently. 
 
 Tim carefully stuck his bit of gum to the side 
 of his cheek by aid of his tongue. He gulped a 
 little. 
 
 " Yes'm, once," he said, " but " 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 "Yes? "she said kindly. 
 
 " If you don't care maybe Chris wants the 
 soda but I'd I'd rather have a wienerwurst 
 sausage." 
 
 She met his eyes now. 
 
 "I perhaps I don't quite understand " she 
 began, unwilling to admit a truth Tim's eyes had 
 been forcing on her from the start. 
 
 " A-h, why don't yer tell de lady yer ain't had 
 enough grub ? " put in Chris curtly, and turning 
 around in his seat to speak to Tim. " He don't 
 mean ter be unthankful, Miss," he added in a milder 
 voice to Blair Martin, " and I 'spect the fizz stufFll 
 taste crackin' fine by and by, but he's jest holler 
 now." 
 
 70
 
 m 
 
 Miss Martin did not turn to him as he was speak- 
 ing; she only kept her eyes on Tim, whose small 
 pinched face suddenly became scarlet. 
 
 " Is that true ? " she asked him. Her voice was 
 the gentlest he had ever heard. 
 
 " I'm I'm right empty," he said. 
 
 That night, sitting by her window, she thought it 
 all over, and something of what life was and meant 
 came to her, and she awoke dimly to a knowledge 
 of what Hector Stone was working for. Not until 
 to-night, looking out over the garden where only 
 a few chrysanthemums slept, had she permanently 
 connected Stone's labor with his life. Not until to- 
 night had the desire of sharing it with him come 
 over her. At least, if he failed to come if he had 
 forgotten that summer night that had meant so 
 much to her this much was left, a sharing, al- 
 though unknown to him of his life and aims. 
 Strange thoughts had crowded on her in those long 
 hours since she had parted with the children had 
 seen the street whereon they lived. How could any 
 one ever be glad again, she wondered, after seeing 
 that, crush back the dumb resentment against 
 the scheme of things ? Did there exist a philosophy 
 that had grounds for being, that could reconcile and 
 weigh with a Justice without reason and beyond 
 question? Was there a Mercy working evolv- 
 ing upward from the clod in the street she had 
 seen to-day? 
 
 She leaned forward in her chair, her forehead 
 
 71
 
 3% THE SANCTUARY a* 
 
 against the window-sill, and closed her eyes as one 
 in pain. The October night wind sighed through the 
 tree tops on the darkened lawn without, and she was 
 unconscious that it was the only sound that broke 
 the stillness except the dull heart throbs in her 
 breast. Darker than the moonless-night skies was 
 the sea whereon the frail bark of her faith was drift- 
 ing, and every spar of Church or Creed she reached 
 for, turned as rotten driftwood to her hands. 
 
 At midnight she was aroused by cold, and got 
 up slowly, as one awakened from a stupor. A late 
 cold moon was floating in the sky. She stood watch- 
 ing it as it sailed into a bank of clouds and emerged 
 again. Some words of Hector Stone's came back 
 to her. 
 
 " She will teach you if you really want to learn 
 slowly, and not more than you can bear at a time," 
 he had said. 
 
 Could Georgiana Smith teach her, she wondered. 
 Was she strong enough to bear more than the 
 glimpse she had had to-day and still live in a world 
 from which the very foundations were crumbling 
 to their fall ? 
 
 72
 
 VII 
 
 THE next three months passed for Blair Mar- 
 tin as a panorama passes as something 1 
 separate and distinct and apart from her 
 own life. If there were ever moments when it wove 
 itself about her own existence the luxuries and 
 the pleasures that she knew she fought them 
 away, and went dimly, dully on her way, observing 
 learning from Georgiana Smith, who in silent 
 pity watched her, and in mercy only showed her 
 such sights as she could bear. But later there came 
 an hour as Georgiana Smith had foreseen 
 when Blair Martin was no longer willing to be 
 shielded, and where the elder woman would not 
 send her, Blair Martin went herself, unasked. Once 
 she stayed at the Settlement House for a week. 
 There lived none that had a right to question her 
 comings or her goings but her father, and her father 
 was much too busy with matters at the mills to think 
 of questioning his daughter when she announced 
 one day that she was going to visit a friend for a 
 week. It was perhaps Hannah alone who worried 
 at the strange new look in Blair Martin's face at 
 her long absences at the fatigue that bordered on 
 prostration at her returns and who with many 
 misgivings packed the steamer trunk of simplest 
 
 73
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 clothes, and at her mistress' orders left untouched 
 the new and unworn gowns of fragile beauty that 
 had only recently come from the dressmakers' hands. 
 
 If Blair Martin's face grew thinner in those days, 
 she grew to learn that loss of flesh comes from 
 many causes not the least, from hunger. If her 
 face was whiter and her eyes darker and more sad, 
 she was instinctively conscious of the fact in other 
 faces men's and women's and if her laugh 
 came less often it was because she saw less to re- 
 joice over in those months when she was learning 
 in those months when she waited in vain for a 
 glimpse of Hector Stone. 
 
 By and by the sights, the smells, the sounds that 
 had at first been an agony to her, seemed to merge 
 into the panorama she was watching to become 
 its color and its life and tone. She spent a month 
 in travel, in the great cities of her own coast and 
 inland, and she came back to the Anchorage more 
 still and sad. Christmas came and went, and for 
 the first time since she was a child herself she failed 
 to go to the Children's Hospital with toys, but sent 
 Brewster and Hannah instead. Did not the chil- 
 dren of those loathsome darkened places need her 
 more than these? For the first time she failed to 
 head with a liberal donation the subscription list 
 in the church which she had once attended, and of 
 which her father was a vestryman. How had she 
 ever given such sums for the decoration of a church 
 when there were countless homes which never knew 
 a bed or chair? For the first time since she had 
 
 74
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 grown to be a woman, her dressmakers waited in 
 vain for her orders for opera dresses. How could 
 she bring herself to show her own white throat and 
 neck when at Hull House in Chicago she had looked 
 upon the back of a Russian girl scarred with the 
 lash of the Cossack soldiers, and in Milwaukee she 
 had seen a man walk in the lock-step, serving out 
 ten years because, when starving, he had stolen 
 bread? For the first time she returned the gift of 
 flowers bought at a fabulous price and sent 
 her on the New Year for the past five years by a man 
 she knew, a friend of her father's. Had she not 
 learned how he had amassed his millions on the 
 blood and sweat of others; had she not for ten al- 
 most intolerable minutes watched, unknown to him, 
 the men he employed stripped to the waist before 
 the glaring furnaces, watched them, enveloped in 
 white steam and paralyzing heat, by the streams of 
 molten iron, scarcely ceasing through the intermi- 
 nable hours; great shadowy forms of men working 
 mechanically beneath the awful strain, no time to 
 rest, no time to pause even to wipe away the sweat 
 that ran in great streams across half-blistered flesh ? 
 Stone she never saw. Of his movements, of his 
 work in the slums, she sometimes heard either from 
 Georgiana Smith or some of the other people she 
 encountered. It was perhaps only Georgiana Smith 
 who even knew of him as the man of money. To 
 the others he was Joe Blackburn Blackie. As she 
 walked to and fro from one horror to another, either 
 alone or with some other worker, she used at first to 
 
 75
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 scan the faces of the men as they passed on their 
 way to work or on their return from toil. By and 
 by she ceased to look for him for he never came 
 but the faces of the men she watched became a 
 living book to her, and in those hurried glimpses 
 she grew to learn the lines of tragedy of dark 
 crime and grim want and terrible despair. 
 
 But always, somewhere, shielded from all outward 
 touch of harm, the remembrance of him lived with 
 her, sleeping or awake.
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE winter had set in early and it lasted late. 
 Blair Martin had never known before what 
 a cold winter meant. Wrapped in her great 
 furs and driving her own sleigh, to return to warmth 
 and luxury, light and food, winter had held no ter- 
 ror for her in spite of her mother's blood. But for 
 the first time it was the first time in so many 
 things she saw winter as it could be stripped 
 of its beauty she saw it as the poor see it, as some- 
 thing grim, foreboding and walking in the van of 
 Death. It was then that the helplessness of things 
 came over her. There was so much want, and 
 the money it would not go everywhere. She 
 grew then to know at once the power of money and 
 its limitations, and she knew that the answer to the 
 problem could not, and never would find its solution 
 even in vast piles of divided wealth. 
 
 Georgiana Smith watched her in silence still 
 knowing that words were useless at this stage, and 
 knowing, too, by suffering and the experience of 
 many years, that for Blair Martin the flame was 
 burning at too fierce a heat. 
 
 " She will learn as we all do," she thought, 
 as she sorted out a pile of half-worn clothes and laid 
 some infant's things aside along with a blanket and 
 
 77
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 a shawl, " but while she's learning may God help 
 her." 
 
 To Blair Martin she only said : 
 
 " Tom O'Brien will carry the food and heavier 
 things and be grateful for the dime. The baby's 
 clothes " 
 
 Blair Martin interrupted her. 
 
 " Let me take those," she said. 
 
 She trembled as she picked them up and walked 
 through the early morning streets with Tom. She 
 remembered seeing yesterday a scrub-woman in an 
 office-building and the marble floor over which she 
 bent was wet with milk that mingled with the dirty 
 water. The crime of it of the waiting starving 
 child at home dyed her cheeks as the maternal 
 in her cried out against the shame. 
 
 For some time she walked along in silence, which 
 Tom, usually so communicative, was afraid to break. 
 She had never gotten to the heart of Tom or of any 
 of his kind she did not know how to appeal to 
 them. She was conscious of the lack in herself and 
 sometimes when she could not sleep at night for the 
 horrors that she had seen, she would remember what 
 Hector Stone had said. Some day perhaps she 
 would learn this foreign language too, learn to 
 reach them in reality, in some way other than with 
 food and clothes perhaps as Georgina Smith 
 reached them with a word, or, as they had some- 
 times confessed, Joe Blackie had reached them with 
 a smile. 
 
 After some little difficulty they found the place, 
 
 78
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 and used as she was by now to the type of so-called 
 homes in which these people lived, she could not 
 remember having seen in all her months of work, 
 an entranceway more loathsome and more dark. 
 The creaking stairs were so narrow that it was 
 only with infinite patience and labor that Tom got 
 to the top with the bundle that he carried. The 
 smell of vermin and of rotted food and of fifty peo- 
 ple living where twenty would have been too many, 
 overpowered her for an instant and made her ill 
 and faint. Tom saw it and with a ready sympathy 
 laid down his pack on the first landing and begged 
 her to return. She mutely shook her head. The 
 small, dark, dirty doors which they passed were 
 closed and all the house was silent. She remem- 
 bered it was a Sunday morning. Of late Sundays 
 had meant nothing to her except a day whereon the 
 women who worked all week in the sweatshops 
 cleaned their homes, or the men who toiled for six 
 days rested from an exhaustion that it would have 
 taken twelve months to relieve instead of twelve 
 hours. The inside of a church she had not seen for 
 months. How could she worship What? 
 
 They reached the top at last and through the 
 stillness came a broken, feeble wail. Tom laid down 
 his burden and turned questioningly to Blair Martin. 
 
 " Please don't wait," she said. " I can manage 
 very well alone I would rather be alone. And 
 and I know what it would mean to you to be 
 with your friends to-day." 
 
 An odd light swept into Tom O'Brien's eyes. 
 
 79
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Perhaps this strange woman with the white face 
 and dark-shadowed eyes sometimes understood. 
 
 She waited until she heard him step from the last 
 rickety stair and cross the lower passageway and 
 slam the door. Still the feeble wail went on. She 
 glanced once at the bundle of food and clothing at 
 her feet, at the package in her arms, and then she 
 knocked gently on the door. There was no answer. 
 The wail of a moment before had sunk to rest. She 
 knocked again and louder, and the stillness weighed 
 upon her until her nerves began to quiver beneath 
 the strain. Again she knocked and she was an- 
 swered by the feeble wail. She turned the unresist- 
 ing knob and entered. 
 
 Upon a pallet made of filthiest straw was 
 stretched the form of what once might have re- 
 sembled a woman, distorted now by years of crime, 
 of bitter battling against poverty and woe and 
 recent pain. The lips were drawn back from the 
 teeth in a ghastly grin. One lean hand was 
 stretched forth and touched a dirty bundle on the 
 floor. From the bundle came a plaintive cry. 
 
 " Poor soul, she is asleep she needs it and I 
 will let her rest until the district nurse comes. She 
 said she would be here within an hour. The 
 baby " 
 
 She leaned down over the dirty bundle on the 
 floor, her hands trembling as she touched the rags. 
 It was so little and so helpless. Had she ever seen 
 such a helpless thing before ? 
 
 The wail ceased suddenly. With one arm Blair 
 
 80
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Martin held the child to her, warming its cold face 
 against her bosom. With the other hand she tore 
 the wrappings from the bundle, looking around her 
 for some sign of water. She saw a little near the 
 woman in an old tomato can. 
 
 She never very clearly remembered the next 
 twenty minutes. She gave up all thought of wash- 
 ing the child until the district nurse should arrive, 
 and she wrapped it in a warm shawl and held it to 
 her that it might share her human warmth. Now 
 and then it wailed feebly. She wondered if it were 
 hungry everything seemed hungry in this under- 
 world into which she had stepped and she thought 
 of awakening the mother. The district nurse, when 
 she came, would surely have them both taken to 
 the hospital. The child went off to sleep and Blair 
 Martin crouched with it on a low broken stool wait- 
 ing for the district nurse, and for the mother to 
 awake. By and by the utter stillness of the place 
 broke through her thoughts and outer conscious- 
 ness, and she raised her eyes to where the woman 
 lay. 
 
 With a sudden cry she rose, and still holding the 
 sleeping baby close, she leaned over and touched the 
 long thin hand. 
 
 " Dead ! " she breathed. " And I never knew ! " 
 
 After that she remembered nothing except that 
 the room was very cold and that she must warm and 
 soothe the helpless new-born thing that lay within 
 her arms. She did not even move when some one 
 turned the knob and entered, closing the door be- 
 
 8l
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 hind. By and by she began to wonder dimly why 
 the district nurse, whom she knew, did not speak to 
 her offer to do something. Then she became 
 aware that it was a man facing her. With an effort 
 she swept away the veil that had fallen over sight 
 and sound and she looked up and met Stone's gray 
 eyes regarding her. 
 
 Still crouching on the low and broken stool with 
 that helpless bundle at her breast, she looked up at 
 him giving no token of surprise. Across the 
 chasm of the months she looked at him, and in her 
 eyes he found no dimmest resemblance to the eyes 
 that had looked at him from under the mimosa tree. 
 These eyes to-day were dark with the world's pain, 
 deep with the experiences of life, as sorrowful and 
 brooding as the eyes of a woman who had been a 
 mother and lost her child, and the most wonderful 
 that Stone had ever seen. 
 
 Without comment she motioned to the bed, and 
 then gathering the new-born thing she held closer 
 to her bosom, the eyes were lowered as Blair Martin 
 bowed her head.
 
 IX. 
 
 TWO hours later Stone called for her at the 
 dingy drug store a block away, where he 
 had taken her and bidden her wait for him. 
 She had obeyed him now as she had obeyed him that 
 night in August in the garden at her home. She 
 had neither questioned his wisdom or his judgment 
 in bringing her here until he could adjust things 
 and see the child in the care of the district nurse 
 who had arrived a few minutes later. Neither did 
 she question how he had found her or where he had 
 come from, and she had only dimly noticed that he 
 wore a shabby suit of brown such as a mill hand 
 might wear for a Sunday best. 
 
 " Come," he said, with the quick decision that had 
 been one of the secrets of his influence in the upper 
 as well as the lower strata of the lives he lived. And 
 she never dreamed to pause or question. 
 
 Once out in the streets she followed where he 
 led mechanically. In the more crowded districts 
 through which they passed signs of active life 
 greeted them. Into less frequented ways he led her 
 with an evident knowledge that at any other time 
 would have surprised her. They crossed a small, 
 dingy square, dignified by the name of park by the 
 city officials one of those few small breathing 
 
 83
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 spaces where the poor congregate. It was deserted 
 at this early hour and was too cold for even the 
 men and women who breathed foul air all the week 
 to take advantage of at present. The snow that had 
 fallen the day before was trampled and blackened 
 where a horde of children had played. Across the 
 little square she saw an automobile waiting. He led 
 her to it and helped her in. The man who had been 
 guarding the car cranked up and then came back 
 to where Stone stood and helped him into a great 
 fur coat that completely covered the suit of shabby 
 brown. 
 
 " That is all, Wilson. You may go now, and 
 have my things ready by noon the gray suit and 
 the dark tie. I am dining out." 
 
 The man touched his cap respectfully and crossed 
 the square. He had been too well trained to evince 
 the surprise he felt at seeing his master bring a lady 
 shabbily enough dressed, but certainly a lady 
 from those haunts that Wilson could not have been 
 hired to go near except to serve Stone. The lady, 
 he thought, in spite of her thick veil, looked re- 
 markably like the daughter of the multimillionaire, 
 Andrew Martin. 
 
 " It's tempting Providence to meddle with states 
 of life you weren't born into," he muttered to him- 
 self, boarding the first car. He was conscious of 
 being glad as block after block carried him further 
 away from the crowded sections into the upper parts 
 of the city that were better known to him. He was 
 conscious, too, that some pretty shop girls opposite
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 were regarding his overcoat a last year one of 
 Stone's approvingly. 
 
 With a tact that was partly inborn and partly the 
 result of long experience in dealing with living men 
 and women, Stone did not break the silence at first, 
 and when he did it was to tell her in a few brief 
 words the things she would want to know. 
 
 " The doctor says with proper care the child 
 should live. It is to go to the good sisters. The 
 woman "he had paused and looked down the 
 street through which they were passing, thought- 
 fully, " the woman is to have a decent burial." 
 
 Still she neither spoke nor moved. 
 
 He guided the car with a knowledge born of long 
 acquaintance from the roughly paved streets of the 
 poorer section to the smoother asphalt of the broad 
 main avenue. Here palatial homes looked at one 
 another across a well-kept park with big shade trees 
 that ran through its center from end to end. 
 
 Once he saw her lift her eyes to the big houses 
 standing with closed blinds in the hush of the early 
 morning, and she shivered suddenly as she turned 
 away. 
 
 "You are cold?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I understand, still put this on." 
 
 He slowed down a little and reached under the 
 seat and pulled out a big fur coat and gave it to her. 
 Mechanically she took it, conscious of a new warmth 
 creeping through her, at his care of her. He helped 
 her into it. 
 
 85
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " There, that is better. I should have remem- 
 bered." 
 
 They were on the outskirts of the city now, and 
 stretches of country road with wide fields, white 
 with untrodden snow, lay on either side. The 
 branches of the bare trees overhead were weighted 
 down with the same white burden, and the morning 
 sun lay bright and warm over all. The roads were 
 almost deserted and as they pulsed along in the big 
 car they did not notice the few they did pass who 
 looked curiously at them, people to whom storm 
 and fair weather were the same. 
 
 Still she had not spoken. 
 
 " I met Tom O'Brien on the street Tom and 
 I are great friends " Stone smiled, " and I asked 
 him what he was about. He told me that some un- 
 known waif had called at daybreak at the Settle- 
 men House for help for the woman. I wonder how 
 the woman got hold of the waif and what^became 
 of him." 
 
 She shook her head again. 
 
 " Just one of the mysteries of the slums," he went 
 on in a low voice. " The floor on which she lived 
 was deserted. I understand that the family was 
 evicted yesterday." 
 
 She clasped and unclasped her gloved hands, with 
 a gesture of passionate pain. 
 
 " And then Tom told me he had left you, that 
 you insisted on his going off for his holiday. I came 
 because because I knew the neighborhood and I 
 thought you might need my some help." 
 
 86
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 The words were breathed rather than spoken. 
 Stone smiled strangely. 
 
 " Would not any friend have done as much ? " 
 he asked. A light that had been flickering through 
 her eyes suddenly died. 
 
 " Perhaps," she said. " What were you doing at 
 that hour down there ? " 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 She turned and looked at him and her eyes com- 
 pelled an answer. 
 
 " I had been up all night with a man I knew a 
 mill hand who " he broke off and turned his face 
 away. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Who was scalded yesterday by an explosion 
 where he worked." 
 
 She shuddered. 
 
 " There, do not grieve so. When I left his pain 
 was over." 
 
 " His family he left a family? " 
 
 " A wife and four children. They are to go back 
 to Italy." 
 
 Stone slowed down a little, and the car, like a 
 horse that knows its owner's touch, seemed to run 
 with little guidance from the steering wheel. When 
 he spoke again she started. She had never heard his 
 voice so stern. 
 
 " They call America the melting pot of nations 
 and she is unworthy of the name. They come to 
 her with their wounds the crushed and the down- 
 
 87
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 trodden of the earth as hurt children run to the 
 shelter of a mother's arms, and instead of healing 
 them, America fastens on them as a vampire on its 
 prey, and drop by drop their blood adds to the 
 wealth we know. She holds out her arms to' them 
 and bids them come to her, and she boasts of a free- 
 dom that they only know in name. She does not 
 have czars and kings, but she has political bosses 
 who run her cities and her states. She boasts that 
 she has no Siberias and no fortresses like Saint 
 Peter's and Saint Paul's, but in some of the modern 
 penitentiaries where she fancies she is curing men 
 of crime, the inmates labor all day, and at night are 
 sent to rest in vermin-infested cells oh, I know 
 and she has one law for them and one law for 
 the men of money who betray her trust. They 
 come to her and she puts the women the future 
 mothers of the future race ankle-deep in blood in 
 Western slaughter houses, and the little children 
 in their feeble strength to bear the burdens for the 
 rich. She gathers them all in and she stands by 
 this America that I love in spite of all, that might 
 be as great as she is mighty and she guards the 
 melting pot, but in the process of refining she lets 
 the gold go with the dross." 
 
 He stopped. The words had fallen quick and 
 throbbing on the silence of the early day. 
 
 By and by she spoke. Her voice was low and 
 strained. 
 
 " How can we live how can we be glad 
 when such things exist?"
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 He turned to her with his slow smile. There 
 was a light in his eyes, as though they saw the solu- 
 tion to the soul's problems, that she did not under- 
 stand. 
 
 " You will learn to be glad for life, Miss Mar- 
 tin, and for joy and even wealth," he said. 
 
 " I can never enjoy all that wealth brings again," 
 she answered. In her eyes was the dawning of an 
 age-long pain. " I shall always see before me 
 the things I have seen ! " 
 
 " You will never feel quite the same again per- 
 haps you will never want to," he said. 
 
 " I shall never want to," she told him, and it 
 seemed to her she saw before her a vast procession 
 crossing the white fields of snow an army of men 
 and women, starving and in rags, and of little 
 children dropping by the way, and as they passed 
 her with averted heads, they all paid tribute to a 
 vast pile of gold lying at her feet. 
 
 " What can I do ? " she murmured, and in the 
 stillness of the early day her voice fell upon his ear 
 an anguished prayer. 
 
 " Listen," he said, the strange light of revelation 
 still in his eyes, " and I will tell you what first 
 helped me." 
 
 For a moment he looked down in silence at the 
 steering wheel. He had studied men and women 
 as some study books, and he knew that for her the 
 awakening had come. Then he began to speak, 
 but his voice was no longer stern accusing, and 
 she was conscious that there was a quality in it that
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 gave her benumbed senses added strength. Years 
 afterward, she recalled his every word. 
 
 " I felt as you do we all do at first," he said. 
 " None of us and you would be surprised, Miss 
 Martin, could you know the number of rich men and 
 women who have given up their lives for those of 
 the underworld are ever quite the same again, 
 and as I have said, we do not want to be. It takes 
 most of us some time to get over the shock of things 
 to readjust our preconceived ideas of a deity and 
 life. There are a few who never do brave souls 
 that go down to the grave with the crushing weight 
 of others' woes upon them. Then there are some 
 who patiently submit and do all they can, and oth- 
 ers, strong rebellious spirits that fight every 
 inch of the way, and life finds them unsatisfied and 
 death rebellious still." He paused for a moment as 
 though weighing his words. " I have learned to be 
 grateful for the experiences. I have learned to be 
 thankful for the wealth and all of comfort and 
 peace and beauty that it brings to others, and my- 
 self." He hesitated and looked out across the wide, 
 white stretches of the fields. 
 
 " Oddly enough, it was a Catholic priest in France 
 who first showed me the way. He is still living. 
 I hope some day that you two may meet. His phi- 
 losophy and wisdom and understanding are as pro- 
 found as his love for humanity is deep and true. 
 He will never win me to his Church, but he won me 
 back to God." 
 
 " Is there a God? " she questioned with white lips. 
 
 90
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " Just now, to you, there is no God, Miss Mar- 
 tin," he said gravely, and his voice was very low, 
 " and to-morrow and to-morrow, and to-morrow 
 still, you may feel He does not exist. But some 
 day you will learn a philosophy, to you, new 
 although it is a philosophy as old as men and 
 you will know Him as I know Him as Pierre 
 Lamore in France knows Him as the true Mo- 
 hammedan, the true Hindu, the true Christian 
 knows Him with a knowledge separate and dis- 
 tinct from time and sphere and space and creed 
 you will know him as the breath of All." 
 
 An hour later the big car slowed down as he 
 turned into the courtyard of the Anchorage, and 
 when it stopped he helped Blair Martin out. 
 
 The courtyard was deserted except for Ajax, who 
 lay asleep in the warm winter sun. Stone held out 
 his hand in parting. She put her own in it and 
 looked up at him. 
 
 " Thank you," she said simply, " for all that you 
 have done to help me. I fancy some day I shall be 
 even more grateful when I can understand better. 
 Won't you come in? My father will be back 
 from ' she broke off for a moment, " from 
 church in a little while." 
 
 ' Thank you, I cannot stop to-day," he said, and 
 she wondered what made his voice so strange. 
 
 A sigh escaped her of which she was not aware. 
 
 ;< You you will come some other time per- 
 haps? " she asked. 
 
 91
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Perhaps," he answered, and to himself he said, 
 " When I come again I will tell her the truth." 
 
 He got into his car and she stood watching him 
 as he drove out of the courtyard and down the 
 carriageway. One thought strong and insistent 
 beat on her senses the thought of the mill 
 hand, scalded, who had died. 
 
 She stood still, her hands clasped tightly together. 
 
 " Spare him spare him," she breathed, speak- 
 ing to she knew not What.
 
 X. 
 
 THE winter that had set in early gave way to 
 an early spring. Each day in February 
 found the earth a little warmer than the pre- 
 ceding one, and only an occasional light flurry of 
 snow appeared to suggest the bitter coldness of the 
 earlier months. Blair Martin found herself watch- 
 ing for the first traces of the budding green with an 
 eagerness of which she was only half aware. Since 
 that ride with Hector Stone a few weeks back, life 
 and its problems had assumed a healthier tone. He 
 had not paid another visit to the Anchorage, and 
 she had given up looking for him there. The in- 
 tense expectation of the late summer and fall, in 
 which every sound upon the carriage drive had sent 
 the warm blood flushing to her face, the dull resent- 
 ment that had followed, and the still duller sense 
 of pain, had gone. She found many excuses for 
 him his labor with the men his unwillingness 
 to partake further of hospitality from a host who 
 so radically differed from him in his views. She 
 never admitted to her own heart that he did not 
 come because he did not wish to see her. Of late 
 they had met occasionally at the Settlement House 
 on Sundays. They rarely met alone, and personali- 
 ties, as by tacit consent, both avoided, but in those 
 
 93
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 hours life took on new meaning for her, and his 
 work became her own as it never had done before 
 not as a panorama to be watched with varying de- 
 grees of interest and pity and of horror, but as a 
 part of her and him. 
 
 " May I call next Sunday afternoon? " he asked 
 her as he was helping her into her roadster ; " there 
 is something that I feel you ought to know 
 why I have not called oftener." 
 
 His broken speech, unlike his usual decision, con- 
 fused her, and her low assent was hardly audible. 
 
 How the week passed she did not know. She did 
 not see him in the interval and the days dragged 
 as with a leaden weight. 
 
 When Sunday came she hardly touched her din- 
 ner, and after her father had gone to the big library 
 for his usual holiday smoke and nap, she slipped 
 on a warm loose cloak and went out into the 
 grounds. Once she looked in the direction of the 
 garden and she shook her head. 
 
 " I have waited so long," she thought, " I will 
 wait just a little longer," and she wondered at the 
 cold fear that crept into her heart. 
 
 Now and then she watched the carriage road for 
 the first glimpse of his car as it rose on the crest of 
 the incline, but the carriage road lay in its long 
 winding length with no sound or sign of life upon it. 
 
 He came upon her unawares from the foot path 
 that ran to the left of the broad way. He was in 
 stout walking boots and puttee leggings and a cordu- 
 roy Norfolk jacket and cap, and had not her heart- 
 
 94
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 beats told her it was he, she would not at first have 
 known him. 
 
 She stood quite still under the bare trees waiting 
 for him as he came up cap in hand. On his face 
 rested the grave smile she had grown to think a 
 part of him, and his look was all for her. 
 
 "Are you wondering who the stranger is?" he 
 asked lightly. " Joe Blackie sometimes spends his 
 Sundays so and gives the car a rest. It's back to the 
 fundamental things of life isn't it? But the walk- 
 ing does me good." 
 
 " You have walked all the way from town ? " 
 
 " That is not so far when one has been used to 
 Alpine climbing." 
 
 " True. I have never climbed the Alps." 
 
 " I hope you may some day. One gets an idea 
 of the breadth of life from those dim heights." 
 
 " I shall remember that. I had thought of going 
 abroad this summer. Oh, yes, I have seen Paris 
 and I was three years in Brussels at school when a 
 girl and I have ' done ' London on a tram, and 
 all that part of it and once I went to Lucerne." 
 She paused a moment and looked off across the 
 grounds. " I fancy I was too young then to know 
 all that beauty meant. I was very young it was 
 before I had suffered any before my mother 
 died." 
 
 " You will see Lucerne with different eyes when 
 you go again," he said. 
 
 " Will you not come into the house and rest ? " 
 she asked after a pause. 
 
 95
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " I will ring for a cup of tea or would you 
 rather have black coffee?" 
 
 " Coffee, please." 
 
 " When my father awakes he will doubtless take 
 you into the library and offer you something else," 
 she smiled. 
 
 " He knows I am coming? " 
 
 She was grateful for the shadow of her little 
 tea-room that hid the color that sprang to her face. 
 
 " I did not tell my father." 
 
 " I am glad. I did not come to see him to-day, 
 Miss Martin," the light of greeting had died out of 
 his face, and for a moment it looked old. 
 
 She threw off her loose wrap and drew up a big 
 chair to the cheerful blaze upon the hearth. 
 
 " What were you doing when I came on you so 
 unexpectedly?" he asked, moving restlessly about 
 the room. 
 
 " Looking to see if there were any traces of the 
 early violets foolish, wasn't it ? and watch- 
 ing for you." 
 
 She leaned nearer the fire and began to play with 
 it gently with a poker. 
 
 He stopped by the mantel and leaned one elbow 
 upon it. 
 
 " Was I not on time ? " he asked in a low voice. 
 
 She looked up with a smile, the glow of the fire- 
 light upon her face. 
 
 " I am not sure. I had no watch, but " 
 
 She broke off in confusion.
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " But? " She could not disregard his voice. 
 
 " The time seemed long. It is a long while since 
 you have been to the Anchorage." 
 
 " A very long while," he said slowly. 
 
 He did not speak again, and a sudden tremor 
 seized her. 
 
 " Will you press that bell, please ? There, yes, 
 that one, thank you." And when Brewster ap- 
 peared she ordered black coffee in an odd strained 
 voice. 
 
 " The grass shows signs of awakening," he said 
 from the window, " even if the violets are still 
 asleep." 
 
 She rose and crossed the room to the window 
 and stood by him looking out. 
 
 " I never appreciated what grass might mean," 
 she said gently, " until one day last fall I brought a 
 small child out here and showed him the grounds. 
 He knelt down near the grass and patted it softly 
 with his hands, and when I told him to go and run 
 on it, he asked if it would hurt it. It seems in- 
 credible, but it is quite true." 
 
 " I do not doubt it," he answered, " only those 
 doubt who have not seen." 
 
 " I shall never doubt any of those things again," 
 she answered ; " anything any one might tell me of 
 those barren lives stripped of all beauty." 
 
 " I believe it is for that that I have learned to 
 prize beauty more," he said. " It is a great softener 
 and a great educator, and I do not despise it as 
 some of the rich men do who have gone into the 
 
 97
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 underworld. We must have ideals for them to 
 strive for if we would help them permanently we 
 must have ideals to come back to when the tragedy 
 and sordidness of our day's work is over, else we 
 descend lower than their low level, and forego the 
 aspirations to which we have been born. It is be- 
 cause of this that I am Joe Blackie through the day, 
 and at other times dress well and ride in my own 
 car as Hector Stone. Do you think you under- 
 stand ? I have wanted you to understand," he said, 
 still looking out of the window. 
 
 " I think I do," she answered. " I shall think of 
 that when I pass the others, walking in their rags, 
 as I ride by in my car wrapped in my furs." 
 
 " It will help to adjust life for you," he said. 
 " We are all born in the environment to which we 
 are best fitted with capabilities that could so well 
 develop in no other soil. It is the one true philos- 
 ophy of the ages whether you read it in the books 
 of India or in the parables of the Christ." 
 
 " I wish I understood such things better. I would 
 be happier, I think." 
 
 " I sent you to Georgiana Smith to know and see 
 life as it really is for some of us," he said, " but I 
 fancy you will have to meet Pierre Lamore some 
 day if you want even dimly to realize what the 
 Eternal means." 
 
 " Tell me something of him." 
 
 " I will," he answered. " Come and sit by the 
 fire with me. Pierre Lamore is indelibly associated 
 with my life with a life of which you know noth-
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 ing. It is because I thought you ought to know 
 that I have come to tell you something of that life 
 to-day." 
 
 He pulled out the big armchair for her as Brew- 
 ster entered with the coffee on a silver tray, which 
 he placed on a small table by Miss Martin's chair. 
 
 After he was gone Stone took a chair opposite 
 and watched her in silence while she poured the 
 fragrant amber drink from a Persian coffee pot into 
 cups of fabulous price. The rich simplicity of the 
 room and of the service seemed a part of her and of 
 her pale gray gown. The late sunlight streaming 
 through the western window fell on her hands and 
 lit up for an instant the sapphire ring she wore a 
 gift from her dead mother. It was her only per- 
 sonal adornment except her long string of white 
 pearls. 
 
 He took the cup she handed him in silence. 
 
 " I have a fancy," he said after a pause, " that 
 some day you and Pierre Lamore will meet. He 
 stands as a type of a great faith irrespective of 
 church or creed and the symbol of a great wis- 
 dom that at present the world is too blind to fathom 
 or to comprehend." 
 
 She listened, the coffee untasted by her, her hands 
 folded in her lap. 
 
 " In his veins is the blood of the nobility of 
 France of Russia ; he has the manners of a court- 
 ier, and he is versed in the philosophies of the 
 world, but he wears the dress of a Catholic priest 
 and he lives on an island it is called the Island 
 
 99
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 of the Angels in the Mediterranean, in a cottage 
 with a sanded floor, with a middle-aged house- 
 keeper and a young boy, named Anthony, whose 
 face is like one of Botticelli's choristers. He goes 
 about in a rickety old chaise drawn by a horse he 
 overfeeds from kindness, and he preaches at a little 
 village church to a couple of hundred peasants and 
 their children, and he visits their sick and christens 
 their babies in the name of Christ, and buries their 
 dead and weeps with them, and in all things shares 
 their lives. And for all this or because of this 
 he has refused a bishop's see and a cardinal's hat" 
 
 Stone put his empty cup of coffee down. The 
 slight stimulant seemed to give him new strength. 
 He was conscious that Blair Martin's eyes had not 
 left his face. 
 
 " How did you ever run across him? " 
 
 " Years ago when I was a midshipman," he an- 
 swered in a low voice. 
 
 " An Annapolis man ? I did not know . . ." 
 
 " It is all so long ago, Miss Martin, I hardly 
 know myself. It was on one of the cadet cruises 
 to Marseilles. I got a short leave and went on a 
 tour by myself, and I came on the Island of the 
 Angels and met " he broke off. It seemed to him 
 he could not go on. 
 
 " Oh, Pierre Lamore how interesting ! What 
 made you give up the service? " 
 
 He turned and looked at her as a man looks who 
 has been granted a brief respite. He was silent for 
 an imperceptible instant. 
 
 IOO
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " Do you think I was made for the service? " 
 
 A smile of infinite beauty crept across her face. 
 He could see it in the failing light. 
 
 " I am not sure how you would have taken orders 
 from your inferior superior officers. Yet you 
 were born to be a leader of men." 
 
 " It was a big question to me, Miss Martin, that 
 decision, and I was very young. I I did not al- 
 together decide it for myself. There was some one 
 else to be considered, and just then a year be- 
 fore graduation the money came from my child- 
 less uncle. Even then I was conscious that it 
 brought with it its trusts and responsibilities. I 
 graduated and then resigned but I have al- 
 ways loved the sea." 
 
 " Tell me more about Pierre Lamore and the 
 Island of the Angels." 
 
 " What more is there to tell that some day you 
 will not see for yourself? There is a wonderful 
 chateau on a high bluff at one end of the island, 
 overlooking the water, and not far from it is a 
 memorial church built to the memory of a child, 
 where every night they hang a beacon to light the 
 travelers on the sea. And down in the valley with 
 the vineyards Pierre Lamore lives and labors." 
 
 " Some day I must go there." 
 
 " Yes some day." 
 
 After that he fell into a silence and by and by he 
 stooped down and picked a fresh log from the wood 
 basket on the hearth and laid it on the big brass 
 andirons. They watched it, as the shadows behind 
 
 IOI
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 them began to creep into the room, until it caught 
 and commenced to burn. 
 
 " One could say a good deal more about Pierre 
 Lamore and the Island of the Angels, but what is 
 the use? Some day you will see for yourself. It 
 is growing late and there is something else I came 
 to tell you." 
 
 His voice was more earnest than she had ever 
 heard it. Into her heart again unbidden stole that 
 faint cold fear. 
 
 " It was while I was on that cruise to Marseilles 
 that I met a girl " he broke off and rose sud- 
 denly and stood by the mantel looking down into the 
 fire. 
 
 "Yes?" she said. 
 
 " That I thought I loved." 
 
 " Yes ? " she said again. 
 
 " That the next year after I had been gradu- 
 ated and had resigned I returned and mar- 
 ried." 
 
 " She is living? " Her voice was as quiet as the 
 soft wind that played through the bare branches of 
 the mimosa tree outside the window. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She did not speak again although he waited. 
 
 " We have not lived together for seven years," 
 he said, after what seemed a year of silence broken 
 only by the crumbling of a log upon the hearth. " I 
 cannot tell you all the details to-day perhaps some 
 day some day I hope I may be free to do so. 
 It may be that until then you will trust me as 
 
 I O2
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 one friend trusts another ? For now this is 
 enough." 
 
 " It is enough," she said, looking into the fire, 
 " and trust I will always trust you." 
 
 She waited until she heard the front door close 
 on him and his step die away along the gravel foot 
 path. Then in the dusk she slid from her chair to 
 the floor in front of the hearth, and with wide eyes 
 dumb with pain, watched the log he had placed 
 there burn to ashes. 
 
 The room was very still, but there was an odd 
 bursting sensation in her head, that ached and ached. 
 She had felt it days before, and again that morning, 
 but had put it from her by the thought of his com- 
 ing. He had come and gone, and the agony had 
 returned, fiercer than before. All life was gone, 
 it seemed to her, leaving just this dull agony in- 
 stead. She had looked for violets as she had waited 
 for him. Would the violets ever bloom again, she 
 wondered. She had waited for him, her heart burn- 
 ing at a white heat she had found that while the 
 white heat glowed it made and left its ashes. 
 
 " But I will always trust you," she said again, as 
 the last log broke and she sat crouching in the dark. 
 
 103
 
 XL 
 
 IT was the next day that the accident at mill 
 fifteen occurred. A detailed account of it, with 
 startling headlines, appeared in a dozen extras 
 two hours after the boilers had exploded and the 
 maimed and dying had been carried from the 
 wrecked building where the huge belts, suddenly 
 freed, vied with the harsh grinding cogs and wheels 
 in bringing death or injury to the helpless men. 
 
 Blair Martin heard the extras called the length 
 and breadth of the streets as she stepped into her 
 roadster and took her seat by Willis, the chauffeur, 
 after an afternoon of shopping. She was suddenly 
 arrested by the words the boys were shrieking. 
 
 " A-l-1 about the big explosion ! Extray! One of 
 Andrew Martin's mills mill fifteen blown up ! 
 Extray! Extray!" 
 
 She hailed a boy in passing, and not waiting for 
 the change, stepped into the car again. 
 
 " Home," she said briefly to Willis. The paper 
 for a moment lay folded as the boy had given it to 
 her in her nerveless hand. 
 
 After a while she unfolded the paper and com- 
 menced to read. Instinctively she looked for the 
 list of dead and injured. At the foot of the list of 
 injured she read the name, Joe Blackburn. 
 
 104
 
 ** THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 The old pulsing pain she had felt in her head for 
 days still went on in its uninterrupted way, but 
 otherwise she was not conscious of an unusual 
 tremor or a sigh. It seemed to her she had known 
 it would come, and she was not surprised. 
 
 By and by when they had left the more crowded 
 thoroughfares, the noises of which strangely con- 
 fused her aching head, she went back and read the 
 account of the accident through. It was all there 
 in its cruel and glaring details even the edito- 
 rial's scathing denouncement of her father and the 
 state inspectors. But none of it seemed to touch 
 her inner consciousness except the brief account of 
 one foreman, by name Joe Blackburn (generally 
 called Blackie) and of his injuries. He was one of 
 the few they had been able to move any distance, 
 and he was now at Saint Vincent's Hospital in the 
 east end. 
 
 After she had finished it all, she carefully re- 
 folded the paper and laid it in her lap without com- 
 ment of any kind. The action was unconscious, 
 but Willis, who had seen the glaring headlines and 
 guessed something of the truth, drove the car with 
 unusual care over the rough stretches on the home- 
 ward road. 
 
 Once in the courtyard of the Anchorage -she de- 
 scended from the automobile mechanically and made 
 her way to the library. The paper was still in her 
 hand. 
 
 The library was empty and she sat down in a big 
 chair to wait and think. Thinking seemed difficult. 
 
 105
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She supposed it was this strange ache in her head 
 that kept the thinking back. After all, what was 
 there to think of except of Joe Blackie ? She pulled 
 off her gloves slowly and carefully smoothed the 
 fingers out. How still the room was and how 
 warm! She rose and went over to one of the big 
 windows and tried to open it. Her hands were 
 oddly weak. She tried again and the window 
 yielded, and she stood there by it breathing in the 
 February air. It helped the strange aching in her 
 head and she was conscious that her thoughts were 
 clearer and more collected. After all, there were 
 other things to think of besides Joe Blackie, if one 
 were strong enough to bear them. The engineer 
 had been killed, and the paper said he left a wife and 
 new-born child. The assistant engineer had been 
 scalded horribly scalded, the paper had said 
 and the doctor gave no hope. Two other men 
 would die. Another had lost an arm a working 
 man maimed for life. Several had received minor 
 injuries, and Joe Blackburn had been badly cut about 
 the head and neck. And all because the State 
 inspector had passed shaky boilers and machinery 
 innocent of safety devices. Who was responsible? 
 She stopped thinking here, but the horrible ache 
 went on, and by and by the thoughts forced them- 
 selves back upon her consciousness. Who was re- 
 sponsible? Why, Jenkins, the manager, of course 
 Jenkins and her father. Her father ! And he 
 had done this thing! Was it possible that the pa- 
 pers and his workmen and Joe Blackie knew her 
 
 1 06
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 father better than she did? Had she ever known 
 the real Andrew Martin at all ? Was his blood her 
 own? 
 
 She closed the window suddenly, shivering as 
 with a chill, and went back to the chair to wait. 
 She did not even try to fancy what his homecoming 
 was to be. She looked about the room. She had 
 taken such pride in its fashioning in its heavy 
 wainscoting, and few fine paintings that blended so 
 well with the carved wood and the massive furni- 
 ture. He had left it all to her, as he had left every 
 detail of the home, and he had never questioned the 
 expense or her taste in choosing. How blind she 
 had been how the money had slipped through 
 her fingers. She wondered if the big chair in which 
 she sat would have paid for a safety device for the 
 machinery on the third floor. It had cost a great 
 deal of money, she remembered. 
 
 By and by she grew tired of thinking and she 
 leaned her head back against the big chair and fell 
 into a fitful doze. She awakened to find that the 
 early February dusk had fallen. For a moment she 
 sat without moving, looking at the dark wainscoted 
 walls and the big dim pictures showing forth from 
 their gold frames. The odd throbbing in her head 
 had increased, and then came memory. 
 
 She rose to her feet with a low cry and groped 
 her way out of the room, upstairs. 
 
 Her father did not return that night nor was he 
 there when she came downstairs to breakfast. Her 
 
 107
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 eyes were heavy and it seemed to her she walked on 
 air. She could not touch her meal. 
 
 Afterwards she ordered out her roadster, which 
 she drove herself. She never remembered how she 
 found Saint Vincent's, nor could she very distinctly 
 remember the Sister in charge who met her there 
 and to whom she stated her errand. 
 
 " My name is Miss Martin," she said, "I am 
 I am Andrew Martin's daughter. I have come to 
 inquire about the injured men brought here yester- 
 day especially about one by the name of Joe 
 Blackburn. May I see him ? " 
 
 The Sister in charge hesitated. 
 
 " There have been many inquiries for him from 
 the other men," she said, " but no one of his own 
 has been here since he was brought in injured. It 
 is against the rules to allow the ward patients to 
 see other than their own people out of visiting hours, 
 but " she broke off, " you know him? " 
 
 " Yes," said Blair Martin. " Will you take me 
 to him?" 
 
 The Sister in charge touched the rosary that 
 hung from her belt. She was old in the service of 
 suffering. She had grown to know that there was 
 even greater suffering than that which Saint Vin- 
 cent's walls sheltered. 
 
 She spoke slowly. 
 
 " Come with me." 
 
 She led her to the elevator and on the second 
 floor motioned the boy to stop. They got out to- 
 gether the woman of the world and the woman 
 
 1 08
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 of the church and together they walked the 
 length of a long hall. 
 
 At the main door of the men's ward she stopped. 
 
 " When he was brought in yesterday he was un- 
 conscious from loss of blood. In going over his 
 clothes to find some relative's address, we found 
 considerable money. Later, he may want a private 
 room, but I fancy not if he is a mill hand. I must 
 caution you not to startle him when one's sight 
 is threatened " 
 
 " His eyes are injured ? " 
 
 " Not permanently, we hope, but the wound in his 
 head came very near to blinding him for life " 
 The Sister in charge crossed herself. " Sister Sim- 
 eon will take you to him." She motioned to the 
 ward Sister as she spoke. 
 
 His bed was at the extreme end of the room, 
 partly screened to keep out the strong light. As 
 the footsteps came nearer and paused at the foot of 
 his bed, he stirred a little and put up one hand feebly 
 to his bandaged head. 
 
 Sister Simeon moved on to another bed. 
 
 Blair Martin came to the side and stood looking 
 down at him. She hardly saw the chair placed there 
 for her use, nor was she conscious that some of the 
 other men, who had seen her enter, were regarding 
 her curiously. 
 
 " I have come to see how you are," she said, and 
 as gentle as was her voice, and as low, he started. 
 
 "'You! You have come alone ?" 
 
 " I am quite alone," she answered. 
 
 109
 
 " How did you know I fancied only Wilson 
 knew," he said. " After all, your father all the 
 world can know now." 
 
 " I read about it in the papers last night." 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 " Your father " 
 
 " I have not seen my father. He had not come 
 home when I left this morning." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 She sat down in the chair by the bed. She felt 
 suddenly ill and faint. 
 
 " I knew it would come," he said after a pause, 
 " it has been threatening for months." 
 
 " And you exposed yourself ! " 
 
 "Would you have had me run away? " he ques- 
 tioned. " I could not leave the other men to face 
 it alone." 
 
 " Did they know the danger, too ? " She seemed 
 to be speaking impersonally. 
 
 " Of course ! Every one every one knew." 
 
 She began to draw a pattern with the tip of her 
 gloved hand upon the coverlet. 
 
 " Did my father know ? " 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 "How long since he has known?" she asked, 
 after a little. Her voice was very calm. 
 
 " I warned him last summer. It was for that I 
 I first visited the Anchorage." 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 She looked at him in silence for a few moments, 
 and in silence he waited. 
 
 no
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Then she gathered strength to ask him what had 
 been trembling on her lips since she first saw him. 
 
 " Are you much hurt ? " 
 
 A ghost of a smile played about his mouth for a 
 moment. 
 
 " That depends. They tell me my eyes will be 
 all right in a few weeks if I use care, and that the 
 wounds will heal, but " he broke off. 
 
 " But what? " she breathed. 
 
 He stretched out one hand impulsively over the 
 spread, then drew it back hastily. 
 
 " Would you care," he asked very slowly, " if 
 I should tell you that I shall be scarred for life? " 
 
 Somewhere in the ward she heard other voices. 
 They seemed far away. The odor of ether from 
 somewhere near crept over to her. She tried to 
 speak to control her voice and failed. 
 
 " I could not bear it," she said brokenly. 
 
 " You will learn to bear it as I shall," he said 
 in a low voice. 
 
 By and by Sister Simeon came up and gave Stone 
 some stimulant from a covered glass standing on 
 the table by his bed. Blair Martin watched them 
 both in silence. She could see the hot flush of 
 shame overspreading Stone's partly covered face, 
 as the Sister raised him in his weakness as though 
 he were a little child. Something in that flush, as in 
 the Sister's act of mercy, touched her with an un- 
 utterable pain and she turned her face away. 
 
 After the nurse had gone she spoke to him. 
 
 " Is there anything I can do for you ? " 
 
 III
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 He hesitated a moment. Then he put out one 
 hand and began to grope for something on the table. 
 
 She rose. 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked. " What is it that I can 
 get for you ? " 
 
 " Are there not some letters on the table ? " 
 
 She shook her head, and then, becoming aware 
 that he could not see the motion, she answered : 
 
 " I do not see any there. Shall I ask the Sister? " 
 
 " Oh, I remember now. I put them under my 
 pillow when Wilson left the package this morning 
 directed to Joe Blackburn. Poor Wilson he need 
 not be afraid of betraying me now. I can't keep 
 the thing secret any longer. One of the workmen 
 who reached me first found a letter on me in my 
 own name and some visiting cards I had forgotten. 
 After all I don't suppose it matters much except for 
 all the newspaper talk and fuss, and I'll miss most 
 of that." 
 
 " You do not care who knows ? " She was think- 
 ing of her father. 
 
 " Why should I, when there is so much else worth 
 while? I've tried to make it good to the men." 
 
 Then after a little: 
 
 " There is something you might do for me if 
 you would " he broke off. 
 
 " I shall be glad oh, so glad," she said eagerly. 
 
 He groped under his pillow until he found the 
 bundle of letters. 
 
 " Will you read the postmarks to me, and any 
 return addresses in the corners? I have never felt 
 
 112
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 such need of a secretary before. Will you play sec- 
 retary to me now? " 
 
 She took the bundle from his hand and undid it. 
 
 " There are four," she said. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " This one seems to be from a tailor it is post- 
 marked the city and bears the name of Smith and 
 Brown." 
 
 " Unmistakable," he said, with a slight laugh, " a 
 receipted bill. It can be laid to one side. Wilson 
 will file it for me. The next, please? " 
 
 " Postmarked Philadelphia. Undoubtedly a wed- 
 ding invitation. Shall I open it ? " 
 
 " Do not trouble about it. There is another? " 
 
 " Two more. This one is an advertisement notice 
 from a haberdasher. It bears the city postmark and 
 is unsealed." 
 
 " Tear it up, please." 
 
 She did so and carefully piled the scraps on the 
 table by his bed. 
 
 "The other one?" 
 
 She sat down again and picked up the remaining 
 letter. She turned it over once or twice to be sure 
 of the postmark. 
 
 " This seems rather personal," she said doubt- 
 fully, " and I can't quite make out the postmark. 
 It bears a Canadian stamp " 
 
 " A Canadian stamp from Montreal ? " with a 
 sudden strength he sat up and reached for the let- 
 ter. " Let me have it," he said, almost harshly. She 
 gave it to him and her hand trembled as she did so, 
 
 IJ 3
 
 * THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 and she knew not why. For a minute he lay hold- 
 ing it tensely in his hand, and once it seemed as 
 though he would have torn the bandages from his 
 head and eyes. 
 
 " I cannot see " The words were fraught with 
 a pain she sensed, but could not understand. 
 
 " Let it wait until your eyes can bear to be 
 used," she suggested, " or until some friend or 
 Wilson comes." 
 
 " I cannot. I have no friends near enough for 
 that. It may be weeks before I can use my eyes. 
 Wilson I could not bear for Wilson to know the 
 details and I dare not wait." 
 
 " Could I read it for you ? It would be as though 
 I had never seen it." 
 
 He bit his lips for a moment. 
 
 " If I could be quite sure of that," he said, 
 " quite sure " 
 
 " Try me." 
 
 " I will," he answered. " Draw your chair closer 
 that no one else may hear. Tell me first, is the en- 
 velope marked in one corner?" 
 
 " Yes. It requests that if not delivered in five 
 days it be returned to The Hotel des Invalides, 
 Montreal." 
 
 " Go on," he said briefly, and he turned his face 
 away. 
 
 She opened the envelope carefully and undid the 
 closely written pages. They were in a woman's 
 firm, clear hand. It was dated four days back and 
 read: 
 
 TT4.
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " MY DEAR MONSIEUR STONE : While I am aware 
 that only recently I sent you the monthly bulletin 
 regarding your wife's condition " The pages 
 suddenly fluttered to the floor, and Stone, arrested 
 by the faint noise and the ceasing of Blair Martin's 
 voice, asked hastily: 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " It is all right," her low voice came back, " I 
 carelessly let the sheets fall. If you will wait a 
 moment I will soon have them so I can begin again." 
 
 He waited in a tense silence. Then her voice 
 went on : 
 
 " regarding your wife's condition, but such un- 
 usual developments have taken place of late that I 
 thought you should be notified. The case, as Mon- 
 sieur knows, is one of the most remarkable we have 
 ever cared for, for even in the hours of Madame's 
 greatest mental darkness there have been rays of 
 pure reason shown. Our own doctor here has never 
 agreed with the specialists Monsieur, had sent from 
 Toronto and New York, who pronounced the case 
 one of hopeless insanity, and it would seem that 
 our own good doctor may be right after all, and 
 Monsieur meet with the reward his faithful care of 
 Madame merits. 
 
 "A fortnight ago Madame's condition was not 
 encouraging there being symptoms of a return 
 of the lung cough she had so severely when you 
 first brought her to us. These symptoms have not 
 abated as much as we would like, although Madame
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 is somewhat better in her cough to-day, but her lucid 
 moments have returned more and more often. To- 
 day she refused to play with the new toys you sent 
 her last month, and once she spoke of you and asked 
 when you were coming to take her home. She also 
 attended chapel this morning and her special nurse, 
 who never leaves her, tells me she heard her quite 
 distinctly pray for the soul of the boy you lost. I 
 left her only a few minutes ago by the window in 
 her sitting-room overlooking our beautiful river, 
 and she spoke of it and of the sunset, as Monsieur 
 himself might have done. 
 
 " Monsieur may be assured that he will be kept 
 posted as to the slightest change. When I spoke to 
 our doctor about it to-day, he smiled a little. ' You 
 may tell him from me,' he said, ' that I think the 
 waiting is nearly over.' 
 
 " I can fancy what this hope will mean to Mon- 
 sieur, whom we have never forgotten as the husband 
 of Madame, or as the liberal contributor to our new 
 chapel when it was built. 
 
 " I commend you and Madame to the mercy of 
 God. 
 
 " MARY FRANCES, Mother Superior." 
 
 In silence she folded the letter and placed it in the 
 envelope, and then very gently laid it in his hand. 
 His hand lay limp upon the coverlet and she took 
 his fingers and folded them over the letter. Still he 
 did not move. 
 
 After a while she rose. 
 
 116
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " I am afraid you are tired. Is there anything 
 more I can do for you ? " 
 
 He turned his head wearily on the pillow. 
 
 " Nothing more, thank you," he said slowly. 
 
 "Does the letter require an answer?" 
 
 " No answer, thank you, Miss Martin." 
 
 She looked down at him then and it seemed to 
 her that he was miles away. Her own voice when 
 she spoke again sounded far off and indistinct. 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye." Further off still came his voice to 
 her, and it was as the voice of one speaking from a 
 great abyss. 
 
 117
 
 XII. 
 
 AT midnight Blair Martin awoke from a fitful 
 doze and rung the electric bell by her bed 
 for Hannah. Hannah, whose rest was rarely 
 disturbed by her mistress, but who always slept 
 with one eye open in case of need, hurried down in 
 anxious wonder. From the bed Miss Martin looked 
 at her with burning cheeks and shining eyes. 
 
 " Call the doctor, Hannah, I am ill." 
 
 They were the last conscious words she said in 
 weeks. An hour later, when the doctor hurriedly 
 arrived, he found her raving in wild delirium. Un- 
 til daybreak, he and Hannah sat with her. Then 
 the trained nurse arrived. At five in the morning, 
 Lorimer, the doctor, descended the broad steps. His 
 face was grave and troubled. He had known Blair 
 Martin since she was a child her mother before 
 her and he had watched with an almost personal 
 interest the rise of Andrew Martin and his fortune. 
 As he reached the lower step, Martin came out of 
 the library door, and for a moment the two men 
 faced each other in silence. 
 
 "How is she?" 
 
 " Very ill typhoid without a doubt. She must 
 have had it in its walking form for a week." 
 
 " She will pull through ? " Even Lorimer 
 
 118
 
 m THE SANCTUARY ^ 
 
 scarcely recognized the voice or the face of the 
 man before him. His clothes were awry, his hair 
 disheveled, his eyes red from sleeplessness and the 
 horrors they had lately seen, his face ashen with the 
 weight of a new fear. 
 
 Lorimer drew on his coat slowly. He did not 
 meet Andrew Martin's eyes. 
 
 " She is very ill," he repeated. " I have tele- 
 phoned for Curtis, the great typhoid specialist. He 
 is to meet me here at nine. Also another nurse. 
 If she can be pulled through " He broke off. 
 
 "May I see her?" 
 
 Lorimer hesitated. How could he repeat to the 
 father before him the wild ravings he had listened 
 to through the night ravings of the explosion ; 
 of sufferings personally witnessed ; of sights he had 
 never even dreamed she knew to exist of a crin- 
 ging fear and loathing lest her father come to her? 
 
 " She would not know you," he said after a little ; 
 " it would only be painful to you, and you can do 
 nothing " 
 
 Martin interrupted him. 
 
 " You mean " 
 
 " I mean," said Lorimer slowly, and with more 
 of sympathy in his voice than he was aware, " that 
 from her delirium I gather she has not seen you 
 since the the trouble at the mill. Is it so ? " 
 
 Martin nodded his head in assent. 
 
 "Ah I thought as much. Better leave her to 
 time." 
 
 Andrew Martin drew a deep breath and turned 
 
 119
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 back to the library door, and in silence Lorimer 
 crossed the great hall to the courtyard. When his 
 hand was on the latch he was arrested by Mar- 
 tin's voice, and in that moment he barely recog- 
 nized it. 
 
 " Wait, Lorimer, there is just one thing. There 
 is no expense to be spared you Understand that ? 
 What money can get for her " he broke off and 
 paused a moment. 
 
 " I understand," said Lorimer. " Wealth can do 
 much sometimes." 
 
 The Scotchman looked at him still with those red 
 sleepless eyes that had already witnessed horrors 
 still with his ashen face of fear. 
 
 " Lorimer, two days ago I fancied money could 
 buy almost anything. I know now it can never buy 
 peace." 
 
 Then he went into the library and closed the door. 
 
