THE 
 
 ROMANTIC WOMAN
 
 NEW BORZOI NOVELS 
 SPRING, 1920 
 
 PETER JAMESON 
 
 By Gilbert Frankau 
 
 THE ROLLING STONE 
 
 By C. A. Dmvson-Scott 
 
 THE CROSS PULL 
 
 By Hal G. Evarts 
 
 DELIVERANCE 
 
 By E. L. Grant Watson 
 
 THE SECRET BATTLE 
 
 By A. P. Herbert 
 
 THE TALLEYRAND MAXIM 
 By J. S. Fletcher 
 
 WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD 
 
 By E. M. Forster
 
 THE 
 ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY BORDEN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ALFRED A KNOPF 
 
 1920
 
 PUBLISHED, 1920, BY 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 
 
 The Only Authorized American Edition 
 
 Firtt and second printings in advance 
 of publication 
 
 Published March. 1920 
 
 PRINTED IN THK UNITED 8TATIS AMIBICA
 
 PART ONE 
 
 2134198
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 IT was in the middle of dinner at Saracens on the 
 tenth of September two years ago. They were on 
 their way home, the four Americans, and in two 
 separate couples had descended on us, all dreadfully 
 unaware of the surprise in store for them, the surprise 
 of finding each other. Ruffles had been safely staring 
 at Phyllis and Louise for some moments through the 
 branching candelabra. He ended his scrutiny by wickedly 
 rolling his eyes in my direction and saying with more 
 than usual insolence : 
 
 " How well you imitate us." 
 
 " And how hard we try," I murmured, saying with 
 fatal promptitude what was bitterly in my mind. 
 
 " What's that? " growled Jim. 
 
 " Ruffles is accusing us of imitating his own, that is, 
 their own decadence " 
 
 " Oh, I say ! " put in Ruffles deprecatingly, cocking an 
 eyebrow. 
 
 Jim glared. I expected him to defend his nation, but 
 he was unlike himself that night. 
 
 " Only the women," he brought out after a pause with 
 defiant brutality, daring me to snub him for his bad taste 
 in criticizing his wife. 
 
 " Yes, I meant the women." 
 
 And then they fixed each other with an animosity that 
 seemed to suggest the stirring of dangerous depths. I
 
 8 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 dropped my eyes to avoid the sight of Jim's passionate 
 flush, and when I looked up again after an uncomfortable 
 silence I was appalled. 
 
 I remember quite distinctly the definite sensation con- 
 veyed by the almost audible click in my brain, as I 
 looked up from my plate and as, in that instant, all the 
 broken images that made up for me the impression of 
 the dinner table, slid smoothly together into a new pat- 
 tern. The change was like the change worked by the 
 turning of a kaleidoscope, and the people who came within 
 range looked as peculiar as though I myself had stood 
 on my head. It was not that I actually became clair- 
 voyant in the middle of the dinner, but that exaggeration 
 is as near as I can get to a truthful statement of the 
 case. It may have been a particularly piercing gasp of 
 enthusiasm from Louise that produced the phenomenon ; 
 certainly her shriek of delight as she ogled Lord Britton 
 was startling enough upon strained nerves, to account for 
 anything, but then I hadn't realized that my nerves were 
 strained. However that may be, and whatever the cause 
 of it, they all changed for me in an instant, appeared 
 strangely significant, and tremendously queer, as queer 
 as ghosts and as significant as immortals, angels or devils. 
 They became suddenly immortal souls visible to the eye, 
 and hopelessly entangled in the meshes of the endless 
 past and the more endless future. Their faces and bodies, 
 as much of their bodies as was visible above the table- 
 cloth, looked strange, but not like the faces of strangers, 
 for, at once, that was the point of it, I knew them 
 phenomenally, understood them deeply. It was as though 
 all my life I had been dealing with the dried remains 
 of these people, as though I had been living with a set 
 of mummies, the remains of human beings I had known
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 9 
 
 centuries before, and as if now we had suddenly been 
 transported back to the time when they were alive. 
 
 The moment had a sinister quality, as though it had 
 been blown upon by the breath of very old decayed 
 things, immemorial, transcendent villainies and disappoint- 
 ments. It was like a hard drop of eternity, distilled 
 for me to behold in completeness, out of the vague flood 
 of time. It was complete as a gigantic and perfect 
 crystal in which they were all petrified, and I remem- 
 ber pitying them ; for what human figures could appear 
 to advantage against the visible drop-curtain of eternity? 
 
 The sight of my plate formed the jumping-off place for 
 my unnatural vision of them. I remember the very 
 ordinary look of it, the bit of discoloured and decayed 
 partridge, an ugly black part of the wing, lying in a 
 little pool of gravy with a shred of lettuce mangled 
 by my fork; and I remember the scarlet cuff of the 
 footman's coat as it came between my eyes and the white 
 cloth while he removed the plate, good scarlet cloth 
 woven on a Scotch loom, sold for three and six a yard, 
 and worn by a well-trained arm; and then I looked 
 down the table and saw Binky as I had never seen him 
 before. I saw Binky with his fine, lined countenance 
 for the first time visibly tinged with depravity. His 
 eyelids drooped, and I remembered the eyelids of the 
 beautiful Duke who had died so inopportunely as far 
 as Binky's love affair was concerned, and I remembered 
 the eyelids of a certain actor who had once played the 
 part of the mad King Charles of France. He, the 
 actor, had plastered his eyelids with white paste it 
 was a clever make-up. I had never noticed the resem- 
 blance before. Binky had always looked to me more 
 or less as he did at the beginning when he came forward
 
 io THE ROMANTIC WOMAN, 
 
 to dazzle me with that vivid bright expression of his, 
 just coloured with sarcasm and apology as though he 
 were constantly saying : " I know the world is supposed 
 to be a beastly place, and I've no business to be happy, 
 but everything is so awfully jolly, you know." He had 
 always seemed to me like that, happy and boyish, in 
 spite of his grey hair and hollow cheeks. I saw him 
 now growing old, beautifully and hopelessly aged, in- 
 finitely aged. I saw the extreme sophistication of all 
 his ancestors, and the weariness of all his forests, and 
 the corruption of his mouldering houses waiting to fall 
 on him and do away with his energy and his joy, and 
 make him into just such another as his father or his 
 father's brother. I saw him, too, gently writhing in 
 agony under his perfect raillery, and I knew that he 
 was cursing still the accident that had made him give 
 up that creature beside him. For there actually was 
 Phyllis sitting beside him, quite perfectly lovely, and 
 with her eyes and teeth softly sparkling, and her mar- 
 vellous hair an aureole of fairness about her slender 
 face. She was dimpling and laughing in spite of her 
 acute regret, her enormous envy, and I recognized her 
 then at last in a flash as the most immortal thing on 
 earth, a perfect coquette; and I hated her, for I saw 
 that she was fond of killing people and tormenting them, 
 and I remembered what Aunt Cora had said to me in 
 her grim way about American women. What was 
 Phyllis doing there, I asked myself, sitting next to 
 Binky, who would have been so glad to have let her 
 devour him, sitting merrily next to Binky, and opposite 
 Claire Hobbes? Phyllis I had loved, and Claire I had 
 disliked and feared for years for just as many years 
 as I had wanted Binky, but after all Claire had played
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN n 
 
 the game as she saw it with fairness, and she had a 
 right to despise Phyllis. She was honest in her profanity, 
 at any rate, and daring. She sat as cold and still 
 as an idol, swearing silently to herself. I knew she 
 was swearing and sneering at them both out of her long 
 curious eyes that compelled my reluctant admiration. 
 Nothing could have looked more perfectly finished than 
 Phyllis, but she didn't fool Claire. She was a treasure, 
 a jewel; she would fetch almost any price in a shop 
 that dealt in rare products and yet Claire knew, and 
 Ruffles knew, what she was. They saw through her, they 
 saw through Louise, they saw through us all. We never 
 could fool them. 
 
 But Binky had fooled me, all unconsciously and inno- 
 cently I knew, but nevertheless truly he had fooled 
 me. I had been finding it out bit by bit for years. 
 When a man's mother and sisters and grandfathers 
 and grandmothers and great-grandfathers and great- 
 grandmothers have all had the habit of being painted 
 by great artists, he acquires a flippant familiarity 
 with such artists. How was I to know, coming straight 
 out of the wilderness, that when Binky talked so easily 
 and gaily of great men and great treasures, men and 
 things we regard with awe on the other side of the 
 Atlantic, that his polish was no evidence whatever of 
 a fine intellect, but just the result of rolling about in a 
 world of treasures, and of rubbing up against a 
 rich background ? How was I to know that his excellent 
 taste was not his own, that he really had done his best 
 to spoil it? His household gods had been too much for 
 him ; they had kept him by force in the frame that had 
 been meant for him, and there he was high up on the 
 wall for plain people to gape at. Their gaping angered
 
 12 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 me. What right had Americans to gape? Clergymen 
 ought to be good and Americans ought to be demo- 
 cratic. It is a question of living up to one's profession 
 of faith. Binky and Claire and Ruffles, and even dear 
 Molly Tripp, were gazing down their English noses at 
 us, because they knew we were faithless. Phyllis and 
 Louise were obvious, and was I not to be bulked with 
 them, for had I not married Binky? Had I not bought 
 him? Of us all, Pat alone was above and beyond their 
 scorn. Jim was obscure. He puzzled them, but Pat they 
 accepted good-humouredly. Pat, who had been a 
 " Mick " in the streets of Iroquois, he was their peer, 
 and as he sat there waving vague gestures towards them 
 with his huge hands, and rumbling on with his huge 
 voice, he was as removed from them all as a bear too well 
 fed and comfortable to bother about knocking any one 
 down. 
 
 I became suddenly weary with the problem of birth 
 and inheritance, of races and the origins of societies. 
 I was bewildered by the vision of our Huguenot, and 
 Dutch, and Irish, and German forefathers. They seemed 
 to crowd up behind my compatriots grimacing and chat- 
 tering to drown out the sound of their American voices. 
 If Louise and Phyllis would only keep still and let us 
 hear what these ghosts had to say. 
 
 I had belonged to them. I had given them up ten 
 years before, and had taken the others on, but they 
 hadn't taken me on. Further, the American lot had 
 grown accustomed to think of me as one of the English. 
 I perceived that I existed nowhere, and belonged to 
 nobody. 
 
 Whether the dreadful event that was approaching 
 had actually cast its shadow on that moment I don't
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 13 
 
 know. I felt no menace of any particular horror; it 
 was merely the fear of knowledge, the shock of so much 
 recognition, that made me go white enough to attract 
 Jim's notice. His was the last face to be crowded into 
 that panorama, for he sat at my right, and I came to 
 it hoping to find him at least looking like the same 
 intelligent dissipated cherub, but he was no more com- 
 fortable to the eye than any of them. The beauty was 
 there still, and the innocence, but it was a dreadful 
 innocence, dreadful and desperate, and his flushed face 
 seemed to be set in a last final effort to remember all 
 those things which we together and apart had clung to 
 and which had kept us clear of degradation. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked in his suppressed 
 nasal tone. 
 
 "Why? what?" 
 
 " You look so funny, a queer colour, whitish." 
 
 He leaned forward and stared, deeply, shyly, solici- 
 tous, and I looked back at him, not shyly, for I was 
 too tremendously excited to feel shy. I wanted to know 
 once and for all whether it was true, or whether he 
 too had fooled me. His very deep blue eyes are like 
 the eyes of a fierce intelligent angel, and he has a ridicu- 
 lous curly mouth, a beautiful cupid's bow mouth that 
 would fit a girl to perfection. I took in again the contra- 
 dictions of his face with its fine, impressive brow and 
 its round, chubby cheeks, and I realized that I loved 
 him terribly, as a ghost might love a man utterly out 
 of reach. He had occupied my mind more persistently 
 and for a longer number of years than any one on earth, 
 except perhaps my father and it seemed tremendously 
 important that I should know absolutely that I had not 
 been thinking about him inaccurately and romantically.
 
 14 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 It was necessary for my sanity and for the composure 
 of my old age that I should know that when I suffered 
 with his suffering I was right about it, not imagining a 
 thing which" did not exist, as I had done with Binky and 
 so many others. 
 
 "" What is it? " he urged again. 
 
 " I don't know," I said. '* It seems queer your all 
 being here together. I didn't plan it. It happened. 
 Phyllis invited herself, and so did Louise." '- 
 
 " You don't mean to say you don't want us ? " He 
 smiled dimly. 
 
 " No. I don't mean that, not so long as you don't cut 
 each other's throats." 
 
 He stared, and then decided, too late, to laugh. 
 
 " Oh rats that's all too far off. Pat is perfectly 
 tame now perfectly tame. He eats out of her hand." 
 
 "Ah but it's not Pat I'm afraid of." 
 
 " Who, then ? " He leaned back, digging his round chin 
 into his collar. 
 
 " At least, not Pat especially, but all of you together." 
 
 "Don't you think we know how to behave?" He 
 smiled. 
 
 " My dear Jim ! It's not that. You know what I 
 mean." 
 
 I was saying stupid things, because I wanted to know. 
 I wanted so terribly to know that I ws not mistaken 
 about Louise's effect on him. 
 
 " You know what I mean," I repeated. 
 
 And Louise's voice shrilled down the table. " What 
 is a point to point? You English have such an extraor- 
 dinary way of talking. A horse race? Why a point 
 to point ? What points do you mean ? " We both hung 
 there, suspended, as though that voice were a nail that
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN' 15 
 
 had nailed us awkwardly, helplessly, flapping against a 
 wall a blank wall. 
 
 But Jim answered me, as he sat up suddenly, reaching 
 for a glass. 
 
 " Well then, I don't, and what's more I don't want 
 to." He stared at me dimly, but as he stared his ; look 
 cleared and hardened. There was no appeal in his eyes. 
 They shut me out completely. If I thought that he 
 was gokig to give himself or Louise away, there in Binky's 
 house, or anywhere else, I was mistaken. He had brought 
 Louise because she wanted to come. Why she wanted to 
 come, he chose to consider none of his business. He 
 would get through it somehow, and he did not want 
 me to know. He would be ashamed if he thought I 
 kn^w. So much I read with relief in his face, his 
 obscure passionate face; and in looking at his face I 
 realized that my curious moment had passed. 
 
 I was quite normal once more, quite as normal and 
 as lonely as ever. And then Louise shrieked again, and 
 Jim flushed a darker crimson and volently drained his 
 glass of champagne. I had kept no count of his glasses 
 of champagne. His drinking didn't impress me at the 
 time as unusual. 
 
 I go back to that moment of that night because if 
 I hadn't had it, with them all fixed in it, so clearly, I 
 should never have been able to understand anything in 
 its relation to anything else sufficiently to attempt to 
 write about it. And I want to write because, now it's 
 all over, and. Jim has disappeared for ever, and the 
 others have gone off to the war, Binky and Ruffles, and 
 all the other men in the world writing this gives me 
 something to do. 
 
 Moreover, in thinking over my life I keep coming
 
 1 6 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 back to that moment as to a sort of touchstone. It's 
 not only that I see now how everything even from the 
 beginning, when I was a child in Iroquois, led up to 
 that horrible evening, but that the vision I had at dinner 
 just before the final scene made me a different person, a 
 wiser person just as truly as the war has made me a 
 quieter person. 
 
 The war has made us friends, Binky and me. I am 
 ashamed to say it, but there it is. I am ashamed of 
 being in debt to the greatest horror of all time for my 
 own peace of mind. I am ashamed to admit that the 
 war has done something good for us, because that proves 
 just how dreadfully deep we were in failure. It's an 
 awful thing to think that the tragedy of millions has 
 been a blessing to me, but it is true. It has reduced my 
 life to the simplest terms, it has destroyed all fictitious 
 values and left me with a very few simple ones. I love 
 my children, and I like Binky, and I am glad the war 
 has saved him. He is happy now in the face of all 
 those horrors. When I say he is happy I mean that his 
 soul is enjoying the acute discomfort of his body and 
 the dislocation of his nerves, and the unviolability of 
 his mind in a violated world; I mean that his soul is 
 quiet in the midst of the shuddering convulsions of the 
 universe. It's a splendid thing for a man to keep his 
 will rigid against the raving lunacies let loose by the 
 noise of cannon and the sight of grotesque agonies. 
 Binky, of course, doesn't realize that he is splendid. 
 He talks of doing his job. That is the most English 
 thing I know, that terse denial of heroism and splendid 
 suffering. I sit at home thinking about it. 
 
 I believe my cousins-in-law are full of romance and 
 energy. Clementine is on a barge somewhere in a
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 17 
 
 Flemish mud-puddle making coffee for the Belgians, and 
 Monica is nursing at Le Touquet; but I do nothing. I 
 am too old to delight in calamity. I have entered into 
 middle age, and there seems to be nothing for a decent 
 unprofessional woman to do but perpetuate the race and 
 meditate over her knitting. And so, as I've given Binky 
 an heir long ago, two of them in fact, I am meditating. 
 I am meditating upon the questions of race personality, 
 of inheritance ; I am meditating on the vices and virtues 
 of mongrels and thoroughbreds, of civilized people and 
 uncivilized people, and upon the relative beauties of 
 wildernesses and gardens. 
 
 I am thinking of how I have misunderstood Binky, 
 and of how he must have misunderstood me. It has 
 taken centuries of discipline to turn out Binky, and it 
 is no wonder that I took long to understand him. I 
 was born in the city of Iroquois. That explains a lot. 
 There is little discipline in Iroquois. It has no history. 
 There has never been a war there. I am a savage, and 
 I look decadent. Ruffles says that is our national charm, 
 the charm of American women. There seems to be 
 something peculiarly seductive about the frail white 
 barbarian clothed in costly laces, who masks her passion- 
 ate blindness under extreme frivolity. Binky found 
 me like that and succumbed. I know now that it wasn't 
 only the money. I clear him of that accusation. But he 
 didn't understand what it was that attracted him. 
 
 We are domesticated creatures, we American women. 
 We love our bonds. We are spoiled and petted, and 
 loaded with jewels, and we are crowned with the assur- 
 ance of the woman who is born where women are scarce ; 
 but all the same we are full of the domestic affection 
 of slaves, and our lives move in the round of simple
 
 1 8 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 primitive passions, such as jealousy, and maternal pride, 
 and the lust of possessions. 
 
 No one would have dreamed to have looked at Phyllis 
 and Louise that night, that Phyllis was capable of plotting 
 unspeakable robberies, and indecent self -revelations, all 
 because of her enormous greed, or that Louise could 
 turn her husband into a murderer through the power 
 of her furious jealousy. 
 
 So much geography spreads about that dinner table 
 that it seems impossible to give any idea of the pattern 
 of it. And yet there is a very definite pattern, in which 
 Iroquois is linked up with the Afghan frontier and the 
 west of England. And then think of the time it took 
 to arrange that party, fifteen years at least, or perhaps 
 thirty, just the whole of my lifetime. For my life seems 
 to me an interesting affair because of its mistakes, one 
 mistake leading to another inevitably until the whole 
 lot of them produced that final scene that turned Jim 
 into a criminal. For this war isn't the final scene, it's 
 really not in the story at all. The story ended on the 
 tenth of September two years ago.
 
 CHAPTER Two 
 
 IF you can imagine the whole of industrial Man- 
 chester, a large slice of the Riviera, most of the 
 East End of London, with half a dozen Polish, 
 Hungarian, and Italian towns thrown into one, and all 
 spread upon a brand new prairie by the side of a lake 
 as big as a sea, you will have an idea of Iroquois, a place 
 of gigantic incongruities and pretensions! And Iro- 
 quois is American as no other city in the United States 
 is American. New York is New York, but Iroquois 
 is American ; it is gigantic, it is provincial ; it has sprouted 
 like a mushroom out of the inexhaustible riches of the 
 prairie; it is more or less exactly in the geographical 
 centre of the United States. 
 
 Iroquois is an exciting place. I always think of it 
 as full of wind and noise. In winter the wind tore 
 down the lake shore in hurricanes, screamed round 
 buildings, rattling the windows; and this demoniacal 
 yelling of the wind, together with the crashing of waves 
 on the stone beach, gave a queer sharp distinction to 
 the extreme richness and luxury of my father's house. 
 There is something splendidly perverse in the artificial 
 seashore of the city bordered for twenty miles by sky- 
 scraping office buildings, by clubs, railway stations, hotels 
 and palaces. There is something irrational in the beau- 
 tiful sweep of that concrete beach built that the wind 
 should not eat away land worth a thousand dollars 
 a bucket, and built so cleverly that it looks for all the 
 
 19
 
 20 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 world like the real thing. From a point on the outward 
 curve somewhere opposite the Art School, a grey stone 
 building in the French style of the last century, one 
 gets a view back along the shore, and always I am startled 
 to find there, planted by the shore, no bathing houses, 
 pavilions or boat clubs, but the headquarters of great 
 industrial enterprises, the shops of a complex city's 
 appetites and the palatial mansions of millionaires. My 
 father's house was one of these. It was- built of grey 
 stone, in a kind of modified Norman style, with massive 
 walls and a tower and wrought-iron gates shutting off 
 the driveway from the street. A strip of grass with 
 tall trees at regular intervals stretched between the street 
 and the lake. I remember once standing in the library 
 and watching three ships go down in a storm. I take 
 it that a room is built for protection, to shut out the 
 menace of Nature, and enclose us in a lying security. 
 Our palaces in Iroquois weren't very successful refuges. 
 In spite of the damask walls and Persian rugs, one 
 could see ships going down with all hands on board. 
 We kept a life-belt and a coil of rope inside the kitchen 
 door for the rescue of drowning men. I remember 
 on several occasions that one of our kitchen chairs 
 was commandeered for rescue work by a policeman, 
 our special policeman. We rushed out after him once 
 to watch with the crowd while he let it down by the rope 
 over the stone wall to the man struggling there in the 
 icy water. That was before the shelving beach of con- 
 crete was built. The stone wall was done away with 
 because the waves continually ate into its foundation, 
 and because the sheer face of it seemed to tempt men 
 to commit suicide by jumping over it. The man whom 
 we watched had apparently jumped over, but had found
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 21 
 
 death in the icy water too terrible and had changed his 
 mind. He grabbed the chair and was drawn up. Half- 
 way to the top, however, with a convulsive movement, 
 he flung himself back again into the lake. This was 
 repeated four times while the policeman and several mem- 
 bers of the crowd shouted encouragement to him through 
 the wind. I didn't see the end, for my governess, spying 
 us from the schoolroom window, had dashed out after 
 us and pulled me away, but Dick managed to elude her, 
 and told me graphically how the " poor geezer " had been 
 tired out at the last and had gone down. 
 
 The lake was a constant source of annoyance to the 
 municipality before they granted the money for that 
 very beautiful beach. It ate away the land at one point, 
 and piled up sand at another. Dredges were constantly 
 at work somewhere within view, and just south of our 
 house a great tract of new land was built out into the 
 water. I don't know why ; one would have thought there 
 was enough land with the prairie stretching away for ever 
 to the north, west, and south. 
 
 The north side, as we called it, ended on the south with 
 the river a narrow, sluggish stream spanned by innum- 
 erable drawbridges, crammed with ships and barges of 
 every description, banked with factories, and warehouses, 
 and saloons. A romantic, filthy stream this river, trav- 
 elling by slow and devious routes through the dark 
 crowded canyons made by sky-scrapers. One could 
 follow it up by walking across the tops of the close- 
 packed lake craft all the way to little Hell, that cesspool 
 of life where the races of the earth are indistinguishable 
 and the universal brotherhood of man lies stupefied in 
 the mud. 
 
 I knew the city. In spite of the fact that my father
 
 22 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 was a gentleman and owned a lot of it, I played in the 
 streets. My three brothers and myself and our friends 
 formed a sort of gang, which we called the " Hot Push." 
 The Hot Push gathered itself together every day after 
 school. What became of our governesses I don't know. 
 We, at least, had one, presumably to watch over us and 
 help with our lessons, but if she ever dared come out 
 with us, we gave her the slip heartlessly and disappeared 
 from the sight of the grown-ups until dark. Now that 
 I think of it our fun was harmlessly hedged about with 
 ignored conventions. We had a governess who succeeded 
 in functioning for five minutes before each meal by 
 inspecting hands and faces, and one minute each night 
 in each bedroom when she turned out the light. We had 
 a back yard enclosed by a high stone wall, where we 
 were supposed to play, all safe from tramps, and where 
 the boys very occasionally condescended to do tricks on 
 the horizontal bar that had been put up for them. We 
 had a schoolroom, but always did our lessons in the 
 library in the evenings with my father to help us. In 
 fact my mother's idea of bringing us up had given way 
 to the enthusiasm of American youth, and the Hot Push 
 went its joyful way, unimpeded by parents, attendants, 
 or policemen. Its activities varied with the seasons. In 
 the autumn it played football, built bonfires of dead 
 leaves in the streets, and persecuted tradesmen. In the 
 winter it went skating at the skating rink, or tobogganing 
 in the park, and " hitching " with small sleds up and 
 down the whole length to the north side, behind grocers' 
 or bakers' or milkmen's wagons. In the spring it played 
 " prisoner's base," or baseball, or " hare and hound," and 
 in the summer it disbanded to meet again in the autumn. 
 But, of course, besides these normal pursuits it went
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 23 
 
 in for all sorts of other things, such as shooting sparrows 
 with sling shots, and cats and mice with air guns. 
 It also built houses in back yards, and steam engines 
 that would go, with machinery from my father's foundry ; 
 and then of course it had always on hand the war with 
 the " Micks." 
 
 I don't know how it was that I was allowed to share 
 all these good times with my brothers in the streets ; 
 it must have had something to do with the spirit of 
 democracy, and with the fact that Iroquois, big as it 
 was, had still something of the quality of a country 
 town. I remember stretches of wooden sidewalk with 
 mushrooms growing between the rotting planks, that we 
 used to pick, cook and eat at the risk of our lives. The 
 numerous vacant lots too, gaping between Venetian pal- 
 aces and Tudor castles, overgrown with bushes and 
 strewn with tin cans, these were an evidence of the fact 
 that Iroquois was not quite such a finished city as it 
 pretended to be. It was doing its best to convert wooden 
 planks into concrete pavements, and vacant lots into 
 luxurious dwellings, but it seemed to have bitten off more 
 of the prairie than it could conveniently chew up and 
 swallow. 
 
 It had managed in the fifty odd years of its life to 
 bring forth or at least allow one gentleman to come into 
 being, but it gave birth to no artist. How could it? 
 
 A gentleman was miracle enough. On the other hand, 
 it produced a whole crop of saints. Religious leaders 
 thrive in the wilderness, particularly in a wilderness full 
 of money and noise. 
 
 There was no established church in Iroquois, and noth- 
 ing well-behaved about religion. It was a furiously mil- 
 itant Protestantism that cried loudly in the wilderness,
 
 24 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 with no regard for good manners, or good taste. I wish 
 it had not been so. I have a particular grudge against 
 those churches of Iroquois. I wish my mother had not 
 come within their reach. My mother was a lady, a gentle, 
 delicate lady. She ought to have been born in an Italian 
 palace and have gone on pilgrimages to Rome for the 
 saving of her dear soul. It was an exquisite soul, you 
 could tell by her face. She was a mediaeval religieuse, 
 and she was a member of the Ebenezer Sprott Church. 
 Wasn't it tragic that with all her intense religious fervour 
 she could find no fellowship for her spirit save in the 
 Ebenezer Sprott Church? I have always been afraid of 
 religious experience as an incipient drunkard is afraid 
 of drink; nevertheless, in spite of myself, when I was 
 thirteen years old I was " born again." That is what it 
 was called in the Ebenezer Sprott Church ; and as it took 
 place there one night during a prayer meeting which was 
 part of a revival, the members of the church ought to 
 know. They saw me at it. My miserable little soul was 
 stripped and exposed to their sanctified curiosity. It is 
 horrible to think of. I shudder at the indecency of it. 
 I can see myself now, a quaking, shivering little girl, 
 rising up in the midst of that heated congregation and con- 
 fessing my sins in a trembling voice, with a thousand pairs 
 of eyes devouring my shame and my tears; a thousand 
 minds in a state resembling intoxication, praising God for 
 my utter and disgraceful loss of self-control. It is a 
 pitiful sight as I see it now, and the pity of it saves it 
 from a too horrible indecency. I was very young, I 
 couldn't stand up against all the terrible weight of psychic 
 influence that was exerted by those electrified saints. 
 After all, I wasn't so very much to blame for giving in, 
 but mind you, I knew all the time that I was doing an
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 25 
 
 offensive thing. Even in the midst of that delicious 
 delirium the still small voice of my sane self told me 
 that this was a misdemeanour of a particularly danger- 
 ous and disgusting kind. What it amounted to was this : 
 I humiliated myself, I abrogated my will, I surrendered 
 it to an alien influence ; and this I take it to be the supreme 
 crime, and to do so publicly the supreme indecency. And 
 the strange thing is, that this surrender of self, this public 
 display of nakedness, is held up by such churches as the 
 Ebenezer Sprott Church as the only way to salvation. 
 They revel in the self-abnegation and in the mortification 
 of the spirit. Their theology is full of expressions about 
 being nothing so that God may be everything, about being 
 dead that He may live, and so on. I suppose, granted a 
 God, one can justify it all logically enough; it's not their 
 logic that I am criticizing. As a matter of fact I'm not 
 trying to criticize them at all. I am merely stating my 
 own experience ; and for me, the participation in a spirit- 
 ual life, thus conducted, was a perversion of my most 
 fundamental instincts. And this is the point of interest, 
 namely, that although I knew this, still, so strong was the 
 religious influence exerted by the church, that I suc- 
 cumbed to it. Possibly I might never have succumbed 
 if I had not been over-emotionalized by other excesses. 
 
 Life was full of emotions for the youth of Iroquois. 
 At the age when, doctors and reformers would tell you, 
 young people should be vegetating, I and my friends were 
 in a chronic state of excitement. It seems to me that 
 some one of us was always rushing in upon the others, 
 eyes flashing, hair disordered, breath exhausted, to im- 
 part some startling piece of news. 
 
 We were excited about our sweethearts, about the 
 " Micks," about the suicides that jumped over the stone
 
 26 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 wall into the lake, about our parents and their prohi- 
 bitions, about God and Sunday-school, about presidential 
 elections, and political parades, and strikes, and murders 
 in the newspapers. 
 
 And this excitement, which was a thing in itself, like an 
 electric current, existing in us and in the composition of 
 the city, stirred up our minds to a feverish and perhaps 
 disastrous activity ; disastrous because our minds were so 
 empty. We were like little machines driven by a tre- 
 mendous force, grinding on and on with flying wheels and 
 with no weight to drive, no great task to consume the 
 energy. The efforts of our mothers and our teachers 
 seemed to be exerted to drive us on with morals and 
 ideals, while no one put any facts into our heads. We 
 were taught to take life very seriously, and told nothing 
 about it, nothing more accurate than my mother's state- 
 ment that it was the gift of God. 
 
 It wouldn't be fair to Iroquois to let you think the 
 Ebenezer Sprott Church was the only church in the city. 
 There were hundreds of them, all kinds Episcopal 
 churches, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Baptist; 
 Christian Science temples, Jewish synagogues, a Roman 
 Catholic Cathedral, a Zionist chapel, where they went in 
 for faith-healing, and, I believe, a Mormon meeting- 
 house, to say nothing of Salvation Army headquarters, 
 and down-town missions for drunkards, and a Buddhist 
 shrine; but the Ebenezer Sprott Church was the place 
 where you heard the Gospel. That was the reason my 
 mother went there. She had left a fashionable church in 
 a storm of protest and gone west to sit among her 
 servants, and everybody else's servants, and bootmakers, 
 and bakers, and laundresses, to hear the Gospel. 
 
 I can see her now, sitting in that congregation, severely
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 27 
 
 but undeniably well clad, surrounded by pimply, untidy, 
 sweaty human beings, her shell-like face turned radiantly 
 to the pulpit where the low-bred man, with a face like a 
 caricature of Michael Angelo's prophet Hosea, pro- 
 pounded the Gospel. 
 
 I didn't like the Ebenezer Sprott Church. I didn't like 
 the name, and when I was asked in school where I went 
 to church, I was ashamed to say. I didn't like the smells 
 of all those close-packed bodies, whose habits and pocket- 
 books involved the use of not quite as much soap and 
 water as I was accustomed to. I didn't like the way they 
 came up to you after service, teary about the eyes, and 
 pressed your hand with radiant smiles and praised the 
 Lord. Of course I know that all this had nothing to do 
 with the divine Gospel which was preached there, but I 
 can't separate the theology of that House of God from 
 its aesthetic envelope. My mother could. She was by 
 nature much more fastidious than I, and yet she could 
 love a greasy woman with bad breath and a jet bonnet, 
 because she was a sister-in-Christ. My mother was won- 
 derful ! She was commanded in a certain verse in the 
 New Testament to cherish the saints, and she did; she 
 loved them, all the most pimply ones, and had them home, 
 fed them and clothed them, and let them flop on her. I 
 believe they really were made beautiful and pleasant to 
 her, by the light of her own charity, I mean her love for all 
 Christ's followers. 
 
 There were, I confess, things that I liked in the church, 
 but I was ashamed of liking them. I had a weakness 
 for the Reverend Ebenezer Sprott himself. He had bad 
 teeth and hollow cheeks, and a voice like a gong, and when 
 he preached, prancing up and down the platform, his cav- 
 ernous eyes glowing, and his Adam's apple working, the
 
 28 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 terrific emotional impact behind his words made me 
 shiver, deliciously. He would throw out his long, bony 
 hand and shout : *' Satan shall be bound a thousand 
 years, but he's not bound now. There he is stalking the 
 streets." It was very exciting. And the singing, too, 
 troubled and moved me. There was a large choir of some 
 fifty men and women, and they sang hymns to waltz tunes, 
 all about the blood of Jesus, and I joined in voluptuously, 
 feeling at the same time both exultation and disgust. 
 
 People were always being converted, and going up to 
 the altar and kneeling down in public as a sign that they 
 had found grace. Public exposure was one of the most 
 tried and approved methods of dealing with that flock. 
 The Reverend Ebenezer at the end of every service would 
 call on those who wished to accept Christ to rise and con- 
 fess their faith. My knees always trembled at this sum- 
 mons, and every Sunday as I watched the wretched crea- 
 tures who rose and stammered out the secrets of their 
 poor little lives, of how this man had beaten his wife, but 
 by the Grace of God would do it no more, and of how 
 that woman had been too fond of drink, I would blush 
 furiously and hold on to my seat in terror lest the Holy 
 Spirit drag me to my feet. Half a dozen such confessions 
 was in the ordinary course of things, but when the church 
 was struck by a revival, then was the real excitement ; 
 then you could hear the life history of a hundred sinners 
 in an hour, except that half a dozen talked at once. I say 
 struck by a revival, because the tumult in that church was 
 like the tumult in a ship that is struck by a storm. 
 
 It is difficult to convey to any one who has never 
 witnessed such a phenomenon any idea of its character. 
 Psychologically, I suppose, it is closely akin to the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 29 
 
 frenzied obscenities of savage rites. The negro church 
 in America forms an obvious link between the dances 
 about camp-fires in the jungle and such scenes as took 
 place in the Ebenezer Sprott Church. And the fact that 
 these orgies prevail throughout the whole of the United 
 States, dragging with them such people as my mother, 
 only proves my contention that we are savages. 
 
 I assure you the whole church would go mad ; more 
 or less obviously, more or less dangerously, but anyhow 
 mad. The little wheel of reason in each mind was re- 
 versed and set spinning backwards at an accelerated speed. 
 I remember so well the night of my rebirth, how I found 
 myself on my feet, shaking as if I had fever, stammering 
 out something about the sin fulness of my heart. I don't 
 know what actual deeds I confessed, I can't think what my 
 deflected brain could have fastened on, but I remember 
 scores of people round me were sobbing and praising the 
 Lord, and that a suffocating cloud of emotion seemed to 
 fill the room and make me dizzy, and that I believed this 
 somehow must be due to the presence of the Holy Spirit, 
 so I staggered up the aisle to the railing and knelt down 
 beside a man in a sporting checked coat and began to 
 pray and cry. 
 
 I don't know how long I was there, but I remember 
 vowing to myself that I would go as a missionary to the 
 heathen, after I had first converted my father and my 
 brothers, and Phyllis, and Louise. While I was kneeling 
 there, some one began the song, "At the cross, at the 
 cross," and I felt during the singing that my heart would 
 burst, that I wanted to die right then and go to heaven, 
 and then suddenly when the song finished I had a vision 
 of myself there, kneeling in the sight of everybody, and
 
 30 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I felt ashamed, but this shame I knew was of the devil, 
 so I stifled it and went on praying to Christ to wash my 
 heart clean. 
 
 The result of these revivals is supposed to be the regen- 
 eration of character. I don't know whether in the lives 
 of all those affected by the upheaval a greater clarity of 
 mind and righteousness of conduct is evidenced subse- 
 quently or not. It is difficult to collect statistics on the 
 point. Did the man who confessed to wife-beating give 
 up beating his wife, and if so, what did he do instead? 
 No one, that I know of, has gone into the psychology of 
 conduct after conversion. It might be an interesting 
 piece of research work; I can only speak for myself. 
 The immediate result of that revivalist prayer meeting 
 was a desire to make converts. A shred of decency left 
 hanging to me kept me off my father, but I tackled Phyllis 
 straight away. I made her read the Bible with me. I 
 made her get down on her knees and pray with me. I 
 reduced her, in fact, with astounding ease to a little piece 
 of religious pulp. She announced herself converted, and 
 promised to read the Bible every morning, a vow which 
 she kept a fortnight. With Louise I was less successful. 
 Her mother interfered and sent me home with a mental 
 box on the ear. As to whether my experience made me 
 any more loving and kind and generous, I couldn't say. 
 It certainly made me more anxious to do right, more self- 
 conscious in conduct, and for a time it acted as a check 
 upon my quest for knowledge; knowledge even came to 
 assume the character of a sinful thing. My mother gave 
 me as a test of the Tightness and wrongness of a thing the 
 following maxim. If you are sure that you could do and 
 would do such and such a thing with Jesus if He were 
 actually here, then do it. Well, there was no doubt in my
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 31 
 
 mind that Jesus would censor a number of books. I felt 
 that I couldn't very well read aloud to Him Tolstoi's 
 " Resurrection," which had been forbidden by my mother 
 anyhow ; so I abandoned it in the middle and put it in the 
 fire. Probably this was good. I've an idea that " Resur- 
 rection " would be unwholesome reading for a girl of thir- 
 teen, particularly an ignorant girl ; but if my conscience 
 saved me some unhealthy food, I'm sure the continued 
 excitement of prayer meetings was equally unhealthy. 
 Prayer meetings were my chief dissipation that winter, 
 their hold on me slackening so imperceptibly that my re- 
 version to former freedom came all unexpectedly, with 
 only a slight bump. The experience altogether was like 
 falling in love, giving way to desire, and then gradually 
 getting bored.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 PHYLLIS DAY and Louise Bowers belonged to the 
 " Hot Push," Jim Van Orden, of course, and 
 Tommy Dodge, Sally Comstock, and Gus Brown, 
 and half a dozen others besides my three brothers, Dick, 
 Jerry, and Bud. Phyllis and Louise were my bosom 
 friends. We went to the same school, and during school 
 hours we wrote daily voluminous letters to each other 
 such as sisters might write who had been long separated, 
 and smuggled them across from one desk to another in 
 the covers of textbooks. We met moreover every after- 
 noon as soon after lunch as possible. 
 