 Inside he sat down by his big flat table desk where 
 he had sat all night, awake and alone. His money 
 had never brought him the son and the heir to his 
 name that he had wanted years ago ; it had not kept 
 Mary Blair with him. It could not purchase for him 
 now the easy self-satisfaction of these last years. It 
 could never wipe out the horrors he had seen at the 
 mill and in the vicinity, and the horrors of the last 
 two days and nights. It could not lift one ounce of 
 the crushing dread that beset him now. After he 
 had gone after he had exhausted all the luxuries 
 and the ease and the complacency that wealth had 
 brought, and had passed on to What, what would 
 
 1 2O
 
 m THE SANCTUARY ^ m 
 
 the vast pile be worth to him if Blair and her chil- 
 dren's children did not exist? After all, what had 
 he been striving for all these years if not for Blair 
 and her unborn children ? He himself had been too 
 busy really to enjoy more than the personal comforts 
 his vast wealth had brought. He had never had 
 time for travel, or for art or for the finer things that 
 seemed to make life worth while to others and to 
 Blair. And Blair would she ever speak to him 
 again except through necessity would she ever 
 want to touch his hand it was blood-stained, he 
 remembered suddenly or to look into his eyes or 
 caress him as of old ? There had always been depths 
 in Blair's nature he had never fathomed, as there 
 had been depths in her mother's life he had not 
 touched he had always known that, and yet now 
 the knowledge came to him as the swift stroke of 
 a knife might cut suddenly and deep. His had 
 been the lesser nature. To-day he knew that. Was 
 it because he had been too busy watching the vast 
 pile roll up on itself to try to understand ? Could all 
 the luxuries and the gold and the power he had 
 striven for as a youth wipe out one remembrance of 
 the horrors he had seen, or grant him happiness if 
 Blair were to die without forgiving him? Would 
 she, with her ideals of life forgive all this? 
 
 At nine Lorimer returned with the specialist, 
 and later there came another nurse. He heard 
 Brewster admit them, and listened as they made 
 their way upstairs. After what seemed to him hours 
 he heard them descending and he went out into the 
 
 121
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 hall to meet them, as earlier in the day he had gone 
 out to meet Lorimer. 
 
 The specialist stopped on his way to his car, 
 waiting at the door to answer the unspoken question 
 in the Scotchman's eyes. 
 
 " You are naturally anxious, Mr. Martin, for 
 news. It is really too early to tell you anything 
 definite. There are symptoms I do not like a 
 brain complication evidently the result of some 
 great shock and I might say personal loss, al- 
 though of the latter her delirium tells little. Your 
 daughter has had no sudden bereavement per- 
 haps an unfortunate love affair?" 
 
 The Scotchman swallowed hard. The face of 
 Hector Stone rose up before him. After all, how 
 little, next to nothing, he knew about the heart of 
 Blair. All these years he had been too busy making 
 money for her lavish gowns 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " I think not," he said, and he knew that he was 
 ashamed, and that he had told a lie. 
 
 " Curious curious," said the specialist, slowly, 
 and looked towards Lorimer, but Lorimer's face was 
 turned away. 
 
 " Lorimer will keep me posted. I will come out 
 again later. We'll hope for the best, Mr. Martin. 
 May I extend my sympathy? This on top of the 
 mill trouble He broke off. Something in the 
 Scotchman's eyes forbade. With a bow he picked 
 up his hat, and followed by Lorimer, he passed out 
 of the front door and entered his car. 
 
 122 

 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 The morning wore away. At one, Brewster 
 brought him his luncheon, but was curtly dismissed. 
 He walked the length of the great room again and 
 again, pausing now and then to look out of the long 
 casement windows to the February scene without. 
 Strange thoughts came to him as he walked and 
 looked. The bare, gaunt trees assumed human 
 shapes of worn and ill-fed men. He could not for- 
 get the homes that he had seen or the horrors they 
 contained. And he had always boasted of his mills 
 of Jenkins' management. He had boasted of 
 it to Hector Stone. Stone! He wondered what 
 Stone would say when they met he knew what 
 Stone would think, what Stone had thought of him, 
 now. It might be that Stone had known him better 
 than he had known himself. A sudden fierce desire 
 to meet Stone face to face came over him, and as 
 for years all desires had meant their gratification 
 to Andrew Martin, he hurried over to the desk and 
 rang up Stone's chambers. After some trouble he 
 made a connection with a man who said he was 
 Mr. Stone's valet. No; Mr. Stone was not in. 
 Mr. Stone was away. Thwarted, he put the re- 
 ceiver down, and began to walk up and down the 
 room again. At three, Brewster announced his 
 lawyers. 
 
 He met them as he had met the doctors stand- 
 ing. Mechanically he rang the bedl, and when 
 Brewster answered it, ordered drinks. He did not 
 touch his own. 
 
 The lawyers were old friends. Like Lorimer, 
 
 123
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 through long years they had watched the Scotchman 
 rise and amass his vast fortune. The eldest of them 
 had almost kept pace with his client He was known 
 as the greatest corporation lawyer of the state. 
 
 " I understand your daughter was suddenly taken 
 ill last night ? Accept my sympathy. I have always 
 admired Miss Martin, although I have for years 
 had a fancy she never cared for me," the older man 
 smiled a little grimly. He was thinking of his New 
 Year's gift of roses, returned. 
 
 " My daughter is ill so ill she may not live," 
 said Andrew Martin. He spoke with a certain dig- 
 nity foreign to him. Then, as neither man an- 
 swered, he rested his hand on the table and bent a 
 little forward toward the older man. 
 
 "Like you? I fancy not, Hadley." He spoke 
 very distinctly and very slowly. 
 
 Hadley's expression of self-satisfaction fell from 
 him like a mask. He put down his brandy and soda 
 quickly, and half rose from his chair. 
 
 " Oh, I'm not saying anything against you I don't 
 say against myself," said Andrew Martin, sinking 
 into his chair, and leaning across the desk with a 
 contemptuous smile on his face. " My daughter is 
 of finer clay, Hadley, than you or I." 
 
 Hadley moistened his lips with the brandy and 
 soda and waited. The younger man stared. 
 
 " We've been playing a poor game, Hadley. I 
 never knew just how poor a game until two days 
 ago. You've come to see about a settlement for 
 damages how little we can buy the injured men 
 
 124
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 off with how little we can pay the women and 
 the children of the men who died. Oh, yes, I 
 know it's all in my own interest. You're doing 
 the work I hire you to do " he was aware that 
 Hadley winced, and he was filled with a fierce 
 pleasure, the first he had known in hours, " but 
 I'm simply not going to make any so-called settle- 
 ment. I've never estimated before what a working 
 man's arm might mean to him, or the money value 
 of a woman's heart, and the worth of children's 
 empty stomachs. Here are some cheques I've drawn 
 up for the different families. I've I've investi- 
 gated each case myself, but I'm new at the business. 
 I've added fifty per cent to what seemed to me just 
 just, mind you, Hadley, not business-like or ex- 
 pedient. If it doesn't suit, you can come back with 
 the cheques and I'll add to the amount." 
 
 He stopped and walked over to the fireplace, and 
 stood there looking at the smouldering logs on the 
 andirons, his back to the room, his hands folded be- 
 hind him, his head bent a little forward. Hadley's 
 voice reached him quite distinctly where he stood, 
 and neither the words nor the sneer surprised him. 
 
 " Turning parson, eh ? Suppose the men and 
 the women refuse the cheques refuse to let you 
 add to them and take their cases to the courts ? 
 Buying them off is one thing and not such a very 
 hard thing when men have what we have, Martin, 
 but the public these days is acquiring a pernicious 
 habit of demanding investigations and punishment 
 of responsible parties." 
 
 125
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " I'm prepared for a fine, Hadley." 
 
 Hadley leaned back in his big chair, crossed his 
 legs comfortably, and carefully measured his finger 
 tips together and puckered up his lips. He was 
 conscious that he was giving the great millionaire 
 a bad quarter of an hour. He thoughtfully reflected 
 that it was wholesome treatment. He also made 
 another mental tabulation on an event that had 
 rankled for many weeks the return of his roses 
 by the woman lying ill upstairs. One could not 
 fight a woman, but one might reach her through the 
 man of the family. 
 
 " One cannot always get off with fines," he said 
 at last, significantly. He wished the Scotchman 
 would turn that he might see His face. The quiet 
 voice of the Scotchman when he spoke, disturbed 
 him. Perhaps, after all, he had not bagged his 
 game. 
 
 " I have thought of that, too," said Andrew Mar- 
 tin, still looking into the fire. " Some men, when 
 they have been rudely awakened to a wrong, and 
 learned a principle of life, would be willing- to 
 give themselves up. I am not man enough for that. 
 All my life I have fought for what seemed to me 
 worth while. I shall continue to fight as I think 
 best. Dishonor is one thing, Hadley and I have 
 thought to-day that the world's standard of honor 
 is not over high and disgrace to one's only child 
 is another." 
 
 " I fancy Miss Martin, with her high ideals, would 
 hardly be able to distinguish between the two," said 
 
 126
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Hadley. His voice was studiously polite and solicit- 
 ous. 
 
 The Scotchman wheeled around suddenly and 
 faced him. A flush not wholly from the fire crept 
 over his face. 
 
 " You are quite right, Hadley. One can often 
 read in others the qualities lacking in himself." 
 
 " Thank you. We were talking about " 
 
 " The possibility of a prosecution. Quite correct. 
 That's rather fine talk for the gallery, but the threat 
 hardly does here. You're a pretty big stockholder 
 yourself, you know, and your own great steel in- 
 terests are not over clean. It would certainly be best 
 to defend the case. The State inspector, too, is not 
 altogether unattached. We're pretty well within 
 the law." He stopped for a moment, and he smiled 
 sarcastically. He was not looking at Hadley now, 
 but out of the window on those bare, gaunt trees. 
 " The law ! What a farce it is sometimes ! Stone 
 once said that there was one law for the rich and 
 one for the poor. I never thought of it before. 
 Stone is of the caliber that would give himself 
 up for a principle." 
 
 " I fancy it will be some time before Mr. Hector 
 Stone airs his views again. When one has been 
 nearly cut to pieces eyesight endangered, and per- 
 manently scarred a long rest in a hospital seems 
 best. I imagine his principles will wait for some 
 time," said Hadley. 
 
 The Scotchman's gaze quickly left the view from 
 the window, and he looked straight at Hadley. 
 
 127
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " I don't understand you," he said slowly. 
 
 " Oh, come now, self-possession and grit are all 
 right, and I don't mind saying I rather admire the 
 way you're taking this thing especially with your 
 daughter so ill but that won't go." 
 
 " I don't understand," said the Scotchman again, 
 looking straight into Hadley's eyes. 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me that you don't know 
 what all the papers are shrieking in glaring head- 
 lines, by now ? " 
 
 " I have not read the papers. I have not had 
 time or wanted to." 
 
 " Do you actually mean that you don't know that 
 Stone is lying injured in Saint Vincent's Hospital 
 in the east end ? " 
 
 Martin's hands clasped and unclasped themselves 
 nervously. He gave no other sign of agitation. 
 
 "He has been hurt?" 
 
 Hadley rose with a suppressed oath. 
 
 " This is really too much. Don't you honestly 
 know that he was one of the foremen in mill fif- 
 teen?" 
 
 Martin's hand went up to his collar quickly. He 
 drew a deep gasping breath. He did not speak. 
 
 " He's worked there for months under the name 
 of Joe Blackburn the men called him Blackie 
 they found his card on him, and sent it to the hos- 
 pital later " Hadley broke off, suddenly conscious 
 that the Scotchman had walked over to the window 
 and thrown it wide open; his eyes seemed staring 
 into nothingness. 
 
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 "His hands! His hands! and scarred for 
 life ! " He spoke aloud, but as though he were alone. 
 
 After they had gone he was not conscious when 
 they left, Hadley and his silent partner who had 
 scarcely spoken more than a word of greeting 
 he continued to stand there staring out of the case- 
 ment window. By and by he began to walk the 
 length of the room. He wondered dully if he would 
 ever be tired again. The motion helped somewhat 
 the tension in his head. 
 
 So Stone had worked in mill fifteen for months 
 Stone with the six-cylinder car and the immacu- 
 late clothes and the Chesterfield manner when he 
 wished to assume it and with the blackened hands. 
 And for months how many he neither knew nor 
 cared Stone had received on a Saturday night his 
 pay envelope doled out from the mill pay window. 
 A hot flush swept over the Scotchman's face. That 
 pay! Had it even kept him in cigars? Why had 
 he stayed knowing the danger why ? Why, 
 if not to stand by the men he had come so often to 
 argue for, here, at Martin's house? How he must 
 have despised him ! It had been one thing for Mar- 
 tin himself when young to fight upward each rung 
 of the ladder had not ambition and the hope of 
 wealth been goad enough to urge him on ? But for 
 this man for what had he served ? He could not 
 have liked the monotonous manual toil of the long 
 days. The pittance that he earned could have meant 
 nothing to him. He had given of his labor and his 
 
 129
 
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 strength and his time and brain fitted for better 
 things to what? Was a principle of life a tangi- 
 ble thing after all ? Was this why Blair was raving 
 in delirium upstairs. Did she know? Scarred for 
 life ! And he, whenever he should see him again 
 whenever men should look, they would see that red 
 mark of courage on this man's face and the sign 
 of his own dishonor. 
 
 He stopped walking at last and threw himself in 
 a chair, and in the dark sat watching the glowing 
 embers on the hearth. He was not of a caliber like 
 that. He keenly realized he never could be. He was 
 not sure he desired to be, but he was conscious that 
 the world had been changed for him by the knowl- 
 edge of a scar upon a man's face. 
 
 He dismissed Brewster shortly when he came to 
 turn on the lights, and he did not go to dinner. He 
 was conscious of neither hunger nor fatigue. Would 
 not Blair's place be empty the place she had taken 
 when her mother died the place she herself might 
 never take again. He was glad with a fierce 
 gladness that Mary Blair had gone. He went 
 back over their lives together the first meeting 
 it had been under a mimosa tree, as had been the 
 wooing in those days when he was penniless, ex- 
 cept for a meager salary a salary a trifle more 
 than Hector Stone had drawn from him for months. 
 Yet had he ever known perfect happiness since then ? 
 The realities of life had swept in, and an ambition 
 and a craze for power had possessed him. There 
 had been little time for love in that swift race for 
 
 130
 
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 -wealth. He had always felt in a dull way and 
 to-night he felt it keenly that she had loved him 
 to the end as she had in the beginning and he had 
 been so blind ! He had never forgotten her, but the 
 work had been so paramount it had seemed to him 
 that if one must work to win one must starve love 
 from one's life. He had won and she had died, 
 and he knew now, that, except for Blair, in spite of 
 all the wealth he had lavished on her, she had been 
 glad to go. 
 
 In the dark he rose slowly, and slowly crossed the 
 room and the hall beyond and climbed the stairs. 
 He walked as an old man walks, with bent shoulders 
 and bowed head. At the landing that led off to the 
 wing where Blair's apartments were, he paused, 
 steadying himself with one hand on the newel-post 
 of the staircase. A dim light glowed from her bed- 
 room, and as he listened, wild incoherent ravings 
 reached him, and he shivered as with the palsy. 
 Then, haltingly, he turned into the passage that led 
 to his own rooms and passed in and closed the door. 
 
 131
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE hours dragged themselves out into long 
 days and nights, and the nights and days 
 passed into weeks. Outside in the grounds 
 of The Anchorage, the last vestige of snow melted 
 from the lawns, and the violets came and went as 
 silently as* souls at death creep forth from outer 
 forms. The first soft green hung on the willows by 
 the stream in the pasture, and in the garden where 
 Thomas and his assistants worked, a miracle of 
 beauty was being wrought from the dull cold clod 
 that seemed almost unwilling to yield up its secrets 
 to the sun's increasing warmth. Inside the great 
 house dwelt a silence more profound than in the 
 heart of outer nature, broken only by faint neces- 
 sary noises or voices pitched to their lowest key. 
 The shrill discordant cries of delirium, in the room 
 where Blair lay ill, had ceased and had given place 
 to a stillness and a stupor from which it seemed im- 
 possible to arouse her. The fever enveloped her 
 body as a sheet of flame envelopes an object that for 
 a time resists its will only later to yield and crumble 
 to its fall. It was as though for her all time had 
 ceased, and spirit and consciousness lay suspended in 
 a vast void. And day and night, unseen by Andrew 
 Martin in his agony, or the physicians or the nurses 
 
 132
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 or the retinue of servants, but sensed by all, stood 
 the Overwhelming Presence by the door, bearing in 
 its hands the scales. 
 
 It came that Overwhelming Presence to be 
 at last a tangible thing to Martin. It followed him 
 in his comings and his goings it oppressed him 
 with a weight that he could not lift. In the silences 
 of the night it awakened him from fitful feverish 
 dreams of a burning mill and maimed and broken 
 lives, and stood specter-like above him, and there in 
 the darkness there came at its bidding the vision of 
 years to come, barren of man's regard, of woman's 
 love visions in which only a vast avenue of gold 
 stretched out in endless miles ahead of him, stripped 
 of all except its own gleaming splendor. 
 
 As the aged walk, he walked about the great 
 house until, driven by the Presence, he would creep 
 as some hunted thing, once strong, now abjectly 
 weak, out into the grounds. None of the servants 
 except it might be Hannah or old Brewster or 
 Thomas, dared to address him. Sometimes, half 
 mad, he would hunt Thomas out in the garden and 
 try to talk to him. An odd change took place in 
 their interviews. The old retainer found no trace, 
 in the lined and haggard face, in the stooped 
 shoulders, in the uncertain voice, of the able, cal- 
 culating, precise master of six weeks ago. Thomas 
 offered the silent consolation of his life work a 
 garden that grew more beautiful as time went on; 
 that was the envy of all the other big estates for 
 miles around, and in which for years, except for 
 
 133
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Blair, he had held undisputed sway. But there came 
 an hour when the sight of the flowers that for years 
 Martin had only dimly appreciated when the 
 mimosa tree was more than he could bear, and, 
 bent and shriveled, he would retrace his steps to the 
 great house to be met by the watching, waiting 
 Presence there. 
 
 That was the afternoon that Lorimer and the 
 great specialist sought him out in the library and 
 told him that somewhere around midnight they ex- 
 pected a change, that the scales so long suspended 
 must drop either to the side of life or death. They 
 left him as they had found him, a crouching object 
 of a man in his big chair in the wainscoted library. 
 
 The hearth below the high mantel was cleanly 
 swept, and stretched its tiled length in front of him. 
 The fireplace was filled with growing plants, where 
 earlier in the year the great logs had burned. A 
 chill took possession of him, and he glanced around 
 the huge empty room. In it, in all the house, save 
 Blair, there dwelt no human creature of his own; 
 there existed in all his life no one upon whom now 
 in his weakness he might lean. Had it come to this, 
 he wondered dimly, the impotency of gold, that it 
 could neither buy back men's lives nor mend wid- 
 owed hearts nor return to children the fathers they 
 had lost that had no power to make a man's arm 
 grow again where it had been wrenched off that 
 was of too base a coinage to buy human ties or 
 human loves; that was powerless to save Blair if 
 the Presence chose to drop the scales the fraction of 
 
 134
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 an inch; that never in this world could wipe out 
 the scar on the face of Hector Stone. 
 
 He started and leaned forward suddenly in his 
 chair, gripping its arms with his fingers, and he 
 stared and stared into the fireplace of flowers. He 
 had never seen the scar; he had never heard from 
 Hector Stone since this desolation had come to him. 
 
 He got to his feet and made for his desk tele- 
 phone. An overpowering impulse to see Stone came 
 to him to look upon his work, the scar. An over- 
 powering sense of fear such as he had never known 
 swept over him the need of some one (and in that 
 instant his groping soul reached out and sensed 
 Stone's own) for some one who cared to watch out 
 this night with him. 
 
 At the telephone he hesitated. After all where 
 was he to be found at the hospital at his old 
 chambers? Feverishly he rang up both. From 
 Saint Vincent's came the word that Mr. Stone 
 Joe Blackburn had been dismissed a fortnight 
 ago. From the chambers came the word that Stone 
 had moved, and had left behind no address. The 
 information department of the telephone system 
 gave no clew. 
 
 He slipped back into his desk chair, his nails 
 against his mouth, a thwarted and a half-crazed 
 Thing. His brain that brain that had devised 
 such vast schemes for self-enrichment on other 
 creatures' woe had it forsaken him now? He 
 closed his eyes to hide from himself the Shadowy 
 Presence facing him ; behind it stood the gray ghosts 
 
 135
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 of mill men looking at him with haunting- eyes. 
 Then as a tree might suddenly snap in a storm, he 
 flung his head and arms on the desk and cried, as 
 he had only cried once in his life before, down in 
 the far south alone in the darkness of a Mississippi 
 night under a mimosa tree, the hour Blair had been 
 born. 
 
 When it was over he began to think more clearly 
 than he had done since the accident to mill fifteen. 
 Something of the old ability to marshal his forces 
 came back to him and for a brief space the Haunting 
 Presence and the ghosts drew back and were for- 
 gotten. He reached for pen and paper and wrote 
 to the Chief of Police a personal letter and 
 another to Hector Stone. Then he rang for Brew- 
 ster. Through all the years of service, Brewster 
 had never failed him. 
 
 At ten that night he heard the sound of an auto- 
 mobile in the courtyard, then Brewster's voice in the 
 hall. The impatience, the earlier hope, suddenly 
 fled. What was it he had done? How could he 
 bring himself to face the scar? He switched off the 
 lights and only one with a leaded glass shade of 
 Tiffany ware cast its soft glow and shadows on the 
 desk at which he sat. The rest of the big room was 
 in darkness. He could hear it the step he re- 
 membered he was almost at the door. Then 
 Brewster's voice. 
 
 " Mr. Stone, sir." 
 
 He rose as Brewster closed the paneled door be- 
 
 136
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 hind him and stood by the desk waiting. It seemed 
 to him he could not move to meet him. He was 
 conscious that Stone still stood by the door, his hat 
 in his hand, regarding him. 
 
 By and by he left the desk and came forward, and 
 he did not see, or seeing care, the start of surprise 
 Stone gave. Had not his own mirror reflected his 
 changed face for weeks ? 
 
 " So you have come. It was good of you," he 
 said at length. 
 
 " I have come yes." 
 
 Stone remained standing in the shadow of the 
 door and did not offer to break the silence that fell. 
 Martin went back to the desk and began nervously 
 to play with a Florentine paper-knife. He was 
 acutely grateful for the shadows that hid Stone's 
 face from him a little longer. 
 
 " Where did Brewster find you ? " he asked, try- 
 ing to speak lightly. Then : " Won't you have a 
 chair?" 
 
 Stone moved across the room. The Scotchman 
 knew that he was coming nearer the arc of light, 
 and he suddenly sat down. 
 
 " You have a treasure, Mr. Martin, in your man," 
 said Stone, standing by the desk. " He never traced 
 me until after nine, but he wouldn't give up. He 
 found me at Doctor Lorimer's." 
 
 " Lorimer's ! " the older man started. " You 
 mean you are " he broke off. 
 
 " Staying with Bragdon Lorimer. He was my 
 uncle's best friend. I have known him ever since 
 
 137
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 I was a little shaver. He helped to care for me at 
 Saint Vincent's." 
 
 The Scotchman heard a chair move and knew that 
 Stone was seated opposite. Still he could not raise 
 his bent head leaning in his hand. Still he could 
 not bring himself to look upon that scar. Stone's 
 voice reached him. It held and charmed him still. 
 
 " You sent for me. Can I be of service? " 
 
 The Scotchman's shaking hand dropped suddenly 
 from his face. Across the length of the big flat- 
 topped desk he looked at Stone. 
 
 " I believe I am slowly going mad," he said. 
 " The mills the dead men and Blair and 
 that " he pointed to the left side of Stone's face 
 where, in the arc of light, the long red disfigurement 
 mercilessly stood out. 
 
 Stone began to trace patterns on the desk with the 
 tip of his finger. 
 
 "It is not a pretty thing is it?" he asked at 
 length, " but of late I have scarcely remembered it." 
 Then after a pause : " Why have you sent for me? " 
 
 The Scotchman's nails went up again to his 
 mouth ; he crouched lower in his chair. His hunted 
 eyes rested fascinated on the mark on Stone's face. 
 
 " I am going mad," he said, " I believe I am mad 
 already. I sent for you because, although I wronged 
 you, I need you to help me through to-night. The 
 dead men they are always near me and the 
 women's faces and the children's cries and Blair 
 Blair " 
 
 He broke off and his face was as colorless as the 
 
 138
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 dead men's they had carried from the horrors of 
 mill fifteen. 
 
 Stone shivered suddenly. He had schooled him- 
 self for days for this meeting, but the look upon the 
 other man's face or was it the mention of a 
 woman's name unnerved him. He turned his 
 face away. 
 
 The long silence grew there seemed nothing 
 but silence no sound in all the house of which 
 they were conscious. Even the clock on the high 
 mantel had stopped. 
 
 " Yesterday," said Stone slowly, " I helped Lori- 
 mer with a case in the slums. It was in the midst 
 of filth and want and despair, and he burned an eat- 
 ing sore out of a man's body with caustic " The 
 slow voice changed a little, growing sterner, " Mr. 
 Martin, there is a filth worse than vermin and de- 
 cay a want grimmer and more terrible than that 
 of physical poverty a despair keener than the 
 bodily needs of men. I live in both worlds ; I have 
 worked in both worlds, and I know, and the cancer 
 on the morals of the rich is worse than that running 
 sore. Caustic is needed for both, leaving maimed, 
 incomplete bodies, it is true, but perhaps restoring 
 health." 
 
 The Scotchman dropped his forehead on the end 
 of the desk. 
 
 " For God's sake stop! " 
 
 Again Stone's voice changed. This time it hardly 
 seemed the same. 
 
 " I am here to help you watch through the night." 
 
 139
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 To himself he said, " I was watching when you sent 
 for me." 
 
 " You know then that that to-night they ex- 
 pect a change ? " 
 
 " Yes ; Doctor Lorimer has kept me posted from 
 the first." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 Then the silence fell again, and by and by Stone 
 noticed that the bent shoulders of the man opposite 
 were shivering with cold. He leaned forward and 
 pressed the electric bell, which Brewster, who had 
 been haunting the door, hastily answered. 
 
 " Some wine for Mr. Martin," said Stone, " and 
 a good fire, please." 
 
 Later, as Brewster knelt before the hearth, Stone 
 came up behind him and reset the clock upon the 
 mantel. It was five minutes of eleven. 
 
 "Doctor Lorimer is here?" he asked in a low 
 voice, and his hand shook as he replaced his watch. 
 
 " Yes, sir, and Doctor Curtis, too. I heard them 
 say they would spend the night. Miss Blair is 
 mighty sick, sir." 
 
 " Yes, Brewster mighty sick." 
 
 Brewster applied the match and sat back on his 
 heels to watch that the kindling caught. By and by 
 he looked up at Stone. 
 
 " Has she any chance, Mr. Stone ? " 
 
 " I don't know, Brewster. I don't 
 know " said Stone at length. " Do you ? " 
 
 Brewster rose slowly to his feet and gave a nerv- 
 ous cough. 
 
 140
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Years ago, sir, my old mother taught me before 
 she died that the first and last chance is prayer," 
 he gave his attention wholly to the fire, " but we 
 don't think much of those things now, sir." 
 
 Stone was silent. Quite irrelevantly he saw the 
 face of Pierre Lamore in the flames. 
 
 " Anything more, sir? " 
 
 " Nothing, thank you, Brewster. Wait," as the 
 man would have gone, " get word to Doctor Lorimer 
 that Mr. Martin is waiting news of any change here. 
 That he sent for me that I shall wait with him 
 until we know." 
 
 " Yes, sir, and if I might say it, sir, it's mighty 
 glad I am that Mr. Martin's got a friend to help 
 him through to-night "he hesitated, looked once 
 towards the crouching immovable figure at the desk 
 and then softly closed the door. 
 
 When he had gone Stone left the fire and re- 
 crossed the room, and poured out some wine. He 
 touched Martin on the arm. 
 
 " Drink this," he commanded, " it will help you. 
 Then come with me to the fire." 
 
 Unresistingly the Scotchman did as he was bid- 
 den. By and by Stone got him settled in an arm- 
 chair by the hearth. Once he leaned over and 
 chafed the older man's cold hands. 
 
 After a little, the warmth of the great fire to his 
 body and the heat of the wine to his brain, soothed 
 and brought to Martin a certain languor such as he 
 had not known in weeks. He stared into the fire, 
 but there came no visions of horror to disturb him 
 
 141
 
 *% THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 now. The Brooding Presence was forgotten per- 
 haps shielded from him by the strong will of the 
 man beside him, who seemed to give him strength. 
 For this brief time the ghosts remained unseen and 
 he forgot the slow ticking of the clock, the scar 
 upon the face of the other man, and the battle 
 being fought upstairs. He leaned back in his chair, 
 and a brain half-maddened from terror and fatigue, 
 grew calm, as Martin closed his eyes and slept. 
 
 In the cfcair on the other side of the fireplace, 
 Stone sat and waited for the passing of the hour. 
 Then it was that the mask he wore slowly dropped, 
 and in the silence of the room, with none to see, the 
 soul of the man lay bare. 
 
 Upstairs they were fighting for her life, those men 
 of skill. How slowly, how quickly the minutes 
 passed! He counted them by his pulse, and each 
 heart throb was for her. Only by chance, by the 
 need of another man, had he gotten in her home 
 to-night. Those others those trained men and 
 women upstairs they had a right to her near 
 presence closer than his own. His own! What 
 rights were his? 
 
 He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his 
 forehead in his hands. And he searched his brain 
 for the philosophy that had sustained him in his 
 work in the under world ; he grasped for the hope ; 
 the faith that Pierre Lamore knew and understood 
 so well. For his soul lying in that dark abyss there 
 seemed neither time nor place. Then it was that 
 his consciousness swept into the void where for 
 
 142
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 days her own had lain suspended, and his own 
 reached out instinctively for hers. 
 
 "Blair," he whispered, "where are you, Blair? 
 . . . Come ! " he commanded. 
 
 The void changed into a sweeping overwhelming 
 Sea of Consciousness. He was the Sea the All 
 and he was nothing. And she 
 
 " Blair ! " he said again. The Consciousness was 
 All. It held her, too. 
 
 " Blair! " And he breathed it to himself. It was 
 as if he had called upon the name of God. 
 
 143
 
 XIV. 
 
 OUT into the new unfolding world of spring, 
 a month later, they carried her, and laid her 
 in a long wicker chair in the sunshine. 
 There she neither spoke nor moved, and except for 
 the yearning earnest eyes with which she looked 
 around on old familiar objects, she might have been 
 asleep. For a while the nurse lingered near and 
 then, seeing that she needed or desired nothing, left 
 her to herself. She was dimly glad when she saw 
 her go, but would have made no effort to dismiss 
 her. Effort was a thing of the past as was 
 thought. In the low valley of her convalescence the 
 soul of her stood mute and motionless, and for the 
 present the dim heights of health to be rescaled 
 seemed a remote possibility. She was conscious only 
 of a dim awakening in her weakness to the things 
 of outward sense. Had she ever seen the trees so 
 soft and green how wonderful a tree was how 
 strong. . . . And the odor of the box hedge, how it 
 came to her sweet and pungent after the night's 
 shower! Then there were bits of delicate color be- 
 yond the garden hedge the flowers some day 
 she would see them nearer, perhaps, but it was a long 
 walk to the garden and the mimosa tree once she 
 had thought it near at hand she could not see the 
 
 144
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 mimosa tree very well. It had no flowers as yet. 
 . . . What was it about the mimosa tree that once 
 had made her sad. . . . How tired she was how 
 tired was her brain. If the nurse would only come 
 with old Brewster to carry her upstairs. . . . 
 
 Each day they brought her out and each day she 
 lay a little longer in the wicker chair, and each day 
 the opening world of spring grew fairer, and she 
 read an inner revelation she had never seen before, 
 as she watched the thickening foliage of the trees, 
 the increasing bulk and beauty of the flowers 
 Thomas brought daily and placed on the porch table 
 near her. 
 
 Slowly, as one awakens from a half-conscious 
 doze, she awakened to the realities of life again. It 
 was the day Thomas had added to his offering of 
 flowers one slender spray from the mimosa tree, 
 that the first keen consciousness came back. After 
 he had gone she lay staring at it then she half 
 rose in her chair and touched it. She was acutely 
 aware of her weakness. Unseen she laid her head 
 down on the porch table near and prayed for the 
 gift of tears. 
 
 She had never once asked for her father. And 
 Lorimer, fearing a relapse, had kept him away. 
 Martin used to look at her sometimes from a cur- 
 tained window or shadowed doorway, as old Brew- 
 ster bore her past him, white and emaciated, in his 
 arms. 
 
 Besides the money and the mills what had his life 
 held but Blair ? And now Blair seemed unconscious
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 alike of his existence or his need. That his need 
 for her had become paramount, he grew to know 
 with an overwhelming knowledge. Sometimes he 
 drove over to the mills and he would creep into Jen- 
 kins' office, shame in the eyes he never lifted, if, by 
 chance, any passed him on his way. Experts had 
 been working for weeks on the new safety devices 
 for the machinery through all the twenty mills 
 otherwise things were much the same. He had 
 never recrossed the thresholds of the stricken homes. 
 He knew that each month Hadley sent them the 
 pensions. He did not know that there were those 
 in that vast throng of working men who each morn- 
 ing and each night filed in and out to labor pup- 
 pets to a shrill whistle's call whose eyes looked 
 with envy on the pension Griefstin drew for his 
 maimed arm ; or that there were hearts beneath the 
 grime and sweat that beat faster with the divine 
 longing to renounce their lives as the other men had 
 done, that sometime their women might have time 
 to rest their children have more cause to smile. 
 
 Once in a shamefaced way he mentioned to Jen- 
 kins an increase in their pay, the possibility of 
 shorter hours, but with a business instinct and a 
 business logic that had drawn Jenkins to him long 
 ago and held him for twenty-five years in his em- 
 ploy, the manager had talked convincingly of the 
 folly of such a deviation from the accepted schedule. 
 When the Scotchman had hesitatingly asked if some 
 other mill owners had not of late been trying such 
 experiments, Jenkins met him with a knowledge of 
 
 146
 
 $ THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 statistics as to the loss per annum such experiments 
 caused of the falling away of political influence 
 crushing defeats from the Interests and Martin 
 stood appalled. Of course if Mr. Martin wished to 
 face all this to curtail his power for a wild ex- 
 perimental dream and turn a thriving industry, that 
 now yielded him a fortune every year, into a losing 
 investment if he wished to incur the enmity and 
 ridicule of men even more powerful than himself in 
 the world of finance the mills unmortgaged, 
 uninvolved in any way a modern mine of gold 
 were his to do with as he liked. In that case, he, 
 Jenkins, would feel that his day of service in the 
 concern was at an end. The Scotchman, filled with 
 panic at the thought of losing his right-hand man, 
 and alone facing the unknown proposition, cowering 
 beneath the threat of failure and ridicule, unresist- 
 ingly signed his veto to the paper Jenkins put before 
 him. It was an appeal from the men for a larger 
 night shift. Jenkins assured him that the shift was 
 already large enough, larger than like shifts in other 
 mills of the kind throughout the country. The men 
 were a shrewd lot and were taking advantage of the 
 unfortunate accident that was still fresh in their 
 minds. Jenkins was willing to admit that he had 
 underestimated the danger of the machinery he 
 had never taken very much to the mechanical side 
 of the work but he was on his own ground with 
 the men. 
 
 The Scotchman left him complacently giving or- 
 ders unconscious that he had given Jenkins a bad
 
 m 
 
 quarter of an hour. He got into his waiting auto- 
 mobile, and in a dispirited way ordered Willis to 
 drive him home, the word was a farce since 
 Blair's illness; since the indifference with which 
 she treated his existence. Perhaps it came from her 
 weakness Lorimer had once in an uncertain way 
 suggested it it was a hope to which he clung. 
 Some day she might arouse from the lethargy that 
 seemed to enfold her and might ask for him. Since 
 the night in the big library when Stone had awa- 
 kened him and told him Blair would live, the haunt- 
 ing ghosts had now and then faded away, and he 
 had known a dim semblance of peace. After a 
 while, when the horror had grown dimmer when 
 Blair came back to him life would be as it was 
 before. When Blair came back! Would Blair ever 
 come back and take that place in his life again, 
 he wondered. He put the thought from him and 
 stared across the road. They were passing through 
 the settlement of rough and decaying cottages where 
 the workmen lived. Did they live, he wondered 
 suddenly, was their existence life? Perhaps his 
 old defense that he had once worked for less than 
 they that every man had his chance was a fal- 
 lacy after all, and suddenly and quite irrelevantly 
 he thought of Hector Stone. He had seen Stone 
 twice since that night in the library at the Anchor- 
 age. Once Stone had called and had sat with him 
 an hour. He remembered it was the longest hour 
 he had ever spent facing that long and jagged 
 scar the scar and the ghosts. Once he had 
 
 148
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 passed Stone on the street. He wondered how Stone 
 would meet Jenkins' argument. Stone, too, knew 
 the men, and perhaps from a different standpoint 
 than did Jenkins. 
 
 Bent, and with the weight of years upon him that 
 he had never felt until of late, the Scotchman de- 
 scended to the courtyard. Brewster met him, and 
 deferentially held open the door of the tonneau. For 
 a moment Martin hesitated, a slow hope dawning in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Your mistress ? " 
 
 " In her chair, sir, under the trees. I carried her 
 there an hour ago. Doctor Lorimer left his regards, 
 sir, and said she was gaining every day." 
 
 " That is good. She she has asked for me ? " 
 
 Old Brewster shook his head. 
 
 " Not yet, sir, perhaps to-morrow, sir " 
 
 Andrew Martin stepped past him. 
 
 " Yes, perhaps to-morrow, Brewster." 
 
 And still more bent, he passed through the hall 
 and into the library alone. It was always alone. . . . 
 For a moment he stood in the middle of the room. 
 On every hand was luxury such luxury as few 
 men know and he remembered with a thrill of 
 conquest and of pride that he had won it wrested 
 it from the hands of fate. How well had he built 
 his structure after all ! Should he renounce now at 
 the summit the power he had so long craved cur- 
 tail it the fraction of an inch, or see diminished the 
 vast hoard for which he had toiled and sweated and 
 given the years of his life that might have been spent 
 
 149
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 in enjoying other things? The blood of his youth 
 and of his prime had gone into the struggle, and he 
 was too old now for the things other men cared for 
 sport and travel, or art, perhaps, and books. He 
 had paid the price. 
 
 The thoughts were checked as wild horses are 
 brought to a stop. He had paid the price. 
 
 In the empty room with its high carved wain- 
 scoting and priceless pictures, and windows leading 
 to a larger view of beauty and possessions, he stood 
 quite still alone. 
 
 The price ! was there something existing in 
 those wretched homes of his workmen that was 
 lacking here? 
 
 Was there something after all beyond price be- 
 yond the reach of his long arm of power? 
 
 And once again he saw the mimosa tree in the far 
 South. Once more beneath it he saw Mary Blair 
 a child held in her arms. 
 
 150
 
 XV. 
 
 IT was the next day that Martin came unexpect- 
 edly upon Blair, and the meeting that he had 
 hoped for, and yet dreaded for weeks, became a 
 reality. He had thought that she was upstairs in 
 the big sun parlor, asleep. The ghosts that for a 
 time had been quieted had risen again, their haunt- 
 ing semblances at his side. It was, perhaps, to rid 
 himself of them that he had started on a walk around 
 the grounds. For a while he had watched Thomas 
 at his work among the flowers, and talked a little to 
 him in a half-hearted way, and then had slowly re- 
 traced his steps toward the house. On rounding the 
 southern corner he came upon her before he was 
 aware of it, and retreat seemed impossible. She had 
 heard his step upon the graveled pathway and slowly 
 turned her head in his direction. For a moment she 
 looked at him in silence, and he, before whom some 
 of the great moneyed men of America had stood 
 dumb, began to tremble childishly, waiting for a 
 word. Then, without comment of any kind, with 
 a gesture of inexpressible weariness, she turned her 
 face away. A slow, dull rage awoke in him that was 
 stilled as he noticed the frailness of her face, the 
 transparent look of the hand where Mary Blair's 
 ring still shone. He came forward and stood by the
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 arm of her chair, the paternal, all the best in him, 
 rising to meet her weakness and her need. 
 
 "Blair," he said, "my bairn!" 
 
 For a brief moment the white half-closed eyelids 
 fluttered, and it seemed as though she would look 
 at him. Then the colorless lips trembled, but she 
 neither spoke nor moved. 
 
 Desperately he felt the gulf between them widen- 
 ing, and more desperately still came the knowledge 
 of his need of her just now. 
 
 " You are getting stronger ? Oh, Blair, these 
 weeks without you you have been so ill ! " he 
 spoke disconnectedly hurriedly, feverishly, watch- 
 ing her face for a change. 
 
 Her eyes opened wide and she stared across the 
 lawn. " Yes," she said, " I have been so ill if 
 I only could have died ! " 
 
 The voice was weak and passionless and without 
 hope. 
 
 "Blair!" 
 
 She went on as if she had not heard him call her 
 name. 
 
 " The best in me died long ago, yet some- 
 thing " she hesitated a moment, and a faint color 
 crept into her face that he, intently watching, did not 
 understand, " something kept me here." 
 
 " It was because I needed you," said Martin, and 
 his face was as colorless as hers. 
 
 " You do not really need me " he remembered 
 afterwards the calmness of her voice " there is 
 nothing that I have to give you now that you have 
 
 152
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 not had all these years. You have the money that 
 has been your need ever since I could remember 
 it broke my mother's heart and it is breaking mine 
 but you have the money still." 
 
 " Hush, you do not know what you are saying 
 you shall not speak so," and Martin began to walk 
 up and down to still the rising tide of shame and 
 anger within him. 
 
 " I have had weeks to think it over, and I know 
 what I am saying," and she turned her eyes to his. 
 " I never knew all my mother suffered until 
 now." 
 
 He said nothing, but he walked a little faster. 
 
 "I I was so proud of you," she said brokenly, 
 like a little child. 
 
 He stopped in his walk and began to shiver in 
 spite of the warm day. The fever of anger had re- 
 ceded and it seemed to him he had been plunged 
 into a bath of ice. Listening, he knew that her faith 
 in him was dead. 
 
 " As soon as I am stronger I am going away," 
 she said after a little, and she drew the shawl around 
 her shoulders a little closer, as if the chill of the 
 blight had come on her, too. 
 
 He started, and stopped in his walk. 
 
 " Going where with whom ? " 
 
 " I'm not sure where," she said wearily, " just 
 somewhere to get away from things and myself. 
 I shall take Hannah good old Hannah some- 
 wHere I shall learn to face life again. I have no one 
 but Hannah. I have never had any close friends 
 
 153
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 real friends as other women. My life was my 
 mother's before she died. Then it belonged to you." 
 
 " Blair let it be mine still ! " 
 
 For a long while she looked at him, and in the 
 weeks and months that followed he remembered 
 every line in her white face. 
 
 " You never were all I thought you," she said 
 slowly. 
 
 " I am no worse than other men," and he spoke 
 sharply, and the flame of anger burned within him 
 again. " I am not as bad as many. I have lived a 
 clean life as men's lives go. I have never con- 
 sciously forgotten your mother. As for the mills 
 
 the money " the words were pouring out to 
 escape from the white heat of fury that burned be- 
 hind them " what besides this " he mo- 
 tioned to the home and grounds " besides the 
 physical comforts luxuries of life, if you will 
 have I gotten from the money? Have I withheld 
 it from worthy charities have I begrudged it to 
 the servants in the house did I ever stint your 
 mother has not your smallest wish been bought 
 and gratified? " 
 
 Slowly she sat up in her chair and leaned forward 
 without support a thing she had not done in weeks 
 
 and she clasped her hands together tightly in 
 front of her breast. White, emaciated, with shining 
 eyes she looked at him again. 
 
 " Listen," she said, her voice low with emotion, 
 " There are needs in my life in the life of every 
 woman as there were in my mother's life that 
 
 154
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 cannot be bought and gratified so. Your money 
 brought you more than the luxuries. No human 
 man or woman ever toiled as you toiled ever re- 
 nounced the finer things as you did without some 
 purpose. My mother knew long ago what I, until 
 now, only dimly guessed. It was not all for us 
 it was not first for us you struggled. You 
 wanted something more than the luxuries. You 
 wanted the esteem of other men you wanted 
 glory above all you wanted power ! And when 
 you won them all those great gifts of life how 
 did you use them? For the esteem of men whose 
 hands I would not touch, you killed the Labor Bill 
 before the legislature of your state. For the glory, 
 you built and endowed a home for fallen women, 
 while you gave starvation wages to the women in 
 your mills. Was the home to shelter them ? And 
 for your power because you had power over hun- 
 dreds of workmen that toiled to add to your wealth 
 you refused them the protection of safety devices 
 on the machinery, demanded by bare humanity ; and 
 their blood, and the anguish of their women and 
 little children, and the scar on the face of the man 
 who shared his life with them is on you, and is 
 on my heart." 
 
 For a moment she sat as she was, then with a 
 long breath of exhaustion, let herself back in her 
 chair. 
 
 " For years you were my ideal of strength of 
 wisdom my mother, in her love for you, kept the 
 ideals bright.. If I questioned your indifference, as 
 
 155
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 children will, she hushed me with a look or word. 
 Did you not labor for us, and, after us, did you not 
 labor for the good that you might do? " 
 
 He listened, and he was as a man changed to 
 stone. She knew him as he was as he had barely 
 known himself and she was judging him. 
 
 After a while he spoke. He had no thought of 
 questioning her source of information it was piti- 
 fully correct and in his fear he forgot all except 
 that he had lost her and soon was to lose even sight 
 of her form. He resorted to the commonplace. 
 
 " You cannot travel without means." 
 
 A smile infinitely sad crept into her eyes. Even 
 in this moment the paramount thought was upper- 
 most. 
 
 " I have thought of that," she said. " I shall not 
 need overmuch I never knew until recently how 
 really little one can subsist on and I shall have 
 more than enough for Hannah and myself. Have 
 you forgotten the very comfortable income left me 
 five years ago by my mother's single brother? " 
 
 He had quite forgotten it, and his start of surprise 
 was her answer. Even this tie this need of her 
 for him was severed. 
 
 He looked around him in a blind, unthinking way, 
 without seeing anything. Then his vision cleared, 
 and he saw himself in these grounds alone. He 
 saw himself in the big wainscoted library and in the 
 dining-room at his meals alone driving out 
 with Willis, perhaps, but still alone ! How the 
 ghosts would walk and follow him! . . . 
 
 156
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Then he turned on her fiercely, with the instinct 
 of a wounded animal to retaliate upon him. He 
 forgot the years when Blair had filled his life 
 when he had had time to give her from the building 
 of his wealth forgot his need of her his tie with 
 Mary Blair. 
 
 " As you please," he said coldly, and his face 
 looked as it had on the day he had killed the Labor 
 Bill. " Go when you are strong enough when 
 Lorimer says it is safe I have no doubt that Han- 
 nah is to be trusted, but you need not suppose I 
 shall live at the Anchorage alone." 
 
 He looked at her quite steadily, and she had never 
 known until then how merciless his eyes could be. 
 
 " I do not think I understand you," she said, and 
 she tried to keep her voice from trembling. 
 
 He heard the trembling and he was glad 
 fiercely glad and because the instinct of the pri- 
 meval was uppermost, with its gloating desire to 
 wound he forgot Lorimer's warnings and the 
 whiteness of the emaciated face before him the 
 face of Blair and the face of Blair's mother that had 
 haunted him of late. 
 
 " It is quite plain. You go your way with your 
 money. I go my way with mine. I shall buy me 
 if I wish it pleasures and diversions sometimes 
 called dissipations. Later it shall buy me a wife 
 for my home." 
 
 The hot color swept over her face then as sud- 
 denly receded. 
 
 " First if you wish it you would dishonor 
 
 157
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 my mother's name, and later put another woman in 
 her place? " 
 
 " Just that but subject to my will, my pleas- 
 ure, my caprice, my power. I shall use that power 
 as I have never used it until my last breath and 
 I shall die cursing the fate that takes it from me. 
 Do you understand ? " He drew down his mouth a 
 little. Fascinated, she watched his face. 
 
 " I hear," she said at length, " but you cannot 
 expect me to understand." 
 
 He laughed disagreeably and turning, walked 
 away. Dimly he was conscious that hours later in 
 the library the ghosts would come again, but just 
 now he did not care. The instinct to crush was on 
 him. Had he looked back had he once hesi- 
 tated 
 
 Five minutes later, when Brewster and the nurse 
 came to carry her upstairs, they found her quite un- 
 conscious in the long chair, her hand pressed to her 
 throat the sapphire gleaming in the sun.
 
 XVI. 
 
 MORE colorless than the face he had left up- 
 stairs was that of Martin, whom Lorimer 
 encountered as he was leaving three hours 
 later. The physician looked at the Scotchman 
 searchingly and not without suspicion. 
 
 "She is better," he said briefly; "it looks as 
 though she had had a shock. I do not understand it. 
 She was doing well. I have left orders that the 
 nurse watch her more closely. I do not look for any 
 serious results but it has been a setback and 
 she hasn't strength for setbacks." 
 
 " You are coming again, to-night? " 
 
 Lorimer puckered up his lips thoughtfully. 
 
 " There shouldn't be any need for that," he said, 
 " she is sleeping now, and when she awakens the 
 nurse will telephone me how she is. If she's as well 
 as I believe she will be, I'm planning to hear Hector 
 Stone speak to-night before the National Federa- 
 tion." 
 
 " I had not heard," said the Scotchman slowly. 
 
 " That isn't the fault of the press," said Lorimer 
 tartly. " It's been in big type for three days. It's 
 considered rather an honor to be called to speak be- 
 fore the Federation. Stone is the youngest man 
 they have ever asked." 
 
 159
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Indeed ! " The Scotchman's throat seemed dry. 
 
 " He's a big man Hector," said Lorimer, " big 
 in frame and heart and brain. He's the kind of man 
 this country needs just now. I've known him since 
 he first wore kilts, and John Stone and I used to talk 
 of him and predict great things for him. When 
 John Stone died he left his millions unreservedly to 
 him. That uncle was something of a connoisseur 
 in men and he knew Hector's caliber as he knew 
 his own." 
 
 " What's his subject ? " It seemed to Martin that 
 he asked against his will. 
 
 Lorimer laughed a little. 
 
 " Brotherhood," he said briefly. " Rather a vague 
 subject or a Utopian dream in this era of warring 
 factors." 
 
 He picked up his hat from the settle in the hall. 
 
 " Nothing more to excite that daughter of yours," 
 he said. " Mind or I'll give up the case." He 
 looked at the Scotchman again in a critical way and 
 opened the door into the courtyard. 
 
 Martin went back to the ghost-haunted library 
 and picked up a financial journal and tried to read. 
 His fears for Blair's safety had been stilled by 
 Lorimer's reassuring words, and the anger of the 
 morning that had flamed at so high a heat had set- 
 tled into a dull glow of defiance and resentment. 
 But he was restless and he could not keep his mind 
 on the rise and fall of stocks. The all-absorbing 
 passion of his life self-aggrandizement to-day 
 failed to hold him and his wandering attention. He 
 
 1 60
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 pulled the morning paper toward him. It had never 
 been unfolded. Of late the comments in the papers 
 regarding himself were things rather to be avoided. 
 On the first sheet in big type was a column and a 
 half on the Federation meeting that evening and the 
 coming speech of Stone. There was an editorial 
 on the same subject. He pushed the paper from 
 him with an impatient gesture. The press the 
 world or was it himself ? was going mad. 
 
 At half past seven that night, he got into his car 
 and briefly ordered Willis to drivei to the Federation 
 Hall. A few moments before eight he entered with 
 the crowd a soft hat pulled down over his eyes 
 and he slipped into a seat in the extreme rear of the 
 hall. He chose it because of the shadow cast by a 
 near-by gallery column. It was the first time he had 
 gone out publicly since the mill disaster. He smiled 
 grimly as he sat in the shadow and waited. Some- 
 thing had changed was it himself or the world's 
 judgment of him that had made him, who once 
 had been a prominent figure in the world, grateful 
 for the shadow that hid him. He did not analyze 
 the impulse that had led him here to-night. It might 
 have been curiosity or the desire to get away from 
 the ghosts. 
 
 From the shadow he watched the hall rapidly fill- 
 ing up, realizing that he had come none too soon in 
 order to be seated. The place was crowded. Be- 
 hind him, men and even women were standing three 
 rows deep. He hardly knew what he had expected, 
 perhaps a gathering of working men or those of 
 
 161
 
 3% THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 the middle class but he had not looked for the 
 faces and the kind of people he saw here to-night. 
 Here and there in patches he saw men and women 
 of the working class. Two rows ahead of him he 
 recognized with a start, a young clerk that assisted 
 Jenkins in his office; but for the most part the 
 clothes the faces the cultivated voices that 
 reached him were those of men and women in the 
 upper strata of society. So Stone drew his own 
 around him still, as well as the toilers of the under- 
 world. 
 
 In a few minutes Stone and the President of the 
 Federation came on the platform. If he had been 
 surprised before, he was startled now at the burst of 
 applause that greeted their appearance. Waiting for 
 it to subside, he had a chance to study the faces of 
 the men on the platform. The President was a man 
 whose name was known throughout the country, 
 who, for his work civic and scientific, had been deco- 
 rated abroad. Stone looked unusually young beside 
 his lined and venerable face. In a few words as 
 eloquent as they were simple he introduced the 
 younger man and then sat down. 
 
 Very slowly very easily Stone came forward 
 and stood facing the waiting throng, one hand rest- 
 ing on a small table near by. At his approach the 
 applause began again. It was his first appearance 
 since the mill disaster since his identity with 
 Joe Blackburn had become known since he had 
 been at, or addressed, any public gathering. He had 
 left them the men and women of his own world 
 
 162
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 and the men and women of the under world in which 
 for so long he had worked unknown strong, with 
 the vigor of health, physical and mental alert in 
 movement forcible in walk, a face naturally 
 thoughtful, unmarked. He stood before them to- 
 night and looked over that vast sea of faces a 
 man thinner for weeks of physical suffering move- 
 ments slower the very turn of his head less alert, 
 and bearing on his left cheek the sign of his life's 
 devotion the long and jagged scar. The pity of 
 it of the blighting mark that would never leave 
 his face, and of the way in which that scar had been 
 won struck a sudden spontaneous chord in his 
 waiting audience, and the applause ceased and gave 
 way to a low murmur in which once Martin caught 
 his own name. 
 
 As though realizing the ground was dangerous, 
 and as if impatient of the pity and the sympathy, 
 Stone took a step forward, raised his hand for 
 silence and commenced to speak. 
 
 He talked for an hour, and for an hour they hung 
 upon his words the tones of his voice his few 
 gestures. They accorded him the greatest compli- 
 ment an orator can desire or know an attention 
 so fixed as to leave no room for comment or ap- 
 plause. At first Martin heeded little that he said. 
 He was held astounded by a charm he could not 
 have analyzed if he had desired the charm that 
 had held him months ago when Stone had first 
 called at The Anchorage to plead for the safety of 
 the men. How had he ever resisted him this 
 
 163
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 man now holding them so ? And he Martin 
 through Jenkins had doled out to him each week 
 for months that pittance in the pay envelope. . . . 
 He could hear the voice well modulated, culti- 
 vated, penetrating in every inflection, that strange 
 nameless charrn. ... At first the words of the 
 speaker made little impression on him ; then by de- 
 grees he became conscious of something of their 
 import, and towards the end he became keenly atten- 
 tive, the slow deep color mounting to his head as 
 he sat and listened. . . . Distinctly now Stone's 
 words oame to him. 
 
 " Long ago, when I was a boy, I heard a great 
 speaker say that Brotherhood is not Equality. I 
 believe these words and the thought behind them 
 helped to shape my life. Have any of you seriously 
 considered just what equality would mean? You 
 who would revolutionize society by the discontent of 
 Socialism, how would you bridge the vast chasm of 
 the intellect of a Socrates and the beggar in the 
 Athenian streets; how join -the aspirations of a 
 Spinoza with the sordid passions of the degenerate 
 and the criminal? You answer, perhaps, by educa- 
 tion for all by substituting reformatories for the 
 present degrading penal system by building pub- 
 lic baths and playgrounds all excellent, I admit, 
 and all admirable and necessary if we are to keep 
 up with the march of progress, and all possessing, 
 whether we are conscious of it or not, the germ 
 of selfless service the foundation on which all 
 brotherhood is built. But brotherhood implies more 
 
 164
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 than this. It is to man what physics is to the world 
 of natural force; what chemistry is to the world 
 of atoms the one unfailing Law. Do you think 
 huge walls and stately gardens and perfectly ap- 
 pointed homes, sufficient safeguard against the dis- 
 eases your indifference allows to breed and fester 
 in the slums ? You have no surety against the bac- 
 teria of science your life is one with the life of 
 the lowest, and as our perfect health demands pure 
 circulation in every part, you cannot, in your arro- 
 gance and pride and self-aloofment, say you are 
 pure or healthy or have strength, while you allow 
 the blood that contains impurity and disease and 
 weakness to be poured from the great heart of 
 humanity. Brotherhood is something more than a 
 name and something more than the deeding of a 
 big stretch of ground by the rich man for the public 
 use more than the endowing of an institution, or 
 the building of libraries where the poor can read. 
 Did the irony of it ever come to you the useless- 
 ness of libraries to some of the men who work in 
 steel twelve and fourteen hours out of every twenty- 
 four sometimes seven days in the week often 
 at a twenty-four hour stretch? Can you take that 
 in? Can you conceive the strain and the fatigue 
 and the hopelessness of such men? Can you blame 
 them who know no home life for lack of self- 
 improvement and education? Can you judge them 
 because as a man drowning they grasp the nearest 
 object at hand, not stopping in their terror and 
 despair to question its stability? Have you the 
 
 165
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 reason or the heart to censure them because they 
 turn to the only helps they see socialism and 
 strikes and revolution? Have you ever read or 
 even heard the story of the children who make 
 paper boxes day and night, night and day to 
 whom all time is alike to whom Christmas is 
 unknown? Do you know that in this country live 
 men who build their pile of gold on their feeble 
 strength ? Could I convince you that to-day in 
 this Free America white women are bought and 
 sold into a slavery of shame to which, in com- 
 parison, the bonds of the black man many of you 
 fought to abolish fifty years ago are as nothing? 
 Would you believe me if I showed you the deeds 
 and rent lists and mortgages on such houses that 
 are a source of income to one of the richest and 
 most fashionable churches in the New World to- 
 day dedicated to the name of Christ? And lest 
 you think my sympathies are only with the labor 
 class, and that I secretly uphold socialism, let me 
 try to show you another side for the need of broth- 
 erhood. It will come as a new thought, perhaps, 
 to some of you, and because it is the hardest lesson 
 of brotherhood to learn, it is the last tolerance 
 towards those in high places, who allow such things 
 to exist. Let me cite a concrete case to you. I 
 once knew a man in the far West who had amassed 
 a fortune a fortune tainted with the blood and 
 tears of weaker men and women a fortune so 
 vast that the yearly income counted up into the 
 millions. With a fraction of the total he bought 
 
 166
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 himself great tracts of land and built one palace 
 in the West another in the East. A great army 
 of workmen and farmers and secretaries were em- 
 ployed few of whom he ever saw and fewer still 
 that he knew by name. And one night a friend 
 asked him why he had never married. ' I have 
 never had the time,' he said, ' to give thought to 
 such things I was too busy making money in the 
 early years to think of making a home, now I do 
 not care to.' A little later I met him and some ques- 
 tion of art came up. ' I do not know,' he said, ' any- 
 thing about it. I have been too busy all these years 
 for art or travel. I do not care for such things. 
 There is only one thing that I do care for work.' 
 And each year his millions, like a snowball rolling, 
 gather more, and his great palaces are filled with 
 pictures chosen by other men of taste and knowl- 
 edge, and which he cannot appreciate. His stables 
 and garages are stocked with thoroughbreds and 
 cars of the latest model that it would take a man 
 of leisure weeks to exercise and enjoy. . . . You 
 give freely of your sympathy to the starving and 
 the poor, the diseased and the blind, and you give 
 of your alms as well. Have you no coin of pity 
 no thought of sympathy to share with a man like 
 this, who is spiritually starved and poverty stricken, 
 on whose great powerful mind grows an ulcer worse 
 than those on men's bodies in the slums who is 
 blind to the beauties in nature and in art who has 
 had ' no time for woman's love, or to know the 
 treasures gold cannot buy in the heart of a little 
 
 167
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 child? Is there no brotherhood needed here? . . . 
 How will you men and women of a broader out- 
 look meet the issue ? 
 