 I remember one day in the butler's pantry that we 
 had a momentous conversation. We were about the same 
 age I was twelve. I seem to have rather a vivid idea 
 of what we looked like that day, perhaps because I sat 
 on the sink opposite the square looking-glass where Ed- 
 ward tied his butler's tie. We had on sweaters and tam- 
 o'-shanters, and our long thin legs stuck out from under 
 short woollen skirts. The icebox was open, and we had 
 hauled various eatables out of its depths. We sat with 
 our feet dangling, eating olives, salted almonds, and choco- 
 late cake with a gusto that betokened a perfect confidence 
 in the capacity of our own insides and that of the ice- 
 box, that betokened more an absolute belief in the great 
 American god who gave little girls joy of their stomachs. 
 The chocolate cake was of an exceedingly rich, damp 
 kind, called Devil's food, a special source of gluttonous 
 
 32
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 33 
 
 joy to Phyllis, who had been known to eat a whole two- 
 pound cake without a sign of discomfiture. One would 
 never have imagined it of Phyllis. None of us looked at 
 all like gluttons. We had alert, restless heads and a 
 nervous vivacity that would have given a stranger the 
 impression that we lived on a special brand of rarefied air. 
 Neither would one have supposed from the way Phyllis 
 dived into the icebox that it was my icebox. I didn't go in 
 for being a hostess. What the gods put in our way we ac- 
 cepted unquestioningly, and enjoyed in common; books, 
 ribbons, pocket-money, food, adventures, secrets, animos- 
 ities, and loves. We had formed a triangular compact 
 to be " chums " for ever. That there were forces at work 
 already, to tear us asunder, we were blissfully unaware. 
 The house was nice, we knew, and large, a glorious place 
 for hide-and-seek on wet days, a place of innumerable 
 rooms and cupboards, of romantic cellars, coal-bins and 
 back stairs. That it represented great wealth was none of 
 our affair. We had the vaguest ideas about wealth. We 
 had the vaguest ideas about every prosaic thing. That 
 our parents were, comparatively speaking, strangers did 
 not concern us. The things, indeed, that did not concern 
 us were legion. 
 
 We realized that Phyllis was handicapped in life because 
 Mrs. Day's cook was continually leaving. Phyllis often 
 had to cook the dinner. This gave her dignity in our 
 eyes. We envied her skill with pots and pans. We con- 
 sidered her power in the little dark kitchen in Oak Street 
 wonderful. 
 
 The fact that our three mothers sent us to the same 
 school is significant ; it is what Ruffles would call " one in 
 the eye " for Iroquois. Ruffles once spent three days in 
 Iroquois. He was greatly impressed by the elevated rail'
 
 34 
 
 roads and the number of " candy stores." He to this day 
 talks of the " candy stores of Iroquois." But what I 
 started to say was that Miss Broadwood's Private School 
 for Girls places the social system of Iroquois definitely, 
 places it rather nearer to the camps of Iroquois' pioneer 
 settlers than it would like to admit. My mother never 
 dreamed of educating me at home ; Mrs. Bowers dreamed 
 of it because she had heard that all good families in Eng- 
 land did this with their daughters, and Mrs. Day, the 
 poverty-soured, heart-sick woman shut out from Society, 
 looked upon Phil's entrance into Miss Broadwood's as a 
 triumph. It was a triumph, a triumph over little dreadful 
 obstacles such as grocer's bills, rent, clothes, and Mr. 
 Day's obstinate worry. It would have been much easier 
 to let Phyllis go to the public school, where one got a 
 better education for nothing, but Mrs. Day had her dreams 
 and ambitions, dreams that made her heart beat fitfully 
 as she sat in her window sewing ceaselessly, and thinking 
 of Phyllis's dimples. 
 
 We knew nothing of all this. Phyllis was certainly the 
 prettiest of the three and the most alluring. She was 
 always laughing. Her teeth were white and shining, and 
 her delicate nose quivered when she laughed, while 
 dimples came in her slender cheeks. Her hair was the 
 colour of sunlight and her eyes blue, with long golden 
 lashes that curled up at the ends. She had a sparkling, 
 scrawny loveliness, and never seemed to care about any- 
 thing, just laughed and screwed up her nose and floated 
 away from trouble. 
 
 Louise looked stiff beside her, but had a proud, disdain- 
 ful air that carried her through most situations with suc- 
 cess. When she thought about herself, she was usually 
 prim or elaborately enthusiastic, but often under our infiu-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 35 
 
 ence, she succumbed to being nice and jolly. Neverthe- 
 less, in her most hoydenish and abandoned moments, her 
 hair, which was crinkly, bushy hair, maintained its com- 
 pact mass of thick curls unruffled, and there was always a 
 kind of smart daintiness about her. Louise was the most 
 " brought up " of us. She already bore her mother's 
 stamp. 
 
 I held the other two together. I believed that they 
 must love each other, and so they did. They both gave 
 in to me. It was I who had insisted on our all tattooing 
 our arms by means of needles and ink, as a badge of un- 
 dying friendship. Phyllis had sniffed and pooh-poohed, 
 but had agreed half amused. Louise had gone ahead 
 doggedly pricking and scratching, wondering what on 
 earth her mother would say. I alone had really enjoyed 
 it, the self-inflicted torture, and the high sentiment of the 
 thing. 
 
 Phyllis had no use for me when I was in what she called 
 a " sloppy " mood. She was always teasing me about Jim. 
 Boys were the same as girls to Phyllis, only more fun. 
 She never dreamed about them at night, or carried a pho- 
 tograph of one in the back of her watch. She was more 
 worldly-wise than Louise and I. The close quarters of 
 the little house in Oak Street had taught her things ; and 
 her mother, with no one else to talk to, treated her much 
 of the time as an equal. She had made up her mind 
 already that she would marry a man with heaps of money, 
 and although she was as full of caresses and terms of 
 endearment as a kitten is full of purring sounds, she 
 didn't think much about loving people. To have a good 
 time was all she wanted. It astonished her that I should 
 be always getting wrought-up about people, and dreams, 
 and right and wrong. Poverty was the only thing she
 
 36 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 hated. Already, beneath her sparkling vivacity, a layer 
 of hardness was beginning to form. 
 
 " One I love, 
 Two I love, 
 Three I love, I say; 
 Four I love with all ray heart, 
 Five I cast away, 
 Six he loves 
 
 " Six he loves," I repeated, gazing at the apple seeds 
 in my sticky palm. 
 
 " Rats ! " muttered Phyllis. 
 
 " You've missed one," said Louise. 
 
 " Oh, so I have." I flushed. Not for worlds would I 
 deceive myself about the number of those seeds, but I 
 would eat another apple and count again. And while my 
 teeth set to work, my mind was occupied with the vision 
 of a young man, a young man of fourteen in his first 
 suit of long trousers, and with the secret of his affections 
 that somehow was hidden away in the core of that apple. 
 
 We each had a special boy friend, a beau. Dick, my 
 eldest brother, was sweet on Louise ; Tommy Dodge, who 
 was a very fat boy with a comic lisp and an inordinate 
 appetite for candy, belonged to Phyllis. Phyllis tolerated 
 him because he was funny, but I'm sure she never let him 
 kiss her. 
 
 Affairs of the heart occurred early among the youth 
 of Iroquois. Girls and boys playing together, skating, 
 romping, walking to school, would suddenly see each other 
 in romantic high-lights ; hearts would thrill, imaginations 
 be touched. Shy, sullen boys' eyes would express, sud- 
 denly, reverence and sentiment where before had been 
 contempt. Photographs would change hands. Some- 
 times on Saturday nights a number of shame- faced youths
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 37 
 
 would go to Brinckman's flower store and buy the flowers 
 left over at the week's end, buy them cheap to be sure, 
 but pay for them from weekly allowances and present 
 them sheepishly or with assumed nonchalance to thrilling 
 maidens. Romantic, delicious affairs were these, clothed 
 by the girls in all the language of grand passion, orna- 
 mented with vague high-sounding phrases borrowed from 
 novels half-understood, or from the conversation of adults 
 even less comprehensible. 
 
 I was twelve years old, and considered myself seriously 
 in love. I was consumed with the delicious pain of 
 exalted emotion. My mind was filled with enthusiasm 
 for life, crowded with beautiful memories, of music 
 and pictures, and travels to strange places. But I knew 
 nothing about sex. Wrapped in an impenetrable garb 
 of romantic ignorance, I had dashed through childhood 
 with my brothers, joyous and sad, jolly or sentimental, 
 vague, wondering, untainted. And something about me, 
 pride or sensitiveness, or innocence, kept the tongues of 
 less innocent children still in my presence. 
 
 " Would you marry him, if he asked you ? " questioned 
 Louise. 
 
 I flushed again. 
 
 " Yes," I said at last. 
 
 Phyllis grunted. " If I were you, I'd make up my 
 mind to marry a duke," she said abruptly. 
 
 I gazed at her. The idea struck me as rather exciting. 
 
 " You probably will," went on Phyllis. " Mother said 
 so." This was a revelation. That Mrs. Day even 
 thought about me was strange. We sat silent, eating 
 languidly now; and thinking. It occurred to me for 
 the first time that we might not, after all, be friends for 
 ever.
 
 38 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " I am going to a French convent next year, or the 
 year after," announced Louise at last. She heaved a 
 rather affected sigh. 
 
 " Oh, Loo, how dreadful! " I gasped. 
 
 " You'll have nothing but dried fish to eat," said 
 Phyllis ; " and there'll be a window in your door so 
 that the nuns can look into your bedroom at any time 
 of day or night." 
 
 Louise had hoped to be the centre of envy. This was 
 disappointing. 
 
 " I shall probably become a Catholic," she ventured 
 tragically. 
 
 " And kiss the Pope's toe," giggled Phyllis. Louise 
 frowned. I felt that things were getting rather strained. 
 
 " I suppose we'll all be separated for years and years," 
 I put in very earnestly ; " but we'll never, never give up 
 being chums whatever our destinies." I tossed my hair 
 from my shoulders, and my face no doubt shone with 
 the vision of the future. Phyllis looked at me sidewise 
 out of her bright, sceptic eyes. 
 
 " Destinies," she echoed, sniffing. " Gee whiz." She 
 giggled. Her delicious lips curved, sweet and impudent. 
 
 " Marriage I suppose she means," said Louise im- 
 portantly. She had a way of explaining people to them- 
 selves. " When I'm married I shall have twelve brides- 
 maids, and Joan will be maid of honour. You'll all have 
 pink chiffon dresses with silver lace." 
 
 " Pink isn't becoming to me," said Phil, " nor to Joan 
 either. Her hair's too reddy." 
 
 Louise looked troubled. She fought her desire for 
 pink chiffon. She scrutinized me. " Joan's hair's not 
 red, it's purple." 
 
 " Gosh, you are silly purple hair ! "
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 39 
 
 " Wellj it is. Just you look." 
 
 I looked in Edward's glass. " It's the colour of the 
 sideboard." 
 
 14 Mahogany hair," giggled Phil, trying to stuff down 
 
 a last bit of cake. " Anyhow I won't wear pink 
 
 besides, I may be married first." 
 
 There was a sound of some one falling up the back 
 stairs, and in another minute a small red boy burst into 
 the pantry, his eyes ablaze. It was Jerry. 
 
 Dear Jerry, he has always been the ugliest creature 
 on God's earth. He was ugly as a small boy, he was 
 ugly as a youth, and he is ugly as a man. His hair is 
 a pale sandy red, not a flaming shouting red like Pat's. 
 His face is red too, and speckled all over with large 
 freckles. His mouth is very wide. In repose he has 
 a timid, mournful expression, and when he grins the 
 change is so startling that it makes you laugh. He is 
 always grinning and making you laugh. He has only 
 one beauty, a very nice white set of teeth. 
 
 Dear Jerry. He was the youngest and we all bullied 
 him unmercifully, and he has paid us all back with 
 years of faithful kindness. It was only three months 
 ago that he came to see me, all the way from Iroquois 
 to London, to comfort me when Binky went to the war. 
 Dear believing Jerry. I've never told him anything about 
 Binky and me. I couldn't. 
 
 " Come on, you girls ; something doing," he splut- 
 tered, and disappeared again. 
 
 We were after him in a flash. The icebox was left 
 open with remnants of cake strewn about. We pulled 
 on our woollen gloves as we hurled ourselves out of the 
 front door. A gust of icy air rushed into the warm hall, 
 the door closed with a bang.
 
 40 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Jerry talked in jerks as we ran along. His youth 
 and insignificance were outweighed for the moment by 
 the immensity of his news. 
 
 " There's a fight. The ' Micks ' the whole gang in 
 the vacant lot on Oak Street. Dick's got a black eye 
 already. Began coming out of school." 
 
 We sped on. 
 
 MacAvoy's school was the masculine twin of Miss 
 Broadwood's. My brothers, and Jim Van Orden, and 
 Gus, and Tommy Dodge, and all the rest of the crowd 
 went there. Next door to it was the public school, 
 the home of free education, and the headquarters of 
 an army hard to characterize, a vast heterogeneous rabble 
 of boys, differentiated from MacAvoy's boys by subtle 
 yet unmistakable signs. It was not that they were all 
 poor and the others all rich, though that might have 
 been the slipshod judgment of a casual observer. Some 
 of them were sons of well-to-do families enough. Their 
 fathers kept shops and hotels, managed street railways, 
 paved streets, butchered cattle, bossed political parties, 
 and in fact ran the town ; but they were not gentlemen. 
 They had names like Zimmerman, Weinburger, O'Sul- 
 livan, O'Brien, Eikenstein, Brodovsky, Chenelli; Amer- 
 ican citizens certainly, most aggressively so. They chose 
 the Mayor and the City Government, and out of their 
 number many a senator had gone to the White House. 
 Down town in offices or at restaurants they met such 
 men as John J. Fairfax and Harry Van Orden and 
 Charlie Bowers, but never did they enter the homes 
 or the clubs of these men. And they didn't want to. 
 They had a world of their own, beer-gardens, ball-rooms, 
 synagogues and churches, German or Catholic, but for 
 all their palatial clubs their sons were " Micks " in the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 41 
 
 minds of MacAvoy's boys, and knew it, admitting the 
 appellation savagely. 
 
 How the public schoolboys had come to be called 
 " Micks " I don't know, but " Micks " they were, and they 
 waged incessant guerilla warfare on the gentlemen's sons 
 who studied the same books next door. 
 
 There was no special reason, unless it was for the 
 possession of the street, for the fights that took place; 
 yet fights there always were, more or less. The two 
 schools let out at the same time, and there was a constant 
 dispute as to " the right of way " to Kranz's German 
 Bakery, where thousands of pies and cakes appeared and 
 disappeared daily. 
 
 It seemed almost as though this red-handed, glove- 
 less Irish-German- Jew-and- Yankee rabble had vowed not 
 only to deprive the " Softies " of pumpkin pies, but to 
 drive them off the earth altogether. 
 
 And the " Softies," while looking extremely neat and 
 fair in comparison with the flaring reds and dusky browns 
 of the rougher lot, were still far from deserving the 
 title. They numbered those who were past-masters in 
 the art of fist fights, notably Dick Fairfax and Jim Van 
 Orden. None of the " Micks " was a match for these 
 two, except Pat O'Brien, the leader of the gang. 
 
 Pat O'Brien was a figure terrible and thrilling to us. 
 We quaked when we saw him slouching down the street 
 plotting unspeakable things, his hands in his pockets, 
 his heavy jaws thrust into the muffler round his neck. 
 His cap was always pulled over one eye, and he sneered 
 at us as he passed. We didn't know where he lived, 
 but we imagined somewhere on Grant Street over a 
 saloon, perhaps, because he frequented saloons. It 
 was a fearsome thing to watch him dive through the
 
 42 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 swaying doors of a saloon. We imagined him drinking 
 beer with ugly full-grown men. Sometimes he smoked 
 cigarettes, which gave him a sinister, devilish air, 
 inspiring awe as well as antagonism in our hearts. 
 Probably he was not more than fourteen, but he was 
 bigger than the others and had the ponderous swagger 
 of a man who owned the earth. The finishing touch to 
 his exciting ugly portrait had been given when I learned 
 about the pistol. He had pulled it out of his pocket in 
 an alley. 
 
 I fled along behind Jerry, my heart in my mouth. 
 Phyllis was laughing and gasping for breath. How could 
 she laugh? Even Louise's disdainful blue eyes shone 
 with terrified anticipation. Turning a corner, we came 
 suddenly on the battle-ground. 
 
 The vacant lot, as a rule bare of everything save 
 scraggy bushes and tin cans, was swarming with boys, 
 and in the centre of the mob was a cleared space, and 
 in this space a double fight was going on between Patrick 
 O'Brien, another "Mick," Dick and Jim Dick was 
 my eldest brother. Silently, furiously they lunged as 
 one another's fists flashed in and out, crashed against jaws 
 and noses. Blood was trickling down Jim's face. 
 
 We three girls, having wedged our way through the 
 crowd of boys, stood fascinated. We were seized with 
 exultation. Jim and Dick weren't half the size of the 
 other two, but they fought better. The thirst for blood 
 was in our hearts. 
 
 " Go it ! Go it ! " we whispered fiercely. 
 
 Great and beautiful stone houses in French and Italian 
 and English architecture rose on three sides of the lot, 
 and on the fourth side was the drive and the lake front. 
 Some day the frozen ground of the lot itself would
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 43 
 
 bring forth a mansion fit for a king. It was a cold, 
 dull day, sharpened by an icy wind. A wave dashed 
 now and then high into the air. No one thought of 
 parents. Even Louise had forgotten her ladylike 
 demeanour. " Go it ! Go it ! " she was muttering again 
 and again, her fists clenched. 
 
 Jim's face, at ordinary times as pretty as a baby's, was 
 smeared with blood and dirt. One eye was bulging 
 visibly. His thick gold hair stood up stiff in the wind, 
 and his curved mouth was set in absurd grimness. This 
 way and that his thin body bent, dodged, ducked, 
 swayed, while his feet danced ceaselessly, scraping the 
 frozen ground ; and his fists shot in and out. Dick's 
 nose was bleeding profusely. His lunging was more wild 
 than Jim's deft, clean movements, but then his antagonist 
 was the fearful Pat, who snorted like a fiery dragon, 
 muttering horribly, and hammering relentlessly with huge 
 fists. And all around stood ragged boys and clean, well- 
 dressed boys silently intent, only now and then moved to 
 shout for their champions. 
 
 But there was a sudden alarm. 
 
 " The copper ! " yelled a voice. A policeman was 
 sighted in the distance. 
 
 Instantly the crowd demobilized. The girls were 
 swamped where they stood. A wild rushing rabble of 
 boys swept us along, and by the time the policeman 
 reached the spot not a sign of life was to be seen ; nothing 
 but tin cans and trampled bushes and bare, frozen 
 ground. 
 
 I found myself pelting down an alley, a hand on either 
 side grabbing an elbow to help me along. Vaguely I 
 realized that my two aids were Jim and Dick, and that 
 we were being pursued not by the policeman, but by the
 
 44 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " Micks." I ran faster, incredibly faster. A stone hit 
 me on the back, hurting between the shoulder-blades. 
 
 " This way," muttered Jim. His mouth was set. He 
 breathed hard. A trickle of blood had congealed on 
 his cheek. How I adored him ! The back yards of a 
 row of houses opened doors into the alley. We burst 
 through one of these doors into a yard. Yells followed 
 us. We scrambled up some kitchen steps, what steps 
 of what house we did not know. The kitchen door was 
 locked, and the " Micks " werp pouring into the yard. 
 They were armed with stones, and they snarled, jeered, 
 and yelled tauntingly. 
 
 " Go home to your ma." 
 
 " Run, tootsey wootsey, run." 
 
 " You're a rummie geezer, you are." 
 
 For one instant I stood exultant, looking down on 
 them. " This," I said to myself, " must have been the 
 way Marie Antoinette felt when she faced *he mob at 
 Versailles. 
 
 Then the kitchen door burst open and we fell into 
 safety.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 MY father and mother loved each other. 
 I don't want to modify that statement. I 
 should like it to stand as a challenge or an 
 article of faith. 
 
 My father was a silent man. He talked when it was 
 necessary, or on the rare occasions when he wanted to. 
 His silence was definite and profound. One couldn't 
 tell whether he was listening to the people about him 
 or not, and it took a deal of courage to break through 
 his reserve. He seemed to carry with him a stern still- 
 ness, sensible even in the street or on a crowded tram- 
 car. People never seemed to get near him. He had a 
 flowing moustache, and it was a habit of his when thinking 
 to pull the plumes of his moustache with his hand, 
 absently, first on one side then on the other. A smile 
 from him was startling, as startling to me when I was 
 a child as if a General had suddenly turned his eyes 
 from surveying a vast and puzzling battlefield, to greet 
 me affectionately. There was something military in his 
 appearance, in the flare of the moustache and the 
 square set of the shoulders and the erectness of his 
 carriage. 
 
 He was strangely isolated. I didn't understand it in 
 those days, but I think I do now. It was simply the 
 isolation of refinement. There were three million people 
 in Iroquois, but he was the only gentleman. Charlie 
 
 45
 
 46 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Bowers couldn't be called a gentleman, he was too much 
 like a draper's assistant. Mrs. Charlie had done her 
 best to make him one, but it was like most of her efforts, 
 rather a bad imitation. Mr. Van Orden came near it, 
 but when he was drunk he was not. Besides this he was 
 too charming, too jovial. He didn't weigh enough. I 
 seem to have gathered an impression somehow during 
 my youth in Iroquois that when strangers came to the 
 city they were shown my father as one of the sights. 
 Probably he was unaware of this. It was impossible 
 to tell of what he was aware. Perhaps my own im- 
 pression was mistaken, and based merely on the fact 
 that conducted tours in large motors would stop out- 
 side the house while a courier shouted through a mega- 
 phone that this was the " magnificent residence of John 
 J. Fairfax, millionaire." Of course I knew vaguely as 
 a child that he was very rich, but that fact didn't seem 
 to matter. There was no chink of money in the house, 
 and no one talked about what things cost. It was all 
 taken for granted, and that reminds me of a remark 
 of his, one night when he quite unexpectedly talked to 
 me. 
 
 We were in London. It was a week or two before 
 my wedding. I remember how he stood in the drawing- 
 room of the house he had taken for me in Arlington 
 Street. We, he and I, had been giving a dinner, and 
 our guests had gone, leaving the room with that vast 
 disarranged emptiness that follows such a crowded 
 couple of hours. Binky had been there, of course, and 
 a number of Binky 's relatives; but I had felt all the 
 evening tremendously conscious of my father. His 
 personality had been for me on that occasion, as on 
 all the other occasions during that season that were
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 47 
 
 for me ordeals of one kind or another, a splendid guar- 
 antee. He had given me, simply by being what he 
 was, an immense backing, had lent to me social weight, 
 equal to weighing them all down. I had had actually, 
 that night, a sensation of our having tipped up their 
 side of the scale so high that their position was almost 
 precarious. He was so clearly one of the " great people." 
 I had seen them, .these strangers, come into view with 
 their rather frightening array of coronets, not worn, but 
 nevertheless obvious, and immediately dwindle in his 
 presence, until I was no longer afraid. 
 
 He stood in front of the Georgian fireplace, his hands 
 clasped behind him, his head slightly bowed, and I sat 
 by an open window waiting for him to say something 
 and wondering what life would be without him, won- 
 dering whether I wouldn't spin about like a ridiculous 
 flying machine with no pilot and no ballast; as indeed I 
 all too immediately began to do. 
 
 " Where the English have an advantage over the 
 Americans, is in the number of things they can take for 
 granted." 
 
 When he spoke, I looked back from the dim vista of 
 the green park into the large and brilliant room with 
 him in the centre of it, surprised. A question at once 
 presented itself. If the English scored because of what 
 they could take for granted, hadn't he scored above them 
 all because of the same thing? They had not so taken 
 him, certainly, but he, on the contrary, had so accepted 
 them, the whole lot of them, bulked together. He had 
 surprised them. They had had to adjust themselves and 
 play up to him. American millionaires they had, of 
 course, been long accustomed to, but their more or less 
 disguised antics that evening had proved to me that
 
 48 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 even they had felt that his being a millionaire was quite 
 incidental to his greatness. It was as though they had 
 been invited to meet at a shooting-box the best gun in 
 Scotland, and had all unprepared come upon the King. 
 I had been watching him and his effect on them, amused. 
 He had felt for my sake that it was necessary to talk, 
 and he had handed Aunt Cora down to dinner very gently 
 and gravely, and had proceeded to say- six or ten words 
 to her, six or ten words that were profoundly the right 
 words. I saw him looking at her as from a great distance 
 with that fine modesty of his, all unconscious of the 
 effect he was producing, and that has lasted to this 
 day. If I had not fully appreciated it before, I did 
 finally that night when she took me in her arms and 
 let me cry there after I had come back from that last 
 trip to Iroquois. I am sure that the number of times 
 when Aunt Cora had taken some one in her arms could 
 be counted on her thumbs. It wasn't because of me she 
 did it, but because of him. It was always because of him 
 that she was kind to me. 
 
 Where did he get it, his grand simplicity? How did 
 he come to exist in Iroquois? I don't know, but I do 
 know that what he was, he was by virtue of himself. 
 Even had he raked up the bits of his family tree and 
 discovered it to be rooted in illustrious soil, that would 
 not have explained. The American climate can obliterate 
 type in a wink of time time I mean as the evolution 
 of races is measured. What he had learned, he had 
 learned with great effort. His mind was full of knowl- 
 edge carefully gathered and fastidiously selected. And 
 this dignity of his manner was just the perfectly smooth 
 expression of his mind. 
 
 I cannot imagine my father discussing the subject of
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 49 
 
 marriage. It never entered into his head that there was 
 any such subject. My mother was not for him one of 
 a world of married women, she was the centre of the 
 universe. That was all. It would have been impossible 
 for him to analyse their relationship. There was nothing 
 to analyse. 
 
 Domestic bliss is a horrid phrase and a dreadful mis- 
 statement as far as they were concerned. If two highly 
 organized human beings care enough for each other to 
 live unashamed and without subterfuge full in the light 
 of each other's eyes, for a period of years, such an 
 experience can hardly be described with an epithet. My 
 father and mother were nervous about each other. There 
 was friction sometimes, there were troubles, there were 
 periods of strain which were evident even to me. When 
 he lost his temper we were terrified. I can't remember 
 his ever being actually angry with her, but it seemed 
 as though she were the one who suffered most wherever 
 his anger was directed. I remember one night his going 
 up the stairs two steps at a time with a cane in his 
 hand. Dick was the offender upstairs. My mother 
 stood at the bottom, trembling, her face white, her hands 
 twisted together. Once I dashed into her boudoir to 
 find her standing crying with his arms about her. " I 
 can't bear it, John dear, when you do. I can't bear it," 
 and he was comforting and reassuring her. I don't, 
 of course, know what it was about, but I knew then 
 that she demanded a great deal of him, expected him 
 always to be wonderful to her, and would never let 
 .their relationship lapse into anything second-rate. They 
 (had entered very seriously upon the supreme social 
 I adventure, abandoned or never attempted by ninety- 
 nine people out of a hundred because it is too strenuous.
 
 50 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 He was in love with her always until she died, in love 
 with her as he had been at the beginning, with the same 
 shyness and the same reverence. 
 
 And we were at the same time very important to 
 them, my brothers, I mean, and myself. We were 
 allowed to absorb their time, limit their activities, and 
 destroy their social life. Probably they didn't care for 
 the social life of Iroquois at any rate they gave it up 
 in great measure for us. 
 
 The house was overrun with us. A hundred and fifty 
 white mice lived in a village of starch boxes in the 
 attic. Electric wire for strange purposes intersected 
 under every rug and carpet. School books were piled 
 about in the library, bicycles and skates and baseball 
 bats and boxing-gloves filled the cloak-room under the 
 stairs, a punching bag was suspended from the ceiling 
 in the upstairs hall, dogs inhabited the basement and 
 the back yard. It took an army of servants to clean 
 up after us, an army of carefully selected servants with 
 patience and a sense of humour. We must have been 
 a frightful nuisance, but we weren't told so, and were 
 never handed over to governesses or tutors for disci- 
 plining. 
 
 My father and mother were in the habit of dining with 
 us at seven o'clock, and if three of our four pairs 
 of hands looked grimy against the white damask cloth, 
 no one seemed to mind, unless it was myself. I became 
 in the evening, with the donning of my white dress and 
 patent-leather pumps, a lady, who turned up her nose 
 disdainfully at the sight of rapid shovelling forks. 
 
 It was not that the boys were unwashed. Their good- 
 will and the respect which dinner commanded were evi- 
 denced by clean collars, wet hair, slicked down from a
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 51 
 
 middle parting, and shining faces. Their hands were raw 
 with scrubbing, pumice-stone and cornmeal were often re- 
 sorted to when soap failed, and more than this proof of a 
 sincere purpose my mother did not demand. My mother 
 was wise, she understood boys. It was a constant source 
 of wonderment to me that she, with all her exquisite 
 elegance and her extreme moral fervour, could smile 
 upon black finger-nails and the noisy supping of soup. 
 She could accept a black eye with a smile and no ques- 
 tions asked, but a rude word or a fib would involve 
 serious consequences, unhappiness to her and to us 
 because of her, so that our remorse was usually mixed 
 with, if not actually caused by, our sympathy with her 
 pain. 
 
 But in spite of all this freedom allowed to us, a 
 certain formality prevailed in the evenings. My father 
 had a taste for ceremony that did not entirely give way 
 to the demands of a boisterous family. He invariably 
 dressed for dinner, an unusual thing in the bosom of 
 an Iroquois family. The meal, served with unnoticeable 
 skill by two waitresses in stiff white caps and aprons, 
 was plain, but complete and perfect of its kind. The 
 cut-glass tumblers were filled with ice-water that made 
 a musical clinking sound as it came out of the heavy 
 silver pitcher; the bread was cut in small cubes, and 
 there were olives with the soup. No wine was served, 
 and my father carved the roast himself, dealing out 
 second and third helpings with a detached skill and lib- 
 erality. 
 
 My mother was a beautiful woman. Her friends used 
 to look me over critically, shake their heads encouragingly 
 and say : " No, my dear, you'll never be the beauty 
 your mother was." My looks have always been a subject
 
 52 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 for controversy, but about my mother's there was never 
 any doubt. Every one admitted instantly, at first sight, 
 once and for all, that she was exquisite. She was as 
 clear and definite and shining as though made out of 
 mother-of-pearl. There was no flaw in the line of her 
 nose or her arched eye-brow, or her low forehead with 
 its delicately defined widow's peak of dense auburn hair. 
 And on her face there was sometimes a peculiar radiance 
 that would have marked her out from all other women, 
 even had she been plain. I know now what radiance 
 meant. It meant conflict. It was a costly thing, that 
 radiance on her face. It was as costly as diamonds. 
 It had cost endless hours of suffering and prayer. It 
 was the witness of a human mind that willed to do 
 God's will. My German governess once said to me about 
 my mother : " Sie arbeitet so an ihre Seele." It was 
 true. My mother laboured endlessly for the perfecting 
 of her soul, laboured in prayer, in fasting, in deeds of 
 charity. And this radiance that used to light up her 
 face frightened me because I knew what it meant, and 
 I knew how terribly hard it would be for me to attain 
 it. Secretly I longed to be like her, and rebelled against 
 the awful effort it involved. 
 
 Of course we didn't understand her. She looked 
 fragile and luxurious like a hot-house flower. To please 
 my father she dressed in rich brocades and old lace. 
 At a casual glance, she looked as though she never read 
 the Bible or said her prayers, as though she never lifted 
 a pink tapering finger to discipline those noisy bursting 
 sons who adored her. When we looked at her frail, 
 richly-clad figure, at her gleaming auburn hair, and her 
 large, brown, wistful eyes, we were moved to a kind 
 of protective adoration. We wanted to fondle and kiss
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 53 
 
 and purr over her, and often, if she were not exercised 
 about the salvation of our souls, she allowed us to make 
 demonstrations of affection, drinking in our kisses and 
 murmured terms of endearment, thirstily, as a flower 
 drinks up rain. I seem to remember her as two distinct 
 people ; one, a lovely shimmering creature turning a rapt 
 face of maternal delight to her children for their kisses, 
 and another, a stern preceptor, struggling against the 
 seen and unseen powers of evil. 
 
 It is inconceivable to me now that instead of melting 
 me, the tears that she shed over me only hardened my 
 heart. I cannot explain the antagonism aroused in me 
 by her religion, unless it was the extreme vulgarity of 
 the God worshipped in the Ebenezer Sprott Church. 
 My mother's God was not vulgar, I know that now ; but 
 she had perforce to take us to church. She was afraid 
 to trust herself with our spiritual upbringing. I am 
 sure if it had not been for all those tumultuous prayer 
 meetings and shouting sermons and voluptuous hymns 
 that I should have understood my mother better. The 
 atmosphere of that church was thick as a fog it 
 wrapped her from me I saw her midst those revivalists, 
 distorted, and I set my teeth and was disobedient because 
 I was afraid of them. 
 
 Nevertheless, we were affected by her religious spirit. 
 We were confused and stirred up and full of belief in 
 Jesus Christ as our Saviour. How could we help 
 believing ? He was more talked about by her, and adored 
 and more explicitly obeyed than any one in the world. 
 Everything we did or did not do was prayed over 
 that is, everything that had a moral significance and it 
 seems to me, looking back, that the whole of life, aside 
 from actual play and study, was made up of moral values.
 
 54 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I suppose that's not true. It couldn't have been. We 
 had long summers en famille camping in the woods of 
 Canada, cruising up the Atlantic coast, or riding across 
 the western plains of Dakota or Arizona, where our 
 interest was centred on things geographical, geological, 
 or culinary. I can remember my mother making coffee 
 over a camp fire, her skirt pinned up about her waist, 
 her face sunburned and laughing. I can remember her, 
 too, in khaki riding-breeches on a horse, climbing a 
 mountain-side or racing across a field. We seemed to 
 have left our sins and God behind us for the summer 
 holidays, which only proves my contention that the 
 Ebenezer Sprott Church was the real difficulty. 
 
 If my mother had lived longer there would no doubt 
 have been trouble over the question of religion, and of 
 all the many rights and wrongs that seemed for her to 
 be bound up in religious truth, such as drinking wine, 
 and smoking, and going to the theatre, and having one's 
 hair curled. I remember once having put my hair up 
 in curl-papers at night. I came shame-facedly to break- 
 fast with what must have been a very curious crown 
 of ringlets; but I was not made to feel that it was ugly 
 and ridiculous; I was made to feel that it was wicked. 
 I came away from her boudoir with a feeling that God 
 was angry with me, and dipped my head into the wash- 
 basin with a distinct sense of expiation. It sounds funny, 
 no doubt, but even nowadays in America little matters 
 of taste are continually being fought out as great moral 
 issues. Had she lived longer, something must have hap- 
 pened either to change her, or to make her unhappy; 
 but as it was, she died, leaving us only half out of 
 childhood, and I remember her most as our delight and
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 55 
 
 our wonder, as the light in the tower of that fine home 
 of which my father was the foundation. 
 
 After dinner as a rule my mother went upstairs and 
 the rest of us into the library. The boys settled down 
 to their books and I played for my father while he 
 smoked his cigar. While I played the piano I thought 
 of him, of the thousands of engines and dynamos he 
 made, and of how little of it all seemed to interest him. 
 I had been down with him often to the works and 
 watched the men pouring molten steel into smooth, hard 
 moulds of sand. The foundry always suggested to me 
 a picture of hell; I felt a kind of horrid delight in the 
 noise and roar of its blazing furnaces. My father seemed 
 not to feel it at all. Once it must have thrilled him, but 
 now he didn't care. He was withdrawing more and more 
 from all activity. I felt, strangely, the inertia that 
 seemed to bear down on him now in that rich still lamp- 
 light. 
 
 The library was a long room lined with books, hundreds 
 of books about history, and archaeology, and philosophy. 
 Books in German and French, scientific treatises and 
 books on art. 
 
 Wide doors opened into the drawing-room and hall, 
 the polished floor was strewn with faded Persian rugs, 
 pictures by Corot, and Rousseau, and Daubigny, and 
 a number of Dutchmen, and some old Italians, covered 
 the wall. On the tables stood lamps, the Tiffany glass 
 shades in rich crimsons, and blues, and golds looking like 
 large luminous flowers. 
 
 Jerry and Bud sat by a lamp studying, their books 
 and pads of paper spread on the table. A wood fire 
 was lighted in the fireplace, and the charred logs sent 
 out a faint pungent smell.
 
 56 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Bud always got into trouble. " Hang it ! " he would 
 mutter, biting his pencil. " This is the very deuce ! " 
 
 I would leave the piano with an unsatisfied stirred- 
 up feeling when my father had almost finished his cigar. 
 He often looked up as I came to him, opening his arms, 
 and I clung to him a moment. 
 
 " Thank you, Joan darling," he said. I kissed the 
 lines at the corner of his eyes, so stern, and grave, and 
 aloof that the tender words always thrilled me un- 
 expectedly. 
 
 " Father, I can't get at it." Bud's hair was rumpled 
 with despair by this time. 
 
 " Let me see." 
 
 " It's quadratic equations." 
 
 My father moved to the light. He sat down with 
 the paper on his knee, the pencil in one hand, his cigar 
 in the other. Bud knelt beside the chair with the algebra 
 book. He began to explain. 
 
 I remember standing by the window on a windy winter 
 night. I pressed my face against the window-pane. I 
 could see the wind flying by in the dark. The drive was 
 deserted. Beyond the great circle of light made by 
 an arc light, I could catch the glint of spray dashing up 
 over the wall that bordered the drive. The lake was 
 only fifty yards away. It was very cold, but not cold 
 enough to freeze over. Blocks of ice that one could not 
 see were grinding and floundering about on the water. 
 A solitary carriage passed, its lights moving swiftly. 
 The coachman, wrapped in furs, was bent forward against 
 the wind. I wished there were streams and streams 
 of carriages as there were in New York on Fifth 
 Avenue. 
 
 Jroquois had nearly as many fine buildings and beau-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 57 
 
 tiful houses, and much more beautiful parks, and its 
 boulevards were empty. What made New York so 
 exciting were the crowds and crowds of beautiful women 
 and prancing horses, and proud coachmen, and won- 
 derful, luxurious hotels teeming with people all having 
 a good time. Here there were so few people of our 
 kind, and such crowds of others. I didn't know whom 
 I meant by " our kind," but the sprawling foreign throngs 
 in the parks on Sundays and the miles of avenue where 
 Jews and Germans had built big stone houses, and the 
 vast desert of the south side where thousands of people 
 lived in little flats, depressed me. My German gov- 
 erness's mother had lived thirty years in Iroquois and 
 didn't speak a word of English. The city didn't really 
 belong to us, to people like my father at all. 
 
 The window-pane kept clouding over with my breath. 
 It was snowing, and the wind drove the snow-flakes by 
 through the lamplight in great horizontal streaks. I 
 loved the wind, and the dark, and the waves booming, 
 but it all made me sad. 
 
 I stood a long time staring out. Behind me sounded 
 my father's voice : " x equals the square root of," and 
 Bud murmuring eagerly. Presently Fraulein's timid note 
 of summons floated down the hall. Nine o'clock, bed- 
 time. I went up the stairs slowly, sliding my hand along 
 the dark polished rail. Dick was coming down, his 
 face set and gloomy. He had been with my mother, 
 and confessed about the fight with the " Micks." I had 
 an intense consciousness of Dick, of all my brothers. 
 Their lives invaded mine disconcertingly. They teased 
 me and angered me and professed to despise me, and 
 all the same confided in me, and we were all fiercely loyal 
 to each other.
 
 58 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 The sight of my mother on the sofa in the boudoir 
 made me realize suddenly that my stocking was sticking 
 to a round skinned place on my knee. My mother was 
 looking very white and her brow was puckered ; she had 
 begun the dictation of a letter to Fraulein, whose meek 
 head was bowed over the desk. 
 
 " Look," said I, sitting on the edge of the sofa and 
 pulling up the hem of my dress. The stocking wouldn't 
 come down. It was wet and bloody. 
 
 " Oh," said mother. " Take care ; we'll have to soak 
 it off. Fraulein, the absorbent cotton, please, and the 
 adhesive plaster, boracic acid too, and a bowl of warm 
 water. How did you do it, Joan ? " My mother was 
 only mildly interested. The thing happened continually. 
 
 " Going over a wall, I came down on my knees on 
 the sidewalk." I kept pulling and wincing at last 
 I ripped the stocking off, carrying with it a patch of 
 skin and leaving a raw, bleeding place as big as a dollar, 
 which I surveyed proudly. It was rather fun having 
 my mother bandage it, if only the boracic acid didn't sting 
 so. " It's as bad a place as Jerry's, anyhow." 
 
 " You weren't in that fight, Joan ? " asked my mother. 
 
 *' No, I watched." 
 
 *' It won't do, dear, for you to play with those rough 
 boys, and you're getting too big to climb walls." 
 
 " Well, I hate playing with girls all except Louise 
 and Phyllis." 
 
 My mother wound the bandage deftly. 
 
 " I mean those other boys." 
 
 "Oh, the 'Micks.' We don't play with them. We 
 only fight. Patrick O'Brien's " 
 
 " Yes, Patrick O'Brien. I've told Dick he's to have 
 nothing whatever to do with him even with his fists."
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 59 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " They're not nice people. His father's a political boss 
 and a brewer; they run most of the saloons on the west 
 side in the Red Light District ; terrible places where they 
 entice young girls." 
 
 " Ach, so-so," murmured Fraulein. " It is true, I 
 know." 
 
 " How do you mean entice them ? And what for ? " 
 My curiosity was aroused. " What do they do with them 
 do you mean rob them ? " 
 
 " No, I don't mean rob them." 
 
 My mother's face took on a strange expression. She 
 seemed about to make an announcement. I waited 
 breathlessly. Here was something I didn't understand. 
 Something dreadful and mysterious was in my mother's 
 mind, and I was afraid to learn. Suddenly I blushed, 
 and felt queer and uncomfortable. I didn't know why. 
 Vaguely I was aware of something horrid, somewhere. 
 It made me rather sick, yet the words " Red Light 
 District " were alluring. I fiddled nervously with the 
 bandage and became aware that I was angry with my 
 mother for looking like that so knowing. Why should 
 she? Why should she? 
 
 But she changed her mind; she would preserve a 
 little longer her child's ignorance. She drew me to her, 
 guessing something of the tumult in my heart. 
 
 " Never mind how, darling, or what for. There are 
 things you don't understand yet." Her white hand 
 stroked my head affectionately, her voice had a sup- 
 pressed, and, to me, a suffocating sweetness. It sug- 
 gested so much too much of suffering and under- 
 standing. 
 
 I pulled away. " I don't want to know. Yes, I do.
 
 60 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 No, I don't," I said to myself. I stared at my mother 
 inimically. What I could not bear was the feeling that 
 she knew everything, everything that was going on in 
 my own heart. I was afraid that if she smiled at me 
 any more like that, I should blurt it all out, all about 
 Jim Van Orden and my foolish dreams and everything, 
 so I scowled and turned my back, pretending to be fasten- 
 ing my stocking. Why Jim should come into it I didn't 
 know. With my back turned I felt my mother stiffen, 
 and expected the serious tone of her voice when she 
 spoke again. 
 
 " And I've told Dick, if you're out with your brothers, 
 he must take care of you." 
 
 " He won't like that. Confound it ! " 
 
 " Joan ! " 
 
 " Well, he won't, and I can take care of myself." 
 
 " It's not safe. Mrs. Chadwkk's child has been kid- 
 napped." 
 
 " I'd like to see any one kidnap me." 
 
 " That is my command, Joan. You're not to go out 
 without Fraulein unless Dick will take the responsibility. 
 Kiss me good-night ; and, darling, I want you to tell God 
 about the fight this afternoon." 
 
 " Why should I ? I don't think He'd care a snap." 
 
 "Joan!" 
 
 " Well, I don't. It's over now. Besides, whenever I 
 get down on my knees I get so sleepy. I'm sick of 
 praying." 
 
 "Joan!" 
 
 " Well, I am. Why can't I pray in bed, where it's 
 warm ? " 
 
 " It says in the Bible, every knee shall bow. Daniel 
 knelt three times a day."
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 61 
 
 " Oh, I know," petulantly ; " but," with a brilliant 
 inspiration, " I can't tonight, anyhow, on this knee." 
 As I turned with a fling toward the door to escape, 
 I caught an expression of intense pain on my mother's 
 face. I stopped with my back to her and heard her 
 draw a long shivering breath. My heart smote me I 
 did love her. All the same I was terrified at what was 
 coming. 
 
 " Joan," her voice was the voice of another woman 
 small, cold, vibrating I knew it so well. It always 
 changed like this when she was about to struggle for 
 my soul. It sounded as though she herself had gone 
 into a trance and was possessed of an alien spirit. I 
 felt a dead sickening weight in the middle of me some- 
 where. 
 
 " Joan, kneel down with me now and ask God to 
 forgive you. Let us implore the Holy Spirit to take 
 possession of you more fully." 
 
 It was impossible to refuse. I sank on my knees 
 in a tumult of rebellious worship, shame and emotional 
 disgust mingling with fear of the Almighty. I was so 
 excited that I could not utter a word, had I wanted to ; 
 but I listened to my mother's voice, that was like a 
 voice of a medium, and I imagined another voice, the 
 voice of God, telling me to drive the devil out of my 
 heart, and I refused. I have never felt so wicked as 
 I felt that evening kneeling beside my mother in her 
 boudoir. 
 
 Gradually as she went on praying I grew calmer. I 
 steeled myself against the waves of emotion that flowed 
 from her, and as it seemed from the heart of the un- 
 seen. By the time she was finished I was capable of 
 dissimulating. I smiled sweetly, said I was sorry, kissed
 
 62 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 her good-night and fled to my room, where I burst into 
 tears. 
 
 And I dreamed a terrible dream about the Rev. 
 Ebenezer Sprott coming into the schoolroom and kissing 
 me, with a dirty Bible in his hand open at the story of 
 the woman who was taken in adultery to the Red Light 
 District.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 THERE was something reckless and knowing 
 about Jim that made me unhappy. Sometimes 
 I felt that he was wicked, and this made him 
 the more fascinating, just as his mother's wickedness 
 that we heard of in our childish world, made her seem the 
 most romantic creature on earth. 
 
 It must have been the gossip about Jim's parents that 
 made me pounce upon and fasten on to the word 
 " adultery." I found it in the Bible and learned that 
 people were stoned for it, and looked it up in the dic- 
 tionary. It was around that word that sin and romance 
 unfolded itself, around a word that for years filled me 
 with the horror of St. Paul. 
 
 Because Mrs. Harry Van Orden always seemed to 
 me the most fascinating creature in the world, immor- 
 ality, which I connected peculiarly with her, began by 
 appearing to my mind at the same time both horrifying 
 and alluring. She was rather Spanish-looking, it seemed 
 to me, tall and dark with a fierce repose and pride, an 
 unnaturally restrained vitality that made her voice hoarse 
 and her movements dramatic. Her face was thin and 
 sallow, with long flashing eyes and white pointed teeth. 
 I used to watch her breathlessly when she passed up 
 the drive, wrapped in furs, slanting her long, narrow 
 figure against the wind; watched her more breathlessly 
 because I had heard Louise's mother say to some one that 
 
 63
 
 64 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Mrs. Harry Van Orden was getting into trouble. No 
 sooner had I heard this than I was consumed with 
 longing to get into trouble like Mrs. Van Orden. What 
 exciting beautiful trouble that would be ! Sometimes 
 at the skating rink she smiled at me, her sidelong smile, 
 as she floated across the ice with a certain big man, 
 Mr. Sweney. And gradually I came to connect him with 
 her trouble; also the fact that Mr. Van Orden drank. 
 No wonder, with such mysterious complications in his 
 family, Jim was beyond me in experience. 
 
 Then things came to a climax. The word " divorce " 
 slipped about in and out of adult conversation. We were 
 forbidden to go home with Jim to his house any more, 
 and Jim refused to come to ours. All our good times 
 seemed to vanish suddenly. I suppose the break-up of 
 the " Hot Push " wasn't sudden in reality. It must have 
 taken Mr. Van Orden weeks, even months, to work 
 himself up to the divorce. I imagine that we merely grew 
 up in accelerated spasms that took about three months 
 and found ourselves, at the end of that time, self- 
 conscious, and arrayed against one another. I of course 
 didn't understand the attitude of society towards the 
 Van Ordens at the time but looking back it is clear 
 enough. 
 
 Drunkenness was a specially marked sin in Iroquois. 
 So militant was the Church against it that among a large 
 section of the population the drinking of wine even in 
 moderation was sinful. The attitude of the smart set 
 toward this subject was self-conscious, just as its attitude 
 toward the larger inclusive subject of religion was self- 
 conscious. Society was definitely irreligious, but it was 
 irreligious with a bad conscience. It entertained on 
 Sunday with an air of bravado, and it was exceedingly
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 65 
 
 uncomfortable at the mention of God's name. The same 
 with drink. Iroquois society had very definite ideas about 
 drink. It remembered its Puritan ancestors on the one 
 hand and emulated its glittering idols across the Atlantic 
 on the other ; and between the two it preserved a rigid 
 countenance towards alcohol. It had wine upon its tables 
 at dinner-parties, but excepting these ornamental events, 
 the very expensive wine-glasses were kept locked in 
 cabinets. Hostesses served wine with more or less sang- 
 froid. She who could most successfully make champagne 
 appear to be a matter of course was the most polished 
 society woman of the lot. Mrs. Charlie Bowers was 
 this woman. No one could insinuate that to her, the 
 three different liqueurs passed by her butler after dinner 
 constituted a conscious triumph over the ghost of her 
 grandmother. 
 
 Louise's mother was the most worldly woman we had 
 in Iroquois. She could carry off anything. She had 
 a genius for style. Even her features were stylish, and 
 her smart face, that always seemed somehow absolutely 
 a la mode, covered completely the mechanism of her 
 principles. Nevertheless, she had principles and a horror 
 of drunkenness, a horror even of drinking when manners 
 did not demand it. 
 
 Jim's father drank. He was a living social miracle, 
 not only because of his physical well-being he was 
 an exceedingly handsome man but because he had van- 
 quished the puritanism of society. He had created for 
 himself a special dispensation. Because of his inex- 
 tinguishable charm, Mrs. Charlie Bowers and the 
 rest of society made excuses for him, conjured up a 
 new convention. They invited him to dinner repeatedly, 
 out of the kindness of their hearts, and with each of
 
 66 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 these acts of charity, they triumphed afresh in the fact 
 that he never disgraced them, and was always a gentle- 
 man as they understood a gentleman in spite of the 
 champagne. 
 
 Drunkenness is a sin, but not an unpardonable sin; 
 at least, Harry Van Orden defeated its consequences 
 for a time; but adultery is unpardonable. Mrs. Van 
 Orden achieved no social miracle. She succumbed. She 
 made it impossible for Mrs. Charlie Bowers to be gracious 
 to poor Harry. She had been so inconceivably rash 
 that no one had any doubt at all that she would be 
 divorced, so she had to be dropped and her husband 
 with her for the time being. A man couldn't be invited 
 to dinner without his wife, even an unfaithful wife. 
 
 And, of course, the more they forgave him, the less 
 they forgave her. Indeed, all their past forgiveness 
 was piled up against her. Though the knowledge of 
 her offence was new, they were sure the lurid fact was 
 old, and if of long standing, then it was the real cause 
 of his unfortunate habit, and they had been condoning 
 what they thought one of the natural weaknesses of 
 his fascinating temperament, when it really was all the 
 time her fault. They were sure now that they had 
 never liked or trusted her. There had always been some- 
 thing dark and not quite nice about her. 
 
 Then arose the question: What would become of the 
 boy, who was the living image of his father? Its 
 maternal instinct made society shiver. Society was, after 
 all, entirely made up of mothers. The arms of these 
 were opened where the faces of the hostesses were blank, 
 and it thus came about that we, Louise included, were 
 still allowed to play with Jim, to have him in our homes, 
 but not to go to his. And Jim for a time, unconscious
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 67 
 
 and ignorant, for his mother's lips were sealed, frequented 
 houses long since closed to her. 
 
 I only saw Jim and his mother together once at 
 least I only remember this once. It was the night that 
 he and Dick were carried out into the lake on the 
 floating ice, and she came to our house to find him. That 
 was the night, too, that Pat O'Brien turned up as their 
 saviour. A strange night, far-reaching in its result. For 
 one thing, it started off Pat on his career toward the 
 Governorship of the State. 
 
 Dick and Jim did not despise Pat. A fist which gives 
 one a bloody nose or black eye, even if it is red and 
 raw and the fist of a " Mick," commands respect. They 
 felt for him a fierce animosity tinged with envy. He 
 was to them a member of a wild foreign tribe, but 
 one who created welcome diversion in the ranks of the 
 civilized, and as such an enemy he was enjoyed fero- 
 ciously. 
 
 They envied him his dirt and his freedom and his 
 huge ugliness, Jim especially, for Jim hated his own 
 personal appearance. Never had any ugly little girl 
 with snub nose and squinting eyes suffered greater humil- 
 iation than Jim suffered through the conviction that 
 he was pretty. He was never really pretty, his forehead 
 saved him from that; but his golden hair and deep blue 
 eyes were to him a source of furious resentment. His 
 eyes were certainly of an extraordinary dark blue. They 
 had a deep expression of fierce innocence. They had 
 still, when I last saw him, and his mouth was still the 
 same mouth, and he pulled it down grimly just as he 
 used to do in an effort to spoil its curves. 
 
 It is extraordinary how that look in. his eyes remained 
 to deny the bitterness of his speech, to stir in one feelings
 
 68 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 of pity and fun and tenderness. And in spite of him- 
 self, his face in manhood expressed still that absurd 
 babyish sweetness against which his erratic passionate 
 brain had battled with such futile cruelty. He and the 
 devil together would have murdered his innocence long 
 ago if they could that is how he made me feel at 
 the end. 
 
 Sentimental complimenting mothers used to drive him 
 mad. " Women make me sick," he would growl after 
 one had been running her ringers through his hair, and 
 women have always made him sick. He was happiest 
 in the old days when, 'with cut lip, bulging eye, and 
 battered nose, he felt that his face was as manly and 
 terrible as Pat's. He was small and slight, and he envied 
 Pat the size of his feet, and the bulging muscles of his 
 shoulders, and the nonchalant way in which his strong 
 glistening teeth bit a cigarette. To smoke a cigarette, 
 not in secret, but boldly strolling along the street with 
 one's hands in one's pockets that was to proclaim 
 oneself a man. Also at close quarters Pat exhaled the 
 odour of beer, and Jim and Dick remarked to each other 
 curtly with bated breath that he probably drank. 
 These things, together with the holes in his stockings, 
 suggested a degree of liberty at home that was dazzling. 
 Probably he never had to go to bed or church. Some 
 fellows had all the fun. 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of their admiring envy, they 
 might have gone on indefinitely calling him a " do'gone 
 Mick," had it not been for that Friday night. On 
 Friday nights we were allowed to invite four of our 
 friends to dinner and have a " rough house " afterwards. 
 A rough house included anything from hide-and-seek to 
 a candy-pull in the kitchen. Dinner was served on
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 69 
 
 Fridays at half -past six, to leave more time for fun 
 afterwards; but on this particular Friday Dick and Jim 
 had not turned up by seven o'clock. I had invited Louise 
 and Phyllis, of course. Tommy Dodge was there con- 
 soling himself with Jerry and Bud. We were all 
 depressed by a feeling of guilt and responsibility. None 
 of us knew where the other two were, but we could 
 think of half a dozen escapades in which we might have 
 been involved, and our lucky immunity didn't console 
 us much. 
 
 " We won't wait any longer, John," said my mother 
 at last, moving toward the dining-room. I remember 
 she wore a sort of tea-gown of wine-coloured silk with 
 cascades of black lace at her throat and elbows. There 
 was a strained look on her pale face. We followed 
 gloomily, wondering why we weren't hungry. There 
 was sure to be vanilla ice-cream with chocolate sauce. 
 
 Only Phyllis seemed to be enjoying the excitement 
 that depressed the rest of us. Her light fluffy hair 
 was tied by a big frivolous bow, her cheeks were pink, 
 and her eyes dancing, and she whispered, giggling to 
 Tommy. 
 
 At that moment the door bell rang. Every one jumped. 
 Edward ran to the door. My mother turned. A 
 woman's clear incisive voice spoke. It was Mrs. Van 
 Orden. She swept up the steps of the vestibule and 
 stood in the hall. I had never seen her in our house 
 before, and her presence seemed strange, her advent 
 dramatic. She was followed by the big man, Mr. Sweney, 
 who stood behind her, silently, during what followed. 
 Under her close fur toque her small sallow face looked 
 proud and mysterious. Her white teeth gleamed as her 
 thin curved lips smiled a short, nervous smile. From
 
 70 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 the top of her little high head to the curve of her slender 
 instep, she was foreign, alluring, mysterious. There 
 were skates over her arm. She spoke quickly. 
 
 " Please excuse me, Mrs. Fairfax. I knew you were 
 
 expecting Jim, but something -" she hesitated, " I 
 
 wanted to make sure. Is he here ? " 
 
 It was really very curious her being there in our 
 home with that man. He, I remember, was fat, with 
 reddish eyebrows and icicles melting on his short 
 moustache. Not at all romantic, I thought to myself. I 
 must have known a good deal about it all by that time, 
 for I mentally compared him to her husband, to his 
 disadvantage. " How can she be thrilled by that fat 
 man?" I wondered. 
 
 My father nodded to Mr. Sweney and moved towards 
 her with his rather formal courtesy. 
 
 " No, he's not here," he said. 
 
 Her face changed suddenly quivered and grew still 
 again. " She doesn't look like a mother, but she loves 
 Jim," I thought. 
 
 " I was told," her voice was harsh and clear-cut, 
 " that some one saw them, Jim and Dick, going towards 
 the lake with their skates." Her eyes flashed from 
 one to another. Phyllis made a funny little noise a 
 noise of pleased and wicked excitement. I could have 
 choked her. My mother's face had gone as white as 
 death. The lake was forbidden. Even when appar- 
 ently frozen solid for miles out, the ice would crack off in 
 great slabs and float away, carrying rash skaters with 
 it. I felt suddenly sick. One of our favourite games 
 had been to go out on the ice as far as we dared. Each 
 one would carry a brick which he would throw ahead 
 of him. If the brick did not go through or show weak-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 71 
 
 ness in the ice ahead, we would follow and repeat the 
 experiment. The one who dared go farthest was the 
 hero. Jim had once gone nearly a mile, and I had 
 watched him, trembling with guilty admiration. But 
 none of us had ever gone skating, partly because this 
 had been very expressly forbidden, partly because the 
 ice was really smoother at the skating club. I had a 
 terrible picture of Jim and Dick carried out on a slab 
 of ice along the dark vast surface of the lake, through 
 the night wind. And at the same time that I felt sick 
 with fear, I felt too a certain exultation. How romantic 
 and exciting it all was ! And yet in another corner of 
 my brain I knew that I was as bad as Phyllis, whose thrills 
 were rippling to the surface. 
 
 Then the door bell rang again, and Mrs. Van Orden 
 flung herself upon the door, but it was a strange boy 
 he came in blinking, shuffling his huge boots together, 
 his bright red curls standing out grotesquely about his 
 scowling face. It was Patrick O'Brien. 
 
 " They're out on the ice," he growled. " It's cracked. 
 They're floating." His angry eyes fixed on my father. 
 " Better come with me and bring me a lantern, and a rope, 
 and a board. Ain't much time. Better git a move on." 
 He kept rolling his torn cap round in his bare hands, that 
 were cracked and bleeding with cold. There was some- 
 thing rough and funny about him that inspired confidence, 
 as he stood waiting, his back to Mrs. Van Orden's rigid 
 figure. 
 
 " Better git a move on," he muttered again. His 
 bright speckled eyes shifted from one to another until 
 they rested on Phyllis, then his red face turned a shade 
 redder. Violently he cleared his throat and was about 
 to spit, but there was no place fit to spit in. He looked
 
 72 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 about him with growing animosity. Rage and contempt 
 seemed to grow in his face. He looked at his boots 
 from which the snow was melting into little puddles. 
 " Damn ! " he half whispered to himself, with a fierce, 
 shamed glance towards the dainty white figure of fluff 
 and ribbon. 
 
 It seemed an age before my father in fur coat and 
 cap, and Edward with lantern and rope, were ready, but 
 it had not been more than four minutes. 
 
 " Come on, then." Pat jerked his elbow and shot 
 out into the cold. The others followed. Mrs. Van 
 Orden gave Mr. Sweney behind her one glance, he nodded 
 and followed the others. The door banged. I rushed 
 to the window and flattened my face against it. The 
 lake was shrouded in darkness. With a shiver I turned 
 from the window and ran to my mother and knelt on 
 the floor beside her, clutching her hand. Bud was 
 hanging over her fondling her hair. Louise and Phyllis 
 sat at her feet looking up into her white face. At the 
 other side of the fireplace Mrs. Van Orden was seated 
 now, leaning back, her long, slender legs crossed, one 
 slim foot swinging nervously, while, through lowered 
 eyelids, she surveyed the group. Little spasms of pain 
 and annoyance passed over her face. Her eyes gleamed 
 strangely. A cruel little smile parted her lips. Sud- 
 denly she leaned forward and burst into violent tears. 
 
 " You have so many," she gasped, " and so much 
 besides ; God, and a mind at peace." 
 
 We stared petrified. My mother got up. " Go into 
 the dining-room. Dinner is waiting. It may be a long 
 time before they come back. Joan, take my place at 
 the table." We crept away and sat round the table 
 miserably in silence for a long time.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 73 
 
 *' Mother doesn't bow to her," announced Louise at 
 last, tossing her head. How I hated Louise at that 
 moment. 
 
 My mind dwelt inquisitively upon the two women 
 in the hall. I never knew what happened. Perhaps 
 in spite of everything, they prayed together for the 
 safety of their sons. Mrs. Van Orden's personality, so 
 dark and so magnetic, is always tinged for me with the 
 fear of that ghastly evening, and never shall I forget the 
 way in which she met Jim on his return, the terrible 
 intensity of her extreme control. 
 
 She didn't even touch him, though her arms twitched. 
 They had started out from her sides against her will ; 
 she checked them. But he came to her and took hold 
 of her hand that hung rigid by her side, and they stood 
 together close for a moment, both frowning with the 
 effort to deny the emotional and the unusual that was 
 so instinctive to them. I suppose she must have known 
 then that she was going to leave him. It was not long 
 after this that she bolted with the fat man. 
 
 We afterwards took it as a matter of course that 
 the boys were saved. It was not in the nature of things 
 that they should be frozen to death or drowned in the 
 icy depths of the lake. Such things happened in Iroquois, 
 but not among people that one knew. Nevertheless, if 
 it had not been for Patrick O'Brien, the snobbishness of 
 fate might have been less obvious. 
 
 Pat was a hero, and of a sudden all the fierce ani- 
 mosity that had been levelled against him was turned 
 into friendship. With dogged persistence Jim and Dick 
 insisted on receiving him into their homes. He had 
 disappeared that eventful night, waiting for no word 
 of thanks or farewell, but they met him the following
 
 74 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Monday after school. He was slouching along as always, 
 kicking the snow with the clumsy toes of his boots, 
 and chewing gum violently. They stopped. He grunted. 
 Embarrassed, yet determined to be friends, Jim and 
 Dick ranged alongside. Dumbly they proceeded down 
 the street until they came opposite the German bakery. 
 Pies and " Kafe Kuchen " and gingerbread were dis- 
 played in the window, and Kranz's round, rosy face 
 smiled at them through the frosted glass. 
 
 " Come on in," said Dick. Pat lurched in and accepted 
 a lemon pie. Solemnly they proceeded, eating, down 
 Grant Street. 
 
 " My new dynamo's a peach," murmured Jim. 
 
 " Gosh ! " replied Pat irrelevantly, but somehow he 
 found himself within Jim's front door. Mrs. Van Orden 
 was standing ready to go out. 
 
 " How do you do, Pat ? " She smiled and passed out, 
 while he pulled his hat from his head in a tumult. 
 
 And once on a Friday night he came to dinner with 
 Dick in a clean collar. He said not a word throughout 
 the meal, but shot terribly shy and angry glances at 
 the girls. And his great hulking roughness made us 
 all suffer with the sense of his discomfort. After dinner, 
 with a last savage frown at Phyllis, he grabbed up 
 his cap. 
 
 " I'm goin' naw it's no good. I hate girls and 
 all this fancy stuff," he growled to Dick at the door, 
 and bolted. 
 
 In vain did they look for him after that. He was 
 not to be found. At last another " Mick " informed 
 them, " No, Pat didn't come to school no more." 
 
 Not for years, when we had almost forgotten him, 
 did we find out. Dick found himself face to face with
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 75 
 
 him on the baseball field. He was captain of the Colum- 
 bia team. I believe Phyllis must have told me that he 
 rushed home that very night to his father's room behind 
 the big saloon on Grant Street and demanded that he 
 be allowed to go to college, and, undoubtedly romantic 
 as it may seem, those two glimpses of Phyllis in white 
 and blue ribbons were his incentive. 
 
 But I started out to tell you how, when Jim found we 
 weren't allowed to come to his house any more, he 
 refused to come to us, and after this, how Dick made 
 such a scene that he was packed off to boarding school, 
 but, as I say, I forget how long it all took. I only know 
 that Tommy Dodge went too, and then the " Hot Push " 
 vanished.
 
 CHAPTER Six 
 
 THE affair of Phyllis Day and Patrick O'Brien 
 would make a romantic story. His career 
 began when she laughed at him with those 
 blue bows bobbing in her hair. His remarkable efforts 
 to educate himself and make money were all because 
 of his desire to possess her. Any one in Iroquois can 
 tell you all about that. He was noisy about it himself. 
 He wasn't the kind of man to hide his furious hunger. 
 His were direct methods. As a " Mick " he gave 
 innumerable embryo gentlemen black eyes ; and as a 
 man he lunged into any soft-spoken rivals who happened 
 to want her for themselves. He battered them about, 
 not perhaps with his fists, but in a way that left them 
 equally sore. It is all romantic, if you look at the mere 
 changes and happenings. Compare his home in Grant 
 Street over the saloon with the Venetian house 
 on the drive that he has built for her. The carvings 
 on its stone front are copied straight from the Doge's 
 palace. What more could any one want? However, no 
 one is very much surprised. It's just the sort of thing 
 that happens to people in America. Everybody knows 
 America is a hot-bed for romantic marriages. Marriage 
 is the one gallant adventure of all well-brought-up young 
 people. Marriage for love is not only the dream of 
 youth, it is the achievement of youth, and the divorce 
 laws are all of a piece with it; but the unusual thing 
 
 76
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 77 
 
 about Phil's affair was that she stood out for so much 
 money. That spoils it rather. I'm afraid the romance 
 was all on one side. Sally Comstock was more typical. 
 She was proud of marrying a poor man and doing her 
 own cooking. Phil consented when her admirer could 
 show her a million dollars, not a penny less. And the 
 curious thing about Pat is, that he has gone just exactly 
 as far as he wanted, and now refuses to go any farther. 
 He is the Governor of the State, and is going to retire 
 from politics when that's over. He has made a fortune 
 and bought her the string of pearls that she saw in 
 Paris on their honeymoon, and he doesn't propose to 
 work himself to death any more. He's going to build 
 a house in California and take to farming or growing 
 grape-fruit or something, and Phil has got to go with 
 him. She has no say in the matter. One would per- 
 haps pity her if she weren't so everlastingly adaptable. 
 I fancy in another couple of years she will be a contented 
 farmer's wife, a domesticated amazon. 
 
 I had never managed to make up my mind about 
 Phyllis until that night at Saracens. She had always 
 hoodwinked me, and she does it again now that I am 
 made charitable by the calamities of the war. She looked 
 to me in that clairvoyant moment a devil; but now I 
 begin to feel that she may be innocent of any real knowl- 
 edge of herself. It may be that her cruelty is no more 
 real than her affection. Her movements and her voice 
 are delicious and comic. Her beauty is full of humour. 
 And I find it impossible now to believe in a humorous 
 she-devil. I prefer to believe that she is just organically 
 wrong somewhere, and that she doesn't know. She is 
 frigid, and I suppose she can't help it. And being frigid 
 she must find all the rest of us very curious, very comic.
 
 78 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 That may be the explanation of her laughter and the 
 tricks she plays with us. 
 
 She has always played tricks with me. She has always 
 got everything out of me that she wanted. Even when 
 she wanted Binky, I'd have given him to her. It wasn't 
 my fault that Uncle Archie died at the wrong moment. 
 I believe she and Binky would have suited each other 
 admirably, for I realize now that they both have repeatedly 
 hurt me the same way. 
 
 I remember one night when I was about fourteen 
 hearing that Phil's mother was ill, and her father away, 
 and the cook drunk. I don't know how I gathered this 
 information, from the servants I suppose, but anyhow 
 I flung on a coat and rushed round to their house in Oak 
 Street and ran up the stairs, and burst out that I had 
 come for the night, that I would take care of the children, 
 that I was so dreadfully sorry. I was full of enthusiastic 
 sympathy, and began all this the moment she opened 
 the front door, and I poured it all out and ended up 
 by saying with an earnest motherly manner : " So, Philly 
 dear, I couldn't bear to have you here alone brooding 
 through the night ; and I came." It sounds ridiculous ; 
 of course I admit that it must have sounded ridiculous, 
 but I can feel again the hot wave of mortification and 
 disappointment and the consciousness of my absurdity 
 when she began to laugh. I saw then that she had a 
 paper-covered novel in her hand with her forefinger 
 keeping the place. 
 
 " Come on in," she gurgled. " Gracious goodness ! 
 come on in. Oh dear, you are so funny," and she led 
 me giggling up the stairs to her room, where she'd been 
 evidently lying on her bed with a box of chocolates. 
 The next day she repeated my remarks to Louise.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 79 
 
 " Brooding through the night, great Scott ! Would any 
 one else ever talk like that but Johnny ! " I remember 
 I felt it very cruel of her to tell Louise how silly I'd 
 been. 
 
 Of course I don't mean to say that Binky is quite like 
 that, or has ever so obviously made fun of my feelings 
 about him, but I know that I often used to seem to him 
 absurd and" quaint, and I have had to learn not to be 
 spontaneous. 
 
 Binky has an aversion to the human heart. He has 
 always regarded my interest in human beings as a not 
 quite nice eccentricity. He has a chronic fear of what 
 I call the great things and the deep things. His bogey 
 is revolution, and his effort is to keep every one well- 
 behaved in his own little place, so he wants always to 
 deny the existence of emotions and mysteries. And as 
 Phyllis doesn't realize that they do exist, they ought to 
 have got on admirably. 
 
 I suppose Phil's mother knocked all such romantic 
 nonsense out of her head ages ago, before Patrick O'Brien 
 ever turned up on those flirtatious front steps of the 
 house in Oak Street, those sociable flirtatious front steps 
 where Phyllis received her beaux. How I used to envy 
 her both, steps and beaux. If you are not American 
 you can scarcely realize their significance, their important 
 place in the social system. The Pat-Phyllis story might 
 be labelled " The Romance of the Front Steps." I'm 
 sure Pat proposed on them. They were of wood, and 
 they formed before the front door a small verandah, and 
 in the warm spring evenings they used to be black with 
 young men who came, sometimes with banjos or with of- 
 ferings of candy, to sit at Phyllis's little white feet. I don't 
 know how old she was when she began to hold court there,
 
 8o THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 about fourteen, I should think, but it seemed to me she 
 always had had the little airs and grace of a young lady 
 tucked away behind her boyishness, ready to put on when 
 she liked. 
 
 Oak Street runs east from Jefferson Drive into Grant 
 Street. The " Micks," many of them, lived in Grant 
 Street above bakeries, groceries, and saloons. Patrick 
 O'Brien lived there somewhere, possibly behind that big 
 saloon on the corner of Maple and Grant. At least I've 
 an idea that was the place, because I know big political 
 gatherings took place there, and you remember Pat's 
 father was a politician. 
 
 Oak Street is a sudden unashamed transition between 
 the mansions of Jefferson Drive and the saloons of 
 Grant Street. It degenerates rapidly, for it is not more 
 than five hundred yards from one end to the other, and 
 at the west end, or top, are dilapidated wooden houses 
 built like farm-houses, and tenanted, the stoops as well 
 as the houses, by prolific Italians whose bow-legged off- 
 spring sprawl over the wooden sidewalks. 
 
 Phyllis lived half-way up Oak Street in No. 83. No. 
 83 was a mere scrap of a house sandwiched in between 
 two larger ones, but it was nice and cosy, even outside, 
 with its low, inviting front door and the bay window 
 on the first floor jutting out over it. I had always 
 particularly liked Phyllis's house. It was diminutive, 
 like a doll's house, and it had an informal attractive air 
 about it, and Mrs. Day, however sour she may have 
 felt, looked nice and motherly as she sat continually 
 sewing behind the crisp white muslin curtains of the 
 bow window. The smallness and the closeness of the 
 house and of the Days' family life appealed to me. One 
 felt protected and gossipy there. Within the definite
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 81 
 
 limitations of their poverty was left no room for troubling 
 ideals. I used often to go home with Phyllis in the 
 afternoon, and we invariably found Mrs. Day sewing 
 or darning stockings in the failing light. She would 
 look up when Phyllis burst in, radiant and rosy, and 
 would smile dotingly and bitterly upon her daughter; a 
 smile that pulled her rather pretty mouth to one side. 
 There was a queer mixture of tender indulgence and 
 of hungry curiosity in her glance. Chained so much of 
 the time to her work-table, her horizon bounded by the 
 window through which her fine sharp eyes watched envi- 
 ously the comings and goings of her neighbours, she 
 would dwell upon her grievances and her ambitions. She 
 depended on Phyllis to bring her news, and for lack 
 of other companions she had become accustomed to 
 treating her in the relaxed mood of evening to all the 
 bitter thoughts that accumulated during the day. Pov- 
 erty had drawn the two together in a strange adult 
 intimacy. 
 
 For me, she had always a sugary, rather pitying 
 smile. It has taken me a long time to fathom that 
 smile, but I have discovered that it was meant to make 
 me feel what a terrible misfortune was mine in being 
 the daughter of such a rich man. I must have been 
 a constant source of acute annoyance to Mrs. Day. She 
 must have enjoyed talking to me as one enjoys scratching 
 a sore. In any case she always detained me, and talked 
 on at me, making continually shy little remarks about 
 rich women having time to be religious, but she had 
 to stick to darning; or about how little girls who didn't 
 have to count their pennies could afford to lose hair- 
 ribbons; always with the same acid-sweet hypocritical 
 pity.
 