 " Do you look for your government to solve such 
 problems when your legislatures are blackened and 
 dishonored by bribery and bossism ? No amount of 
 private charities no matter how great they are 
 nor how big the need they fill will ever bridge 
 the gulf. Not until brotherhood becomes a living 
 reality to every employer in the country, as well 
 as to the employed until the elder brothers, with 
 their more developed brains, their larger reasoning 
 faculties, their greater experience, feel their re- 
 sponsibility to every younger brother in the family 
 of the state as they do to the younger members of 
 their own hearts and homes not until those 
 younger brothers, with their less matured minds, 
 less controlled and balanced natures, are willing to 
 learn the lessons of service and obedience to the 
 elder ones will the religious, economic and civic 
 problems before us to-day, be solved. You may 
 call it cooperation if you will the principle is the 
 same but if you want and expect a sane, safe 
 policy of advancement, you will begin to work out 
 this idea of brotherhood in your homes, your state, 
 your land. Do you say it is a phantom that I fol- 
 low a dream I dream a structure that I rear 
 on sand? I tell you it is the one enduring thing 
 of all the years that love of brotherhood which 
 will alone suffice; that will satisfy our intellect 
 that will satisfy the heart. Then will weakness be 
 
 1 68
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 turned to strength; failures to success; misery 
 and even sin transformed to good; despair and 
 warring hate to love, as the Spirit of the Coming 
 Race of Man guides all that man may think and 
 do and feel until all things that work together for 
 good, converge at the Center of the Infinite." 
 
 From the light and warmth of Federation Hall 
 Martin went out into the darkness and chill of night 
 and stepped into his car. 
 
 " Home," he said, and he did not recognize his 
 own voice. 
 
 169
 
 XVII. 
 
 ONE afternoon two weeks later Blair Martin 
 was seated in her little tea-room. It was 
 there that Stone's card was brought to her. 
 
 When he entered he found her in a chair by the 
 window, which was open, allowing the late spring 
 breeze to enter. She leaned forward a little with 
 extended hand. 
 
 He took it and for a moment looked down upon 
 it in silence and then raised his eyes to her face. 
 
 " You are growing stronger? " 
 
 " Every day a little stronger, thank you. I walk 
 some now, and in three weeks I sail for Europe," 
 she answered. 
 
 " So Lorimer tells me. Are you fit for such a 
 trip so soon? " 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of in- 
 difference. 
 
 " I suppose so." Then, her voice a little lower, 
 " I can't gain strength very rapidly here. A 
 change may help me." 
 
 He sat down on a chair near her and looked out 
 of the open window across the wide sweep of lawn 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " It is almost summer now," he said after a while 
 irrelevantly. " When I was last by this window 
 here the violets had not come." 
 
 170
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 For an instant a strange light flickered in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " The violets have come and gone," she said, 
 " since I saw you last." 
 
 " Yes," he answered, and he did not remove his 
 eyes from the stretch of lawn, " it is the law of 
 nature as it is of life, life and death and again 
 life." 
 
 " There are some things that will never live for 
 me again," she said. " It is because of them I am 
 going away." 
 
 His eyes came back to her and gravely met her 
 own. 
 
 " Changes are good for us," he said. " We all 
 need them sometimes especially when the body 
 is weak and the brain refuses to readjust things for 
 us but there are some things we can never get 
 away from some things that are as close to us 
 in the lands of distant Africa, as they are here at 
 home." 
 
 She did not answer, and he found the task that 
 Lorimer had imposed upon him becoming more 
 and more difficult. 
 
 " Your father what will he do without you ? " 
 
 " I do not know," she said, the indifferent note 
 stealing into her voice again. " I do not believe I 
 very much care." 
 
 " He will miss you." 
 
 " I hardly think so," she said, her face flushing 
 a little. " He he will find other things to 
 interest him." 
 
 171
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " He is well?" 
 
 " I suppose so." She spoke slowly, and for a 
 moment she looked out of the window. " I have not 
 seen him for over a week. He left last night to look 
 at the stock farm in the western part of the state." 
 
 She began to trace an intricate pattern on the 
 broad arm of her wicker chair. Suddenly she 
 raised her eyes to his. 
 
 " I suppose I might pretend not to understand 
 you but I won't," she said. " You have come 
 to plead for him either that I will not leave him 
 just now, or if I go, part differently. I cannot 
 do either and be true to myself. I know what you 
 would say what Doctor Lorimer has said and 
 I read the speech in full that you made the other 
 night. I simply have not reached that height. I 
 do not think it is so much that I am judging him 
 or or all the wrong that he has done the lives 
 he has wrecked the tears he has made flow 
 that scar you bear but I cannot breath the at- 
 mosphere and live" 
 
 He sat regarding her with his grave eyes full of 
 understanding, and a great pity and a great love for 
 her rose in his heart as he looked. 
 
 " Some day you will live to serve," he said, " as 
 once you lived to love. It is only in service that 
 the broken ideals and the lost faiths can be for- 
 given and forgotten. Sometime when you grow 
 stronger and the other places pall upon you, go to 
 the Island of the Angels. Pierre Lamore will help 
 you." 
 
 172
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " I will," she said, and she did not know all that 
 was in her eyes as she looked at him. 
 
 " That is good. I will write to him, and no mat- 
 ter whether it is soon or late you will find him, 
 waiting." 
 
 He rose suddenly. He could not trust himself 
 longer. He had seen the look in her eyes. . . . 
 
 For a barely perceptible instant he leaned over 
 her hand in parting. 
 
 " There have been many;" he said in a low 
 voice, " who have been anxious over you." 
 
 She stared past him and the hand he held trem- 
 bled a little. A slow flush mounted to her white 
 face. 
 
 " The physicians and the nurses still wonder why 
 I lived. I scarcely know myself. Something " 
 She broke off. He dropped her hand quickly and 
 he did not question her. 
 
 From a window, and screened by the curtain, 
 she watched him enter his car in the courtyard. 
 She wondered suddenly why she had not noticed 
 how thin and haggard was his face how glaringly 
 cruel was the scar. He hesitated a moment, his 
 hand upon the steering wheel, as though he would 
 return. Then she saw his lips close tightly al- 
 most defiantly and an instant later the great 
 machine began to move. Not once had he looked 
 back. 
 
 Three weeks later she stood on the deck of the 
 great Lutania, quite alone, watching the other pas-
 
 * THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 sengers come aboard. Below, Hannah was unpack- 
 ing the things necessary for the five days' voyage. 
 She scarcely heeded the hurrying life around her. 
 Once she thought of her father. He had not been 
 at The Anchorage when she left. There had been 
 only old Brewster and Thomas and the other serv- 
 ants to see them off and close the door of The An- 
 chorage behind Hannah and herself. Half hope- 
 fully, half fearingly, she had waited in those last 
 weeks for some word from Hector Stone, but the 
 days had come and gone, bringing the sailing date 
 nearer. The railroad trip to New York had been 
 made, and it was as if they were strangers to each 
 other. It was not until she had reached the steamer 
 and had entered the big saloon with its countless 
 small dining-tables, that she found at the place re- 
 served for her a box of fresh and most exquisite 
 violets. They bore neither name of florist or of 
 sender but with a quick heart-throb of surprise 
 she bent her face above them, upon her lips, the 
 first in months, a whispered prayer. How he had 
 gotten them long out of season she neither 
 knew nor cared, but that they came from him 
 his one gift to her she did not question, and they 
 were with her now. 
 
 Suddenly, as though her very thought of him 
 had called him across the miles, he stood before her 
 that grave smile of welcome on his face. She 
 stared at him in silence the faint flush of return- 
 ing strength leaving her face and then she spoke 
 - questioningly. 
 
 174
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 "You?" 
 
 " Quite real," he answered. " I fancied it might 
 be hard leaving the country with no one to see you 
 off." He paused, and added, " I could not let you 
 go without some word." 
 
 " It was good of you," she said, "I I shall not 
 forget your kindness." 
 
 He hardly seemed to hear her. He spoke hur- 
 riedly and without his usual calm. 
 
 " I was delayed in a bad block. It seemed at one 
 time as though there would be no familiar face to 
 watch you from the pier. It is almost sailing time." 
 
 Something of his agitation came to her. 
 
 " I know," she said, " already some are going 
 ashore." She caught her breath quickly and laid 
 her gloved hand over the flowers she wore. 
 
 "How long will you be gone?" he questioned, 
 and his eyes were as the eyes of one without hope. 
 
 " I don't know," she said, "I don't know ! 
 There is nothing to keep me in America much to 
 take me away." She looked past him. " And 
 you?" 
 
 " I go to Montreal to-night," he said, and his 
 face was colorless. " They have sent for me. She 
 seems almost almost well again." The 
 words came to her as from a long distance. 
 
 " What will you do ? " she asked him after what 
 seemed an interminable silence, and neither of them 
 wondered at or questioned her right to speak so. 
 
 " My duty as I see it," he said. " What right 
 have I to hold up ideals and standards of life to 
 
 175
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 others if in my extremity I am not willing to 
 strive for them myself ? " 
 
 She looked at him and it was as if a bridge had 
 suddenly been thrown across the impassable gulf 
 that parted them. " I always knew," she said as 
 his eyes held her own, " I always knew," she re- 
 peated. "I never doubted." 
 
 Across that phantom bridge that for a moment 
 Love had built for them, they walked to meet each 
 other. For them the outer world had ceased. His 
 eyes held her still. Nearer they came, and Love, 
 merciful, held the phantom bridge together over 
 the abyss. For the first time he called her to her 
 face and always thereafter by her name. 
 
 " Blair some word some token for the 
 barren years ! " 
 
 In spirit, across that frail phantom bridge, she 
 moved to him still closer. In reality she stood quite 
 still. With eyes that suddenly cleared she looked 
 upon the scar. 
 
 " God bless you, Joe," she said, conscious that 
 the warning whistle was sounding that the phan- 
 tom bridge was crumbling to its fall, " Joe Joe 
 Blackie" 
 
 He watched her until her face became a blur 
 across the widening space between them, and he 
 waited until the great ship was a distant speck upon 
 the waters. Then he turned away a great sorrow 
 a great joy living in his heart. 
 
 END OF BOOK ONE. 
 
 176
 
 BOOK TWO 
 THE INNER COURT
 
 I. 
 
 FOR months, followed by the patient Hannah, 
 Blair Martin wandered over Europe, in her 
 eyes the look of one searching for the unat- 
 tainable. With the fatigue born more of the weari- 
 ness of the spirit than of the body, she stopped at 
 many places searching out the unusual to excite her 
 waning interest, for a while half hopefully linger- 
 ing and then ordering Hannah to pack again, when 
 they would move on. The places that she saw and 
 the memories that they left were never very clearly 
 impressed upon her brain. Now and then she ran 
 across acquaintances whom she joined for a little 
 while more to get away from herself than be- 
 cause she cared for them but more often she 
 sought out her paths alone. She grew to lean on 
 the old serving woman as she had never leaned on 
 any one since her mother had died, and Hannah, 
 close-mouthed and watchful-eyed, followed her in 
 anxious wonder and never seemed to know fatigue. 
 If Blair Martin grew restless and the hours were 
 many Hannah's nature dwelt in deeper calm; if 
 her mistress was annoyed, Hannah's patience only 
 grew; if her body was touched by some passing ill, 
 Hannah watched day and night with maternal care. 
 But Hannah, as shrewd as she was tender, guessed 
 
 179
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 something of the secret of Blair Martin, and for 
 the heart sickness and the soul yearning, her homely 
 knowledge knew no cure. 
 
 Thanks to a constitution inherited from Andrew 
 Martin, who had never known a moment's illness 
 in his life, Blair's strength returned rapidly. Much 
 was probably due to the open life she lived the 
 fogs of London or the storms of Austrian moun- 
 tains being much the same to her as the sunshine 
 of the Latin countries that she visited. London 
 with its noise and hurry jarred her as did gay Paris 
 with its sunshine, and Nice and Brussels. She only 
 stayed in Brussels a day, and then she went out alone 
 and looked on the high stone wall and the gray 
 buildings where she had been at school. It was all 
 quite unchanged. " Would that I were there 
 again ! " she thought as she made her way back 
 to the hotel and feverishly looked up time-tables 
 for Switzerland. In the Alps she lingered some 
 six months. It was the longest stop that she had 
 made, Hannah remembered gratefully, and daily 
 she waited for that strange look to lift from Blair 
 Martin's face. Sometimes she would steal into 
 Blair Martin's room when she was sleeping the 
 sleep of perfect and renewed health, and would 
 stand looking down on her in the dim light, hoping 
 that on that mysterious plane of sleep the look might 
 be left behind. But indelibly it seemed stamped 
 there, and Hannah was not wise enough to know 
 it had been left by the die of life that gives each 
 human face the value that it should bear. Neither 
 
 1 80
 
 V* THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 were Hannah's thoughts acute enough to follow 
 those of the mistress whom she loved and served. 
 Strange thoughts, long thoughts, they were that fol- 
 lowed her to the realm of sleep. Sometimes they 
 seemed the material of which happier, better things 
 are built sometimes by their aid she walked again 
 across that mysterious bridge of Love. . . . Then 
 it was that the miles became as nothing, and again 
 Time, merciful, paused. Dimly she was conscious 
 of the abyss below, but above them hung the stars. 
 Again they were together. . . . There came a time 
 when the bridge was seen and felt not only in the 
 world of sleep but in the outer world as well. Some- 
 times she saw it as one sees a vision of the inner 
 sense and as something quite separate and dis- 
 tinct from her own consciousness. Again she trod 
 the span and was a part of it, and then the vision 
 was a vision no longer, but a reality she knew and 
 felt but could not name. It never came at her bid- 
 ding, but she grew to look for it in her hours of 
 greatest need when the intricate fabric of her 
 life seemed a raveling thing and she clung to the 
 remembrance of it desperately in the long days that 
 followed in its wake. Such days were many, for 
 the human in us cannot long withstand the rarefied 
 air of spiritual heights, and the descent into the 
 things of earth became by comparison more sordid 
 and more hard. The woman in her stood groping 
 blindly at the door of happiness, and sometimes it 
 seemed to her the desire for that happiness became a 
 tangible thing of strength, and she used to wonder 
 
 181
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 dimly why the bands of fate that bound the door 
 did not give way before it. There were hours when 
 she would think of nothing except Stone, to be fol- 
 lowed by others when she fought the memory of his 
 face from her, and others still when another \voman 
 
 shadowy and wraith-like would appear as 
 though to demand a reckoning from her hands. She 
 dwelt on this shadowy form of the other woman 
 more often than she herself was aware, and she 
 pictured her in a hundred different guises. She was 
 short were not all women of French blood small ? 
 
 she had vivacious ways. Were they the ways 
 that first attracted him, she wondered. Perhaps she 
 might be tall her blood might not be all French, 
 and had not Stone once said he admired tall women ? 
 Perhaps she had beauty he cared so much for 
 beauty in all forms and grace, and charm she 
 must have had to have held and won him years ago 
 in his early manhood. She wondered if she held 
 him now if the old charm was hers still. When 
 a woman had lived seven years in a place like the 
 Hotel des Invalides, what could life hold for her 
 again ? Who could emerge from such a place, such 
 a night of mental darkness, with grace and charm ? 
 Seven years ! She used to say it over to herself 
 sometimes and to shut her eyes as though to pic- 
 ture to her soul the darkness that had once de- 
 scended on this other woman whom she did not 
 know had never seen but with whom the web 
 of her life was woven as the warp is woven in the 
 woof. An instinct that she never had defined, but 
 
 182
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 which rarely failed her, told her in such hours that 
 one day they would meet, and Blair Martin in her 
 strength found herself trembling at the thought. 
 It seemed to her she could not look on her this 
 other woman and live. ... In the long months 
 following her sailing she had not even indirectly 
 heard of Stone. To her father she did not write, 
 and grimly Andrew Martin had held to the silence 
 and refused to be the first to extend the palm of 
 peace. Her father might have told her something 
 perhaps. Stone himself never wrote and it was 
 as if a great gulf had swallowed him forever from 
 her sight and hearing. Then came days when she 
 doubted her own instinct the remembrance of 
 Stone's parting at the pier and if it had not been 
 for the phantom bridge still spanned for her by 
 Love, the doubt would have become an overwhelm- 
 ing thing and crushed her life. Sometimes she 
 walked the bridge alone and stood leaning against 
 its frail sides without fear, peering for him into 
 the abyss below. She never peered' in vain. It was 
 as if by the strength of her own faith she drew him 
 to her and once more they faced each other on that 
 frail support. ... So the days succeeded days and 
 ran into weeks, and, unknown to her, invisible 
 forces were at work upon her, as the master, un- 
 known to the marble, with chisel and mallet works 
 at the unformed block until it is a perfect thing. 
 
 In December she went to St. Moritz and there 
 lingered some six weeks. Gradually the warm blood 
 and the young life in her had awakened as she joined 
 
 83
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 in the round of winter sports with an enthusiasm 
 that six months before she would have regarded as 
 impossible. But by and by the bob-sleighing on the 
 Cresta, and the great skiing contests palled upon 
 her, and in February she joined friends who were 
 going southward towards the French border. 
 
 The little irregular oval-shaped Republic lying in 
 its mountain fastness as an emerald lies in a casket 
 of whitest hue, had taught her much and she was 
 grateful. Health, sealed by St. Moritz winter 
 sports, had first come back to her, she sometimes 
 thought, when in the summer time she had looked 
 out over the Alpine meadows with their wealth of 
 pansies and anemones, the bluest of forget-me-nots, 
 and the pride and love of the Swiss, the Alpine rose. 
 Later, in those months of returning strength and 
 increased mentality, she had grown to know some- 
 thing of the stern perils of the snow-capped peaks 
 where the edelweiss grew; and that in the nature 
 of the Swiss, as in the nature of all man, loomed 
 the inaccessible mountains of the unattainable and 
 yawned the black abyss of doubt, untouched by 
 flower or light that in realms above the physical 
 souls were sometimes crushed as the homes and 
 cattle and bodies of these people were buried be- 
 neath the vast bulk of a Grundlawine. It was after 
 she had left the table-land of Switzerland for the 
 upland regions, dwelling near and yet immeasurably 
 far away from the vast peaks of the never ceasing 
 snow, that there was brought to her a letter in an 
 unknown hand, forwarded by her bankers in Paris. 
 
 184
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Letters of any sort were a rarity. This bore the 
 postmark of Marseilles. 
 
 She turned it curiously in her hands before open- 
 ing it. The writing was evidently that of a for- 
 eigner but bore marks of culture and of strength. 
 She opened it and glanced at the signature. The 
 color receded suddenly from her face and then 
 flamed it again. She put the letter down and went 
 and stood by the window, looking out and up to 
 those mountains of eternal calm. By and by, across 
 the patch of winter sky, a cloud mist gathered and 
 reached from the summit of the high peak in front 
 to the summit of the adjacent one. Motionless she 
 stood, her hand up to her throat. The Bridge 
 the Bridge was forming. She watched it as Therese 
 might have watched the visions in her cell in 
 rapt and entranced wonder. Then she became a 
 part of it she walked that cloudlike span, alone 
 and unafraid, knowing he would come. He came 
 and now she heard his voice. It was the same 
 months back that had said its partings at the pier 
 then as it was that day in her tea-room at home when 
 she had first seen him after her long fever. " Some- 
 time when you grow stronger and the other places 
 pall upon you, go to the Island of the Angels. 
 Pierre Lamore will help you." . . . She did not 
 answer him, she remembered afterwards, but she 
 listened and she looked. . . . The look, unknown 
 to her, was in her eyes still when the Dream Bridge 
 slowly faded, leaving her by the window staring at 
 the patch of winter sky between the two great sum- 
 
 185
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 mits, while the silence of the high hills closed in 
 around her. 
 
 The Island of the Angels ! Pierre Lamore ! How 
 was it she had forgotten? How was it she had 
 not gone before? The Island of the Angels! She 
 said it over and it brought strange solace to her 
 heart. It called her as did Pierre Lamore's letter 
 lying on the table. It called her with the voice of 
 Stone speaking from that immeasurable height, 
 from the Bridge of Dreams. 
 
 Unconsciously she held out her arms to those 
 vast mountains looming up before her, in their cold 
 white splendor. 
 
 " You have given me much that I wanted 
 taught me much that I needed, but not all not all ! 
 I am going to leave you for the Island. There I 
 shall find peace." 
 
 186
 
 n. 
 
 THE short February day was drawing to its 
 close as Blair Martin's train steamed into 
 the great Gare St. Charles, and Hannah and 
 herself stepped into a waiting cab. She gave the 
 hotel address to the driver in French as marked for 
 its accuracy as for purity of pronunciation, and 
 Hannah respectfully stood by, bags in hand, and 
 listened, wondering where her mistress' whim would 
 lead her next. She was too well trained in service 
 and in Blair Martin's moods to question by a look 
 or word. Blair Martin herself said nothing as she 
 stared out of the cab window. She had not been 
 to Marseilles in years not since she had been a 
 girl abroad at school. Once on an Easter holiday 
 her mother, who was wintering in Italy, had gone 
 to Brussels and brought her here. The broad Bou- 
 levard, planted with great elms and plane-trees, 
 through which they were passing, reminded her of 
 that holiday of gladness with a swift pang of men- 
 tal longing and regret that was almost physical in 
 its pain. She knew as by instinct, even after all the 
 long years, when she was passing the Church of St. 
 Vincent-de-Paul, and she turned her face away, 
 still recalling its fagade and its two Gothic towers. 
 Together, her mother and herself had heard the 
 Easter mass there. . . . 
 
 is/
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She dined alone in her room her invariable 
 custom when in France and unattended by friends. 
 Long after old Hannah was sleeping the sleep of 
 utter weariness, and dreaming lifelike dreams of 
 peaceful living at The Anchorage, Blair Martin sat, 
 a book in hand, trying to read to mind and eyes the 
 sleep that fatigue should have brought. Marseilles 
 indeed much of the south of France was mem- 
 ory-haunted for her. The year after she had left 
 the school in Brussels had been spent in France with 
 her mother vainly searching for the health that 
 never came. They had traveled her mother and 
 Herself and a German maid in almost regal state. 
 She remembered that her father had withheld noth- 
 ing but' himself ; and she realized, with a knowl- 
 edge won from the depths of her own experience, 
 that in withholding himself he had withheld the 
 only thing her mother needed or wanted. When 
 the urgent cable reached him at the mills, he had 
 taken the first steamer across to them, but the first 
 steamer had gotten him there too late. It had been 
 Blair, in the first flush of her girlhood and untried 
 by love or suffering, who had suddenly become a 
 woman and dimly sensed the meaning of that yearn- 
 ing that until the very last had dwelt in her mother's 
 saddened eyes. . . . She laid down her book and 
 turned out the lights and sat by the window watch- 
 ing Marseilles by night. . . . Better to live as she 
 was living and sometimes walk that mysterious 
 Bridge of Dreams than to have lived to have had 
 the ideals shattered by the hand of Time. 
 
 188
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Early the next morning Blair Martin left Mar- 
 seilles by boat for Grenette, a small fishing village 
 half a day's ride up the coast. The skies looked 
 threatening and the hotel clerk urged her to wait 
 over forty-eight hours for the next boat. Blair 
 Martin shook her head and ordered the baggage 
 transferred. She would not admit to herself her 
 anxiety to reach the Island now that she had once 
 started, after having waited for so long. From 
 the Bridge of Dreams, Stone seemed calling her. 
 
 The trip on the boat was a tiresome and trying 
 one. The craft offered few comforts for passengers, 
 and two hours out a storm arose and whipped the 
 waters on the coast into a white fury, and Han- 
 nah and herself were driven by its force below. 
 Hannah soon reached the stage where a rough bench 
 became more to be desired than the straight-backed 
 wicker chair, and dry land the only thing, outside 
 of Blair Martin's happiness, that she wanted from 
 the hands of gods or men. Blair Martin, herself, 
 usually a good sailor, began to wonder if the crazy 
 little craft would ever cease its rolling, and the 
 white-crested, choppy sea she saw through the port, 
 resume a more peaceful and comfortable mood. The 
 boat was delayed some three hours and it was night- 
 fall when they reached the little fishing village of 
 Grenette. A fine penetrating rain was descending 
 like a veil over the hamlet. The kindly mate and 
 a peasant shifted the baggage from the Marseilles 
 boat to a rough craft of about half the length, and 
 got Miss Martin and Hannah more dead than 
 
 189
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 alive transferred, in addition to the numerous 
 trunks and bags. The trip from Grenette to the 
 Island took another hour on account of the bad 
 weather. The seas had been considerably stilled by 
 the rain that was falling, but the little launch was 
 wet and even the leaky close cabin was damp. The 
 pilot, Frangois Fauchet, with the face of a boy and 
 the sea knowledge of a man, offered them the shelter 
 and the meager comfort of his small pilot house. 
 Never in the knowledge of Fauchet had such a 
 grand person stepped into his pilot house en route 
 for the Island, unless it might be the Island priest, 
 whom Fauchet regarded as the type of all that was 
 desirable in man. Once or twice from his wheel he 
 peered at Miss Martin shyly. Surely not since the 
 days when the Comtesse de Grandcceur, the Chate- 
 laine of the Island, had come and gone on this little 
 craft years ago when his father was its pilot, had 
 such a grand lady been aboard. The few words she 
 had addressed to him he recognized as pure French, 
 almost as pure as the Comtesse herself might have 
 used, but Fauchet, born and bred in the fishing vil- 
 lage of Grenette, and who had only made two city 
 trips in his life, one to Marseilles and the other last 
 summer to Avignon, was quite convinced that the 
 lady did not come from France. She was English ? 
 Fauchet shook his head and watched the wheel spin 
 as he eased his helm. Impossible. She seemed 
 quite too nice for that. She could not be Russian. 
 Her eyes were not dark enough and she bore around 
 her no atmosphere of revolutionary plots and in- 
 
 190
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 trigues. Undoubtedly she was American. America 
 must be a great country. Had it not been an Amer- 
 ican, whose name no one in Grenette remembered 
 and whom only a few had seen, who had come once 
 to the Island years ago and won the Comtesse from 
 them ? He remembered hearing his mother say that 
 the marriage had broken Father Lamore's heart. 
 He was a grand American, so the stories had gone 
 some one had said he was an officer in the Navy 
 and hence recommended to Fauchet's consideration 
 but if in any way he had hurt Father Lamore. 
 . . . Fauchet suddenly blew his whistle with unex- 
 pected force. 
 
 The rain was still falling heavily as the boat made 
 a landing at the Island wharf. Fauchet himself 
 helped Miss Martin and Hannah over the rough 
 gangway and held an umbrella over the former's 
 head. 
 
 "You have friends awaiting you?" he asked in 
 patois French and wondering, if so, who of the 
 Island peasants her friends might be. 
 
 Blair Martin stared ahead of her into impene- 
 trable darkness. This then was the Island of the 
 Angels! She knew no one here. She wondered 
 dully what had brought her. She looked up into 
 Fauchet's face, suddenly grateful for the interest he 
 had shown. 
 
 " I know no one," she said simply in French. 
 " Father Lamore wrote me I might get rooms at 
 Toinette Dorset's. I wrote to her a week ago from 
 Switzerland. I asked her to let me know at Mar- 
 
 191
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 seilles. I have heard nothing. Is there anywhere 
 I can go with my maid for to-night? " 
 
 Fauchet stroked his smooth young chin thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " Toinette Dorset is my cousin's widow. Most 
 of us are kin at the Island. I have been at Grenette 
 for the last three days and have not seen Toinette, 
 but if you know Father Lamore " he broke off 
 suddenly. 
 
 From the darkness emerged the figure of a boy in 
 a blue peasant's blouse, holding a lantern in his hand. 
 Fauchet became suddenly conscious that the rain 
 had stopped, and lowered the umbrella. 
 
 " Ah, it is the little Anthony Carrere. He is 
 probably bringing you a message from the good 
 Father." 
 
 The boy came nearer, the lantern raised the better 
 to help him in his search. Its light illuminated his 
 face, and the strange beauty of it startled Blair Mar- 
 tin into a momentary exclamation of surprise. In 
 looking she forgot that she was desolate and tired. 
 By the lantern's aid it shone forth from the dark- 
 ness, and it seemed apart from earth. By and by 
 the boy came quite close to her, looking up. In 
 silence she waited for his message. He spoke in 
 French that had little of the patois of the peasant. 
 
 " I come from the good Father. He could not 
 come he is with some one who is dying." Here 
 the boy stopped a moment and slowly crossed him- 
 self. Blair Martin watched him, fascinated. " He 
 sends you his blessing and his greeting and will call 
 
 192
 
 *% THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 to-morrow. I have here the chaise he sent for you.. 
 If it pleases you, Mademoiselle, I will drive you 
 to Toinette Dorset's. She got the good Father to 
 write to you at Marseilles. She is waiting for you 
 and your maid." 
 
 As in a dream Blair Martin listened. She remem- 
 bered thanking Fauchet, who helped her and Han- 
 nah into the chaise and who promised to attend to 
 the luggage for them. Then the boy, who had been 
 waiting respectfully by, lantern in hand, hung the 
 latter to the carriage's top to light them on their 
 way, and getting into the front seat, picked up the 
 reins. Hannah, who had about come to the con- 
 clusion that she had reached the world's end, sank 
 back in a corner of the old but comfortable chaise 
 with a sigh of satisfaction, and closed her eyes and 
 dozed. Blair Martin stared in front of her. The 
 night was still dark and she could see little ahead, 
 and she found herself studying the boy in front of 
 her. The lantern dimly illuminated his head, which 
 was bare. Once he half turned in his seat and said 
 quite thoughtfully : 
 
 " I hope Mademoiselle will like the Island." 
 
 " I am sure I shall," said Blair Martin. 
 
 " Mademoiselle cannot see the Island now, it is 
 so dark, but when the light comes " the boy 
 Anthony broke off, a smile upon his face. 
 
 ' Yes," said Blair Martin softly, remembering 
 that Stone had been to the Island and looked on the 
 beauty hidden from her, " when the light 
 comes." 
 
 193 

 
 III. 
 
 AT seven the next morning Blair Martin was 
 standing at the doorway of the Dorset cot- 
 tage looking out across the Island. The 
 clouds had been dispelled and the morning light re- 
 vealed a scene of undreamed-of beauty. Never in 
 all her wanderings of this year or of other years had 
 she come across a spot that so soothed her with its 
 peace and held her with its charm. From the busy 
 world and haunts of men she had awakened over- 
 night to this; and she had not known that outside 
 of romantic books or mystic's dreams such places 
 could exist, to the outward world comparatively un- 
 known. She was seeing it this morning glorified, 
 as she had seen it that winter's day last year when, 
 before the fire in her tea-room at the Anchorage, 
 Stone had described it to her. The perfect verdure 
 of the gentle slopes waiting in the sunshine of the 
 early spring for the ripening of the vineyard har- 
 vest; the picturesque homes of the peasants; their 
 quaint dress ; the blue of the Mediterranean that lay 
 around the Island as a mother's arms encircling a 
 loved child; and further off, up on the cliff, the 
 chateau with its turrets the church on the cliff's 
 summit with its spire standing out against a bluer 
 sky all this she saw and sensed with a vision that 
 
 194
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 could see beyond the physical, and a spirit that knew 
 instinctively when it was at home. 
 
 The wonder of it, the spell of it was still upon her 
 when she was aroused by the clicking of the gate. 
 She raised her eyes to the man who was closing it 
 behind him. He wore the dress of a priest. 
 
 She made no motion, but continued to watch him 
 coming towards her up the garden path. He was 
 tall, perhaps six feet, slender and with the bearing 
 of a soldier. In his hands, held in front of him, he 
 was holding his hat, and she noticed that his dark 
 hair was slightly streaked with gray. His face, on 
 which experience had written a long story, bore no 
 deeper marks than those that come from study and 
 from pity and from sorrow. There was on him 
 that indescribable mark that spoke of the eternal 
 youth of the spirit which Time could only soften, 
 not change. All this came to her just then rather 
 as an impression than as the result of closer observa- 
 tion. A few feet from her he paused smiling, look- 
 ing in her eyes. 
 
 " I am Lamore," he said simply, " Pierre Lamore 
 the priest and the Father of the people of the 
 Island." 
 
 " I knew you at once," she answered, and she 
 wondered at the frankness of her speech. " And 
 I " 
 
 He advanced and took her extended hand and 
 bowed over it. For an instant the parish priest had 
 fled and in his place stood a courtier and a nobleman. 
 
 " It is Mademoiselle Martin, the friend of my 
 
 195
 
 good friend, Hector Stone. He wrote me months 
 ago that he hoped you would come to the Island. 
 For months, Mademoiselle, the Island has been wait- 
 ing." 
 
 She smiled a little wistfully. 
 
 " So strange so strange," she said, " that I did 
 not think to come before. If I had only known what 
 your Island was. . . ." 
 
 He dropped her hand and stood regarding her. 
 For the first time since she had left Stone, she knew 
 the compelling power and wonder that sometimes 
 dwells in human eyes. 
 
 " One has to come to the Island, Mademoiselle, 
 to dwell on it, to know all that its beauty means. 
 There are times when I think of the Island as a 
 great sealed book of ancient wisdom that only the 
 initiated, the pure in heart, can read." 
 
 She watched his face, his bearing. From the 
 priest he had changed swiftly to the courtier, from 
 the courtier he had changed to the student and the 
 scholar. Now he was speaking as a friend a host. 
 
 " I am glad that you have found us. I fear the 
 trip from Marseilles was bad. Our beautiful Medi- 
 terranean can be very rough, and sometimes it 
 makes some of us very ill. You brought your 
 maid and did my boy, Anthony, meet you safely 
 with the chaise ? " 
 
 " Hannah is upstairs unpacking. The young cap- 
 tain saw that we got our things early. And the boy 
 you call Anthony did he not bring back to you 
 my thanks ? " 
 
 196
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Pierre Lamore's face became suddenly grave. 
 
 " I was not at home when Anthony came back last 
 night. All through the darkness, Mademoiselle, I 
 was watching a soul depart." The eyes that she had 
 been watching intently changed. It was as though 
 the compelling power of them withdrew to make 
 room for an all-embracing compassion. " When 
 the dawn came, Mademoiselle, the soul slipped out. 
 Presently you will hear the bell of the village church 
 tolling. . . ." 
 
 Blair Martin looked away suddenly, wondering 
 why she was so moved at the news of a stranger's 
 a peasant's death. 
 
 " I am sorry," she said, more gently than she 
 knew. " And you you must be very tired." 
 
 " I am used to such things, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " And the chaise you sent the chaise for me 
 when you needed it yourself." 
 
 " I rarely use the chaise, Mademoiselle, on a visit 
 of that sort." 
 
 " You have had your breakfast? " 
 
 " Not yet. I celebrate mass in a little while. 
 Then my good Marie will get me something to eat 
 and I shall rest until noon. I was passing here on 
 my way to the church. I stopped in to inquire about 
 you of Toinette. I did not expect to see you up so 
 early." 
 
 Blair Martin smiled. 
 
 " I rather surprise myself," she said. " I could 
 not sleep after six, when I went to the window and 
 looked out. The earth seemed calling me. I fear 
 
 197
 
 *B THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Hannah is dozing over the trunks. Poor Hannah, 
 she bears so patiently with all my varying moods." 
 
 "Is it your maid, Mademoiselle? Ah, yes. I 
 am glad you have so faithful a friend. You travel 
 alone with her? " 
 
 " Quite alone, unless I join parties, which is sel- 
 dom. I fear you hardly approve." She laughed a 
 little at his grave face. 
 
 " It is not exactly the way our ladies in France 
 do yet who shall say which custom excels ? All 
 are probably right, Mademoiselle, according to the 
 bringing up. I do not personally agree with all the 
 customs of your great land yet what of it?" 
 
 " You know America? " 
 
 " A little, Mademoiselle. A few years ago I had 
 the honor of representing France at a convention 
 in your West. I saw much in a short while ; I 
 learned much as well." 
 
 " You are modest, Father ; they tell me you are 
 one of the great scholars of the Church." 
 
 A slight flush crept over the priest's face. 
 
 " I have prejudiced friends. I rather think of 
 myself as the student always learning." 
 
 " So few take that attitude," said Blair Martin. 
 
 " Perhaps, Mademoiselle. I know of one man 
 who retains the child's attitude of receiving and im- 
 parting impressions to a greater extent than any one 
 I have ever met. It is Hector Stone." 
 
 She started slightly at the unexpected mention of 
 Stone's name, and was not aware that Lamore had 
 heeded it. 
 
 198
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Mr. Stone is a big man, Father Lamore. Amer- 
 ica needs more like him." She spoke as imperson- 
 ally as she could. 
 
 " All countries need such men, Mademoiselle. 
 For years I have known him; for years I have 
 followed his work and his movements from afar; 
 for years I have built my trust on him. I have never 
 known him in great things or in little things 
 to fail." 
 
 She did not answer, conscious that her lips were 
 trembling. 
 
 Lamore stepped a little nearer and held out his 
 hand. 
 
 " I must go now, Mademoiselle. I am glad of 
 this informal meeting. Soon I will make my formal 
 call upon you. Toinette she makes you comfort- 
 able?" 
 
 " Yes, Father." She put her hand in his, her face 
 controlled now, and smiling as she remembered the 
 simplicity of the rooms upstairs, their sloping walls, 
 the well-scrubbed sanded floors. 
 
 He saw the smile and laughed genially. 
 
 " In time you will forget, Mademoiselle, you ever 
 lived in a world of luxury and fashion." 
 
 " I am willing to forget, Father," she said, and 
 she would not meet his eyes. 
 
 From around the corner of the house Toinette 
 Dorset came. On seeing the priest she hurried for- 
 ward and when near him courtesied, and then knelt 
 for blessing. 
 
 Blair Martin watched the scene curiously. As 
 
 199
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY %* 
 
 naturally as he had talked to her and as simply as 
 he drew breath, she saw Lamore raise his hand. 
 The words of the Latin blessing fell slowly, sono- 
 rously, on the morning breeze, and for the first time 
 in her life, Blair Martin knew and felt something 
 of the mystic meaning that lies behind the sign of 
 the cross. Instinctively she bowed her head. 
 
 Then Toinette Dorset rose and stood at a re- 
 spectful distance from them. Indeed she would 
 have gone and left them had not Lamore drawn her 
 into the conversation. 
 
 " The little sick duck, Toinette it is better ? " 
 
 " Nay, Father. It is dead." 
 
 " So ! And the flowers, Toinette will your 
 garden be among the first this year? " 
 
 Toinette Dorset courtesied again. 
 
 " The flowers promise well, Father, thanks to the 
 seeds you sent, but none of us can hope for flowers 
 like you have. The boy Anthony has the magic 
 hand." 
 
 " Quite true, Toinette ! I know not what I should 
 do without him or his mother Marie. They take 
 good care of the house and the chickens and old 
 Nanette and me." His laugh, well pitched and 
 wholesome, was a thing one cared to hear. 
 
 Blair Martin and her peasant hostess watched 
 him down the garden path. At the gate he looked 
 back and smiled at them. In the light of his learn- 
 ing 1 he seemed so remote from them; in the sim- 
 plicity of his compassion in all their interests and 
 their needs, so close. 
 
 200
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Toinette shaded her eyes from the morning sun, 
 the better to watch him down the road. 
 " There goes a saint, Mademoiselle." 
 Blair Martin did not answer as she turned back 
 to the house, but she thought " There goes a 
 man." 
 
 201
 
 IV. 
 
 THOSE first days at the Island were a revela- 
 tion to Blair Martin. She had never known 
 how full days of such simple living could 
 be, and she fell instinctively into the life lived by 
 the others there. After Toinette had brought her 
 her supper on a wooden tray and the food was 
 plainer and more wholesome than she had ever eaten 
 before and she had watched Toinette wash the 
 dishes and tidy up for the night, and sweep clean 
 the sanded floor, there had been little to do by way 
 of diversion and she had followed the example of the 
 people of the Island and gone to bed. Sometimes 
 she would sit by her window after she had blown out 
 the candle and watch the moon rise over the sea and 
 fall upon the Island, and smile to herself at the 
 primitive life she was leading. For the first time 
 she enjoyed rising early, and daily she marveled at 
 the splendor of the varying sunrise. She grew to 
 listen for the singing of the birds, the bark of Toi- 
 nette's St. Bernard that reminded her of Ajax at 
 home. Home! Sometimes she wondered if she 
 had ever had a home since her mother had died 
 
 202
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 more worthy of the name than this that she had 
 found so strangely in this peasant woman's cottage. 
 Sometimes she helped Toinette in the garden with 
 the flowers and even among the early vegetables. 
 It was while she was working so one day, in a skirt 
 and waist she once would have hesitated to give to 
 an under-housemaid at the Anchorage, with sleeves 
 rolled up and bareheaded in the sun, that Pierre 
 Lamore found her when he came to call. 
 
 " I am quite one of you, Father," she had said 
 with a laugh after the greetings were over. 
 " Sometimes I wonder if I ever knew any other life." 
 
 " Forget that you ever have," he answered. 
 " When you go back to it you will be the better for 
 the forgetting." 
 
 She brushed some dirt off of the big apron of 
 Toinette's that she wore, a serious look in her eyes. 
 
 " Perhaps you are right," she said. " Sometimes 
 it seems to me I do not want to know any other 
 life. It is as if I had stepped from tumult into 
 peace." She raised her eyes and looked towards 
 the great chateau towering above them on the cliff. 
 " It is beautiful," she said, speaking musingly and 
 irrelevantly, " but it looks so lonely. I think I like 
 the valley and the vineyards best." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, the heights are always lonely." 
 
 She did not answer, but continued to look up at 
 the chateau. By and by she half turned with a sigh. 
 
 " How rude I am ! Will you not come in and sit 
 down and rest? " 
 
 ' Thank you, Mademoiselle, with your permis- 
 
 2O3
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 sion. This is my formal call," and with a smile he 
 opened the gate at which he had been standing, and 
 came around to where she stood leaning on the 
 fence. 
 
 " This, then, is my receiving dress," said Blair 
 Martin with a laugh, smoothing out the folds of 
 Toinette's apron. " Will you come inside or shall 
 we sit here on this bench ? " 
 
 " Let it be here, Mademoiselle. I never stay in- 
 doors in southern France at this season unless my 
 duties call me." 
 
 Together they sat down the great scholar and 
 nobleman in his simple priest's dress; the rich 
 woman of the world in a peasant's gingham apron. 
 Neither seemed conscious of any incongruity in 
 their being so disguised, nor in the setting of the 
 peasant's low-roofed cottage and small garden. He 
 was studying her as all his life he had studied men 
 and women as well as books. She folded her hands 
 white hands, unused to toil and now becoming 
 sunburned and discolored over the gingham 
 apron. Again her gaze rested on the chateau. 
 
 " There is so much time to dream here, Father, 
 and I have been dreaming often. Tell me something 
 of the chateau. Is it occupied ? " 
 
 His look did not leave her face, which he was still 
 regarding closely, but a troubled shadow crept into 
 his eyes. He thought swiftly of Hector Stone 
 of the letter Stone had written him of the trust 
 Stone had placed in him. How much should he 
 tell and yet remain true ? 
 
 204
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " The chateau, Mademoiselle, is unoccupied. In 
 France one can still see if the owner is away by one 
 unfailing sign. Mademoiselle sees the tower to the 
 left?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " In France such towers are generally guide posts. 
 As you will see, there is no flag flying from the 
 staff. It means the owner is away. Always the 
 flag flies when the owner is at home always the 
 flag hangs at half-mast when the heir is dead, and 
 later is taken down, and what we call the Great 
 Banner flung to the breeze. Some eleven or twelve 
 years ago, the Great Banner with its gold fringe was 
 last flown there. It was for a child a boy and 
 the private chapel of St. Michael's that you sec 
 higher up on the cliff, is his memorial." 
 
 Blair Martin looked at the priest and drew a long 
 breath. An interest such as she had not known in 
 months stirred at her heart. 
 
 " It is like a story, Father, like a story that one 
 reads " she broke off, looking at the bare flag- 
 staff again. 
 
 " Life is so much stranger, Mademoiselle, than 
 fiction." 
 
 " So it has been said, yet " she hesitated, look- 
 ing again at the priest, whose face gave no sign of 
 the anxiety her words were causing. " Tell me some 
 more, Father. There is no other heir ? " 
 
 " There is only one of the line left, Mademoi- 
 selle ; a woman the mother of the boy she is 
 away." 
 
 205
 
 " You knew her, of course ? " 
 
 " Since she was a child," and for the first time the 
 expression of the priest's face changed swiftly to 
 one of unutterable pain that startled her. " Al- 
 ways I have known the family. It is one of the 
 oldest in France. As a boy, Mademoiselle, I played 
 with the mother's mother in the chateau garden. 
 The chateau garden is the jewel of the Island; for 
 centuries it has been its pride and boast." 
 
 " I am curious. Some day I may go there ? " 
 
 Lamore smiled a little. 
 
 " Perhaps some time, if you care to. The head 
 gardener, Giovanni, is an Italian and the grand- 
 father of my little Anthony. He rules supreme there 
 and he is jealous and suspicious of strangers. Some 
 day you might persuade him." 
 
 " I shall enlist your help, Father ; it is the Open 
 Sesame to all things of the Island. And the church 
 
 that wonderful church up there I may see that, 
 too?" 
 
 " Nay, Mademoiselle, the chapel is a private one." 
 
 " But, Father " 
 
 " There are but two keys to it. The Comtesse, 
 who is away, holds one." 
 
 " And the other, Father is yours." Blair Mar- 
 tin leaned eagerly forward on the bench. " It is 
 yours I know it is you will not refuse me? 
 Sometimes on my walks I have stopped at the foot 
 of the cliff and I have heard the music of an organ 
 
 a wonderful organ and the sound of children 
 singing." 
 
 206
 
 flg THE SANCTUARY t& 
 
 "Indeed, Mademoiselle?" He questioned her 
 kindly. 
 
 " Surely, Father, you must know." In her eager- 
 ness and interest she had risen from the bench and 
 stood before him in a pretty unconscious attitude of 
 entreaty. 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle. You heard the Children's 
 Mass." 
 
 "It is only for the children then?" she asked, 
 and she could not keep the note of disappointment 
 from her voice. 
 
 Lamore rose and looked down on her from his 
 height. She remembered afterwards that his voice 
 had been the kindest that she had ever heard that 
 the tone had robbed the words of all their sting. 
 
 " St. Michael's, Mademoiselle, is built above the 
 crypt that holds the earthly body of the little Count. 
 Always does the great saint guard well his charge 
 and the little children who go with me to sing there. 
 In that Sanctuary dwells a Presence and a Peace on 
 which the outward world has never jarred. When 
 one has come to know that Presence and that Peace, 
 one may enter St. Michael's with the heart of a little 
 child. Until then, Mademoiselle, the village church 
 is open to you as it is to every man and woman of 
 the Island. Come to it and let it help you. Accept 
 from it what you can." 
 
 A sudden tightening came to Blair Martin's 
 throat. She put her hand up to it as though the 
 pressure of her fingers there would help her. In 
 silence she looked again toward St. Michael's on the 
 
 207
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 cliff. One slender Gothic spire tipped with a gold 
 cross stood out against the blue of the southern sky. 
 
 " If I come to the village church sometimes," she 
 said, still not looking at Lamore, " will will I 
 learn how to reach St. Michael's?" 
 
 Lamore smiled kindly. 
 
 " Perhaps, Mademoiselle, yet I cannot promise. 
 The little village church would help you were you of 
 our faith, yet few even of that faith have attained 
 to St. Michael's. The peasants here will tell you 
 strange stories of that great chapel on the cliff 
 most of my people are very simple and some are 
 very superstitious, and most of them would not pass 
 the portal of St. Michael's if they might. Some- 
 times they question the children, and because the 
 children do not tell them what their own disordered 
 brains have planned, they do not believe them. Yet, 
 Mademoiselle, it is to the little ones that the mys- 
 teries of heaven lie nearest." 
 
 Blair Martin drew odd figures with the tip of her 
 finger across Toinette's gingham apron. A sudden 
 strange resentment filled her heart. 
 
 " Yet the memorial chapel is built to your God, 
 and are we not all His children ? " 
 
 " Surely, Mademoiselle," and a quality in La- 
 more's voice quenched the resentment and made her 
 suddenly ashamed of it as an unworthy thing. 
 " What pile of stone, what man-made rule, what 
 depth or height, or miles of space or eons of time 
 can part us from that all-embracing Consciousness 
 in which we breathe and move? We may call it 
 
 208
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Force or God or the Logos or the Father names 
 mean so little when we are dealing with Reality. 
 St. Michael's doors can never bar you from it, and if 
 you seek you will surely find. Some day, Made- 
 moiselle, you may reach a plateau on your long climb 
 upward, and from that table-land of the spirit you 
 will look back and see how you have in your strug- 
 gles unconsciously brought stones one by one for 
 the building of a temple fairer than our St. Michael's 
 on the rock ; and one by one, Mademoiselle, as each 
 suffering and each temptation and each struggle is 
 overcome you will lay a stone in place until that 
 temple of your soul is done. Then before that 
 Sanctuary in which dwells the Divine in you, your 
 soul will light its lamp and make profound obei- 
 sance. Then then Mademoiselle, you shall 
 come to St. Michael's and you will be at home. In 
 the world of physical things we do not give the 
 children calculus before they know addition nor 
 put a burning torch in hands that have not learned 
 the danger of the illuminating thing they carry. 
 Wait, Mademoiselle, and you will know that St. 
 Michael's stands as a symbol of true living, no mat- 
 ter what faith you hold and as something more 
 than an old priest's fancy or a mystic's dream." 
 
 She listened with a rapt attention that was so 
 complete that time and place were forgotten. Years 
 afterward she remembered Lamore's face recalled 
 his voice that held and thrilled her. 
 
 When he had gone and strangely enough she 
 did not question that he had divined her need and 
 
 209
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 tried to help her she still sat on the wooden bench 
 near Toinette's door, her hands folded in her lap, 
 her face raised to St. Michael's. She spoke aloud. 
 " So far," she said. " So far." 
 
 2IO
 
 V. 
 
 DURING the weeks following, Blair Martin 
 watched the flowers grow in Toinette's gar- 
 den, and daily felt the increasing warmth 
 of the sun as it lay in a bright sheet of glory over 
 the vineyards waiting for the harvest. She was 
 much alone. After her first fortnight in the Island, 
 when things had grown less strange, she had in- 
 sisted that Hannah should go and visit a niece who 
 had married and settled in Devonshire. Hannah, 
 while loath to separate herself from her mistress, 
 had nevertheless drawn a deep sigh of relief as her 
 boat had started for Marseilles. More than her 
 dread of the long journey to England alone was 
 her anxiety to get away from a place whose cli- 
 mate she did not like, whose beauty did not espe- 
 cially appeal to her, whose people she did not under- 
 stand. She felt it would be good to breathe the 
 dampness of the English air once more to see 
 Devonshire just bursting into its spring bloom. 
 She was dimly conscious that Blair Martin needed 
 her just now less than ever before on their trip, and 
 the knowledge reassured her as did her mistress' 
 
 211
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 parting" words that when she was needed she would 
 be sent for at once. So Blair Martin came back 
 from Grenette alone, and once more Fauchet had a 
 chance to study her. 
 
 Sometimes when Toinette could spare a moment 
 from her cleaning and her gardening and her 
 chickens and her cow, she would wipe her hands 
 and put on a fresh dress and quaint head-piece 
 that the women of the Island wore, and talk to the 
 American of the simple homely things of life. The 
 things were so few, so childlike that made up Toi- 
 nette's life. Now it was a birth or death or christen- 
 ing, a wedding perhaps ; whether the Great Cardinal 
 would make his usual visit the following year and 
 give the Island the special blessing from the Holy 
 Father; whether the vineyards would yield a fruit- 
 ful crop that there might be extra wine sent to the 
 city's poor ; or perhaps it was Father Lamore's last 
 sermon, or the coming First Communion of the 
 Island children they would make after the great 
 Easter festival. Mademoiselle must not fail to see 
 the First Communion. Toinette doubted if Made- 
 moiselle, even in America where they said the 
 streets were paved with gold, as were the streets of 
 heaven if even in that great America, Mademoi- 
 selle had seen dresses more beautiful. Each girl 
 would have a veil would be all in white, and the 
 boys did Mademoiselle know that the boy An- 
 thony, whom the good Father loved so, would this 
 year be among the Communion children? 
 
 It was, strangely enough, the boy Anthony who 
 
 212
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 filled more than any one else the hours that some- 
 times dragged and promised to be lonely. Lamore 
 she saw often, but often not more than a few minutes 
 at a time. Now and then she met him on his walks 
 and he joined her for a little while on his way to or 
 from some parish visit. Sometimes she merely 
 passed him in his chaise when he was bound for a 
 more distant point of the Island. She noticed that 
 the boy Anthony was often with him, and each time 
 she saw him the strange beauty of his face appealed 
 to her afresh. Sometimes the child came to Toi- 
 nette's cottage with a loaf of black bread fresh from 
 Marie's oven; sometimes he came with the word 
 that the good Father had sent him and bidden him 
 show Mademoiselle some distant point of beauty 
 on the Island. He was a trusty and sure-footed 
 little guide with double the strength his slender 
 limbs and delicate clear-cut features would imply. 
 He knew as though by instinct where the rarest 
 flowers grew, the best of the wild strawberries ; and 
 the language of the birds and the little creeping 
 things that lived in the woods; the burden of the 
 song that the wind sang among the tree tops; the 
 chant of the breakers at the foot of the high cliff. 
 Sometimes, in the still fastnesses of those wooded 
 slopes, he spoke to her in a hushed, awed voice of a 
 life beyond the life of the insect or the bird of the 
 fairies and the elves that helped to fashion every 
 little leaf, that painted every little flower. Some- 
 times as he walked beside her in his little blue 
 peasant blouse, head bared to the sun filtering 
 
 213
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 through the branches, he would lift up his face to 
 the tree tops and begin to sing, as unconsciously as 
 the birds he loved and never harmed. Once at mid- 
 day it was a Latin canticle of his Church ; another 
 time at sunset it was a German lullaby taught him by 
 Lamore, and which she had heard the children sing 
 in the Swiss uplands. 
 
 " Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf ! Dein Vater huten Schaf " 
 
 But no child of the Swiss uplands had sung it like 
 the boy Anthony. 
 
 He was many-sided and he held a never ceasing 
 charm for her. Sometimes on a Sunday when she 
 went to mass she would watch him at the altar 
 assisting Pierre Lamore, see him kneel in the aco- 
 lyte's dress on the altar steps with folded hands re- 
 citing the responses. It was then she would recall 
 Stone's description of him as one of Botticelli's 
 choristers. His voice, clear and flute-like, with its 
 perfect Latin, would echo in her brain long after 
 the service had closed. And likely as not, on the 
 next day she would meet him on the road, one of a 
 group of chattering, quarreling peasant children, he 
 in their midst in his peasant's blouse like theirs, 
 shortly, imperiously settling the dispute. The other 
 children, even the older ones, never questioned his 
 decisions or the authority that seemed his by a right 
 they blindly accepted but could not understand. 
 Sometimes it seemed to Blair Martin, watching, 
 that the little Count, disguised, had risen from his 
 
 214
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 sleep in the great memorial chapel towering on the 
 cliff, and had come among them with the right the 
 lord of the Island bore. An odd dignity a gravity 
 beyond his years rested on him, and a reserve 
 that none seemed able to break through except La- 
 more, whom he adored. Blair Martin used to satisfy 
 the curious questionings of her brain in regard to 
 him and tell herself that the life he lived under the 
 roof and the influence of Lamore had made him dif- 
 ferent from other boys. To his mother he was def- 
 erential but curiously reserved, and the latter re- 
 garded him much as the mother duck in the old 
 German story looked on the swan that she had 
 warmed to life, and with a philosophy of which she 
 was not conscious she would acknowledge to herself 
 that while she had given birth to his body, not in 
 looks or bearing or characteristics of the mind or 
 spirit did she understand or share in the child of 
 her begetting. He served her with a willingness 
 that never flagged, but the mother heart that beat in 
 the peasant-woman's breast would sometimes turn 
 away sick from the service that duty and not love 
 had brought. In her simple way Marie would take 
 her trouble sometimes to the Virgin's altar in the 
 little village chapel, and with tears and humble trust 
 plead that the Great Mother would heal her widowed 
 heart and teach her to understand her son. Always 
 in the eyes of the boy Anthony as they looked at. 
 her there was a yearning and a patience as though 
 they sought and waited for the true mother who 
 never came. 
 
 215
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 In some unaccountable way the boy Anthony 
 came, in the mind of Blair Martin, to be associated 
 with the great chapel on the cliff and the chateau 
 further down, although exactly what connection one 
 could have found between the stately piles of stone 
 and a little boy in a blue peasant's blouse, she could, 
 not for her life have told. But the vague mystery 
 of it and a sense of the unreal, as though she had 
 stepped from a world of fact into a world of fiction, 
 possessed her and brought her a new interest that 
 kept her mind from much she would forget. 
 
 Once she and Anthony on one of their long 
 tramps had climbed the steep side of the cliff over- 
 hanging the sea, and on crossing a winding drive- 
 way she had come unexpectedly on a little wicket 
 gate. Breathless from the steep ascent, she leaned 
 against it, and was surprised to find it yielded to 
 her touch. 
 
 " It leads to the chateau garden, Mademoiselle," 
 said the boy, smiling a little and replying to the 
 question in her eyes. " I often come here to see my 
 grandfather at work among the flowers. Would 
 Mademoiselle care to see the garden?" 
 
 " So much," said Blair Martin. "I " then she 
 suddenly stopped. . . . Why she could not have 
 told, but before her inner vision swept a sense of 
 Hector Stone's face and following him, with bowed 
 and averted head, the faint shadow of a woman. 
 Almost immediately her vision cleared and she saw 
 nothing but the sheer cliff, the sea breaking at its 
 base, blue sky, and nearer, the wicket gate that led 
 
 216
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 to green still woods further on, and the face of the 
 boy Anthony regarding her curiously. 
 
 " Come," she said, with a short laugh of disdain 
 at her vague fancies, and led by Anthony, she passed 
 through the wicket gate to the chateau garden. 
 
 217
 
 VI. 
 
 EMERGING from the wood with beating 
 heart, she paused in silent wonder. She had 
 approached the garden from the west 
 through a small side-entrance and a turn in the 
 wooded path had hidden it from her until she came 
 on it stretching at her feet in all its loveliness. In 
 a silence that the boy did not break she looked on 
 the long row of hedges, the perfectly kept walks, the 
 marble terraced steps leading up and up to a broad 
 lawn spreading in front of the chateau a royal 
 carpet spread at the feet of a royal guest and cir- 
 cling the whole and enclosing it as a lover might 
 hold and guard the lady of his choice, were tall trees 
 that surrounded flowers such as even in Sorrento 
 she had never seen. There were roses everywhere, 
 and tall rows of lilies whose heads swung gently in 
 the breeze as though they bowed a welcome to her. 
 There were flowers she barely knew by name and 
 some that she had never seen before, all in a profu- 
 sion that would have taxed the eye and brain, had 
 not the perfect setting and the carefully selected 
 kinds and colors mingling, showed the hand of a 
 master workman in his art. She had been to Pasa- 
 dena and had walked the country roads near Naples 
 in the spring; she had gone where tourists go and 
 
 218
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 had walked through the stately gardens that are the 
 pride of England. She had seen the Alpine 
 meadows in their bloom, but nowhere had she ever 
 looked on anything like this. Quite suddenly and 
 irrelevantly she thought of the Anchorage and the 
 garden there. Once she had prided herself on it 
 on the interest and the time and Thomas's skill that 
 had been lavished to make it a thing of beauty and 
 renown, and now, here in a far off almost unknown 
 island in the Mediterranean, she was looking on a 
 sight she had not dreamed existed. When she com- 
 pared the Anchorage garden to this, a flush almost 
 of shame dyed her cheeks. She did not know until 
 afterwards all the wonder of that garden, of its ex- 
 panse of over seven acres, the winding paths that 
 led from beauty to beauty, of the rarity of the 
 flowers it produced the immensity of its yield. 
 She only saw just then the thing as a vague whole, 
 too wonderful for analysis in detail, the shining 
 whiteness of the terraced steps, the warm spring sun 
 of southern Europe lying over all, and near-by, in 
 the grateful shadow of a tree two centuries old, an 
 old man asleep. 
 
 By and by her clasped hands came up to her 
 breast in a quick impulsive gesture. 
 
 " Ah," she breathed. 
 
 The boy Anthony moved a little nearer to her 
 side. Like hers, his gaze rested on the scene ahead. 
 It was always new to him the wonder and the 
 loveliness of it but the keen surprise in his eyes 
 was lacking. He looked out over the wide flowering 
 
 219
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 acres, the winding walks, the tall hedges, as though 
 he looked upon a familiar thing. Presently his eyes 
 came back to the old man asleep in the shadow of 
 the tree. 
 
 " It is my grandfather Giovanni, Mademoiselle. 
 He has been the head gardener here for nearly fifty 
 years. Shall I waken him and ask him to show you 
 the part you cannot see from here ? " 
 
 " No, no, Anthony, do not waken him. He looks 
 tired and and he might be angry that you brought 
 a stranger here." 
 