 82 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I think I always instinctively disliked Mrs. Day, but 
 I didn't admit this to myself. It would not have been 
 loyal to Phyllis. 
 
 What struck me as so curious about that time was that 
 Mrs. Day and Phyllis could be so sweet and loving to each 
 other, and so horrid to the rest of the world. 
 
 Phyllis would give her half a dozen nibbling kisses, 
 rubbing her mother's worn cheek with her cold nose, as 
 a puppy would do, and then fling herself on the window- 
 seat among the stockings and under-flannels and children's 
 clothes ; and they would gossip about their neighbours 
 in the bitterest way. 
 
 I suppose I drank in a certain amount of poison during 
 these sittings I don't know, I wasn't there so very 
 much after all, but I'm sure Mrs. Day deposited a 
 thick layer of poisonous sediment in her daughter's 
 mind. She must have. Her talk ranged from Mr. 
 Brown's new overcoat next door and the Manniere 
 girls' silk petticoats which they could not afford, to 
 Mrs. Bowers' champagne suppers, which she had never 
 been to, but where the men got drunk, and so forth 
 and so on, all tinged with envy, malice, and maternal 
 jealousy. 
 
 " Louise Bowers is going to Paris next year," Phyllis 
 announced one night. 
 
 " Oh ! " Mrs. Day drew a sharp breath. Her thin 
 face contracted. She moved her head irritably. Phyllis 
 rubbed her nose against the window-pane, purring. 
 
 " She's going into a convent. Wouldn't that jar you ? " 
 She sniffed, genuinely disgusted with the idea, vaguely 
 and uncomfortably aware of the sudden tumult of 
 jealousy in her mother's bosom.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 83 
 
 "If your father could only make a little more money," 
 said Mrs. Day, with a sidelong look at me. 
 
 Phyllis opened her eyes. " I wouldn't go to a convent 
 for worlds. Not much ! " 
 
 Mrs. Day was staring into the gathering gloom, 
 her hands in her lap, her shoulders hanging forward 
 wearily. 
 
 "Mrs. Bowers knows what she's doing oh if 
 
 if " She broke off as suddenly as she began, then 
 
 began again : " Who would ever think my family was 
 better than hers? Family doesn't count in this coun- 
 try, or blue blood she wasn't any one, you know, 
 but look how she's managed, always entertaining the 
 right people. She's clever, but if your father could 
 only make a little more money " Her voice shook. 
 
 " Money ! " grunted the daughter. " Louise has a 
 rotten time, and Joan doesn't have any more fun than 
 me, do you, Joan ? " 
 
 I shook my head. Mrs. Day pursed her lips super- 
 ciliously, and I dimly realized that she felt a deep un- 
 reasoning grudge against my mother for being a recluse. 
 It was a crime to have social position and beauty and 
 wealth and then not to do any entertaining. 
 
 I began to feel very uncomfortable. 
 
 " Your mother," Phyllis indicated me, " asked me yes- 
 terday if I believed in Jesus Christ." She giggled. Her 
 mother's twisted smile grew more bitter. Her contempt 
 for the religion that would not let one enjoy life was 
 deep ; and she was angry at any one interfering with her 
 own child. 
 
 " Your mother is too much of a saint for this world," 
 she said to me.
 
 84 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I got up, feeling hot and angry. My eyes smarted, my 
 lip trembled. 
 
 " I must be going home," I managed to say. Mrs. 
 Day looked conscience-smitten, and ashamed, but I was 
 too much afraid of bursting out into tears or angry words 
 to stay. I ran out of the room. 
 
 Why did I keep going back there to that detestable 
 talk, with its sly hits at my mother and father? I 
 don't know. I suppose because I loved Phyllis, and I 
 believed she loved me. I still believe she did a little 
 in those days. Why did I love her? I don't know. 
 She fascinated me, as she has fascinated hundreds of, 
 other people, in spite of the fact that I knew she would 
 never hesitate to push me out of the way, if I weren't 
 useful to her. I kept going back, and have always kept 
 going back, till this last time when over Binky it all 
 went to pieces, our supposed friendship ; and that was due 
 to her after all, not to me. 
 
 It must not be supposed that Mrs. Day was a cynic. 
 Phyllis, her daughter, is a cynic if you like, but her 
 mother was an idealist, and a romanticist. 
 
 She was a soured, disagreeable woman, with an infinite 
 capacity for being nasty to her neighbours, but she 
 would never be soured and cynical about her family. She 
 might loathe poverty, and be consumed with anger against 
 her husband's futility; she might lose her temper daily 
 with nervous unreason, and weep sickly over the children's 
 garments that filled her work-table : nevertheless, the word 
 " home " would always hold for her a sentimental, even 
 a mystic, significance ; marriage would always, in her 
 fancy, assume a religious beauty ; motherhood would 
 always seem a heart-breaking delight, and the crown of 
 womanhood. She adored her children; her face would
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 85 
 
 soften as she looked at her unquestionably pretty 
 daughter, and then a tremor would pass over her 
 features. 
 
 " Don't ever let yourself fall in love with a poor man," 
 she would say fiercely to Phyllis, and in these words 
 were packed all the deep affection and resentment she 
 bore her husband. She would never bid Phyllis make 
 a cold-blooded, mercenary marriage, but she would pray 
 in her heart that the child find and love a good, handsome 
 millionaire. It was impossible for her ever to entirely 
 rid herself of the sweetness of her own youth. Her 
 husband was too devoted and too simple to allow of her 
 doing this. 
 
 Mr. Day reached home at ten minutes to seven o'clock, 
 just twelve hours after his departure in the morning. 
 He rose every morning at six, had a hot breakfast, took 
 a trolley car for fifteen minutes, a suburban train for 
 an hour, and arrived in the office of the Fairfax works, 
 Fairfax-Ville, at eight-thirty; stayed there till five-thirty, 
 and took the same route home. He had been doing this 
 for fifteen years ; and he was forty-five years old. It 
 would have been possible, of course, for him to have 
 shortened his working day by living nearer his place 
 of business. He could have lived on the south side, 
 close to it. The south side was a wilderness, a vast 
 desert, of new pale brick buildings, full of innumerable 
 flats, designed for just such people as himself. Naturally 
 his wife did not wish to live there, and Mr. Day, who 
 lived for his wife and children, agreed that the north 
 side was nicer. People who lived on the north side at 
 least had neighbours, and sometimes one came to know 
 one's neighbours. The children would grow up to 
 know other children of their own kind. This was all
 
 86 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 that could be definitely said for it, but the quality of the 
 north side was as absolute and binding as it was 
 indefinable, and Mr. Day admitted it. He always 
 admitted the truth of his wife's convictions, and the 
 value of her tastes, because he felt constantly that he had 
 done her an injury and had been repeating it daily for 
 fifteen years, in not being worth more to John J. Fairfax 
 than two thousand a year. 
 
 They had begun life together full of hope. It was 
 a love match, of course, and he had been the envied of 
 all young men when he had secured the penniless belle 
 of that gentle southern town. His prospects had been 
 as rosy as prospects are in " love's young dream." John 
 J. Fairfax, senior, had been a friend of his father's, 
 and had given him a job. He had every opportunity to 
 get on, and he had risen from five hundred a year to 
 two thousand. That was his measure. Maude, the girl- 
 wife, had thought it fun to begin on five hundred dollars 
 a year. She had thought it fun because she had believed 
 it was merely a picnic, a lark of poverty preceding a 
 serious banquet of wealth. Her sweetness had been the 
 good-nature of blind optimism, and with disillusionment 
 had come bitterness. He had in the early days found 
 the sight of her dainty figure bending over the kitchen 
 stove a poetic, entrancing sight, but now it hurt him to 
 notice that her finger-tips were rough with the prickings 
 of a needle. He tried not to see them. He always tried 
 not to see things that hurt him, and always he pretended 
 to be happy, but life weighed on him, and his daily 
 journey home was a long, heavy dream of lost hopes. 
 Only at the last lap of his daily pilgrimage, at the top 
 of Oak Street, did he assume a jaunty air, and on 
 reaching his own front door he would begin to whistle,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 87 
 
 keeping it up while mounting, more rapidly than he 
 found comfortable, the last steps to the bedroom. It 
 was his nightly terror that she should tell him the 
 cook had left, but he came to her smiling, and his 
 large, rubicund face, made for jollity, never gave him 
 away. He looked still, at a casual glance, a hale and 
 hearty man, but his high colour was not the colour of 
 health, his figure, seemingly robust and portly, was flabby 
 and top-heavy and his knees weak. His innocent, delight- 
 ful blue eyes were, too, marred by blood-shot eyeballs, 
 and there was an uneasy apologetic joviality in his man- 
 ner. His natural kind-heartedness had gradually through 
 repeated snubs from business men, turned into a sort of 
 conciliatory cordiality. He knew himself to be a failure, 
 and he now pretended to love a world that had conquered 
 him. 
 
 Whether Mrs. Day persuaded him to go to my father 
 or not about Phyllis I don't know, but I think not. I 
 think Mr. Day was too proud to beg, and too fine to 
 set so much store by a fashionable boarding school for 
 his daughter. He was a simple man, and he , worked 
 proudly, plodding stolidly to his death. I've an idea 
 that my father sent Phyllis to school without it being 
 suggested to him, and with Mr. Day's reluctant per- 
 mission and Mrs. Day's resentful gratitude. Anyhow, 
 I know it had all been arranged when I went to say 
 good-bye to Phil that night before we went abroad. She 
 was going to Farmington in the autumn, and it was only 
 her father's collapse that prevented her making a lot 
 of fashionable friends and realizing her mother's dream, 
 for Patrick O'Brien could never be said to realize Mrs. 
 Day's dream. Rich and powerful as he is to-day, she 
 can never forget that he was once a " Mick."
 
 88 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Softening of the brain is a terrible thing. It lasts 
 so long. Poor Mrs. Day ! Doubtless during those years 
 of nursing, of weeping over that living corpse, so ghastly 
 in its similarity to her husband, during those years of 
 endless tenderness and patience, with which she tried 
 to atone for her many bygone tempers, it must have 
 come to her that she was responsible. Yes, it must 
 have been quite clear to her that it was her own jealous 
 ambition that killed him. And doubtless, too, the terrible 
 position at home had a lot to do with Phyllis's acceptance 
 of Pat. She has been able to make her mother very 
 comfortable since her marriage. 
 
 The windows and doors of many houses in Oak Street 
 stood open, that evening, when I went to say good-bye 
 to Phyllis. They sent out shafts of light into the shadowy 
 street, that was alive with laughing voices and moving 
 forms. Children played hop-scotch on the sidewalk. 
 Mothers and fathers and neighbours visited on their 
 front steps. 
 
 I found Phyllis in the kitchen washing up the dinner 
 dishes. She had a big blue check apron over her white 
 muslin dress, and her arms were submerged in the 
 steaming water of the sink. Her wonderful hair was 
 tied up at the back of her neck with a white ribbon, in 
 a way that made her look a young lady. It was terribly 
 hot in the kitchen, and the flickering bracket light seemed 
 gasping for breath in the close, steamy atmosphere. 
 
 She nodded brightly over her shoulder without expla- 
 nations. Quite obviously, the cook had left, and she 
 had cooked the dinner, had put it on the dumb waiter, 
 served it to her father and mother and the two younger 
 children in the dining-room, and then had cleared it 
 away. She was continually doing this. One of the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 89 
 
 points on which she was immovable was that her mother 
 should not enter the kitchen in the evening. She was 
 very considerate of her mother, and very efficient. The 
 dinners she cooked were good. I know because I've 
 eaten them, and I've watched her make pastry, baste a 
 roast, mash potatoes, with the swift, accurate movements 
 of a professional. All the same she hated cooking. She 
 didn't grumble, because there was no use grumbling, 
 she merely laughed; but she hated it. It might have 
 been over that stove that she made up her mind not 
 to accept any man with less than a million dollars. She 
 had no nonsense about her, no sentiment of self-sacrifice 
 that made her enjoy work. Hers is an economical nature, 
 given to no extravagance of mood, and she is in her 
 frivolous way a stoic with a philosophy of life almost as 
 finished as Binky's. 
 
 I implored her to let me help her, and rolled up my 
 sleeves. 
 
 " All right," she said, " you dry." She began hauling 
 plates out of the water. One by one, she handed them 
 to me. Through the open windows came the sound of 
 a hand-organ and children screaming happily. And she 
 looked so exquisite in that dingy kitchen that for tuppence 
 I could have sentimentalized over her. 
 
 " You're a dear," she began. " Poor Daddy, he 
 couldn't have managed it. I'm going to have the most 
 scrumptious new clothes, and two silk petticoats. I sup- 
 pose all the girls at Farmington have silk petticoats." I 
 murmured that I supposed they did. " I wouldn't change 
 with Louise, and go to her convent for worlds. Tommy, 
 you know, will be at Yale. He's asked me to the Yale- 
 Harvard game." She chattered on, laughing with antici- 
 pation, and rinsing plates busily. If I have not succeeded
 
 90 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 in conveying to you her attraction, let me put it simply, 
 that it lay in the fact that she always looked so happy. 
 Her dimples and her very white, regular teeth, and 
 her eyes and her hair, all seemed alive with happiness, 
 and she is just as invaluable to society as light. One 
 would as soon think of resisting her as of pulling down 
 the blinds on a sunny day in the middle of winter. And 
 the fact that her brightness is a fake doesn't matter. 
 What difference does it make whether it's only a trick of 
 eyelash and curved lips, or an effulgence from the soul? 
 None. The result is the same, precisely the same. 
 
 " There ! I've just got to put these away, then I'm 
 done ; you go up and talk to mother till I come. Gosh ! 
 it's hot." She dismissed me with a splashy gesture. 
 
 I found Mr. Day in the hall dozing over his evening 
 paper, his large head fallen forward on his chest in a 
 way that made him look decrepit and old. Mrs. Day 
 was on the front stoop in a low wicker chair, fanning 
 herself with a palm-leaf fan. She proceeded to smother 
 me with pity. 
 
 Was I not going to boarding-school at all? Wouldn't 
 I miss my girl friends? It was so unnatural for a 
 young girl to spend all her youth with an old man, 
 not that my father was really old. She supposed, thanks 
 to me, that Phyllis would make lots of nice friends 
 in the East. From her pale lips and expressive eyes 
 I gathered that Phyllis was infinitely lucky and beau- 
 tiful, that it was nice of my father to help her, but 
 that she could have got on very well without any help 
 at all. 
 
 I suppose I was jealous of Phyllis. Having played 
 the benefactor it seemed to me a sorry role, and going 
 abroad with my father began to look very dull compared
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 91 
 
 to Yale-Harvard football games. I felt very miserable 
 by the time she came out to join us, all fluffy muslin and 
 curls. 
 
 I was going away for a long time, and the sociability 
 of Oak Street and the informality of the front stoop 
 appealed to me more than ever before. Phyllis, sitting 
 on the top step, rubbed her cheek against her' mother's 
 knee. Her eyes were bright, a little smile played about 
 her lips. The provoking dimples came and went in her 
 firm, slender cheeks. I felt lonely, and when two young 
 men arrived I was suddenly set aching with increased 
 jealousy. No young men ever came to call on me in 
 the evenings. Why not? I tried to picture them 
 " joshing me," as the phrase was, on Jefferson Drive, 
 but I couldn't. I sank into mute admiration of Phyllis. 
 It was wonderful the way she entertained them and eyed 
 them and laughed softly with alluring movements, and 
 seemed to keep them amused without talking. Mrs. Day 
 had disappeared, and presently another young man emerged 
 out of the shadowy street, and then two more, to all 
 of whom she threw a casual hallo, as they joined the 
 group. The front steps were presently crowded with 
 young men, who sat at Phyllis Day's little slippered 
 feet and vied between them to make her laugh. It 
 seemed that every evening young men paid court in this 
 fashion to Phyllis. They ragged her about each other, 
 and teased her mysteriously. And she was demure and 
 secretive. 
 
 " Who came every night last week, I'd like to know ? " 
 sneered one jovially. 
 
 " He's got it bad." 
 
 " Say, Phil, look here, you must leave the debutantes' 
 beaux alone; they'll be getting jealous," And so on,
 
 92 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 to all of which Phyllis gurgled and replied in dainty 
 negative monosyllables, repudiating carelessly the accusa- 
 tion of being'a belle and cutting out the older girls. 
 
 I tried to talk to the youths, but I didn't succeed very 
 well. They spoke to me stiffly, and looked bored when 
 I asked them if they were fond of baseball. My heart 
 grew heavier and heavier. Why couldn't I sparkle -and 
 fascinate like Phyllis? Why couldn't I talk silly, 
 delicious nonsense? 
 
 My father's appearance came as a blessed release. 
 He stood at the bottom of the steps surveying the group. 
 He seemed astonished. They all sprang to their feet. 
 Phyllis said, " Good-evening, Mr. Fairfax," with the 
 manner of a society lady that suddenly made her absurd. 
 Then she called through the door : " Mamma, Mr. Fairfax 
 has come for Joan." There was an awkward moment 
 during which we all stood around. 
 
 My father talked a little to Mr. Day, who followed 
 his wife outdoors, then said good-bye. Phyllis ran after 
 me, shaking off her young men, to whisper enthusiastic 
 endearments into my ears, and then flew back to them 
 in a whirl of smiles and dimples, and I walked home 
 heavy-hearted with my hand on my father's arm, 
 wondering how I could make myself fascinating to 
 men.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 I HAVE alluded to my mother's death, but I must 
 go back and bring you up-to-date with Louise. My 
 mother died the year after Jim Van Orden's mother 
 was divorced, and as Mrs. Bowers must have made up 
 her mind then and there to have Jim for a son-in-law, 
 it seems worth while to tell you a little more about 
 her. Doubtless you think Louise an uninteresting per- 
 son; perhaps she is, as a character, but not as a social 
 product, as the sort of thing America with its American 
 mothers turns out; for whatever she is, her mother 
 made her. She was never allowed to find out anything 
 for herself, or follow out an idea of her own. Mrs. 
 Bowers nipped her soul in the bud, and went on nipping 
 and snipping at her mind until there was absolutely 
 nothing left. And Louise never knew it. Not only did 
 she not know that she had no mind, nothing but a 
 collection of attitudes handed to her beautifully cat- 
 alogued by her mother, but she was totally unaware that 
 she ever had a soul, that her mother ever crushed it and 
 committed skilful murder upon it with a pair of nippers. 
 Mrs. Charlie Bowers is very clever with nippers. She, 
 at least, is an interesting person if her daughter is not. 
 In her worship of virtue she expressed the mind of 
 society. Society in Iroquois can be known by its clothes. 
 Mrs. Bowers was one of the best-dressed women in 
 town, she was a leader of society. She expressed, in 
 her conduct and her conversation, the beliefs and ideals 
 
 93
 
 94 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 of the most fortunate people of her local world, and 
 virtue is worshipped by the very best people in Iroquois, 
 that is, by the best-dressed people. It almost seems 
 as though virtue is worshipped because through virtue 
 one most easily obtains clothes and more clothes, and 
 the background for clothes but perhaps that is not 
 quite true. 
 
 Those things which Mrs. Bowers worshipped were 
 the idols of the refined and the wealthy, or, to be more 
 exact, of the cultured, who were also rich, for refine- 
 ment without wealth was not worth her while, and wealth 
 without culture was to her distasteful. 
 
 Still, as has already been said, it was neither culture 
 nor riches that was enshrined in the temple of her per- 
 fectly irreligious mind, but the love of virtue. There 
 it lay in her heart under the frail, frivolous laces of 
 her Parisian clothes, like some bit of antique jewellery 
 embedded in a modern casket, out of place, yet inef- 
 faceable. It was the very centre of her being abso- 
 lute in itself, linked to no religious experience, nor 
 any ideal fervour, yet reconciling to itself her most 
 worldly ambitions. There is a certain logic in the 
 matter. 
 
 Social position in Iroquois is rigid and tyrannical in 
 its demands. Society, that small nucleus of snobs, 
 which has evolved itself somehow out of the prairie, 
 Society has to justify its existence constantly, to give 
 evidence of its actuality daily. Without traditions, or 
 titles, or world-old names, without landed estates, or 
 hereditary noses, or state decorations, without any of 
 that stability of a group revolving about and deriving 
 its life from a royal palace, it is obliged to fall back 
 upon clothes for its insignia. Social position is too
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN . 95 
 
 illusive a thing to allow either of dowdiness or moral 
 laxity. No counterpart of an untidy and comfortable 
 dowager duchess with bad table-manners and antique 
 bonnets exists in Iroquois. Even old Madame Bowers, 
 aged seventy, mistress of a family of three generations 
 of millionaires, was obliged, by her strenuous daughters- 
 in-law, to have her white hair dressed daily by a French 
 maid. No beautiful and fatally fascinating creature, 
 with an inevitable succession of lovers, would have been 
 tolerated for one moment. Mrs. Harry Van Orden 
 was our nearest approach to the type, and Mrs. Harry 
 Van Orden was a tragic figure. To no set, however 
 smart, however eager to copy the ways and manners 
 of that far-distant, glittering English vanity fair, was 
 morality anything but a consideration of supreme im- 
 portance. 
 
 Mrs. Van Orden was divorced by her husband during 
 the first winter that Jim was away at school, when 
 Louise and I were fourteen. Mrs. Bowers and the rest 
 of society were delighted to be justified in their long 
 succession of snubs and insults. Harry Van Orden's 
 good-nature had occasionally given them a feeling of 
 insecurity. If they had not felt sure that in the end 
 he would really divorce her, they would not have pur- 
 sued the same tactics, but they had been right, and 
 their high moral attitude brought its reward. Agatha 
 they spoke of her as " poor Agatha " had disappeared 
 at the beginning of the proceedings. She had been 
 seen for the last time at the railway-station bidding her 
 son good-bye, with set lips and haggard face. No one 
 had realized then that this was the last time she would 
 see her beautiful boy, but the thrill of the dramatic 
 moment was relished in retrospect. Even the newspapers
 
 96 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 appreciated the tableau, and wrote touchingly about the 
 beautiful erring mother's last scene with the child she 
 was to abandon. The Iroquois Tribune understood the 
 temperament of a society that was made up of mothers. 
 It was disappointing, from a journalistic point of view, 
 that the case was not defended ; the proceedings in court 
 were nil, but the most was made of every scrap of 
 domestic information. A column appeared on the front 
 page every day for a week, then paragraphs. The 
 Tribune limited itself to detailed descriptions of episodes 
 and a biography of the co-respondent, and speculation 
 as to his income, but the yellow journals had excellent 
 photographs of the incriminating housemaid and of the 
 country hotel where the lovers were wont to retire, also 
 an architect's plan of Mrs. Van Orden's bedroom and 
 boudoir. 
 
 Mrs. Bowers and her friends thought the publicity 
 of the affair absolutely disgusting, and evidenced by 
 their horrified conversation a masterly grasp of the entire 
 case in every detail. Mrs. Bowers happened to be giving 
 a luncheon on the day that the decree was given. It 
 was a feminine lunch, of course; luncheons always are 
 in Iroquois; the guests were feminine, the food was 
 feminine, and the conversation was feminine. Of the 
 three, undoubtedly, the food, if analysed, would have 
 done most towards the establishment of the female as 
 superior to the male species. It was marvellous, ten 
 courses of it, and not too much for a neurotic stomach. 
 Each dish was a work of art, and was without body or 
 substance or any of the normal masculine attributes of 
 food, saving that of flavour. That chickens and potatoes 
 and green vegetables and fruit had gone into the con- 
 coctions was unbelievable. One's fork dipped into the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 97 
 
 chicken mousse as through cream, and one's palate reg- 
 istered faint flavours of mushrooms, truffles, olives. For 
 the piece de resistance, the something solid supplied in 
 case some one might be hungry, there were medaillons de 
 boeuf, no bigger than silver dollars, trimmed with aspar- 
 agus tips and tiny livers of some diminutive bird. Salads 
 of alligator pear and lettuce-leaves as crisp and crinkled 
 as though freshly laundered, were perched lightly on 
 rare Sevres plates, and ices a la Maraschino froze 
 languidly in golden goblets. The table, highly polished 
 and without a tablecloth, glittered with cut-glass, silver, 
 and frail painted china, and the women glittered with 
 quick, flashing movements of heads, eyes, teeth, and 
 jewels. In high, piercing voices they provided one 
 another with an intellectual repast no less highly 
 seasoned and meaningless than the food toyed with upon 
 their plates, while two ebony negro butlers, the only 
 male beings in the room, in phenomenally white cravats, 
 carried priceless dishes back and forth from the pantry 
 with discreetly rolling eyes. They were the only negro 
 butlers in Iroquois. Under the tutelage of Mrs. Bowers 
 they had acquired distinction. 
 
 " Will he marry her, do you think ? " 
 
 " I sincerely hope so " demure, sympathetic, very 
 sympathetic lips and cold eyes. 
 
 " But he hasn't a penny ! " 
 
 " Are you quite sure ? Poor Agatha always showed 
 herself quite clever where money was concerned "- 
 sympathy less perfect, more mixed with sourness. 
 
 " That's what's so strange. He really hasn't more than 
 five thousand dollars a year and she, nothing." 
 
 " I'm sorry for the man, then a woman like that to 
 support"
 
 98 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " They'll have to disappear." 
 
 " They have they're in Italy. My nurse told me." 
 
 " Really ! She does manage to keep things dark. 
 Why, nobody had any idea for months, you know. She 
 must have been carrying on all that winter, when she 
 was the rage and we had to entertain her to please 
 the men. Positively, George insisted on having her to 
 dinner every month, and at the very time she was sitting 
 
 at my table, she must have been already " 
 
 On the other side of the table 
 
 " Not a penny ! Think of it, my dear ! Leaves her 
 handsome husband and beautiful child to go off with 
 a penniless man, and a fat, ugly man too. I can't under- 
 stand it!" 
 
 " She'll never be able to show her head here again. 
 Poor Agatha ! " 
 
 " But tell me " voices lowered, looks grow mysteri- 
 ous " do you think it's true that Harry Van Orden 
 came on them " 
 
 " I shouldn't be a bit surprised. She was reckless, 
 wild. You know for yourself she didn't care a bit what 
 people thought. He was there all the time. No wonder 
 Hal got drunk every night ! " 
 
 " But in her own bedroom, with her boy sleeping on 
 the same floor " 
 
 " Well, you saw the plan sketched in the paper. 
 Besides, I've been in her bedroom the bathroom does 
 lead out the other way." 
 
 " Isn't it perfectly horrible? " 
 
 " Yes, absolutely horrible." 
 
 And underneath all the excited talk there ran a note 
 that no one heard, or would have admitted hearing, the 
 note of envy. As their horror did not interfere with their
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 99 
 
 enjoyment of the scandal, so their pitying superiority did 
 not altogether still the envious curiosity in their own 
 barren breasts. Their interest in this poor tragedy was 
 the more voracious because they were virtuous women 
 and ignorant. They had reached the average of forty 
 without tasting the flavour of illicit bliss, or even of 
 unconventional emotion. Their marriages had been love- 
 matches. Their husbands had achieved romance in 
 marrying them, and expected their wives to prove the 
 ideal by subsequent years of emotional slavery. And 
 when they showed signs of finding their bondage irksome 
 they were bribed with jewels or sables, or carriages or 
 expensive orgies of dressmaking in Paris. Poor little 
 society women of Iroquois, with your ropes of pearls 
 and your female companionship, you had nothing natural 
 to fall back on but motherhood, and you became mothers 
 with a vengeance not in the number of children you 
 brought forth, but in the intensity of your mothering 
 and if your mothering was a silly and greedy and with- 
 ering thing, who can blame you? You had no other 
 outlet for those animal instincts you concealed so cleverly 
 under your flat stylish bosoms. 
 
 We heard a lot of this talk from our post in the 
 pantry ; by we, I mean Louise, Phyllis, and I. We had 
 descended on the pantry to " lick the plates," so to speak, 
 and while occupied with this pastime we listened through 
 the open door, hidden by a painted leather screen. The 
 scraps of conversation were nearly as thrilling as the 
 scraps of food were delicious, and we had, together, at 
 precisely the same instant, the same inspiration. We 
 would read all about it in the newspapers. Sam, the 
 negro butler, kept the old newspapers in the pantry 
 cupboard. We found three, and, having finished the
 
 ioo THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 remnant of the biscuit glace, retired to Louise's room. 
 That was the last time we three ever met in Louise's 
 bedroom until three years ago, when we met to discuss 
 the horrid tangle of ourselves and our husbands. How 
 strange it seems! We all lay in a happy, loving bunch 
 on the bed, behind that newspaper, dated February Qth, 
 1895. We thrilled and gasped and felt guilty in unison, 
 arms and legs intertwined, flushed faces close together, 
 eyes intent on the same pages, when Mrs. Bowers came 
 in to scatter us. She certainly did scatter us. As I say, 
 we've never met, we three, in a bedroom of any one of 
 us since then until three years ago, when we met and 
 sat stiffly at wide distances, and walked the floor and 
 stared out of the window, our backs to each other. 
 
 At the sight of her daughter reading the divorce case, 
 Mrs. Bowers had simply flown into one of those terrible 
 rages that were common enough with her in her own 
 domain, but she used the outburst cleverly after she cooled 
 down. She was, in the first place, really shocked 
 and pained at the idea of her child's finding out about 
 this thing. 
 
 Mrs. Bowers regarded God somewhat as she might 
 have regarded a very aged poor relation whose presence 
 in her house would make her ridiculous, but she never- 
 theless brought up her daughter in the way of righteous- 
 ness. That her child should be touched by the unclean 
 breath of the wicked world was a frightful thought, 
 but her fear for Louise's innocence was not based on 
 any hope of her entering heaven as a spotless little 
 saint; it partook rather of the art-dealer's concern lest 
 a priceless treasure be reduced in market value. Louise 
 was her darling daughter, the centre of all her ambitions 
 and imaginings, and she would some day be married.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 101 
 
 Every hour of every day she was becoming more or 
 less desirable, and that she might be infinitely desirable 
 in order that she might command the highest price in 
 the matrimonial market; to this end was her mother 
 straining every nerve. Not that she was entirely con- 
 sistent in the matter. She was human after all, and she 
 craved the love of this child of hers, allowing this 
 craving to lead her into indulgences. Phyllis had been 
 one of those indulgences, but now Phyllis was to be 
 barred. 
 
 Mrs. Bowers had never met Mrs. Day. There was 
 no occasion for the two to meet, as Mrs. Bowers went 
 only to the smartest functions, and Mrs. Day rarely 
 went to any functions at all. They knew each other 
 quite well by sight, but never had they spoken. It 
 would not have been impossible for Mrs. Bowers to 
 make a friendly call on Mrs. Day had there been any 
 point in this, but she saw no point in it. On the con- 
 trary, it would be much easier for Louise to cut Phyllis 
 when the time came, if Louise's mother did not know 
 Phyllis's mother. Mrs. Bowers felt that the time had 
 now come. She anticipated a slight struggle, nothing 
 more. The incident of the newspaper was as good an 
 occasion as any. Phyllis and I were packed off home, 
 and Mrs. Bowers re-entered her daughter's room with 
 a hard, calm face, to find the latter a crumpled heap 
 on the bed, her nose red, her eyes swollen, her breath 
 coming in broken, gusty sobs. 
 
 " Lou, darling, who suggested to you to read that 
 paper ? " demanded the mother with sinister mild- 
 ness. 
 
 " I don't know. We heard you talking at lunch, and 
 we found it in the pantry cupboard."
 
 102 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Mrs. Bowers did not wince. Her philosophy of life 
 was complete. 
 
 " Things that are fit for grown people to read are not 
 fit for children." Still, it sounded like a self-justification, 
 and that was a mistake. " I feel sure," she went on, 
 " that it was Phyllis who suggested it. I don't want you 
 to play with Phyllis any more." 
 
 Louise sat up in bed suddenly, her wiry curls standing 
 out about her head in bushy glory. 
 
 " Not play with Phyllis ? " she gasped. 
 
 " Exactly that." Mrs. Bowers shut her lips. 
 
 " But but we go to school together every day. I 
 can't just stop and I won't I won't. I love Phyllis. 
 We're chums we are a triumphirate." 
 
 "A what?" 
 
 " We three Joan and Philly and I." These words 
 came fast and passionate. " We're a triumphirate, 
 a three-cornered friendship f orever'en ever I love 
 Phyllis. We tattoed our arms. It's a sign that'll never 
 fade." 
 
 " I don't know what you're talking about, Louise ; but 
 as for meeting Phyllis at Miss Broadwood's, you may as 
 well stop school now. We'll go to Paris a few months 
 earlier, and that will make it easier for you." 
 
 I know quite well what was said, and how it all 
 happened, partly from what Louise told me, partly from 
 my subsequent understanding of Mrs. Bowers and her 
 maternal methods. 
 
 The word Paris acted just as her mother wished on 
 Louise's brain. Oh, clever woman ! Louise had been 
 prepared for this long, long before. All unwittingly 
 she had imbibed the doctrine of her mother's ambitions, 
 had drunk down the intoxicating drink of her mother's
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 103 
 
 carefully-mixed flattery. She was to be a great belle 
 and a great beauty, and Paris was to make her this. 
 She was to have perfect manners and marvellous clothes 
 and all the accomplishments, and she was to acquire 
 these in Paris. She was to fulfil the splendid destiny 
 of a beauty and a belle in making a fastidious choice 
 among all the suitors that would ask for her hand, 
 and in order to be in a position to do this she must go 
 to Paris. Now that word Paris. It flashed across the 
 dark struggle of her loyal little heart, lit up everything 
 garishly, distorted the old tired feelings, made them look 
 uninteresting. 
 
 Her heart ached for Phyllis, and her mind, dazzled 
 by Paris, was troubled. She thought moodily, and one 
 finger stole into her red mouth. 
 
 " Take your finger out of your mouth." She obeyed, 
 and gazed at her mother with troubled eyes in which was 
 no questioning of authority, no suspicion of criticism, 
 but sheer bewilderment. 
 
 " But after Paris ? " she asked. 
 
 " You'll be there three years. Then we'll travel for 
 a winter and in four years you'll come out." Another 
 magic phrase " Come out." What visions of dresses 
 and parties and beaux and flowers and chocolates it 
 called forth! 
 
 " But won't Phyllis be coming out too ? " 
 
 "I don't think so." Mrs. Bowers smiled. "You 
 needn't worry about things so far ahead. I don't mean 
 that you must never speak to her again. When you're 
 eighteen you can do as you like." Mrs. Bowers smiled 
 again, but she could not resist elucidating the matter 
 a little further. "You see, darling, Phyllis is is a 
 nobody just now you dear children, Joan and yourself,
 
 104 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 don't understand these things, but you will find when 
 you come out that you won't meet Phyllis any more." 
 
 " Oh, but Joan ? " Louise held her breath. Was I to 
 be banned too? 
 
 Mrs. Bowers burst into her very effective, carefully 
 practised laugh. " What a stupid you are, my pet ! 
 Joan? But of course you shall always love Joan," and 
 Louise was relieved. 
 
 She would have given me up too, of course, if that 
 had been on her mother's program, but I didn't find 
 her out then. I tried not to blame her for obeying her 
 mother in regard to Phyllis. It was not until I said 
 good-bye to her that I, for the first time, was really 
 irritated by her complacency and suspicious of her affec- 
 tion for me. 
 
 " Oh, Joan, Joan darling I can't leave you I 
 simply can't. Won't you come? Get your mother to 
 let you come to the convent. You simply must. I can't 
 live without you." And suddenly I found myself saying 
 to myself, " I don't believe it." She had been in the 
 habit of professing just as much love for Phil, and it had 
 been easy enough for her to give Phil up. I said as 
 much. 
 
 "Oh, but that's different." I didn't see why. 
 *' Phyllis and I have never, never been to each other 
 what you and I are." That was a lie, but such a glib 
 little lie that I swallowed it for the moment. "And 
 
 then you see " She paused; her blue eyes took 
 
 on an obtuse, complacent look, that made me want to 
 shake her. " We can't help it, if fate separates us 
 from Phyllis. If she's going to be so poor, you see, she 
 won't be able to do what we do. It's better to see
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 105 
 
 that now." I began to burn inside, and I had then an 
 inspiration. 
 
 " You're a snob," I burst out. I believe we parted in 
 anger and tears. 
 
 Phyllis only laughed when I told her Louise had gone. 
 
 " Louise is a goose, but she's getting to be a cat," she 
 said after a minute's thought. 
 
 " It's her mother," I ventured. 
 
 " Her mother is twenty cats." She sniffed and laughed 
 and tossed her head. " I don't care I'm going to have 
 a good time. You wait." She was right. It didn't 
 matter to her, but it mattered to me. I had believed in 
 the " triumphirate," and it was gone.
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 MY mother died when I was fifteen. I suppose, 
 if she had not died when I was fifteen, that 
 I should have turned out a more normal, 
 light-hearted person. I should probably have gone to 
 Farmington with Phyllis, and after some years of idiotic, 
 youthful philandering with life, should have married 
 Jim. Yes, certainly I should have married Jim, and 
 everything would have been different, smaller, quieter, 
 more intimate. The terrible things would have been 
 concealed by a familiar environment crowded with pretty 
 objects. By the terrible things I mean space and time 
 and imminent eternity. By pretty objects I mean houses 
 and yachts and babies, all the things that fill the life of 
 an American woman. American women are given over to 
 " things " motor-cars and clothes. 
 