 The boy threw back his head and gave a low 
 laugh. 
 
 " I shall tell him, Mademoiselle, that you are a 
 friend of the good Father's, that you are a friend 
 of mine." 
 
 The words were said without boast, as though he 
 were stating an unalterable fact, as though the 
 glories of the garden were his by right. 
 
 She hardly seemed to hear him. Slowly she be- 
 gan to walk down one of the winding paths. 
 
 " Wonderful," she breathed. 
 
 The boy kept step beside her. 
 
 " But, yes, Mademoiselle, the most wonderful 
 thing in all the world but one " he broke off. The 
 laughing mood had passed and the strange earnest- 
 ness had crept across the young face once more and 
 rested in his eyes. 
 
 Blair Martin looked around her slowly. 
 
 " What can be more wonderful than this ? " she 
 spoke rather to herself than to the boy. 
 
 220
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " St. Michael's, Mademoiselle." 
 
 It was the voice of the child at her side. 
 
 She started and instinctively followed his gaze. 
 Further up the slope, behind the great chateau, rose 
 the white stones of St. Michael's. The tall spire 
 topped by the gold cross was gleaming in the sun. 
 
 " I can bring you to the chateau garden, Made- 
 moiselle, but I cannot take you to St. Michael's. 
 No one goes there, none of the children, Mademoi- 
 selle, unless the good Father is along. He only has 
 the key." 
 
 She stopped suddenly in her walk. To the right 
 of her lay a bed of violets. Suddenly she was on 
 her knees beside them, her mouth working strangely. 
 She had come so far to see the violets bloom again. 
 . . . She did not attempt to pick any but she re- 
 mained stooping there for a little while and she 
 caressed them softly. By and by she became aware 
 that the boy was regarding her wonderingly. She 
 rose and resumed her walk and tried to speak in 
 her natural tone of voice. 
 
 " The good Father told me there were two keys 
 to St. Michael's," she said. 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle, but our Comtesse, our Great 
 Lady and Chatelaine of the Island never comes with 
 the other key, although I have waited " 
 
 Something in the boy's voice made Blair Martin 
 turn and look at him quickly, and she forgot the 
 violets and the burning memories. . . . 
 
 " You know the Comtesse, Anthony ? " 
 
 The boy shook his head. 
 
 221
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " No, Mademoiselle, I was born after she left the 
 Island yet " 
 
 He broke off and in silence she waited. Her 
 heart had begun to beat violently. Why, she could 
 not have told. 
 
 They came to an unexpected ending of the wind- 
 ing path and stood on a ledge of rock whose sheer 
 sides ran down to meet the sea. An odd feeling of 
 faintness crept over her, and ashamed almost to 
 acknowledge it to herself, she sat down on the grass 
 and leaned her back against a big tree. Her eyes 
 rested on the wide blue sea below, and mechanically 
 she counted the fishing boats within the radius of 
 her vision. Her mind, though, was keenly alert to 
 what the boy was saying. 
 
 " Yet what, Anthony ? " 
 
 He sat down at a respectful distance from her 
 and began to braid some strips of grass. 
 
 " It is foolish, Mademoiselle, is it not, yet some- 
 times it seems to me I have known and seen the 
 Comtesse. Sometimes I dream of her at night. 
 Sometimes I pray for her at mass." 
 
 "Why, Anthony?" 
 
 " I do not know, Mademoiselle, except that she 
 must be very lonely so long away from her people 
 and her home." He spoke in a shy constrained man- 
 ner foreign to him. 
 
 "Why does she not come back, Anthony?" 
 
 The boy Anthony shook his head. 
 
 " I do not know," he said. " There is so much 
 I do not understand. Sometimes I ask the good 
 
 222
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Father about it, but he only pats my head and looks 
 down on me with his kind eyes. ' She is away, 
 Anthony,' he tells me, ' far away. Some day she 
 may come back to us and the flag will fly again from 
 the chateau turret. Until then we can only pray.' 
 So I pray, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " And Giovanni your grandfather does he 
 not know ? " 
 
 The boy turned two grave eyes on her. 
 
 " Very likely, Mademoiselle. My grandfather 
 has worked for the Counts de Grandcoeur for fifty 
 years. Yet he says nothing, and I would not ask, 
 since the good Father knows and does not tell. But 
 I dream of her at night," he added again. 
 
 " What do you dream of her? " 
 
 The boy laid down the bit of braided grass and 
 leaned forward, his elbow on his knee, his chin in 
 his hand, and looked out to sea. He spoke slowly, 
 yet a strange fire and longing was in his voice. 
 
 " I dream, Mademoiselle, of a great lady dressed 
 in pale, pale blue and gold they are the colors of 
 the flag, the good Father says and she comes to 
 me and smooths my hair and smiles, and I I kiss 
 her hand." 
 
 He stopped as though all had been said and stared 
 out across the waters. Far in the distance around 
 the curve in the coast, the dim outlines of Marseilles 
 lay. She did not smile at his fancies, but she won- 
 dered at the sense of mystery surrounding him. He 
 sat looking toward the dim outline of the great city, 
 and it did not draw him with its charm of the un- 
 
 223
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 known as it might have drawn another little peasant 
 boy of his age. Instead he dreamed of a dream lady 
 in palest blue and gold a great lady of a great 
 estate whose hand he kissed. . . . 
 
 She half turned and looked back over the still 
 garden. On an old sun dial near at hand two birds 
 perched a linnet and its mate and as she looked 
 the male bird uttered one sweet long note. It 
 seemed to call to her across miles of space, and she 
 rose suddenly to her feet, her hand pressed to her 
 heart as if in pain. 
 
 She leaned over the boy Anthony, whose dream- 
 ing eyes still rested on the dim outlines of Mar- 
 seilles, as though from the Marseilles the great lady 
 of his dreams might come. She touched him on the 
 arm. 
 
 " Let us go," she said quickly. 
 
 224
 
 VII. 
 
 THE days slipped into weeks, and except for 
 the increasing warmth of the sun and the 
 growth of the vineyards in the valleys, which 
 Blair Martin learned to watch with as much interest 
 as every man, woman and child on the Island, time 
 might have stood still. She wrote to Hannah every 
 week, and every week hesitated to recall her. Han- 
 nah in far away Devonshire used to read and re-read 
 the letters wonderingly. It was a mystery to the 
 old woman how her mistress had gotten along alone 
 during the last month, and how the millionaire's 
 daughter she had known since a slip of a girl, reared 
 in the lap of luxury, could endure the limitations and 
 privations of Toinette's peasant cottage, the quiet 
 monotonous life lived at the Island. That her mis- 
 tress was happier than she had been since the mill 
 disaster since the few visits at the Anchorage 
 of Mr. Stone Hannah could tell by the tone of 
 Blair Martin's letters. She herself was more con- 
 tented than she ever would have thought possible 
 separated from the lady that she served. That her 
 lady would sooner or later feel the need for her and 
 send for her, Hannah never doubted. Meanwhile, 
 she enjoyed the first faint marks of spring in Devon- 
 shire, the customs and the dialect she had not seen 
 or heard since a child. 
 
 225
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 With a hospitality as simple as it was sincere, the 
 people of the Island shared their best with the rich 
 American, and she drank deep of it as a thirsty 
 traveler drinks some cool refreshing draught after 
 the travel and the desert's heat. Her moods were 
 many, and the three she knew best Lamore, Toi- 
 nette, and the boy Anthony bore with her with a 
 patience the full extent of which she never realized 
 until years later. It was perhaps to Lamore that 
 she most often turned when the seeming cruelties of 
 life oppressed her, but even with Lamore she never 
 ventured confidences, and he never attempted to 
 break through the wall of her reserve. She was 
 dimly conscious that when she was weary in body 
 and in mind, his calm brought her rest. When the 
 brain of her and the heart of her dwelt on the in- 
 justices and questioned the mercy of the All-Per- 
 vading Force, his sane judgment and wise philos- 
 ophy, for the time at least, stilled her questionings 
 and brought her peace. When the woman in her 
 yearned for more than she had, his sympathy, deep 
 and tender, soothed her, and instinctively she grew 
 to feel that once in his life he had suffered with the 
 human in him as she was suffering now. He grew 
 to be a type to her of high spiritual endeavor, as 
 long ago Stone had grown to be a type of all she 
 had ever dreamed of in the present humanity of 
 man. He was at once an interest and an inspiration 
 in her life and she hardly acknowledged to herself 
 the full force of what his personality meant to her. 
 As if conscious of her need of him, Lamore joined 
 
 226
 
 ^ THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 her more often in her walks and so apparently un- 
 expected were the meetings, that Blair Martin never 
 guessed how carefully they had been planned. 
 
 Once, alone, she climbed the winding road again 
 and lingered at the gate that led to the chateau gar- 
 den. She did not attempt to enter just why she 
 could not have told. By and by she rose from the 
 big boulder on which she had been sitting and list- 
 lessly continued up the side of the cliff. She had no 
 objective point in view. She only knew that she 
 was tired more tired in heart and brain than in 
 the body and that any extra physical exertion 
 helped her. The fruitlessness of being, oppressed 
 her, and with a yearning intense and not to be 
 denied, she longed for some word from Stone. Not 
 since she had been at the Island had she walked the 
 Dream Bridge with him seen even that dim sem- 
 blance of his face, and yet there had been times when 
 Stone had seemed nearer to her here than anywhere 
 she had ever been. Sometimes she wondered if it 
 was the hope of such few recurring moments that 
 kept her lingering at the Island. The road grew 
 steeper and she found walking difficult. Few marks 
 of carriage or wagon wheels broke the surface, but 
 to one side through the shaded woods she came upon 
 a little well worn path. Not stopping to question 
 whither it led, and only conscious that it offered less 
 resistance to her tired feet, she turned into it and 
 followed it to its end. Its way led through deep 
 woods that lay still and cool around her, and the 
 darkness of the narrow path was broken every little 
 
 227
 
 while with shafts filtering through from the warm 
 sunshine overhead. To the left some birds were 
 singing, and their song and the light footfall of her 
 feet were the only sounds that broke the silence. 
 After a little a strange peace began to creep into 
 her heart, as turbulent waters suddenly become 
 stilled as they grow deeper and approach the sea. 
 And then it was that there came to her full, 
 strong and mellow the most wonderful music that 
 she had ever heard. For a moment she stood still 
 and held her breath, as a child who hears some 
 sound of a fairyland long dreamed and read of, and 
 something of the child-wonder crept into her deep 
 eyes as she listened. 
 
 " It is some one playing the organ at St. 
 Michael's," she said at last, and she did not know 
 she spoke aloud. By and by she moved toward the 
 sound, more slowly and with lighter footfall, as 
 though afraid she might miss one cadence, or awa- 
 ken from a dream. After a little the woods thinned 
 on either side as she walked. To the left she caught 
 a glimpse of blue sea far below, and on the right a 
 gleaming mass of stone which she knew to be St. 
 Michael's. On the edge of the clearing she saw it 
 fully that great memorial chapel so full of mys- 
 tery and of beauty, and almost as a thing afraid she 
 crept across the space that divided the outskirts of 
 the woods from St. Michael's, and stood in the 
 shadow of a side doorway listening. ... At first 
 she was acutely conscious of her own presence there, 
 and the sense of her own insignificance one small 
 
 228
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 and finite thing in the shadow of that great pile 
 of marble, overwhelmed her. Then she forgot all 
 except the music and she listened until her whole 
 body was one vibration of sound. Her brain 
 throbbed to it, her heart beat to it, her spirit steeped 
 itself in it until it seemed to her she could bear it no 
 longer, and she turned and leaned against the carved 
 marble of the entrance, her face hidden in her hands. 
 By and by the strange peace she had felt in the 
 woods stole over her and she raised her white face 
 from her hands and stared out across the clearing 
 to the open sea. The music rose and fell and it 
 seemed to her its vibrations throbbed in the air in 
 front of her, a tangible thing. Little by little they 
 seemed to gather into a cloud and as she looked the 
 Dream Bridge formed before her. She was stepping 
 on it now and from the other end Stone was coming 
 to meet her as he had met her before, but to-day his 
 face was different than she had ever seen it. All 
 weariness and anxiety and sorrow and passion had 
 passed from it and it shone out grave, triumphant, 
 and serene, and when he got to her he held out his 
 arms and folded her to him with a love that claimed 
 her as separate and distinct from sex and time and 
 space. Around them and above them and made of 
 the Bridge on which they stood, was the music of 
 St. Michael's. . . . Slowly the cloud was dissipated. 
 She could feel it going and she clung on to it pas- 
 sionately knowing the emptiness of the awakening. 
 Then once more she stood in the shadow of St. 
 Michael's looking out across the clearing to the sea. 
 
 229
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 One great sonorous chord greeted her awakening, 
 then silence, and Gounod's Mass was ended. 
 
 She crouched down on the stone floor, the cold- 
 ness of it bringing back to her the realities of life, 
 and she lay there, her spirit crushed and broken. 
 By and by she was conscious of a key being turned 
 in a lock, the opening of a door, and she rose sud- 
 denly to her feet. In the doorway stood Pierre 
 Lamore. He did not show any surprise at her 
 being there, and he answered her disjointed ques- 
 tions in a calm and natural voice that at once con- 
 trolled and soothed her. 
 
 " It was I Mademoiselle I come when I can 
 and practise on the organ." 
 
 "I I did not know that you were a musician," 
 she said in a low voice as she watched him relock the 
 inner door and walked by him as he began the de- 
 scent. 
 
 " I studied long ago while a boy in Germany. 
 Through all the grave perplexities and vicissitudes 
 of the years, it has sustained me, Mademoiselle." 
 
 It was the only allusion she remembered that he 
 had made to his own life, and a strange new liking 
 for him went out from her as for a comrade who 
 had known distress. 
 
 She glanced back over her shoulder at the gleam- 
 ing stones of St. Michael's. 
 
 " It is a wonderful organ, Father," she said at 
 length. 
 
 " It is one of the finest in all France," said La- 
 
 230
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 more, and he spoke as a connoisseur. " It is a great 
 privilege to play there, Mademoiselle." 
 
 She looked up at him with a faint smile. 
 
 " It was not altogether the organ, Father. Where 
 in Germany did you learn that touch? And the 
 Mass I have heard the Gounod Mass in America 
 in most of the big cathedrals of Europe and 
 never like that " she broke off. Henceforth could 
 she ever separate the Dream Bridge and the Mass of 
 Gounod, she wondered. 
 
 He helped her in silence over the big boulder on 
 which earlier in the day she had rested in her ascent. 
 Neither of them looked toward the wicket gate as 
 they passed. 
 
 " The mysteries of music, Mademoiselle ! Who 
 shall fathom them? Some soul perhaps born from 
 other worlds than ours, with the experiences, the 
 pains, the joys, the loves, of other existences than 
 those of which we are conscious." 
 
 She did not answer and together they walked on 
 in silence, he in a grave revery, she vainly trying to 
 soar again to those heights that for a moment she 
 had touched on the threshold of St. Michael's. 
 
 " But your mysteries your mysteries of faith 
 what is there in them that one can take for common 
 life and needs ? " She spoke slowly, finally. 
 
 Lamore stopped in his walk and smiled. He 
 looked out across the sea. The blue was turning to 
 a somber gray; the sun was hidden by great 
 clouds. 
 
 " Who is there of us," he questioned, " that knows 
 
 231
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 what a sunset is what it is that makes that clear 
 splendor, or the glory of a child's face in sleep, or 
 the look of love? But, Mademoiselle, do we ques- 
 tion either the splendor or the glory? And can we, 
 of whatever race or creed, spare the beauty and the 
 power? Shall finite fathom Infinity? " 
 
 She did not answer but he saw that the hand she 
 held above her eyes to shade them trembled. 
 
 The moments passed and grew into long minutes 
 and the silence of nature and of human speech was 
 there. Her eyes, still shaded, looked out across the 
 stretch of waters gray and cold, and on the lowering 
 sky. On the summit, at St. Michael's, wrapped in 
 the music, wrapped in the mystery of the Dream 
 Bridge, there had been light and peace and warmth ; 
 but here, down near the base, on the edge of the 
 homeward road, were shadows gray and cold. She 
 turned with the instinct of a wounded thing that 
 wants to be alone. 
 
 " I am going now," she said. 
 
 He took her offered hand with an understanding 
 of her need, and he looked down on it critically for 
 the moment that it rested in his own. It was a beau- 
 tiful hand, but oddly shaped, with the broad palm 
 of practical benevolence and the slender fingers of 
 the lover of all that is beautiful in life as well as art. 
 It lay in his own quite listless as though uncertain 
 of the task expected of it. Then with the simple 
 dignity of the birth and breeding of his race that 
 was his before he was either a soldier or a priest, his 
 head inclined above it. 
 
 232
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Au revoir, Mademoiselle." 
 
 He stood where she had left him on the rock, 
 watching her pick her way among them until she 
 reached the main road, that, winding by the sea, 
 led back to Toinette's cottage. 
 
 " Only a few grains for the field as yet," he 
 thought, " since it is not ready for the sowing " 
 
 Suddenly he raised his head expectantly, and as 
 he waited in the solitude and silence, a light crept 
 across his face and lingered there before it slowly 
 faded. He spoke then as one answering a familiar 
 unseen voice. 
 
 " ' Feed thou my lambs ! ' Aye, Master Gra- 
 cious Lord yet at first we give but crumbs to the 
 starving lest they perish with the surfeit. Hast 
 Thou not said our daily bread ? " 
 
 Slowly he stepped from the crags that lay at the 
 base of St. Michael's, and silently and unseen, fol- 
 lowed the road winding by the sea where, in the dis- 
 tance, Blair Martin walked alone. 
 
 All through the long hours of the afternoon the 
 sky became more threatening and the sea more 
 somber, and with the darkness there broke over the 
 Island such a storm as it had not known in years. 
 In the scattered cottages among the vineyards the 
 peasant women lighted their blessed candles and 
 prayed, or stilled the children's frightened cries, 
 while the men crossed themselves as they made their 
 way to where their flocks were sheltered to see that 
 they were secure, and thought with dread of the 
 
 233
 
 *R THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 vineyards waiting for the harvest and of the dawn- 
 ing of the morning. In all the darkness and the 
 pelting rain and heavy winds, the flickering of the 
 blessed candles and the steady beacon light from 
 the spire of St. Michael's streamed out upon the 
 blackness of the night. All through the night the 
 storm lasted, and Blair Martin, kneeling by her 
 window, watched it unafraid. The sound of 
 the pelting rain against the glass that shook and 
 rattled with its force, the slow tolling of St. 
 Michael's bell, rung by Giovanni to warn the men 
 at sea, were to her physical senses what Lamore's 
 music earlier in the day had been to heart and spirit, 
 and she gloried in the passion and the force of the 
 elements that subdued all things to their will. 
 
 At dawn she was still kneeling there, watching the 
 storm subside and waiting for the light, half fearful 
 of what it might reveal. By and by the light came, 
 and with it the sun that looked down upon the soak- 
 ing earth. The vineyards, sheltered in the valleys, 
 had been but little harmed, but some of the great 
 trees on the cliff side had been laid low, their 
 strength of slow long centuries of growth worsted 
 in the struggle of the night. With the coming of 
 the dawn and the sun, the light upon St. Michael's 
 steeple had gone out. She could see it the steeple 
 the slender white beauty of it pointing heaven- 
 ward, a type of the Eternal that endures when things 
 transitory are destroyed and forgotten with the 
 ceasing of time. Then slowly her eyes traveled to 
 the chateau standing in its shadow, and with a quick 
 
 234
 
 3 THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 cry she rose suddenly from her knees. From the 
 staff on the turret a flag spread itself to the morn- 
 ing breeze; she could see it where she stood a 
 gold cross upon an azure field. 
 
 END OF BOOK TWO. 
 
 235
 
 BOOK THREE 
 THE TEMPLE'S STEPS
 
 I. 
 
 STONE took the midnight train to Montreal. 
 All night he lay awake and the dull rumble 
 of the iron wheels kept time to the grinding 
 tumult in his brain. One by one the events of his 
 life shaped themselves from out of the confusion and 
 one by one they passed in review before him. At 
 first he regarded them almost impersonally. . . . 
 Later there came to him Blair Martin's face as it 
 had looked at him one summer night under a mi- 
 mosa tree. . . . After that his brain was a burning 
 sheet of memory and he let it burn. . . . Towards 
 morning the fire wore itself partially out and he fell 
 into a fitful sleep from which he was aroused by the 
 dining-room porter calling through the car the time 
 for breakfast. He stepped down from the train into 
 the big station of Montreal without haste and color- 
 less, the great scar showing out more distinctly by 
 contrast. He ordered a cab and was driven to a 
 hotel, where he engaged a suite and bathed and 
 changed his clothes. Then he flung himself down 
 on a lounge near the window and turned listless 
 troubled eyes toward the great river flowing below. 
 He was known at the hotel ; he had often occupied 
 this suite before, he remembered with what was al- 
 most' a shudder, and there had been times when he 
 
 239
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 had lain here and let the beauty of the river view 
 soothe restless heart and nerves. To-day it brought 
 little help to him. By and by he started up and sat 
 on the edge of the lounge, his hands on his knees, 
 staring straight ahead of him. Time was passing. 
 They would be looking for him at the Hotel des 
 Invalides wondering at his lack of haste in com- 
 ing. Ah! those good sisters with their temptation 
 sheltered lives who were rejoicing for him. How 
 little did they know or understand ! And the Other 
 the Other waiting for him ! What would that 
 meeting be? For years he had come to Montreal 
 to see her or was it that he came to see that she 
 lacked for nothing? But to-day it would be dif- 
 ferent. How was he to bridge those seven years? 
 He could not. That night in summer under the 
 mimosa tree, he knew that the bridge he had so care- 
 fully built and guarded, had shattered to its fall. 
 How would she look and act now that an inscrutable 
 Fate had seen fit to lift the veil? Once she had 
 charmed him she had never, he remembered, even 
 in those long years, been repulsive to him or awa- 
 kened aught save pity in her helplessness but he 
 knew as by an unalterable decree that that charm 
 for him was passed. He had borne much; he had 
 forgiven much, but as yet he could not forget. 
 And he what was this thing he was about to do 
 he whose life had stood for effort in the highest 
 and for truth was he, could he, live this lie ? 
 God ! Even for a promise made in the name of that 
 God years ago, even because she once had borne a 
 
 240
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 child for him, even to shield her life from further 
 bitterness, ought he to live the lie ? ... He searched 
 the empty room with eyes that questioningly looked 
 on its inanimate things, with eyes that turned to the 
 river and the sky, but neither the inanimate things 
 nor the sky gave back an answer. 
 
 By and by he rose and walked out to the street 
 and began to slowly climb the heights where the 
 Hotel des Invalides stood. Half an hour later the 
 Mother Superior, on whose face rested a joy unself- 
 ishly remote, led him into a small private apartment. 
 
 " I will send her, Monsieur. For hours she has 
 been waiting praying that you might not delay." 
 
 After what seemed hours he heard a step along 
 the corridor a light step, one almost of youth. A 
 hand touched the door-knob, hesitated. . . . He 
 drew a deep breath, watching the door, and he no- 
 ticed irrelevantly the stream of sun motes crossing 
 it. How bright they were. . . . 
 
 Slowly the door opened. In the sun motes stood 
 a woman. She was above the average height and 
 slender. One hand with delicate tapering ringers 
 played a little nervously with the knob of the closed 
 door. It was her only sign of confusion. A control 
 such as he could never remember seeing in her face, 
 or in the face of any of her countrywomen, lay upon 
 her; looked from the grave brown eyes beneath a 
 white low forehead. Her dark hair, very fine and 
 very long, was twiste'd in two great braids and 
 wound and wound around her head, a simple crown. 
 He remembered it was the way she had worn it 
 
 241
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 years ago. Her attitude expressed yearning and 
 doubt, without fear, and there was withal about her 
 a dignity that had come to her by right and which 
 she could not lose. 
 
 The hand that had been playing with the knob 
 dropped suddenly and was outstretched. . . . He 
 crossed the room and took it and pressed it to his 
 lips. 
 
 " Cecile," he said, and so low did he speak that 
 the woman waiting expectant at the doorway bowed 
 her head to hear the whisper of her name. 
 
 242
 
 n. 
 
 FROM Montreal he took her to St. Anne de 
 Beaupre, a quaint Canadian town where 
 yearly pilgrims come to worship at the 
 shrine. The serenity and the influence of the place 
 brought a strange peace to his troubled heart, al- 
 though it was for her that he had come, fearful at 
 first of the noise and confusion of a large city and 
 the effect it might have upon her. She was inex- 
 pressibly charmed with the place the quaint 
 streets, the shrine itself, the tongue of France that 
 she heard on every side. For her a new heaven and 
 a new earth had opened and the dawning wonder of 
 it was reflected in her eyes. Day by day he watched 
 her furtively, scarce believing that the dream was 
 true, or that the life he was living was real. If she 
 was ever aware of his veiled scrutiny she gave no 
 outward sign, but she in her turn studied him when 
 he least expected it, as though from behind the mask 
 that hid the real man from her, she might know him 
 as he was, face to face. A strange reticence envel- 
 oped her, which he might have heeded more had he 
 not been absorbed in thoughts of other things, not 
 the least being the remembrance of her happiness. 
 In honesty to himself, however, he gave no more 
 than he could and hide his secret still. His thought 
 
 243
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 for her comfort, for her diversion, was unfailing, as 
 was his consideration in all things. Demonstration 
 seemed to him the one coin that he could not pay, 
 and unlike what he had feared, she never asked more 
 than he freely gave. If during those hours of wait- 
 ing after her awakening she had looked for more, 
 if now her heart hungered for more, at least she gave 
 no sign and he was satisfied. 
 
 Only once, as by a mutual consent, had either al- 
 luded to those seven years in Montreal rarely to 
 the life lived together before the shadow fell. Once, 
 on leaving the church after Benediction, they walked 
 together on the outskirts of the town, and for the 
 first time in all the long weeks she questioned him 
 as to something outside of the life they were living 
 here together in the small Canadian village. 
 
 " The organ at the Memorial Chapel it has been 
 installed ? " 
 
 The question without preface of any kind startled 
 him, but he answered quietly. 
 
 " It was placed in the Chapel soon after its com- 
 pletion, and as you directed in the plans you left. 
 It is one of the finest in all France." 
 
 " Ah, you have seen the Chapel ? You have heard 
 the organ ? " she asked, a quick catch in her voice 
 yearning in her eyes. 
 
 " Once, on my last visit there, I saw the Chapel 
 completed. It is a thing of wonderful beauty, Cecile. 
 But I did not go inside nor hear the organ. I had 
 no key," he added with a grave smile. 
 
 " The good Father he is still living and he did 
 
 244
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 not take you to St. Michael's you did not see the 
 great altar window to the child?" To herself 
 her voice seemed remote. 
 
 " No, Cecile." 
 
 After a while she asked: 
 
 " The good Father he has grown much older? " 
 
 " I saw him last year. He seemed as when I first 
 met him years ago," said Stone. 
 
 " Eternal youth is on him," she said softly. 
 " Are are there any changes at the Island ? " 
 
 " So few as not to count. Time stands still there, 
 I think, Cecile. Marie the daughter of your old 
 serving-woman is widowed and lives with her 
 child at the rectory. Together they take care of 
 Father Lamore. Giovanni still works in the garden 
 that wonderful chateau garden and each night 
 he runs the light up on the steeple of St. Michael's 
 to guide men on the sea each stormy night he tolls 
 the Chapel bell for them." 
 
 She stopped suddenly in her walk and she clasped 
 and unclasped her hands. 
 
 " All all just as I wanted it to be," she said, a 
 strange smile lingering on her lips, " just as I 
 wanted it to be. I thank you oh, I thank you." 
 
 Stone drew intricate patterns in the dust of the 
 road with the tip of his walking stick. 
 
 "Don't," he said hastily; "don't thank me. I 
 was glad to do what I could. Lamore helped me a 
 great deal. He has a wonderful eye for the truly 
 great in art." 
 
 " All the same," she repeated to herself softly, 
 
 245
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 resuming her walk, " all as I left it, except the great 
 Chapel I never saw except in drawing as I never 
 saw except in dreams." 
 
 Something in her voice made his heart beat more 
 rapidly. He said nothing, and after a while her 
 voice low and quiet broke the stillness that lay 
 around them. 
 
 " The seven years were not all darkness, Hector," 
 she said. " There were minutes when I awoke 
 when I knew, and I would feel for the gold key to 
 St. Michael's you once placed around my neck. I 
 clung to it as a drowning man clings to a spar, before 
 the waters closed above me again and the night 
 came back. I knew, Hector, for a moment the day 
 you came with it and clasped it round my neck 
 I saw your face as I see it now and I knew all the 
 promises had been kept. Some day will you take 
 my key and go to St. Michael's ? " 
 
 " Some day," he said, and it seemed to him his 
 heart and brain were ice. 
 
 On the way back they were overtaken and de- 
 tained by a man Stone had once met in Que- 
 bec, who had come over to St. Anne de Beaupre 
 for the day. Stone himself was not aware how 
 eagerly he inquired for news of the outer world. 
 On reaching the strange little place they had for so 
 many weeks called home she went directly to her 
 room, Stone lingering below to smoke a cigar and 
 talk in the cool of the late August evening. 
 
 Once upstairs she sat down on the edge of her 
 bed in thought. She thought of many things, and 
 
 246
 
 * THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 once Stone's face with its new glad look of interest 
 flashed before her mind. 
 
 " His work all this time he has put it to one 
 side for me. He must go back to it. He loves 
 the world he is a part of it his work is for it, 
 while I I only want the Island my Island of 
 the Angels the child again and him! " 
 
 The long dusk fell and found her still sitting there. 
 Once she put her hand to her throat and touched the 
 key that for so long had hung on the chain about her 
 neck. 
 
 " Ah, that I might unlock his heart to-night as 
 some day I shall unlock the Chapel to the child ! " 
 
 The dusk had turned to darkness when Stone as- 
 cended and lighted the candle near the door. 
 
 " Cecile, where are you? " 
 
 She rose from her seat on the bed and came 
 toward him. The light from the candle that he held 
 high, searching for her, fell upon his face, and the 
 long red disfiguring scar stood out boldly. Sud- 
 denly she drew his head down and laid her lips 
 against it. 
 
 " Would that I might so heal all your wounds, 
 mon cher," she said. 
 
 247
 
 III. 
 
 THREE days later they left St. Anne de 
 Beaupre for the outside world again. At 
 first Stone had remonstrated, fearing the 
 new excitement for Cecile, but on seeing her heart 
 apparently set on it, he had at last consented. He 
 had not, so intent had he been in his thought of 
 her, seriously considered all that that exodus from 
 the quiet life would mean. There would be the 
 world to face again, he remembered suddenly as 
 their train neared the great city, and the world to 
 be faced under new conditions. Little gossip, or 
 indeed news of any sort, had penetrated to St. Anne 
 de Beaupre, but he had lived and worked in the 
 world too long was too prominent a figure in 
 that world not to guess the discussion he had 
 undergone since he had left it that night months 
 ago for Montreal. A sudden understanding of the 
 criticism he would meet with, the forces against 
 which he would have to pit his will, came over him, 
 and mentally, as the great train steamed along, he 
 began to arrange his batteries of defense and the 
 weapons he would use. The desire to do battle 
 with the world again, lying dormant for a while, 
 stirred in him, and instinctively his hand went up 
 and touched the scar on his cheek. Did he not 
 
 248
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 bear on him the seal of the world's work? He 
 thought of the laboring men he had not seen for 
 so long. . . . 
 
 Unnoticed by him, Cecile from her parlor chair 
 watched his face and read something of his 
 thoughts. She sighed a little, remembering the 
 quiet of St. Anne de Beaupre. She had overruled 
 his every objection, declaring that she needed noth- 
 ing but her needlwork and her music, and what- 
 ever diversions he could find time from his work 
 to spare for her. The train steamed through the 
 outskirts of the city through the tenement ap- 
 proach where hundreds of working men and 
 women and squalid, pale-faced children leaned 
 from open windows to catch the faint breeze of 
 the hot August night. She sat forward in her 
 chair a throb of pity in her heart as the train 
 whirled past. How different how different 
 from her people in the Island of the Angels ! Then 
 she remembered suddenly that they were his people 
 the people that Stone had adopted for his own 
 and for whom he lived and labored, and the feeling 
 of impersonal pity passed and was replaced by a 
 vague desire to share something of her inner self, 
 she had never known before. 
 
 With infinite care Stone helped her from the 
 car all his attentions to her were infinitely gen- 
 tle as they were infinitely remote and together 
 they got into the big touring car waiting for them 
 at the curb. 
 
 " My wife, Wilson," he said briefly, and Wilson 
 
 249
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 stood cap in hand, before climbing back into the 
 driver's seat. He had looked at the lady as curi- 
 ously as he dared. In the months since his master 
 had been away, Wilson had listened to strange 
 stories in regard to him. They had never been 
 uttered in his presence without invoking his vigor- 
 ous protest. Had he not watched Mr. Stone grow 
 up from a boy in the home of his millionaire uncle, 
 John Stone? Had he not served Mr. Stone ever 
 since his return from abroad, long ago? Would 
 he not have known if there had been a woman in 
 his life? Just the same it was with another fur- 
 tive glance that he held open the door of the ton- 
 neau for Stone and his wife to alight at the pretty 
 cottage Stone had rented in a quiet suburb near the 
 city limits. 
 
 " As thoughtful as ever," she had murmured on 
 the threshold of the new home, looking out over 
 the pretty garden and some distant hills. " I shall 
 be happy here," she added, smiling softly as though 
 to herself. " While you work I shall have the 
 music and the flowers ; while you work I shall 
 wait for you." 
 
 And still with the smile upon her face she en- 
 tered and Stone closed the door. 
 
 250
 
 IV. 
 
 THE weeks slipped into months and little 
 came to disturb the quiet in that suburban 
 home. The fall was a long one and Cecile 
 rejoiced in the flowers that the frost spared to her 
 from day to day. They went out but little and 
 they entertained still less, but the few times she 
 was seen in public with him did much to quiet 
 suspicion and still criticism. Something in her 
 bearing and her pretty broken English spoke of 
 a birth and a gentle breeding that none that met 
 her could deny, and there was withal a dignity 
 about her that repelled curious questionings of 
 any kind. It was her wall of defense, and a better 
 protection than even Stone's name. If she ever 
 suspected some of the reports that had been cir- 
 culated about her and which were slowly dying a 
 natural death, she gave no hint of it to Stone; 
 and the knowledge that his secret marriage to her 
 years ago barely known outside of France and 
 of the vague criticism that that lack of knowledge 
 to the world had brought down upon her, made 
 Stone redouble his attentions to her and see that 
 every wish he guessed at was satisfied. If he de- 
 clared his marriage to the world, the curious world 
 would wonder, conjecture and demand to know 
 
 251
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 where those seven years of separation had been 
 spent. Could he bring himself to let the world 
 know the inner secret the curse of Cecile's life ? 
 The knowledge was locked safe in the Hotel des 
 Invalides, was safe with Lamore, and safe with 
 the only other person who knew it Blair Mar- 
 tin. The world that upper world of fashionable 
 people of whom he was one and for whom he cared 
 so little might conjecture as they would. They 
 would soon forget him and his affairs. Their 
 iwonderings could not hurt Cecile in her white 
 purity. As for the others the people whose 
 lives and cause he had made his own they ac- 
 cepted the news of his wife as they accepted every- 
 thing in regard to him as a thing above criti- 
 cism and beyond question. Two or three of the 
 labor leaders had seen her in the suburban home. 
 It was there she had met them as a queen might 
 meet courtiers from a foreign power to which she 
 was friendly, but whose customs and language she 
 did not understand. There had been no conde- 
 scension in her attitude, only a superb graciousness, 
 as from one who rules by right, that they vaguely 
 felt but could not explain to themselves. But the 
 remembrance of her strengthened Stone's influence 
 in their midst. 
 
 Stone himself went back to the work with an 
 enthusiasm and a passion that helped him in the 
 new strange life he lived which helped him to 
 forget. For the first time in his labors he came 
 out fully as he was, as to position and to princi- 
 
 252
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 pie. Joe Blackie, so long a prominent figure in 
 labor meetings, came no more since the mill ex- 
 plosion had revealed who Joe Blackie was. But 
 the foreman with the blackened hands that had 
 worked among them, had blazed a trail for Hector 
 Stone and his work. They never would have heard 
 him never followed him with the same intense 
 loyalty had it not been for the years he had labored 
 with them and shared their lives. 
 
 It was about this time that he drew more fully 
 to him the upper class his own that for years 
 he had endeavored to enlist in his cause. For 
 years he had wanted the brains, the cooperation, 
 the money, that his class might give. It came to 
 him now, and the knowledge of the ultimate attain- 
 ment of a goal in sight, strengthened him as strong 
 wine strengthens a man who has been through 
 some long and bitter ordeal. 
 
 The widening influence the public need for 
 him for his presence and his speeches, brought 
 new obligations. There were hours spent away 
 from the pretty suburban cottage now some- 
 times trips, even, and a journey out west of a fort- 
 night. Twice Cecile had gone with him, but the 
 long hours in the trains, the excitement of the 
 time, had tired her, and she was content thereafter 
 to remain behind, and her decision had been re- 
 ceived by Stone with a relief that was an astonish- 
 ment to himself. His work gave little time for 
 thought, but when the thoughts came, fight them 
 as he would, they were not of Cecile in the subur- 
 
 253
 
 *B THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 ban home but of another woman earnest, gray- 
 eyed, wandering restlessly from place to place in 
 foreign lands. 
 
 Once he met Andrew Martin. The older man had 
 in a shamefaced way approached him after one of 
 his famous speeches in a neighboring city. With- 
 out preliminary comment of any kind he had said 
 briefly : 
 
 " My taxi is waiting at the curb. Come with 
 me. I will drop you at your hotel. I want to talk 
 to you." 
 
 It seemed impossible to refuse the invitation, and 
 Stone was not altogether sure that he wanted to 
 refuse it. Might not the Scotchman tell him news 
 for which he hungered? 
 
 To the driver the Scotchman said : 
 
 " The Kingsford," adding in a lower voice, 
 " the longest way around." 
 
 Then he clambered into the taxi by Stone. 
 
 At first neither of them spoke and Stone looked 
 out of the window on the brightly lighted thor- 
 oughfare. He was tired. His speech had been 
 a long one had needed hours of thought and 
 tact, but he was conscious that his audience had 
 been good, and that what he had set forth in clear, 
 concise sentences, in timely references and accurate 
 statistics, had been well received. Such knowledge 
 brought him the deepest sense of rest that his life 
 knew just now. 
 
 The Scotchman made no allusion to his being 
 at the meeting what had brought him to the 
 
 254
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 neighboring city just at this time but he broke 
 the silence first. 
 
 " I hear you are married, Mr. Stone." 
 
 He tried to make his voice impersonally polite. 
 
 Stone did not turn to him but continued to stare 
 out upon the city lights. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Martin." 
 
 The Scotchman regarded him curiously. He 
 wondered if he could ever find this man off his 
 guard. 
 
 " I suppose you are open to congratulations," 
 he said at length. 
 
 " Certainly, Mr. Martin. Thank you." 
 
 The silence fell again. Something in Stone's 
 attitude forbade further questions, but it was not 
 of Stone's wife that the Scotchman was thinking, 
 but of Blair's face as he had sometimes seen it. 
 
 It was not of Cecile that Stone began to think 
 as he stared out of the window, but of Blair Mar- 
 tin. If he might hear some word of her . . . that 
 she was well. . . . 
 
 By and by, with an effort of his will, he forced 
 the memory of her from him and began to speak 
 on indifferent topics. So steadily and so well did he 
 talk that the taxi drew up at the Kingsford long 
 before the Scotchman wished. He could find no 
 excuse however for detaining him longer, and in 
 chagrin he heard Stone thank him, saw him open 
 the door, heard it close again. 
 
 They had met and parted, and it seemed to both 
 of them that they had discussed every subject 
 
 255
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 under heaven except the one of which both longed 
 to hear. 
 
 Stone returned late the next night, and for the 
 first time since the days of St. Anne de Beaupre, 
 Cecile was not awaiting him. Her maid said she 
 had gone to bed. 
 
 In his dressing-room, on his shaving-stand, he 
 found a note from her a few words of welcome. 
 By it, in the dim light, was something he did not 
 at first recognize. He switched on the main lights 
 and for a moment was blinded by the sudden glare. 
 Then he returned to the shaving-stand and picked 
 the thing up with a sharp exclamation of surprise. 
 It was a frail thing an object for a woman's 
 dainty room the little work-bag that long ago 
 Blair Martin had sold him at their first meeting. 
 On it was resting a long white glove with the faint 
 elusive odor of violets about it. 
 
 For a moment he held it in fingers that grasped 
 it in a tense hold, looking at the closed door into 
 Cecile's room, and in that moment he realized why 
 she had not been waiting to welcome him when 
 he came home what the morrow must surely 
 bring. 
 
 256
 
 V. 
 
 IT was late when he awoke the next morning 
 after a night of haunting, troubled dreams. 
 He dressed deliberately he slowly drank the 
 coffee that Wilson brought to his room he 
 walked its length back and forth anything to 
 gain time. The crossroads of his life had been 
 reached. Which road to take which ? The road 
 up to now had been an undividing, if rocky one. 
 There had never been the question, which way to 
 turn. He had followed the road of his duty as 
 he had seen it, and in spite of the fatigue and sweat 
 from the toil and sorrows of others he had carried, 
 he had clung in his manhood to the ideals of his 
 youth. Sometimes, by a turn in the road, that 
 ideal had become lost or blurred, but he had found 
 it again as a beacon burning brightly still, and it 
 had led him on and on, across the morasses of 
 despair, the deserts of barren living, the few green 
 oases with their springs of living waters that he 
 remembered gratefully, but it had always led 
 him. To-day it hung above the crossroads and its 
 guiding power seemed gone. His brain, that had 
 so often and for so long evolved schemes for the 
 helping of others' woes, had no power or faculty 
 now to help his own. 
 
 257
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 He went downstairs to the library and began 
 to sort over his mail always a heavy one a 
 task he allowed no one to attend to but himself. 
 Later his secretary would come and they would 
 go over the correspondence together, but the first 
 reading was always his. To-day he began to open 
 the huge pile in a listless manner. Mechanically 
 and with skill born of long practice he sorted the 
 letters out invitations to speak social requests 
 personal business affairs in connection with his 
 vast fortune appeals for help in mental difficul- 
 ties and labor questions, and financial distress. 
 The last were by far the most numerous and were 
 scrupulously read and thought over by Stone 
 the evidently needy ones laid to one side for fur- 
 ther investigation on the part of well trained 
 agents. Few were cast aside, and all were read 
 a fact that had become pretty generally known in 
 the under-world of the unfortunates, and which had 
 made Stone, of all the rich men in America, the 
 most easy of approach. 
 
 To-day, however, even the letters failed to arouse 
 him or the pressing need of work to be gone over 
 and prepared before the arrival of his secretary. 
 He pushed back the papers from him and looked 
 out of the long casement windows opening on the 
 garden. The garden lay white and still wrapped 
 in its sheet of snow. The morning was a gray and 
 cold one. It seemed to him the house was unusually 
 still. The footstep that he knew, the voice so fa- 
 miliar, that he half dreaded, half longed to hear,
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 was silenced. He wondered where Cecile was 
 how she looked her thoughts ! If he might read 
 her thoughts, he might better deal with this thing, 
 know which of the crossroads to choose. . . . 
 
 At eleven his secretary knocked. Stone's eyes 
 came back suddenly from the garden and fell on 
 him as he entered. The papers were barely touched 
 in front of him the mail unsorted and unopened 
 for the first time in years. 
 
 The secretary entered with a quick, decisive 
 tread and started for his desk in a far corner of 
 the room. 
 
 " The work will have to wait, Farnum, I am 
 not up to it to-day," said Stone as he slowly rose 
 and went to one of the casement windows and 
 stood staring out. 
 
 " I don't understand, sir," said Farnum, won- 
 dering if the foundations of all things were giving 
 way beneath him. " You're not ill, I hope? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Stone, " I only know I 
 can't work this morning. I don't suppose you 
 mind a holiday? " 
 
 Farnum laughed slightly. 
 
 " I wouldn't as a rule," he said briefly, " but 
 with work like yours if one loses an hour and 
 gets behind, it's like sweeping back the sea." 
 
 " Yes yes. I know you've been grinding 
 pretty hard of late, Farnum. Perhaps you'd better 
 see young Turner this afternoon. He's been well 
 recommended and I like the boy's face. I fancy 
 he'd make you a pretty able assistant and like the 
 
 259
 
 *S THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 place better than the one he has now with its long 
 hours." 
 
 Farnum nervously rubbed his chin. 
 
 " It's just as you say, of course, Mr. Stone. So 
 the work is off for to-day ? " Then as Stone gave 
 a gesture of assent he added, " Better go and rest, 
 sir, you're all tired out and won't be fit for the 
 northwestern trip next month. I'll stay on here 
 and do what I can." 
 
 " No, no, Farnum, we're going to close up sfiop 
 for to-day," said Stone. He had no desire for any 
 outsider in the house just then, not even Farnum 
 who had served him long and well. " Go home 
 and surprise your wife and take the kiddies coast- 
 ing. You'll work all the better to-morrow for it 
 and mind you stop and see young Turner." 
 
 After Farnum had closed the library door be- 
 hind him, Stone resumed his seat by his desk and 
 began to collect his correspondence and lay it in 
 neat piles in his desk. The habit of order was 
 habitual with him. 
 
 The clock above the big brick fireplace told him 
 it was nearing lunch time a meal that Cecile 
 and himself invariably had together when he was 
 at home. He rose suddenly and without knowing 
 exactly what he did, went in search of her. 
 
 He found her in the small conservatory at the 
 back of the house, watering and pruning the flow- 
 ers. Her back was to him as he entered and he 
 noticed that she did not turn or look up. 
 
 " Luncheon is almost ready, Cecile." 
 
 260
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 He spoke in French and never had his voice 
 been kinder. She answered him in the familiar 
 tongue of her people, but she made no effort to 
 look up. Her manner was without embarrassment, 
 and she asked him many questions as to his speech 
 his reception in the near-by city about the 
 comfort of his trip. Had it not been for the two 
 red spots that burned in her usually white face, 
 and the remembrance of the silken bag and long 
 white glove upstairs still resting on his shaving 
 stand, he would have thought no change had come 
 to her. Her very attitude was making the thing 
 harder, although she was evidently exerting all 
 her powers to please to put him at his ease. 
 He stood studying her face as it was bent over 
 the palms, wondering wondering 
 
 Later they had lunch together and she poured 
 his tea for him from a little teapot of old Satsuma 
 of exquisite design. She was gay he did not 
 know how feverish the gaiety was, nor how forced. 
 She played the role she had given to herself with 
 an art that was partly inborn partly a charac- 
 teristic of her nation. 
 
 She met his eyes now, and with a start of sur- 
 prise he noticed a new fire in their brown and melt- 
 ing depths. He did not know of the inner fire 
 that seemed slowly consuming- her, but he heard 
 her voice, more tender than ever in the past. 
 
 Luncheon over, she went to her room to lie down. 
 She was just recovering from a cold due to the 
 unusual dampness of the winter. In January, when 
 
 261
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Stone had suggested taking her south, she had 
 shaken her head, remembering his work. She 
 would not go without him. She simply evaded 
 his entreaties, saying she preferred to remain at 
 home with her music and her flowers. 
 
 He did not see her again until the seven o'clock 
 dinner, when again he sat opposite to her at table. 
 How he had gotten through the afternoon he could 
 not remember. How he endured that meal he did 
 not know. With his coffee he began his smoke, 
 and she left him for the piano with a backward 
 smile. Of late the smoke had made her cough 
 worse, and he, remembering it, had indulged in the 
 luxury even less than formerly, but to-night he 
 needed the cigar. He needed the wine he had 
 taken. 
 
 By and by her music reached him from the op- 
 posite side of the hall. None of the old skill had 
 been lost, he noticed, with those seven years of 
 waiting. The music, low, tender, elusive as a 
 dream, stole in to him where he sat smoking. 
 
 " Schubert," he said softly to himself. 
 
 By and by he heard her close the great piano, 
 and cross the hall and begin to mount the stairs. 
 He listened intently until he heard the door of her 
 room open and close. Then suddenly he rose to 
 his feet. The dull stupor, the irresolution of the 
 day, gone. The crossroads stretched out- in front 
 of him, whichever way they led whichever he 
 chose he would play the man. He might choose 
 wrong might miss forever the beacon light of 
 
 262
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 that ideal he had followed, but choose he would, and 
 he was conscious that beneath the coldness that 
 gripped him, brain, body and heart, there burned 
 the flame of truth before which he had never failed 
 to bow. 
 
 Not knowing what he was to say or how he was 
 to say it, or the consequences of what he was about 
 to do, he laid aside the half-finished cigar and fol- 
 lowed her upstairs. 
 
 At her door he knocked, and when her voice bade 
 him enter he did so without hesitation. Some- 
 thing in his face made the red spots that had burned 
 all day in her own, suddenly recede leaving her 
 cheeks like wax. She steadied herself against the 
 back of a chair, for a moment forgetting the role 
 she had given to herself to play. When he spoke 
 she forgot the role and was herself herself as 
 Stone had never seen her. 
 
 " Cecile, there is something I want to talk over 
 with you," he said, and for a moment something 
 in her face frightened him. If this should cause 
 that shadow the darkness of the seven years 
 ... to descend on her again ... if ... 
 
 Then he went on resolutely. 
 
 " Come with me for a little while into my dress- 
 ing-room. I shall not detain you long." 
 
 He held open the door for her to enter. As she 
 passed him her head was a little lowered, her eyes 
 cast down. 
 
 " Not long," she whispered to herself, and her 
 lips were colorless. 
 
 263
 
 VI. 
 
 HE pulled forward a chair for her to sit in 
 and she took it mechanically; her eyes 
 were fixed on him. For a moment he 
 stood before her without moving, looking down on 
 her. His look was a question, but her face, beyond 
 its unusual paleness, told him nothing. 
 
 He turned and without further hesitation walked 
 over to his shaving-stand, where the work-bag and 
 the white glove still lay. 
 
 " I found these, here, in my room last night," 
 he said so quietly that he wondered at his own 
 voice. " I suppose you found them in my cam- 
 phor chest and wondered at their being there. I 
 owe you an explanation." 
 
 He paused a moment and across the space of the 
 room she looked at him. 
 
 " Hortense found them when I sent her to the 
 chest to get your automobile coat to take to the 
 northwest with you. You asked me to see about 
 it, you remember. The girl was called away be- 
 fore the things were put back, and I came in and 
 found those on the floor. You do not owe me an 
 explanation. After the wrong I did you years 
 ago, you owe me nothing. If you care to tell me 
 that is different. I simply could not ask you 
 
 264
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 about them as another woman might have done, 
 and I could not put them back without your know- 
 ing that I had found them. Do you think you 
 understand? " 
 
 She had spoken dully almost without emo- 
 tion, and now she half turned in her chair and 
 looked out of the window at the darkness, as 
 though all had been said. 
 
 It was not what he had expected, remembering 
 the old days when she had demanded every breath 
 be hers. It was foreign to her bringing up, to the 
 station in life in which she had been born, to the 
 characteristics of her countrywomen. 
 
 He took the work-bag and the white glove from 
 the shaving-stand and carried them over to a table 
 near her, where he laid them down. The glove 
 clung to his hand in an almost human way. 
 
 " Whatever the past held of sorrow or wrong, 
 Cecile," he said slowly and in a low voice, " it 
 has nothing to do with the matter in hand, has 
 nothing to do with what I owe you as my wife." 
 
 She looked at him for a moment, and because 
 her back was to the light he could not see her face 
 distinctly, only the oval outline of it, the shining 
 eyes, the crown of dark and heavy hair. 
 
 " As you please," she said. " I only wanted you 
 to know I had found the things. I could not de- 
 ceive you again." 
 
 " It is best for both of us that I tell you, and 
 tell you - quickly." 
 
 After it was over and his voice had ceased, she 
 
 265
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 remained sitting where she was immovable. 
 After all, there had been so little to tell that was 
 tangible, and little to confess of wrong. 
 
 By and by she rose and crept over to the table 
 in a timid way and picked up the long white glove. 
 She stood looking down at it in silence. The rare 
 elusive perfume stole up to her. She recognized 
 it as a product of her own land, an extract of al- 
 most priceless worth. In a dim way and for a 
 moment of time it became associated with a won- 
 derful garden she had walked in as a child, had 
 dreamed in as a girl, and a carpet of violets that 
 bloomed there. Then gently she laid the long 
 glove down. 
 
 She turned and crossed the room and stood by 
 the door, the knob in her hand. Once she looked 
 at him, and as though unconscious that he had fol- 
 lowed her every movement in agony and anxiety 
 of mind, she spoke. 
 
 " Tell me again, Hector. Perhaps perhaps I 
 did not understand you love her?" 
 
 " Yes," he said, and he could not look at her. 
 
 For a moment she stood staring straight ahead 
 of her. 
 
 " So ! " she said, then she opened the door and, 
 wraith-like, slipped through. 
 
 He made no attempt to follow her. There was 
 nothing he could say or do. He had told the truth, 
 he had spared neither her nor himself, and all the 
 rest of life stretched out a blank. 
 
 266
 
 VII. 
 
 IT was as though a heavy weight lay on the 
 days that followed, and the heaviness in- 
 creased until the secretaries and the servants 
 felt it. To Stone, his only safeguard lay in work, 
 and he worked so feverishly and so long that Far- 
 num used sometimes to remonstrate. Stone would 
 only shake his head and remind his secretary that 
 the long northwestern tour was rapidly approach- 
 ing and there was much to get in readiness, much 
 to prepare for young Turner, who was to be left 
 behind. 
 
 The relief of work did not come for Cecile 
 work of the strenuous sort that had to be done, 
 work that took one out of oneself and that brought 
 a certain relief and balm in the knowledge that 
 others were being helped work that brought re- 
 lief with fatigue. Almost feverishly she worked 
 among the flowers, but little concentration of en- 
 ergy was necessary in the task, and thoughts and 
 memories haunted the conservatory. Then she 
 tried her needle. For hours she sat in the sun- 
 shine of her window before her embroidery frame 
 and toiled at the great frontal in gold thread and 
 azure she had started. Some day, when the gold 
 threads were woven in, in the finest art that she 
 
 267
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 had learned at the convent as a girl, when the 
 azure strands formed a background that one could 
 scarcely tell from the product of the brush, she 
 would send the frontal to Pierre Lamore for the 
 Memorial Chapel to the child. Once she paused at 
 the work, her needle suspended. Perhaps she 
 would not send it after all perhaps there were 
 other ways for the frontal to reach St. Michael's. 
 After that the work at the embroidery frame took 
 on new impetus, and something like the fire of a 
 settled purpose burned in her eyes. It became hard 
 for her to leave the gold threads and the delicately 
 colored skeins of silk even for the daily outing in 
 the still frozen garden that the doctor had said she 
 must have, and for once in her life the art of her 
 needle at the embroidery frame overshadowed the 
 art of her music at the piano. 
 
 The long-talked-of and unexpected tour through 
 the northwest was fast approaching, and it seemed 
 to Stone it was the one topic on which Cecile 
 talked long and well and without reserve. He was 
 conscious that the separation would bring relief 
 to her from a strain almost unbearable, and he was 
 too honest with himself to doubt that the trip would 
 bring relief to himself as well. It was about this 
 time that he tried to persuade her to take Hortense 
 and go south for a trip. Lorimer's last verdict on 
 the cough had been anything but encouraging. 
 For the first time she listened without remonstrance. 
 
 " Peirhaps I will think of it," she said, twirling 
 around slowly on the piano stool one evening after 
 
 268
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 dinner, " but you and your nice old doctor are 
 geese, mon cher." She laughed almost blithely, 
 the two bright spots burning in her cheeks again. 
 
 " Lorimer is a very able physician," and Stone 
 came and leaned over the piano, a smile upon his 
 face. How like her old self Cecile was to-night! 
 She was almost as she was years ago when a girl 
 at home in France. He looked at her intently, 
 her head slightly bent, her dark eyes on the ivory 
 keys, and as he looked she began to play the slow 
 elusive dream piece of Schubert's he had heard 
 so often. He listened in silence until it was ended, 
 a sudden swift admiration for her skill throbbing 
 in his heart for the art that had existed sleep- 
 ing in all its perfection through the dark night 
 of the Montreal years. The Montreal years had 
 wrought a curious change, he had often thought. 
 They had come and gone and left the delicate oval 
 of her face almost untouched by any line of time, 
 but wherever the divine ego of her had been while 
 her body and her brain had been in the tender 
 keeping of the Sisters, it had grown to look with 
 calmness on the vicissitudes of life, and to weigh 
 events with an exact proportion as to their relative 
 value with a skill that sometimes put him to shame. 
 To-night the long years rolled back and she seemed 
 to him to be once more the girl he had first seen 
 when, as a midshipman in the flush of youth and 
 the independence of a week's leave, he had climbed 
 the steep ascent to a chateau in an island in the 
 Mediterranean. With the spirit of exploration 
 
 269
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 strong upon him, he had pushed through the wicket 
 gate and come on her standing alone in the sun- 
 shine of the chateau garden. . . . She wore to- 
 night a dress of azure and of gold, and he remem- 
 bered suddenly they were the colors she had worn 
 then the colors on the flag that stretched itself 
 exultingly to the breeze from the turret of the 
 chateau beyond. Something of the beauty, al- 
 though remotely removed from the thrill of ex- 
 quisite pleasure the scene had given him then, came 
 back to him to-night. ... It had been this piece 
 of Schubert's, too, that he had first heard her play. 
 Then something in the texture of the flushed cheek, 
 something in the delicate tracery of the hands lying 
 inert upon the ivory keys, dissipated the dreams, 
 and Lorimer's warning came back. 
 
 " Cecile," he said, and something in his voice 
 aroused her from the revery into which she had 
 fallen, " I am serious when I say I want you to 
 consider the Savannah trip. Lorimer says the 
 dampness of a New England winter is not desir- 
 able and will only increase the bronchial cough. I 
 don't want to alarm you, for there is really no 
 cause for alarm, but " he broke off suddenly, 
 conscious that Cecile was sitting very straight upon 
 the stool, and that all the listlessness had vanished. 
 
 " But what mon cher? " 
 
 " Just this, Cecile," said Stone, more gently than 
 he knew, " Lorimer says there is no serious trouble 
 yet there may never be. He says there never 
 will be, in all likelihood, if you care for yourself 
 
 270
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 avoid dampness and exposure and live much in the 
 sunshine. This is one reason that I want you to 
 take the Savannah trip." 
 
 For a moment she did not answer. A strange 
 shadow crept around her mouth and lay upon her 
 face. 
 
 " You are very careful of me, Hector," she said 
 at last. It was the nearest to a reproach she had 
 uttered since her return from Montreal. 
 
 He said nothing. 
 
 " Must it be Savannah ? " she asked after a little. 
 " Would no other place suit you or Doctor Lori- 
 mer?" 
 
 " Ah, now you are going to yield and care for 
 yourself. Is there any other place you would 
 rather go to Palm Beach, perhaps, or Asheville, 
 in the Carolina mountains?" 
 
 " I do not know very much about your health 
 resorts in America." 
 
 " Well, think it over and decide as soon as you 
 can. I am sorry you have not decided before, so 
 that I could make the arrangements for you 
 perhaps take you there and see you in good hands. 
 Lorimer will advise you and Turner will see to 
 your tickets and all such arrangements. He is a 
 capable young fellow. I will speak to him about 
 it in the morning before I leave." 
 
 She opened her lips to say something, then 
 closed them again. After a while she commenced 
 to play a bit of Brahms. Again he listened to her 
 in silence, and again he wondered at the art in her 
 
 271
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 frail body. Something in the austere splendor of 
 the piece grated against his mood to-night. There 
 was little in the music now to recall Schubert and 
 the girl he had first seen at the chateau in sun- 
 kissed France. He longed for the sound and mel- 
 ody, the tender droop of her head, the yielding of 
 her hand he wanted to see her as she had been 
 half an hour before. He had grown used to her 
 swift changing and varying moods, but to-night 
 he felt he could not bear the change. Almosti 
 harshly he laid his hand on her shoulder. 
 
 " Play me Schubert again, Cecile." 
 
 Obediently and without question she stopped in 
 the middle of a splendid bar and began the selec- 
 tion he wanted. As she played he became quieted 
 and something like peace came over him again. 
 