 It is good for a person to be anchored to one little 
 spot. The protective intimacy of walls ; that is what 
 we pigmies all need to keep us from going to pieces; 
 that and some one to be loyal to. Jim and I have both 
 gone to pieces rather. I don't see why we need have. 
 I can only put it down to the fact that in the face of 
 so much time and distance I hadn't the courage of my 
 conviction, the conviction that was with me through 
 my other love-affairs. I wanted him all the time, but 
 it seemed too incredible a thing, too supernatural an 
 instinct to govern one's conduct. Yes, I had a super- 
 natural instinct about him. I remember the peculiar 
 
 1 06
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 107 
 
 still feeling that enveloped me suddenly once in the 
 midst of my frenzy over Binky, when I got a letter from 
 him. It was such a deep, still feeling. I ought to have 
 responded to it. I ought to have thrown Binky over 
 then and there, at that moment, when he came into 
 the room smiling that bright, bewildering smile of his. 
 I ought to have had the courage of the faith that was 
 in me, but I hadn't. I had not seen Jim for three years, 
 and his letter wasn't quite a proposal, also his hand- 
 writing was stiff, and Binky was there, right there, 
 exerting in his effortless way that meaningless charm 
 of his that dazzled me so. It is strange how one denies 
 reality, irresistibly. There was always in those days the 
 element of fear and strangeness and perverse excitement 
 in my feeling for Binky. I didn't analyse it, but I felt 
 it sufficiently ; whereas that still rapture of recognition in 
 the mere thought of the other one was enough to tell 
 me that this was the way to go. I must have realized 
 it all, for I remember feeling quite sick, just as I used to 
 feel as a child when I lied to my mother; I remember 
 feeling just like that when I turned to Binky, crumpling 
 the letter in my hand. 
 
 This incident is an example of the thing I am trying 
 so hard to understand and express, in all the writing 
 of these confessions. It represents the fatal facility 
 with which I chose the wrong thing, knowingly and 
 unhappily. It represents the peculiar war going on 
 always in myself, a struggle so inarticulate and so sub- 
 dued under the padding of habit that I scarcely noticed 
 it, or rather that I found I could quite easily ignore it. 
 My moral condition was something like that of a very 
 sleepy person wakened in the night by the soft muffled 
 sounds of a struggle going on somewhere far away
 
 io8 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 downstairs. The noise is so slight, and I am so sleepy, 
 that although I know it is a desperate fight between two 
 enemies, I still can quite easily sink back into oblivion 
 by merely shutting my eyes. Such seems to me to be 
 the quality of my spiritual conflict, and my failures or 
 defeats were just as real, but no more vivid to me at 
 the time, than the half-silly recognition of disaster by 
 the dreamer who floats off into sleep with a vague feeling 
 of depression too weak to rouse him. Long afterwards, 
 of course, he wakes up, and in the glaring light views what 
 has happened, and wonders how he could have allowed it 
 to be so. 
 
 What interests me is this excessive sleepiness of our 
 spirits. We are all drugged, and the realities of the 
 soul are disguised under wads of padding, until they 
 appear so grotesque and absurd that it becomes madness 
 to take them seriously. This is civilization. My mother 
 was not a civilized person. She was a mystic to whom 
 the things of the spirit appeared as grand and terrible 
 and concrete. She was a mystic to whom the things 
 of the spirit appeared tremendous and urgent, in just 
 the same way as guns and flags and battleships appear 
 tremendous and urgent to Binky. She took God seriously, 
 and she took Him seriously in just the same way as 
 Binky takes a Field-marshal seriously. The will of God 
 was to her as explicit as any military order ever was 
 to a subordinate. Divine truth was a study, no less 
 fascinating, intricate and accurate, than a textbook on 
 artillery is to a gunner. It had the same effect upon the 
 soul as military discipline has upon conduct. It resulted 
 in an entirely reliable specialist, a drilled and disciplined 
 character to whom a mistake was impossible to whom 
 untidiness of soul was horrible, to whom one lapse from
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 109 
 
 duty, that is duty to God, was attended by terrific con- 
 sequences. This is splendid. Its result is the survival 
 of the individual's precious integrity. I know this. It 
 is the one way of standing up against the onslaught of 
 experience. I know because I haven't done it. I have 
 gone to pieces, and I have become one of those who 
 are amused or shocked by spiritual seriousness. We are 
 afraid of intensity, we cringe before it as before an 
 obscene sight, and we call it bad form. Truth is a 
 ridiculous image to Binky or a disquieting ghost. I don't 
 mean that he is a liar. 
 
 But I am wandering. 
 
 My mother's death gave my father into my hands. 
 I felt, somewhat arrogantly and egotistically perhaps, that 
 he was now my chief responsibility. 
 
 I did not accept the fact of death meekly. I fought 
 it. In the terribly personal way that I had of taking 
 all impersonal things, I set all the passion of my youth 
 against death, and in the struggle between my bursting 
 heart and the vast, unruffled infinite, my chidhood van- 
 ished. It seemed to me that the sun went out, that 
 the world with all its gaieties and friendships was blotted 
 into darkness ; and God too dissolved, with His attendant 
 fancies of a beatific Heaven. You see, it was im- 
 possible to go on hating Him as I hated Him for killing 
 my mother. It was easier to kill Him too, so I denied 
 His existence. It seemed the best thing to do. 
 
 Imperceptibly and stealthily, death had stolen upon 
 my mother, washing the light from her eyes, and the 
 colour from her hair. So slowly and gently did it come 
 that we, without knowing how it happened, grew accus- 
 tomed to hear her lying still upstairs on her couch, then 
 again to her greater prostration in her bedroom, propped
 
 i io THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 among her large white pillows. The life of the house 
 centred for so long a time about her bed that we almost 
 forgot she had not always been thus, lovely and frail 
 as a shell resting upon foam. 
 
 And it never occurred to us that she was going to 
 die. Her smile was too bright, her little pretty ways 
 too appealing, her will too strong; and we had a deep 
 instinctive belief in the partiality of fate, or as we had 
 been taught to put it, the loving-kindness of God. 
 Nothing terrible had ever happened to us before. It 
 was beyond the bounds of possibility that anything terrible 
 should happen now. As always we played, romped, 
 shouted (for she would not have our voices silenced), 
 went to school and came home, dragged our dirty boots 
 across her room, flung our school-books at the foot of 
 her bed, and wrangled loudly about where we would all 
 go next summer when she was well. 
 
 Doctors came and went under our unseeing eyes. 
 Nurses in uniform took up their abode in our house, 
 and my father's silence deepened. Yet marvellously, we 
 did not know, wrapt securely in the shell of youth, were 
 not oppressed. Sometimes, instead of stiffening into 
 hurt dignity, Fraulein's eyes would fill with tears when 
 we were rough and disrespectful, and she would fling 
 her arms around us with unaccustomed emotion. This 
 disquieted us a little, but we put it down to the vagaries 
 of the German temperament. 
 
 Then it came suddenly in the middle of the night. 
 Out of a terrible, confused dream I saw the white-capped 
 head of a nurse leaning over me. 
 
 " Your father has sent for you to come to your mother's 
 room." 
 
 Dumb, shivering, I crept out of bed, and met Jerry,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN m 
 
 Bud, and Dick on the stairs, bleary-eyed with sleep, 
 stumbling along in their slippers. From behind the closed 
 door of Fraulein's room came the sound of sobbing. 
 A strange, terrible presence seemed to float with us down 
 the stairs. An inexpressible terror held us in its grip 
 as we stole into mother's room. 
 
 The light was turned low, and by the bed knelt my 
 father, motionless, his eyes fixed on the worn, lovely 
 head that lay so still. There was a strange smell in 
 the room, a sickening hospital smell. A doctor stood 
 a little away, under the light. The other doctors were 
 beyond the boudoir door, and the presence of these 
 strangers seemed to set the seal upon the horror of it 
 all, seemed to make death actual, hideous, and profes- 
 sional. If she could only be left alone with us we 
 loved her, we would keep her somehow we would beat 
 back that thing. 
 
 My father didn't seem to notice us standing dumbly 
 at the foot of the bed. A nurse touched him on the 
 shoulder, and he moved ever so little, beckoning us to 
 come nearer. The waxen face on the pillow was turned 
 towards us, but the eyes were closed. 
 
 " Dear the children," said my father's voice. The 
 eyelids flickered. The lips parted. We waited a long, 
 long time. How like a child she had sometimes seemed 
 to us, and now it was as though she were the youngest 
 of us all, just a very little girl. The lips moved again. 
 
 " It is so beautiful you must all come." It was 
 as though a swiftly dipping wing had touched her face 
 with unearthly light; and as I realized that she was 
 already far away, separated for ever from our aching 
 reality, tasting of an ineffable bliss at the moment of 
 our poor agony, I was all at once consumed with hatred
 
 ii2 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 for God. I wanted to throw myself on my knees and 
 scream out. Her strange ecstatic words were so cruel, 
 and He had put them into her mouth. She was 
 going to Him, just as she had said so many times she 
 would go, and He was not even allowing her to want 
 to stay with us. It seemed to me now that this had 
 always been the reason for our unhappiness. God had 
 always been getting between her and us, and now He 
 was doing it again once and for all. 
 
 A deeper stillness had settled upon her face. I stood 
 beside my father a long time. So still he was, as still 
 as the figure on the bed. They were both so still, and 
 the invisible cord of sympathy that held them together 
 was loosening. She would escape him utterly, she was 
 escaping now. A terror for him seized me. The min- 
 utes seemed to drop into the silence like drops of water, 
 and melt away. They were dropping one by one, all 
 the minutes of her life, and when they had all melted 
 away she would be gone. 
 
 The nurse came to take me away, but I slipped into 
 his room instead of going upstairs, and knelt down on 
 the floor against the door to wait, I don't know why. 
 Hate and fear were in my heart. Something noiseless, 
 invisible, and relentless was doing its work in that room. 
 I had a glimpse of the great void, the boundless, imper- 
 sonal universe in which I was an atom, helpless, doomed, 
 of no account. 
 
 My feet were very cold. I shivered on the floor, 
 taking a certain pleasure in my own discomfort; and 
 I went on hating God. He had been put so clearly 
 before my eyes, as a person, a kind, loving Heavenly 
 Father, that it was quite natural now for me to feel 
 murderously towards Him.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 113 
 
 I must have fallen asleep. A pair of arms lifted me 
 from the floor. I realized that my father was carrying 
 me upstairs, and that, therefore, my mother must be 
 dead. She had escaped him. We were two helpless 
 things in the grip of God, and I loved him and he was 
 separated from me. He put me into bed and tucked 
 the blanket round me, automatically, as if he were moving 
 in his sleep. I dared not speak to him, his face looked 
 queer and grey ; I heard him go out of the room and 
 down the stairs, I held my breath to listen for his foot- 
 steps, his faint footsteps in the terrible forsaken house. 
 
 The three days that followed were a blur of crepe 
 and flowers, of hushed voices and stealthy feet. My 
 father sat hour after hour in my mother's room. Each 
 time he came out there was a greyer tinge upon his 
 face, as though it were covered with soot ; yet he shaved 
 carefully every morning, came down to breakfast and 
 sat with the unopened newspaper in his hand, watching 
 us, gently and absently, and now and then he took a gulp 
 of coffee. 
 
 Automatically he went through the ordinary daily 
 routine of the house. There was something terrible and 
 humble about his punctilious performance of his duties. 
 A woman would have behaved very differently, would 
 have found a vent for her agony somehow, but he 
 couldn't take to his bed or weep, or call a doctor to 
 give him sedatives, he must just go on living as usual. 
 Something within him could not give way. Only his 
 voice seemed to have given out. He could not speak. 
 When necessity demanded speech, it came through his 
 moustache in a hoarse, halting whisper. 
 
 The boys couldn't keep up the strain imposed. For 
 a day they sat in a huddled group on the stairs, then
 
 ii4 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 they had to dissimulate. Behind closed doors, shame- 
 facedly and solemnly, they played marbles and read 
 story-books. Once Jerry forgot and shouted, naturally, 
 the sudden yelp of youth, whereupon I flew into the 
 room, slapped his face and burst into violent tears. 
 
 " You brutes, you horrid brutes ! How can you laugh ? 
 Don't you care for anything?" I stormed, sobbing 
 angrily. 
 
 " I didn't laugh," growled Jerry, and I flung out again. 
 t suppose they felt I was right, for they put away their 
 distractions dejectedly, with awe in their hearts for the 
 superior sensibilities of women. 
 
 Still, I didn't blame them much, my anger had been a 
 sudden crise de nerfs. They were only boys. Besides, 
 they didn't love father the way I did. 
 
 Maybe I was vain of my love for him. Maybe I 
 exaggerated it. If it had been the marvellous thing I 
 thought it, I couldn't have hurt him so, in the end, could 
 I ? No, I must have deluded myself ; I never loved him 
 half enough. When it came to a choice between him 
 and something I really wanted, I took that and gave 
 him up. My staying at home with him, instead of going 
 away to school, wasn't really done for him, wasn't 
 altogether unselfish. I suspect that it was a piece of 
 romantic self-indulgence. Doubtless it seemed to me a 
 creditable and sweetly filial thing to do. Also, it gave me 
 a feeling of maturity, and I liked to feel old. 
 
 I don't mean that I was entirely sentimental in the 
 matter. If that had been the case, I couldn't have stuck 
 it out after all the excitement was over. And I was 
 extremely sensitive to his feelings, his moods, his wishes. 
 That must have meant that I loved him to some extent. 
 I like to think that it did. The thought comforts me
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 115 
 
 a little. I remember that all my strength seemed gathered 
 together into a knot of acute sensation of agony, on the 
 day of the funeral. My mother was put into the family 
 vault, and as the coffin slid into place, he gave one queer, 
 tearing sob, that seemed to shiver through the whole 
 world, and I fainted. The sound of it made me faint. 
 I don't know how. I had a blurred vision of many faces, 
 of many eyes all turned towards the mouth that had 
 swallowed the coffin, and at the same instant, on my 
 father's cry, everything went blank. 
 
 I want to think that it wasn't just a lack of food 
 and sleep, and the three days of funeral preparations, 
 and the standing on my feet while being fitted for black 
 clothes, and the long, slow drive in the closed carriage, 
 that made me faint then. It couldn't have been just 
 that, else why did I faint at the instant he cried, when 
 I was in fresh air? No, I want to think that it was really 
 a sudden sense of his agony that stopped my heart. As 
 I say, the thought comforts me. 
 
 The next day, when they told me that we, the boys 
 and I, were to go down to the farm, I refused. I worked 
 myself into a fever, my temperature went up to 101 
 degrees, and even when they told me my father wanted 
 me to go I said I wouldn't. I got my way. The boys 
 went off, Jerry and Bud, to the farm, Dick back to school, 
 and I was left. I didn't leave my father from that day 
 until I was married to Binky. 
 
 There was nothing spectacular about his grief. He 
 gave no sign, scarcely any sign of what was going on 
 in him. Only his face grew greyer and more rigid with 
 the effort to control the convulsing struggle of his mind. 
 and his movements grew timid and still, as though he 
 could not trust freedom to his hand, and he was silent.
 
 u6 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 His struggle for sanity went on in silence, buried far 
 beneath his silence and the accurate automatism of his 
 habits. I didn't know or understand, but I was fright- 
 ened, and something warned me to keep away, to keep 
 still. He didn't speak. I don't think he spoke for ten 
 days after the burying of my mother. He would walk 
 up and down the hall, up and down, up and down; and 
 I would crouch on the stairs watching him, wishing 
 hysterically that I could pray. I couldn't pray because I 
 had thrown over God. There was, I reasoned obstinately, 
 no one to pray to; but I remember a distinct desire 
 for a string of beads, a desire to mumble prayers on 
 a string of beads. Then my father would go up to his 
 room, and I would watch him through the door as he 
 took out his patience cards, start to lay them out on 
 the table, and stop. He never got further than laying 
 out two rows. He would stop and stare at the table 
 and sit a long time staring. I remember it seemed 
 uncanny to me that three times he stopped at the queen 
 of spades, and then I noticed that he always stopped 
 when the queen of spades turned up. I used to go in 
 and stand quite close behind him, but he was unaware 
 of my presence. Once I found him standing in the 
 library with a lighted match held an inch or two before 
 his face, just where the tip of a cigar would have been, 
 but there was no cigar between his lips, and his eyes 
 were fixed. He stood like that, motionless except for 
 a slight sucking or puffing motion of the mouth, until 
 the match burned down to his fingers and went out. The 
 sensation of the flame that perhaps burned his finger 
 made him drop his hand, and he began slowly to walk 
 up and down again. I was very much frightened. It 
 was like seeing a ghost. I must have grown hysterical
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 117 
 
 and queer after this, for a struggle seemed to begin 
 between me and the silence ; my father's silence, and the 
 silence that spread from him through the house. I felt 
 that the silence became alive, menacing, full of dreadful, 
 grotesque things. 
 
 You see I was righting God too all this time. I kept 
 saying over and over to myself, that if God was God He 
 was omnipotent, and personally responsible for all 
 wickedness and all sorrow. Therefore He must be either 
 cruel and wicked or the dupe of the devil, who made it 
 impossible for Him to do what He liked. This was 
 inconceivable. Therefore He was inconceivable. He 
 didn't exist. It was the same old question, simple 
 enough, just the same old rock on which Christianity has 
 split, over which so many absurd storms of theology have 
 raged, the incompatible equation of a holy and merciful 
 God and sin and suffering. 
 
 I am sure that my father felt something of the same 
 sort of thing. He would have believed if he could, for 
 my mother's sake, I know. That separation of his mind 
 from hers must have been very terrible to him. It 
 must have constituted for him a very cruel temptation. 
 He could have united himself with her in Heaven, by 
 one little disgraceful act of will. Her belief that they 
 would be reunited after death must have become added 
 agony to him, when he was facing the loneliness of death 
 and nothingness. 
 
 I must have understood something of what was going 
 on in his mind during those days. Two voices out of 
 his silence seemed to speak to me. One told me to 
 keep away, the other begged me to come to him in spite 
 of that forbidding barrier of grief. Finally, one night 
 as I lay in the dark thinking, miserable, frightened,
 
 ii8 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 and lonely, I heard two of the servants talking outside 
 my door. " I can't stand it. I'm going to give notice," 
 said one. " He'll go off his head," whispered another. 
 I jumped out of bed, flew by them and downstairs 
 without pausing. I rushed to his room, flung myself 
 into his arms and began to sob loudly and more loudly. 
 I remember the delicious relief of that crying, of making 
 that noise. He pulled a quilt from his bed and wrapped 
 it round me. He chafed my bare feet. I cried on and 
 on, luxuriously. 
 
 " There, there, Joan darling," he murmured. What 
 an acute ecstasy of pain and joy those words gave me ! 
 I had a perfect orgy of weeping. My self-indulgence 
 was good for both of us, and after a time I upbraided 
 him, straining him hungrily, to feel his firm shoulder and 
 smell his face. 
 
 " You wouldn't spea-k to me," I scolded. " You must 
 talk, you mustn't keep me away. I'm too frightened, 
 too frightened." I didn't realize what I was doing, other- 
 wise I should never have dared put things into words. 
 " Mother's gone. God's gone. There isn't any Heaven, 
 or anything after. I know, I know. I hate it. I'm 
 frightened." 
 
 " Joan darling, my poor little girl ! " Oh, the delicious 
 nearness of him. I lay still in his arms, and gradually 
 the same shyness that always has been between us, came 
 over me again, but I had had the one outburst that made 
 us companions in experience.
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 I DIDN'T see much of Jim during the three years 
 after his mother's divorce. He came home for 
 the holidays one Christmas, but he didn't go to 
 any of our parties. Still, though he never talked to me 
 about her, I have gathered a very definite impression 
 as to how her adventure affected him. I know that when 
 he came of age, just after his father's horrid death, he 
 went at once abroad to see her, and I believe he would 
 have kept in touch with her if it hadn't been for Louise 
 and Mrs. Bowers. It wasn't, of course, the kind of 
 thing that they would encourage. Louise told me that 
 soon after they were married he asked her to go with 
 him to Italy, and she refused. She didn't want to get 
 within a thousand miles of that villa at Sorrento. It's 
 difficult to understand, but I rather think she was afraid 
 that his mother would get money out of him, and so 
 she took a scandalized, virtuous line, and Jim gave in. 
 He never broached the subject to her again. I imagine 
 he forgave her heartlessness, almost, because he actually 
 did care so much about keeping his wife immaculate. 
 His father's disgraceful death, which he connected with 
 Mrs. Van Orden's faithlessness, gave him a terror of 
 liberty. You can see how he must have suffered, loving 
 his mother as he did, and yet having to blame her for 
 his father's disintegration. I can imagine the thoughts 
 that passed through his mind while he watched that 
 
 119
 
 120 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 wretched man dying of delirium tremens. I can almost 
 forgive him his rigid insistence on conventions. Con- 
 ventionality, appearing to him a safeguard, came to be 
 an obsession with him. I believe Louise's perfect brand 
 of it was one of the things that attracted him to her. 
 He was athirst with the desire for purity, and he thought 
 it existed in conventionality. Poor dear ! I've no doubt, 
 too, that my wildness caused him misgivings. He once 
 said I reminded him of his mother. He hadn't the cour- 
 age to love me, not until it was too late. I don't blame him. 
 I understand the awful fuddle of his mind during those 
 three years when he was growing into a man. I under- 
 stand the futile questionings, the baffled dreams, the lone- 
 liness of his poor, passionate spirit. He tried religion. Dick 
 told me that one year at Yale he, Jim, had a Bible Class. 
 It seems so funny and pathetic. I see those sweet boys 
 seriously trying to find out from the Bible what it was 
 they wanted out of life. Perhaps he did find something 
 there, but if he trusted God for a bit, his father's death 
 spoiled that for him. Our experiences were somewhat 
 the same in that way, only his were worse. 
 
 When I was eighteen I went to the " Yale Prom." 
 Jim invited me, and Dick asked Sally Comstock. Phyllis 
 was at home taking care of the family. It was the 
 beginning of Mrs. Day's illness. Louise was in her 
 convent in Paris, so Sally and I went together, and my 
 father chaperoned us. I am glad now of that " Yale 
 Prom." It is wonderful to me to think how happy 
 I was; of the quite perfect delight of those four days. 
 We arrived in New Haven on Saturday afternoon with 
 a whole train-load of other girls, all sparkling, chattering, 
 fluffy, curly, dimpled, dainty creatures, all with nothing 
 in their heads but the idea of having a good time, and
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 121 
 
 with little delicate sentimental loves in their sweet hearts 
 for the young men who were their hosts. I can imagine 
 nothing more delicious and innocent than the romance 
 of that week-end, than the three or four hundred little 
 romances that made up the joyous crowd. I love 
 America for the beautiful fun it allows to young people. 
 From Saturday to Wednesday we kept it up. We 
 danced all night, we laughed and sang and flirted lightly, 
 and went to luncheons and teas in college rooms, all 
 day. Of course, we didn't dance on Sunday night. On 
 Sunday night we received in Dick's rooms, and some 
 fifty young men came in to pay court to us, and Sally 
 and I queened it for three hours, while my father sat 
 in a corner smoking and watching and sometimes 
 laughing aloud with us. I remember so vividly that 
 room with its Turkish divans, its college banners, its 
 dim lamps, the wood fire in the large fireplace, the 
 many slim forms of young men lounging about, and Jim 
 electrically there in the midst of them looking at me 
 deeply now and then. Conversation died down about 
 ten o'clock, and all but half a dozen boys whom we 
 knew well, went away, and then we sat for an hour in 
 the firelight on the floor, singing. We sang all the 
 college tunes and negro melodies that we knew, and 
 some favourites like " Kentucky Babe," and " Bring 
 the Wagon Home, John," and " Mandy Lee," we sang 
 over and over again, with wonderful variations in the 
 harmony. Jim and Dick sang tenor, Tommy Dodge and 
 George Armstrong bass, Sally and I alto, and the rest 
 carried the air. We sang on and on, while the birch- 
 logs crumbled in the grate and our hearts thrilled with 
 vague emotion. I remember feeling then quite sure 
 that I was going to marry Jim, and when at last he
 
 122 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 and Dick had walked back with us through the clear, 
 cold night, and said good-bye at the door of our hotel, 
 I kissed my father all tremulously and flew up with 
 Sally to bed. where I told her just how much I was in 
 love. 
 
 But of course, the great ball on Tuesday night, the 
 Promenade itself, was the event of the week. I danced 
 one hundred and twenty dances, forty of them with 
 Jim. There were two bands playing alternately, so 
 that one didn't have any intermissions unless one wanted, 
 and I didn't. At six o'clock my slippers were in ribbons, 
 and I hobbled blissfully back with the rest of our little 
 group to Jim's breakfast rooms for breakfast. My poor 
 father had, of course, stuck it out, and was still with 
 us, yawning dreadfully; but we kept it up hilariously 
 over our coffee and eggs, kept it up until we were on 
 the train for home. Jim had given me a bunch of violets 
 every day that covered the whole front of my coat, and 
 I carried the last bunch all the way back to Iroquois 
 and pressed a few of them carefully in a book. It 
 seemed to me I could never be so happy again, and I 
 never have been. I was sure, so sure, that we loved 
 each other, Jim and I. The interval between that 
 " Prom " week and the following summer, when he came 
 yachting with us for a fortnight, was spent in thinking 
 of him. I embroidered sofa-cushions and knitted neck- 
 ties for him, and I wrote poetry, not about him, but 
 about the moon and silver birch-trees, and being in love. 
 I used to read the Song of Solomon over and over, and 
 I got through most of Browning and Shelley, and Keats, 
 and Byron, and learned the " Sonnets to the Portuguese " 
 by heart. I don't know if my father realized what was 
 the matter with me. I suppose he did. We lived very
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 123 
 
 much together, and though we didn't talk a great deal, 
 I know that he must have read many of my thoughts. 
 One evening, I remember, when I kissed him good- 
 night, he took my face in his hands and looked at it 
 intently. 
 
 "Am I like mother?" I asked. 
 
 He shook his head. " Not very." There was a 
 curious, grave look in his face, a look almost of appre- 
 hension. " You will have to take care," he said strangely. 
 
 "Take care?" 
 
 I waited for him to say more, but he only took me 
 in his arms- more abruptly than usual, in a tighter hug, 
 and then with a " There, darling, run up to bed," he 
 turned away. I looked down on him from the dim 
 stairs, half-way up. He was standing by the hall fire, 
 with his head bent, and his hands as usual clasped behind 
 him. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. 
 The silence into which he had lapsed was profound and 
 palpable. I went on up to my room, and turning on 
 all the lights stared at myself in the glass. I was pleas- 
 urably impressed by my father's concern. It was inter- 
 esting to feel that there was something dangerous in 
 my make-up, and I was a little disappointed to find the 
 same small white face staring back at me. I pulled my 
 hair down over my forehead in a curly tangle, and 
 looked at myself in deep affection. And I succeeded, to 
 my mind, in looking very wicked and fascinating. I 
 smiled at myself, and simpered and frowned. I longed 
 for jewellery to play with, but I had no jewellery. It 
 was all very silly, and by the time I was ready for bed 
 I was ashamed of myself, and in a sudden revulsion 
 of feeling ran down to my father's room in my dressing- 
 gown. He was playing patience. He always played
 
 124 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 patience at night, and as I flung myself on him I remem- 
 ber hating those little cards with their red and black 
 spots, and a terrible feeling of the waste of it all and 
 the loneliness came over me. I was jealous for him 
 and ambitious. His languor and his indifference appalled 
 me. It seemed to me he should be doing great things 
 in the world. What things? In what world? I don't 
 know. 
 
 Jim Van Orden was certainly very attractive that 
 summer when we all went yachting together. He was 
 sunburned, and his hair, against the warm tan of his 
 face, was golden, and his eyes were very blue, and his 
 small body was very graceful and strong in its white 
 flannels. 
 
 My father's yacht, the Minnehaha, was put into com- 
 mission in June in New York Harbour. She was a 
 very pretty little schooner, with room for a dozen young 
 people. He was his own skipper with a crew of eight 
 sailors. We cruised up the coast that summer, stopping 
 at various bright, frivolous places like Narragansett Pier, 
 Manchester-by-the-Sea, as far as Bar Harbour. Jim 
 joined us about the middle of August. I remember 
 those days of golden sunshine and sapphire seas and 
 fresh, sweet winds. Phyllis was with us then, and Jerry 
 and Bud and Dick, and others came and went, hopping 
 on and off at different yacht clubs and piers in sandy 
 harbours. My lasting impression of those days is one 
 of delicious salt smells, the smell of the sea and of sea- 
 weed and tar and fish and steaming clams. 
 
 I remember best of all the last day Jim was with us. 
 We had been becalmed off Cape Cod somewhere, and 
 had gone ashore in the launch. It was a funny little 
 place of scattered huts and bathing boxes, where marshes
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 125 
 
 came down to the beach. A long, very dilapidated pier 
 stuck out into the sea, with a funny cabin on it where 
 sailors could buy rope and fishing-tackle and lobsters 
 and salt pork and cheese. Jim and I bought cheese and 
 biscuits from the old sailor there, and went out to the 
 end of the pier and sat down, dangling our legs over 
 the still water. The sun was bright and hot, and the 
 white sails of ships, becalmed, flapped loosely in the har- 
 bour. A square-rigged lumber schooner afar out seemed 
 to have caught a vagrant breeze, and was moving slowly 
 southward, all sails set. I could see my father sitting 
 under the awning on the deck of the Minnehaha. Phyllis 
 and the others had gone to play golf at the little club 
 across the marshes. I was very happy sitting there in 
 the sun with Jim, eating yellow cheese and biscuits. The 
 sun made us blink and feel pleasantly sleepy. The tide 
 was going out, and we could see the clam-diggers farther 
 down the shore digging in the mud, their trousers rolled 
 up to their knees. 
 
 " You're going abroad in October, aren't you ? " asked 
 Jim, after a long, sleepy pause. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " When are you coming back? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 He cut me another bit of cheese off the large hunk with 
 his penknife. 
 
 " It's been great this cruise," he ventured. 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " I suppose you will come back look here, you're not 
 going to stay ? " 
 
 "Gracious goodness, what should I stay for?" 
 looked at him. His face flushed, and his eyes grew 
 dark.
 
 ia6 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " Promise you'll come home in a year two at 
 most." 
 
 I laughed. "Of course I'm coming home in a year." 
 
 I was trembling with excitement. I waited for him 
 to say it. I waited happily, fervently. I was eighteen 
 and he was twenty. I wanted to be engaged to him right 
 at once, that minute. He hesitated, and I grew angry. 
 I threw my cheese into the water, and turning, kissed 
 him somewhere near the corner of his mouth. We were 
 in full view of all the sandy, sunny, clam-digging world 
 and of the yacht of my father. I don't know why I kissed 
 him like that. He grabbed my shoulders and kissed me 
 back clumsily and shyly and fiercely, but it stopped him. 
 it upset him and frightened him. In another minute we 
 were both uncomfortable and embarrassed. I got up, 
 shaking the crumbs out of my skirts and jamming my hat 
 down over my eyes. 
 
 "Joan," he muttered huskily. I turned my back. It 
 was impossible to look into his face. 
 
 " Come on," I said angrily, and walked off down the 
 pier. 
 
 That night we all sat on the deck in the moonlight 
 singing to Jerry's banjo and the next morning Jim went 
 away. 
 
 He went away without saying anything more to me 
 except that I had promised to come back in a year. 
 " I never promised," I said, laughing at him with a sick 
 little feeling inside me. I watched his white figure going 
 off in the tender. He was to take the train and go West 
 to Jim Armstrong's ranch for a fortnight before college 
 opened. He had one more year at Yale. That was the 
 last I saw of him for five years.
 
 PART TWO
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 THEY all called him " Binky." It seemed to 
 me a dazzling impertinence. I felt that how- 
 ever much I might long to imitate their terse 
 and flippant familiarity, I would never be able to call 
 him Binky, and the ease with which they did it, all of 
 them Molly Tripp and Mrs. Hobbes and all the rest 
 removed them miles from me. I could never acquire 
 the dry, reckless tone of these English army people ; 
 and how fascinating it was ! Yes, it seemed to me witty 
 and fascinating. How young I was, how gullible I must 
 have been, how utterly romantic! A group of weary, 
 stupid, plucky women, and their soldier men, living in 
 exile, poised giddily on the edge of a great enigma ; 
 and taking it all in the well-bred British way, simply 
 refusing to admit the existence of the horrid fact ; these 
 seemed to me wonderful people. You see, they 
 had a quality that was new to me, the quality 
 of extreme boredom, of well-regulated, disciplined bore- 
 dom. They didn't care a hang about either God or the 
 devil. A nickname for the Almighty would have perched 
 as easily as Binky on their lips ; only, they never thought 
 about the Almighty. He didn't bother them. They had 
 succeeded ages ago in staring Him out of existence. 
 Their main occupation now was in staring life out of 
 countenance. This perfect and assured flippancy made 
 them seem to me infinitely superior, so secure and un- 
 approachable as to be mysterious. 
 
 139
 
 130 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I must have been at that time incredibly enthusiastic. 
 
 I was nineteen. My father and I had been travelling 
 round the world, and we came on them, the dangerous 
 Mrs. Hobbes, and little wizened Molly Tripp, who jingled 
 all over with jewellery like a pedlar's cart, and Ruffles, 
 whom I hated wistfully, and Binky, who seemed to me 
 a god, and all the rest, in a little dusty place near the 
 Afghan frontier. I was full of the poetry and colour 
 that I had been imbibing, ripe for romance and for adven- 
 ture dangefously, deliciously ripe for adventure. I 
 was very happy. I loved everybody and everything, 
 myself included; my eyelashes and my nose gave me 
 extreme pleasure. I had some ravishing clothes which 
 delighted my heart; I remember one gauzy pink thing in 
 which I had five different proposals in as many differ- 
 ent languages. 
 
 And it was right into the midst of this clear, if shallow, 
 pool of happiness that they dropped their rubbish. They 
 used me; they gave me their unclean leavings. Even 
 Binky didn't give me anything new and first-class in 
 the way of feeling; he hadn't it to give. It had all been 
 used. It was all second-hand; it all had the mark of 
 the other woman on it. 
 
 I didn't know at the time. I scarcely suspected. 
 People like that were beyond my comprehension. I 
 had been constantly with my father for three years. I 
 knew only his fine, simple nature; I didn't know there 
 was such a creature as Mrs. Hobbes in existence, so 
 finished, so complete, so immune. 
 
 Binky's real name in those days was Captain Gilbert 
 Humphrey Fitzgerald Dawkins. He was in a Cavalry 
 Regiment, and I fell in love with him at once, if not 
 at first sight, then between first and second sight. I
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 131 
 
 don't think it necessary to analyse what falling-in-love 
 means for a romantic girl. It is sufficient to say that he 
 entirely upset my equilibrium, that he blotted out the 
 past and took up with his own image the whole of the 
 future. I forgot Jim Van Orden. I abandoned in one 
 instant all my memories. I wanted to marry this man 
 that was all. Perhaps I wanted him more fiercely than 
 most girls want men. I don't know. There's a conven- 
 tion abroad that women don't care for men with that 
 physical longing that eats one's vitality away, but I sus- 
 pect that this convention has been built up by women 
 themselves, out of a lie, for their self -protection. Any- 
 how, although I was very proud and shy with Binky and 
 capricious and moody, although I suppose I played the 
 game of the coquette to some extent, luring him on 
 and keeping him off, still there was nothing conven- 
 tional in my feeling for Binky. It was quite an uncon- 
 trollable, wild feeling, a choking, dizzying, humiliating 
 feeling. 
 
 I remember so well my suffering on our last day in 
 India. I sat all the afternoon on the balcony outside 
 my room, in the Taj Mahal Hotel, and scowled into 
 the dazzling Bombay Harbour. Sampans floated softly 
 on the pale, glassy water. He was, so I supposed, on 
 the Afghan frontier, fifteen hundred miles north, and 
 his personality seemed to crush me, even at that dis- 
 tance. His conjured image made me feel sick and faint ; 
 and we were sailing next day by the P. and O. for 
 Marseilles. " I shall never see him again," I kept 
 repeating to myself savagely. Carriages were passing 
 swiftly beneath me along the dark red road, open car- 
 riages drawn by magnificent Arab and Australian horses, 
 and occupied by Parsee ladies in brilliant silken veils that
 
 132 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 flowed behind them. A strange scent rose from the date- 
 palms and flowering bushes that banked the fagade by 
 the hotel. Everything was soaked in a queer, pungent 
 perfume, that all but obliterated the savour of the sea. A 
 military band was playing in the yacht club near by. A 
 large vessel was coming into harbour from China, or 
 possibly Siam, or New Zealand, and the romance of 
 the Orient, mingling with my passionate sentiment, made 
 my heart ache with an insatiable longing and curiosity 
 and despair. I kept repeating : " I will never see him 
 again," and he was already downstairs talking to my 
 father. She had sent him down to Bombay to propose 
 to me. 
 
 I thought of France and England as dull, grey places 
 of monotonous streets, full of drab faces under queer 
 hats, and then my mind flew with a flurry of sympathy 
 back to Iroquois, where Jerry and Dick were, and Jim 
 too; but the thought of Jim entered my head only long 
 enough to be dismissed irritably. I did not want to go 
 home, I wanted to go nowhere under the sun. I was 
 sick with disappointment and bewilderment and jealousy. 
 Yes, I must have been already jealous, for I remember 
 Mrs. Hobbes kept appearing erratically and persistently 
 in my mind, and behind her image lurked the thought, 
 more or less clearly inarticulate, that it was impossible 
 for any one who had tasted of the sharp flavour of this 
 woman ever to care for a young girl like myself. 
 
 You see, I knew a good deal by this time, in a con- 
 fused way. I knew about as much as " Maisie knew," 
 in that story by Henry James; but my efforts to fit the 
 pieces of the puzzle together were not as sure and 
 instinctive as the child's were, because my heart and my 
 vanity were so deeply involved. The tangle and the mys-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 133 
 
 tery were only just clear enough to engage me in a 
 disastrous struggle, a struggle between my pride and 
 my infatuation. This much I knew, that I couldn't have 
 him, except at the price of my pride. Ah, yes, they 
 humiliated me, and she at least knew it ! She must have 
 known it. She couldn't have thought me such a child 
 as not to be aware of the insult she put upon me. I 
 lay it all at her door, because I feel sure Binky didn't 
 realize. There is nothing cruel about Binky, and 
 nothing subtle. He couldn't have understood the mean- 
 ing of the affair. I know he didn't, from what he said 
 afterwards. 
 
 Then there were other things that I knew. I knew 
 that Binky was not good, as I understood goodness ; but 
 was quite wicked, perhaps even incurably bored with 
 goodness ; and this bit of knowledge added to his fas- 
 cination. No, it wasn't his having played the part of 
 a lover to the wife of another man that gave me the 
 strength to refuse him, that first time. No, horrible 
 as that seemed to me, it only made it the harder to 
 give him up. It was something else, a complicated revul- 
 sion of feeling in which my sudden discovery that he 
 was his uncle's heir had a part. 
 