 " Next year," he said, " the work will be less 
 pressing. Would you like to take a trip to 
 France ? " 
 
 She played softly now; as low as her voice was 
 he heard it distinctly above the tender music. 
 
 " Some day I shall go back to France." 
 
 She had left him out in her thoughts and her 
 reckonings, whether intentionally or not he could 
 not say. The charm of the music lingered with 
 him, for she was playing Schubert as she had never 
 played before. 
 
 Once she played the piece. Then she began it 
 over again. Sweet, appealing, tender, accepting 
 much, renouncing much ; the music called him and 
 held him in its spell. Once more she played it 
 
 272
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 this time it was but an echo so low, so soft, the 
 notes fell upon the air. ... By and by she rose 
 and closed the piano lid, a strange smile upon her 
 face. 
 
 " Thank you," he said gently, " I shall remember 
 Schubert when I am on my trip. No one quite 
 interprets him as you do, I think. When I come 
 home you will play for me again ? " 
 
 " Perhaps," she said evasively, " unless I have 
 gone south." 
 
 After she had gone to her room she stood by 
 the window looking out upon the frozen garden. 
 A winter wind, fierce and strong, blew past the 
 window and rattled the sash and swayed the bare 
 branches of the trees. She could see their restless 
 movements by the light of a pale waxing moon. 
 By and by she looked down curiously at her 
 thin tapering fingers those skilful fingers that 
 wrought such beauty from the embroidery frame, 
 such magic from the instrument below. 
 
 " Poor hands," she said softly to herself, " poor 
 hands, that charm but cannot hold." 
 
 273
 
 VIII. 
 
 STONE had been gone almost a month. The 
 northwestern trip had expanded in its length 
 and breadth and scope. There was much 
 ground ready for the harvest among the wide roll- 
 ing prairies of that upper land, and Stone was too 
 earnest and capable a worker to leave unsowed any 
 district that might bear fruit. In Detroit he was 
 detained a week, and it was while there that de- 
 layed mail reached him. There was a short note 
 from Turner enclosing matters for his personal 
 consideration, another from his lawyer in regard 
 to some fruit farms in the far west, a letter from 
 Cecile, and a foreign one from France which he 
 recognized as from Pierre Lamore. It was stained 
 and travel worn and bore many marks of forward- 
 ing by post. He attended to the business corre- 
 spondence first and then, for some reason he never 
 could explain, he rang for Farnum, turned the 
 necessary work over to him and left orders that 
 he should not be disturbed. When he had assured 
 himself that he was, for a time at least, quite safe 
 from intrusion, he drew up a chair to the open fire 
 and sat down, the last two letters in his hand. For 
 a while he stared into the high leaping flames in 
 silence. There were few moods in his life into 
 
 274
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 which the beauty and the solace of an open fire 
 could not creep. It had always stood to him as a 
 symbol of pure living, a test of the Eternal that 
 tries all things in its consuming heat, separating the 
 gold from the dross. 
 
 For a while he dreamed and saw strange pic- 
 tures in the flames. Once he thought of Blair Mar- 
 tin and wondered where she was. How strange 
 were the circumstances of life that took her so far 
 from him that sometimes gave her back to him 
 so near. In his life, since that parting at the pier, 
 there had come strange moments of calmness and 
 of something akin to consolation. Just what it 
 was he did not know an intangible sense of her 
 presence, real yet elusive. The moments came un- 
 bidden because of self-control. 
 
 After a while he left off looking at the flames 
 and turned to the two letters in his hand. How 
 odd it was the same mail had brought them to him 
 together, and he vaguely felt that in some way 
 they were connected with each other and that at 
 last after all the months he was to hear some word 
 of Blair Martin. His heart beat faster at the 
 thought. 
 
 He opened Pierre Lamore's letter first and read 
 it through, his hands trembling as they turned the 
 finely written pages. 
 
 The letter told of Blair Martin's arrival at the 
 
 Island where she was staying, how she seemed 
 
 and acted; of her friendship with the boy Anthony 
 
 -all the details that Stone had hungered long 
 
 2 75
 
 m THE SANCTUARY a* 
 
 to hear. There was no allusion made to Cecile 
 except that he remembered her in his prayers and 
 commended her to God and the care of the pitying 
 Sisters. It was evident that the joint letters that 
 he and Cecile had written him from Canada and 
 later from the suburban home had never reached 
 him, although he mentioned and sent thanks for 
 the liberal cheque that Stone had forwarded in both 
 their names at Christmas. He added it would go 
 a long way toward helping in the repairs so neces- 
 sary to the village church. 
 
 After he had finished it, Stone sat with it a long 
 while in his hand. It was like Lamore to write so 
 fully Lamore who so instinctively always said 
 the right thing in the right place. He had almost 
 forgotten the other letter, when, on glancing down 
 to the floor, he saw it lying at his feet. He stooped 
 and picked it up hastily and opened it. 
 
 He read it through without a tremor to reveal 
 the consternation that suddenly took possession of 
 him. Once he read it twice thrice and it 
 was as though the words written in Cecile's small 
 delicate handwriting fascinated him and he could 
 not stop. 
 
 " MON CHER : " it ran, " When you get this 
 I shall have started on the southern trip you and 
 that old goose, Lorimer, seemed to think necessary. 
 After all, it is a good excuse for what I am about 
 to do without it I could not have gone, for as 
 intolerable as the last few weeks have been I could 
 
 276
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 have done nothing that would have reflected on 
 you. Lorimer's insistence on the trip has made 
 the matter right before your world. Mon cher, 
 I have taken you at your word, I have chosen 
 where I will go to hunt out sunshine and health 
 for myself. Did it ever occur to you how little 
 America held for me now ; or how long, since 
 the days at St. Anne de Beaupre, I have hungered 
 for my Island and my people? If you have ever 
 guessed at it, if it ever occurred to you the last 
 night you were at home and you spoke of taking 
 me back to France next year, you will know why 
 I have decided as I have. Hector, mon ami, I 
 cannot wait for next year nor for your work to 
 be less heavy, as you think it will. I know you 
 and your work (perhaps your heart) better than 
 you have ever dreamed, although once long ago I 
 wronged you so. Your work will never grow less 
 heavy, for it is world-wide in its scope, and in 
 years to come it will take you from your own land, 
 but now your land is calling for your work as my 
 land is calling for my heart. Your work is here 
 next year your work will be here and there 
 will be no time for pleasuring in France. Once 
 long ago the good Father on the Island told me 
 men were made for their places in this world that 
 still some men were born with the mark of a divine 
 calling on them. I have thought as I watched you 
 speaking to the public such a mark rested on your 
 life; that in truth, in the name of the Great Mas- 
 ter, you belonged to that brotherhood who by and 
 
 277
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 by would become the saviors of the world. What 
 place have I in that world? How truly I know 
 that I have none! And all your denials could not 
 shake me from that conviction. Just why our 
 lives touched, I do not know and I do not attempt 
 to explain, unless it was that both needed the ex- 
 perience. 
 
 " I am going south, Hector, south, across the 
 sea to France back to Father Lamore and my 
 people back to the Island and the chateau where 
 for so long the Grandcceurs have reigned in lonely, 
 lovely state back to the Memorial Chapel on 
 the heights. I ask you not to come for me. Let 
 me from the ruin of my life at least go unhampered 
 on my search for peace. There is no comfort that 
 you can give me now that the Island cannot 
 give me more. I desire only your consideration 
 not your pity. 
 
 " Adieu, the good Father will write you from 
 time to time. To the world my health keeps 
 me abroad in the south of France. To you 
 who once were my world, whose presence was its 
 horizon and for whom I left my land, my titles, 
 my people and my Church, the knowledge that 
 our paths have crossed only to separate again, will 
 be enough. I will think of you unhampered. You 
 will think of me perhaps sometimes as one 
 who could no longer live beneath your roof and 
 starve on empty husks of love. 
 
 " Nay, I do not blame you. There is no blame 
 for which you are responsible. Had I, in the old 
 
 278
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 days, followed truth as heroically as you have, I 
 had not wronged you so. 
 
 " Adieu adieu, 
 
 " CECILE." 
 
 At first only the fact that she had gone had 
 left him struck upon his consciousness and he 
 wondered vaguely how she had ever made the trip 
 alone she who in the old days was so dependent 
 on others' help. There was no mention of Hor- 
 tense. Hortense had not gone, he knew, remem- 
 bering that in the spring Hortense was to be mar- 
 ried. She might have gotten another maid, but 
 it was doubtful ; his reason and his instinct told 
 him just how doubtful, remembering Cecile's dis- 
 like of new faces and new scenes. 
 
 Then as another thought struck him and beat 
 insistent on his brain, he rose from his chair, his 
 hands working in a strange restless fashion, for- 
 eign to him. She was going to the Island of the 
 Angels she was at the Island now perhaps! 
 just landed, but at the Island where Blair Martin 
 was. The Island was too small to avoid the pos- 
 sibility of a meeting. What was there that human 
 skill could do how save Cecile, how save Blair 
 Martin, from what must be only added pain? He 
 walked the length of the room with rapid steps 
 and a half dozen plans came to him, all of which 
 he dismissed as impracticable. One thought he 
 clung to, one hope he held, one thing he remem- 
 bered for his relief. Neither had heard the name
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 of the other from him both had been too large 
 in nature to descend to idle curiosity that would 
 have in the old days conveyed nothing to them. 
 He clung to the remembrance desperately. Per- 
 haps some Fate, who had played with them all so 
 strange a game, might make another move per- 
 haps Blair Martin, tiring of the Island, would go 
 away. If there was but some one ah, he stopped 
 suddenly in his walk and went over to his desk. 
 There was some one after all into whose strong 
 hands the tangled threads might be laid with some 
 hope of their unraveling. He would write to 
 Pierre Lamore. 
 
 He wrote long and feverishly and the letter was 
 unlike any he had ever penned. Up to now he had 
 been sufficient to himself, had fought his battles 
 alone and never asked for quarter. He never 
 stopped to think how strange it was that he, Hec- 
 tor Stone, should be unburdening his heart, his 
 brain, to a Catholic priest in France. He hid noth- 
 ing that might throw some light on the affair 
 he did not spare or excuse himself. Even now 
 the truth as he saw it led him and guided the pen 
 that moved so rapidly over sheet after sheet. That 
 the knowledge of the letter would be sacred he 
 never questioned. That the letter itself would be 
 burned on reading he never doubted. 
 
 He signed, directed and sealed it, then sent for 
 Wilson and bade him post it at once. After that 
 he relocked the door, and shaking as though with 
 ague, he sat down again in the big chair by the 
 
 280
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 fire and stretched his hands to the still cheerful 
 blaze. 
 
 By and by the warmth brought him a sense of 
 physical comfort and his nerves relaxed. He 
 stared into the flames and strange pictures were 
 figured there. As he watched a sense of peace 
 crept over him a strange sense of Blair's pres- 
 ence he had not known in days. Too unstrung 
 to resist further, he gave himself up to it, not ques- 
 tioning the phenomena. By and by all sense of 
 the present vanished, all weaknesses and yearn- 
 ings and desires fell from him like a cloak, and 
 it seemed to him that for an instant he saw himself 
 stripped of all vehicles of flesh, the perfect and 
 perfected Ego of the Eternal plan. It was then 
 he felt her nearest, it was then to hold the vision 
 longer that he closed his eyes, to unclose them with 
 a start, deep music pulsing in his brain. But it 
 was not Schubert, but Gounod that he heard. 
 
 The impression faded but the remembrance of 
 it lingered in his brain and filled him with a peace 
 unspeakable. Again he closed his eyes and slept. 
 
 END OF BOOK THREE. 
 
 28l
 
 BOOK FOUR 
 THE SANCTUARY
 
 I. 
 
 ALL through the walk that led him home; 
 all through the afternoon, Lamore watched 
 the gathering clouds with anxious eyes. 
 He recalled an afternoon years ago when the sky 
 had looked so, and he remembered the night of 
 wild storm that followed. It was the night when 
 the tortured spirit of Clarisse had been liberated 
 from the bonds of flesh, and the child Cecile, 
 scarcely more than an infant in years, had been left 
 an orphan. 
 
 He could not settle himself to work over parish 
 matters that needed his attention, nor could he 
 concentrate his thoughts on the sermon for the 
 coming Sunday. He moved restlessly about the 
 small bare room of the humble rectory, unadorned 
 except by books and a fine old picture of the Naza- 
 rene the room dignified by the name of study 
 -finally pausing at the window. Here he lin- 
 gered, looking out with troubled eyes, across the 
 stretch of waters that lay between the Island and 
 Marseilles. As he looked far off toward Mar- 
 seilles the blackness of the clouds increased and he 
 knew that a storm had descended on the sea. 
 
 Once his lips moved in prayer. How often in 
 the past he had stood on the Island and looked 
 
 285
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 seaward in a storm. How often his prayer had 
 descended in the depths with drowning men, 
 wrecked on that treacherous bit before the landing 
 at Grenette! 
 
 Suddenly he was conscious that the boy An- 
 thony was standing in the doorway and regarding 
 him with grave eyes. It was the boy Anthony 
 alone of all the people in the Island that had free 
 access to Lamore's study. 
 
 Lamore turned with a smile, not wishing to 
 frighten the boy. 
 
 " What is it, Anthony, my child ? " 
 
 The boy came over to him and took his hand 
 and looked up at him appealingly. 
 
 " I saw you come in. I knew that you were 
 troubled. Is it for the ships at sea?" 
 
 " Are you a little wizard, Anthony? " 
 
 The boy smiled faintly as he shook his head. 
 
 " No, no, mon pere, yet 
 
 "Yet what, Anthony?" 
 
 " Never have I seen the sky look as it does now 
 never has the Island, before night, been so 
 dark." 
 
 Lamore sighed as he stroked the boy's hair. 
 
 " Try not to watch the sky and earth, Anthony. 
 Run and see if the chickens are all housed and the 
 cow in from pasture, and good Nanette quite safe." 
 
 After he had gone swiftly and obediently La- 
 more glanced again toward the sea. The great 
 storm cloud was approaching and its fury would 
 soon be on them. A little later, premature dark- 
 
 286
 
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 ness swept over the Island and hid from him famil- 
 iar things. Then it was he went over to a cup- 
 board and took from it strong rubber boots which 
 he sometimes used when the spring rains made the 
 walking to the distant parts of the Island difficult, 
 and in haste he put them on. He took also a big 
 lantern, and from its wooden peg, an old cloak that 
 in bad weather had sheltered him for years. This 
 he threw around his shoulders and opened the door 
 to the sanded kitchen, the lantern in his hand. 
 There he met Marie. On catching sight of him 
 she gave a sharp exclamation of dismay. 
 
 "And who is dying now?" she asked sharply, 
 " and wants you on such a night when the flood 
 is going to descend on us again?" 
 
 He reproved her with a look that was all kind- 
 ness kindness and thanks for her thought of him 
 but his voice rang out in the silence of the little 
 kitchen with a note the peasants in extremities 
 sometimes heard. 
 
 " No one has sent for me, Marie. Yet there 
 may be some who need me in the storm some 
 child perhaps caught on the inlet and too frightened 
 to get home some stray animal too weak to fight 
 against the wind alone." 
 
 She made no further movement to stay him, 
 but she followed him to the door that even La- 
 more's strength found difficult to open against the 
 increasing force of the wind. She watched him 
 until the blackness enveloped him and he was lost 
 to view, unmindful of the wind that blew upon her 
 
 287
 
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 and wrapped her peasant's dress around her like 
 a winding- sheet. From the dark, the boy Anthony 
 emerged, lantern in hand, returning from the care 
 of the dumb things that served them, and in silence 
 he hung the lantern on a big nail by the cottage 
 door. 
 
 Together they went inside, Anthony to sit by 
 a great fire of logs and watch that it did not go out, 
 and to see that some gruel was kept warm upon 
 the crane; Marie, her usually talkative tongue 
 silenced, to creep up the narrow winding stairs to 
 her small room, there to light her blessed candle 
 and before a bisque image of the Virgin, pray for 
 Lamore's safe return. 
 
 288
 
 II. 
 
 ONCE out beyond the gate of the Rectory, 
 Lamore paused, the big lantern in his hand. 
 He had no definite point he knew not 
 where he was needed, if indeed he were needed at 
 all and for a moment he wondered why he had 
 come. The next, the sea seemed calling him with 
 an insistency not to be denied. He followed the 
 instinct now as he had followed it all his life. 
 
 " Can it be Fauchet's boat that Fauchet needs 
 me and has been caught at sea?" he thought, as 
 he slowly made his way down a rough cut across 
 an unfarmed pasture, to the landing. One less 
 sure-footed than himself, one less physically strong, 
 would have found the short cut an impassable way. 
 It lay exposed to all the winds of heaven and of- 
 fered neither tree nor shepherd's hut by way of 
 shelter. Here all the force of the storm, now break- 
 ing, met and beat upon him. Sometimes it seemed 
 he made scarcely any headway at all; sometimes 
 he stood still for breath, his ear keenly alert for 
 any sound. Once the deep tolling- of the Chapel bell 
 reached him and he knew that Giovanni faith- 
 ful was at his task. 
 
 " Only God knows," he thought, " how many 
 souls at sea St. Michael's bell has saved." 
 
 289
 
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 And he thought suddenly of the wreck that had 
 occurred on the inlet reefs years ago; how the 
 next morning had revealed the beach-strewn bod- 
 ies, the arms of an older Fauchet still clasping the 
 body of the Count; how it had been he, Lamore 
 
 who bore the burden of his people's woes 
 who an hour later had climbed to the chateau and 
 told the wife the mother of Cecile. For cen- 
 turies the curse of violent death or madness had 
 taken the toll from the chateau of the Grandcoeurs, 
 and even Clarisse a distant cousin of the 
 drowned Count had felt its weight, when three 
 years later she had died insane. Just why he was 
 thinking of these things and of Cecile to-night, 
 he could not have told, unless it was the remem- 
 brance of two long delayed letters that had reached 
 him a week ago letters from Cecile and Stone 
 
 that had borne the almost unbelievable intel- 
 ligence that they were together that she had 
 left Montreal. He had offered a Mass of thanks- 
 giving at St. Michael's before writing them to- 
 gether. Perhaps the curse was to lift at last and 
 Cecile was to be the instrument. Then the remem- 
 brance of Clarisse came back, more vivid than it 
 had in years. . . . He recalled again the old legend 
 of the house the story of the sin once committed 
 against innocence and human rights, followed by 
 the sin of usurping power, and long years of an 
 enemy incarcerated in a dungeon; later the sin of 
 murder when fear and remorse had become prey- 
 ing demons of the brain. And then the dying 
 
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 curse had been laid on the Count da Grandcoeur 
 and his sons and upon his line, until some soul 
 among them should find the way of the Great Re- 
 nunciation and through a child redeem the house, 
 when the last of the line should die in peace. The 
 Count had gone to the Crusades in expiation, but 
 one by one his sons had died of lingering madness 
 or by violent death, until he himself was slain 
 under the banner of the great Louis, leaving his 
 titles and his lands to one surviving child a girl 
 of ten. Then it was that the Island and the great 
 estates in France had become a female fief. Few 
 males were born after that to the line direct or 
 otherwise of the Grandcceurs. Always one of 
 the eldest males had become a priest and later per- 
 haps a Cardinal; always one of the women in a 
 generation had entered a convent and taken the 
 veil, hoping to lift the shadow from the line. But 
 the shadow hung there, and years of penance and 
 of prayer had availed the heirs of the house noth- 
 ing. Even the little Count, whose body lay in the 
 crypt of the Memorial Chapel, had fallen from the 
 cliff and died. The curse of madness had not 
 spared the last remaining one Cecile until 
 now. . . . 
 
 He shook the memory of the story from him 
 that long, long tale of bloodshed and of human woe 
 and wrapped his great cloak more closely around 
 him, the better to fight the strength and violence 
 of the rain and wind. He skirted the inlet, with 
 its remembrances of horror, and came at last upon 
 
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 the landing. Here he swung his lantern out to 
 sea. The inky, white-capped, tossing waters gave 
 no sign of any living thing, and he drew a deep 
 breath of relief. For a moment he stood hesi- 
 tating. He had met nothing on his way, no living 
 soul, no dumb thing, that had needed him or his 
 help. He thought with sudden weariness of the 
 long struggle back before he could reach the light 
 and warmth of the Rectory and give himself up 
 to the ministrations of Marie and the boy. . . . 
 Suddenly he raised his head and listened, every 
 nerve alert. Above the noise of the breaking surf 
 near the inlet not far away, above the tolling of 
 St. Michael's bell, there reached him the slow, 
 steady pulse of an engine the shrill whistle of 
 a tug. 
 
 " Fauchet's boat ! " he said aloud. 
 
 He waited through what seemed interminable 
 hours, every little while swinging his big lantern 
 seaward. Slowly the pulsing sound came nearer; 
 once it receded for a moment, as though the pilot 
 had lost his bearings. Then it was, unheeding the 
 danger that lay from the force of the wind that 
 beat against the swaying pier, Lamore went to its 
 edge and swung his lantern toward the sound. 
 
 " Courage," he shouted, " you are almost 
 home ! " The wind took his voice, deep, strong, 
 and sonorous, and carried it out to sea, but some- 
 thing in the will of the man on the wharf shot 
 with the words toward the laboring craft. The 
 words themselves went wild and were lost in the 
 
 292
 
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 noises of the night, but the steady will, like the 
 unswerving pressure on a lever, never lessened 
 until Fauchet's boat came into sight and the land- 
 ing had been made. 
 
 A gangway was out of the question. The boat 
 surged heavily against the side of the pier as though 
 realizing it was in its death-throes. For a moment, 
 by the light of the great lantern, Lamore saw Fau- 
 chet poised on the side of the tug, a burden in his 
 arms. Once, twice, the tug beat against the sides, 
 the space slowly widening between Fauchet and 
 the pier, while Fauchet watched in the darkness 
 for his chance to leap. The burden stirred in his 
 arms. Again the lantern fell on them, and this 
 time the light streamed out and made a pathway of 
 safety for Fauchet. 
 
 " Leap ! " It was the voice of Pierre Lamore 
 ringing out above the storm, above the beating of 
 the boat's prow against the pier. " Leap ! And 
 may the Master hear ! " 
 
 As though at the call of the bugle ringing out 
 for battle, Fauchet heard and instinctively obeyed. 
 Across the widening space, unmindful of the dark 
 death beneath, his eyes fixed upon the light shining 
 on the pier, Fauchet cleaved the distance and half 
 fell at Lamore's feet, his unconscious burden in 
 his arms. The little tug slowly settled in the sea. 
 
 Lamore helped him to rise. 
 
 " A woman, Fauchet ? " he asked wonderingly. 
 
 Fauchet stood before him. His burden stirred 
 again. By the light of the lantern Lamore could 
 
 293
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 see his face, white and bloodless, his wet and matted 
 hair. 
 
 " It is our lady, Father," he said. " Our lady 
 has come home." 
 
 294
 
 III. 
 
 FOR a fortnight, in an upper chamber in the 
 chateau that looked toward St. Michael's 
 and the sea, Cecile lay, too prostrated from 
 exposure, danger and fatigue, to think or care of 
 much that went on around. She never clearly 
 remembered the events of that night of the storm 
 the wreck of Fauchet's boat the drive up to 
 the chateau and Lamore and Fauchet and the 
 people who loved her with an affection that had 
 descended through generations of the peasants of 
 her Island, never told. It was Lamore's old chaise 
 drawn by old Nanette, led by the Father himself 
 and Gabrille, the younger brother of Frangois Fau- 
 chet, that had climbed that long, wind-swept, wind- 
 ing road. Inside the chaise Marie had held her in 
 her arms, close against her rough peasant's dress and 
 wildly beating heart. It had been midnight when 
 Angelo, the keeper of the chateau, had been aroused 
 from his sleep by the knocking of the Father at 
 the door and had lent his aid to the almost ex- 
 hausted priest and peasant, and later fetched the 
 chateau physician from his cottage near the cliff. 
 The chateau, that had for so long remained in 
 nightly darkness except for the corner windows, 
 where for centuries had burned lights for the guid-
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 ance of stray wayfarers in need, became illumi- 
 nated in the wing facing the Chapel and the sea. 
 The rest of the great pile of stone, facing the vil- 
 lage and the valleys, remained as it had been for 
 so long, in darkness. 
 
 There through the long night her people had 
 worked over her unconscious form, pouring into 
 the labor the love and the devotion and the fire of 
 loyalty that through long years of absence Lamore 
 had kept bright. Marie remained at the chateau 
 until a housekeeper known and trusted by Lamore 
 could be summoned from Marseilles. In lieu of 
 her mother, now dead, who had served the ladies 
 of the castle for so long, Marie took her place as 
 nurse, by right. Now and then, when her lady was 
 resting or asleep, Marie would return to the Rec- 
 tory to see how things fared with the good Father 
 and the boy Anthony and the peasant girl the 
 former had gotten in to help during Marie's ab- 
 sence. To Marie's eyes all was going as well at 
 the Rectory as could be expected in her absence, 
 and she never noticed the strange new look in the 
 boy Anthony's eyes, nor guessed of his daily prayer 
 before her bisque figure of Alary, that soon he 
 might be summoned or sent to climb the chateau 
 hill and see the lady that had come back to them 
 through danger in that night when he had fallen 
 asleep before the fire and the crane, while waiting 
 for the Father. 
 
 The days followed days, and still he waited for 
 the summons, and for the first time in his life he 
 
 296
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 did not confide in Lamore. He used to listen 
 eagerly to the few words dropped by the priest on 
 his return from his daily visit to the chateau, but 
 for the most part Lamore seemed anxious and pre- 
 occupied, He avoided meetings with Blair Martin 
 or parochial visits of any kind, and answered all 
 inquiries as to the condition of the Island's lady 
 in a kind, if brief and reserved way. 
 
 Like the boy Anthony, Blair Martin would day 
 by day stand by her window in the morning and 
 watch the first sunlight fall upon the flag; would, 
 from the gate of Toinette's cottage or from the 
 rocks and fields, see the last glimmer of the spring 
 sunshine touch it before it faded in the west behind 
 St. Michael's and the sea. That great waving 
 thing of silk with its gold cross on its azure field 
 became to her almost a living thing. She watched 
 it in ' the morning breeze stretching its full length, 
 as though in willing submission to a force stronger 
 than itself: she knew how, in the midday heat, 
 when St. Michael's great bell tolled the Angelus, 
 and all the work of the Island ceased for prayer, 
 the silk folds of it hung limp and quiet as though 
 from its height it paused in its restlessness to hear 
 the Ave Maria said. The mystery of its long years 
 of rest, its sudden raising in the night of storm, 
 the quiet persistency of its presence there now, 
 through rain and sunshine, became a vital interest 
 in her life. Of Lamore she saw little. Indeed 
 every one in the Island seemed suddenly aroused 
 from their quiet life among the flocks and vine- 
 
 297
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 yards, and gathered into low-voiced groups, dis- 
 cussing the matter of the return of the lady of the 
 Island, stopping suddenly when she drew near, with 
 their first show of apparent inhospitality, as though 
 in this one thing she was separate and apart from 
 them, and in this could not share their lives. In 
 these, two weeks it was the boy Anthony that filled 
 her most lonely hours, his eyes lighting with 
 a strange fire as they looked toward the chateau 
 on the heights topped by the long silk flag that 
 kept the new and living interest at a fever heat. 
 Anthony spoke little in these days, but there grew 
 up between them a freer understanding that gave 
 her new interest in the child. For some reason, 
 with a restraint foreign to the ways of boyhood, 
 he sought in no way other than in listening to the 
 Father's or the peasants' talk, to draw himself into 
 a nearer relationship with the lady of the chateau. 
 He did not even push through the wicket gate and 
 attempt to see her, on a pretended visit to his old 
 grandfather. In his slender height of childhood, 
 with a face of one of Botticelli's choristers, in his 
 simple peasant blouse, it seemed as though he 
 awaited the pleasure of his lady, as in the old days 
 one of the Counts de Grandcoeur had awaited a 
 summons to court. 
 
 So they waited waited both alike, unconscious 
 that the thing they waited for was so soon to come.
 
 IV. 
 
 AT the end of the two weeks, with the aid of 
 Marie, Cecile got up from the couch by the 
 window where she had been moved fr.om her 
 bed and went out to the chateau garden. For a 
 while, seated on an upper step of the terrace in 
 the warm sunshine, she talked to Giovanni of his 
 boyhood's home in Florence, of the life and changes 
 on the Island, of the wonder of his work here among 
 the flowers. Then, when the old man had left her 
 for his midday meal, she got up and began slowly 
 to wander through the familiar paths. Except for 
 greater tree growth, more luxurious vegetation and 
 flowers, the place was quite unchanged from what 
 she remembered it as a child and later as a girl. 
 The chateau garden ! It was here that she had come 
 and wept, comforted by Giovanni, on her eve of de- 
 parture for the convent in Lyons she had been 
 so little then and so lonely it was here she had 
 come that spring morning as a young girl in her 
 Communion veil and looked upon the flowers, gath- 
 ering the fairest for the Virgin's altar, before she 
 fed upon the Mystery Bread ; it was here, down by 
 the wicket gate, she had stood and looked at the 
 young stranger emerging from the woods first 
 met his eyes and taken of the Sacrament of Love; 
 and it was here that later, stained with the wrong of 
 
 299
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 deceit, she had come back to await the coming of the 
 child ; it was here she had first brought him to look 
 upon his future lands; it was here she had stood 
 five years later with Lamore, beside an open grave, 
 and wept her woman's tears. . . . There was no lit- 
 tle mound in the garden now to greet her eyes, only 
 warmth and brightness of the sunshine and the 
 sweet odor of the flowers. Instinctively she looked 
 toward St. Michael's, where in the crypt under the 
 high altar they had, in her absence, placed the body 
 of the little Count. . . . Some day soon, she would 
 go there and kneel beside it see the memorial win- 
 dow say a prayer at the high altar some day 
 when she was stronger and the weather had grown 
 warmer and her cough better. She did not doubt 
 that her cough would get better was she not home 
 again had not the great Marseilles physician de- 
 clared that the Island days and nights were not to be 
 excelled in all the south of France? The journey 
 home, the long, lonely, seasick days across the At- 
 lantic, the weary trip from Marseilles, later the ter- 
 rible one in Fauchet's boat, when the storm had 
 overshadowed them and she had urged, nay, com- 
 manded, Fauchet to push on, declaring that they 
 would out-race the storm, until retreat was impos- 
 sible, all all had not been good for her nor helped 
 her cough, but now she was at home. It would be 
 well. 
 
 For a while she stood dreaming near the wicket 
 gate. After all it was through the wicket gate that 
 Love had first come to her, and to her, as to all 
 
 300
 
 *B THE SANCTUARY fl* 
 
 women, no time, no distance, no sin or heartache, 
 could wipe out the vividness of that remembrance 
 for her blot it from her life. 
 
 The sense of some one's near presence aroused her 
 from her dream. She looked up suddenly and saw 
 a woman standing by the wicket gate. For a mo- 
 ment, across the sun-kissed lawn, they looked in 
 silence at one another and, in spite of the warmth 
 of the day that was still young, Cecile shivered as 
 though cold and drew her light wrap closer. It 
 was a strange working of inheritance and a contra- 
 diction to the world's preconceived idea of the fitness 
 of it, that made the woman of ancient lineage and 
 of title, trained in the formalities of an older civil- 
 ization, for a moment forget the usages of society 
 and look in open wonder on this other stranger 
 whom Fate had led up to the wicket gate. It was 
 the younger woman, born in a land where social dif- 
 ferences mean less, titles vastly more, the daughter 
 of Andrew Martin, who on her father's side at least 
 could claim little of what Europe knew as gentle 
 blood, who -bore herself with a composure only 
 equaled by the charm with which she apologized 
 for her intrusion. 
 
 " I fear I startled you," she said, " I did not 
 dream that I should find you here. Down in the 
 valley we think of you still as ill quite ill in bed. 
 I climbed the cliff this morning to sit upon St. 
 Michael's steps and listen while Father Lamore 
 practised on the great organ as I often do. I 
 returned by way of the road, and the temptation to 
 
 301
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 step aside and look once more on the chateau garden 
 was too strong. I saw Madame long before she knew 
 that I was at the gate, and was trying to slip away 
 unseen. I hope Madame the Comtesse is quite well 
 again ? " 
 
 She had spoken in a French marked for its purity, 
 yet which could not quite conceal her foreign birth. 
 Her speech had been a long one, evidently to give 
 the older woman time to recover from the sudden- 
 ness of the meeting, and now when Cecile answered, 
 it was with the manner and graciousness that was 
 one of her chief characteristics, and, as though to 
 make her guest feel at home, she talked pretty 
 broken English. 
 
 " Quite well again, thank you, except for a little 
 cough which is nothing. Mademoiselle " she had 
 hesitated for an almost imperceptible instant, and 
 with a smile looked at the other woman's left hand, 
 where only one ring a sapphire shone, " Made- 
 moiselle is welcome to our Island and our garden. 
 Will not Mademoiselle enter?" 
 
 Blair Martin pushed open the little wicket gate 
 for the second time. The spell of the place was on 
 her again the spell of this other woman's superb 
 yet gentle graciousness. She crossed the bit of lawn 
 that lay between them, her slow movements giving 
 no hint of the excitement the incident had wrought. 
 Cecile watched her, her grace and refinement and 
 lack of visible embarrassment appealed to her deli- 
 cate sense of the fitness of things. 
 
 " My name is Miss Martin Blair Martin," this 
 
 302
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 stranger was saying with a smile, " and I have been 
 living for weeks on your beautiful Island. I board 
 at the cottage of Toinette Dorset." 
 
 The Comtesse of the Island inclined her head. 
 She wondered where the stranger, who was evi- 
 dently an American, had heard of the Island and 
 its beauty. Perhaps like that other stranger of 
 years back she might be a traveler who had been 
 stopping at Marseilles and by chance had come to 
 them. Something of the feudal obligations held 
 for centuries by the Grandcoeurs stirred in her. 
 Politeness forbade seeming curiosity. The fact that 
 chance or fate had sent her here made her welcome 
 to the Island and what it had to give. 
 
 " You are welcome," she said again as she looked 
 into Blair Martin's eyes. 
 
 Something in the simple dignity of the speech 
 and the obligations that rank and possessions had 
 imposed on this slender dark-eyed chatelaine of the 
 Island, struck Blair Martin as a new experience in 
 life, strange as well as new. She hastened to offer 
 something more of an introduction of herself. 
 
 " A friend of your good priest, Father Lamore, 
 recommended me to his care. I was traveling 
 through Europe with my maid when Father La- 
 more's letter of invitation came, offering me the 
 Island's hospitality in your name." 
 
 " So ! Mademoiselle is doubly welcome. Father 
 Lamore's word carries as much weight on the Island 
 as my own probably more " here Cecile broke 
 off and smiled a little " since I also depend on 
 
 303
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 what the Father says. Our priest is as widely 
 known throughout Europe, Mademoiselle, as he is 
 widely loved." 
 
 " I do not doubt it," said Blair Martin, holding 
 out her hand. 
 
 The French woman took it and let her eyes rest 
 on it a moment, and in that moment the two women 
 came in closer contact. With a movement that was 
 as sudden as it was unexpected the French woman 
 dropped the hand and stooped down and began to 
 gather some flowers. She was not conscious at first 
 just what the flowers were, but she continued to 
 pick them mechanically. By the time she had a 
 handful, she had quite recovered herself and rose, 
 holding them out to Blair Martin, who stood near 
 looking down curiously on the slender stooping 
 figure. 
 
 " Will you take them from the Island? " asked 
 the French woman. She smiled as she spoke, but she 
 looked intently into the eyes of the American. 
 
 Blair Martin held out her hands. 
 
 " Oh, thank you. They are lovely. They are my 
 favorite flowers." 
 
 " I fancied so," said the elder woman slowly. 
 
 Blair Martin looked down at the violets a moment 
 in silence. 
 
 " They are more beautiful than any I ever saw 
 in my own garden," she said at last. 
 
 " So ! You have a garden you love flowers 
 at home?" 
 
 Blair Martin laughed a little. 
 
 304
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " I was very proud of our garden," she said, " un- 
 til I saw the chateau garden, Comtesse." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " But at home," went on the American, " there is 
 something we have, I have not found even in the 
 chateau garden it is a wonderful mimosa tree. 
 Has the Comtesse ever seen a mimosa tree in 
 bloom?" 
 
 The French woman shook her head as they kept 
 slow step together down a winding path. 
 
 " Tell me of it, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " They grow in our south there are few where 
 I live in the north but we brought this, my father 
 and I, a shoot from a tree at my mother's home, 
 long before she died. At first we raised it under 
 glass. In the summer it blooms all pink against the 
 tender green " Blair Martin stopped speaking 
 suddenly and stared out across the hedges and the 
 flowers that she did not seem to see. " It should be 
 coming into leaf about now," she added after a 
 while. " Some day I hope Madame the Comtesse 
 may see it." 
 
 " Perhaps some day," said Cecile slowly with 
 a faint smile. 
 
 For a while they talked on indifferent subjects 
 the prospects for the coming vineyard harvest 
 Lamore and his life the peasants and the won- 
 derful climate of the Island. Then with an exclama- 
 tion of surprise at the passing of time Blair Martin 
 turned toward the wicket gate once more. 
 
 " The next time Mademoiselle climbs the heights 
 
 305
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 she must let me welcome her to the chateau," and 
 Blair Martin wondered suddenly what made her 
 hostess' voice so strange, even while she thanked 
 her. On the outskirts of the garden Cecile stopped 
 her with a gesture. 
 
 " Do not leave us, Mademoiselle, with only the 
 few violets." She clapped her hands sharply and old 
 Giovanni, working near, stopped at his task and 
 came toward them. 
 
 " Some flowers some roses and some lilies 
 for the American lady, Giovanni." 
 
 The old man bowed, not overpleased at having 
 his garden robbed for a stranger, but returned soon 
 with the flowers in his hands and gave them to the 
 Comtesse. 
 
 She took them from him with a nod of thanks 
 that was all the reward he needed, and laid them in 
 Blair Martin's arms. 
 
 " The roses are the flowers of love," she said in 
 a low voice, looking deep into her eyes as though 
 she would wrest from their gray depths an answer 
 to an unvoiced question of her own, " and the lilies, 
 Mademoiselle, they are the flowers of France." 
 
 306
 
 V. 
 
 FOR a week Cecile walked in the chateau gar- 
 den every day. For the most part she was 
 alone, and often had her embroidery frame 
 carried out and placed upon a rug near the sunshine 
 of the terrace. Here she sat and worked upon the 
 gold and azure frontal that was almost done. Here 
 the housekeeper came to her for any orders that she 
 might care to give; here Marie took leave of her 
 when she was well enough to need a nurse no 
 longer; here Giovanni would pause on his way to 
 and from work in the lower garden: it was here 
 Lamore found her one day when he came to call. 
 
 He sat down a little wearily in the easy chair a 
 footman had brought and leaned forward to look at 
 the work in the embroidery frame. He wiped his 
 forehead with his handkerchief. 
 
 " How well you work, my child, and how cool 
 it is up here even in the sun." 
 
 She regarded him with anxious and affectionate 
 eyes. 
 
 " You surely did not climb the heights on this 
 warm day ? " 
 
 " Am I so antiquated, then, that the little Cecile 
 thinks I cannot walk any more ? " he asked evasively. 
 
 307
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She shook her head, troubled. 
 
 " But why did you not use the chaise that 
 wonderful chaise that you still cling to and refuse 
 to allow me to buy from you, Father? " 
 
 " You could not pay the price I want for my old 
 chaise, my child," he said, and laughed so heartily 
 at his little joke that some birds near, startled at the 
 sound, flew suddenly away. 
 
 " Then, if your pride is not as great as I thought, 
 let me give you at least let me make it a perpetual 
 loan one of the small carriages in the chateau 
 stables. There is no one here to use all the carriages 
 the grooms would be grateful if you relieved 
 them of just one. And Nanette that wretched, 
 lazy, overfed beast why, Father, I have a mare 
 twice as useful as Nanette, that you could use." 
 
 :( You must not scold me so, nor say such hard 
 things of my Nanette. She has served me long and 
 well " 
 
 " There ! There ! I love the old thing as well as 
 you almost. Did she not bring me home the other 
 night when I was half dead from danger and 
 fatigue? But, Father, where is your merciful heart? 
 Nanette should be turned to pasture and pensioned 
 off after a long life of service." 
 
 " Nanette and I are old friends. I cannot pension 
 old friends, Comtesse ; only dependents ! " 
 
 " Such pride, Father ! As the chatelaine of the 
 chateau I must speak of it to our kinsman the Car- 
 dinal when he comes." 
 
 Lamore's eyes twinkled. 
 
 308
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " His Eminence will not be here for almost an- 
 other year. By that time you may decide to visit the 
 Pyramids or look upon the fjords of Norway." 
 
 " Ah ! You make me shiver when you talk of Nor- 
 way, and you make me very hot when you talk of 
 Egypt. Talk of pleasant things to me, Father 
 about the Cardinal or or perhaps the American 
 at Toinette Dorset's cottage in the valley." 
 
 Lamore studied the frontal in the embroidery 
 frame. 
 
 "The American?" 
 
 " Nay, Father, do not pretend to know nothing of 
 the American. She came on your invitation. She 
 told me so." 
 
 Lamore turned on her slowly, but even Cecile, 
 who had known him since her birth and his every 
 change of mood, could detect no surprise or added 
 color in his face. 
 
 " You have met and talked with her? " 
 
 " A little while, Father, near the wicket gate. She 
 thought me still ill in bed and peeped in at the gar- 
 den on her return from hearing you practise at St. 
 Michael's. She says her name is Blair Martin ; that 
 - some mutual friend recommended her to your 
 care here. I " the Comtesse broke off. 
 
 "What did you think of her, my child?" he 
 asked suddenly as Cecile paused. 
 
 She met his eyes steadily. 
 
 " I thought her charming, Father." 
 
 Lamore rose and began to walk up and down. 
 He wondered what was coming next. 
 
 309
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 By and by Cecile left her low chair by the em- 
 broidery frame and began to walk up and down with 
 him. After a little she slipped her arm in his and 
 peered around at him in the pretty appealing way he 
 remembered as a child when she had begged for the 
 peppermints he always brought her from a trip to 
 Marseilles. 
 
 " Father ? " very low. 
 
 " My child ? " very tenderly. 
 
 " I have a favor to ask, Father. I want your in- 
 fluence, Father, in a matter for my happiness." 
 
 He looked down at her. All the pretty playful- 
 ness of look and gesture had disappeared. Her 
 white face with the dark eyes, and crowned by the 
 dark hair, looked back at him wistfully. How like 
 her eyes to eyes he had seen here in the chateau 
 garden long so long ago ! His hold against her 
 arm tightened. It spoke of encouragement and 
 strength. 
 
 " Is it my influence with the Cardinal ? He has 
 never refused his help in trouble. Or " 
 
 " It is nothing that the Great Cardinal can do for 
 me in Rome. It is not the Great Cardinal's help I 
 want this time but yours." 
 
 Lamore smiled. 
 
 " What can I give that his Eminence cannot ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Much. Could the Great Cardinal take your 
 place with me with my people here?" she an- 
 swered quickly. 
 
 " Your people here and you are prejudiced," said 
 
 310
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Lamore with a faint smile, but a slow flush of pleas- 
 ure crept across his face. 
 
 " Then, Father, it is quite settled. You will help 
 me?" 
 
 Lamore laughed. 
 
 " How the little Cecile takes things for granted 
 yet have I ever been less indulgent than the Car- 
 dinal?" 
 
 "Never! And I have never asked of his Emi- 
 nence all I have asked from you," the Comtessei 
 answered. 
 
 " He would grant as much, my child." 
 
 Cecile shrugged her shoulders with a pretty ques- 
 tioning gesture that had in it just a spice of dis- 
 respect. 
 
 " The Great Cardinal is still the Great Car- 
 dinal! You are just Pierre Lamore, the priest of 
 our Island of the Angels, and all I or my people 
 want of power and good just now. The favor, 
 Father," she broke off and looked up at him again 
 in the beseeching childlike way. 
 
 ;< There ! There ! Cecile, I can refuse you noth- 
 ing. Is it more peppermints from Marseilles ? " 
 
 She shook her head slowly. 
 
 " The peppermints were good in their day and 
 much desired. I wonder sometimes if, at the end of 
 life, when we look back, all that we have yearned 
 for, much that we have wept for, will seem as un- 
 important as the sweets seem now." 
 
 She did not seem to expect an answer. Once 
 more the childish look had faded and something 
 
 3"
 
 rested in her face a look remote which Lamore 
 was conscious that he had not seen before. 
 
 " Perhaps, my child," said the priest slowly. Then 
 he waited for her to go on. 
 
 " The chateau is unchanged, and it is beautiful, 
 Father, but it is lonely and full of memories; the 
 chateau garden is as I remember it as a child when 
 I walked here with my staid governess, but it, too, 
 is lonely, Father, and memory-haunted ' She 
 broke off. 
 
 " Then why, my child, did you come back 
 alone? Could you not have waited for your hus- 
 band?" 
 
 She looked away, and she would not meet his 
 eyes. 
 
 " I had no right to take Hector from his work. 
 Neither could I stay with him. Do not ask me why. 
 Some day some day I will tell you all things ; 
 until then trust me and help me to be as happy as 
 I can." 
 
 " I will, Cecile. What is it that I can do for 
 you?" 
 
 " Persuade the American to come and stay with 
 me a little while at the chateau." 
 
 Lamore stopped suddenly in his walk and re- 
 garded her curiously. 
 
 " That would be impossible, Cecile." 
 
 " Impossible ! Why, Father ? " 
 
 It seemed to him he could not in his turn meet her 
 eyes; that he was nearer to deceit to-day than ever 
 in his life. Yet had not Hector Stone put his trust 
 
 312
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 in him? If it might be that he could hear from 
 Hector Stone again and learn just how much he 
 knew just why Cecile had come back to the 
 Island, alone. 
 
 " Impossible ! Why, Father ? " 
 
 The insistent question of the woman at his side 
 beat upon his ears. With keen but kindly eyes that 
 rarely were misled he searched her own and found 
 them inscrutable. 
 
 " She is quite a stranger, Cecile." 
 
 " Was she not invited to the Island by you and 
 vouched for by a mutual friend? " 
 
 " Quite true only " 
 
 "Only what, Father?" 
 
 " She is very proud, Cecile. I doubt if she would 
 come." 
 
 " Try her, Father. She, too, looks lonely. It 
 cannot be that Toinette Dorset gives her all the 
 companionship she needs." 
 
 " She seems quite contented at Toinette's." 
 
 " She might be more contented here." 
 
 Lamore began his slow walk again, his eyes look- 
 ing down at the path. How dark and rich the earth 
 was how free of weeds, thanks to Giovanni. 
 
 " Cecile tell me the truth. Why is it you want 
 this stranger this American here? " 
 
 Hidden by the folds of her soft morning gown, 
 Cecile's fingers twitched a little nervously. She 
 was acutely glad that Lamore was not looking at 
 her face. 
 
 " Father I am lonely ! Never in my life have 
 
 313
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 I known a woman friend. The chateau and the gar- 
 den are memory-haunted for me. Let me let me, 
 before I leave you and the Island again, have hap- 
 pier dreams to carry with me." 
 
 "This is your only reason?" He was looking 
 at her now. 
 
 She answered without hesitation, " What other 
 reason could I have, Father ? " 
 
 " I do not know. Yet you do not speak nor act 
 like yourself, Cecile." 
 
 " It might be, Father, that your own heart is 
 for some reason troubled?" 
 
 Inwardly he was aware of being amused at her 
 sharp wit that had turned the tables on him. At 
 least she must not suspect he had other reasons for 
 refusal. 
 
 " You are quite sure, if I can persuade her to 
 come ; if I tell her that you are not strong and need 
 her as a friend, you are quite sure she will be made 
 welcome? " 
 
 Cecile drew herself up and lifted back her head 
 with a curious gesture of pride, almost of disdain. 
 
 " I do not forget the obligations of the chateau," 
 she said. 
 
 He lowered his head, remembering an old old 
 legend of the Count who, centuries ago, had be- 
 guiled an enemy to the chateau under guise of friend- 
 ship. The enemy years later had died in an under- 
 ground dungeon of the chateau, leaving a curse 
 upon the Grandcceur line. . . . Then he looked 
 upon Cecile's face again, and his glance fell from
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the pale whiteness of it to the slender hands below, 
 as though of his unbidden thoughts, he was ashamed. 
 " I will see the American to-night," he said. " My 
 child adieu/' 
 
 315
 
 VI. 
 
 IT was Lamore that came with Blair Martin in 
 the carriage, and mounted with her the broad 
 chateau steps where at the top Cecile stood 
 awaiting them. She gave a glance of surprise as 
 she recognized Lamore helping the American to 
 alight from the victoria. She had not supposed he 
 knew the time the chateau carriage was to meet her 
 guest. 
 
 " He does not trust me," she said to herself, the 
 hot color mounting to her usually pale cheeks, but 
 by the time Lamore and the American had reached 
 her, she showed no trace of any emotion except that 
 of welcome. 
 
 " Mademoiselle does me honor," she said in her 
 pretty English, " I am Mademoiselle's debtor that 
 she should consent to come and lift my loneliness. I 
 see the Father brought you." 
 
 Lamore stood watching them the slender dark- 
 eyed woman of title, the tall American with the deep 
 gray eyes, and a sudden wonder came to him. They 
 were both so different, and yet in manner and bear- 
 ing, not unlike. 
 
 " Father Lamore insisted on coming. Were you 
 afraid I should seem strange and shy ? " Blair Mar- 
 tin turned on him with a laugh. 
 
 Lamore looked past her to Cecile. 
 
 316
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " I came with your friend that I might see her in 
 safe hands," he said. Then his glance came back to 
 the American. " When one is in a foreign land," 
 he said, " protection is due as well as hospitality." 
 He was conscious that Cecile moved restlessly. 
 
 " Shall the maid show you to your room ? " she 
 asked in French. " Doubtless the boys have brought 
 your luggage by now. If you will give her the 
 keys she will make you comfortable. I have found 
 her trustworthy as all the others that are recom- 
 mended by the good Father here." 
 
 " Thank you, I shall be glad to be unpacked again. 
 My trunks were the wonder of Toinette. Do you 
 ever work yourself in that wonderful garden? " she 
 turned and faced the long terraces. " I used to help 
 Toinette with the flowers and peas." She smiled a 
 little, as at a pleasant remembrance, and softly 
 smoothed the folds of her sheer embroidered gown. 
 The priest and the dark-eyed Comtesse watched her. 
 To both of them came the thought that she made a 
 pretty picture standing there in the great doorway, 
 her face, her form, half turned from them, in un- 
 conscious grace. She seemed so sure of herself and 
 the sincerity of the welcome here. 
 
 " I love the flowers, Mademoiselle, and I often 
 rob Giovanni of his choicest treasures, but as for 
 vegetables " the Comtesse shrugged her shoulders 
 a little and laughed " they are good to eat, I 
 think, but not to tend." 
 
 Blair Martin raised her eyes, the amused and 
 happy light still lingering in them. 
 
 317
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " So I once thought," she said and turned to go. 
 
 After she had gone through the shadows of the 
 great doorway in company with Cecile's maid, La- 
 more turned to the French woman. 
 
 " I trust, my child, you will be to each other all 
 you should be." 
 
 Cecile's eyes came back from the great doorway. 
 
 " And how much, Father, is that ? " 
 
 " Do I need to tell you? I can trust you not to 
 forget that you have asked for a friend." 
 
 She looked at him from lowered eyelids, but he 
 knew of the sudden fire burning in the depths be- 
 neath. 
 
 ' You need not remind me. You can trust me to 
 remember, Father, that I am chatelaine of the cha- 
 teau." 
 
 He bowed as though accepting an unvoiced dis- 
 missal. 
 
 " I shall trust you," he said. 
 
 On his return to the humble rectory, the boy 
 Anthony met him at the gate. Something in the 
 settled sadness of the child's face struck Lamore. 
 He put his hand upon the small shoulder, with re- 
 assuring pressure. 
 
 "In trouble, Anthony?" 
 
 The boy did not answer, but in spite of his ef- 
 fort at control, his lips trembled. 
 
 "My child what is it? Has Jean tried to 
 force you to fight again? Did not the birds sing 
 for you in the woods to-day ? " 
 
 318
 
 ** THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 The boy controlled himself with an effort. 
 
 " The birds sang their sweetest, Father, and 
 Jean he does not dare to fight me," the quiet 
 eyes took on quick fire. " It is not that, Fa- 
 ther " 
 
 "Then?" 
 
 " The American lady, Father. You have taken 
 her up to the great chateau." 
 
 " She has gone to cheer the Comtesse and help 
 her to get well, my child," said Lamore, his kind 
 hold increasing on the other's shoulder. " Are 
 you not glad ? " 
 
 "Glad, Father?" The boy turned on him, his 
 voice ringing out sharp and defiant on the air. 
 " What right has the American to go to the cha- 
 teau?" 
 
 " Anthony ! " Never had the boy heard the 
 Father's voice like that, and he felt Lamore's kind 
 grasp relax. " My child have you a better 
 right?" 
 
 The boy stood off from him, his rough peasant 
 blouse shining out against the background of the 
 yard's dark trees, his head raised proudly. He 
 threw out his hands with a gesture of passionate 
 grief. 
 
 " I have no right yet we have waited 
 the Mademoiselle and I and it was for her the 
 Comtesse sent " He broke off suddenly, and 
 without another word turned and fled into the fast- 
 ness of the near-by wood. 
 
 For a moment Lamore seemed as though he 
 
 319
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 would go after him, then he stopped, grave 
 thought fulness in his face. 
 
 " So ! My little one has been worshiping at 
 the shrine of an unknown divinity and jealous 
 of usurpation. Some day when the Comtesse sees 
 you, she will not let you go again for all the Amer- 
 icans in the world some day, little Anthony." 
 
 He walked slowly toward the house, crossed the 
 deserted kitchen and went into his study and locked 
 the door. He was conscious that he wanted and 
 needed to be alone. 
 
 He drew to the white curtains at the windows, 
 pausing for a moment to look out across the waters 
 in the direction of Marseilles. The evening was 
 a quiet one. An old moon crept over the edge of 
 the horizon, at first silver, then turning to gold as 
 the purple clouds melted into gray and black. By 
 and by he came back to the table. On his blotter 
 lay a letter. He picked it up with an exclamation 
 of surprise, recognizing Hector Stone's handwri- 
 ting on the envelope. 
 
 He sat down in his arm-chair, lighted the lamp 
 and drew it nearer. Then he slowly opened the 
 letter. It was the confession Stone had written 
 him from Detroit. It enclosed the letter Stone had 
 received that day from Cecile. 
 
 Outside the last faint traces of the daylight faded 
 inside the glow of Lamore's study lamp burned 
 steadily on. Once, twice, he read the letters, then 
 replaced them in the envelope and rose and went 
 back to the window. There was nothing to be seen 
 
 320
 
 3% THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 except the stretch of water lighted by the rays of 
 the old moon. They had all of them, Hector Stone 
 consciously, Blair Martin and Cecile unconsciously, 
 brought the twisted, tangled threads to him for the 
 unweaving. It seemed to him he was like one of 
 the workers he had watched at the great tapestries 
 in Flanders as a boy. Like them, he was weaving 
 on the reverse side of the great pattern of these 
 lives. Yet the pattern that he sought to copy was 
 before him, clear and perfect. If it might be that 
 from among the tangled skeins and knotted ends 
 his hands might sort the somber shades and bring 
 forth the strong bright threads of gold! 
 
 Far into the night he sat writing at his desk. 
 The letter to Stone finished, he enclosed in it the 
 one Stone had sent him from Cecile. Afterwards 
 he took Stone's letter and twisted it into a torch 
 which he lighted at the lamp, and burning, threw 
 it in the empty fireplace. In silence, he watched 
 it crumble until it was a withered and charred mass. 
 Then he picked up the lamp from the study table 
 and slowly walked away to bed. 
 
 321
 
 VII. 
 
 AT first Blair Martin settled as naturally to 
 the life lived at the chateau on the heights 
 as she had settled at Toinette's cottage in 
 the valley. She had a nature, inherited from her 
 mother, of keen sensitiveness to changes, and an 
 equal faculty from her father that made her adapt 
 herself to places, people and the environment in 
 which she found herself. She returned to the lux- 
 uries of life, the spacious rooms, the perfectly 
 cooked food, the well-trained servants that were 
 always near to do her bidding, as though she had 
 never known weeks in Toinette's sanded cottage, 
 with its primitive furniture and only Toinette to 
 serve her needs. But there came an hour when 
 the luxuries to which she had been used and to 
 which she had so unexpectedly returned, palled on 
 her, and she was ashamed to acknowledge to her- 
 self how she missed the loaf of black bread Marie 
 never sent her now, the simple work in Toinette's 
 garden, and more than all else the sight of and 
 the walks with the boy Anthony. 
 
 Then it was that a dim disquietude took posses- 
 sion of her, which she felt but could not explain, 
 if indeed there had been any one in whom she 
 cared to confide. There had never come into her 
 
 322
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 life any one to whom she cared to carry the per- 
 plexities of her life, since her mother's death, and 
 now she tried to shake the impression from her as 
 one would shake the impression of an evil dream. 
 She had never realized until now just what a strong 
 hold the boy Anthony had exerted on her life, and 
 she was loth to admit to herself that she wished 
 for Toinette Dorset's cottage with its sanded floors. 
 She had left the cottage and the lesson of simple 
 happiness she was learning there, because Lamore 
 had come to her and pleaded, with an eloquence not 
 to be resisted, for another woman a stranger 
 and her need. In those first days at the chateau 
 it came almost as a shock to her that she saw so 
 little of her hostess. There was never any tangible 
 thing, any one act to which she could cling that 
 would warrant the odd resentment that sometimes 
 came to her. When she saw the Comtesse which 
 was never before the noon meal she could not 
 question the ease and the charm with which she 
 was always greeted. Her every physical need was 
 satisfied almost before she could voice them; the 
 horses and the new motor car from Paris were at 
 her disposal; in Hannah's absence (which Blair 
 Martin insisted on, fearing friction with the chateau 
 retinue) there had been assigned to her use a maid 
 who did her duties admirably; the freedom of the 
 great halls, the long picture gallery with its square 
 projecting window of wonderful stained glass at 
 the furthest end, the music room so perfectly ap- 
 pointed, were hers with a lavish sharing that she 
 
 323
 
 m TH'E SANCTUARY m 
 
 could not doubt. The earlier peace, however, the 
 peace that had come to her at Toinette's, that she 
 had been gratefully conscious of when in the com- 
 panionship of the boy Anthony; the peace that she 
 had felt when she had first come to the chateau in 
 Lamore's care seemed to have vanished, and she 
 wondered how and why and where it had gone. 
 She spent hours, when the Comtesse was resting or 
 otherwise occupied, in the music room, whose every 
 appointment appealed to her keen artistic sense. 
 Here she would take from the long unused case 
 her bow and her violin and practise long and dif- 
 ficult scales, finding in the very difficulty an obsta- 
 cle that taxed her mental powers to their uttermost 
 and prevented the intrusion of dangerous or un- 
 profitable thoughts. She never knew the unnum- 
 bered times that the Comtesse gave strict orders for 
 silence in the music wing, where she listened her- 
 self, unseen, from a curtained recess of which Blair 
 Martin knew nothing. Cecile, herself, in these hours 
 would watch the face of the musician and study 
 its every change. Her own well-trained and tal- 
 ented ear delighted in the difficult gymnastics that 
 Blair Martin attempted and with a dogged patience 
 persisted in until overcome. At other times, weary 
 of the effort such exercises were to her, she would 
 rest a little, and then with eyes turned from the 
 music rack to the view stretching in front of her 
 from the chateau window, she would draw the bow 
 across the strings and give herself up to the de- 
 licious rapture of some rendering of Beethoven, or 
 
 324
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 perhaps even some impromptu bit of her own. It 
 was in these times that the Comtesse saw the Amer- 
 ican as she was the soul of her laid bare and 
 half ashamed, half awed, would creep from her 
 hiding place upstairs, and fling herself upon her 
 couch, exhausted. If the trained musician in her 
 admired the persevering efforts of a musician, in 
 technique, perhaps, less gifted than herself, the 
 woman in her responded to the inimitable tone of 
 feeling which Blair Martin called forth from the taut 
 strings. Later, facing her at dinner, she searched 
 in vain for that look upon her face that had rested 
 there earlier in the day, as she had played. 
 
 "Music or love?" she said to herself slowly 
 on one such occasion. " Music and love," she 
 added to her heart later. 
 