 Poor Binky! it has taken me so long to understand 
 him, and I did him such injury in thinking him a 
 wickeder and more dashing and more intelligent man 
 than he really is. After all, it wasn't his fault if I 
 made him out to be a colossal figure, and dressed him 
 up in all sorts of picturesque raiment which didn't fit 
 him. I did the same with Joseph, and I've done the 
 same all my life with hundreds of people. I believe 
 Jim is the only man I ever saw clearly, and I let him 
 go. I am like the dog in the fable, who let the bread
 
 134 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 drop out of his mouth. I am always looking beyond 
 the actual. Some one has defined romanticism as " look- 
 ing beyond the horizon," and that is what I have always 
 been doing. I am for ever believing that there is 
 more in people than they really amount to, finding more 
 meaning in things than really exists there, expecting 
 more excitement from an experience than the experience 
 can possibly supply; and so I call this the story of 
 a romantic woman, the story of self-inflicted disap- 
 pointment. 
 
 Well, I was excessively romantic about Binky, and 
 it was partly due to the setting in which I found him. 
 
 It was wild and bare on the Afghan frontier, some- 
 thing like Job's wilderness, only no one wrestled with 
 his soul there. The hills to the north that looked as 
 if they were cut out of cardboard, scrawled a jagged 
 line across the sky, and beyond this line was Afghanis- 
 tan. I beheld my hero against a background of desert 
 and frowning sandhills, amongst which appeared now 
 and then the muzzle of a rifle and the savage, bearded 
 face of a picturesque ruffian. He stood out well against 
 s\ich a background. In the direct line of a menacing 
 gun-barrel, I could see him light a cigarette and play 
 with his pony's nose. He seemed to me extremely reck- 
 less and dashing; and he was almost too good-looking, 
 almost too surely the hero of dreams. It was true that 
 he did his best to obliterate his looks ; his hair was cropped 
 short, he walked with a contemptuous slipshod fling of 
 his superb body, and wore very old and shapeless clothes, 
 but it did no good. He was elaborately handsome, and 
 his carelessness made him the more unquestionably 
 attractive. 
 
 His hair was just faintly tinged with grey in those
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 135 
 
 days, and he had a vivid, bright look on his face, a 
 look of clear good-humour with a dash of mockery, 
 that was very charming. I first saw him on the polo- 
 ground. He came riding across the field with his saddle- 
 girth burst in two, balancing precariously and grinning. 
 His scarlet shirt was streaked black with perspiration, 
 his face under his topi was of the unpleasant hot shade, 
 relieved by daubs of dirt. He was certainly not beau- 
 tiful then, but the long line of his wet, red shirt and 
 worn breeches pleased me unaccountably, and the way 
 he sat his ungirthed pony, careless, secure, quizzical, 
 seemed to me unspeakably attractive. I listened for his 
 voice. It had a dry, toneless quality ; and his words, half 
 of them never came beyond his moustache. He spoke as 
 though it didn't matter whether any one heard him or 
 not, as though speech was a bore and there was nothing on 
 earth worth saying anyhow. 
 
 None of them could be said to talk much; there was 
 never any conversation that I remember. Even the 
 women seemed to think it unnecessary to be entertaining. 
 I had always believed that one thing woman had to do 
 was to talk; brilliantly, interestingly if possible, but 
 anyhow to talk. Girls in Iroquois thought a great deal 
 of a good talker. Phyllis was the only girl I knew at 
 home who got along without talking, but all these women 
 were the same. They threw out remarks now and then, 
 most of the time unintelligible to me, and usually 
 received with laughter, dry, short, and equally unintelli- 
 gible. Mrs. Hobbes sometimes said nothing at all for 
 hours, and Mrs. Hobbes was certainly fascinating. I 
 saw that plainly enough at once, though she did look 
 something like a shark made of ivory. All she had to 
 do was to look through those narrow golden eyes of
 
 136 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 hers and smile a little, to make you feel her power. 
 When she smiled it was as though a light from an outside 
 source had touched her for a moment, had produced by 
 its fleeting radiance the illusion of movement upon her 
 features, that were in themselves immovable. She was 
 like marble, all cold, with silvery tints in her skin and 
 copper in her stiffly coiffed hair. Only in her thin, 
 curved lips was there any warmth, and her voice had 
 a ringing quality, sometimes musical, sometimes harsh 
 as the clang of metal. One could not admit that she 
 was beautiful with that high-arched nose. It was too 
 large. But she was more than beautiful; she was inex- 
 plicably menacing and alluring. One could imagine that 
 she knew everything, was a golden receptacle for secrets ; 
 yet she talked like a very ordinary person, and had no 
 affectations, unless it was her immobility. She dressed 
 severely, and in my opinion badly. They all dressed 
 badly, the women, even Lady O'Donald, my hostess at 
 Government House; but their clothes didn't seem to 
 matter any more than their lack of conversation. They 
 had a wonderfully secure touch with men. The men 
 and women treated each other like like, not quite like 
 brothers and sisters, but certainly not as American 
 women and American men. I couldn't put to it myself. 
 There was here a certain camaraderie that took every- 
 thing for granted, seemed to have got beyond the business 
 or the game of flirtation. At first I was mystified ; then, 
 puzzling it out, I came to the conclusion that the women 
 were all bored by the continual presence of the same men ; 
 then suddenly I discovered that underneath the casual, 
 desultory converse, love-affairs were going on. That 
 took my breath away, then made me feel acutely mis- 
 erable, envious, and ashamed of being envious.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 137 
 
 The fact that married women had love-affairs wasn't 
 in the bare sense a piece of news, but as a reality with 
 which one came casually in contact, it was a revela- 
 tion. 
 
 My initiation was accidental, and it so happened that 
 the edge of the shock was taken off for me by Mrs. 
 Hobbes, in a peculiarly cold, enlightening way. I had 
 surprised Mrs. Tripp on the back verandah of her 
 bungalow with her hand on a subaltern's curly head, 
 in an attitude that suggested a light kiss just past, or 
 about to be given. I had fled out into the garden, and 
 finding Mrs. Hobbes there alone, had blurted out some- 
 thing about being mortified, some ridiculous apologetic 
 nonsense, quite uncalled for, which she easily enough 
 understood. 
 
 " Molly won't mind," she said shortly, with a con- 
 temptuous curve of her fine lips. 
 
 " Won't she ? " I gasped. 
 
 " Lord, no ! Why should she ? " Her great pale eyes 
 pitied me. I think she made up her eyelashes, perhaps 
 not. Anyhow she used her eyes with disconcerting skill. 
 
 I half closed mine, and saw again the flushed young 
 man scrambling to his feet from his half-kneeling posture 
 by Molly's chair. I saw more : an abyss opening before 
 me. 
 
 Molly Tripp was the wife of the General in command 
 of the station. She was obviously a good sort. I found 
 her in the beginning a perfect dear, and to this day I 
 like her. I have always liked her. She is so sporting, 
 so generous and kind and sweet-natured. How on earth 
 she has managed to keep sweet-natured I can't imagine, 
 but she has, and her heart is as fresh and untouched as 
 her face is withered. She was withered and emaciated
 
 138 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 even then, with a wrinkled, vivacious face, and scrawny 
 neck; and she will go on being withered and light- 
 hearted to the end of her life, and her scraggy, hag- 
 gard charm will avail always with every one except 
 Henry, her husband, who is a beast, and insults her in 
 public. 
 
 She was forty then, when I was nineteen, and next 
 to Lady O'Donald the senior lady in the station, and 
 there was no dignity and no wickedness in her. Her 
 flirtations were utterly frivolous and absurd. Claire 
 Hobbes knew that. Any one and every one ought to have 
 known that Molly's actions were always as indiscreet 
 and innocent as the light of day. 
 
 And just because I felt this about her, the kiss which 
 seemed hovering in the air between those two was the 
 more astonishing. Its thoughtless, indiscreet brightness 
 meant so much more than anything furtive or dark. 
 
 Mrs. Hobbes continued to smile with uplifted eye- 
 brows, and I saw that she must be smiling at the horror 
 and confusion in my own face. I stammered again, 
 making myself the more amusing to her. 
 
 " I'm sorry I was asked for tennis," I burst in. 
 " Lady O'Donald dropped us here. Captain Dawkins was 
 with me. He " 
 
 " Binky ! Oh, Binky doesn't matter. Molly's little 
 affairs " she laughed. " You quaint dear ; she con- 
 fides in Binky." 
 
 I stared, appalled by a sudden question. 
 
 If Molly Tripp went in for harmless, light-hearted 
 affairs, what did Claire Hobbes go in for ? 
 
 I gazed at the other's chiselled face under the uncom- 
 promising line of her riding-hat. I took in the slightly 
 dilated nostrils, the marvellous texture of the skin, the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 139 
 
 firm, clear line of the lips with their slight, hard smile; 
 and I believed it was then on Molly's tennis-lawn, 
 with Molly herself emerging from the verandah, her 
 white hat tilted rakishly over her aged unconcerned little 
 face just then, while Mrs. Hobbes lightly tapped 
 her riding-boot with her crop and stared back at me 
 with that cruel, appraising glance, that I began to dis- 
 like her. 
 
 I know now what that glance meant. She was even 
 then sizing me up for Binky, and her glance was one 
 of calculating approval. I should do. I should do so 
 well that to give him to me would cost her horrid pain. 
 Yes, way down inside of her frozen self, she was suffer- 
 ing too and hating me, because she was going to give him 
 to me, and because she was afraid he would like it
 
 CHAPTER Two 
 
 I MARK the beginning of that process of going to 
 pieces that I keep alluding to, as dating from a 
 certain night when Binky gave me a dinner-party 
 in his bungalow. It was a very select little dinner- 
 party ; my father was not there, nor anybody's husband ; 
 only choice spirits like Claire Hobbes and Molly Tripp 
 and Ruffles ; and it was then, out of sheer pique and 
 chagrin, that I gave way. I longed to be fast, so that I 
 might attract him. 
 
 I had been feeling vaguely unhappy ever since my 
 contretemps with Mrs. Hobbes in Molly's garden. My 
 ignorance and awkwardness hampered and irked me. 
 My enthusiasm seemed as absurd as ill-fitting clothes, and 
 my shy response to Binky 's attentions seemed clumsy, 
 futile methods of attraction compared to the harsh glitter 
 and finished, distrait rudeness of these Englishwomen ; 
 but that night all my misery came to a head. And when 
 I got home to my plastered room in Government House, 
 I cried tears of mortification. 
 
 Poor, wretched, absurd creature! As if my being 
 worldly-wise would have made me one bit more attractive 
 to Binky ! His own simplicity ought to have been obvious 
 enough when he came to me, to apologize for them. I 
 remember now his boyish remorse, his contrite confusion. 
 Why didn't I then and there understand that underneath 
 his gallant exterior he was rather a stupid, nice boy ! 
 I suppose it was her personality that coloured him in 
 
 J40
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 141 
 
 my eyes. It was impossible for me to conceive of an 
 Adam dwelling, as it were, in the bosom of that won- 
 derful Eve without contamination. It seemed to me 
 that the friend and knight-errant of Mrs. Hobbes must 
 be a bold, bad man. And then, besides this, I wanted 
 to believe him to be a bold, bad man. 
 
 You see, I wanted to be one of them because he 
 was one of them. Though everybody made a fuss over 
 me, just because everybody made such a fuss over me 
 I felt out of it. Up to the night of the dinner, they 
 all put on airs for my benefit. The men laid them- 
 selves out to please me. They never treated me to 
 the casual and terse good-humoured ragging that they 
 served up to their own women. When I entered a 
 group, it bestirred itself and made conversation. How 
 I longed for the compliment of their flippancy, and their 
 silence ! 
 
 My father could match any of them in reticence. 
 In the midst of my own babble, I could always feel 
 the support of his silence. They were afraid of him ; 
 I saw that and was glad. I didn't want him to make 
 advances to them, didn't care how aloof he was; but 
 for myself, I wanted to be one of them, I wanted to 
 be what they were, only more so, because of Binky. 
 
 He alone, of the whole lot, had treated me casually, 
 because it was, I suppose, impossible for him to treat 
 any one otherwise, even if his life depended on it. And 
 from him alone I wanted the differentiating touch of 
 reverence. In his case, I got the indifferent air, and 
 it piqued and angered me. He was lackadaisical and 
 cynically frivolous with every one. He was always teas- 
 ing and ragging, muttering little jokes to one and another, 
 and chuckling to himse*lf. Never did he allow himself
 
 142 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 to be drawn into a serious discussion, never did he 
 evidence any emotion of any kind except mild amusement 
 and an occasional flare of temper. And I thought, 
 because I wanted to think so, that this airy persiflage 
 covered great depths of thought and feeling. What 
 fired my imagination was the prospect of this cynical 
 worldling becoming for me a simple, earnest lover. If 
 a man so reckless and gay could for one moment, under 
 the influence of a rare feeling, be tender and serious, 
 how inexpressibly sweet that would be. I beheld in my 
 mind's eye that swift, scathing intellect melted, that 
 mocking face transformed with sympathy. I heard that 
 well-bred, muttering voice vibrating with restrained 
 passion, and my heart flamed at the thought. 
 
 How funny it seems now! Poor Bihky or rather, 
 poor me! Binky is happy enough. He never went to 
 pieces. As he is, so he has been and ever shall be; 
 and he isn't even aware of what a legend I wove around 
 him. 
 
 He lived by himself in a small bungalow next to 
 the Officers' Mess. It was a very small bungalow, 
 and my impression of its interior is a confusion of dogs 
 and drinks, and chintz curtains sent out by his mother. 
 There were puppies and bottles everywhere, and up- 
 holstered chairs covered with the maternal flowered 
 chintz. One was conscious too, somehow or other, of 
 the close proximity of many horses. If the bungalow 
 was small, the stables were large. All the servants' 
 houses had been turned into stables, and in them dwelt the 
 eight polo ponies and three hunters which were the 
 absorbing interest of his life, and the source of his 
 debts. 
 
 Dinner was served from the mess kitchen next door,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 143 
 
 and it was rather a bad dinner, but there was so much 
 drink and so much talk that no one seemed to mind. 
 Ruffles began at once, as we sat down. He accused 
 Molly of having had twins sub rosa, and how did she 
 do it, he demanded, without ever letting on? He had 
 heard one squealing that very afternoon when he called. 
 Oh he could tell a baby from a pomeranian. Yes, 
 he could really. This sound hadn't the slightest resem- 
 blance to a puppy's yelp. Now, was it quite good form 
 to have twins at all, much less to have them like that 
 without telling? He had grave suspicions from Henry's 
 behaviour that afternoon, that he (Henry) was a mysti- 
 fied parent. Come, had she told Henry, or had she kept 
 it dark? 
 
 How I hated Ruffles! I could have killed him, and 
 he absolutely ignored me, just rattled on, teasing Granny, 
 as he called Mrs. Tripp, until she gasped and shrieked, 
 and sending Mrs. Hobbes off into uncontrollable fits 
 of laughter. I had never seen Claire Hobbes laugh 
 before, but under Ruffles's cocked eye she let herself 
 go, the tears streamed down her face, and when Binky 
 tried to stem the tide, she merely gasped, " Oh, Lord 
 Binky, do laugh. For God's sake laugh ! " and went 
 off again. 
 
 No one paid any attention to me. I stared at my 
 plate, wondering if sometime and somehow this sort 
 of thing might seem funny to me, and feeling a per- 
 fect fool. If every one else is laughing, the one who 
 doesn't see the joke must feel an idiot. I wanted to 
 do something to Ruffles. I loathed his complacency, his 
 perfect impudence. He semed to me vulgar and con-
 
 144 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 ceited, and I marvelled that Molly Tripp could allow 
 him to take such liberties. 
 
 Ruffles and I are friends now. 
 
 He offended my vanity that night as it had never been 
 offended before. When I tried to say something, he 
 simply didn't listen, turned his shoulder, and began 
 ragging Molly over again. His deviltry made me sick, 
 but all the time he was ragging Molly, I knew that he 
 liked her enormously, and I suppose underneath it all, 
 I wanted that compliment too, the compliment of being 
 admired by a clever little bounder whom I hadn't the 
 strength of character to despise. 
 
 I don't mean to say that Ruffles actually is a bounder ; 
 he is really what men call " one of the best " ; but I 
 thought him one then, and he still looks a bit of an 
 outsider. He is rather slight and small and hard, and he 
 gives the impression of great elasticity, as though his 
 limbs and his muscles were of india-rubber. He is 
 slightly bow-legged, which, after all, is a small price 
 to pay for being one of the finest polo-players in the 
 world. He has an amusing face. One of his eye-brows 
 is higher than the other, which gives him somehow the 
 air of a sportive puppy, and there are two deep lines on 
 either side of his mouth, like elongated dimples. He 
 hasn't much hair, but what he has is grey, stiff, grizzled 
 hair, like nigger's wool, and he has a wild taste in neck- 
 ties and socks. Nothing will ever temper his love for 
 brilliant neckties and socks. 
 
 He tells me now that he wanted me himself, but 
 I don't believe him. I never believe anything he says, 
 but what he does say is very entertaining all the same. 
 He is a quaint mixture, a Roman Catholic and an inter- 
 national polo-player, and an authority on birds.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 145 
 
 Sometimes we refer to those days on the frontier. 
 He says he was watching me all the time, and was awfully 
 amused to see how I was taking the Binky-Hobbes affair. 
 He didn't think I'd swallow it, had never been so surprised 
 in his life as when he heard we were engaged. He 
 watched the process of my going to pieces, what he calls 
 my growing up, with delight, because he thought all the 
 time that it was bringing me within his reach. Now, he 
 has got over that idea too. 
 
 You see what a long way I have travelled since that 
 dinner. It seems wonderful to me that I could have 
 suffered as acutely as I did then. There was a lot more 
 of the same sort of thing after dinner. Molly, I remem- 
 ber, had on a gorgeous petticoat, and then there was the 
 whole subject of the bed. Ruffles, it seemed, had bought 
 her bed, and it squeaked. He had paid seventy-five 
 rupees for it, and it squeaked so that he couldn't sleep. 
 He was sure Henry's ghost must haunt the thing. It 
 was fatal for a bachelor to try and sleep in a great con- 
 nubial bed like that. Wouldn't she take it back. Claire 
 Hobbes here interposed with some remark about Molly 
 having dispensed with the need for it, whereat they 
 all roared. I didn't understand, but I felt myself blush- 
 ing, and as they all looked for an instant rather guiltily 
 in my direction, I grew more and more crimson. It 
 was horrid. 
 
 Binky, as I said before, did his best to head them 
 off and draw them in and hold them up, but he didn't 
 succeed in doing much more than let me know he was 
 ashamed of them, by coming to my rescue with awkward 
 platitudes, darting funny glances of consternation about 
 him. I felt that he must, all the same, despise me for 
 not paying them back in their own coin, for not showing
 
 146 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 myself mistress of the hilarious situation, and his apology 
 next morning was a comfort. 
 
 It was given in the dark of a very wintry five o'clock, 
 while we drove to the meet. He had established the 
 right to call for me at Government House and drive 
 me out, every hunting morning, but on this morning, 
 such was my sense of defeat that I scarcely expected 
 him to turn up. I remember standing in the verandah, 
 waiting and shivering inside my fur coat, and thinking 
 that if he didn't come I could always pretend I had not 
 intended to hunt that morning. I had dressed myself 
 without help. No one would know. You can imagine, 
 then, when I heard the wheels of his spindly trap and 
 the irregular tap of his pony's skittish hoofs, how relieved 
 I was. And when I found him more solicitous, devoted, 
 and flattering than ever before, I loved him for what I 
 termed to myself his generosity. It actually seemed to 
 me noble of him not to mind my stupidity of the night 
 before, and with a full revulsion of feeling I gave my- 
 self up to happiness. Yes, certainly that icy-cold drive 
 before dawn was one of the happiest hours of my life. 
 I remember how the pale day, stealing over the parched 
 country like a grey spirit, thrilled me with a sense of 
 mystery. It was very cold, and he tucked the sheep- 
 skin rug round my feet solicitously, and informed me 
 he had beer and sandwiches under the seat for me to 
 drink and eat on the way back. And then he went on 
 to say that he felt like thrashing Ruffles, and would 
 I forgive him for introducing such a bounder, such an 
 out-and-out cad, but, really, he hadn't known the man 
 was such a swine. And as he talked on I grew more 
 and more blissful. We drove through an uncanny world 
 of half-light. The shadowy forms of bullocks, and
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 147 
 
 silent, hooded villagers, loomed spectrally through the 
 dust and mist. And in that strange country, passing 
 through straggling throngs of weird, alien folk, we two 
 seemed very intimate and alone, and after he had 
 exhausted his apologies and I had denied being anything 
 but vastly entertained at dinner, we grew absurd and 
 light-hearted. And I loved him too for being gay at 
 five o'clock in the morning. His profile, revealed to me 
 under the hood of the trap, in the light of the dawn, 
 seemed to me the handsomest I had ever seen, and the 
 slight stoop in his pink-coated shoulders thrilled me un- 
 speakably. 
 
 I rode his best hunter, and was in at the finish of 
 the wretched jackal ; and afterwards, standing in the 
 road, dusty and sweaty, and divinely happy, I drank half 
 his bottle of beer, and singled Ruffles out with what I 
 considered a peculiarly clever little nod. 
 
 I remember his saying, as I climbed again into his 
 trap: 
 
 " They're all lookin' and wonderin', because I don't 
 do this sort of thing much, you know," meaning by this 
 sort of thing, myself. 
 
 I was elated by his attentions, which made me con- 
 spicuous, and for two days after this, while he dogged 
 my footsteps, quite obviously trying to screw up courage 
 to propose, I toyed with him delightedly, sure of my 
 conquest, rapturously, divinely sure, and then it was that 
 I came upon the bewildering revelation. 
 
 Lady O'Donald was giving a garden party in honour 
 of some native prince, and I was late in arriving on the 
 scene. I was hurrying across the lawn to join her under 
 the distant " shamina," where she was receiving turbaned 
 gentlemen, when I ran into Molly and Mrs. Hobbes. I
 
 148 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 came swiftly up behind their hibiscus bush, and caught 
 the sound of my own name and stopped. 
 
 " You seem to have fallen a victim, too," Mrs. Hobbes 
 was saying. 
 
 " She's perfectly adorable." Molly Tripp, I repeat, 
 was a dear. 
 
 "How old is she?" 
 
 " Nineteen, I believe." 
 
 " Lord ! " Mrs. Hobbes's voice took on a metallic ring. 
 " If I were nineteen, with that face and five millions, what 
 wouldn't I do?" 
 
 " You do quite enough as it is, my dear." 
 
 " Nineteen ! All the same, I suspect that air of inno- 
 cence. Those eyes have bowled over too many men not 
 to know what they're doing." 
 
 " I don't agree with you. She's absurdly unconscious. 
 You're a little bored, aren't you, about Binky? Why 
 make him dance such frantic attendance on her ? " 
 
 The emerald-green lawn and the scarlet-coated servants 
 and the dotted forms of white-flannelled tennis-players 
 blurred suddenly. 
 
 " He likes it," enunciated the icy voice ; " and be- 
 sides " Pause, and then in a smaller, tired tone : 
 
 " Binky must marry some day. It might as well be now. 
 Here's his chance." 
 
 And will you believe it, as I stole away back to the 
 house, I could for the moment hear nothing, think of 
 nothing, but the pain, the undeniable, furiously weary 
 pain in that hateful voice, and it was because of that 
 pain that I was turned completely adrift. It was all too 
 much for me. 
 
 I wandered weakly back to the house and threw myself 
 on my bed and stared at the ceiling, which was miles
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN i 49 
 
 high and covered with cobwebs. The sound of the 
 police-band playing " Under the Shadows," or some such 
 tune, came through the open windows, and I found my- 
 self, after a time, thinking of Major Hobbes, little red- 
 faced jocular Major Hobbes. My mind dwelt on him. 
 
 You must remember that it was not so very long 
 since Phyllis and Louise and I had all vowed together 
 in the middle of Louise's little baby-white bed, never 
 to marry a man who had ever cared for any other 
 woman the slightest bit. It was not that we demanded 
 men who were virgin in body, we didn't know anything 
 about being anything else, we demanded them virgin in 
 mind and heart; and we thought our chances of getting 
 what we wanted were exceeedingly good, about a hundred 
 to one against. 
 
 Picture yourself the pride and ignorance of my youth, 
 and remember the loyalty of my father and mother one 
 to another, and you will have some inkling of my state 
 of mind. I had no data to go on. Nothing but a reli- 
 gious upbringing, a reverence for marriage, vague, horrid 
 fears, and a longing for this man. Mrs. Hobbes and 
 Binky swam before me, indistinctly coupled, terribly 
 attractive and well-matched. Their special relationship 
 I was incapable of labelling, but they were coupled 
 together in my mind as disembodied spirits, romantically 
 and beautifully. 
 
 That they were wicked was an inevitable conclusion, 
 deduced from the fact that she was another man's wife, 
 but their wickedness partook of no physical suggestion 
 to disgust me. Its abstractness made it positively at- 
 tractive and enviable. I was not disillusioned, far 
 from it, nor was I seriously shocked. I was quite 
 definitely angry and offended because another woman
 
 150 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 who knew all the meaning of love and of life, had a 
 prior claim to him, and was disposing of him to me. I 
 was consumed with jealousy, enraged by the insult they 
 two together, as it seemed, had offered me, and terrified 
 by the knowledge that I still wanted him. 
 
 Yes more than ever I wanted him, and with him 
 the high and passionate experience which his love rep- 
 resented.
 
 THE -torment of that B inky-Mrs. Hobbes situ- 
 ation partakes always in my memory of the 
 smell of Bombay, a steamy, hot smell of spices, 
 perfumes, dust, and the droppings of animals all stewing 
 together in the sun. I have the same pungent, tickling 
 sense in my nose now, as I think of it, and for years 
 an odour even faintly similar has always called up the 
 painful memory. My suffering was so very acute there 
 on the balcony of the Taj Mahal Hotel, that I didn't 
 think of moving into the cool shadow of the tiled room, 
 but sat outside in the reflected glare, holding my damp 
 head in my hands and thinking deliriously. I wanted 
 him so but not like that. It was terrible to feel that 
 I should never, under any circumstances, be sure that 
 he, of his own initiative, wanted me. 
 
 I was still floundering helplessly in the mess of it, 
 when the door opened across the room behind me, and 
 my father entered. I turned as he came to me. He 
 looked tired and hot. His loose silk clothes stuck to 
 him in places, and he mopped his forehead with a large 
 bandanna handkerchief. His forehead, I noticed, was 
 flushed red under his whitening hair. 
 
 " Captain Dawkins is here." I turned from him again 
 quickly and stared dizzily through narrowed eyelids out 
 over the languid, unreal sea, whose colour and savour 
 were obliterated by the downpour of the sun.
 
 1 52 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 He came out on the balcony and stood beside 
 me, leaning forward, his hands on the railing. The 
 facade of the hotel cut off the sun behind us, lending 
 us a safe strip of shadow, the edge of which lay along 
 the middle of the red road beneath. I waited, while he 
 straightened up again, and with a characteristic gesture 
 began pulling his moustache gently first on one side, then 
 on the other. I could feel, for all his quiet and delibera- 
 tion, that he was profoundly disturbed. 
 
 " He has asked leave to propose to you. You must 
 decide for yourself. Your mother might have advised 
 you. I don't know. You must decide. I want you to be 
 happy." 
 
 I rose unsteadily and put my cheek against his. I 
 was nearly as tall as he. I clung to his arm, my hands 
 clasped round it, and we contemplated the situation 
 together silently. 
 
 " I had not thought of your marrying an English- 
 man," he ventured again, after a moment. I drew away 
 and looked in his face, and the pain in his eyes, the 
 weary languor in his face, that he had so completely 
 obliterated from his voice, recalled to me the days after 
 my mother's death, when I had vowed never to leave 
 him. I knew now that I should leave him some time, 
 if not for this man then for another, and it came as 
 a shock to me, that there was a force in the world 
 stronger than my love for him. One of the central 
 pivots in the machinery of existence seemed suddenly 
 to have gone wrong. I was troubled and bewildered 
 by a multitude of visions, of temptations, of hopes. 
 
 I kissed him nervously, and buried my face in his coat. 
 I was a little ashamed. 
 
 " You're very young. I don't quite see you as a
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 153 
 
 duchess, somehow." For a moment, in the turmoil of 
 my mind, I didn't take in the meaning of this last 
 remark. Then it penetrated, making everything all at 
 once more lucid, separating things queerly, and my reply, 
 though not spoken aloud, was concise enough. " No 
 I don't want to be a duchess. That is what they would 
 all expect me to do ' to marry a duke.' " 
 
 I don't mean to suggest that my dislike of being a 
 duchess was sufficient to make me throw over Binky. 
 Certainly not. Other things being satisfactory, I would 
 certainly not have baulked at the swallowing of that 
 prize-pill ; but the fact that my pride was already roused 
 to an abnormal pitch by the interference of Mrs. Hobbes 
 in this affair, gave the point of the dukedom undue and 
 perverse importance. To receive from the slender, dis- 
 dainful hands of Mrs. Hobbes a duke as well as a lover 
 that choked me. I stood there strangling on that 
 dizzy balcony. Nevertheless, I knew that if only Binky 
 would get her out of the way, shove her off somehow, 
 avow her to me frankly, and put her by in her place 
 definitely on a top shelf, if he would only do this, then 
 I should swallow it all. And it was with that last reserve, 
 that poor little entrenchment all ready and waiting to be 
 taken by storm, that I went to him. 
 
 " He's in the sitting-room," my father had said, while 
 I was mentally choking. I felt his eyes follow me 
 wistfully. Passing my dressing table, I snubbed the 
 impulse to powder my nose, and hurried into the next 
 room. 
 
 He was standing with his back to the lowered window- 
 screens that let into the mild dimness of the big, bare 
 room, little blinding lines of light. He was dressed in 
 a grey flannel suit, rather dusty and travel-creased, and
 
 154 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 his appearance gave me a distinct shock. He was quite 
 as handsome as I remembered him, but the bronze of 
 his skin, the white of his teeth and blue-green of his 
 eyes, had a strange stirring physical quality, a quality 
 both compelling and repulsive, that did not exist in my 
 memory of him. As he came forward, I noticed for 
 the first time a scar on his forehead, and my eyes were 
 held by the red, moist line on his neck where his collar 
 rubbed, and I was acutely conscious of his perspiring 
 body. 
 
 " No end of people sent messages," he was saying. 
 " Molly Tripp loaded me down with 'em I can't remem- 
 ber what they were. You know the sort of thing. 
 Phipps and Dicky and Bobs all sent their hearts in 
 little bundles." He laughed. He was very evidently 
 embarrassed, and his confusion pleased me. I had never 
 seen him like this before. He kept darting shy glances 
 at me and then looking away. The boyish, bright timidity 
 on his face was comical. It made me wonder. It both 
 pleased and displeased me. As a tribute to myself it 
 pleased, but it shed a new and disconcerting light on 
 his character. I had expected him to be a most accom- 
 plished lover. It occurred to me now that he couldn't 
 be so very wicked or so very wise about women after all. 
 What, then, of that past experience of his that so im- 
 pressed me? 
 
 I'm sure that it was then that I had my first suspicion 
 of him, of his being one of those people who go through 
 experiences without ever experiencing much of anything. 
 As I watched, from the depths of my wicker chair, 
 his nervous, lackadaisical movements, I had for one 
 instant a flash of insight, I even half articulated the 
 accusation " shallow," and then as my eyes dwelt on
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 155 
 
 his superb self, so full of potential fire, and heard his 
 quick voice enunciating little terse words in that, to me, 
 exquisite diction of the well-educated Englishman, I 
 dismissed my suspicion. It was impossible for me then 
 to trust my instinct against the evidence of my eyes 
 and ears. And how was I to know that he was merely 
 one of his class, the complete and meaningless output 
 of a very finished system? An American like that, of 
 equal brilliance and attractiveness, would have achieved 
 it by some rare innate quality, by some splendid energy 
 of his own. 
 
 He began walking about the big cement room, fling- 
 ing his legs aimlessly as though to shake off his shoes, 
 and evidently trying to screw up his courage. 
 
 " I've got to go back tonight. You know what I've 
 come for, I s'pose ? " He turned to me with an effort 
 to obliterate all expression from his face and a straighten- 
 ing movement of his shoulders. Then, as he looked 
 down on me, he smiled charmingly. " Oh, my dear, 
 you do look ripping like that. Your hair is like velvet 
 with little crinkles." He beamed down on me in that 
 quick sunny way of his, and my heart fluttered. I did 
 love that sunny look of his so, and I still like it. It's 
 the very nicest thing about Binky. It means nothing, 
 absolutely nothing but good health and a vacuum where 
 his imagination ought to be, but it is nice, very nice, just 
 in itself, and you must always think of him with it, 
 spreading from him and about him like a nimbus. 
 
 " I wrote to your father," he went on, turning half 
 away. " But before I ask you anything, I want to tell 
 you something, something about myself." His momen- 
 tary solemnity gave way to the mockery he always sum- 
 moned to cover embarrassment, " It's a kind of little con-
 
 156 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 f ession." He laughed, drew a chair across the shining floor, 
 and sat down near me. 
 
 I must have beamed too then, for a weight was lifted 
 suddenly. He was going to tell me everything, and it 
 would come right after all. I would forgive. What 
 could I not forgive if he confessed to me? That confes- 
 sion would prove the truth of the happy tribute of his 
 admiring glance, it would prove that he cared. My anger 
 had all ebbed away. I gripped my hands together to keep 
 from throwing them out towards him. 
 
 " I'm not such an awfully bad chap. Not so very dif- 
 ferent from other fellows." It was not a good begin- 
 ning. I felt slightly chilled. Why this self-justification? 
 Why excuse ? I didn't want him to be ashamed. I only 
 wanted him to acknowledge the past and say he loved 
 me best. I wanted the tribute of his confidence, but I 
 didn't want him to defile the dignity of his other affair. 
 Mine should be the honour of replacing the other, of 
 obliterating, not a shameful but a beautiful image. My 
 thoughts raced ahead, putting into his mouth the words 
 I wanted him to say, and then I realized that he was 
 speaking his own words. 
 
 " I've only got a little more than my pay, you see. 
 We're devilish poor in our family. Have been for ages. 
 Estates all entailed, and, of course, you can't be in a 
 cavalry regiment and live like a hermit. You see what 
 I'm driving at. It's disgusting, I know. I suppose you'll 
 think it's beneath contempt, being in debt. You despise 
 me, don't you? I can see it in your eyes." 
 
 I managed to murmur : " Despise you ? No, of 
 course not." I was utterly confused. 
 
 But he didn't believe me, and went on. " You see, I 
 wanted you to know the worst about me." It was really
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 157 
 
 very painful for him. He was scarlet. " I owe about 
 five thousand pounds." He plunged into gloom. 
 
 And I was so surprised that I could think of nothing 
 to say. So this was his confession. 
 
 It could not be. It must be just a preamble, a lead- 
 ing up to the real subject. But he had said he wanted 
 me to know the worst, and he considered this to be the 
 worst. Doubtless it was the worst, and he needn't have 
 told me at all. I didn't want to hear about his sins, I 
 wanted him to place me in his life along with that other 
 woman. I wanted him to make it clear to me, all of 
 it. It was ridiculous of him to tell me about his debts. 
 I laughed. 
 
 He looked up at the sound of my laugh. " You don't 
 quite despise me ? " 
 
 " Oh, no." I dismissed the subject lightly, wanting 
 to get on to the seriously interesting thing. 
 
 " You see, I don't want your f athe*r to pay them ; 
 I only wanted you to know." I shivered. So he had 
 thought about my father paying his debts. The idea had 
 come into his head to be repudiated. The thought of 
 my father's wealth was in his mind, uppermost in his 
 mind. His own poverty and my wealth; but, of course, 
 why hadn't I thought of that before? I was an heir- 
 ess! And my father had said just now something 
 about my being a duchess. It was the same old story. 
 They had told me at home. It was what the world 
 expected of me; what Iroquois, on the one hand, and 
 Mrs. Hobbes, on the other, expected of me. But no one 
 of that set had ever told me that their Binky was heir 
 to a duke. They had taken a mean advantage of me. 
 I was in love with him already. I was in love with 
 him, and he didn't even think of my being jealous of
 
 158 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 that other woman, so he couldn't care, not one rap. 
 
 I got up from my chair and walked over to the 
 window. All the anger that had been smouldering under 
 my hope, blazed up now. I saw it all. I was sick with 
 humiliation. 
 
 " So you are going to be a duke, some day ? " I 
 threw the words jerkily at him, over my shoulder. 
 
 " I suppose so. You see, my uncle hasn't any chil- 
 dren, and " 
 
 I cut him short. " I understand that you are propos- 
 ing to me. Am I right?" I turned, surveying him 
 coldly, by a tremendous effort. 
 
 " Yes, you are. I you you must have seen how 
 you attracted me you must have seen how awfully I 
 liked you." He moved a step nearer. " Oh, my dear, 
 I'm an ass I can't say things." I burst into tears. 
 He stood irresolute. He was floored. What on earth 
 could I be crying about? Binky is horribly afraid of 
 tears. He hates to see weak things suffer. He is very 
 tender-hearted when you make an obvious spectacular 
 appeal to his sympathy. His sympathy now came 
 uppermost. He took me 1 very gently and nicely in his 
 arms. His impulse was to soothe, protect, and en- 
 courage. 
 
 " There, there, kiddy dear, never mind. If you don't 
 like me, never mind. Don't take it so hard." 
 
 For one moment I lay there deliciously, my face against 
 his coat, hoping against hope that by some miracle he 
 would understand, would give me my proof ; but his little 
 muttered, caressing words, sweet as they were, put 
 the final touch to my despair, and I pulled away, baring 
 my face, with its tear-stains, to his eyes. 
 
 " No, it's no use ; you don't understand. It doesn't
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 159 
 
 matter. I don't know why I cried. Please go away. 
 I can't marry you; I don't want to marry you. It's 
 only nerves ! " 
 
 I said too much. I realized I was saying too much. 
 A clever man would have seen through it, but Binky isn't 
 clever, poor dear! 
 
 He slunk away, and I watched him, scarcely able to 
 keep from rushing to bring him back. I might just 
 as well have done it then.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 I UNDERSTAND perfectly now what I did not 
 understand then. It has put itself together, bit 
 bit by bit, until it is all quite complete. I see how 
 inevitable and, from their point of view, how right it 
 was. I don't mean right in the sense that it satisfied 
 her conscience or his. You must remember that they are 
 more civilized than I. They neither of them possess a 
 conscience, but their course of action in regard to me 
 satisfied what they have in place of it, a rigid and abso- 
 lute sense of the ultimate fitness of things. 
 
 Claire was here a couple of months ago. We get on 
 rather well. Why shouldn't she come? Binky likes 
 having her here. She's so just the right sort of per- 
 son for this place ; and, of course, it's a great score from 
 his point of view to get Britton. Britton scarcely goes 
 anywhere, you see, and she brings him. I suppose from 
 Binky to Britton could be called promotion; anyhow, as 
 Ruffles so nicely put it, Britton wiped Binky's eye for 
 him long ago, and there's no question now of her letting 
 me hand him back to her. 
 
 I think Claire almost pities me now. There she has 
 the advantage. I can't pity her. I can only admire her 
 pluck. Really, she's quite wonderful in her way, and 
 her complexion is as perfect as ever. You'd think all 
 the bitterness that she has tasted would have withered 
 her lips, but it hasn't. You'd imagine that all the dust 
 of disillusion that has passed over her would have 
 
 160
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 161 
 
 dimmed and speckled her shining surface. Not at all. 
 She's as impervious to the deposits of time as a glazed 
 china vase. She allows no vestige of despair or discon- 
 tent to settle visibly upon her. I suppose she turns her 
 complete cynicism on to herself daily, as a kind of 
 vacuum cleaner. 
 
 We had tea on the south terrace the other afternoon 
 alone, she and Binky and I. Binky had his arm in a 
 sling. Every one else was shooting, and it wasn't until 
 the very middle of tea I had my cup half-way to my 
 lips that it struck me as at all strange, our being there, 
 quite placidly together, we three. It was a remarkably 
 still afternoon for October, still and golden and quite 
 warm in the sun. The air was crystal clear, and the 
 yellow leaves of the beeches at the bottom of the tennis- 
 lawns were motionless. It was her kind of an after- 
 noon, and truly she was good to look at, sitting as still 
 as marble with her head outlined against the grey stone 
 of the south wall. In that sudden moment I gazed at her 
 motionless head desperately. My eyes clung to it for 
 the support of my brain. It was so fixed, so proud, so 
 untarnished, that it gave the lie to my sudden over- 
 whelming sense of unreality. She saved me, just the 
 look of her. One couldn't, you know, accuse her of be- 
 ing base, or vulgar, and so one came back to the same 
 conclusion that everything was as it should be. 
 
 I remember, as I lifted the cup again to my lips, that 
 it seemed an age since the last sip. I had been all the 
 way back to my mother's room, and I seemed to return 
 from a great distance to hear their voices going on about 
 horses. They mostly do talk about horses, she and 
 Binky. The technical completeness of her vocabulary 
 in this respect is amazing. I couldn't attempt to
 
 1 62 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 duce it for you. I can't even understand it. I didn't 
 understand then, or try to; but the staccato tune of the 
 short sentences they tossed to one another acted on my 
 nerves as a tonic. 
 
 One can't blame Claire Hobbes or even criticize her. 
 One doesn't accuse a sausage machine of being unkind be- 
 cause it grinds up little animals into sausage-meat. I 
 don't mean to be nasty, but Claire is as inexorable as 
 that. She fulfils herself perfectly and obeys the laws 
 that have made her, and the laws that have made her 
 are the laws of English society. 
 
 You see, it was an established fact that Binky should 
 marry some one with money. Everybody had united 
 to establish it ; his uncle and his aunt, his cousins Clemen- 
 tine and Monica, his mother and his brothers, and having 
 established it, they all lived on the strength of it. On 
 the strength of it, the duke went to Monte Carlo every 
 winter, and on the same principle Clem and Monica were 
 allowed to amuse themselves with artists, and remain 
 single, while Binky's younger brothers settled down with 
 sweet young brides on nothing at all. I was vital to 
 them, absolutely vital. Without me the dear duke could 
 not have been permitted to lose his hundreds at the 
 tables, without me Clem could never have had her futurist 
 bedroom or Monica her penniless sweethearts. The girls 
 talked about me ages before, as though I actually were 
 in the flesh, and they sized me up pretty well in prospect. 
 They felt certain I wouldn't be ugly and that I would be 
 young, and the betting was that I would be an American, 
 for they knew he would marry no one with or without 
 money who wasn't nice-looking, and they knew, so they 
 said, that no older beauty would be taken in by him, and 
 they felt, like every one else, that there were more pretty
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 163 
 
 heiresses with appetites for titles in the United States 
 than in Australia. 
 
 Yes. His meeting with me was one of those happy 
 turns of circumstance, when head and heart and the 
 wishes of one's relations are all in perfect accord. He 
 did not analyse his feelings or question his own motives, 
 nor any one else's for that matter. Analysis is not in 
 his line. Obviously, fate had thrown this jolly little 
 heiress in his way. I am perfectly certain that he thought 
 of me as a jolly little heiress, in spite of my longness and 
 my sombre eyes, and my general effect of mingled 
 languor and fierceness. The term would have nothing 
 in it descriptive of me, but would express somehow, 
 satisfactorily to himself, his attitude towards me. 
 There was doubtless, something miraculous about my 
 appearance on the scene. It looked as though it had been 
 arranged by Providence expressly for him, but, then, 
 so many things had been so arranged, why not this too? 
 It was no good suspecting the motives of fortune any 
 more than fighting the decrees of fate. 
 
 If old Hobbes could have been persuaded to divorce 
 his wife, that is, if he, Binky, had had enough money 
 to make that proposition then, undoubtedly, he would 
 have married Claire. He might have had it all fixed 
 up before he found himself heir to the duke, for it was 
 in the middle of their six years' love affair that his cousin 
 Bertie was killed. 
 
 The difficulty had always been financial. He had only 
 four hundred a year over his pay. I supposed they 
 agreed that it wasn't worth it. She had a concise way 
 of valuing things. Undoubtedly they understood each 
 other perfectly, and when his cousin died then only one 
 thing remained to be done : to find me.
 
 164 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I say, they understood each other, but I don't mean 
 that Binky ever understood the workings of Claire's mind 
 or heart. It was certainly a part of her creed that he 
 shouldn't. She understood him, and he knew that and 
 he believed that he had made her happy. They had en- 
 joyed each other, with scarce a break, for nearly six years. 
 What more could any two people want of each other! 
 There is no doubt that Binky was well satisfied with it 
 all. 
 
 Why not? He is not more stupid than most men. 
 Claire Hobbes gave him exactly what he wanted and 
 no more. It was just that restraint of hers that I find 
 wonderful. I know Binky ; I know how she must have 
 felt sometimes, but she never let him see. She had never 
 been given to tears or moods or emotional self-indulgence. 
 She must have gauged accurately, at the beginning, the 
 measure of her happiness, the measure of what he could 
 give her. She never tricked herself into extravagant 
 hopes. He gave her all that was in him to give, that 
 she knew, and she never tried to make him into some- 
 thing that he was not. Perhaps the fact that she had kept 
 him for six years all her own, as far as women were 
 concerned, was all she asked of life. I can see her 
 calmly and definitely bargaining with fate: she on her 
 side was never to let on that she wanted anything more 
 than his even light-hearted attention and half-humorous 
 love-making; and fate was to let her hold him until the 
 time came to give him to me. It was a part, too, of 
 her understanding with a fate that had been good to her 
 on the whole, that she had to be very particular about me, 
 very fastidious in her choice of his wife. 
 
 This last obligation must have been particularly hard 
 for her when the time came. She recognized me as the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 165 
 
 person, at once, but what must have made her wince 
 was that he recognized me too. His immediate response, 
 so Molly Tripp told me, was as gall to her. Yet she 
 drank it down without a grimace. And this was the more 
 plucky because she was imaginative enough to foresee 
 everything. She must lose him altogether, she would 
 be obliged to watch him succumb gradually more and 
 more completely to what she told Molly was my extrava- 
 gant and impudent charm. Yet she decided in a few 
 days. It was, of course, as she knew, a matter for her 
 to decide, and neither her face nor her voice played her 
 false when she gave him his freedom. I am sure of 
 this, as sure as if I had been there. Their final scene as 
 lovers was as terse as most of their conversations. She 
 did not even indulge herself in making clear that this 
 was really the end. He would find that out soon enough. 
 She let him go to Bombay without any final flare of 
 passion, without any of that solacing fire which might 
 have assuaged her pain. He just went; happily and 
 vaguely, not foreseeing anything. 
 
 Molly meet her driving back from the station, where 
 she had seen him off. She was lashing the pony and 
 swearing in a low, devilish voice, as Molly climbed up 
 beside her. It seems that his immediate departure, the 
 ardour it evidenced, had driven the whole thing home 
 to her horribly. She didn't say much ; merely remarked, 
 with a laugh, that that little chit wasn't the kind of 
 girl who would bore a man. 
 
 You see, we appreciate each other. She, on her side, 
 was afraid that I should discover things in Binky that 
 she had longed for but never found ; and I I have 
 always felt, until quite recently, that he must have given 
 her more than he gave me. Now, as on the terrace the
 
 1 66 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 other day, we sit beside him, one on either side, and 
 marvel distantly at one another. 
 
 In the meantime, while she was recklessly driving 
 Molly to the gymkhana and swearing at the pony, Binky 
 made himself comfortable in the train and calculated his 
 debts. He would have to tell me about his debts; that 
 was the terrible thought that disturbed his journey. 
 What should I think about debts ? Should I despise him 
 for them ? He hadn't the least idea. He was not at all 
 sure that I should not despise him. It was so " differ- 
 ent." My being " different " was disquieting. He owed 
 in all about five thousand pounds. Perhaps this sum 
 would seem to me like five shillings. He devoutly hoped 
 so. Dash it, he didn't want my father to pay them ! He 
 only wanted me to know the worst about him. Yes, cer- 
 tainly he considered this the worst, in fact, the only seri- 
 ous thing written against him in the Book of God. He 
 felt hot and ashamed over it, and began to wonder whether 
 he'd have the nerve to tell me, and then some men got 
 hold of him for bridge and he forgot it all. He forgot 
 so successfully that he lost all his immediate cash and 
 some more, and had to give one of the men a post-dated 
 cheque. He arrived at the Taj Mahal with a return ticket 
 and ten rupees in his pocket. He had never minded this 
 sort of thing before, but he was on the point of proposing 
 to a fortune, and he has a certain taste in superstitious 
 values. His immediate pennilessness started him off 
 badly with me. When he found himself face to face with 
 his jolly little heiress, he felt embarrassed. Two or three 
 gold pieces to jingle about in his pocket would have made 
 all the difference. 
 
 I've no doubt he felt this when I refused him. He 
 would curse his luck and damn the bridge he'd played
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 167 
 
 on the train. Such is the quality of Binky's mind. It's 
 funny when you contrast his state of mind with mine, at 
 that moment. I was certain he was full of Claire Hobbes, 
 full of self-condemnation and cowardly passion, and vio- 
 lently painful deceptions. I let him go, told my father 
 briefly that I had refused him, and then proceeded to live 
 with this idea of him, while I grew thinner, and more and 
 more gloomy. 
 
 My father was in the habit of leaving me alone. He 
 did not meddle with my conduct or inquire into my 
 dreams. We had been constantly together for four years. 
 Our understanding did not need demonstration, and the 
 more complete this understanding, the more impersonal 
 became our manner to one another. We forgot that we 
 were bound together by any ties, save those of mutual re- 
 spect and enjoyment. Only in rare instances did we be- 
 come suddenly aware of the incalculable depths of feel- 
 ing which underlay our seemingly prosaic, pleasant inter- 
 course. 
 
 My refusal of Binky was one of these instances. Quite 
 obviously the affair made me ill, and my father watching 
 me, suffered ; but he said nothing. His reticence, the re- 
 spect he had for the privacy of my life, was an evidence 
 of the instinct of a father who never abused his paternity. 
 
 I should have gone mad if he had questioned me. He 
 knew that. Probably, at first, when I told him that I had 
 refused the man, he was glad. He did not want to lose 
 me. Quite selfishly he must have been glad, but in the 
 face of my misery his gladness vanished. I believe I 
 really tried to hide my feelings. On the way to Suez I 
 did my best to flirt with some subalterns. I played the 
 piano every night on deck, and danced and laughed a great 
 deal too much, but he saw through it, and I couldn't help
 
 1 68 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 getting thin. I remember one night in Cairo, watching 
 him from my balcony. He spent two or three hours in 
 the garden, walking up and down in the scented palm- 
 fringed night. At regular intervals his figure would 
 appear through the trees, in the light of the hotel win- 
 dows, his head bent, his hands clasped behind him. I 
 knew he was thinking about me, and coming to under- 
 stand that I wanted this man with a particular gnaw- 
 ing, physical pain, uncommon, perhaps, to most girls. 
 He must have come to see, then, that I was more sensual 
 than the traditional woman. I'm sure there was noth- 
 ing ugly to him in the idea of sensuality. He believed 
 in first love and in the physical poetry of youth. He had 
 loved my mother suddenly and lastingly, and out of his 
 own experience he believed. 
 
 The night was voluptuous and heavy with sweetness. 
 The stars seemed to swoon in the amorous sky, and my 
 heart burned. I imagined my lover beside me, and 
 trembled at the conjured sense of his touch. I did not 
 analyse my longing or find my feeling for him lacking in 
 any way, but all the time, in the midst of my delirium, I 
 had a sense of shame and humiliation ; I knew that I 
 was in love with a man who did not love me, who loved 
 another woman and belonged to her. This I had forced 
 myself to face as the all-important fact. I had stared at 
 it, night and day, for a month, hoping that it would some- 
 how wither up and destroy my infatuation. I was deter- 
 mined to be free of him. 
 
 And then I had a letter from him. He merely said 
 that he'd had a nasty fall at polo a week before, had 
 broken his left arm, and that the doctors didn't know but 
 that something serious was the matter with his spine, so 
 he just wanted to write, in case to tell me that if he
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 169 
 
 was pronounced a cripple he was going to get out of this 
 world, and I must know he cared about me more than I 
 thought, so please not to think meanly of him. It ended 
 up : " My dear, I don't think you understand me, or 
 ever will; and I wonder what in blazes made you cry. 
 I've thought a lot about it. It stumps me; but don't 
 ever again over me, anyway I'm not worth it. 
 Yours, all the same, * Binky.' " It was a scrawl and a 
 scrap, and it upset all that I had been trying to accom- 
 plish. 
 
 Molly Tripp added to my pain and joy. She wrote 
 in a scattered, vivacious way, just as she talked 
 " Binky had come back from Bombay in the devil of a 
 temper. Nobody could get near him with a ten-foot 
 pole. What had I done to him? If I had refused him, 
 well, I had a perfect right to; Binky was a dear, but 
 rather conceited, and it would do him good to be refused 
 something that he wanted. He was sulking, and break- 
 ing in a new pony in the maddest style. Possessed, 
 absolutely possessed. Would certainly kill himself some 
 day." Then later: "Had killed himself tried to- 
 Major Smith, the surgeon, said it might be serious. She 
 was the only woman in the station. Claire had gone to 
 Simla, so she, Molly, sat by him and listened to him in 
 the evenings. She didn't know if she ought to tell, but 
 he kept muttering my name and something about ' damn 
 the money ! ' " And so the letter went on, until a third 
 postscript, evidently a week later, announced that there 
 was nothing seriously the matter. " He would be all 
 right in a few weeks. He always did have the de'il's 
 own luck ! " 
 
 Scrutiny of date and postmarks revealed that his letter 
 had missed the previous mail, so he was safe, and the
 
 170 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 world was standing on its head. I sat on the terrace of 
 Shepherd's Hotel gazing with beaming eyes at an Arab, 
 who expected every minute that I should buy the 
 spangled scarf he dangled before my seemingly entranced 
 vision. 
 
 It seemed after all that he did care, some, anyway. 
 
 How was I to know that Molly had lent herself to the 
 conspiracy? I'm not, of course, certain, even now, but 
 I suspect. Molly, you see, wanted Binky to marry me. 
 She thought it was time he did his duty by society and 
 the old duke. I suspect that she edited Binky's ravings 
 a bit. If my name was on Binky's lips once in his 
 delirium, Claire's must have been there a dozen times. 
 Claire had been harsh with him when he came back 
 from Bombay, and had gone off to Simla. Binky must 
 have found out then, for the first time, that he had lost 
 her for good. He had fallen between two stools, and the 
 odds are that he felt her snub the most. Poor Binky ! 
 
 As for me, if it seems that I was lifted out of drown- 
 ing depths upon a straw, it must be remembered that I 
 wanted to be lifted.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 BINKY had heavy reinforcements in London. He 
 didn't need them; I had already been defeated 
 in Cairo by those letters ; but he didn't, of course, 
 know this, so he turned them all on, or brought them all 
 up, whatever the term is. I don't mean to say that he 
 deliberately and carefully attacked me through my vanity. 
 It looked, I admit, as though he had reasoned it all out, 
 just how being presented by the duchess and fussed over 
 by a lot of lords and generals and smiled on by the king 
 would affect my giddy American head, but Binky isn't 
 clever enough for that. He must have just quite simply 
 set himself to giving me a good time with the nice, 
 vague hope I should find him a better sort of chap than 
 I had at first thought him. And so he stirred them all 
 into action for my amusement. It's funny to think of 
 the stiff old generals and solid dowagers who danced 
 about helping Binky to capture a poor child who was 
 already bound and gagged by her infatuation. I suppose 
 it did seem flattering. I suppose I must have enjoyed 
 it. It was a kind of antidote to that other humiliation. 
 There was firstly his family, made up of his uncle the 
 duke, and his aunt, his cousins, and their scenery ; and then 
 there were all their friends, with, again, their scenery. I 
 mean by scenery their titles and coronets and histories, 
 as well as the more or less wonderful houses they lived 
 in and the moors and deer forests they tried to hold on 
 
 171
 
 172 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 to, and the great array of elaborate sports and amuse- 
 ments they went in for. There were so many castles, 
 such endless family portraits, such yards of pearls, and 
 in the centre of it all was the duke himself, the most 
 deadly of all the weapons aimed against me. If there 
 had been nothing else, I could never have resisted the 
 duke. When he waved his hand in the direction of all 
 those turrets, indicating somehow without a word that 
 he was gracefully, and with perfect delicacy, giving them 
 to me, I was lost. I mean I should have been lost then, 
 if I had not been before. He was so marvellous to me, 
 so utterly marvellous. I can remember standing with him 
 that morning at the bottom of the field by the river, and 
 looking back at the castle, fairly choking with romantic 
 joy. It is certainly big enough, and some of it is old 
 enough, to delight any tourist, and if you had told me 
 then that I should come to dislike the place intensely, 
 I should not even have taken the trouble to laugh at 
 you. I was too happy. I was too hopelessly under the 
 spell of that old rake, Binky's uncle. 
 
 You must have seen his portrait by Moode, done in 
 hunting clothes. It is the absolute embodiment of the 
 romantic idea of an English gentleman. From the wave 
 in his long nose, and the weary, delicate droop of his 
 eyelids, to the heel of his boat, he is exquisite ; the most 
 beautiful thing in decadent and decrepit manhood that 
 ever lived. 
 
 But there were others besides the duke. Not quite so 
 fascinating, but all startlingly different from anything I 
 had ever met. There were, for instance, Clem and 
 Monica. Clem and Monica were the constant target for 
 Binky's criticism and contempt, but I gathered that he 
 admired them enormously all the same. They were in
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 173 
 
 themselves perfectly sustained denials of the actualities 
 of existence. Therein lay their charm. They were both 
 extremely unhealthy and ungainly, and so dowdy in their 
 dress that I thought this, like everything else about them, 
 was calculated, but I don't believe it was. I think it was 
 simply that they'd no taste and no time for clothes. 
 Monica is sallow, with sunken, flashing eyes, hollow 
 cheeks and long neck. She almost always wears a cerise 
 or green ribbon round her dark, untidy head, and she 
 talks with her chin far out, like a Rossetti picture. 
 Clem is smaller and fair, with very beautiful feet, which 
 she always reveals unstockinged at fancy-dress balls. 
 They are both clever, uncannily clever; and their clever- 
 ness is expended in transforming all the ordinary 
 activities of life into elaborate and fantastic rites. Going 
 to bed, for instance, is a simple enough thing, for me, at 
 least. I simply tumble in, roll up into a ball, and go 
 to sleep. Not so with Clem and Monica. Monica has 
 a black bedroom with a red lacquer bed in the middle of 
 it, an extremely high bed. One ascends by a flight of 
 steps, and enters into the sombre embrace of black 
 crepe de chine sheets. Monica wears no nightgown. 
 Call that simplicity if you like ! On the top step she 
 sheds her dressing gown of very moth-eaten golden satin, 
 and lays her very beautiful body between the black sheets, 
 and smokes little Bulgarian cigarettes until she finally 
 drops off. Only a few chosen friends are supposed to 
 know this. Clem's room is white, with no bed at all. 
 She sleeps on a quilt on the floor, with a Japanese wooden 
 pillow under her head. 
 
 You can imagine that I didn't know what to make of 
 them I don't know now. They were older than I, 
 centuries older, and they received me with delicate and
 
 174 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 subtle cordiality, and I warmed to them hopefully. I 
 might as well have warmed to a couple of goldfish. 
 
 I often wonder whether there are any simple feelings 
 left in them at all. I imagine their elaborated pose has 
 become for them the most real thing on earth, that they 
 couldn't drop it now, if they wanted to. It is impossible 
 to picture them mated to any man, or going through any 
 such common ordeal as having babies, though, if one 
 could have suggested any new and eccentric way of bring- 
 ing a child into the world, I'm sure they'd be charmed to 
 try it. 
 
 I never saw them kiss their mother anywhere except 
 on the top of the head, an attention which she received 
 with a grimace. Aunt Cora has a sense of humour 
 the sort of humour that the sphinx of Egypt might develop 
 some day. One gathered that she despised her family, 
 and all the rest of the world. She would like to live in 
 the country all the year round and knit socks, but the girls 
 won't let her. They insist on the fiction that their 
 mother is interested in art. They used to put her in her 
 box at the Russian ballet every night, where she sat 
 staring grimly at Chaliapine, and avenged herself by using 
 too much rouge. She never used to go to Monte Carlo 
 with the duke, but sent her housekeeper every year, at 
 the proper moment, to bring him home. I wonder if I 
 shall ever be like her! Binky, you know, had taken to 
 going to Monte Carlo before the war. 
 
 I'm certain Aunt Cora thinks I'm a fool, and always 
 has. She as much as says so. All the same, she's fond 
 of me in her grim way. 
 
 Anyhow they took me to Court with them, Clem and 
 Monica and Aunt Cora, and then to innumerable func- 
 tions and dances, and house-parties and elaborate pseudo-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 175 
 
 bohemian suppers; and introduced me to the endless 
 artists, celebrities, and human novelties that they had 
 gathered about them. 
 
 It was all rather dazzling, not the bohemian part, but 
 the formal part. There were so many jewels and so 
 many wonderful names. The mere business of getting 
 names straight was an effort. I was American enough to 
 feel it a little queer to address benevolent or terrible old 
 ladies as Lady Jane, Cora, or Bridget. You can't under- 
 stand, I suppose, the superstitious awe that Americans 
 feel for titles. It is one of those senseless things that 
 prove us so snobbish over there. I must have felt some- 
 thing of the same thing at first, though I had forgotten 
 until Louise recalled it to me on that fatal visit of hers. 
 Funnily enough, she had never been to see me here before, 
 and it was too much for her, poor child, too much for 
 her to carry calmly, I mean. She simply couldn't help 
 gasping and rolling her eyes and, so to speak, smacking 
 her lips. Doubtless she could scarcely contain within 
 herself all the things she was going to say when she got 
 back to Iroquois. You see, then, I liked Binky's scenery 
 awfully, but I liked him much better than any of his 
 trappings. 
 
 Although my father wanted to get home, I had per- 
 suaded him to take a house in London for the season. 
 He must have known that that meant only one thing 
 Binky. There was some sort of financial railway tangle 
 in America, and he ought to have been there to untie a 
 few railroads, but he stayed. I fancy that house in 
 Arlington Street cost him a good deal more than the 
 rent twenty or thirty times as much but he evidently 
 saw that nothing but having Binky would make me 
 happy. And you must remember he had nothing actually
 
 176 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 against Binky. He knew nothing of the Mrs. Hobbes 
 affair. If he had, he would have rushed me home in a 
 special armed cruiser if necessary. I knew that, so I 
 told him nothing. I trembled lest he discover, for I saw 
 that if he did discover now, I should have to fight him. 
 I should not have given up Binky, even for him, and, of 
 course, I didn't think much about the money difficulty. 
 I deceived my father, not because I was afraid he'd cut 
 me off without a penny and make me valueless to Binky, 
 but because I wanted to avoid the agony of defying him. 
 One can't avoid agony. One merely piles it up. 
 
 It's difficult to know what Binky would have done if 
 my father had discovered him, and had cut me off. I 
 think he would have committed suicide. He couldn't 
 have married me without the money, for he'd been 
 gambling heavily on the strength of getting me, and he 
 couldn't have thrown me over. Yes, I'm sure he would 
 have taken the easiest way out, and committed suicide. 
 He tried suicide once before. That was in Paris, years 
 ago, before I knew him, on account of the same thing 
 money. Binky's difficulties were always financial. 
 
 To eclipse any other image, or rather the other image 
 in Binky's mind, that was my purpose, and I threw 
 myself extravagantly into the business of pleasing him. 
 I carried on the ridiculous task that I set myself on the 
 night of that dinner when Ruffles talked so much. My 
 idea was to season myself to his taste, and I went about 
 it strangely enough. I began to wear jewels, pearl ear- 
 rings and a chain of pearls. I never went anywhere in 
 the daytime without three dogs, a French poodle, a 
 borzoi, and a Great Dane. I drove a tandem in the 
 park and rode a little mouse-coloured pony, and culti- 
 vated a lot of what I thought racy slang. It must all
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 177 
 
 have been evident to my father, and extremely painful. 
 
 I was, you see, rather a success in London; circum- 
 stances had arranged that, and I valued my success be- 
 cause it added to my value in Binky's eyes. I could 
 tell, or at least I imagined, that he desired me the more 
 because others desired me. I forgot how sweet he had 
 been that morning, after my defeat at Ruffles' hands. I 
 was only conscious of his pleasure in my little triumphs. 
 There is no jealousy in Binky. He is too shallow and 
 too sweet-natured to be jealous. It doesn't occur to 
 him that other people may be trying to get things away 
 from him. He's a generous creature, and very sure 
 of himself. He felt, in those days, that I was bound to 
 be his, and so he enjoyed watching other people amuse 
 me. I remember him as continually standing in door- 
 ways, watching me with that bright, quizzical look, as 
 though fearfully pleased and amused at the way I 
 enjoyed myself. Now and then at a dance he would 
 dash across to me, fling me a shower of little remarks, 
 claim a waltz, and then let some one else carry me off 
 again. His attitude piqued me. 
 
 Once, after three days' yachting, during which time 
 he spent every afternoon down below playing bridge with 
 three men, and the evenings too, I lost my temper. I 
 snubbed him, to his utter amazement. He was so de- 
 jected and mystified that I grew more and more angry. 
 He was floored, he was damned. What the devil had 
 he done? Eventually he hit upon the happy idea that I 
 was spoiled. That seemed to him to solve the whole 
 mystery. Of course, I was spoiled, and being angry 
 made me awfully pretty. He actually explained it all to 
 me, and said my tantrums amused him. It was quite 
 hopeless, I could never make him see. I realized that
 
 178 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 he had at no time the vaguest conception of what was 
 going on in my mind. Possibly, at this stage, things 
 might have taken a different turn, my brain might even 
 then have begun working lucidly and disastrously for 
 his matrimonial plans, had not something happened on 
 the Indian frontier, something in the way of an Afghan 
 raid. 
 
 All at once Binky was a changed man. You could 
 fairly see him sniffing up the smell of powder five thou- 
 sand miles distant. He was mad to be off, and under 
 the pressure of this excitement, he burst in on me one 
 evening. 
 
 Would I marry him? Would I promise? God, I 
 must promise ! If he couldn't come back for me, would 
 I come out to India? He adored me. He did so awfully 
 want me, for ever and ever, all for himself. 
 
 He took me suddenly in his arms, crushing me, hurt- 
 ing my shoulders and breasts. His voice sounded broken 
 and queer. There were tears in his eyes. 
 
 " Kiddy, dear, you mustn't think me a fool. Nobody's 
 ever seen me like this before. I didn't want you to. I 
 hate anybody to know what I feel. I love you ! I want 
 you dreadfully. You're so sweet, my heart, you don't 
 know. I may seem a casual sort of beggar, but I hide 
 lots of things you're so awfully sweet. You must 
 marry me ! " He hid his face in my bosom and cried, 
 and I thought of him at the head of his cavalry in the 
 furious dust and smoke of battle, and I was satisfied. 
 I was exalted. I believed 'everything he said, and saw 
 in the break-up of his reserve, not the weak expression 
 of a shallow emotion, but the evidence of great depths 
 of love. So with a little shuddering murmur I gave in, 
 and he kissed me. He pressed his careful, closed lips,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 179 
 
 with their hard bristly moustache, tight against my mouth, 
 and I shivered, not with the shock of this contact, but 
 with the shiver of virginity, that curious, unreal sensa- 
 tion produced by vague imaginings, faint, elusive promises 
 of mysterious experience, and the delicious super-physical 
 appeal of a lover's personality.
 
 CHAPTER Six 
 
 ABOUT a fortnight before this I had heard from 
 Jim. It's easy enough to understand that letter 
 now. I didn't then because my eyes and ears 
 were full of Binky, my wits taken up with the anomaly 
 of his many attentions and his indifference. Jim's letter 
 was a cry for help. There's no possible doubt about that. 
 Though I paid no attention to it at the time, I kept it, 
 and it reads obviously enough. The appeal between the 
 lines fairly screams at you. 
 
 " Why don't you come home ? Do you think we 
 couldn't give you as good a time as those English lords ? 
 Everybody says you'll marry one of them. Aren't we 
 good enough for you? You ought to hear Mrs. Bowers 
 talk. It makes me tired, and it would you. She's so 
 blamed envious of those coronets that you are kicking 
 about keeps lighting into Charlie for not having made 
 enough money to buy Louise one. Come on home and 
 show them. I keep telling them they're all daffy, that 
 you still love the old Kentucky home, but they don't 
 believe it. Louise says you can't be expected to care 
 any more." 
 
 Don't you see what was happening? He was strug- 
 gling for dear life against the power of the devil, and 
 besides this, he was, poor boy, in a very awkward posi- 
 tion. He felt, in a way, bound to me because of that 
 interchange of kisses on the pier, and my image still 
 
 180
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 181 
 
 floated before him faintly attractive and disturbing. It 
 may sound ridiculous for me to say that I know he 
 wanted, in the depths of his heart, to be true to me and 
 wait for me, but I know from Dick that he had actually 
 taken passage on a Cunard liner, was on the point of 
 coming across to me, when he got word of my engage- 
 ment. You may say that he ought to have come long 
 before. Of course he ought. He knows that, so do I, 
 but Louise kept him. She had been getting in some 
 deadly work on him, with her mother behind her, mask- 
 ing cleverly enough her attack, behind that talk about 
 coronets. Mrs. Bowers never, I'm sure, had any wish 
 to make an English match for Louise. She was, in the 
 first place, too clever to let her ambitions run away with 
 her. It was quite clear to her that Louise could never 
 make a first-class international haul; their money 
 wouldn't run to an Italian prince or an English duke, 
 and a little tuppenny French count was no use. Also, 
 she quite selfishly and humanly wanted to keep Louise at 
 home. She wanted her to make the best possible local 
 match, and settle down round the corner. Jim was that 
 match. Harry Van Orden had died and had left Jim a 
 very respectable pile of railway stock and real estate. 
 He was, as a matter of fact, the richest young bachelor 
 in Iroquois, and he was cutting a dash, with two or three 
 motor-cars, a yacht and a big house, where he entertained. 
 Mrs. Bowers was American enough to value earthly pos- 
 sessions very highly indeed. The actual, brand-new 
 things that Jim possessed, and the other things that he 
 would undoubtedly give Louise, seemed more important 
 to this mother than a moth-eaten palace and an ancient 
 name, which one might find by rummaging about in 
 Europe. Mrs. Bowers's efficiency lay in the definite
 
 i8a THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 limits of her imagination. Her ambitions and her 
 energies were concentrated and sharply pointed to one 
 end: namely, to the establishing of her daughter at the 
 tip-top of Iroquois society. 
 
 You doubtless think of Louise as rather dull and not 
 at all dangerous. Well, she had been transformed. Of 
 course, it was a sham, but what of that? She had made 
 her debut that winter, and her mother had, in her marvel- 
 lous maternal genius, achieved a miracle. She had made 
 Louise suddenly appear to be the most desirable and 
 priceless and unattainable jewel in the matrimonial 
 market. With infinite pain she created a superstition and 
 cast a nimbus round Louise, that made her mysterious 
 and wonderful. 
 
 If you place a bit of glass in a velvet case, lock the 
 case with a golden key and keep it in a shadowy cabinet, 
 only bringing it out for display after much persuasion, 
 and with obvious nervousness, you are pretty sure of 
 deceiving people into thinking it a diamond. Louise was 
 put in a velvet case, and the case was kept locked, and 
 a peep at her was a great condescension on the part of 
 the jailer, or the connoisseur, whichever you choose to 
 call her shrewd little mother. Louise, having been sud- 
 denly produced from Paris, brand new, as to clothes, 
 manners and general equipment, was introduced to 
 Iroquois with much ceremony, after which she was 
 allowed to go to only the most exclusive parties, was 
 whisked away from dances in the very middle of the 
 fun, and was every moment of the day and night 
 chaperoned sternly and jealously yet not too sternly. 
 Young men were warned off, but in the very act of dis- 
 missal would catch the tail of an inviting glance. Mrs. 
 Bowers knew just how forbidding to be, and just how
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 183 
 
 cordial. I have a picture of Louise being waved dis- 
 tractingly in the face of the manhood of Iroquois, 
 waved like a flag and then suddenly withdrawn. 
 
 The secret of half-revelation was well understood by 
 Mrs. Bowers. Louise's clothes were marvels of allure- 
 ment. They were cut out and slit up in the most alarm- 
 ing manner, and yet somehow, in them, she was taught 
 how to behave so that the effect was that of an angel 
 or a very young goddess, decked out unknowingly in 
 the enticing garments of a demi-mondaine. Yes, she 
 must have looked quite like a very modish angel, about 
 this time. Her stupidity gave her an air of the most 
 charming innocence, and her very blue eyes were to the 
 young men of Iroquois, I've no doubt, like heaven itself. 
 All her energy was conserved for the business of attract- 
 ing, an occupation which she pursued with unfeigned 
 enthusiasm. She was kept in bed until noon every day, 
 and there was on her round cheeks the bloom of per- 
 fect health. She had no need to fatigue her brain, 
 because she had been taught by her mother exactly what 
 to think and say and do, on every occasion. She knew 
 just whom to snub and how to do it, just what books 
 to skim, and how to discuss them gracefully. So finished 
 was her education that she pretended an extreme devo- 
 tion to independence of thought and sincerity of speech ; 
 and the way she energetically nodded her head and em- 
 phasized the little parrot words learned from her mother's 
 lips was most fetching in its sincerity. Enthusiasm was 
 her note, graceful, graded enthusiasm that found expres- 
 sion in dancing eyes, laughing lips, endless untired ges- 
 tures, and little screams and gasps and oh's and ah's of 
 appreciation and delight. I repeat, this enthusiasm was 
 not feigned. It was natural, a precious spring, having
 
 184 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 its source in perfect health, carefully guarded by her 
 mother. To the end of her life Louise neither smoked, 
 drank any kind of wine, or even tea or coffee. She 
 drank milk and ate fruit, and she would have outlasted 
 us all. You only had to look at the bushy vigour of her 
 hair. I mean her cheeks would have been the last to 
 wither, and her teeth the last to decay. A perfect 
 physique, no bad habits, and a complete set of attitudes, 
 supplied ready-made, to save her from the problems of 
 existence, these would have kept her for years just as 
 she was. 
 
 Of course, as she did not grow any older or more 
 human in the ten years of her marriage, she was not 
 at the end of them as effective as she used to be. The 
 airs and graces of a debutante don't go down so well in 
 a married woman of thirty, but it's not difficult to see 
 how she landed Jim, she and her mother together. Any- 
 how, she did land him. He was already, as I say, strug- 
 gling in the net when he wrote me that letter, and soon 
 after my wedding he took her yachting, and at the end 
 of the trip they were engaged. 
 
 When I say that this letter was a cry for help, I don't 
 mean that they made him marry her against his will, or 
 that he wasn't, as a matter of fact, madly infatuated 
 with her by the time the summer was over. He was. 
 I don't wish to minimize his terribly intense desire for 
 her; it's just that that makes it so pathetic. You've no 
 idea how sensitive and vulnerable he was. He was a 
 hot-headed idealist, absurdly susceptible to the romance 
 of sex. He was incorrigible and fatal. 
 
 He was, at the same moment, on fire with hope, and 
 convulsed with cynical merriment, and enraged at his 
 predicament. He felt it coming, and he was ashamed.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 185 
 
 He knew at that crucial stage that he was going to 
 plunge mto a lying heaven, and he knew, too, that some 
 day he would come out of it disillusioned, and he wrote to 
 me to save him. You see, we are rather alike. I didn't 
 answer. I was taken up with Binky, and six months later 
 Jim was lying awake at night in a state of dementia, 
 because Louise had put off accepting him. 
 