 The American began to have a newer and a more 
 personal charm for her, and more and more she 
 arranged to see her oftener. They always had cof- 
 fee together on the terrace in the garden in the 
 afternoon, and here Lamore, when his time and 
 duties would permit, joined them. Cecile alone 
 was conscious of his close scrutiny. 
 
 His talk was rarely of any personal matters, 
 and his wit, his quaint sayings, his shrewd yet 
 kindly observations, his unfailing sympathy, be- 
 came things to be remembered, and his visits were 
 looked for eagerly. It was on one such occasion 
 that he came on Blair Martin seated on the terrace 
 with her sewing. A strange droop to her mouth 
 made him ask quickly as he took her hand : 
 
 325
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Mademoiselle, are you lonely on the heights? " 
 
 She nodded a little wistfully that Cecile, who 
 was approaching, might hear no voiced answer. 
 Lamore's eyes grew suddenly grave as he turned 
 to greet the Comtesse and helped her to arrange 
 her chair before the embroidery frame the servant 
 had brought out, but it was almost wholly to Blair 
 Martin that he addressed himself during the rest 
 of that long warm afternoon, as they sipped the 
 coffee Cecile served to them, and watched the gold 
 and amethyst lights rest upon the waters. In si- 
 lence Cecile bent over the embroidery frame, put- 
 ting in the last stitches on the frontal, so intent 
 upon her task that she heeded little of the conversa- 
 tion going on near her, and for once in her life 
 grateful that some one else had undertaken the 
 entertainment of Lamore. She fastened the last 
 thread off with a sigh, and for a little while sat 
 forward in her chair, her chin in her long slender 
 hand, regarding the finished work. The frontal 
 was done and she had brought it herself back to 
 France, back to St. Michael's. Presently she rose 
 and stood by Lamore's chair, her hand resting on 
 the wicker. She waited until there was a lull in 
 the talk; then she spoke gently. 
 
 " Father, the frontal is done. Do you care to 
 see it?" 
 
 Lamore and Blair Martin rose hurriedly and 
 walked over to the embroidery frame, where from 
 its roll of linen the already completed part was 
 taken, the frame undone and the thing revealed as 
 
 326
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 a whole. At first, Lamore and Cecile held it end 
 by end, and Blair Martin looked at it in a silence 
 more eloquent than speech. Still silent, she took 
 the end that Lamore held, and the priest stepped 
 off a little way, the better to see. 
 
 " Beautiful ! " he said slowly, and to himself he 
 added, " Worthy of St. Michael's." 
 
 Together, under Cecile's direction, Lamore and 
 the American rolled it in its linen, when a maid 
 was called and directed to take it to the house and 
 later carry in the now empty frame. Cecile watched 
 the latter as it was being taken away, remembering 
 the day the big piece had been started in the subur- 
 ban home with Hector Stone, and she scarcely 
 heard the words of praise now spoken of her work 
 until a remark of Blair Martin's brought her back 
 to the present. 
 
 " Ah, Father, I would like to see his face when 
 he first looks on the frontal." 
 
 " Marie told him something of it. I heard her 
 one evening, after supper, from my study, but the 
 boy is strangely reticent these days and he said 
 nothing," replied Lamore. 
 
 " Does he miss me a little do you sup- 
 pose?" asked Blair Martin, half shyly, half hope- 
 fully. Lamore was relieved of the necessity of a 
 reply by Cecile coming quite close to them. 
 
 " Of whom are you speaking so earnestly ? Is 
 it of Marie's little son? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Blair Martin eagerly. " Is it 
 possible you have never seen the boy Anthony 
 
 327
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the child the Father here loves so with the face, 
 the voice, of an angel? Send for him, Comtesse, 
 let him sing you a Canticle or the slumber song 
 of the Swiss children," she went on impetuously, 
 and so intent was she, so absorbed Cecile in 
 watching this awakening of enthusiasm in her 
 guest, that neither heeded the Father's anxious 
 face. 
 
 " Yes, yes, surely ! How is it, Father, I have 
 not seen the child before? " 
 
 " There was nothing that might bring him to the 
 chateau except his grandfather, old Giovanni, and 
 the lad is shy." 
 
 " Ah ! And Giovanni's grandson I must 
 surely see him." 
 
 Blair Martin caught her breath in a quick sigh 
 of pleasure. 
 
 " I wish that you might learn to know him as 
 I did down there in the valley. He has so many 
 varying moods, I never tire of studying him. Once 
 he brought me here to the chateau garden, when 
 Giovanni was asleep, and he walked the paths with 
 me as a little prince might walk. Another day he 
 brought me one of Marie's black loaves with the 
 simple bearing of a little peasant." 
 
 " Delightful ! He must come up here again and 
 walk the garden with me as a little prince. 
 Father, you will tell Marie I sent for him, and let 
 him bring me a loaf of her black bread that I may 
 see these varying moods that I may see him, 
 like the simple little peasant that he is." 
 
 328
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Lamore bowed. The Comtesse's speech had been 
 at once a request and a command. 
 
 It was the next day that the boy Anthony, the 
 black loaf still hot, wrapped in coarse yet spotless 
 linen, ascended on foot the heights to the chateau. 
 Marie had watched him depart, pride and fear 
 struggling for the mastery in her breast. She 
 would have changed the simple blouse of blue for 
 his Sunday best, had not Lamore by chance come 
 in just then with the brief suggestion that the 
 Comtesse desired the boy as he appeared every 
 day, and Marie with much inward reluctance was 
 obliged to see him go in his peasant's dress and 
 head bared as usual to the sun. It was a matter 
 of small importance to the boy himself whether he 
 wore the every-day blouse or the Sunday suit; 
 his mind was much too occupied on his mission 
 to care about such a trivial thing as dress. Had 
 he not been sent for from the chateau at last 
 was not the lady of his dreams awaiting him ? . . . 
 It was only Lamore, looking on the boy's face as 
 Marie closed the rectory door on him, who fully 
 understood. . . . 
 
 The afternoon was early and the sun beat down 
 warm, shining bright on Anthony's head as he 
 climbed the heights, the black loaf held carefully 
 in his hands. He did not take the short cut to-day 
 by the wicket gate and across the chateau garden. 
 Had not the chatelaine sent for him as she might 
 have perhaps for the Great Cardinal and should 
 
 329
 
 *B THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 he not come to her through the great wide gates 
 the great tall gates that marked the entrance to 
 the chateau? 
 
 The gates once reached, he paused to wipe his 
 hot flushed face with the coarse handkerchief from 
 the pocket of his blouse. He handled it reverently, 
 refolded it carefully. It was one the good Father 
 had lent him for the great occasion. He wondered 
 suddenly what made his mother's black loaf so 
 heavy and the way seem so long. Through the 
 wonderful chateau park he walked, still following 
 the wide carriage drive and scorning the more 
 familiar and shorter cuts through the woodlands. 
 These he skirted, patiently bearing the discomfort 
 of the heat and the weariness, for the hope of what 
 lay waiting for him at his journey's end. When 
 at last he came upon the big chateau, something 
 in its aged and somber grandeur, the heights of 
 its turrets, the shining brilliancy of its many win- 
 dows, the wondrous beauty of its long terraces lead- 
 ing to the still more wonderful gardens, oppressed 
 him with a sudden sense of awe he had never felt 
 before when looking on it, and he felt remote and 
 lonely and very small, and for the first time since 
 Lamore had come to him with the message from 
 the Comtesse, he wished that he was in the valley 
 among the vineyards and the flocks. 
 
 How long he stood there a solitary little fig- 
 ure he never knew, and when at last he moved 
 on, it was not to the great front entrance he had 
 thought of in his dreams, but a smaller side one, 
 
 330
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 used for the upper class of the domestics. Here 
 he met one of the footmen and delivered his mes- 
 sage in a small, shy voice. 
 
 The footman held out his hands for the humble 
 loaf of black bread. 
 
 " Give it to me," he said, " and your message 
 for the Comtesse." 
 
 The boy started suddenly as though aroused 
 from a dream, and he grasped the black loaf pas- 
 sionately. When he spoke, the man, who was a 
 stranger to the Island, started at his tone as 
 peremptory as his own had been, and touched with 
 a note of pride and scorn. 
 
 " I have come to see the Comtesse, who has sent 
 for me. Show me to her." 
 
 Just what would have happened here is doubtful 
 if the Comtesse's maid had not been passing. She 
 paused to watch the scene, and when the footman 
 looked as though he would have rudely expelled 
 the boy through the door whence he had come, she 
 stepped forward with a warning gesture. 
 
 " Idiot ! Do you think so little of your place 
 that you would offend the Comtesse and the Fa- 
 ther himself ? It is the boy Anthony the Fa- 
 ther's charge the Comtesse has been awaiting 
 him all morning. Show him to her. She is in the 
 picture gallery with Mademoiselle the American." 
 
 The footman bit his lip, but did as he was bid, 
 and the boy Anthony followed him with a head 
 held as proudly as though he were a prince of the 
 blood or the reigning heir of the house. An odd 
 
 331
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 smile lingered about his mouth and was still there 
 when the footman drew aside the heavy portieres 
 leading to the great gallery, and stood to one side 
 for him to pass. 
 
 " The boy Anthony," he announced. 
 
 The boy Anthony took a step forward and the 
 curtains fell noiselessly behind him, the curious 
 footman linge'ring on the other side to discover, if 
 possible, why the Comtesse was receiving a little 
 peasant boy bearing a gift of black bread. 
 
 For a moment things turned dark for Anthony, 
 and in that moment of blindness all his anger and 
 his scorn vanished. He was about to see the great 
 lady of the chateau the lady of his dreams if 
 it should be that she should not be beautiful or 
 gracious, clad in outer and inward loveliness . . . 
 if it should be! Then his vision cleared and he 
 stared straight ahead of him up the length of the 
 great gallery, hung on either side by the portraits 
 of the long, long line of Grandcceurs. In an almost 
 endless vista, it seemed to him, they reached, from 
 the forebears of the Count of the Crusade that hung 
 not far from him, to the portrait of a child at the 
 furthest end, near to the great stained window that 
 bore the shield and arms of the chateau, and in 
 whose light a lady stood. She was all the gallery 
 held for him after he had once raised his face to 
 hers and seen her clearly, and Blair Martin, seated 
 on the cushioned window-seat and half hidden by 
 the velvet curtain, watched them undisturbed. At 
 the announcement of the footman, Cecile had 
 
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 smiled and laid aside her work with a gesture of 
 pretty and gracious condescension; the next, when 
 the portieres had fallen behind the child and he 
 had stood at the foot of the great gallery alone, a 
 simple childish figure in a simple childish blouse, 
 she had risen to her feet with a sharp exclamation 
 of surprise. Her work fell unheeded to the floor. 
 Blair Martin saw her glance once toward the por- 
 trait on her right a wonderful portrait, painted 
 by a master's hand, of a child a prince perhaps 
 walking in a garden, a great hound by his side ; 
 the black velvet of his suit, the buckles on his little 
 shoes, shining out in sharp contrast to the rest of the 
 portraits in the hall. From that portrait, whose 
 frame was crowned, like the stained window, with 
 the shield and arms of the Grandcceurs, back to the 
 solitary little figure, barefooted, bareheaded, in his 
 peasant's blouse, bearing the gift of black bread in 
 his hands, Cecile's look traveled, followed by Blair 
 Martin's own, and her face then was as her face 
 had been the night the little Count had died. 
 
 The length of the great gallery they looked at 
 each other in silence. In silence the Comtesse, 
 with a face like marble, awaited his coming. In 
 silence the little boy in the peasant's blouse moved 
 slowly, as one asleep, up the length of the long 
 gallery toward the lady of his dreams. No sound 
 within broke upon that silence except the child's 
 light footfall on the polished floor; the portraits 
 by which he passed seemed to look down on him, 
 some smilingly, some curiously, pitying the child 
 
 333
 
 TH ] E SANCTUARY 
 
 who perhaps had lost its way in the great gallery. 
 On he came, the gift in its covering of white linen 
 borne in his arms, as in the old days one of the 
 sons of the early Count had borne the helmet amd 
 the sword for him before he started on the long 
 Crusade. He stepped lightly, yet moved with a 
 grace strangely at variance with his dress, until 
 beneath the picture of the child he stood and 
 paused, looking up at the Comtesse and holding 
 up his gift in silence to her. The Comtesse stepped 
 from the raised window-seat to the gallery floor, 
 and the light from the stained window seemed to 
 follow her and illuminate her figure in its dress 
 of azure and of gold. She came up to the boy 
 smiling, and laid one hand upon his hair. 
 
 Suddenly and without warning the boy dropped 
 upon one knee, as he had been taught to do when 
 he greeted the Great Cardinal, and with eyelids 
 instinctively lowered, as though to hide from all 
 human gaze the love and worship that dwelt in 
 their clear depths, he raised his gift to her, while 
 he stooped to kiss her hand. 
 
 334
 
 VIII. 
 
 THAT night the Comtesse did not appear for 
 dinner, which Blair Martin had alone in 
 the great dining-room, and the next day 
 she spent alone also, as the Comtesse's maid an- 
 nounced that she was ill. She spent hours in wan- 
 dering around the chateau before she settled her- 
 self to some long-delayed letter-writing in the quiet 
 of the perfectly appointed boudoir connected with 
 the suite she occupied. She found it difficult to 
 concentrate her thoughts that insisted on dwelling 
 on other things than the task at her hands. Ear- 
 lier in the day she had gone to the chateau garden, 
 with the intention of gathering some flowers for 
 the Comtesse, but Giovanni, who had been jealously 
 watching her, learning of her errand, had an- 
 nounced shortly that he himself had taken the 
 garden's best to the chatelaine an hour ago. She 
 had risen from her knees by the bed of lilies with! 
 a quick indrawing of the breath that very success- 
 fully hid from the dimmed eyes of the old gar- 
 dener the hurt his words had given. The few lil- 
 ies that she had gathered had slipped to her feet, 
 and she had not been conscious of it as she took 
 her way toward the house. The odd resentment 
 that had come to her of late returned strong and 
 throbbing an almost tangible thing. Why had 
 
 335
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Lamore urged her to come here, where even the 
 old Italian gardener, so tender with the flowers, 
 so devoted to his mistress, treated her with veiled 
 disrespect? The curtains at the Comtesse's bed- 
 room windows were drawn as though to shut her 
 out, and it seemed to her for a moment as though 
 she walked the paths of some shadowed and en- 
 chanted place of mystery alone and unprotected. 
 How often she had read such tales in German to 
 the boy Anthony at sunset on the steps of Toi- 
 nette's cottage! Would that she were back again 
 at Toinette's. Would that the boy Anthony was 
 with her now. As though in answer to her wish, 
 and as though in truth she walked the paths of 
 Anthony's fairy tales, she saw him crossing by the 
 box hedge at a corner of the garden. She stood 
 still, waiting for him, wondering what had brought 
 him here to-day. He came on unconscious of her, 
 and would have passed her but that she put out a 
 detaining hand and touched him on the shoulder. 
 The boy started as though from a dream. 
 
 " Is there anything that I can do for you, An- 
 thony?" 
 
 He shook his head. It seemed to her for the 
 first time since he had come so intimately into her 
 life, he was impatient to be gone. 
 
 " Nothing, Mademoiselle, and many thanks. 
 The Comtesse sent for me, and I am just return- 
 ing home. Did you know that our lady was ill?" 
 He looked at her with grave, troubled eyes. " She 
 is ill," he repeated slowly. 
 
 336
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Blair Martin smiled kindly. 
 
 " It is surely nothing serious, Anthony, or I 
 should have known, or ' noticing that the 
 shadow did not lift from the child's face "or 
 the good Father would have been sent for." 
 
 The boy raised his clear eyes to her. 
 
 " True, Mademoiselle. She would have sent for 
 the good Father. How kind of you to think of 
 that. Yet " 
 
 "Yet what, Anthony?" 
 
 " She lies so white and still, Mademoiselle, on 
 the long couch. Then she makes me kneel down 
 by her and she takes my face between her hands, 
 and once " 
 
 "Yes, Anthony?" 
 
 " She weeps, oh, Mademoiselle, she weeps." 
 
 The boy looked up at the Comtesse's window 
 and its drawn curtains, and his lips quivered. 
 
 Blair Martin took the boy's small, sunburned 
 hand and held it to her with a friendly pressure. 
 Some instinct warned her not to attempt other 
 familiarity. What was for the Comtesse was not 
 for her, in spite of the long months of her friend- 
 ship with the child. 
 
 " She weeps for what? " 
 
 " I know not, Mademoiselle," said the boy 
 slowly, and then he set his lips tightly together 
 and without another word turned and left her. 
 What was this thing that he had done ? The Com- 
 tesse's tears were they not a sacred thing? If 
 she had meant the American to have seen the 
 
 337
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 kind American with the gentle voice would she 
 not have wept yesterday in the long gallery? He? 
 would need absolution for this thing that he had 
 told. And slowly, bowed beneath the shame of a 
 betrayal, the boy Anthony made his way toward the 
 valley and his home. 
 
 Blair Martin watched him until he was out of 
 sight, then turned to the house. Just what it was 
 that led her steps to the long gallery she could not 
 have told, but she found herself there and walking 
 its long deserted length until she stood beneath the 
 portrait of the little Count. Long she looked at it 
 until the velvet suit and the big buckles on the little 
 shoes and even the form of the great hound faded, 
 and in its place she saw again a little peasant's 
 blouse, but the faces of both children were strangely 
 alike the face of the boy Anthony and the face 
 of the little Count who had died except that in 
 the boy she knew was a maturity of form and ex- 
 pression she sought for in vain in the picture of the 
 dead heir of the Grandcoeurs. 
 
 She sat down on the raised window seat in the 
 deserted gallery, remembering yesterday. The 
 shafts of light fell in long stretches through the 
 stained glass of the window to the floor. She could 
 not take her eyes from the picture. 
 
 " 'It is for this that she is ill to-day," she thought, 
 the odd resentment giving way to pity, " it is for 
 this she sent for Anthony again. It is why she 
 weeps." 
 
 338
 
 IX. 
 
 THE next night the Comtesse came down to 
 dinner, and the two women met by the long 
 table with its fine damask and splendid 
 linen. In the hours since Cecile's seclusion Blair 
 Martin had often fancied what the meeting would 
 be, and hardly cared to acknowledge to herself her 
 inward dread of it. The longing to leave it all 
 the grandeur of the chateau, its strange chatelaine 
 had come to her again, following in the wake 
 of the wave of pity she had felt in the deserted 
 gallery the day before. Soon as soon as she 
 could she would make her excuses to Lamore 
 and the Comtesse, and join Hannah in Devonshire, 
 since she might not now in courtesy return to Toi- 
 nette's. She could hear the Comtesse's light foot- 
 fall on the great stair in the hall; she could hear 
 it coming nearer, and she stood waiting by her 
 chair, looking down at the white and silver of the 
 chateau dining table. When she came and stood 
 by her, the slender, dark-eyed mistress of all this 
 lonely splendor, Blair Martin forgot alike pity and 
 resentment in admiration. To-night it seemed to 
 her she saw the Comtesse as she really was, the 
 acme of the culture, the refinement, the beauty and 
 the graciousness of a princely line. She watched 
 
 339
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 her from the far end of the table; she listened, 
 herself almost in silence, believing that in truth 
 one of Anthony's fairy tales had come to life. The 
 Comtesse talked on books, on politics, on music 
 and on art; of the latest edict from the Holy 
 Father, of the peasants' crops in the valleys far 
 below the chateau heights, of her hopes and plans 
 for the further education of the peasant children, 
 as though she were exerting herself to charm and 
 hold an assembly in a court salon, or the Great 
 Cardinal himself, instead of one woman a guest, 
 almost a stranger. 
 
 " To-night I know her as she is," thought Blair 
 Martin, as they rose and together stepped out on 
 to the terrace. " No wonder that Lamore and the 
 people love her, or the Great Cardinal listens while 
 she talks." 
 
 But on the terrace the Comtesse sat quiet for 
 a long while, looking out over the chateau garden 
 and watching the moon rise from the sea. With 
 the darkness of the night lit only by the young 
 moon and stars, with the scent of the flowers and 
 shrubs close by, it was as if the brilliant mood of 
 wit and learning had fallen from her like a cloak, 
 and she had left it behind in the lighted dining 
 room. Here, in the sweetness of the southern 
 night of France, high on the chateau hill and over- 
 looking the chateau valleys with their vineyards, 
 it seemed as though the quietness of nature and its 
 prevailing peace had become a part of her. Blair 
 Martin watched her as she sat in her wicker gar- 
 
 340
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 den chair, her chin resting on the back of her 
 closed hand, her eyes, dark and wistful, gazing on 
 the night. By and by her voice came to Blair 
 Martin low and soft as the breeze that swept 
 her cheek. She spoke in English, and slowly, mu- 
 singly. 
 
 " Perhaps it was on such a night that Madrisa 
 first saw the stream she loved," she said. 
 
 "Madrisa?" 
 
 The Comtesse turned her head and looked at the 
 American. 
 
 " You were in Switzerland they did not tell 
 you of Madrisa ? " 
 
 Blair Martin shook her head. 
 
 " It is a legend? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle. I heard it when a girl, one 
 summer long ago when I went to Switzerland with 
 my governess. It was in the district of the Vorder 
 and Hinter Rhein, which is rich in folk lore and 
 in legend. The people in the valleys of the Silvretta 
 Range are especially noted for the quaint stories 
 that they tell. There is not a child in all that 
 part that has not heard of the doings of the 
 Fenken the fairies of those parts. There is 
 among them one I know not quite how you 
 would say it, Mademoiselle perhaps the queen 
 that figures in most of the narratives. Her 
 name is Madrisa a beautiful maiden of whom 
 the natives tell strange tales on winter evenings 
 and sing strange songs on summer nights like 
 this. Do I tire you, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 341
 
 *K THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " No no, please go on." 
 
 The Comtesse smiled a little. She leaned her 
 elbow on the broad arm of the wicker chair and 
 again laid her chin against her folded hand. 
 
 " It is she, Mademoiselle, the beautiful maiden 
 of the song and story, who has given her name to 
 the peak known as the Madrisahorn. Once, she 
 fell in love with a mountain stream, and day by 
 day and night by night she would rest beside it, 
 listening to the music that it sang to her and look- 
 ing on the form which smiled on her from its clear 
 depths. This was the beautiful spirit of the stream, 
 and it was always there except when the dark 
 weather fell. But by and by the winter came with 
 all its ice and chilling frost and the beautiful spirit 
 was imprisoned in its hold that tender spirit of 
 Madrisa's lover." 
 
 The low voice paused. The whispering wind 
 blew past them laden with the odors of the garden 
 
 of the flowers and the smell of wet box after 
 the summer's rain. The Comtesse did not move. 
 Her eyes still searched the night. By and by she 
 took up the tale again. 
 
 " Then then it was that Madrisa could not 
 see her beloved she could only hear him moan 
 in his distress. And they resolved he and she 
 that were he ever released again, the two of them 
 would hasten to happier, fairer lands, where win- 
 ter was unknown lands the winds told them of 
 
 lands, which in spring they had heard of from 
 the returning birds. And they waited, Mademoi- 
 
 342
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 selle, the story does not tell of that slow agony 
 of waiting but sometimes I have guessed . . . ' 
 she broke off again, and for a moment it seemed as 
 though her eyes sought those of the American. 
 Then she went on. " At length the spring came 
 and once more Madrisa and her lover saw each 
 the other's face. They decided to go at once to 
 the happy lands the winds and the birds had told 
 them of so much, where they would marry and 
 live happy ever after. . . . Poor Madrisa! Poor 
 Spirit of the Stream ! They started, Mademoiselle, 
 but they had not made a two days' journey before 
 the water of the stream was mixed with other 
 waters and became so clouded she could not see 
 his face. His voice, too, was not as it had been 
 in the old days, but was sad and mournful full 
 of the talk of terrors she knew nothing of and of 
 mysteries to come. Then Madrisa cried out in her 
 dread, ' Oh, Beloved, let us go back to our moun- 
 tain home, to its little ways and delightful music, 
 and if we can't be as happy as we want, we will 
 be as happy as we can. Come, Love ! ' So, Made- 
 moiselle, they went back. And all through the 
 summer season Madrisa sees and knows her lover 
 and hears his voice and tries not to remember the 
 winter coming with its dark days and its silences, 
 and it helps her to think, ' Perhaps I am happier 
 and nearer to him than I dream.' ' 
 
 The low voice paused, and the Comtesse rose 
 from the wicker chair and came and stood by Blair 
 Martin. The latter felt her touch upon her arm. 
 
 343
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 "Mademoiselle, that is all," she said; "perhaps 
 you will remember the story, too." 
 
 An instant she lingered there in darkness by 
 Blair Martin's chair. 
 
 " Do not disturb yourself. Sit here and dream. 
 It is a place for dreams the chateau terrace in 
 the moonlight. You will excuse me? Ah, yes, I 
 am very tired." 
 
 Blair Martin watched her as she crossed the 
 terrace to the house. Once she walked in a shaft 
 of clearest moonlight before the shadow of the 
 great chateau enveloped her. At a casement win- 
 dow she paused and looked back, and though Blair 
 Martin leaned forward and tried to pierce the 
 shadows that lay around her that she might see her 
 face, she could not. But Cecile's voice reached her 
 with a new strange note of tenderness bidding her 
 good-night. 
 
 Long after she had gone Blair Martin walked 
 the terrace alone. She remembered Cecile as she 
 had been at dinner, as she had been later here with 
 her the varying moods the brilliancy of the 
 table talk the odd vibrating note of sympathy in 
 her voice as she told the legend of the Swiss. The 
 mystery and the charm of the southern night 
 around her, the charm and the mystery that hung 
 around the chateau's mistress was borne to her 
 afresh. She felt the resentment falling from her 
 as though it had never been, and she stood still, 
 listening to the thousand voices of a silent night 
 that all can hear who will, and stared across the 
 
 344
 
 ** THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 garden to the sun-dial standing in a shaft of light. 
 As she looked the softness of the light increased 
 and above the dial hung suspended that long 
 Bridge. Long long she looked at it a prayer 
 upon the lips that were learning here in the Island 
 of the Angels to pray again and by and by there 
 came to her the consciousness of Stone's face. It 
 seemed a great way off she was not part of the 
 Bridge to-night she was simply as one looking 
 on a picture. By and by the Bridge faded but the 
 face remained. . . . 
 
 An hour later she stood at the casement looking 
 toward the sun-dial before she went indoors. It 
 seemed to her that here to-night, in the chateau 
 garden, she knew and felt faintly, dimly, some- 
 thing of the end of things the Scheme that with 
 infinite patience had waited for this hour to draw 
 her understanding and her heart into Its Vast 
 Embrace. 
 
 She closed the casement softly and drew the 
 curtain. Then she crossed the great hall and 
 climbed the stairs. As she passed the apartments 
 of the Comtesse she remembered the Swiss story. 
 
 " Like Madrisa, ' perhaps I am happier and 
 nearer to him than I dream/ " she thought, as she 
 went to her own room. 
 
 345
 
 X. 
 
 IN the days that followed a stillness and a brood- 
 ing peace seemed to settle on the chateau, such 
 as it had not known in centuries. It appar- 
 ently came from no definite cause, and was for 
 all who tried to analyze it an intangible thing. It 
 was as if the mental atmosphere of the park and 
 the chateau and its inmates, had slowly cleared from 
 a lowering danger, as a threatening storm is some- 
 times averted in the world of material things, by 
 the slow, steady pressure of a changed wind. 
 Giovanni, in the garden, although unconscious of 
 its cause, worked with greater skill, more untiring 
 patience, and was surprised to find himself bring- 
 ing, almost unwittingly, and a bit grudgingly still, 
 the tall American, a daily gift of flowers. The 
 tall American herself grew happier again and won- 
 dered if it was the remembrance of the Bridge she 
 had seen above the sun dial in the garden. The sun 
 dial became a favorite haunt with her, and here she 
 would bring her work or books and sit leaning 
 against it, and when tired of her task let her eyes 
 rest on the white sails at sea. From here, too, she 
 could see St. Michael's in all its white splendor, and 
 the glory of its golden cross, and the church and the 
 dial and the garden came in a mysterious way to be 
 
 346
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 connected, not so much with the Comtesse who was 
 mistress of it all, as with the face and form of Stone. 
 Of the mistress, she saw not over much, yet there 
 had grown up between them, slowly, the nucleus of 
 an understanding that meant much to them both. It 
 was perhaps the boy Anthony who was the center 
 in those early days of their growing friendship, 
 who drew them both as a vortex draws two streams 
 to itself, and of the boy Anthony they saw much. 
 At the Comtesse's orders, each day, when the tasks 
 at the Rectory were ended, he climbed the chateau 
 heights and came to them. It seemed to Blair Mar- 
 tin that all through the day the Comtesse waited 
 for that hour that it represented more of happi- 
 ness to her than all her lands and all her possessions 
 and all her wealth alike. Always, when she was 
 able, she met him at the wicket gate alone, a pleas- 
 ure that Blair Martin, with the exquisite sensitive- 
 ness that divined another's need, never asked to 
 share. And when the little boy in the blue peasant 
 blouse would come the Comtesse protested in her 
 pretty way against the Sunday and the fete-day 
 suit she would make him rest a little on a stone 
 bench near the gate, and once Blair Martin saw her 
 wipe his flushed and perspiring forehead with her 
 own fine handkerchief. Sometimes they would walk 
 toward Blair Martin, if she were in the garden, and 
 together they would all sit down. The two of them 
 the Comtesse and the little peasant boy became 
 a curious study to Blair Martin, and as she had in 
 the old days at Toinette's cottage, she marveled at 
 
 347
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the strange mixture of simplicity and proud bearing 
 in the child. She watched him intently, seeking for 
 a sign that the sudden favor of the Comtesse had 
 spoiled his manner or his charm, but it never did. 
 In all the intercourse, that grew more intimate as 
 the days went on, he remained as she had known 
 him first. He sang for her again, this time upon the 
 chateau heights, the Canticles and the Swiss slumber 
 song, as months ago he had sung them for her in 
 the wooded valleys near his home, and because she 
 wished it wished to see his expressive face change 
 and his eyes turn from sunlit patches to shadowed 
 pools he would repeat the wood lore and the 
 legends of the sea that Lamore had told him since 
 his birth. Lamore himself would sometimes join 
 the group and watch the pretty picture that the 
 child and the two women made. He was strangely 
 silent these days and used to study intently the Com- 
 tesse's face as she watched the child. She seemed, 
 when others were by, to be content to listen and to 
 watch. It might have been that Lamore was repaid 
 by his visits and intent study of the Comtesse, for 
 as day succeeded day and made the months, a 
 shadow of a sorrow not his own lifted from his 
 face, and he would return to the Rectory and say a 
 prayer before he wrote to Stone. He knew that 
 Stone relied on him for news, and he wrote him as 
 one man writes another whom he cares for, with- 
 holding nothing that he fancied Stone might want to 
 hear. It was perhaps of Cecile's health alone that 
 he was reticent. After all, there was nothing tangi- 
 
 348
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 ble an added languor perhaps, a loss of strength", 
 an increasing frailness of the face. Once he talked 
 of it to Blair Martin, who listened, suddenly grown 
 white with a new dread. She had never realized 
 until that moment all that this new growing friend- 
 ship might mean to her life. Once Lamore, with a 
 tact grown keen with the practice of years in delicate 
 missions, wrote a personal letter to a great doctor in 
 Marseilles, a friend of his, and asked him to the 
 Island. Then he climbed the chateau heights and 
 begged the hospitality of the chateau for the eminent 
 man, urging on Cecile the impracticability of any fit 
 entertainment in the humble Rectory. 
 
 " It is all your own fault, Father," Cecile had 
 grumbled, trying to conceal her shining eyes. 
 " Long, long ago my uncle wanted to build you a fit 
 home. You should not ask eminent men to visit 
 you if you cannot entertain them yourself. How 
 much will the great doctor see of you, if he is 
 perched high up on the chateau heights ? Shall you 
 provide him with a spy-glass or a stethoscope ? " 
 
 Lamore started guiltily. 
 
 " Who told you that I wrote to him to come ? " 
 
 Cecile clapped her hands like a delighted child. 
 
 " Bien! " Then she touched her head wisely with 
 one finger. 
 
 " You are incorrigible, my child." 
 
 " Do you desire that the Cardinal's suite be placed 
 at his disposal ? " the Comtesse went on, rising from 
 her chair on the terrace with a laugh. " There, 
 there, do not look so shocked. Has not the suite 
 
 349
 
 *g THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 been kept sacred for centuries for the cardinals of 
 the house? Ah, you do not mind if I leave you for 
 a moment ? Your little Anthony or is he mine ? 
 it is time that he were here." 
 
 Lamore watched her as she crossed the garden un- 
 til her slender figure was lost behind the foliage of 
 the trees. Then the mirth vanished from his face. 
 
 " The last of the line," he said, " except what the 
 Church holds ; and no heirs no heirs for all this 
 splendor and this beauty." 
 
 He was so intent on his own thoughts that he did 
 not hear Blair Martin approaching, and indeed did 
 not know that she was near until she took the chair 
 deserted by Cecile and spoke gently so as not to 
 startle him. 
 
 " Dreaming aloud, Father Lamore? " 
 
 " Perhaps, Mademoiselle. And may I ask where 
 you so adroitly secrete yourself on my visits of 
 late?" 
 
 " I fancied Madame the Comtesse would prefer to 
 see old friends alone." 
 
 He looked at her curiously. 
 
 " Women are strange enigmas," he said with a 
 faint smile. " They can live weeks together under 
 the same roof and share, perhaps, the same diver- 
 sions, have the same tastes as to music, perhaps, and 
 to art, and yet remain to each other ' Mademoiselle ' 
 and ' Madame the Comtesse.' I think men in deal- 
 ing with men are less formal." 
 
 The American flushed a little. 
 
 " I make friends slowly, Father. At first, to be 
 
 350
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 quite candid with you, I had no desire to call the 
 mistress of all this splendor other than by her formal 
 title. I shall never call her by anything less familiar 
 except at her request. Of late sometimes I have 
 fancied she and I might some day reach a point 
 where the conventionalities and the formalities of 
 life might melt away and we should know ourselves 
 as friends." 
 
 Lamore laughed a little. 
 
 " Already, Mademoiselle, you are friends, al- 
 though you know it not. Some great shock 
 some mutual experience coming suddenly alike to 
 you and her would reveal you to each other as you 
 are." 
 
 A troubled look crept over her face at his words. 
 
 " I do not think I understand you, Father, nor, if 
 I may say it, do I think you understand either the 
 Comtesse or myself as well as you might think." 
 
 Lamore, following the American's example, rose. 
 He bowed a little. 
 
 " Perhaps," he said. 
 
 She smiled at the gravity of his answer. 
 
 " I promised the Comtesse, that I would play 
 for her this afternoon after you and the boy An- 
 thony left. Will you excuse me if I go and practise 
 a little while? She tells me she loves the violin 
 and Beethoven." 
 
 " You do not ask me nor the boy Anthony to re- 
 main, knowing that we both love music. Is that not 
 unkind, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 " I would not have you hear my poor music for 
 
 351
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the world a master organist like you, and a critic 
 so the Comtesse tells me." 
 
 " I can be lenient, Mademoiselle, with those who 
 interest me ; with those whose technique rather than 
 whose interpretation is at fault. But as you wish, 
 of course. You did not perhaps know that the 
 Comtesse played?" 
 
 Blair Martin looked up at him in quick surprise. 
 
 " Since I have been here I fancied that the great 
 piano had remained untouched. I have wondered, 
 sometimes, at the appointments of the music room. 
 They are so perfect. I should have guessed." 
 
 " The music room was added years ago to replace 
 one that was burned in the fire that also destroyed 
 the old chapel wing. The new music room was 
 rebuilt under the personal direction of the great 
 Twanciski, a friend of the present Comtesse's 
 mother. The Comtesse Clarisse, Mademoiselle, 
 was a superb musician and one of Twanciski's 
 pupils." 
 
 Lamore stopped suddenly and looked down at the 
 gravel at his feet. For the first time since she had 
 known him, in some way remote and strange, age 
 seemed to touch his face and form. 
 
 " I shall be afraid to play for the Comtesse now 
 as I am afraid to play for you," said the American 
 to break the long pause. 
 
 Lamore looked up and smiled ; the impression of 
 age slowly slipped away. 
 
 " The truly great are the truly simple, Mademoi- 
 selle. To-day ask the Comtesse the little Cecile 
 
 352
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 to play for you the Russian piece that her mother 
 composed. The Comtesse Clarisse used to play it 
 for me when I came here as a young soldier a 
 kinsman to visit the place . . ." he spoke a little 
 dreamily. 
 
 " A kinsman I did not know " said Blair 
 Martin softly. 
 
 " How should you, Mademoiselle ? A distant kin 
 to our lady here and to his Eminence the Great Car- 
 dinal. There are some who think that the life of the 
 Church breaks all human ties, but I, Mademoiselle, 
 and the Great Cardinal whose pupil I still am, are 
 not among the number." 
 
 He bowed to her again, and again there came to 
 her the impression that it was rather a courtier and 
 a nobleman than a priest, who spoke to her. In 
 silence she inclined her head and made her way to 
 the music room. 
 
 Here an hour later the Comtesse found her. She 
 was standing by the window and on the table near 
 was the open violin case. The instrument lay un- 
 touched. 
 
 " I have come to hear you play Beethoven and I 
 find you standing dreaming by the window. The 
 good Father tells me you excused yourself on the 
 plea that you wanted to practise. Was it only an 
 excuse ? Was our Island priest worrying you or 
 mentioning casually to you the benefits of a con- 
 version ? " 
 
 The American smiled faintly. 
 
 353
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 11 1 need hardly remind you that Father Lamore 
 preaches his faith with his life. I had thought to 
 practise when I left him but and Madame the 
 Comtesse will excuse me I cannot play Beetho- 
 ven to-day." 
 
 " Ah ! I am sorry." It was characteristic of the 
 older woman's breeding and birth and the inner 
 fitness of things that she neither urged against her 
 will nor questioned one who was her guest. 
 
 Blair Martin laughed. 
 
 " You would be sorry if you heard me play." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, I have often heard you play. 
 Your interpretation is extremely good your 
 touch one, a player more perfect in technique, per- 
 haps, might envy and strive for through long 
 years. The technique is the brain of music, but 
 the touch its heart." 
 
 Blair Martin turned from the window. 
 
 " You have heard me play, Madame may I 
 inquire where ? " 
 
 The French woman shrugged her shoulders a 
 little and looked at her half appealingly. 
 
 "Must I confess, Mademoiselle? I have heard 
 you play right here in the chateau. Often often 
 when "you thought me resting or away and came 
 here to practise I would hide behind that piece of 
 Flemish tapestry there, which conceals a little re- 
 cess, and listen by the hour." 
 
 The American flushed. 
 
 " You flatter me, Madame. Yet I cannot play 
 Beethoven to you to-day. One may play uncon- 
 
 354
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 sciously before a real musician where one cannot 
 play face to face." 
 
 " Who told you that I played? " 
 
 The American laughed and brushed an imagi- 
 nary bit of dust from the violin case. 
 
 " Who but Father Lamore ? He told me to- 
 day that you and he were kinsfolk. Is your music 
 like his own? And the Russian piece your mother 
 composed and used to play for him he told me 
 to ask you to play it for me." Then seeing the 
 Comtesse hesitate, she added quickly, " You would 
 not refuse a request of his? " 
 
 The Comtesse went to the great piano and slowly 
 opened it. 
 
 " Nor a request of yours, Mademoiselle, that I 
 had power to grant," she said in a low voice as 
 she sat down. 
 
 She laid her long, slender fingers on the keys. 
 She had not played since that last night in the 
 suburban home in far-away America with Stone 
 for audience. She was glad that her guest had 
 not asked for Schubert. She felt that she could 
 never play Schubert again. The Russian air she 
 had almost forgotten it. She sat quiet a long time, 
 looking down on her hands resting on the keys, 
 and once she closed her eyes. Little by little the 
 air of the piece came back to her, and with it some- 
 thing that the Great Cardinal had once hinted at. 
 She had been too young then to really understand. 
 Just why she spoke aloud she did not know. 
 
 " My mother wrote the piece when little more 
 
 355
 
 than a girl, here at the chateau where she visited 
 her father's people, and before her marriage to the 
 son of the old Count. Father Lamore had a com- 
 mission in the French army then had served 
 with distinction in the Soudan. He often came 
 here too she used to play for him. The Great 
 Cardinal told me once, when I last played the piece 
 for him, she composed it the night the young cap- 
 tain decided on the priesthood." 
 
 The Comtesse began to play. Blair Martin 
 leaned against the window-frame, trembling a little. 
 
 " I wonder why," she said below her breath. 
 
 Low as were her words the Comtesse heard her 
 but silently played on. If the American was hu- 
 man, possessed of a woman's heart, a woman's 
 intuition, the ear of the artist all of which she 
 believed the American did possess she would not 
 question further what the Comtesse felt she could 
 not answer, after she had heard the piece and its 
 appeal. 
 
 Softly it began as softly as an awakening of 
 spring and underneath the softness pulsed the 
 joy. Then the movement became more somber 
 and more rapid, and here and there were long runs 
 ending in a burst of passionate despair. From the 
 spring time that reminded one of the chateau gar- 
 den at the door, came hints of thunder and of sum- 
 mer rain; then, like a dirge that sang of winter 
 frosts and barren Russian steppes, the piece went 
 on toward its close. It tolled the death-throes, and 
 it seemed a human thing that in impotent weakness 
 
 356
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 beat against a will inflexible and stronger than its 
 own, whose force it could not break. It ended as 
 slowly as it had begun and its climax was one dis- 
 cordant chord. 
 
 Blair Martin leaned against the window-frame, 
 white and still. 
 
 " Wonderful ! " she said. 
 
 By and by the Comtesse rose from the piano, 
 her soft footfall making little noise upon the floor. 
 She came and stood by the table where lay the 
 violin and lifted it gently from its case. 
 
 " My mother was a Russian," her voice, low and 
 cultivated, broke the silence of the room. " She 
 came from that land of beautiful women and heart- 
 breaking music, and she called the piece ' The Way 
 of the Cross.' Play for me, Mademoiselle, as I 
 have played for you," she held out the instrument 
 to Blair Martin, " not something that you know, 
 but, like my mother, something that you dream, 
 and may the dream be fairer than her own." 
 
 As one asleep Blair Martin took the instrument 
 and bow and began to tune the violin. 
 
 Her brain was a blank. How play after what 
 she had heard how play her dream ? Yet a voice 
 of which she was inwardly conscious a voice 
 that she had not heard since she had parted on the 
 pier, said "Play!" 
 
 She drew her bow across the taut strings, un- 
 knowing that the instrument of her soul had been 
 tuned to even a more perfect pitch by the magic 
 of the music she had heard. Hardly conscious of 
 
 357
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 what she did, impelled by that inner voice of 
 strong command, she laid the violin beneath her 
 chin and drew her bow with a long sweep. 
 
 It was as though a human voice had cried out, 
 touched with the shadow of divinity. It echoed 
 through the silence of the room and beat against 
 the brain of the Comtesse persistently as waves 
 beat against a shore. From a corner where the 
 Flemish tapestries cast long, strange lines of shade, 
 she sat and watched her, leaning forward on her 
 elbow, from her low chair. Before the window 
 her figure a silhouette in its light Blair Martin 
 stood and played, alike unconscious of audience or 
 surroundings. She had laid the bow against the 
 strings, not knowing what she was to play how 
 play at all and now she was improvising some- 
 thing new and strange. She composed as she 
 played, not thinking, not planning, or even trying 
 to guess bar that should follow bar. She stood 
 facing the far dim corners of the room that, as she 
 looked, faded from her sight, and it seemed to her 
 once more she was at the Anchorage at home. 
 It was night could the darkness of the dim far 
 corners deceive one so and she was standing 
 under a mimosa tree in bloom, the moon-flowers 
 near. It was youth and summer time. Low notes, 
 infinitely low and infinitely tender full of hope 
 crept from the heart of the violin. . . . Beside 
 her was some one could the darkness in the dim 
 far corners in truth take on a human shape. . . . 
 Who said the night was still? Ah, it was throb- 
 
 358
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 bing throbbing. . . . Had she not looked into 
 his eyes? . . . Deep as the clouds at sunset that 
 rest above the sea and Naples in the fall, full of 
 a glory, veiled, crept forth a wonderful note from 
 the frail thing of wood, that note of love, and 
 vibrated to it as two chords mingle and become 
 one as two lives mingle and lose their separate- 
 ness. Again and again she called forth from 
 the frail thing of wood, that note of love, and 
 it underlay all the piece she played and became the 
 keynote on which she built the whole. . . . The 
 shadows lengthened in the far corners as she gazed, 
 and there crept into the music slow notes of wait- 
 ing somber notes of hope deferred despair. 
 The shadows took on new shape across the dark- 
 ness stretched a Bridge for her. She saw it as 
 she had seen it that day on the pier ; as it had come 
 to her in weary months of travel; as it stretched 
 its mighty length from alp to alp; as in wonder 
 she had looked at it from the portal of St. Michael's 
 standing forth from the woods and sea; again 
 as in the moonlight in the chateau garden: and 
 the Bridge was always the same yet always differ- 
 ent, as though built from different fabrics of her 
 mind. She realized now it had never come to her 
 until all human helps had failed that in truth 
 it had been to her the dry land that brought her 
 safely through the rushing torrents of a Red Sea 
 that had threatened to swamp her life. . . . The 
 violin sang of the Bridge of its mystery and its 
 power, of the doubt that it had spanned, of the 
 
 359
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 peace it had led to of a faith that was in sight. 
 . . . Now the music left the low lands and the 
 darkened valleys and as a lark soars upward and 
 beats its impotent wings against the fading stars, 
 it rose a triumphant paean, as though wholly con- 
 scious alike of its limitations and its attainments; 
 its human frailty and its immortal birthright; of 
 its unity with the One Reality of all. 
 
 Above the strings she held the bow silent in the 
 air. 
 
 The Comtesse remained motionless, leaning for- 
 ward, her elbow on her knee, her face resting in 
 the hollow of her hand. For a moment Blair 
 Martin stood looking straight ahead of her. The 
 long, dim shadows in the room were only shad- 
 ows after all, and she had awakened from a dream. 
 Her hands still holding the violin and the bow 
 dropped nerveless to her side. The Comtesse 
 stirred a little. 
 
 "But the end," the Comtesse said, "the end?" 
 
 Blair Martin laid the violin and the bow in its 
 case and closed the lid. Her hands began to trem- 
 ble. 
 
 " I do not know the end," she said. 
 
 360
 
 XI. 
 
 IT was the next week that the great specialist 
 from Marseilles arrived. It was not his first 
 visit to the Island. Years ago, when he had 
 been a struggling young doctor righting his way 
 upward from the obscurity of humble birth, La- 
 more, a young captain in the prize regiment, had 
 met him and had realized his worth. It had been 
 Lamore and the position that Lamore had held by 
 right of title and of wealth that he had afterwards 
 renounced, who had been the first to help him 
 whose influence in the society in which he moved 
 had been a potent factor in Duport's success. He 
 had never forgotten Lamore or the debt he owed 
 him, and when Lamore had taken orders and left 
 behind all and more than he could gain, he had 
 cried as a strong man cries beside the grave of 
 some cherished hope. It had seemed to him that 
 in truth he was burying his friend, whose talents 
 had charmed the big cities of Europe, whose influ- 
 ence, political, military and social, whose executive 
 ability had excited comment, even envy, in the 
 world of men. He had come to know, however, 
 to see, even while sometimes he failed to under- 
 stand, that the talents had not been wasted; that 
 in a mysterious way that few could comprehend, 
 the promise of Lamore's youth had been fulfilled. 
 
 361
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 He had been used to come to the Island almost 
 every year to renew the long friendship, to pick 
 up again the strands from the hand of Time; and 
 long ago he acknowledged that he not only came 
 here to rest from the fret and turmoil of the city; 
 not only to enjoy the gifts of Lamore's mentality, 
 but to learn from him as well. Lamore's present 
 request had therefore come to him more in the light 
 of a command than a favor requested. He was at 
 the zenith of his life-work and the days were full 
 of a labor that represented the toil and the study 
 and the fight of years. Already he had made his 
 brief trip of pleasure to the Island for the year. 
 He could ill be spared, yet it never occurred to him 
 to refuse. He would have come at a line from 
 Lamore as readily to serve the poorest peasant on 
 the Island as the chatelaine thereof. He had not 
 seen her since she was a young convent girl of six- 
 teen, living in the summer time in lonely state, 
 chaperoned by her old governess, in the great cha- 
 teau on the hill. 
 
 He knew most of the story well, for he was 
 eminent in other branches of his profession besides 
 his specialty, but it was a subject, as intimate as 
 the two men were, which they never discussed to- 
 gether. In the breast of the great doctor risen 
 from obscurity to eminence and decorated with the 
 medals of Europe, as in the breast of the humble 
 priest fallen from worldly rank and station to ob- 
 scurity, were deep wells that hid many secrets of 
 our frail humanity. 
 
 362
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 It was Lamore that met him with the great tour- 
 ing car of the chateau, and Bernard Duport smiled 
 as he entered the tonneau, where the priest fol- 
 lowed him, remembering Nanette and the chaise. 
 He inquired of them as they started from the wharf. 
 
 " You are to be the guest of the Comtesse," said 
 Lamore with a laugh. " For her, who lives upon 
 the heights this," he motioned to the car ; " for 
 me, in the valley Nanette and the chaise." 
 
 Duport raised his eyebrows. 
 
 " So ! I am to be a guest at the chateau. Now 
 tell me briefly of the fears that made you summon 
 me." 
 
 Duport remained at the chateau a week and 
 seemingly did little but enjoy the life there. If 
 he were impatient to be gone; if he ever recalled 
 the work accumulating for him at home, he gave 
 no sign. Years ago he had learned by some keen 
 instinct so often developed in the physician as in 
 the priest, that some strange tie, born of the past, 
 bound Lamore's love as it did his loyalty to the 
 chateau. What matter it then, the work piling 
 up for him; the delayed convention papers only 
 half finished, the hospital clinics unattended? 
 Let the clinics and the convention papers wait; 
 let the work pile up and up until it was a huge 
 mass that only a giant will and a giant intellect 
 could fight through at last. Lamore had sent for 
 him Lamore leaned on him and needed him as 
 in the early days he had leaned on and needed the 
 
 363
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 young captain in the regiment If it was the first 
 time that the favor was his, it should not be the 
 last, provided Lamore said the word. So he rode 
 in the great car with the Comtesse the full length 
 of the Island's twenty miles and back ; and walked 
 the terrace in the evening with the tall American 
 with the liquid voice, and watched the women with 
 the child Anthony, while he lounged in the garden 
 smoking his cigar. In the evening the great car 
 shot down the heights and stopped before Lamore's 
 door and brought him back to dinner to cross 
 swords of wit with the chatelaine, who was always 
 charming always gracious. Later perhaps La- 
 more and himself would play chess. Lamore, who 
 for years had made the faces of men a study that 
 he had reduced almost to a science, now searched 
 a human face in vain. He had summoned his 
 friend here because of his skill in ferreting out 
 obscure cases of disease that eluded others, and 
 he had fancied that on the evening of the first day 
 he would there read some clue, but Bernard Du- 
 port's face was inscrutable. So the days passed 
 until the week was ended, and the Comtesse gave, 
 with sincere regret, the orders for the tasks at- 
 tending the departure of her guest. He had 
 stepped into the life of the chateau, into the brood- 
 ing peace resting there, as naturally as though he 
 had known the chateau and its inmates all his life. 
 Greatness had set her seal and sign on him and 
 he was completely hers too great to regard his 
 talents as a personal thing of pride, holding them 
 
 364
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 for the service of the world; too great to demean 
 himself and hide, from the titled men and women 
 that he moved among, with shame or denial or de- 
 ceit, his peasant origin. He never alluded to it 
 deprecatingly ; never boasted of it, that one might 
 judge the greatness of the height to which he had 
 climbed by the abyss from which he had come, 
 but partly from instinct, partly from the lessons 
 he had learned from Pierre Lamore, he had built 
 the structure of his life on it, as a man builds upon 
 a rock. The whole world knew him or might 
 have known him by a word of inquiry for what 
 he was, for what he had become; the Comtesse 
 herself knew it even as she placed at his disposal 
 the suite that once had been occupied centuries ago 
 by the great Louis and kept only for distinguished 
 strangers, yet she marveled at the stories she had 
 heard of his hungry, barefooted boyhood in the 
 Pyrenees, and it seemed to her that not the great 
 Louis himself could have bidden her farewell at 
 the entrance to the chateau with a pride, a bearing 
 and a grace that excelled his own. 
 
 She stood by Blair Martin's side watching La- 
 more and her departing guest drive to the wharf 
 in the great car. If she had had any thoughts of 
 fear as to her condition, he had allayed them all, 
 even when that morning, because of a request of 
 Lamore, whom she never could refuse, she had 
 asked him for an examination of her lungs. He 
 had gone through the task as quietly as though it 
 had not been the thing he had been waiting for ever
 
 3% THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 since he came, and his face and manner had reas- 
 sured her from the first. Now she turned to the 
 American with a sigh of loss before she went in- 
 doors. 
 
 Lamore and Bernard Duport were silent until 
 they reached the wharf, where the former dis- 
 missed the car. Together the priest and the physi- 
 cian sat down upon the luggage to wait. Fauchet 
 was late and it was too perfect an evening to wait 
 inside the little station the Comtesse had had built 
 there since her return. Duport took a cigar-case 
 out of his pocket, offered it to Lamore, raised Ms 
 eyebrows slightly as the other shook his head, then 
 took one and lighted it in silence. Lamore studied 
 him with grave eyes so long, that finally the physi- 
 cian turned to him with a smile. 
 
 " Well ? " he questioned. 
 
 " Well ? " said Lamore, and his eyes were not 
 to be denied. 
 
 " It is as you feared," said Duport slowly, " it 
 has been creeping on her for months. I knew it 
 before the examination this morning." 
 
 " You have known it all along? " 
 
 " Certainly since my first evening in that 
 most delightful place of entertainment, the cha- 
 teau." He glanced up as he spoke to the great pile 
 of stone upon the chateau heights. 
 
 " How you scarcely seemed to look at her ? 
 Once I fancied you had mistaken me, the way you 
 studied the American." 
 
 " The American she interests me," said Du- 
 
 366
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 port irrelevantly. " As for the other, my dear 
 Pierre, to eyes long trained as mine have been, the 
 ear the stethoscope is of secondary impor- 
 tance. " 
 
 " Yet I spoke to Keller, the chateau physician, 
 about it less than three months ago. He used the 
 stethoscope. He could find little wrong except a 
 general debility." 
 
 Duport laughed a little. 
 
 " Voila ! Keller is a German ! " 
 
 Lamore smiled. It was evident that beneath the 
 jest there was more. He waited. Duport studied 
 his cigar carefully. 
 
 " The gift of a rich but undiscriminating patient 
 
 although a colleague and one of my best 
 friends." He puffed on it slowly, critically; finally 
 rose and flung it far into the waters and began to 
 pace up and down in front of Lamore, who knew 
 that truth was coming. 
 
 " My dear Pierre, it is no reflection on Keller 
 that he found nothing more serious in his diag- 
 nosis nearly three months ago. He was one of 
 my pet pupils at the Academy, and it was for that 
 I recommended his name to you when you wrote 
 to me after the old doctor died. I do not say that 
 the salary offered a fortune for so poor a man 
 
 did not attract him, but I predict great things 
 for Keller, and there will come a day when double 
 the chateau gold will not tie him here. Then 
 he shall come back to Marseilles to me and learn 
 secrets not taught in Materia Medica or even from 
 
 367
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the lecture platform. For such as will read the 
 signs of the time, to them will be given the knowl- 
 edge that they seek. Some of it will require years 
 of effort, of concentration some of it is taught 
 in simple guise. Some day the true physician will 
 be the true philosopher and the psychologist as well. 
 He will diagnose by watching the simplest things 
 of life the walk of a patient, the color of the 
 hands perhaps, and where all material senses fail 
 he will read with a developed instinct as well 
 trained as is to-day his eyes, his ears, his hands." 
 
 He paused before Lamore, who still sat on the 
 luggage, immovable, looking out to sea. In the 
 distance a quarter of an hour away perhaps 
 he could just discern Fauchet's new boat rounding 
 the point that partly hid Grenette. 
 
 " As to the little Comtesse there is really 
 nothing that one can grasp at as yet," the doctor 
 went on. " We cannot say the seed has been 
 planted while it yet rests on the bosom of the wind 
 but the wind is the tendency the wind is near. 
 The gravest symptom that I noted that I most 
 often wage my fiercest war against is her utter 
 indifference to her life, though well concealed 
 bien well concealed ! " 
 
 He paused. Lamore rose and joined him and 
 together they walked the little wharf, keeping step. 
 
 " I did not study the tall American with the 
 beautiful voice entirely from curiosity or ad- 
 miration, although she excites both. It may be 
 that through her Madame the Comtesse will be re- 
 
 368
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 stored. She is steadfast. She has the quality of 
 uncompromising truth stronger than any woman 
 I have ever seen except my wife. There rests in 
 her the promise of a love and of a soul-fulfilment 
 more marvelous than the physical growth from the 
 embryo to the man. Let the Comtesse lean on her 
 confide in her if she will " the doctor looked 
 keenly at his friend. " All women," he said, 
 " sometimes need a friend ; the peasant woman 
 with her new-born at her breast, as the great lady 
 on the heights in the splendor of her heart-break 
 and her memories." 
 
 Fauchet's tug came still nearer a dark spot 
 upon the shining waters. Both men watched it. 
 On the light breeze was borne to them the faint 
 throb of its engine. 
 
 " But above the friendship and confidences there 
 is something that Madame the Comtesse needs 
 more than all else happiness ! A great shock of 
 happiness, perhaps who knows who knows ! 
 Ah, mon ami, I have known it to do marvelous 
 things." 
 
 Lamore did not answer, but he set his lips 
 tightly and quickened his walk a little. The tug 
 came nearer. 
 
 They did not speak until it had tied up and the 
 gangway had been thrown out and two of the men 
 from the chateau had gotten the luggage aboard. 
 Then the physician and the priest shook hands. 
 
 " Rely on Keller if he is a German," said 
 Bernard Duport with a parting smile. " Trust him 
 
 369
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 he has directions from me. Whenever I am 
 needed I will come again." 
 
 Lamore stood, an immovable figure watching the 
 tug until it was out of sight. 
 
 That night he sent for Hector Stone. 
 
 370
 
 XII. 
 
 THE next afternoon but one was Saturday 
 an afternoon on which the boy Anthony 
 came late. Each week's end he helped his 
 mother sweep up the floor and wipe the wooden 
 benches of the village chapel, built long ago by the 
 Comtesse Clarisse, and where Pierre Lamore had 
 preached and had administered the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment for so many years. The boy sighed as he 
 worked. He was not afraid of toil it had been 
 his portion almost since his birth but the after- 
 noon was hot he wondered why all the Satur- 
 day afternoons seemed hot now and he kept 
 thinking of the grateful shadow of the trees in the 
 chateau garden. Of course the work must be done 
 first especially the work that concerned in any 
 way the good Father whom he loved but the 
 chateau garden. . . . 
 
 Up in the chateau garden Blair Martin sat alone. 
 The Comtesse was resting, and Blair Martin re- 
 membered with a smile that on Saturday after- 
 noons the Comtesse always rested now. It helped 
 to pass the time until Anthony should come. From 
 the chateau heights she looked down at the valleys 
 and the fast ripening vineyards. The houses and 
 the little village church, tipped with its wooden 
 
 371
 
 m TH'E SANCTUARY m 
 
 Roman cross, looked infinitely small and far away. 
 The peasants, too, toiling in .the sun, were specks 
 upon the landscape. How hot the sun must be 
 upon their arms and backs! How slowly, al- 
 most wearily, walked the traveler over the road 
 that wound upward to the chateau park. She 
 watched him curiously. A stranger, perhaps (as 
 she had been weeks ago) on a trip of curiosity 
 from Marseilles or Grenette, or a messenger maybe 
 for the Comtesse. She remembered how primitive 
 in many ways the Island still was. Lamore had 
 told her, almost with a shade of regret in his voice, 
 that the present Comtesse had really been the first 
 to bring modern civilization to the Island. The 
 telephones between the rectory and the chateau, 
 between the chateau and Keller's residence, and an 
 intricate fabric of wiring from the chateau to the 
 numerous houses of those in the Comtesse's em- 
 ploy, were soon to be installed. The Comtesse had 
 even considered the matter of a wireless station 
 for the Island. 
 
 She continued to watch intently the figure of the 
 man walking up the winding road, and frowned a 
 little. The distance was so great and yet 
 
 Presently the turn into the wooded road hid the 
 traveler from her sight and she turned away with 
 a sigh of relief. She would sit and rest a little 
 while on the terrace under the big tree. 
 
 She did not see him enter at the wicket gate and 
 stand there looking around as one in profound 
 thought, or hear his footfall as he came nearer 
 
 372
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 over the grass. By the sun-dial he hesitated and 
 stood there, leaning against it, and he looked at her. 
 Something in the consciousness that she was 
 watched made her turn her eyes from the pages 
 of her book and meet his own. The book slipped 
 to the ground and she slowly rose colorless. 
 
 He neither moved nor spoke, only looked at her, 
 and the look drew her as the magnet draws the 
 steel. He watched her coming; noted the color 
 of her dress, her hair blowing soft tendrils in the 
 wind, the clasping and the unclasping of her hands, 
 the pallor of her face. When she was quite close 
 to him; when the breadth of the sun-dial alone 
 separated them she spoke. 
 
 "You?" she said. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, and he wondered at the 
 whiteness and the beauty of the pearls she wore. 
 
 " Why are you here ? " she said at last with an 
 effort. 
 
 " Lamore sent for me." 
 
 She looked into his face. 
 
 " Why? " she asked again. 
 
 Then it was he knew that he must tell her. 
 
 " Come," he said. " There is much I want to 
 say, and I cannot here. Let us go through the 
 woods up to St. Michael's Rock. There I will tell 
 you." 
 
 She followed him. It never occurred to her to 
 question what he asked. 
 
 High up on St. Michael's Rock he spread wide 
 his handkerchief that she might not soil her dress. 
 
 373
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She smiled faintly at the consideration that remem- 
 bered trivial courtesies when Time stood by with 
 tablet and stylus to mark an epoch in their lives. 
 
 After she was seated he sat down beside her and 
 began to play with some pebbles lying near. She 
 watched him in silence, in a silence that she could 
 not have broken if she would. How strange his 
 face looked. . . . 
 
 He glanced up to her wide, questioning eyes, 
 but his own fell before them and he looked toward 
 the memorial chapel near. 
 
 "Beautiful," he said, "pure Gothic beauti- 
 ful!" 
 
 She heard him, but she waited. 
 
 " It was not here when I was at the Island first," 
 he said. " Then St. Michael's Rock was un- 
 crowned." Suddenly he shook off the mood that 
 had fallen on him and turned to her with his old 
 resolution in manner and in voice. 
 
 " Blair," he said, and she began to tremble as 
 he spoke her name. " Chance perhaps I should 
 say Fate, who brings to us all our unpaid debts for 
 settlement brought you into my life, too late for 
 the happiness that some men know. That, it seems 
 to me, I could have borne more easily than some to 
 whom such happiness has been denied, because of 
 the views I hold, but it touched your life that 
 meeting, too, and it touched another life of whom 
 I have told you little." 
 
 He broke off and he shook the pebbles in his 
 hand and looked down at them for an instant. 
 
 374
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " You never questioned me of her some na- 
 tures are too big for finite failings like that yet 
 have there not been times in which to your inner 
 consciousness you pictured her? " 
 
 " Yes," said Blair Martin in a low voice. 
 
 " Have you have you ever pictured her as a 
 great lady the owner of great estates the pos- 
 sessor of vast wealth " 
 
 Blair Martin put one hand suddenly to her fore- 
 head, as though it pained her, and pressed it there, 
 but she did not answer him. 
 
 " Or slender, perhaps, and fair to look at gra- 
 cious in her ways as the great ladies are in books ? " 
 
 Blair Martin rose suddenly to her feet. A wave 
 of color swept over her face and receded. Her 
 eyes, intense, commanding, looked at him. 
 
 " A great lady like the Comtesse Cecile de 
 Grandcceur?" she asked quite steadily. 
 
 Stone stood facing her. Slowly the pebbles 
 slipped through his fingers and fell noisily to the 
 ground. 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 The American turned away, her eyes to the 
 ground. Up there on St. Michael's Rock the wind 
 blew steadily against her face as a refreshing 
 draught. It helped to clear her senses and helped 
 her to breathe. By and by she stirred and it seemed 
 as though she groped to move away. 
 
 " My God," she whispered, " my God! " 
 
 He put out his hand and touched her on the arm. 
 
 " Let me help you from the Rock," he said. 
 
 375
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She allowed him to do so, in silence, hardly con- 
 scious of his hold of her that at any other time 
 she would have acutely realized. Except for the 
 pressure of her hand in his, it was the closest per- 
 sonal contact they had known. 
 
 He did not speak, as though appreciating her 
 need of silence, but from time to time he glanced 
 at her face as though to read therein her thoughts. 
 
 Her thoughts! At first they chased themselves 
 across her brain, confused and incoherent, without 
 beginning and leading to no end. Then the motion 
 of walking and the strong pressure on her arm 
 unwavering and gentle as it was strong brought 
 inward composure and control. 
 
 How blind she had been! His wife! His wife, 
 that long ago, in the winter in the Alps, she had 
 known she would some day meet; that their lives 
 would cross as the warp is woven in the woof. 
 The shadowy third Cecile ! She recalled Cecile 
 as the months had revealed her her graciousness, 
 her talents and her charm, and she wondered how 
 it was, as though she were judging the matter as 
 an outsider, just why that charm, those talents and 
 the graciousness had failed to hold him or hav- 
 ing failed, had not the power to win him back. 
 There had been those seven years in Montreal 
 that exile from him from all that life held sacred 
 and most dear! Seven years in darkness that hid 
 the remembrances of the Island of the Angels- 
 the recollection of him! A pity in which there 
 was for the moment nothing personal, stirred in 
 
 376
 
 *B THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 her. What a fate for what a life! . . . She noted 
 now that they were almost at the foot of St. Mi- 
 chael's Rock, and she wondered whither he would 
 lead her. Once she slipped a little and the pressure 
 and support upon her arm increased. . . . Then 
 came hurried torturing memories that burned. . . . 
 She remembered how she had come here. Had 
 Lamore known had Cecile known had Cecile 
 known? Was it because of this that she had asked 
 her here? In those first days there had been that 
 strange reticence on the Comtesse's part that 
 vague distrust on hers ! . . . Stone had he 
 known ? Had they all known but her ? Had 
 she walked blindly into a trap? 
 
 She drew a gasping breath as does a man who 
 has been long under water. All helplessness, all 
 indecision fell from her with that breath and . she 
 became acutely conscious of the touch that led her 
 through the shadowed woods back to the chateau. 
 Very quietly her hand removed his own. 
 
 " I am quite myself again," she said, and she 
 wondered at her own voice so low, so even, was 
 it in spite of her despair. " Thank you for your 
 help thank you for what you have told me. I 
 was blind not to have guessed before." 
 
 " If I could have spared you," he said, " if I 
 only could have spared you this ! " 
 
 " It would have been better if I had been spared 
 earlier," said Blair Martin, staring into the leafy 
 shadows of the woods ahead, " better for us all." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Stone, " I do not know." 
 
 377
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She stopped in her walk. 
 
 " It had been kinder never to have sent me to the 
 Island of the Angels, or having come, spared me 
 from the misery of this my visit to the cha- 
 teau!" 
 
 " Have you not been happy at the chateau ? " he 
 asked in a low voice, studying the ground. 
 
 She laughed a little mirthlessly. 
 
 " As an Arab who treads the hot desert, who 
 struggles towards an oasis only to find it mirage ! " 
 
 He raised his head with a passionate gesture of 
 denial. 
 
 " Blair," he said, " look at me." 
 
 She looked because she could not help it 
 because he had bidden her, and she read truth in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Do you fancy that I sent you here for this 
 that I dreamed you two would come together: 
 sleep under one roof ; eat of the same food ? When 
 you came to the Island, she my wife Cecile 
 was with me in America. One night she came 
 across the little silk bag I had bought from you at 
 the fair on our first meeting you remember the 
 little bag?" He paused for a moment as though 
 waiting for an answer. She nodded. " She found 
 the bag and a long white glove of yours it 
 was full of the odor of the perfume that you always 
 use, of violets, the perfume that I can smell now 
 as I am standing here. She asked me nothing. 
 She simply laid them on my shaving-stand that I 
 might know she had found them, and give an 
 
 378
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 explanation if I wished. I told her the next day. 
 I withheld nothing but your name, for which she 
 never asked. I told her what, until to-day, I have 
 never said to you at least- with my lips that 
 I loved you." 
 
 He broke off suddenly and suddenly turned away 
 and began to walk up and down along the wooded 
 path. His mouth was working a little. Then he 
 came back to her, where she had remained immov- 
 able, standing at the foot of a great tree. She 
 leaned against it for support. 
 
 " After that we remained together until I went 
 on a western tour. It was while I was gone that 
 she returned to the Island of the Angels. To the 
 world we gave the reason of her health and Lori- 
 mer's orders to a warmer climate. To Lamore 
 here I wrote the whole truth. He received the 
 letter after you had come to visit at the chateau. 
 I think that is all," he added. His voice was 
 weary. 
 
 " The Comtesse Cecile did she know when 
 I was asked ? " Blair Martin's voice broke the 
 silence of the woods. 
 
 Stone met her eyes. 
 
 " I do not know," he said. " Do you? " 
 
 " I am not certain yet " 
 
 She did not finish, but he understood. 
 
 " I had thought to let Lamore tell you when the 
 time came. Never in all my hours of pondering 
 and of dreaming had I thought to be the one to 
 come and tell you this. To-day on landing I went 
 
 379
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 direct to Lamore's house. They told me there he 
 was on a sick call at a distant part of the Island 
 and later expected to come here. I came to the 
 chateau in the hope of seeing him and met you 
 instead. I took the chance and failed." 
 
 She looked at him with wistful eyes in which 
 there dwelt more than she was aware. 
 
 " I am glad that it is so," she said simply. 
 
 " His cable in cipher was re-sent from 
 America and reached me in Marseilles early this 
 morning. I had just time to make connections 
 here." 
 
 "The cable, I do not understand." 
 
 " Lamore wired me night before last the result 
 of Duport's visit here. He seemed to think that 
 I could help Cecile. In what way I do not know. 
 I was not in America I left there a fortnight 
 ago for Marseilles. The cable made little differ- 
 ence except that it found you unprepared. I was 
 coming to the Island anyhow." 
 
 " You were coming why ? " 
 
 She regretted the question as soon as it was 
 asked, and would have recalled it, but he shook his 
 head. 
 
 " After all, why should you not know ? Let us 
 be truthful with each other and with her. I 
 came first because it seemed to me I owed it to 
 Cecile to help her, if I could, win back peace if not 
 happiness. You believe me when I tell you this 
 my first reason ? " 
 
 " I believe you," she said, and her voice was 
 
 380
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the voice of the woman who had spoken to him one 
 Sunday afternoon in the little tea-room at home. 
 
 " Ah I might have known. Sincerity can be 
 judged only by sincerity, although some would 
 doubt that I would have come to the Island if you 
 had not been here. Yet and I would not be 
 honest with myself or you, did I try to deceive 
 myself into the belief that the hope of a sight of 
 you meant nothing to me. It has been the hope 
 of that sight of you that sometimes I think has 
 kept me from going mad." 
 
 On the outskirts of the woods, near to the wicket 
 gate, they paused, and it was Blair Martin who 
 first broke the silence. 
 
 " Let me return to the house alone." 
 
 " As you will," he said. He took her hand in 
 parting and bent over it before he let it gently fall. 
 
 She left him by the stone bench where each day 
 Cecile waited for the boy Anthony. She wondered 
 what time it was. If Cecile would soon be coming 
 here? 
 
 As she skirted the great garden Lamore's voice 
 arrested her. It was anxious, and his face more 
 troubled than she had ever seen it. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, I have been searching for you 
 for an hour. The servants told me you were in 
 the garden, and when I come I find only an empty 
 chair an unread book." 
 
 He tried to smile a little, but she knew that it 
 was forced. 
 
 381
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Almost constantly for two days I have been 
 with a dying peasant. I came as soon as I could. 
 There is something that I feel that I must tell you 
 about a cablegram I sent from Grenette to 
 Hector Stone." 
 
 She felt herself beginning to tremble. She felt 
 that she must get over the interview quickly and 
 be alone. 
 
 " Mr. Stone is here." 
 
 Lamore stared at her. 
 
 " I do not quite understand you, Mademoiselle. 
 I only cabled to him late night before last after 
 Duport left. America is many miles away." 
 
 " He did not come from America, Father. He 
 was on his way he was in Marseilles when 
 your cable was forwarded." She turned from him 
 as though all had been said. 
 
 " You have seen him since he landed, Mademoi- 
 selle ? He has told you ? " 
 
 " Yes, Father." 
 
 She forced herself to look him in the face, and 
 neither the lips quivered nor the eyelids, but for 
 the pity of it for the stricken woman's soul that 
 looked from their depths he glanced down. 
 
 " He is here at the chateau? " 
 
 " At the wicket gate, Father, by the stone bench 
 hidden by the trees." 
 
 She turned to go and he did not detain her. 
 
 He watched her as she entered the chateau. He 
 guessed something of the battle raging behind those 
 steady eyes. 
 
 382
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She walked through the great hall and up the 
 wide stairs, and it seemed to her each step she took 
 was weighted as with lead. She had come to the 
 Island thinking to find peace, and the Angels whom 
 the peasants prayed to as guardians of the Island 
 had laid a sword in her hands instead. 
 
 It was the same night that Lamore, seated in his 
 study, heard a knocking on the door. Marie and 
 the boy Anthony had long ago retired, and in won- 
 der Lamore rose to his feet and picked up a lamp. 
 It was another sick call perhaps some child in 
 need an infant to be hastily baptized. 
 
 He opened the door and stood a little to one 
 side. Across the threshold Hector Stone passed in. 
 
 The priest looked at him questioningly. 
 
 " It was as I thought," he said, " in spite of 
 Duport. Duport may be right he probably is 
 but, Father, she cannot, will not, take the little hap- 
 piness that I can bring her. It is not enough 
 that feeble semblance of a sacred thing. / do not 
 can you blame her? " 
 
 Lamore shook his head. 
 
 " It was a hope a chance yet I who knew 
 her might have known," he answered. 
 
 Stone entered the little study. 
 
 " May I rest a while until Fauchet is ready? " 
 
 " Fauchet ? He is making an extra trip to- 
 night?" 
 
 " Yes, and I go with him. There is nothing to 
 detain me here much to take me away." 
 
 383
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 He met the eyes of the priest unashamed. Great 
 love is like great sorrow; the all-purifying flame of 
 its mystic alchemy leaves nothing which the soul 
 refuses as unworthy to be built into the great tem- 
 ple of itself which shall eternally endure. 
 
 " Is there nothing that can bring her peace 
 and happiness ? " he asked after a moment. And 
 he thought only of Cecile. 
 
 Lamore drew his hand slowly along the edge 
 of his desk and looked down at it thoughtfully. 
 
 " I do not know," he said. " There is a child 
 here a peasant boy. He is strangely like the 
 boy you and Cecile lost. She is learning to lean on 
 him for happiness, and he may teach her much. I 
 think she loved him from the first time she saw 
 him, but the love she bears him, the happiness she 
 may get from that comradeship is not the happi- 
 ness of which Duport thought. It will never keep 
 her tied to earth." 
 
 By and by Stone rose, and Lamore went with 
 him to the pier and watched him, by the aid of his 
 big lantern, board Fauchet's boat. He thought of 
 the Comtesse and of the American as the engine 
 started and the tug began to move slowly from 
 the wharf. From the deck Stone waved his hat 
 to him. The intricate pattern on which he had 
 been working to which Duport and Stone had 
 lent their aid had proved too difficult for his 
 hands and spoke of the fallibility of man. With a 
 sigh he turned and retraced his steps to the Rectory. 
 
 384
 
 XIII. 
 
 IN a hotel on the summit of the Schynige- 
 Plarre Blair Martin sat by the window in her 
 room waiting for the mail. Her eyes, fixed 
 on the scene before her, seemed hardly conscious 
 of it the wonder of the meadows, the dun-col- 
 ored cattle peacefully grazing below her, near the 
 half-way station of Breitlauenen, or the peaks that 
 rose clear-cut against the summer sky. For weeks 
 she had been here, had studied the meadows and 
 the mountains in their every mood. She had 
 \valked the pastures in the light of sunset; she had 
 climbed the Gummihorn and found upon the top, 
 with the aid of Robert, her Swiss guide, the rare 
 Martagon lily, now so seldom seen. She had rested 
 there, basking in the sunshine, literally lying on a 
 bed of flowers, wondering why the Alps no longer 
 gave her rest. From the shadow of the big hotel 
 she had seen the night fall with its mystery and 
 its beauty on the snow peaks outlined against the 
 sky; had later watched through the big telescope 
 for the chamois coming out of their hiding places 
 in the rocks to seek their evening meal. 
 
 She was keenly sensitive, as she had always been, 
 to the wonder of Nature, the Great Architect, but 
 she had begun to long, as she never had before, for 
 something for some one to lean on ; for some 
 
 385
 
 one to whom she had a right to turn and who in 
 turn needed her as well. True, in the adjoining 
 room sat Hannah, the ever faithful, who had at 
 her call turned her back on the Devonshire that 
 she loved with the passion that increasing age feels 
 for the scenes of youth, but there were moments 
 when she wondered if Hannah understood her as 
 well as Toinette. She could count Hannah's serv- 
 ice almost by the years of her life, and Toinette 
 why, she had only known Toinette a few months. 
 
 She wondered if she would ever see the Island 
 again, and she thought it doubtful. Sometimes it 
 seemed as though a force stronger than her own 
 will was forcing her back there and she resisted 
 almost passionately. Some day she would forgive 
 perhaps perhaps. . . . There had come to her no 
 word from the Island since she so suddenly left 
 the day after she had met Stone there. It was 
 as though her life and the life of the Island were 
 as things apart. Yet once when she had been in 
 need the Island had welcomed her. . . . 
 
 There was a knock on the door and she turned 
 listlessly to see a servant bearing her mail to her 
 on a wooden tray. She took the letters there 
 were only two indifferently. The mail meant 
 nothing to her these days, except a dressmaker's 
 bill or a remittance from her bankers in Paris, or 
 perhaps a note from some slight acquaintance in 
 America who wished to keep up the remembrance 
 of casual meetings for what Blair Martin could 
 do for her socially or otherwise. 
 
 386
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 The servant closed the door deferentially behind 
 him. The fees of the tall American with the gray 
 eyes were always liberal, and where patrons were 
 so inclined, the servitors should have just regard 
 for nerves that jangled from the hasty slamming 
 of a door. 
 
 She let the letters fall from her hands. She 
 did not even care to see whom they were from, and 
 for a while they lay forgotten in her lap. Then 
 she picked one up and fingered it, letting her eyes 
 rest on the postmark and its inscription, and gave 
 a sudden cry as she read the well-known hand- 
 writing. It was from her father the first sign 
 in all these months from home. She tore it 
 open, and it seemed to her her hands were all 
 thumbs, so awkward was she in her haste. She 
 could not read it at first, although she brought it 
 up close to her eyes, because of the mist there. 
 There were no tears in her eyes she had forgot- 
 ten when last she had cried, it had been so long 
 ago but the mist was there and would not lift 
 at her will. Her father ! When she had permitted 
 herself to think of him it had been with a sense of 
 loathing and disgust. All through Europe on her 
 travels, when her identity had become known 
 when she had been pointed out as the great mag- 
 nate's daughter she had drawn within herself, 
 ashamed. It might be that the letter had been writ- 
 ten on the eve of the marriage he had threatened, 
 and after he had blackened still further the name 
 he had given to his only child and the mother who 
 
 387
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 was dead. The mist that had begun to clear set- 
 tled over her vision again. . . . When she was 
 able, she unfolded the pages and began to read. 
 It was characteristic of her and of the control and 
 reticence she had inherited from her Scotch father, 
 that once having begun she did not pause until 
 the pages had all been turned and she had replaced 
 the letter in its envelope. The letter, dated at the 
 Anchorage, read : 
 
 " BLAIR MY BAIRN : I write this with little 
 hope of its soon finding you. For the last two 
 months I have been trying to discover your banker 
 (which was a more difficult task than it seems), 
 and to him I must trust this letter. He will use 
 his own time and discretion in forwarding it to 
 you in the usual way of bankers. You may 
 perhaps, if you care to let your mind dwell on a 
 past that was after all not all unhappy, remember 
 my dislike to that most obnoxious but necessary 
 branch of finance. 
 
 " I have heard nothing from you since you left 
 it has seemed to me longer than a year. I have 
 run across no one who has seen you, heard of you, 
 or tracked you down while ' doing Europe.' I 
 hardly expected to hear of you in the usual beaten 
 paths of travel, but in these modern days I would, 
 a year ago, have thought it an utterly improbable 
 thing that the earth could so successfully swallow 
 up a good-looking young woman like yourself and 
 a humble old maid, -unless indeed one resorted to 
 
 388
 
 the secret-service men. Of late I have even ques- 
 tioned Brewster, who for so long has wooed Han- 
 nah with a perseverance that in the world of finance 
 would surely have won for him his spurs. But if 
 Brewster knows anything which I am pretty sure 
 he does he very successfully plays the clam. I 
 often marvel at the devotion of the servants for 
 you in this age of fickleness, and I have remem- 
 bered that Hannah, in spite of her loyalty to you, 
 was one on whom I could rely did any ill befall you. 
 " Therefore I take it for granted that you are 
 well. I have often wondered if you were happy; 
 ever wished to see the Anchorage or Ajax per- 
 haps, or the mimosa tree the three of us planted 
 before your mother died. The gardens I have 
 never seen them look better, although Thomas is 
 morose; Ajax shows signs of age, but the mimosa 
 tree is wonderful. It is strange what friends the 
 mimosa tree and I have gotten to be. I spend a 
 good deal of my time at the Anchorage now. I 
 am beginning to feel that when a man gets along 
 in years, as I am doing, it is just as well to let up 
 a little, and the new manager promises well. You 
 have not heard, perhaps, that I have pensioned Jen- 
 kins? He wasn't altogether up to some new inno- 
 vations I wanted to try in the mills, and really 
 seemed glad to rest. It strikes me that weariness 
 is getting to be pretty near the keynote of modern 
 existence in America. Hector Stone is, I believe, 
 the only man I ever saw who does not seem to 
 know fatigue. He's still an enigma to me, and I 
 
 389
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 still contend that his views (up to a certain point) 
 are barbaric and socialistic, but sometimes I have 
 wondered if he has not a finer grasp on things than 
 most men. I have seen him seldom, and if by any 
 chance he knew your whereabouts he never told. 
 After all there is no reason, I suppose, why he 
 should know. His marriage was a great surprise 
 to me. I fancied once oh, well, it doesn't mat- 
 ter what I fancied. Old men are old fools, I sup- 
 pose. His wife is in poor health and living some- 
 where in the south of France. I understand that 
 he has recently joined her. I confess I am a bit 
 curious as to the woman Hector Stone would 
 choose. I saw him a week before he sailed. It 
 seemed to me he looked worried and older. He's 
 doing big work in his own particular line here in 
 America the press and the people are mention- 
 ing him for District Attorney or even Governor. 
 He's on the high crest, and yet he looks old and 
 troubled. It may be his wife's poor health. He 
 carries his success with a better balance than any 
 man I ever saw. Success is a wine. Most of us 
 who drink of it find it as insidious as absinthe. We 
 take a little more to dream more dreams, and if 
 the dreams are not to our liking big enough 
 perhaps we drink again until we are drunk. . . . 
 I wonder why I am writing so to you? I doubt 
 if this letter ever reaches you, or if it does, whether 
 you have not destroyed it before you have reached 
 these maudlin ideas of an old man. ... I won- 
 der has it ever entered into your conception of 
 
 390
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 things, the nature of a man who has been drugged 
 by success ? Could I, I wonder, who all my life 
 have worked, not studied tell you in a few brief 
 sentences something of the temptation of the aver- 
 age man in the world of finance to-day? You may 
 have thought all these things over in the months 
 past and you may see it from another standard. 
 I do not doubt that the standard will be higher than 
 that to which I have conformed my life. Has it 
 ever occurred to you that a man's standard is in 
 proportion to his development? It is one of the 
 many thoughts given me by Stone. ' Growth,' he 
 says ' growth all growth always ! ' I asked 
 him once what growth he found in the degenerate 
 and the criminal. He said that in his years of work 
 among nien of all types and of all strata of society 
 he had never met one that was not possessed of a 
 ruling passion. It might be lust of flesh, or lust 
 of gold, or jealousy of wife or child, or pure love 
 without a stain. He called it the Center of Pro- 
 portion. He claims it is the standard to which men 
 conform their lives the sinner as the saint ; the 
 ignoramus as the sage. Is it true, I wonder? Is 
 it eternal growth because it is eternal experience? 
 Do we unconsciously, by the law of balance, adjust 
 our lives by it and judge the world and men by 
 the measure of ourselves? If so, it shuts out com- 
 petition as to standards although we may never 
 see it. ... I have had long hours in which to 
 think since you left me, and while there is much in 
 Stone's philosophy that I cannot grasp perhaps 
 
 391
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 would not grasp if I coold, since we are utterly 
 different types yet he and his work interest me 
 immensely. I am trying on a very small scale 
 of course some of his ideas as applied to the 
 question of labor. The manager is a friend of 
 Stone's, and while I do not give him the leeway 
 in these matters that some radicals think I might, 
 he seems satisfied that they should be tested out in 
 a small way. They could never become a part and 
 parcel of my life as they are a part and parcel of 
 his life and Stone's, and so I leave it much to him 
 within limits. ... It is one of the many dis- 
 tractions I have sought in your absence. Last fall 
 I took enough time to cross the ocean. Somewhere 
 in Europe you were the rest interested me little. 
 The hotels except in London were execrable 
 and exorbitant; perhaps because my coming was 
 heralded according to the abominable methods of 
 the modern press. The food was not to my liking; 
 the cabbies impertinent, and the little town near 
 Glasgow where I was born quite changed. Neither 
 am I up to European art. The museums are tire- 
 some with their dried mummies and their coarse, 
 wooden, peasant-faced Madonnas and saints. Once, 
 long ago, the night that you were born, I saw in the 
 face of your mother a divinity that was enough for 
 me. She was my religion, although she had so frail 
 and poor a worshiper, and I have judged by her. 
 She has been my Center of Proportion as far as 
 women were concerned. No one ever came near to 
 that ideal but you. ... I fancy I can see you smile 
 
 392
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 with the scornful look upon your face that was on 
 it that morning in the garden . . . yet, Blair, it is 
 true it is true ! You will say that the money 
 and the power has been, still is, my Center of Pro- 
 portion, and in a measure you perhaps are right. 
 It is only in silly novels, written by dreamers or 
 young girls who know nothing of real life, where 
 the traits of a lifetime are changed by the hero's 
 words or a woman's smile; where the deep-dyed 
 villain becomes suddenly the wishy-washy penitent, 
 and where the man who has amassed a fortune by 
 work that has become at once his passion and the 
 real pleasure of his life who has drunk deep of 
 power, success and fame, is willing to put the cup 
 aside. The passion for power is an intoxicating 
 thing a disease if you will and no one but 
 the man who has controlled vast enterprises, 
 thought out vast schemes for aggrandizement, 
 wrestled with the chances of fate, and seen the 
 balance waver, can know how the fascination of 
 the game grips and becomes part and parcel of his 
 life. Yet when one is growing old, and the dark- 
 ness that no faith has ever come to break steals from 
 the night of time, a man is something of a kid again. 
 It was a woman's breast that sheltered him at first ; 
 it is a woman's heart he needs toward the close. 
 
 " I ask of you nothing that you do not care to 
 give I have no desire for you to think me other 
 than I am, since I am what I am. This much 
 at least I have learned from Truth; but if from 
 your Center of Proportion you can see things as 
 
 393
 
 *g THE SANCTUARY f* 
 
 they are, judge them still by your high standard 
 and yet remember that the standards of others are 
 not (cannot of necessity be in their non-develop- 
 ment) the standards of yourself, which is in pro- 
 portion to your personal growth, I shall be glad, for 
 it will mean that you will come home again." 
 
 The letter was signed by the well-known signa- 
 ture, that had lost nothing of its power, and was 
 without one term of endearment except the Scotch 
 word at the beginning. 
 
 She replaced it in its envelope, and the gesture 
 was one of infinite longing and pity, and she laid 
 it on the table by her side, staring down at it. 
 
 Then something white in her lap attracted her 
 attention, and she slowly picked up the other letter 
 that had come, and broke the seal. She had for- 
 gotten it. She smoothed out the sheets there 
 were only two and the message was brief. It was 
 in Lamore's hand. Like her father's it held but 
 little appeal, but it stated facts, and when she had 
 read it, so potent was the spell that it had wrought, 
 she forgot her father and all the world except that 
 spot upon its surface the Island of the Angels 
 and the woman there. 
 
 She rose swiftly to her feet and went to Han- 
 nah's door and called her. Some note in her voice 
 made the old woman, who was nodding in her 
 chair, rise, wide awake, at once. 
 
 ' The trunks, Hannah ; let us get at the trunks ! " 
 
 Hannah looked at her with hurt eyes. 
 
 394
 
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 " Where are we going now ? " she asked, and 
 her tone was a mixture of fatigue and patience. 
 
 Blair Martin smiled. For an instant she laid a 
 hand upon the bent shoulders. 
 
 " You are to go back to Devonshire, you good 
 old soul, after you have gotten me off for the 
 Island." 
 
 Hannah regarded her with stern eyes. 
 
 " The Island ! One would think it was your 
 home, Miss Blair, the way you love the Island." 
 
 Blair Martin looked up from some business pa- 
 pers she had begun to sort on the table. She did 
 not know that her hand touched her father's letter. 
 
 " You will wait for me in Devonshire, won't 
 you?" she asked in the tone that Hannah never 
 could resist. " When when something that I 
 have to do there is over I will join you, and then, 
 Hannah, we will go home." 
 
 The old woman stared. 
 
 " You mean " she said, and then broke off. 
 She suddenly bethought herself of Brewster. 
 
 Blair Martin fastened together some business 
 correspondence with an elastic band. For the first 
 time she was judging life as it was, unconscious 
 that in so judging she had by growth raised her 
 Center of Proportion. 
 
 " I mean to the Anchorage," she said slowly. 
 " I mean back to Ajax and all the old servants, 
 and the garden and the mimosa tree. I mean home 
 to my father." 
 
 395
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE harvest of the vineyards had been gath- 
 ered when Blair Martin returned to the 
 Island of the Angels. She was shocked 
 at the change in Cecile, and the first night of her 
 return she could, not sleep for remembering it. 
 She had come back in humbleness, as a little child 
 returns home to acknowledge its mistake, and 
 Cecile had met her at her own level. If she had 
 feared repulse, remembering their last interview 
 and the stinging reproach with which she had cast 
 the dust of the chateau from her, it vanished at 
 the moment that she met Cecile' s grave, question- 
 ing eyes. Indeed in those first days, in spite of 
 failing bodily endurance, it seemed as though 
 there were times in which Cecile was the stronger 
 of the two. If the shadow of an impending loss 
 lay upon Blair Martin's face, it was Cecile who 
 charmed her back to cheerfulness by her bril- 
 liant mind, by the keen wit and humor of her 
 tongue. Then there came a time it was after 
 Duport had made his second trip, the reasons for 
 which this time he took no trouble to conceal 
 that she awoke as from an evil dream and there 
 stirred in her the fighting blood of her father's 
 Scottish clan. When that came she threw herself 
 
 396
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 with all the broadness of her nature into a self- 
 appointed task. She sat beside Cecile's bed, the 
 room in shadows that only the moonlight broke in 
 long shafts of light, and hummed the slumber songs 
 of the blacks of her mother's land. She read to 
 her beneath the trees the songs of France in 
 the beauty of originals, her perfect accent and her 
 modulated voice making the listening a delight. 
 When Cecile grew restive from the weakness that 
 she found harder to bear than physical pain, Blair 
 Martin would slip away to the great music room 
 and take from its case her violin, knowing that 
 the sonatas of Beethoven or bars of Handel that 
 she played could be heard upon the terraces, and 
 would bring Cecile as surely as the magnet draws 
 the steel. Cecile, on joining her, would sometimes 
 open the great piano, and together they would play 
 some well-known concerto ; sometimes she the 
 Comtesse played alone, and it was the American 
 who listened, marveling at the strength in those 
 frail hands that had of late found the embroidery 
 needle heavy. She learned much from the French 
 woman's interpretations of the masters, much of 
 mental and spiritual benefit, from watching the 
 swift changes on that expressive face. The Com- 
 tesse often played the Russian air now repeating 
 it over and over as a cloistered sister in adoration 
 before the Blessed Sacrament in some dim chapel, 
 tells over and over the beads that hang from her 
 girdle. Schubert she never played. 
 
 So the days went on. Each afternoon after the 
 
 397
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 work was done and for some reason Lamore 
 shortened the work now the child Anthony 
 climbed the heights, and as by a tacit understand- 
 ing between the American woman and the French 
 priest, the Comtesse and the boy were always left 
 alone together. Lamore, in his study in the valley 
 or before the sanctuary of St. Michael's on the 
 Rock, would then kneel and pray perhaps look 
 up to the great window above the altar where, lean- 
 ing on his spear, the Archangel Warrior looked 
 down on him through marvelous tints of green and 
 red and blue and gold. The window held but two 
 figures the Archangel and a boy child in front 
 holding aloft the helmet of the leader of the heav- 
 enly hosts. The peasant little Anthony Carrere 
 had posed for it. Long, long Lamore might 
 kneel here, while the real little Anthony was walk- 
 ing the winding garden paths with the last Com- 
 tesse of the line, long he might kneel drinking in 
 the message of St. Michael's, at first too tired or 
 too anxious to find prayer coming readily to his 
 lips, until, soothed by its peace, his soul steeped in 
 it, he would emerge from the side entrance of St. 
 Michael's, as likely as not to find the American 
 sitting waiting for him on the stone steps, gazing 
 out to sea. They saw each other much these days, 
 as though a mutual interest and a mutual fear 
 bound them in some close tie. On such occasions, 
 coming from the cool splendor of those Gothic 
 arches, from the strange influences that dwelt there, 
 he would note a yearning in her eyes, as he locked 
 
 398
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 the door behind him, of which she was not aware. 
 Nor was she aware how in those days he was 
 weighing her heart and soul on the delicate scales 
 of spiritual perception, but he never asked her to 
 St. Michael's. Together they would descend the 
 heights, as they had that day when she had first 
 heard him play and seen the Dream Bridge built 
 of the music, span the southern sky. Sometimes 
 they walked in silence that neither felt it necessary 
 to break. Sometimes they talked together, and 
 their talk was mostly of Cecile. He never ques- 
 tioned her as to her sudden leaving or why she had 
 returned, and it was she who one day abruptly 
 brought the subject up. 
 
 " You have never asked me why I came back 
 to the Island, Father," she said, as they crossed 
 the clearing to the wooded slopes. 
 
 He smiled a little from his height at her. 
 
 " I never thought it necessary, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " You knew it was your letter sent to the 
 Schynige-Plarre, that brought me ? " 
 
 " Not entirely. I fancied you would have re- 
 turned without the letter perhaps not so soon 
 but returned certainly." 
 
 She sighed a little and looked off toward the sea 
 before the woods closed the vision from her eyes. 
 
 " I fancy you are right. I was not altogether 
 happy at the Schynige-Plarre. I had a strange 
 fancy that the Island was calling me." She 
 laughed in a half-ashamed way, but Lamore did 
 not even smile. 
 
 399
 
 " The Island has a strange way of calling her 
 own, Mademoiselle or perhaps it is St. Michael's 
 I have felt the call whenever I have been in 
 foreign lands," he said gravely. 
 
 " I do not know whether it was entirely the 
 Island, Father. I think it was more Cecile and 
 her need." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, your coming has brought hap- 
 piness to the chateau, and our lady needs all of 
 happiness that we can give her." 
 
 Blair Martin's mouth trembled a little. 
 
 " It has seemed to me of late that I could not 
 give her happiness enough. I was very cruel in 
 my sudden leaving " 
 
 She broke off. It would have been a relief if 
 he had questioned her, but he did not. His steady, 
 even footfall on the pine needles and the rustling 
 undergrowth near the trail alone broke the stillness 
 of the clear, bright air. 
 
 " Why or how she hurt me has no part in this 
 confession. It is enough that I thought she had 
 wounded me so I never could forgive. My nature 
 was too small to overlook the hurt my pride too 
 unyielding to condone. Of late, Father, it has 
 seemed to me that the one unpardonable offense 
 in the sight of the Most High must be the pride 
 that warps our souls as metal is warped in the fur- 
 nace heat." 
 
 " You forget, Mademoiselle, it is the furnace 
 heat that shapes the metal into things of beauty 
 and of power. We grow only by experience, Made- 
 
 400
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 moiselle. It was for experience that the Great Love 
 first evolved the Eternal Scheme of Things, that 
 man might pit his finite strength against its force 
 and prove the latent divinity within him." 
 
 She flushed a little. 
 
 " It is because I would not have you think me 
 better than I am that I told you." 
 
 " I have never thought you other than you are," 
 Lamore said aloud, meeting Blair Martin's eyes. 
 To himself he said, " No wonder that he loves her." 
 
 He helped her in silence over a huge boulder that 
 lay in their path. 
 
 " Sometimes in your strict honesty and self- 
 accusations you remind me of my little Anthony," 
 he said at length. 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " Would that I had the child-heart of your little 
 Anthony. He interests me strangely. I have 
 dreamed strange dreams of him of late what 
 will his future be? " 
 
 " I know not, Mademoiselle. A child's nature 
 is unformed, yet sometimes I have fancied he would 
 carry on my work here in the years that lie ahead." 
 
 " I fancy Anthony in some dim way thinks that 
 too, although I doubt if he has ever thought of his 
 life without you or his lady at the chateau." 
 
 She paused a moment before a rustic seat. 
 " Let us rest a while. It is the child's time with 
 Cecile. Sometimes it seems to me she could not 
 love him more if in truth he were the little Count." 
 
 Lamore played with a pine cone he had picked 
 
 401
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 up at his feet. Suddenly his restive hands paused 
 in their task and he looked at the American. 
 
 " Had you ever thought how different things 
 would have been, Mademoiselle, if the little Count 
 had lived? Have you ever thought of the loneli- 
 ness of the great chateau after she is gone ? " 
 
 Blair Martin nodded. 
 
 "Yet I suppose there is an end to all things 
 as stars fall and dynasties fail the line some day 
 would have become extinct. Cecile has told me 
 that even without your church orders, neither you 
 nor Cardinal Venusti are in the line of succession. 
 I fancy if the little Count had lived he would have 
 been by now the counterpart of the little peasant 
 boy, and the little peasant boy says he is to be 
 a priest. . . . Sometimes in my fancies I have 
 seen him, just grown to be a man, walking the 
 chateau gardens in the early morning, or perhaps 
 when all is quiet toward evening, a breviary in his 
 hands." 
 
 " There is an old legend of the Grandcoeurs, 
 Mademoiselle, that says the curse shall end only 
 when a Grandcceur can forgive; only when a 
 Grandcceur can forget then and then only will 
 the strife of the centuries be replaced by peace. 
 And strangely enough, Mademoiselle, it is written 
 in the old records that are still in the chateau 
 library, that the peace shall be bought some day at 
 the hands of a little child." 
 
 She traced a pattern in the pine needles with the 
 toe of her Oxford shoe. 
 
 402
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 11 Since I left America, not so very long ago, I 
 have sometimes felt that I was living in a book." 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 " We are very real," he answered, " all of us 
 our Island and our peasants and our little Anthony 
 and our lady." 
 
 " Your Island and your little Anthony and your 
 lady," she repeated musingly, staring into the shad- 
 ows of the woods, " they are all dear," her voice 
 was tenderer than he had ever heard it. " When 
 I return to America I shall remember it all. When 
 my task here is ended I am going home, you know." 
 
 " I did not know, but I am glad, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " There is work there to do work that in my 
 despair and unbelief I laid aside ; there are wounds 
 to heal and burdens to lift and little children to 
 rescue. It may be that I can help, but even mil- 
 lions, Father, seem so small." 
 
 " It is not the millions, Mademoiselle, that lift 
 the burdens of the world. Millions may endow an 
 university, but it is the men who teach there and 
 who in teaching give themselves, who really serve. 
 The universities will crumble, the endowed libra- 
 ries will burn, and the memory of the men whose 
 millions built them will be as nothing. It is the 
 influence of the books written there the lessons 
 taught the people that will remain, and be 
 poured into the great reservoir of mental and spir- 
 itual force for the uplifting of the world. So will 
 our monuments endure after the marble has been 
 broken and the wood decayed. It is the only 
 
 403
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 earthly immortality worth striving for what 
 Time will leave us. How frail how great is 
 man!" 
 
 She looked in silence on him, at his face lighted 
 as from an inward fire, and she was strangely 
 moved. 
 
 " I shall remember what you say," she answered, 
 " always." 
 
 " Always, Mademoiselle, will my blessing follow 
 you and your work, when you go from us after the 
 task you speak of is ended. May I, because I am 
 your friend, ask you what it is ? " 
 
 Slowly she turned her face to him. 
 
 " It is Hector and Cecile that I may bring 
 them together before I go," she answered. 
 
 It wanted some two hours of sunset when La- 
 more parted from her at the wicket gate. The 
 chateau garden was deserted and there were not 
 even on the terraces any sign of the Comtesse and 
 the child. At the big entrance to the house a maid 
 met her. 
 
 " The Comtesse requests that Mademoiselle will 
 join her by the big window on the north landing." 
 
 Blair Martin mounted the stairs at once and 
 turned down the winding passage that led to where 
 Cecile awaited her. She had not stopped to ques*- 
 tion or to wonder. She found the Comtesse sit- 
 ting on the window-seat of the north stairway, and 
 that commanded a wonderful view of land and sea. 
 She made a lonely, lovely picture with the back- 
 
 404
 
 *B THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 ground of mediaeval grandeur, a basket of keys at 
 her side. She turned and smiled as the American 
 came near, and Blair Martin was struck anew with 
 the nobility of face and bearing. 
 
 " Where have you been, mon amie ? I have 
 waited, oh some time ! I let Anthony go early 
 
 I cannot permit myself to see as much of him 
 as I would wish. I have not held him near me 
 since Duport's last visit here." She looked up at 
 the American, a veiled sadness in her eyes. " Ah, 
 well how is it you say in your great America, 
 ' it is all in the day's work?' I am stronger to- 
 day, and I wanted to go through the house again 
 
 as its chatelaine. I thought you might like to 
 go too." 
 
 She rose from the window-seat and for a little 
 while stood there looking out across the great stone 
 buildings of the chateau down the steep heights 
 to the valleys. Thoughtfully, she let her gaze lin- 
 ger on each familiar thing. She spoke musingly. 
 
 " There, the great gateway through which a king 
 of France rode, and there, the courtyard where 
 Rene, the Crusade Count, drilled his men, and there, 
 where the gardens make a loop, the house used for 
 years by the private confessors of the Grandcceurs 
 
 how they needed them ! The Cardinal in Rome 
 
 he was the last who lived there in my mother's 
 time, before the Church honored him : voila, the 
 house has been closed since, Mademoiselle Fa- 
 ther Lamore being all I need." She smiled a little. 
 " The old chapel under the chateau roof burned 
 
 405
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 and never rebuilt, and for the first time in cen- 
 turies no chaplain for the house ! The Count Rene 
 would declare we were turning heathen." She 
 began to walk slowly down the long corridor, still 
 smiling a little. 
 
 The American helped her up some winding stairs. 
 
 " The Count Rene never dreamed of a St. 
 Michael's." 
 
 " True, mon amie. You have been inside St. 
 Michael's?" 
 
 " No," said the American gently as she helped 
 the Comtesse up the last stair. 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 In silence the American followed the Comtesse. 
 She wondered why the slight figure ahead did not 
 lose her way, so many were the passages, so numer- 
 ous were the turns, so vast the suites she led her 
 through; but the Comtesse never paused except 
 to show her guest rare tapestry or ornament of 
 artistic or historical value with which the chateau 
 was filled. 
 
 " It is priceless," said the American as the Com- 
 tesse took from its scabbard a jewel-hilted sword 
 that hung on the wall of the bedroom once occupied 
 by the great Louis, and which he had left as a gift 
 to the Grandcceurs. " How have you kept the 
 treasures hidden for so long? They would fill a 
 museum bring almost fabulous prices." 
 
 " Strange as it seems, Mademoiselle, there have 
 never been admitted beyond the salons of the cha- 
 teau men and women of the type you mention. 
 
 406
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 It is an unwritten code. We have kept our gifts 
 as we have kept our sorrows, much hidden from 
 the world." The Comtesse replaced the sword in 
 its scabbard with a sure, quick thrust and rehung it 
 on the wall. 
 
 From room to room they wandered, and it 
 seemed to the American that neither the rooms nor 
 the wonders of the chateau would ever be ex- 
 hausted. The chatelaine, upheld by a sudden 
 strength, seemed conscious of no fatigue, but Blair 
 Martin noticed, as they left each treasure-filled, 
 memory-haunted room, the chatelaine lingered and 
 gave one swift, solemn glance around, before she 
 locked each door. 
 
 The glow of sunset had faded from the sky when 
 they mounted the turret steps and half-way up in 
 a little recess paused before an oaken chest. 
 
 With deft fingers Cecile chose the key from her 
 long chain and lifted the lid. Blair Martin watched 
 her as she knelt by the chest, herself seated on one 
 of the steps of the winding stair. She wondered 
 what new marvel was coming next. Her mind 
 was crowded with thoughts of the journey they 
 had made through all the chateau splendor; the 
 great suite hung in crimson for the cardinals of 
 the house; the state chambers once occupied by a 
 king of France, the rooms where the Comtesse 
 Clarisse had lived and died where Cecile had 
 been born the nurseries, with the silent, unused 
 toys as the little Count had left them years ago, 
 and touched by the light of sunset. 
 
 407
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " Ma chere," it was the voice of the little Count's 
 mother that broke upon her re very, "behold! " 
 
 Blair Martin looked up. Before her stood the 
 Comtesse, almost wholly hidden by a huge square 
 banner, whereon was embroidered the Grandcceurs' 
 arms; gold fringe bordered it, and it swept the 
 floor around the feet of the American like a robe 
 of state. 
 
 " What is it? " she asked softly. 
 
 " It is the last great treasure of the house 
 centuries old. It is the Great Banner that flies from 
 the turret when the heir of the chateau dies. See 
 the wonder of the silk and the embroidery and the 
 brightness of the gold thread that has almost out- 
 lived the race and line." 
 
 The Comtesse touched the thing of silk as one 
 might touch a child. Blair Martin neither spoke 
 again nor moved. 
 
 She watched Cecile refold it and she forgot to 
 offer help at the task. The Comtesse replaced it 
 in the chest and knelt regarding it. 
 
 " New," she said, " new, in the time of Rene," 
 and it was as though she were speaking to herself. 
 " Once more it shall fly from the high turret. . . ." 
 
 Blair Martin rose swiftly and knelt beside her 
 and threw her arms around her. The arms held 
 the frail being to her with a sudden strength. 
 
 " Hush ! Hush ! My dear," she whispered 
 sharply. " The Great Banner shall sleep within 
 its chest for years." 
 
 The Comtesse looked long into the face near 
 
 408
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 her own and saw it stricken with emotion. Then 
 she kissed Blair Martin's hair. 
 
 " What matter it, mon amie? " she said, a strange 
 yearning in her voice. " The Banner shall know at 
 last a happier fate. For years it has flown as the 
 sign and symbol of violence and of woe it shall 
 fly once to signify rest for the line, and love, since 
 at last a de Grandcceur has gained a friend." 
 
 Then she rose and closed the lid of the oaken 
 chest and locked it for the last time. 
 
 409
 
 XV. 
 
 IT was Blair Martin who a fortnight later rriet 
 Lamore at the entrance of the chateau. Her 
 eyes, like somber pools in shaded woods, re- 
 flected shadows deep and still. 
 
 " I am glad that you have come. She has been 
 watching for you." 
 
 " She my child has needed me? " 
 
 Blair Martin shook her head. 
 
 " She wants you. She seems to have something 
 to talk to you about. She doubtless needs you more 
 than any one else except perhaps Hector Stone," 
 the voice took on no change. " He is coming. I 
 wrote to him last night from her. But need? I 
 do not think she needs any of us very much. She 
 is very quiet. She seems content. Perhaps it 
 is weakness or " the voice that had not changed 
 at the mention of Hector Stone's name trembled 
 now, " or oh, Father, she talks about the little 
 Anthony she talks about the child she lost " 
 Blair Martin's eyes were turned to him with tears 
 of which she was unashamed. 
 
 He did not speak, and bowed his head in silence, 
 and in silence he left her and crossed the great hall 
 hung with its old tapestries, flanked by its armor 
 of gone and dead de Grandcoeurs. " The last of her 
 
 410
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 race and line," he thought. " A great race in spite 
 of the blot and sin on its escutcheon, and she 
 the daughter of Clarisse the last of all ! " 
 
 He was out on the back terrace now, where habit 
 and instinct told him he would find her. His foot- 
 falls made no echo on the perfect greenness of that 
 well-kept spot, and for a moment he stood regard- 
 ing her, himself unseen. 
 
 She was sitting in a large, low wicker chair, 
 some fine white sewing lying in her lap, where in 
 weariness she had laid it down. Her pale gown 
 of pink shone out like a bit of sunrise against the 
 verdure of the big trees. Her work-bag, a fragile 
 thing of lavender beauty, lay on the grass beside 
 her chair. As though becoming conscious of a 
 presence, she turned her head in his direction, but 
 without haste and without surprise. 
 
 " You were bad very bad not to announce 
 yourself. Did you not know that that ridiculous 
 little Keller, and even the great Duport, said I was 
 not to be suddenly alarmed ? " 
 
 She leaned forward and held out her hand 
 eagerly. 
 
 He crossed the terrace with an answering smile. 
 
 " The same Cecile who, ever since she could but 
 half pronounce my name, has teased and abused 
 me. Nay, do not draw down your mouth so or 
 look so grave. Cannot two play at the little game? 
 And besides, Madame, surely it is the privilege of 
 your sex for you especially, for are you not the 
 Chatelaine of the Island of the Angels does not 
 
 411
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 all this beauty and this peace, and the respect and 
 the devotion of our hearts belong to you? " 
 
 The smile of welcome faded into one of wistful- 
 ness. 
 
 " How well you say what gives pleasure and 
 help," she said in a low voice. " Yet in these last 
 months I have thought, dearer than the beauty of 
 the Island of the Angels, sweeter than its peace, 
 more to be prized than the devotion, is the respect 
 of which you speak. I have strange thoughts, here 
 in the sunshine of these gardens overlooking the 
 sea and the vineyards and the homes of my people 
 far below strange thoughts as I look toward St. 
 Michael's and somehow I fancy that all lives 
 have to be built on that respect of others, respect 
 of self as we built St. Michael's on the Rock." 
 
 He sat down in a garden chair near her, leaned 
 his elbow on the arm, his chin in his hand. He 
 was conscious that his presence was a relief as 
 great a relief as was the silence of her heart that 
 she was at last breaking. How often had the great 
 heart of humanity, crushed, bruised, sin-stained, 
 been laid near his own for healing. And she 
 was she not Cecile? 
 
 "It is about St. Michael's that I want to talk 
 to-day St. Michael's and other things. I do not 
 talk much now it tires me and there are so 
 many things to think of, Father ; some of them are 
 beautiful things like the face of a little child 
 or a peasant's gift of flowers and then there are 
 other things that hurt " she made a swift move- 
 
 412
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 ment of pain " does it not seem strange that 
 anything could hurt one in all this beauty and this 
 sunshine ? " 
 
 He followed her gaze. Far out on the waters the 
 white sails of the fishing-boats were shining and 
 swinging idly in the warmth of the late afternoon. 
 A delicious languor enveloped all things. A pale 
 slender moon hung like a curve of light in the 
 changing heavens and shone out behind the gold 
 cross on the steeple of St. Michael's. One low, 
 sweet bird-call echoed in the air. 
 
 " Can you not think, my child, that the Hand 
 that wrought this splendor that gave the gift 
 to you can heal all hurts ? " he questioned. 
 
 She leaned forward suddenly, her elbows on the 
 low arm of her chair, her hands clasped tightly. 
 How white they were, he thought, against the color 
 of her dress. 
 
 " Yes yes but a broken law laws of 
 health of honor and of truth ! " Her voice 
 sank to a whisper. 
 
 "If a child consciously puts his hand in the 
 flame, does he not know he will be burned? If 
 he does not learn the lesson in an easier way he 
 will be forced to by that experience. But is the 
 healing withheld? Men of science will call it the 
 recuperating power of youth, of nature. I call it 
 God. It does not really matter. Are not youth 
 and nature but a part of the Great Force ? " 
 
 ' Yes yes but when the hurt the broken 
 laws touch other lives ? " 
 
 413
 
 " There is nothing in this world in any world 
 of space my child, beyond the touch of the Com- 
 passionate Ones, beyond the ken of the Vast Om- 
 niscience. From chaos is brought order from 
 disorder, harmony; on the wrecks of civilizations 
 and empires are reared others each with their 
 own beauties, their lessons of experience, their 
 records of immortal truths of mortal sins. 
 From the revolutions civic and religious are 
 wrought the involutions of progression and of 
 peace ' He paused for a moment and for a mo- 
 ment it seemed to Cecile he had forgotten her. 
 Then his eyes came back to her face. 
 
 " My child," he said, " as it is with worlds it is 
 with men. All things work together for good. 
 The Eternal Good of all would have us know that. 
 Did it ever occur to you the wonder of a flower's 
 progression toward the light and sun the hidden 
 darkness the struggle to take root ? Some one 
 once said we are in the School of the Infinite, and 
 the Teacher's lessons are according to the meas- 
 ure of our understanding. There are some souls 
 in the great School that have never learned the 
 lesson of pity. They learn it some day when they 
 go to America and watch much of its vast com- 
 merce upheld by the feeble labor of dying children. 
 Blair Martin has seen the children. She has 
 watched others learn the lesson, and gone up to a 
 higher class. There are others who have failed 
 in knowing justice. Hector has told you of them. 
 And so it is with all things truth and honor 
 
 414
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 and true love they are all branches in the 
 School. And we can never learn a lesson that we 
 do not need. If you have hurt another, that other 
 needs that lesson as much as you, although the 
 results on each will be different. It is the Law of 
 Cause, the Law of Effect the one Eternal Law 
 of Justice and of Tenderest Love. There are many 
 ways of looking at it it goes by many names. 
 In India men call it Karma; in Arabia, Kismet; 
 in Europe, men of science, Natural Law, and I 
 I " he broke off. The light of the coming sun- 
 set was upon his face. " I, here, in your Island 
 of the Angels again I call it God." 
 
 He leaned forward in his chair and raised his 
 face toward the glowing sky. By and by shadows 
 appeared and were reflected on the grass and 
 through the trees faint shadows, the first entry 
 by Night into her book of Time. A hundred bird 
 voices broke the stillness with their evening song. 
 
 " Cecile all scholars in the same great School, 
 in different grades. And, my Little One, all of 
 one family all of us everywhere, who at night 
 return to the Heart of the One Father." 
 
 He stopped, and Cecile leaned back in her chair 
 white and still. The pale oval of her face showed 
 out against the trees. For a minute she rested so, 
 as though gathering strength; then she leaned for- 
 ward and looked him in the face. Years ago, as 
 a youth in the Soudan, he had seen a man look so 
 as he went into action. 
 
 " Toward the end, Father, I fancy we see all 
 
 415
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 things clearly like this sunset lighting up this 
 day before it goes to rest. Toward the end ! " 
 
 He did not answer, knowing that his time for 
 speech was past. He waited. 
 
 " Toward the end, all things are made plain 
 all the wrongs and sufferings all the loves. It 
 has only been the hurt to others that has remained, 
 and that, too, is passing since your words," she 
 smiled. 
 
 " It is of the hurt to others that I want to speak," 
 she corrected herself hastily, " that I must speak. 
 I have been months coming to it, Father. Yet of 
 late truth has seemed to be more prized than your 
 regard. Have you ever thought all that your re- 
 gard has been has meant in my darkened life? " 
 
 He looked at her with eyes of tenderest affection 
 and he leaned over and took her hand and held 
 it in a strong, firm grasp. The pressure helped her. 
 
 " Cecile," he said, " my Little One." 
 
 " There is more light now than darkness," she 
 said, " indeed more light than I have ever known 
 except when I was a very little child, and one other 
 time, Father, can you guess when ? " 
 
 " When Hector Stone came into your life," he 
 said. 
 
 " Yes ; but even that was not all joy except 
 that first wild dream of happiness when I forgot 
 forgot what I remembered afterwards the 
 shadow of the curse." 
 
 She was silent a moment, and Pierre Lamore 
 did not urge her by question or by look. He 
 
 416
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 stroked the hand he held as he had once stroked a 
 wounded yearling he had found amidst the crags. 
 
 " I knew of it, like many of my people before 
 me. I can offer no excuse. I do not want to offer 
 any. When one is near the end or is it the 
 beginning " she broke off again. She was tired 
 but she must go on. 
 
 " I was told after the first flush of girlhood. My 
 uncle, my only living relative, hinted at it before 
 he died of madness, but he left the full truth to 
 you. You remember, Father?" 
 
 Did he remember! 
 
 He bowed his head in assent. 
 
 " After all you were in truth the only father that 
 I ever knew. My uncle tried to be kind but he 
 really never understood me, and and, Father 
 Hector never understood me fully, either." 
 
 Pierre Lamore continued to stroke the hand, and 
 his own trembled. He was acutely conscious of 
 the pain caused him by the quiet voice by that 
 broken cry. 
 
 " Even in those days his thoughts, his aims, his 
 ambitions were different from my own. I dimly 
 felt it even then, but I did not care. I only knew 
 I loved him. . . . Sometimes when sitting here I 
 have looked down to the valley and seen the vine- 
 yards lying warm and still, and I have watched a 
 lark soar upwards, leaving it behind. The valley 
 could not hold it, longing for the light and for the 
 upper air. And I have thought that it was a symbol 
 of our lives of Hector Stone's and mine. The 
 
 417
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 valley needed nothing more, but the lark who 
 could blame the lark, pulsing, soaring toward the 
 light!" 
 
 She stopped and seemed to have forgotten him 
 in revery. Her eyes came back to Pierre Lamore's 
 face as he begun to speak. 
 
 " Cecile, neither can one blame the valley. It 
 yielded beauty, fruitfulness and peace, even if the 
 crops sometimes failed, my child. It has been 
 said that we need the brooding stillness of the hills 
 as well as the restlessness of the great ocean. The 
 two together should form the completed picture 
 a man's ambitions should be balanced by a woman's 
 calm, and the two should make but harmony a 
 perfect whole. It was not that, Cecile, that 
 wrought havoc in your lives. There were some 
 essentials lacking." 
 
 " How well you have understood and read our 
 lives, yet, Father, you have not read all." 
 
 She leaned forward in her chair again, and the 
 work that had been lying idle in her lap slipped to 
 the ground, unnoticed by them both. It lay there 
 a spot of clearest white in the deepening shadows 
 of the trees. 
 
 The eyes of Pierre Lamore were fixed on her, 
 half yearningly, half commandingly. He shaded 
 them lest she should notice his emotion, but her own 
 saw nothing. They were cast down. 
 
 " That is true," she said, and her quiet voice took 
 on a new odd strength, " the essentials were lack- 
 ing. Hector never loved me as he might as 
 
 418
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 Hector Stone can love. And I I loved him 
 far too well. I loved him better than I loved truth 
 or honor. I allowed him to marry me not know- 
 ing." 
 
 She flung her arms across the arm of her chair, 
 and pressed her face against them with a terrible 
 cry. 
 
 " I have always known it." 
 
 She raised a white, strained face to his. 
 
 " You have known always ? How ? " 
 
 " Hector never told. He is far too great a soul 
 for that. But there was much that did tell me 
 principally yourself. Did you dream, Cecile," his 
 voice was full of deepest tenderness, " that I, who 
 have known you all your life, could be deceived? 
 Did you not go and meet Hector Stone in Mar- 
 seilles and marry there, knowing I would have for- 
 bidden the sin of deceit although it broke your 
 heart? Better broken hearts than broken honor 
 or blighted children's lives!" Pierre Lamore 
 looked toward St. Michael's, and unseen by her, 
 his face changed swiftly. For one brief instant 
 he saw the chateau gardens as he had known them 
 as a boy, walking there with Clarisse. . . . 
 
 She was leaning back in her chair now, the 
 tense emotion passed. "I might have 
 known you always knew," she murmured. 
 
 " And you were afraid to trust me," said Pierre 
 Lamore. " For years you have eaten out your heart 
 without laying your secret before me. For years 
 I have waited for this hour." 
 
 4TQ
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 "Why?" she said. "Why did you not let me 
 know you knew ? " 
 
 " No man no one not even the Most High," 
 said Pierre Lamore reverently, " has the right to 
 tear aside the covering from a sacred wound, until 
 the stricken heart brings it for healing and for 
 help." 
 
 " Do you know all the rest, too, Father ? How 
 when before the child came, I I was threat- 
 ened with the shadow of. my people's sin, and how 
 in terror I confessed to Hector? Ah, you may 
 have guessed at it, but you never saw the look of 
 loathing and contempt I read for an instant on his 
 face. I saw it, and the horror of it caused the 
 shadow to mercifully blot out all for a little while 
 and when a month later I awoke to clear reason 
 again I awoke to the knowledge that he was still 
 with me, nursing me and surrounding me with the 
 tenderest care, but the look I never forgot." 
 She paused a moment and looked down at her hands 
 in her lap. Her voice, that had been speaking 
 rapidly, became slower and more calm. 
 
 " He never knew the hours I watched his every 
 tone and look, nor the hours when I listened to him 
 talking in his sleep. Once in his sleep he cursed 
 the child and me. 
 
 " I used to pray that the child would be born 
 dead or if living, die the first day of its life, 
 and while he never said it while he gave me all 
 that wealth and care could give, I knew, in his saner, 
 waking moments, he prayed so too. . . . You re- 
 
 420
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 member I came back here, and by and by the boy 
 was born, and he lived. I used to watch him day 
 by day, searching for the faintest shade of the 
 shadow on his face. Ah! do you know what the 
 watching for that shadow meant! And as I grew 
 stronger, I grew to need him as I had never 
 needed in my life before, and I prayed that he might 
 live. Was it selfish, Father?" 
 
 He did not answer and she did not seem to expect 
 him to do so. 
 
 " And as time went on and he saw how much 
 the child had grown to be to me, Hector left us 
 more and more alone together, and I think it was 
 a relief to him. It was about this time that he 
 began planning for his great work in America, but 
 I used to see him sometimes watching the child, and 
 I knew his brightness and his health reassured him. 
 His work took much of his time his attention 
 I made my headquarters in Italy that I might be 
 nearer him in his comings and his goings but he 
 never by a look or word neglected me you under- 
 stand that ? " 
 
 " It would not have been Hector Stone if he 
 had," said Pierre Lamore quickly. 
 
 Cecile smiled a little. 
 
 " Good Father always so to understand! " 
 
 There was a long silence. 
 
 ' Then he made his two months' trip to America 
 and I came here " 
 
 The sunset changed from deepest rose to gold. 
 One by one the birds were going to their rest. 
 
 421
 
 3% THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 " And then the baby died. ... I have grown 
 to be thankful, Father, for that, too." 
 
 From gold the sunset melted into silver into 
 gray. A faint breeze from the sea stirred the 
 branches of the trees. 
 
 " Then, the long night of horror settled down 
 again those years in Montreal seven years, 
 Father. Seven years ! " 
 
 After a while she went on. 
 
 " When I awoke I awoke to a horror more 
 terrible still to the knowledge that I had only 
 found Hector again to lose him. I came home then 
 to St. Michael's and to you." 
 
 " And in all these months, Cecile in all this 
 time you have sought neither my poor help nor 
 the greater help of the Sanctuary." 
 
 " I went to St. Michael's once," she said in a low 
 voice, " alone last Christmas Day. And I un- 
 locked the door with the key that you sent to Hec- 
 tor's care when the chapel was finished. He brought 
 it to me to Montreal and I dimly remember 
 his putting it on a gold chain around my neck and 
 bidding the Mother Superior to let it stay there. 
 It was one of the few things I brought with me 
 on my return." 
 
 "Did you not find peace and comfort there?" 
 Lamore asked. A strange smile was on his face. 
 
 She covered her face impulsively with her hands. 
 
 " I could not bear it, Father. It was the first 
 time I had ever been inside and yet I could not bear 
 it. I did not even see clearly the window to the 
 
 422
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 child over the high altar. I only saw the golden 
 cross upon the Sanctuary door. ... I came away." 
 
 The strange smile faded i from Pierre Lamore's 
 face. 
 
 " I understand, so much better than you dream. 
 . . . Next week, my child, is the feast of the great 
 Michael will you come again, Cecile, and listen 
 to the 'Mass, and take with me the Eucharist 
 Bread?" 
 
 Her mouth quivered a little. 
 
 " It is years since I have eaten of the Food," she 
 said. 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " My sins and they are many a man's 
 wrecked happiness, another woman's heart, my 
 honor and my truth when I come to you 
 again, will you absolve me ? " 
 
 Pierre Lamore's face was grave. 
 
 " My child, there is no shipwreck possible for a 
 life like Hector Stone's no real blow for a soul 
 like Blair Martin's. And the child have you ever 
 thought, Cecile, all that those few brief years 
 meant, the lesson that they brought the glory 
 that they left?" He raised his eyes and looked 
 toward St. Michael's. One lingering cloud of gold 
 and gray rested in the heavens behind the cross. 
 As they watched, the beacon light was lit, and hung 
 there high up on the cliff to guide the fishers on the 
 sea. 
 
 ' Your own mistakes your sins perhaps 
 have been your own to bring to God. While it is 
 
 423
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 His law that we must bear the consequences of 
 our acts, has He ever withheld His mercy or His 
 love? Cecile, did you ever, while he himself bore 
 the pain of his own small hurts, cease to console 
 your child? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " So are our sins in the eyes of the Most High. 
 All mistakes all sins are to be counted gain 
 that brings a soul to the consciousness of God." 
 
 She rose from her chair and began to walk up 
 and down slowly on the terrace. With a quick 
 deference he followed her example. 
 
 " Sit down, Father, there, do not cross me 
 to-night. Are you not double my age are you 
 not tired with a long day of service among our 
 people ? Let me walk here a little I who have 
 nothing to do now, yet who grow so tired. Some- 
 times I am restless with sitting still so long. There 
 is something else I have to tell you, but it is grow- 
 ing late. Can you spare me the time ? " 
 
 " I am at your service always." 
 
 " I am sure of that, and after all the nights are 
 mild mild as only the nights in southern France 
 can be," she smiled a little wistfully. For a while 
 she was silent, and once as he watched her in her 
 slow walk he saw her press her right hand to her 
 breast in agitation. 
 
 " Speak, Cecile." 
 
 The words were fraught with infinite pity, yet 
 they came to her as a command. 
 
 She turned on him abruptly. 
 
 424
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " I will," she said, and the indecision and agita- 
 tion fell from her like a cloak. " It is about Blair 
 Martin." 
 
 Lamore's eyes did not leave her face. 
 
 "Yes?" he said. 
 
 " I knew her from the first from that first 
 meeting in the chateau garden as the woman 
 who had come into Hector's life and mine. Do 
 you want to know how? I am not sure if it was 
 wholly instinct or if I partly guessed from the 
 French extract that she always uses. It is very 
 rare and once smelt never forgotten. The white 
 glove I found near Hector's trunk was permeated 
 with it." 
 
 " Yes," said Lamore again. 
 
 " Well Father, it was the old, old story of 
 the Grandcceurs. At first she interested me. Then 
 it seemed to me that I could kill her " the 
 Comtesse broke off. 
 
 Lamore waited. 
 
 " But we do not kill in these days as in the time 
 of the old Count of the Crusades. I am not ex- 
 actly sure why I asked you to bring her here 
 perhaps to study her at leisure; perhaps later little 
 by little, with maddening cruelty, to tell her who 
 I was. I do not think I ever meant her physical 
 harm of any kind that is so crude a torture. But 
 I meant to hurt her soul and heart I meant to 
 watch her writhe " 
 
 She stopped in her walk and stood quite still in 
 front of Lamore, and there was nothing in her 
 
 425
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 voice or in her manner that asked for the quarter 
 of his mercy. Now as it would be until the end 
 the sign and the seal of the Grandcoeurs was on 
 her. 
 
 "Why did you hesitate?" Lamore asked after 
 a while. 
 
 The Comtesse's eyes, dark and wistful, met his 
 own. 
 
 " Because of a little peasant boy," she answered, 
 and Lamore did not ask to know more. 
 
 The Comtesse seated herself again in her garden 
 chair and leaned forward, looking up into Lamore's 
 face. 
 
 " Then because of that little child I later 
 grew to love her and to need her in my life. But 
 I could not live the treachery or give her the lie 
 we may be sin-stained, cursed, but we are not 
 all bad I wanted the friendship to be built on 
 honor and on truth, so I took my chances and 
 failed! The night Hector came and I sent him 
 away, I told her. She did not speak until I had 
 quite finished and then as years ago Hector had 
 looked at me in loathing she looked, too. She 
 said but little. The next morning she left for the 
 Schynige-Plarre." 
 
 " She forgave you long ago as long ago Hec- 
 tor forgave." 
 
 " There is little more to tell you except that Hec- 
 tor is coming back. It was my fancy that Blair 
 Martin should write the letter to him from me, since 
 writing tires me so and because it was through her 
 
 426
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 I found my need for him again." The Comtesse 
 played with the soft silk fringe that trimmed her 
 dress. She smiled a little. It seemed to Lamore 
 that her manner and her voice was more buoyant 
 than he could remember it in years. She had asked 
 no comment from him and he never dreamed of 
 making any. After a while she spoke again. 
 
 " Then about St. Michael's. I have a favor to 
 ask you for St. Michael's." 
 
 " St. Michael's like the Island and the chateau 
 is yours, Cecile." 
 
 " Have you ever "thought," she said at last, 
 " what will become of the Island of the Angels 
 of the chateau of the little village church of 
 St. Michael's after I am gone?" 
 
 " I have sometimes thought but I have never 
 found the answer. Perhaps they will pass to 
 Hector Stone?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Hector does not need the Island, neither does 
 he love it as I do. His remembrances of the place 
 are mostly very sad. His work calls him to his 
 own country to America." 
 
 For an instant Blair Martin's face came before 
 Lamore. As though divining his thoughts she 
 looked up quickly. 
 
 " Blair Martin does not need the Island of the 
 Angels " she hesitated a brief moment " any 
 more than Hector does." 
 
 "Who then, Cecile?" 
 
 She leaned forward and stretched out her hand 
 
 427
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 until it rested on the arm of his chair. In the grow- 
 ing darkness her face showed white and smiling. 
 
 " Who needs it more than you ? " 
 
 He started, a troubled surprise on his face, 
 
 " You cannot mean it, child, you " he broke 
 off suddenly. 
 
 " I am quite myself, Father." 
 
 The simple dignity of the words touched him 
 strangely. 
 
 " Cecile you must know that when I took 
 orders I retained nothing for myself that I never 
 can hold possessions. I gave over my Russian in- 
 heritance to my younger sister Servia, for her son. 
 What should I do with the Island of the Angels ? " 
 
 " Keep it in trust as you have in reality done 
 all these years for all that come after, and in 
 memory of the last of the race and line in mem- 
 ory of the child." 
 
 " I do not understand." The lips of Pierre La- 
 more were hard and dry. He spoke with difficulty. 
 
 " Then I must make it plain. It is all in the will 
 that the lawyer made last week. When it is 
 over he will come here from Marseilles. I have 
 left the Island and all that it contains or yields to 
 you, with a few exceptions. The suggestions on 
 a written memorandum, to be handed you, are sug- 
 gestions only. You may have a better plan see 
 wider needs." 
 
 She broke off again, and he waited in a tense 
 silence for her to resume. 
 
 " I have directed that a certain sum be laid aside 
 
 428
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 in case Blair Martin ever marries for her eldest 
 child to be given it on its wedding day, as a 
 gift from me." The voice was low and even. 
 " Then there are legacies one for the Hotel des 
 Invalides at Montreal; one for Fauchet; another 
 for the education of the boy Anthony and for all 
 the old servants enough to keep them in simple 
 comfort for life." 
 
 She broke off an instant and looked around the 
 chateau garden, up to the beautiful home itself 
 then across to St. Michael's, looming white and still 
 against the late twilight sky. 
 
 " Once at Christmas you are to take the village 
 children all the children there, and say a Mass 
 for the child. And again at Easter, the children 
 are to go there with you and say a Mass for me. 
 For the rest of the year St. Michael's is to be a 
 place apart, and in the future, as it has been in the 
 past, only those you or the Great Cardinal wish to 
 take there are to enter except the children. It 
 must be always open to the children. Your suc- 
 cessor is to be named by you. Sometimes I have 
 fancied that it will be the boy Anthony, with his 
 strange likeness to my own. And your successor 
 is to name his successor, and so on down the years, 
 while the Island of the Angels and St. Michael's 
 stand. . . . Then there is the chateau, the home of 
 my people my poor people I have left that to 
 you to do with as you will. In case you are troub- 
 led I would not have you troubled I have left 
 a suggestion in regard to it. I have thought that 
 
 429
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 instead of being the home of one boy, it might be 
 made into the home for many boys. You and the 
 Cardinal, with his great heart yearning over the 
 needs of humanity, would know where to find them. 
 You would see that they have the freedom of the 
 garden the benefits that true beauty and true cul- 
 ture gives. You would see that, without thought 
 of faith or creed, there were only gathered here, 
 the most homeless, the most forsaken, of the Mas- 
 ter's little ones." 
 
 Pierre Lamore suddenly rose to his feet. He 
 stretched his arms upwards and turned his face to 
 the stars. 
 
 " Lord Lord what have I done for this! " 
 
 An hour later he turned to go. He took Cecile's 
 hand in his. 
 
 "It is well, my child?" 
 
 Through the increasing darkness he could see her 
 smile. 
 
 " Father it is well." 
 
 430
 
 XVI. 
 
 A MONTH later Fauchet's new tug stopped at 
 the Island wharf and deposited one pas- 
 senger, and Continental trunks that showed 
 signs of much travel. 
 
 Blair Martin, standing amidst her own baggage, 
 saw him descend the gangway, for a moment her- 
 self unseen. She noticed how grave and troubled 
 was his face, how slow his walk since those far 
 off settlement days since the night by the mi- 
 mosa. Had they really existed after all, she 
 wondered. Had all the work together, all the 
 suffering they had seen and shared, all those mo- 
 ments of that summer night, come to this a 
 formal meeting on a little wharf far off in France? 
 She began to tremble and the smile that came into 
 her face when she saw him raise his head and look 
 in her direction, was forced and different from any 
 he had ever seen upon her face before. 
 
 He came forward with hand outstretched. 
 
 " You must have been hidden behind all the 
 trunks," he said, " or just arrived. I searched the 
 wharf on our approach to see if any one was 
 here." 
 
 " I was a little late," she admitted, " there were 
 many last things to see to to tell the good Sister 
 that arrived this morning, to help you with the 
 
 431
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 nursing. Father Lamore planned to meet you, but 
 I suppose some sudden need for him arose. He is 
 always busy doing good." 
 
 " I sent him a cable from California two weeks 
 ago ; another from Marseilles there was a delay 
 in your letter. Blair I came at once." 
 
 " I knew you would," she said. 
 
 "Cecile?" 
 
 Blair Martin hesitated. 
 
 " A little stronger perhaps. She has seemed to 
 gain a little lately. I left her asleep. She was very 
 tired. All night she sat by the window watching 
 for the tug." 
 
 " I am only an hour late. I was not due until 
 one this afternoon." 
 
 " I know. But your cables were delayed in com- 
 ing from the mainland, by bad weather. They only 
 arrived last night, and Father Lamore brought 
 them up at once and told her. I think up to then 
 she was not certain if you would come or not. 
 After that she could not sleep. You will tell her 
 when you see her that I left a note with the nurse 
 that I did not want to waken her to say 
 good-bye? " 
 
 "Good-bye! You are going to leave Cecile?" 
 he said suddenly. " These trunks are yours ? " 
 
 " Mine, and one I brought for Hannah good 
 Hannah. I shall be glad to see her again. She 
 is to join me - later." 
 
 "Where are you going, Blair -and why?" 
 
 She met his eyes quite steadily. 
 
 432
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 " I have left my address at the Rectory. If Cecile 
 needs and wants me, Father Lamore will send me 
 word. Cecile will not need or want me now." She 
 smiled. 
 
 The autumn sun poured down upon them warm 
 and bright. Two of the chateau servants had 
 stowed her luggage safely on board and were look- 
 ing questioningly from the pilot to Blair Martin, 
 as though uncertain what to do. The tug the 
 pride of Fauchet's heart and a gift from the Com- 
 tesse rocked at her moorings. Fauchet lighted 
 a pipe and lazily watched them from the window of 
 his diminutive pilot house. Did they not seem glad 
 to see each other in spite of their grave faces? 
 Did they not both love the Comtesse as did 
 everybody? Were they not both loved by her? 
 Well, one could wait their pleasure for her sake 
 and think of the sweetheart far away in Avignon. 
 
 " I fancy the Sister that is to ' help ' me will not 
 know Cecile's ways like you. You have grown to 
 be so much to her. I could tell it from the letter." 
 
 " Sister Marie Sebastian will soon grow to know 
 her ways. She is a Bonne Secours trained to 
 her work. I forgot to tell her, though, about the 
 heated milk at night. Cecile always has a glass at 
 midnight if she cannot sleep. Will you see that the 
 nurse remembers?" 
 
 " I will not trouble Sister Marie Sebastian about 
 the milk. Sometimes I may need her help, but I 
 have come myself to nurse Cecile," said Stone, look- 
 ing straight into Blair Martin's eyes. 
 
 433
 
 *ft THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Blair Martin's face quivered a little in the sun- 
 light. 
 
 " I knew you would," she said again, but softly, 
 " I could not expect less from the man I - '' she 
 broke off, a slow flush mounting to her face, and 
 she looked out to sea, " the man I know so well," 
 she said. 
 
 The slow flush faded, leaving her face whiter 
 than before. 
 
 " I have never expected anything of you I 
 have not found," he said in answer. 
 
 She lowered her face quickly that he might not 
 see it folded her hands closely together that he 
 might not note their trembling. 
 
 " I have tried to do right oh, Hector, I have 
 tried. But the way has not been always easy " 
 she broke off. 
 
 "Yes, Blair?" 
 
 " But of late since I have returned to the 
 Island of the Angels, to Cecile, I have learned much, 
 and the way has seemed less hard. I owe Father 
 Lamore a debt for many things and not the least 
 the knowing of Cecile." 
 
 " She has taught me, too," said Stone. " Some- 
 times I fancy we have all taught each other, Blair. 
 I have come to help her die or live." 
 
 She nodded. She could not speak. 
 
 Fauchet, noting the time, and remembering the 
 sailing hour from Grenette, blew the whistle softly. 
 
 ' There ! I must be going now. See, I have kept 
 Fauchet waiting. My baggage must have been on 
 
 434
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 board ten minutes." She stretched out her hand. 
 " Good-bye," she said. 
 
 He helped her up the gangway and watched the 
 little tug slowly move off from its moorings and 
 slip out into the sunlit waters. From the deck Blair 
 Martin waved her scarf at him. He was all she 
 saw or all she thought of as she left the 
 Island of the Angels. 
 
 Then distance came and a soft mist fell, and 
 slowly Stone turned to climb the chateau hill. 
 
 435
 
 XVII. 
 
 AT a sharp turn in the steep ascent he came 
 suddenly on the rectory chaise and Nan- 
 ette contentedly nibbling at the wayside 
 grass. Pierre Lamore sat on a bit of rock near by, 
 thoughtfully looking out to sea. 
 
 " So this is the way you meet me ? " said Stone 
 with a slow smile. 
 
 Pierre Lamore started up guiltily. 
 
 " My dear boy I " 
 
 " There, there, Father. I fancy I understand. 
 It was like you." 
 
 " Neither you nor Blair Martin needed me, Hec- 
 tor, just now." Pierre Lamore spoke with the 
 simple directness of a child the momentary con- 
 fusion past. 
 
 Stone did not answer and looked down at the 
 little mound of dirt he was making with the toe of 
 his shoe. 
 
 " I am not sure, Father," he said in a low voice, 
 " perhaps you know us better than we know our- 
 selves." 
 
 " I know you all quite well," said Pierre La- 
 more. " It is part of my profession, Hector to 
 know people to help them when I can. But there 
 is a largeness of some souls where over watch ful- 
 
 436
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 ness is an impertinence and an insult. And now, 
 since I have waited patiently and so long and 
 dismissed the chateau car sent down for you 
 will you not let me drive you up the hill ? " 
 
 " Thanks ; I see the old chaise is as comfortable 
 as ever. What, the spring has at last been fixed? 
 That is good news. Has Nanette acquired more 
 speed with added fat? " 
 
 " You will hurt Nanette's feelings talking so," 
 said Pierre Lamore, his big laugh echoing through 
 the rocks and trees, and he began to gather the 
 reins together and undo the tangle Nanette had 
 caused grazing, while he sat by unheeding. In 
 silence Stone watched him from the chaise, too 
 absorbed in thought to offer to help him at his task. 
 He could not, in all his long years of studying men, 
 remember seeing such a head as Pierre Lamore's 
 or such a face before. Its charm, its strength, was 
 as intangible as its owner's personality and voice. 
 
 His musings were abruptly terminated as Pierre 
 Lamore completed his task and with a sigh of sat- 
 isfaction settled himself comfortably beside Hector 
 on the front seat and started Nanette slowly on her 
 long climb. 
 
 " This is better than walking, is it not? " he said 
 cheerfully, " except perhaps for Nanette." 
 
 " It is easier certainly if no faster," said Stone 
 with a laugh. " Nanette looks as though she could 
 stand the pace. She looks neither overworked nor 
 underfed. I wish I might show her to some people 
 I know in America. We are a great country, Fa- 
 
 437
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 ther, but we forget many of the simple humanities 
 of life, because of misdirected eagerness and haste." 
 
 Pierre Lamore let him talk on knowing that 
 the topics of his work, his voyage, was helping him 
 to recover from that meeting with Blair Martin, 
 and to prepare him for the one ahead. 
 
 Slowly, with drooping head she never knew a 
 check Nanette pulled her burden up the chateau 
 hill, and her master with slackened reins stared 
 straight between her ears to the winding road open- 
 ing out before them, as a tangled ball of worsted 
 undoes itself at last, listening 
 
 The warm afternoon sun lay in patches across 
 the road and from the shadows of the woods to 
 the right came the stir and chirping of the birds. 
 To the left, through the trees and far below them 
 as they ascended, lay the shining sea, and away off, 
 as far as human vision could distinguish, the outline 
 of the Pyrenees. 
 
 The soft lights and the brooding peace of nature 
 after a while penetrated the wall of talk that Stone 
 had built around himself that he might put off 
 thinking for a little while. He spoke less often 
 his voice was softer, and later he lapsed into silence 
 altogether. Pierre Lamore waited for him to break 
 the silence as he had waited for it to fall, knowing 
 that by and by the readjustment of nerves and brain 
 would assert itself and the balance would hang true. 
 
 " I think I never knew before how beautiful the 
 Island is," said Stone, at last, very slowly. 
 
 The gaze of Pierre Lamore went from the shaded 
 
 438
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 woods, across the sunlit winding road and over to 
 the left, where, through a vista, shone the sea. His 
 clear eyes softened as he looked. 
 
 " I have traveled in many lands," he answered, 
 " not perhaps as many as you have, Hector, but 
 still I have seen much. As a boy in the army I 
 was in Africa, and later I went to Russia for a 
 time " he broke off a moment and into his eyes 
 stole an odd look of remembrance, " and then my 
 father sent me to Germany and Spain and other 
 places wanting me to see life to know men 
 before I gave up the great tracts of land and the 
 titles my mother left me near St. Petersburg 
 before I decided definitely on the priesthood. Five 
 years ago I went to your country, you remember, 
 for a convention of the Church it is a great coun- 
 try, as you say, Hector a wonderful one of 
 promise for the coming race but there is nowhere 
 no place like the Island to me. There never 
 will be." 
 
 Unconsciously he had let the reins slacken more 
 and more as he had talked, and he looked ahead 
 of him, where through the trees the white stones 
 of St. Michael's stood out against the sky. 
 
 " I suppose none of us can really judge for 
 another," said Stone after a while. " I have heard 
 you say so often but I have never ceased to won- 
 der at your spending your life here. While in 
 Rome last winter I met Cardinal Venusti again 
 once I dined at his house he spoke of you. He 
 told me great charges had been offered you a 
 
 439
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 bishop's see that would have meant in time a 
 cardinal's hat. . . . And that you refused them 
 all." 
 
 A slow flush crept over Pierre Lamore's face as 
 he gathered up the slackened reins with a quick 
 movement. 
 
 " His Eminence is kind to remember me so," he 
 said at last and briefly. 
 
 " But, Father, was he not right ? " 
 
 Pierre Lamore carefully flecked a fly off of Nan- 
 ette's back with the lash of an old whip never used 
 for any other purpose. 
 
 " I do not question the Cardinal's words for 
 years he has been to me a beacon light from his 
 point of view. Had I received directions to take 
 a charge elsewhere, I should have gone as un- 
 questioningly as a soldier who receives orders from 
 his superiors, but always they have left the deci- 
 sion to me, and I I have acted as I thought for 
 the best. It has not been from a selfish point of 
 view that I have remained, Hector although not 
 even you would dream what it would mean to me 
 to leave the Island but men are born for places 
 as they are born for their life-work and no one 
 really knows that better than the Cardinal. I am 
 not fitted for his place. He hardly understands 
 my people here. And who shall say which work 
 is the least in the sight of the Most High ? " 
 
 " But your birth, your breeding, your knowledge 
 of humanity as well as books would they not 
 have done more good elsewhere ? It has sometimes 
 
 440
 
 seemed to me a lesser man could have done the 
 work for the Island. Has not your light been 
 hidden?" 
 
 " Did you count your education, your wealth, 
 your leisure, as badly spent when you forsook the 
 comforts and the rest to which you had been born? 
 Who needed you the more, Hector, the fashionable 
 people that you left or the heart-broken, weary, 
 sweating men you toiled among? " 
 
 Stone smiled. 
 
 " The cases are hardly on a par. I never really 
 sunk my position in the world of men I still en- 
 joy my millions. But you you refused alike your 
 title of prince in the world and prince in the Church. 
 Great souls as yours are needed; great hearts like 
 yours are yearned for by the world to help deliver 
 it from despair and want and woe. You laid down 
 great powers renounced great influence. Have 
 you gained as much ? " 
 
 " You and Duport! Duport and you! " said the 
 priest, and he laughed a little. Then he spoke more 
 seriously. " The Great Cardinal is the Great Car- 
 dinal deep in wisdom and in love his honors 
 are none too high for him. He is also a great 
 statesman. One half of Europe knows him as the 
 Churchman; the other only blindly feels the influ- 
 ences in the world of men of which he is the primal 
 force. Do you fancy that my work is there with 
 him do you think his talents best for Rome or 
 here with me ? As for the titles and the lands 
 no, no, they are not such great things to renounce 
 
 441
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 when one has learned to renounce more and my 
 sister Servia's boy bears them well. He is only 
 twenty-five. I am very proud of him. Sometimes 
 I think all my earthly hopes rest on him." 
 
 " I did not know you had any earthly hopes, 
 Father," said Stone with a slow smile. 
 
 Lamore looked out to sea. 
 
 " Most of them went a long, long time ago," he 
 said, and Stone wondered if all regrets were dead 
 or only stilled. 
 
 " As for the Island," Lamore's voice broke the 
 stillness, " it has not always yielded as I wished. 
 Is any one in any work ever satisfied, I wonder? 
 Sometimes the harvest here has seemed so slight 
 yielding so little for the sowing. It has been one 
 reason why I stayed. I have sowed all the seeds 
 I had my learning and my sympathy, my culture 
 and my life. . . . Yet when I have seen them 
 most forgotten, when I have been the most dis- 
 couraged, I have remembered that a great flame 
 might spread from a very little lamp; that and 
 I say it in all reverence the teachings of my 
 Master spread from one small distant spot to guide 
 and teach the world." 
 
 There was a long silence, in which Nanette pulled 
 more slowly at the traces and Lamore let the reins 
 fall slack again to give her greater ease. The echo 
 of her hoof-beats in rhythmic time came to them; 
 the low crackle of dead leaves beneath the carriage 
 wheels. They were almost at the top, where the 
 clearing was to be seen, and a breeze from the sea 
 
 442
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 swept past them with a delightful sense of freedom 
 and of strength. Hector dimly felt it as he spoke. 
 
 " You have always had a proportion on things 
 most men lack. I think it was one of the first things 
 that drew you to me that and Cecile's devotion. 
 Sometimes I think no one understands has ever 
 understood Cecile as you do. I have come to 
 help her, Father, if I can. I have come because she 
 sent for me. Do you know why ? " 
 
 " I fancy, my son, because she needed you 
 because she loved you," said Pierre Lamore. 
 
 " I am not sure. At least I did not question 
 when I got the message. I am here to help her 
 until the end if she is to go. Or I am here 
 to help her live to make a new beginning with 
 her. I do not ask for one or the other since I 
 do not know which is best. I have come back just 
 to make her happy if I can." 
 
 Pierre Lamore turned in the chaise and faced 
 him. His face was suddenly illuminated. 
 
 " Once long ago on one dark night in your 
 life, Hector I told you that one day you would 
 find yourself would see the light ! " 
 
 "Is it the light, Father? I do not know. I 
 hardly seem to care. There have been so many 
 days of struggle hours when the soul was sick 
 to death " he broke off and bit his lip, annoyed 
 at himself for speaking so even to Lamore. 
 
 Lamore noticed the sudden break divined the 
 cause, and with a quick tact said : 
 
 " You shall come with me and I will play the 
 
 443
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 organ for you again. There is nothing like music 
 for tired nerves like yours." 
 
 " That will be good of you. It is a long time 
 since I heard you." Then : " Where were you 
 taught ? " 
 
 " In Leipsic first, later in Munich and Dresden 
 and Berlin. Germany can teach even my France 
 
 even Russia indeed the world in music." 
 Pierre Lamore smiled. " I have not kept it up as 
 I might had I more time or had the Island had a 
 better organ than the little one we have in the 
 village church, but now " he paused. 
 
 " The Cardinal said in Rome you were a great 
 master at the art." 
 
 " Again I fear the Cardinal is prejudiced." 
 
 " I have understood that the Cardinal is consid- 
 ered a great Continental critic on organ music," 
 said Stone with a short laugh. 
 
 " Strange as it seems, I have only played three 
 times for his Eminence the last, one Ascension 
 Day years ago in Rome." 
 
 " He still recalls it. He said you had an organ 
 there worthy of your skill." 
 
 " He has never fully heard the organ in St. 
 Michael's. It is considered one of the finest in all 
 France. You shall judge yourself, Hector, of the 
 organ." 
 
 " You are going to take me to 
 
 St. Michael's?" said Hector Stone very slowly. 
 " There is really no excuse this time ? You know 
 I have never been inside since it was completed." 
 
 444
 
 Pierre Lamore smiled strangely. 
 
 " Do not forget that you helped to built St. 
 Michael's. When one has almost reached the top 
 of the long hill of struggle when one has won 
 and yet is soul-sick ; then, Hector, he is ready 
 for what St. Michael's has to give." 
 
 A minute later he drew rein in the shadow of 
 St. Michael's archway, dismounted and fastened the 
 bridle securely at Nanette's head and turned her 
 loose to graze. 
 
 " Come," he said, and his voice was at once an 
 entreaty and a command. " Cecile is asleep just 
 now. She will not need you until later. The music 
 will give you strength for your mission. Come 
 with me." 
 
 From an inner pocket he drew forth a key slowly, 
 and without turning to look at the view of earth 
 and sky and sea spread out before them, unlocked 
 the door for Hector Stone to enter. 
 
 Through the falling dusk of the short day they 
 later turned Nanette's head homeward. Only the 
 contented whinny of the horse, the low chirping of 
 birds going to their nests, the soft sounds of wood- 
 land life, broke the silence of the hour. The short 
 road cutting through the woods at the base of the 
 chateau garden was soon traveled. There Pierre 
 Lamore stopped the chaise and Stone descended. 
 At the carriage step he paused. His face was col- 
 orless an odd fire burned in the eyes he turned 
 on the elder man. 
 
 445
 
 " Good night," he said. 
 
 Then he turned and lifted the latch of the little 
 wicket gate, and unheeding the glory of the cha- 
 teau garden that he crossed, passed on to meet 
 Cecile alone. 
 
 446
 
 XVIII. 
 
 IN the days that followed Lamore visited but 
 little at the chateau. If now and then the 
 Comtesse spoke of it in the course of one of 
 his infrequent visits there, he would throw the sug- 
 gestion to one side, half laughingly, as a matter 
 of little worth. Indeed it seemed to him, whose 
 perceptions had been sharpened on the wheel of 
 world experience, that for the first time the Com- 
 tesse really cared very little if he came or not. 
 Sometimes, as he watched her, the thought came 
 to him that there had come to her a brief period 
 of matured perfection such as he had sometimes 
 sensed when walking through the vineyards just 
 before the harvest ; that the essence of her was 
 held in some abeyance now that the dark period 
 of growth had passed and before this life's experi- 
 ence was gathered in. There rested on her nothing 
 that recalled to him the wonder and the sweetness 
 of her life in its spring hour, nothing to show even 
 traces of the storms that had swept her life, but 
 there was now a calmness and a completeness of 
 all things in her bearing that was to be felt rather 
 than perceived. If she was feigning happiness she 
 feigned it well; if she indeed were happy it was 
 the happiness of one who judged all things from the 
 
 447
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 wider standard of eternity. Stone he rarely saw 
 on visiting the chateau, although the former made 
 many trips down the chateau heights to the Rectory 
 in the vineyards. Like Lamore, he rarely joined 
 Cecile those afternoons that she and the child An- 
 thony basked together in the sunshine of the gar- 
 den, taking that time to work in the library over 
 his American mail. 
 
 As for the chateau garden, it seemed as though 
 it were reaching the zenith of a glory hitherto un- 
 attained, and in the hours after its presiding genius, 
 old Giovanni, had talked to the chateau lady, he 
 would go back to his work and press labor on his 
 subordinates with an almost despotic hand. The 
 flowers had been the deepest worship Giovanni 
 knew, and it was not strange that through them 
 the old man offered to his lady joy and solace by 
 his life's devotion. 
 
 The perfection of the place struck on Lamore 
 one cool morning as he came through the wicket 
 gate and found Cecile very slowly, very idly, walk- 
 ing up and down the paths. Her face was as quiet 
 as the hands that held some lilies, and as he watched 
 her he saw her lift them to her face. Above their 
 perfect whiteness her eyes shone forth large, dark 
 and luminous, and for the moment seemed neither 
 aware of time or place. So, touched with the divin- 
 ity of maternity, might she once have held the cheek 
 of the little Count to her own. Then with a start 
 she aroused herself, as though conscious of La- 
 more's gaze. On an instant a smile that veiled 
 
 448
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 her eyes swept across her face, and she came toward 
 him, both hands outstretched. 
 
 " Good morning, and it is a good morning is 
 it not ? " she called. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " a wonderful day and a 
 wonderful place." 
 
 She had reached him now and stood before him, 
 a pretty picture in her pale blue dress, a soft shawl 
 around her shoulders and the lilies in her hands. 
 It reminded him how often as a child and as a girl 
 she had stood before him thus. 
 
 " A wonderful place, Father too wonderful to 
 leave." 
 
 She did not cease to smile but she spoke yearn- 
 ingly. He listened in vain for the note of resent- 
 ment or defiance. 
 
 " I know, Cecile. Hector stopped at the Rectory 
 last night on his return from Marseilles. I suppose 
 Duport's decision is not to be questioned." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders and made a little 
 moue that was far more fascinating than she knew. 
 
 "Voila! Such is fame!" 
 
 " You are going then? " 
 
 " Assuredly ; but not because Duport recom- 
 mends it no no! I shall tell him so when I 
 see him in his great offices in Marseilles! I shall 
 tell him so when later we dine with Madame and 
 himself, and I will snap my fingers so! " 
 
 " Cecile, you will never grow up ! You will never 
 respect either eminence or authority," said Lamore 
 with a laugh. " Hector had best hasten through 
 
 449
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Marseilles with you and get you to Mentone at 
 once." 
 
 " Ah Mentone ! " with supreme contempt. 
 " What a place to choose ! What can Mentone 
 offer that can compare to this? We will dine at 
 the Winter Palace perhaps, and perhaps spend some 
 weary hours at the Hotel de Ville in the little 
 museum with its prehistoric antiquities! Hector 
 will like that: therefore we shall go. But I warn 
 you, I shall not attempt to walk through the tor- 
 tuous and steep and badly paved streets of the Old 
 Town, in spite of its picturesqueness ; and you need 
 not recommend me to worship at St. Michael's 
 there when you have all driven me from my St. 
 Michael's here. You can think of me poor me 
 driving to Cap Martin and doing the usual 
 things one must do at Mentone. The thought of 
 it wearies me, mon pere. Ah ! but if I am there 
 long enough if I am strong enough by then 
 Hector shall take me to Sir Thomas Hanbury's 
 garden, and I shall see the anemones again. Yes, 
 yes, I had almost forgotten the anemones. I have 
 not looked on them in years. One can be patient 
 and wait even at Mentone for the anemones! " 
 
 A wistful look replaced the bantering brightness 
 of the delicate face. He watched its swift changes 
 in silence. 
 
 " Perhaps they will not leave me at Mentone 
 Hector and that great inexorable Duport for the 
 anemones. If it grows too cold or perhaps too hot, 
 we will go on to Nice and take the warm baths 
 
 450
 
 * THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 there, and try not to heed the hurrying crowds that 
 tire one so! Or Cannes, perhaps, with its self- 
 satisfied prosperity. Perhaps if I am good that 
 is, as good as / can be they will let me visit 
 Naples and watch the sun set over Sorrento before 
 I come back home." 
 
 Lamore turned away that she might not see his 
 face. As though divining his need, she went to him 
 and took his hand half timidly, as she might have 
 done at times years ago as a very little child. He 
 did not trust himself to turn or look at her, but 
 he knew that she was gazing intently on the signet 
 ring he wore, a lapis lazuli carved with the arms 
 of the Grandcoeurs. It had once been the property 
 of their kinsman, the Cardinal Venusti in Rome. 
 It had been given to the first cardinal of the house 
 of Rene by the great Louis. 
 
 " I shall see his Eminence perhaps? " The voice 
 was low and clear. 
 
 " Undoubtedly, my child." 
 
 " It has been the custom of the house that, if 
 possible, the heir receives the Last Great Blessing 
 from its Cardinal is it not so ? " 
 
 " Yes, Cecile." 
 
 He forced himself to turn and look down at her. 
 If she had thought to look into his face she would 
 have seen for the first time in years its control 
 broken by emotion. But she kept on looking at the 
 signet ring, and once she patted his hand softly. 
 
 " I should rather that it were you," she said with 
 a smile. 
 
 451
 
 *fc THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 "If you outlive his Eminence, it will undoubtedly 
 be I that shall have that privilege as your mother's 
 kinsman and your priest, but, Cecile, Venusti is 
 greater as a man than as a cardinal. He has taught 
 me almost all of worth I know. For years I have 
 drawn on him as from an inexhaustible well. If 
 he lives the Last Blessing is his right." 
 
 She dropped his hand and turned away with a 
 sigh. 
 
 " There are rights and obligations that come 
 with rank even if one should be dying are there 
 not? " she said. 
 
 " Perhaps. Yet why talk so, my child ? It is 
 the thought of going that has made you sad. Du- 
 port is more than skilful he is a wizard at his 
 art it may be that you will look on the anemones 
 at Mentone and come home cured." 
 
 She smiled. Across the waters she looked an 
 instant at Grenette lying warm and peaceful on the 
 far off point; at the cloud flecks on the sky of 
 deepest blue back to the cliffs where the little 
 Count had died ; then to Lamore. 
 
 " I shall come home cured, mon pere," she said 
 slowly. Then a faint color mounted to her face. 
 " Voila ! there is Hector coming let us smile. 
 Long ago I left the Island for him once more I 
 go because he asks it. Come." 
 
 The boy Anthony stood at sunset at the window 
 of his little room and looked toward the heights. 
 In one hand was clasped tightly the last gift the 
 
 452
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 great lady of his dreams had given him a gilded 
 key for St. Michael's door. His great lady his 
 sweet lady had come and gone. There would be 
 no more black loaves to carry to the chateau, no 
 more walks in the wonderful garden with her 
 at least until she should come home to them quite 
 well. He turned away abruptly from the window 
 from where he could see standing forth against the 
 sunset sky the chateau, dark, in all its lonely splen- 
 dor, and the bare flagstaff waiting, stripped and des- 
 olate, for the Grandcceur flag the gold cross upon 
 an azure field. 
 
 With a cry he flung himself on the floor before 
 an image of the Sacre Cceur and pressed St. 
 Michael's key passionately to his mouth. 
 
 453
 
 XIX. 
 
 IT was Hector Stone that bore the light burden 
 of Cecile from Fauchet's boat to the cottage of 
 Fauchet's cousin near the wharf, and laid her 
 on the bed to rest and wait for the coming of the 
 Marseilles boat. By and by Cecile dropped off to 
 sleep, and leaving Sister Marie Sebastian to watch 
 by her, he crept out for a walk along the beach. For 
 the first time in his life Stone was feeling the ex- 
 haustion that comes to overstimulated mind and 
 nerves. All his life-work seemed calling to him 
 from his own country all his constituents were 
 clamoring for him, and at times it seemed as though 
 all the influences for good so laboriously gained 
 were slowly falling from his hands. He spent 
 hours they were always hours when there was 
 no probability of Cecile needing him, mostly after 
 midnight in struggling with his huge correspond- 
 ence. He remembered with a sigh of relief, as he 
 took off his hat and let the cool sea breezes sweep 
 his face, that he had cabled Farnum to send young 
 Turner to him. Turner was to meet them in Mar- 
 seilles and would relieve him of much of the me- 
 chanical strain. Farnum could not be spared from 
 the American end. For a brief instant he won- 
 dered just how long things would last how long 
 
 454
 
 m THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Farnum would have to struggle with the American 
 end alone. Then he remembered Cecile frail as 
 one of the chateau lilies she had left. She had left 
 the chateau lilies only because of his request. He 
 never doubted that, although she never told him 
 so ; and the greatness of his own nature rose up, 
 at the remembrance, to meet her own. After all, 
 what matter it if one's life-work failed? Some 
 one else would pick it up where it had been dropped. 
 There had come the conviction to him that this one 
 frail, rich woman, with her titled name and lands, 
 needed him just now quite as much as the striving, 
 sweating, toil- and sin-marked ones, across the 
 waters. He sat down on a point of land where 
 tall pines grew, and watched the sea creep in with 
 gentle persistency and break lightly on the sands. 
 
 He was aroused from his revery by a step on the 
 pine needles near, and he looked up suddenly to see 
 Blair Martin smiling at him. 
 
 " Did I startle you ? " she said. " I did not mean 
 to. I watched you coming here and I followed you 
 to ask about Cecile." 
 
 " How did you come to Grenette ? I thought you 
 far away." 
 
 " I have never left Grenette. Father Lamore 
 and Fauchet kept my secret well. Did you fancy 
 I could go far from her until I was assured that 
 all was well between you ? " 
 
 " It was like you," he said in a low voice. " So 
 like you that I might have known." 
 
 " Each night," she said, " I have watched St. 
 
 455
 
 3% THE SANCTUARY m 
 
 Michael's light. Each morning I have watched to 
 see if the flag on the chateau was still there. Each 
 day I have prayed for her and you." 
 
 He stood near her, but he could not trust himself 
 to look into her face; instead he looked steadily 
 at the slow creeping in of the sea. 
 
 " Her life is like that," he said at last, " it is 
 creeping surely, persistently, to eternity, but no man 
 can tell how long." 
 
 Blair Martin drew a long breath that was like a 
 sigh. 
 
 "Does she know?" 
 
 " She must know, but she has never spoken of 
 it to me." 
 
 " What does Duport say? " 
 
 " That it is like the tide very slow but very 
 certain. We are taking her to Mentone on a chance. 
 She talks of the anemones. She may see them this 
 season perhaps other seasons. She may slip out 
 in a night. Duport says there have been heart com- 
 plications developing." 
 
 " Father Lamore told me something of it. He 
 comes over once a week. He has kept me posted." 
 
 " So ! " Stone began to pace the sands a little. 
 He was conscious that Blair Martin had seated her- 
 self on a pine knoll, and that the soft breezes were 
 playing with her hair. 
 
 " I have only waited," she was saying, " to be 
 quite sure Cecile would never need me again before 
 I returned to America. Now I know she does not, 
 and it is as I wish. I think I am nearer content- 
 
 456
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 ment to-night true contentment than I have 
 been since that hour under the mimosa tree." She 
 spoke so quietly that Stone, arrested, turned and 
 looked at her. She seemed to be speaking to the 
 sands and sea rather than to him. " I do not under- 
 stand it. I do not question it. I only know that 
 after the dream of the mimosa tree that never was 
 fulfilled, this her going back to you seems to 
 me to be the thing most desired in my life. It has 
 somehow ceased to be a question of personal hap- 
 piness." 
 
 He sat down near her, a strange awe for her on 
 him. 
 
 " Where, Blair, do I come in ? " 
 
 She turned to him a face strangely illuminated. 
 
 " Can you doubt ? " she asked, an exquisite ca- 
 dence in her voice. " You come in in all things; 
 in all my thoughts; in all my aspirations; in all 
 my faith for mankind; in all my hopes and plans 
 of what I am to do when I return. As the shadow 
 follows the sun, so my soul follows you sleeping 
 and awake, and as the sands here have through 
 the centuries waited for the coming of the sea, so 
 through lives behind have I waited so through 
 lives to come, will I wait for you." 
 
 He put out his hand and for an instant it touched 
 the edge of her dress. 
 
 Still she looked at him with those strange grave 
 eyes. They rested on the long scar on his face. 
 
 " I want her to have all she can of you I want 
 you to give her all you can. You even you 
 
 457
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 can only half divine a woman's heart and need. . . . 
 As compared to her, how short is the time I have 
 known you here, but at least the scar is mine." 
 
 " I have known you always," he said in a low 
 voice, " since the Primal Cause called the atoms 
 into being. I do not reason about it. It is simply 
 one of the things one accepts without need of 
 proof. And of late I have fancied the remem- 
 brance of you has been the rock on which I have 
 in reality built my life. If I have learned to be 
 more tolerant; if I have learned more of pity or 
 forgiveness or breadth of understanding, it is be- 
 cause of you." 
 
 She rose from her seat on the pine knoll and laid 
 her hands in his. For an instant he held them close, 
 then let them drop. 
 
 " It is because of each other that we live," she 
 said. " Good-bye good-bye Joe Blackie." 
 
 He watched her make her slow way across the 
 sands, and it seemed to him there was a new dig- 
 nity in her bearing; a new beauty in her face. 
 Where the beach rounded the coast in a sharp curve 
 to the village of Grenette, she stopped for a mo- 
 ment. She made no motion of farewell, but she 
 turned and across the quiet sands she looked at 
 him, before she went on her way. 
 
 458
 
 
 XX. 
 
 BACK at Toinette's cottage Blair Martin lin- 
 gered a month waiting for the sailing of the 
 ship from .Havre that was to take her to 
 America. It was a strange month of poise and rest, 
 in which for the time growth and life itself seemed 
 almost suspended a period of expectancy and of 
 waiting, as the gray quiet hour before dawn lies 
 suspended between the wonder of the night and 
 the glory of the coming day. Like that hour which 
 broods over the other twenty-three, and that con- 
 tains at once the culmination of the darkness and 
 the promise of the light, without being itself a thing 
 of beauty, so was the month of waiting to Blair 
 Martin. 
 
 She was unconscious of planning plans or dream- 
 ing dreams. She simply drifted in a mental sea of 
 gray calm waters that soothed the child heart of 
 her as tenderly as a mother could have done. 
 
 Lamore she saw almost daily, and at first he was 
 full of news of the travelers. They had reached 
 Mentone safely, and Cecile had stood the trip far 
 better than either Stone or Duport had hoped. Then 
 the letters were less frequent less hopeful and 
 the brief postscripts added by Cecile were missing. 
 These last reports Lamore did not show to the 
 
 459
 
 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 American, partly because he was loath to break in 
 upon her calm, partly because the chatelaine had 
 forbidden it. 
 
 " Duport joined us here yesterday," had run the 
 last letter from Stone. " He says little, and Cecile 
 makes no comment on her condition except that it 
 is to be kept from Blair Martin, that her leave- 
 taking of the Island may not be shadowed nor her 
 return home saddened. She still talks of Anthony 
 and the anemones." 
 
 The letter was in Lamore's pocket when he called 
 at Toinette's cottage that day. It was the after- 
 noon before Blair Martin left for Havre. Already 
 were the trunks packed and strapped; already had 
 Fauchet been engaged to take her to Grenette; 
 already had the rocks and woods and slopes been 
 visited for the last time with Anthony, where he 
 had sung for her a Canticle and the song of the 
 Swiss children. The chateau and the garden and 
 the path to the wicket gate lay untrodden and un- 
 visited. 
 
 She found Lamore on the rustic bench before the 
 cottage door, and it recalled to both of them their 
 first meeting there months ago. She was thinking 
 of it when she touched the soft gray gown she wore. 
 
 " Not the old dress and Toinette's gingham 
 apron to-day, Father." 
 
 " I find Mademoiselle the peasant-worker. I take 
 leave of her as the great lady." 
 
 She smiled and smoothed the soft gray dress 
 caressingly. It was the one that she had worn that 
 
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 Sunday afternoon so long ago as she sat before the 
 open fire in her little study at the Anchorage the 
 afternoon Stone had first told her of Lamore and 
 the Island of the Angels. She always wore the 
 pearls with it, and she treasured it with a sentiment 
 that recognizes no dictates of passing fashion, leav- 
 ing it unchanged. 
 
 " Perhaps, Father. As one grows from the 
 stature of the child to that of the woman, so I have 
 sometimes fancied our inner self might grow from 
 the humble to something perhaps a little nearer 
 the divinity within." 
 
 She spoke slowly and simply. 
 
 He bowed again. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, it is because of that that I have 
 come this evening to make a request." 
 
 She looked up at him with wistful wonder in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "A request of me?" she repeated. 
 
 He sat down on the bench by her and looked at 
 her intently. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," he said, " before Fauchet takes 
 you from us to-morrow, will you hear Mass at St. 
 Michael's?" 
 
 461
 
 XXI. 
 
 IT was early morning when Blair Martin slowly 
 climbed the heights. The sun as with the ten- 
 der warmth of youth sifted through the pine 
 woods and with the shadows made a checkered car- 
 pet over which she walked. Here and there a bird 
 flew in front of her, as though to guide her, or lin- 
 gered unafraid near by, searching for its morning 
 meal. For years the birds of the chateau estate had 
 never heard the report of a gun or known its cru- 
 elty, and to all who walked their haunts they were 
 friendly guides. One of them now of splendid 
 plumage soared over her as she neared the clear- 
 ing beyond which stood St. Michael's. She could 
 see even from that distance that the great main 
 portal was thrown wide, as though in invitation. 
 She approached it without haste but without hesi- 
 tation, and mounting the broad steps passed through 
 the vestibule into the memorial chapel. 
 
 Her first impression was of grateful shade and 
 coolness from the warmth and glare of the world 
 outside, and she stood quietly at the foot of the 
 main aisle. Near by her stood a basin of holy 
 water. She noticed how clear and cool it looked 
 in its marble receptacle supported by a beautifully 
 carved column. 
 
 She slipped into the last pew and, without know- 
 
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 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 ing that she did so, knelt, her elbow resting on the 
 back of the pew in front, her chin in her hand. 
 
 There was no one to be seen, no sign of coming 
 solemnities to distract her or break upon her calm, 
 nothing to divert her attention from the beauty that 
 surrounded her. The wonder of the whole came 
 to her gradually and almost in detail. She could 
 not remember even at Cologne seeing win- 
 dows radiating in such mystic roses, or pointed 
 arches more perfect in outline and proportion. The 
 marvel of those pillared arches held her their 
 grace, the impression of upholding without effort 
 the weight of the vaulted roof. The sense of color, 
 perfectly, exquisitely distributed through the tall 
 windows, the wonder of the one behind the high 
 altar, commanded at once the respect of intellect, 
 the worship of the heart. The impression of the 
 whole was the impression of perfection imprisoned 
 in white marble the marble slabs that paved the 
 broad central aisle that led up to the white steps 
 of the Sanctuary the gleaming splendor of that 
 later thing of stone. Was it only stone, she won- 
 dered, quarried by the effort of man's hands with 
 infinite patience and brought here at great labor 
 and great price to immortalize a little child? Was 
 the cross that shone transplendent on the Sanctuary 
 door, nothing but metal after all ? The great win- 
 dow and the Sanctuary had strangely enough at- 
 tracted her attention last, and now they held her 
 to the exclusion of all else. Outside the light grew 
 more intense and increased in brilliancy the hues 
 
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 of the great window through which it shone. The 
 window fascinated her the heroic figure of the 
 Archangel became a type of man glorified sym- 
 bolic of the growth he might attain. The child 
 figure in front was it the boy Anthony im- 
 prisoned in deathless glory there, or the little 
 Count himself a type of that innocence that the 
 soul must regain and know, before it can be in 
 truth reborn. Over it all ran the inscription : 
 
 " To the glory of God and St. Michael His Arch- 
 angel and in memory of Hector Rene Louis de 
 Grandcceur, last Count of the line." 
 
 Some knowledge of the perfect love, the depths 
 of the perfect sorrow, that the coming and the 
 going of that short life must have meant to Cecile, 
 came to her, and in that hour was born in her from 
 the depths of her own unattained maternity, the 
 understanding of a grief and love that had encased 
 itself in glass and stone for centuries to come, as 
 a flower, petrified but unimpaired, is sometimes 
 found long after its death-blow, buried in the wrecks 
 of time. There was nowhere any sign or tablet, 
 any smallest word to commemorate the stricken 
 heart that had thought out and ordered built this 
 splendor. It stood the great memorial for a little 
 child, but Blair Martin read in every curve and line, 
 of perfect self-effacement, the undying monument 
 to the woman whose brain had conceived the glory 
 and whose heart lay buried here. 
 
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 THE SANCTUARY 
 
 She looked upon the window and the white altar 
 beneath until her vision became blurred and until 
 the colors of the window mingled with the radiance 
 of the marble altar where shone the cross a sign 
 and symbol upon the Sanctuary door. 
 
 Then some one began to play the organ; the 
 tones of it swelled out and came beating against 
 her senses as waves beat against unresisting drift- 
 wood, carrying it whither they will. 
 
 She did not question the wonder of the music, 
 which she supposed was Lamore's, any more than 
 she had questioned the marvel of the memorial 
 chapel itself. She did not even sense what it was 
 that Lamore played. She only knew she knelt and 
 listened, her eyes fixed upon the Sanctuary door 
 and the red lamp that burned near by. She was 
 conscious of a perfect peace. So rapt was her 
 attention that at first she was not aware when the 
 music ceased, and she was recalled to herself by 
 seeing the boy Anthony, followed by Lamore in 
 his vestments, enter the Sanctuary by the side door. 
 
 The opening words of the Mass fell upon her 
 ears, low, distinct, sonorous. They reached her in 
 the perfect clearness of utterance, in the wonder of 
 their simplicity, even where she knelt. 
 
 She made no effort to follow a service with which 
 she was unfamiliar in spite of her visits to the vil- 
 lage church. She only wondered vaguely if the 
 service was the same; if it were only heightened 
 imagination that it seemed to her the very vaulted 
 roof, the very pillared arches, the very stained glass 
 
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 windows and the Sanctuary itself, reechoed La- 
 more's utterances and the clear flute-like responses 
 of the child. 
 
 Then it was, unbidden and unthought of, there 
 crept a mist across the communion rail, hiding La- 
 more's figure and Anthony's as well. As she knelt 
 and watched it, it formed once more the Bridge. 
 With a quick indrawing of the breath she pressed 
 closer to the pew in front and clasped her hands 
 tightly together, as she waited for the familiar fig- 
 ure to appear. But to-day she waited in vain and 
 with a strained wonder, for from the Bridge stretch- 
 ing there across the Sanctuary appeared no sign of 
 Hector's face. Instead the mist slowly parted and 
 shifted until it formed and she looked upon a 
 perfect cross. From the center of it the face of 
 the child Anthony looked at her a thing glori- 
 fied before the cross itself assumed the heroic 
 proportions of a Man. She knew not if she saw 
 aright; she knew not if she dreamed, or if the fig- 
 ures in the great window in some strange way of 
 reflected light had become confused with the figures 
 of Lamore and the child ministering within the 
 rails. She only knew that, vision, reality or 
 dream, the cross of mist became the Man with the 
 face, the bearing of the St. Michael of the window, 
 transfigured with a glory such as she had never 
 seen. The face of the Man in the splendor of 
 his full stature, faded, as the face of the child had 
 done, and from the cross at its center burned a 
 strange white light. Creeping from head and foot- 
 
 466
 
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 piece and cross-bars stole strange colors to illumi- 
 nate the Thing of fancy or reality. It seemed to 
 her that along the headpiece in a strange vividness 
 of gold there walked the great intellects of the 
 world; that they passed before her in a strange 
 review the St. Pauls, the Platos and the Hugos 
 and the Bacons; the Mozarts and the Wagners; 
 the Angelos and the Galileos and the Brunos and 
 the Pythagorases. Somewhere from their midst 
 there looked out at her Venusti, the Great Cardinal, 
 as she had seen him one spring morning at the altar 
 rail, his hands on the boy Anthony's hair. From 
 the right arm there came to meet them at that glow- 
 ing Heart the Center, in a stream of palest green, 
 the souls of action the Elijahs, the Marthas, the 
 Booths and the David Livingstones; and some- 
 where, almost hidden in all that great procession, 
 but still there, it seemed to her she saw the faces 
 of Lamore and of Stone. Then it was that slowly 
 from the cross's left arm, wrapped in a blue softer, 
 more intense than even the southern sky without, 
 there came to mingle in that Central Light, the 
 high types of the world's servants of devotion : the 
 St. Johns, the Marys of Bethany, the St. Francises 
 and the Teresas and the a Kempises all those on 
 whom the seal of mystic longing had been set, and 
 among them for a moment there came to her, as 
 they passed, the impression of Cecile. Again she 
 watched them mingle, melt into that One Center, 
 and a light such as one sees at sunset sometimes 
 behind the Matterhorn a pale crimson toning 
 
 467
 
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 into softest pink enveloped the base of the cross, 
 and climbing up the path thus made she watched the 
 Peters, the Magdalens, the Damiens, the Coolidge 
 Pattersons wind their way, and she felt herself 
 among them those who loved ; but always 
 always as a flame that soars toward heaven to 
 be absorbed and lost yet is still a flame the great 
 procession moved toward One Goal, as though from 
 out of that One Heart of Power, all intellect, all 
 action, all devotion and all love had once gone forth 
 in equal parts and were by their own individualized 
 efforts bringing back, vitalized and perfected, the 
 sum of all experience to Their Own. 
 
 The strange cross faded into one glowing Heart 
 of Light before It in Its turn dissolved, and there 
 came to her sight distinct again St. Michael's win- 
 dow, the white marble of the Sanctuary and the 
 figures of Lamore and the child. The Wafer had 
 been blessed and Lamore was giving the benedic- 
 tion. 
 
 An hour later at the little wharf where Fauchet's 
 boat waited at its moorings, she laid her hand in 
 that of Lamore. 
 
 " Good-bye," she said. " When I am living in the 
 valley again when the heights seem strange, re- 
 mote and cold, I will recall to-day. I will remem- 
 ber that, however feebly I have interpreted it, how- 
 ever distorted and blinded was my vision, I have 
 no cause to ever doubt or fear, since once, for a 
 brief time, I sensed the One Reality of Things." 
 
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 They watched her, Lamore and the child An- 
 thony, until Fauchet's boat was a speck upon the 
 waters. Lamore's face was grave. He seemed to 
 have grown old. There was a strange sadness in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " She the good American she will come to 
 us again ? " 
 
 It was the voice of the boy Anthony. 
 
 " I do not know, my child. We can only wait 
 Anthony only wait." 
 
 The boy slipped his hand in that of Lamore, that 
 closed over it quickly. 
 
 " And hope," said the child. " Nay, do not be 
 so sad. Always will 7 love you, mon pre" 
 
 It was the boy Anthony who, three days later, 
 by order of the Great Cardinal, climbed the turret 
 stairs of the chateau and flung the Great Banner 
 with its gold fringe to the breeze. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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