 They told me, Dick and Jerry, that he nearly went 
 off his head. She refused him time after time, and each 
 time he set his teeth and went at it again. He sent her 
 American Beauty roses, six feet high, every Sunday, and 
 gave her every kind of party, bought gold dishes for his 
 table to tempt her, and fabulously expensive ponies for 
 his stables, and his face grew whiter and whiter, and 
 his eyes darker and deeper, and his absurd curly mouth 
 more absurd and set with pain, until at last the seventh 
 time she gave in. 
 
 It is all terribly pathetic to me, and Louise's effort 
 at last, when it was too late, not the last pathetic part 
 of it. She didn't care for him when she married him, 
 that is certain. She merely gave way to the terrible 
 flattery of his desire, and then, years after, when she 
 began to see what he thought of her, how she had 
 destroyed herself in his eyes, she tried to make herself 
 over, and she couldn't. Mrs. Bowers had done her work 
 too well. It was impossible for Louise to throw off 
 the dead corpse that she was encased in. It was so im- 
 possible that I never even gave her credit for trying. 
 She had reiterated so many lying times her love of 
 sincerity, that at length, on that last ghastly occasion when 
 they were here, and when she was really in despair, I 
 couldn't believe. 
 
 I have all my life failed to believe at the crucial mo-
 
 1 86 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 ment. I might have saved them both that night two 
 years ago had I believed her, instead of being put off 
 by her disgusting antics with Britton in the drawing- 
 room. I might have saved us all ages before, if I had 
 only stopped, on the bidding of that exquisite impulse, 
 when I got Jim's letter, but I didn't. I stifled it and, as 
 I say, turned to greet Binky's satisfied countenance. I 
 remember looking him up and down as he stood in the 
 doorway, and definitely giving in to the attraction of 
 his wide, slack shoulders, the delightful cavity under 
 his waistcoat, and the poise of his long, narrow hips. 
 Certainly I can't blame Jim for giving in to Louise's 
 charm. 
 
 I made up my mind, when Binky came to me, to be 
 married at once and go out with him to India, and I 
 carried my point, though it meant sailing in the mon- 
 soon, and leaving my father to go back to America alone. 
 I had scarce a qualm about my father, and no desire 
 whatever to go back to Iroquois, and be married in the 
 midst of my family and friends. 
 
 I was incredibly happy. Every doubt had vanished. 
 I forgot that I had deceived my father about Binky, or 
 that Binky had ever, at the beginning, deceived me. 
 Nothing unpleasant seemed to me of any importance, 
 and all the smallest pleasantries were great and glorious. 
 Everything had to be done in a fortnight, trousseau, 
 legal business, everything. Jerry and Bud arrived from 
 different Continents, and professed themselves satisfied 
 with their new brother-in-law ; but I wouldn't have cared 
 if they had been disgusted. Binky was certainly very 
 charming during those days. His worries, too, were at an 
 end. Nevermore would he be hard-up ; and so he could 
 afford to be merry. Doubtless a wave of gratitude toward
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 187 
 
 me, made him think himself more than a little in love ; or 
 rather, I believe he really did begin to care for me then, 
 out of gratitude. In the short interval between our 
 engagement and wedding, he talked more to me than 
 ever before, talked exultingly and happily. It was 
 agreed that he was not to stop soldiering, under any 
 circumstances, under any circumstances meaning however 
 much money my father settled on us. He was ambitious. 
 He wanted to get to the top, though just what the top 
 was I couldn't make out. He would fling about the 
 room among the litter of wedding presents, throwing out 
 his remarks in that jerky way of his. " You and I can 
 do anything, my dear. Anything. I've had good luck 
 some ways, but awful bad luck in others. In East 
 Africa, that swine, my Colonel he did his best to keep 
 me from getting a V.C. I'll score him off yet. In active 
 service I can show what I'm worth. My men like me 
 I don't say much but they like me. Old Bradford, he's 
 a good fella, he'll get me a staff appointment, if I want 
 it, but I think it's best to stick by the regiment for a bit, 
 or get shifted home, in the Life Guards. We couldn't 
 
 afford the Life Guards before, but now Would you 
 
 like to come home, Kiddy, dear, or stay in India?" He 
 would dive at me from across the room, kiss me and 
 fling off again. " India's all very well if there's a 
 chance of a show. If we do get any fighting, and I get 
 promotion, then we might come home. What do you say? 
 Oh, my dear, you do look sweet ; you're the prettiest thing 
 in the world! I've got my eyes on the very pony for 
 you and Ruffles has rather a decent hunter he wants 
 to sell. I'm afraid you'll hate the monsoon. I feel a 
 brute taking you out. You'll have to go to the hills 
 Simla for a bit. You couldn't stand it in the plains.
 
 1 88 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Molly Tripp'll take you in! It'll only be for a month. 
 Then you'll come down to me, unless we're ordered into 
 Afghanistan. The old Ameer can't keep order, you see. 
 
 Silly old beggar " And so, on and on, while I 
 
 watched the play of light on his face a light so vivid 
 on a face so beautiful that it tricked you easily enough 
 into believing these were fine sentiments. 
 
 And wedding presents poured in, and the machinery of 
 a wedding in English high life whirred so dizzily in my 
 ears, sped so dazzlingly before my eyes, that I had no 
 time to doubt, no power to think. I lived in a maze of 
 cardboard boxes and flowers and bits of silver and bits 
 of crystal and rare china and jewels and clothes and 
 congratulations and strange ingratiating faces, red faces 
 and withered faces, sharp, aristocratic faces, and beefy, 
 bloated faces, all with more or less weighty names at- 
 tached to them, all creating a chorus of sights and 
 sounds and impressions that rose higher and higher in 
 a crescendo of excitement that crashed at last into the 
 thin, small note of the Bishop's voice in St. Margaret's 
 Church, Westminster, telling me that I was married.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 MY delight in Binky, the rapture of that first 
 year of marriage, seems incredible to me now. 
 I am almost ashamed of it. I was so happy 
 that it made me feel religious. It's a funny thing that 
 extreme sensual pleasure should make me think about 
 God, but it does. I was young, and the superstitious 
 impulse to link up sensations to eternal truths, was 
 strong in me. Binky gave me delight of my senses, 
 therefore I thought him divine and our union sublime. 
 Because of the taste of his lips, I took the nobility of his 
 soul on faith. Heaven was in a sensation and eternity 
 in the contact of bodies. Our happiness was, I literally 
 believed, eternal. And God, whom I had hated and 
 denied, appeared to me again. When I opened my arms 
 to my husband, my heart was lifted up in prayer. That's 
 a Biblical phrase, but it expresses the exaltation that I 
 felt. 
 
 It is all very curious. The process by which girls 
 grow into women, and women grow old, is very curious. 
 It is a process of tearing to pieces and violently putting 
 together. My enjoyment of Binky did not begin with 
 the day of our wedding. It took weeks of confusion 
 and horror and revulsion. I remember on the ship, 
 going out to India, contemplating suicide ; I remember 
 being frantic with terror and disgust. Everything 
 seemed dislocated. Binky himself was two distinct 
 
 189
 
 190 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 people, an adored idol and an instrument of torture. I 
 was a bundle of aching fragments. It was like being 
 torn limb from limb, and then being put together on an 
 entirely new plan. Gradually, however, things did fit 
 together and heal up. The romantic lover and the actual 
 husband became one, and my soul and body became one. 
 That is to me the complete moment in a woman's life, the 
 moment when dreams and reality- are reconciled, when 
 the delights of sense seem to hold an infinite spiritual 
 meaning. If one could only hold on to that! I believe 
 one might. I believe some people do. It is only neces- 
 sary to be loyal and fine and true to oneself that's 
 all. To have, in the act of sex, one's mind beautifully 
 involved, and one's imagination illumined, that is the 
 hope of all romantic people. I refuse to admit that it 
 is impossible. For me it was true until well, until 
 I found Binky out. Binky wasn't what I expected I 
 was mistaken, but then I might not have been. I don't 
 see why people shouldn't be happily married if they'll 
 take the trouble to try. The trouble isn't with the mar- 
 riage state, it's with the people. It's just as difficult to 
 make a happy marriage as a perfect aeroplane. It takes 
 infinite pains, perfectly adjusted machinery, but they are 
 both beautiful creations. There is always in my mind the 
 memory of my father and mother. As for me, after the 
 first weeks of adjustment I was very happy, and absorbed 
 in Binky. 
 
 The rest of life was meaningless. I can scarcely re- 
 member anything about it. There was no frontier show 
 in Afghanistan after all, and I did not go to Simla with 
 Molly Tripp. By the end of September we were settled 
 in our new bungalow and the usual Anglo-Indian life, 
 with its tennis-parties and its calls, its polo and dances
 
 and dinings out, had begun, but I can scarcely remem- 
 ber a single person out of all the cantonment except 
 Molly Tripp, whom I had known before, and some of 
 Binky's fellow-officers. I went among people like a 
 somnambulist, but the little stupid activities that busied 
 my days held for me a certain inverted pleasure, their 
 dulness adding to the delicious taste of my secret life. 
 Sometimes in the mornings I went with an orderly into 
 the bazaar, where the clamour of the crowds, the welter 
 of harsh colour and the pungent smells made a kind of 
 stimulating undertone to my happiness. The glower and 
 glare of bearded ruffians, the stare of superb, filthy 
 women, quickened my sense of my own rich experience. 
 I was glad of the desert and the menace of danger, glad 
 of it all as a panorama spreading about the small shelter 
 of Binky's arms, but I took no interest in the native city 
 or anything else. I was profoundly egotistical in regard 
 to the universe. 
 
 It was the unexpected sight of my husband, somewhere, 
 that alone moved me out of my dream. The geography 
 of the cantonment, as I remember it, is made up of a 
 network of places where I had been with him, had 
 come upon him unexpectedly, or had left him. There 
 are patches of tennis-court that were a green table for his 
 figure, stretches of white road down which I used to 
 see him riding, shadowed doorways and festooned 
 verandahs that framed his head and shoulders, parade- 
 grounds that diminished him to a galloping speck; that 
 was all. I have no memory of the place other than this, 
 and, likewise, no person dwells in my mind, except as a 
 foil to him. 
 
 Only my bungalow, and in the bungalow, particularly 
 my bedroom, remains a memory vivid, and complete for
 
 192 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 ever, in every detail. I have only to shut my eyes to 
 recall the exact line of the whitewashed wall cut by the 
 cretonne curtains, the sagging surface of the large white 
 iron bed, the chair on which he flung the dressing-gown. 
 The ugly brown doors that led off on either side to our 
 dressing-rooms were to me emblematic portals. Through 
 the right-hand door I used to emerge in my dressing- 
 gown and slip into bed. Through the left-hand door he 
 came to me in his striped pyjamas, and through it he 
 would vanish again in the morning to bathe, while I lay 
 staring at its streaked face covered with blistered paint, 
 behind which I heard the water splashing. His gar- 
 ments, his shaving-soap, his uniforms and swords and 
 spurs, the table at which we breakfasted, the array of 
 bottles that held his drinks, the aroma of his favourite 
 drink, vermouth, the dogs that climbed over him of an 
 evening by the fire, the smell of his stables where he 
 spent much of his time with his ponies, the warm light 
 from the lamp on his desk that fell on his ruddy, knit 
 forehead, the bugle call from the barracks that woke 
 me in the morning with a clear shock of knowledge, these 
 were to me the only realities. The social life of the 
 station, its flirtations, its jealousies and scandals and 
 ambitions, fled past me in a blur, as a landscape past the 
 windows of a train. 
 
 I suppose we must have had difficulties during the 
 winter, I suppose Binky surprised me now and then by 
 his philosophy of the expedient, but I did not suspect 
 that he was going to disappoint me in any fundamental 
 way, until that night when I told him about Archie, who 
 was to be his son, and who at this present moment is 
 doing circus-tricks with his pony in the south pasture. 
 Any pastime that affords special opportunities for break-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 193 
 
 ing one's neck, is as attractive to Archie as to his father. 
 I can see him from my window. He is trying to stand 
 on his hands on the pony's bare back. Now he has 
 fallen off. The field is soft ! He will come in extremely 
 muddy, with some black and blue spots, and after a 
 bath, Ruffles, who is home on leave, will egg him on to 
 greater exploits. His ambition is to play polo as well 
 as Ruffles Ruffles is his idol. 
 
 I was very uncomfortable before Archie was born, un- 
 comfortable and lonely. It seemed very difficult, some- 
 how, to tell Binky what was the matter, and as I put 
 off telling him, I grew more and more nervous. I must 
 have felt instinctively that he was going to fail me, pos- 
 sibly hurt me. Nature, however, was interfering with 
 my pleasure in him, and finally I began to feel so ill that 
 I couldn't bear him near me, so I was forced to tell 
 him. 
 
 It was a hot night, towards the end of March. He 
 had been to a regimental dinner in honour of the Cavalry 
 General, and came home late, very happy, full of anecdotes 
 and chuckles. He was evidently very much pleased 
 because the General had singled him out. 
 
 " I've asked him here tomorrow, my dear. He wants 
 to see you sent his respects." 
 
 I was in bed, and I sat up abruptly. I didn't like the 
 Cavalry General at all, and I said so. 
 
 " He's a beast ! I know. Any man that would shove 
 his wife and five children down into the plains in the 
 hot weather just so that she'll be driven mad with loneli- 
 ness and amuse herself, and then divorce her " I 
 
 was mixed in my speech, but definite enough as to my 
 meaning. " Really, Binky, I can't see how you can stick 
 up for him. It was a put-up job, so that he could marry
 
 194 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 again you know it. I hate him ! How could you 
 think I'd entertain him again?" 
 
 Binky raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, lit 
 a cigarette. 
 
 " You see, my dear, personal feeling has nothing to 
 do with it. I admit he acted rather like a swine. All 
 the same, as long as I am here he's got me in the hollow 
 of his hand. You want me to get on, I s'pose ? " He 
 came across to the bed and bent down to kiss me. I 
 turned away my head. I was feeling nauseated, any- 
 way, and my mind was full of something else, something 
 wonderful and portentous, that made this business utterly 
 disgusting. 
 
 Binky was slightly annoyed at my refusing to kiss 
 him. He flung back to his stand at the foot of the bed. 
 " You don't mind bein' nice to a low-down beggar, a 
 down and outer that you don't like; why do you mind 
 being nice to some one on top ? It's perverted snobbery." 
 That was clever of him, and I was too tired to argue. 
 I flung myself back on the pillows. 
 
 " Oh, very well. I'll give him lunch." 
 
 He began to chuckle. " Henry was most amusing to- 
 night. He was just drunk enough." I groaned. Had 
 he never talked like this before, or had I never heard? 
 
 " Why on earth did Molly ever marry Henry ? " I 
 brought out. 
 
 " Because she thought he was going to get on." 
 
 " Why does she stand it now ? " 
 
 " Well, you see, she's no money ; she can't very well 
 leave him, poor old dear ! " 
 
 " She ought to leave him. It's horrible the way he 
 insults her. She ought to leave him for the good of her 
 own soul."
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 195 
 
 At this he burst out laughing. He dashed at me with 
 absurd caresses. " My funny kiddy ! You do say the 
 strangest things! The first thing you know you'll be 
 leaving me for the good of your soul." He was highly 
 amused, and his laughing kisses nearly strangled me. 
 Finally he disappeared into his dressing-room and I lay 
 quaking in a panic. For one moment I imagined he 
 might be angry when he heard. He might even hit me ; 
 and then I laughed miserably at my own hysteria. He 
 came out still laughing and something in his laugh told 
 me what was to follow and I realized that he had been 
 drinking more than usual. For the first time his drink- 
 ing and his amorous moods seemed connected. I felt 
 unusually ill and wanted to escape his embrace. Of a 
 sudden there was something commonplace, even sinister 
 in his masculinity. He blew out the light, nestled beside 
 me, his breath hot and fast. 
 
 Quickly in a panic I spoke. " I feel ill, sick ! " 
 
 " Good Lord, do you ? " He lifted himself on an elbow. 
 " What's the matter, my poor kiddy ? " 
 
 " I've been feeling sick for some time." 
 
 " Dash it ! It must be the hot weather. You'll have 
 to be going to the hills." He leaned over me again. 
 Again I cut him short. 
 
 " No, it's not the weather." I nearly choked. It was, 
 after all, a terrible and beautiful thing I had to tell him. 
 I put an arm around his neck and drew his head close. 
 "I I I'm going to have a baby," I whispered, then 
 waited. I had thought he might take me swiftly, pro- 
 tectingly in his arms, or he might be angry, or might 
 cower, frightened, like myself, before the unspeakable 
 mystery, but I heard from his lips a low whistle. That 
 was all, a long outlet of breath, just such an expression
 
 196 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 of amazement as a small boy gives vent to at the an- 
 nouncement that somebody else's dog has been killed, 
 or something of that kind. There was a silence. 
 
 " So I've given you a little son, have I ? " His voice 
 was quite natural, tinged with the affectionate and 
 frivolous raillery he often used. " I hope the little beg- 
 gar doesn't kick up much of a shindy yet awhile." I 
 could scarcely believe my ears. 
 
 " Binky, don't you care ? " My consternation missed 
 him, but the pain in my voice enlisted his sympathy. 
 
 "Of course I care, my dear ; how can you think I 
 don't? Poor little kiddy! Do you feel rottenly? I'm 
 so sorry. You'll have to go to the hills right away." 
 He caressed me kindly, kissed my eyes, turned over and 
 presently went to sleep. 
 
 I told myself later that this was the right attitude, 
 that I was sentimental and absurd, that, after all, having 
 a baby was just having a baby, a thing that happened 
 to everybody every day of the year. But argue as I 
 would, I knew he had failed me in one of the crucial 
 moments of my life. 
 
 I went to Simla, and he joined me three months later. 
 In those three months I had travelled a long way on 
 that strange and weary road of dread, hope, and precious 
 discomfort, and when he came I felt nervous lest he be 
 embarrassed by my changed appearance. I had pre- 
 pared myself for that shock, but he seemed not to notice 
 or to mind. I had never dreamed that his philosophy 
 of life was so complete. He succeeded quite as easily 
 in staring this fact out of existence as any other. We 
 never alluded to it. He was kind and courteous, and 
 the month he spent with me was a sufficiency successful, 
 mutual pretence that nothing was strange about me,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 197 
 
 nothing different between us. He was tired, and spent 
 much of his time sleeping, lazing, or playing bridge. He 
 didn't seem to want to go out without me, and I was 
 actually grateful for that. Altogether he really behaved 
 very well, but I perceived that the whole of this sublime 
 adventure of mine must be my own. He would never 
 understand anything about it. 
 
 At the end of the month he went away, and I stifled 
 the last desperate impulse to throw myself into his arms, 
 and demand of him something that he was withholding 
 from me. He did not like scenes ; he admired self-con- 
 trol ; he believed in the denying of all emotional meaning. 
 I knew this and said good-bye quite casually, and stood 
 up in my rickshaw at the top of the Kud, watching 
 him descend. At a turning, he lifted his fine head, 
 waved me a kiss and left me alone, no one knows how 
 alone. 
 
 Archie was born in October. Binky wasn't there, 
 of course. I remember when it was all over, and I lay 
 in bed with that little soft person in my arms, trembling 
 with a curious new joy, that I was afraid of the thought 
 of Binky. I was afraid of his coming; afraid that he 
 would hurt me in my weakness. It seemed to me that 
 if he saw me with the baby in my arms and that strange 
 softness showing in my face, he wouldn't understand. 
 He might make fun of my yearning over my child, or 
 he might never notice it at all. I decided that it would 
 be better if he didn't notice it, if he never had a chance 
 to see it. I dreaded being exposed, in my new mother- 
 hood, to his gaze, and so I sent word to him that I was 
 all right and that he was not to bother about coming up 
 to Simla. I should not have kept him away, I suppose. 
 If I had dared then to show him what I felt, it would
 
 198 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 have been better for us both. I know so well now that 
 his casual manner was just a disguise dictated by his 
 taste. He was more shy of mystery than I, and he hid 
 from it. I might have seen, if I had let him come then, 
 but I didn't, and I imagined that all the business of 
 maternity was unpleasant to him. I kept Archie to my- 
 self for six weeks, jealously, frantically loving him, and 
 ashamed of the fierceness of my feeling for him, and in 
 two months I was back again, sharing Binky's bed, and 
 denying to myself that anything disastrous had happened, 
 but believing it all the same. I kept Archie out of his 
 way, and he seemed to take this as a matter of course. 
 Occasionally he looked at him in his pram, poked a 
 finger into his stomach and called him a " funny little 
 tomato," but for the most part, he paid him no atten- 
 tion. What I wanted him to do, I don't quite know. I 
 remember once coming home to find him wheeling the 
 pram round the garden, and I was pleased until he 
 began to curse the ayah, .whom he had found with a 
 cigarette, and had hurled out of the verandah by the scruff 
 of the neck. I suppose I wanted him to be poetic about 
 babies in general, and mine in particular, and he wasn't. 
 He took it all as a matter of course,- and instead of 
 letting me see that motherhood had made me more 
 wonderful in his eyes, he was merely pleased that it 
 hadn't altered my figure. 
 
 Early the next spring the regiment was transferred and 
 we came home, and just fourteen months after Archie's 
 birth, Humphry was born. I knew this time just what 
 to expect. We took a house in Queen Anne's Gate. 
 It was a narrow house with the nurseries at the top, and 
 I got into the habit of going up to them, as it were, 
 secretly. Something in the manner of our relations con-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 199 
 
 firmed me in my feeling that it wasn't considered good 
 form to show oneself a passionate mother. Clem and 
 Monica pitied me, and condoled with me on the nuisance 
 of having Humphry, and professed an extravagant ad- 
 miration for my courage when I said mildly that I 
 didn't mind. They turned up gracefully, however, for 
 the christening, seeming to take quite seriously all the 
 elaborate fuss of godfathers and godmothers, and the 
 formal ceremony that so tormented my poor little atom. 
 He screamed all through it, and I was in an agony of 
 nerves, and Binky was annoyed. It was dreadful to 
 me that Binky should be annoyed by Humphry's crying. 
 I was furious with them all. I wanted to grab him from 
 the nurse and run away with him, and have him all to 
 myself, but the nurse carried him severely out to the 
 motor, and I was made to feel that this was not my 
 affair at all. 
 
 One afternoon Clem and Monica climbed up to the 
 nursery, and found me on my back on the floor with 
 Archie climbing over my stomach and Humphry quite 
 naked in my hands, being kissed all over. Humpy was 
 only six months old then. He didn't appreciate the look 
 on their faces, but I did. I remember the slight, horri- 
 fied quivering on Monica's ear-rings, and the little cry 
 that she so bravely and beautifully turned from horror 
 into admiration. Clem turned quite pale. 
 
 After that, even in the nursery and behind closed 
 doors, I tried to discipline my hungry hands and lips 
 and yearning voice. Only on great occasions, when 
 nurse was out and Binky quite safe on duty at the palace, 
 did I allow my sons the pleasure of their favourite lul- 
 laby : " There was an old darky and his name was Uncle 
 Ned."
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 IT was one of those extraordinary coincidences that 
 make one look into them superstition sly, suspect- 
 ing a special and pointed caprice of fate. I so 
 seldom walked through the Park. I can't remember ever 
 before having sat down in Kensington Gardens. The 
 sunlight, the fluttering leaves and laughing children were 
 attractive, certainly ; but they had never tempted me 
 before. It must have been the dim light and delicate 
 gossip in Cadogan Square that, having set my nerves 
 on edge, made the Park look inviting. ' I was due at 
 various " At Homes," but it occurred to me that I might 
 come on my own children with their attendant nurses. 
 I had, at the sight of the balloon woman by the gate, a 
 sudden intense desire to see them, and I left the car 
 and walked in. It was not yet four o'clock. I could 
 skip my dressmaker, and get to the American Embassy 
 in plenty of time to pour out tea. 
 
 I had been lunching with Clem and Monica. That in 
 some measure accounted for my mood. They were be- 
 ginning to weary me dreadfully. And their extrava- 
 gant regard for myself was the most trying part of it all. 
 I saw myself, as I appeared to them, as fascinating as a 
 wild she-elephant. They delighted in me as they de- 
 lighted in all freaks of nature. I was their prize curiosity, 
 their blue-ribbon sensation. This had come to me gradu- 
 ally, after I had groped blindly toward a warming, prosaic 
 
 200
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 201 
 
 affection, and had been repeatedly chilled by the draught 
 of their surprise. What surprised them most was my 
 liking for my husband. They constantly expected me to 
 repudiate him, or rather to repudiate what he stood for; 
 marriage, conjugality, the social law. Having benefited 
 no end by my arrival on the horizon, having allowed me 
 to become the mascot of the family, they now tempted 
 me to avenge myself by laughing at him and them. 
 They wanted the fun of seeing me turn on them all. In 
 regard to Binky, they intimated that a person so capri- 
 cious as myself, could not be expected to subsist on such 
 monotonous diet as Binky served up to me. The idea 
 of wifely fidelity was to them a quaint idea, a curiously 
 musty, dusty idea, and that I should be true to Binky 
 in thought as well as in deed, was bewildering. They 
 could not reconcile such vulgarity with such tempera- 
 ment. They were, of course, possessed with the idea 
 of my having a temperament. Any one who looked, and 
 sang and danced as I did, must have a temperament. 
 You see, they were hoodwinked by that American joke 
 I spoke of, in the very beginning of this book, the joke 
 of my looks. 
 
 They not only depressed me, but they intimidated me. 
 So consistent were they, so complete, that I could find 
 in their artificial universe not a crack large enough to 
 receive the wedge of disbelief or scorn. I was forced 
 to admire and to admit a reality that I longed to expose 
 as a fake. 
 
 At luncheon they had been in great form. 1 Their 
 spirit of rare and perverse enjoyment gave them the 
 advantage over my less beautiful mood. I ate lunch 
 savagely in silence, while they talked about Joseph. That 
 was the first time, strangely enough, that I heard of
 
 202 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Joseph. He had, it seemed, recited some of his poems 
 at somebody's house the day before, and they were wild 
 about him. I gathered that the poems were about dead 
 white moths laying eggs, and green caterpillars crawling 
 on decayed leaves. Monica was quite sure that he was 
 ushering in a new art, a new school of poetry. She 
 called him an Imagist or Vorticist or something. Clem 
 was a little dubious about the poetry, but entirely con- 
 vinced about his personality. It was a shy, fierce person- 
 ality, very disturbing. Indeed, one might say that it 
 was the only personality in London. They were going 
 to take him up. Between the roast mutton and the 
 rice-pudding, I was given a mental picture of the young 
 man, his ferocious looks, his shy, wild eyes, his delicately 
 hooked nose. He was not particularly clean, but his 
 fingers were very nice and long. He recited the poem 
 about the dead white moth laying eggs, in monotone, a 
 jerky, fierce monotone. 
 
 I sniffed while eating rice-pudding. I didn't believe 
 in the young man's genius. I didn't like his uncleanli- 
 ness or his dead moths, or Aunt Cora's rice-pudding. 
 Aunt Cora always gave one roast leg of mutton and milk 
 pudding for lunch. I suspect very plain food was her 
 protest against her daughters' conversation. I remem- 
 ber Clem with a largish plate of stewed prunes and rice 
 in front of her, telling me that the dead white moth and 
 its eggs was a new and wholly excellent image of the 
 procreating universe. Clem's face was as smooth and 
 fair as a Botticelli Madonna. Her eyes, in their shallow 
 setting, were rather Japanese. She had on, for a dress, 
 a piece of very old moth-eaten Persian embroidery. I 
 remember feeling extremely lonely and opulent. I was 
 both too well-dressed and too hungry to take an intelli-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 203 
 
 gent interest in Joseph. When I left them in the meagre 
 chintz-covered morning-room chintz was another of 
 Aunt Cora's protests the touch of their pale lips made 
 me shiver. Had I flung my arms about either of them, 
 they would surely have crumbled away. 
 
 I walked hurriedly through the gardens. A sight of 
 my own round, solid sons in their very ordinary, actual 
 prams, would restore my balance, but they were nowhere 
 to be seen. I spent a quarter of an hour searching for 
 their two white caps, and then dropped into an empty 
 chair under a wide-spreading tree. I sat and gazed over 
 the soothing green of the grass. In the distance sheep 
 were grazing. A light haze hung over the lake, rendering 
 the fagade of the far houses romantic and beautiful. 
 My eyes dwelt with relief on the sheep. Thank God, 
 there were sheep on the earth who just nibbled, nibbled, 
 nibbled, hundreds of them, all the same absurd, grubby, 
 round, senseless things. I took a penny from my purse 
 and gave it to the man who came toward me with a 
 ticket in his dirty hand. I smiled at him. He was thin 
 and unshaven, with a kind, humorous eye and limp 
 moustache; he comforted me, so did the sheep, and I 
 sat happily watching him slouch away, while the voices 
 of children playing near by sounded pleasant in my ears. 
 I wanted to have a dozen children ! There was no reason 
 why I shouldn't I would live with them on a farm, I 
 meant in the country. It occurred to me that by the time 
 I had a dozen children I should probably be a duchess, and 
 mistress of Saracens. The thought was disconcerting. 
 My mental picture had been of a yellow farm-house, 
 something like my grandfather's, with chickens and pigs 
 close at hand. It again occurred to me that Binky didn't 
 quite fit into a yellow farm-house.
 
 204 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 My reverie was interrupted by the sound of a woman's 
 voice. It was a clear, metallic voice, unmistakable. 
 Claire Hobbes was walking toward me at an averted 
 angle. She had with her a boy of seven or eight, dressed 
 in an Eton jacket. My eyes were suddenly riveted on 
 the boy. A strange feeling of recognition, mingled with 
 curiosity and terror, pulled me out of my chair. 
 
 I had not seen Mrs. Hobbes since that first visit on the 
 Indian frontier. She had disappeared so completely that 
 I had almost forgotten her existence. Molly Tripp had 
 said something about her having taken a flat in Regent's 
 Park. 
 
 I advanced and held out my hand. She swerved to- 
 ward me, and a very successful smile touched her hard 
 face, that looked more like a shark's than ever. I think 
 she was in grey broadcloth with a close, stiff hat, but I'm 
 not sure, my eyes were fixed on the boy. I said, " How 
 do you do ? " holding out my hand to him in turn. He 
 shook it loosely, dropped it, and thrust both his into his 
 pockets with an abrupt movement. He had his hat under 
 his arm. His eyes were greenish-grey, and his face wore 
 a brilliant, shy smile, an apologetic friendly beam. He 
 shifted his feet awkwardly. I was conscious of an acute 
 throbbing pain in my heart. 
 
 " My son," said Mrs. Hobbes, and her face never 
 quivered. " He's just down for a few days. Isn't it a 
 divine day? So glad to have met you. Remember me 
 to your husband." She dismissed me with -perfect ease, 
 and the boy, with a charming lop-sided bow, moved off 
 beside her. I went on ahead, automatically, in the op- 
 posite direction. At the iron railings of the walk, how- 
 ever, I turned. Through the sunny vista of the grass and 
 tree-trunks and branches, I watched the two figures, the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 20$ 
 
 woman's tall, stiff, severely tailored, the boy's limber and 
 lackadaisical. He was walking in a zigzag and looking 
 down. The slouching movement, the set of his slender 
 little shoulders, was unmistakable. I hurried back to 
 Alexandra Gate, almost running. I had a sensation of 
 wanting to put my hands over my eyes and ears. 
 
 On the way home I kept repeating to myself the ques- 
 tion : Why had Binky never told me he had a child by 
 that woman? 
 
 My husband, I was told by the footman, had not yet 
 come in. I remembered that he had gone with Ruffles 
 and some others to Newmarket. It was essential, some- 
 how, for me to see him at once. I had a furious craving 
 to talk it all out, to get it all clear, but I had to wait 
 three hours. We were dining at home and going out 
 later in the evening. I changed into a tea-gown and sat 
 down by my bedroom window and stared blindly out 
 into St. James's Park. 
 
 In my crazy jealousy I thought that I had at least 
 discovered one important thing. This boy explained 
 Binky's indifference to my children. Doubtless his first 
 child, the fruit of a passionate and illicit adventure, 
 meant far more to him than his legitimate sons. I had 
 visions of him visiting the child unknown to me, all 
 through the four years of our marriage. I thought of 
 Binky as planning for his future, of suffering silently 
 through the inevitable separation. With a horrid clarity, 
 I saw that he was a dear little fellow. I elaborated in 
 self -mortifying thought upon his good looks and his 
 probably delightful qualities. I told myself that I was 
 an interloper. I was in an absurd state of mind. What 
 right had I to marry Binky and come between him and 
 these two human beings to whom he belonged ? I would
 
 2o6 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 stand between them no longer I would take my own 
 unfortunate babies to America. But then, what? What 
 of Colonel Hobbes? He existed. He would always exist. 
 And what in heaven was his attitude toward his wife's 
 child? It was too much for me. I was in a white heat 
 of anger and bewilderment, and humiliation, when Binky 
 came in. I was so utterly wretched that I gave no sign 
 at all. 
 
 He had had a good day, luck all round, had backed 
 three winners. He was tired and dusty and happy. 
 
 " Dining alone ? Good I'm dead beat." He flung 
 himself into a chair, his legs thrust far out, his head 
 thrown back. " Jove, Mayf air was there ! " He began 
 to chuckle. " Some one came up to him you know 
 Constance had a daughter this morning. Well, some one 
 came up to the duke and congratulated him. Mayfair 
 just cocked an eye. 'Why d'you congratulate me?' ses 
 he. ' It's not my child.' Just like that. Awfully droll 
 chap, Mayfair ! " Binky beamed, caught my look. 
 " There, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you. I know 
 you don't like our manners. Forgive me. My dear, you 
 do look ripping in that blue." His face expressed con- 
 trition, pleading. 
 
 " I met Mrs. Hobbes in the Park, just now." His face 
 grew blank. 
 
 "Did you?" 
 
 " She was with her son." I felt that I was being 
 unpardonably stupid, but I couldn't help it. He got up 
 suddenly; gave himself a fling. 
 
 " Well, my dear, I really must have a wash before 
 dinner. You'll excuse me I won't be long." He was 
 off, almost at the door. He was running away. He was 
 a coward, I thought wildly.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 207 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me ? " My voice arrested and 
 exasperated him. 
 
 "Tell you what, my dear?" He took a pettish tone, 
 which at that moment offended me particularly. 
 
 " Tell me that you had a son." 
 
 " Oh ! " He came back, limp, astonished. He stood 
 looking at me stupidly. His mouth worked. He half 
 smiled, was at a loss, then suddenly pulled himself 
 together. 
 
 " Well really, I don't know. Why should I have 
 told you ? " Then more lucidly : " After all, it was her 
 affair." I admitted the truth of this. " How in the 
 world did you find out?" 
 
 "I saw." 
 
 " Good Lord! You did? How very awkward!" 
 
 "What?" I was terrified of what was coming. 
 
 " Awkward, if he looks as much like me at that. You 
 must admit it's awkward." I was appalled. 
 
 " How long, then, is it since you've seen him ? " I 
 held my breath. 
 
 "How long? I dunno quite." 
 
 " Try to remember." He missed the sarcasm in my 
 voice. 
 
 " Let me see six years. He was two." 
 
 I screamed. " You haven't seen him for six years ? " 
 And the loudness of my voice shocked me. I blushed 
 crimson as he instinctively hushed me with a raised hand, 
 a sounded " Ssh ! " and a glance at the door. I repeated 
 my question in a low tone. " You haven't seen him for 
 six years ? " 
 
 " No I don't think so. He was at home, you see, 
 with her people." I waited and so obviously with 
 bated breath that he went on irritably under my wide
 
 208 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 gaze. " I s'pose you think it blackguardly of me to let 
 her have a child! God knows we didn't want it, did 
 our best to avoid it. She used to go over the highest 
 jumps did all sorts of things." He looked suddenly 
 very young and innocent. I burst out laughing, and 
 went on laughing, hysterically. He looked injured. 
 "Well, what else could we do?" He left it to me, 
 helplessly. My laughter stopped as suddenly as it 
 began. 
 
 " I don't understand you," was all I could say. 
 
 " How d'you mean, don't understand me ? " 
 
 After a pause I brought out the real question. 
 
 " Didn't you want to see him, ever ? " 
 
 "No. Why should I?" 
 
 I caught my breath. " Didn't you feel he was your 
 own? Didn't you want to know how he was getting 
 on?" 
 
 " Oh, Claire used to tell me. You see, my dear, 
 he well, why should I? I knew he was awfully well 
 cared for. 'Tisn't as though he were going to be poor." 
 He sighed as though he had exhausted the subject, and 
 this time, when he turned away, I let him go. It was 
 so much worse than I expected. I couldn't grasp it. 
 Not a feeling stirred me, save bewilderment. Not for 
 days did I deduce any meaning or come to any conclusion. 
 Indeed, I was never lucid about it, but shortly after 
 this I began to feel that there was something indecent 
 in marriage. I admitted him less and less frequently 
 to my room, until one night I lay in his arms as cold as 
 ice, the shivering victim of a mental disgust. The next 
 night I locked my door, and as he did not come, I kept 
 on locking it, until at length the moment came when I 
 heard him try the lock, and again try it, and then go
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 209 
 
 away. I lay trembling and listening. I felt so sorry 
 and so ashamed for him that I nearly rushed to call 
 him back but something stronger than pity kept me 
 still. 
 
 He never alluded to the episode, but a month later 
 he asked me somewhat confusedly, in a roundabout way, 
 what I meant by my retirement. 
 
 "Nothing I just want to be alone." 
 
 " But I don't quite see. Are you angry?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 He hesitated, started to speak, checked himself, and 
 at last came out with it. 
 
 " Have you a lover? " 
 
 " No." My coolness astonished me. 
 
 " For God's sake, then, what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Nothing. I don't want to to live like that any 
 more." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " It's impure." 
 
 " Good Lord ! A man and his wife you you 
 amaze me ! What on earth do you mean ? " 
 
 " It's indecent to me because I don't feel the way 
 I used to." My throat ached terribly. I felt my lip 
 twisting. 
 
 He flushed very red, and shouted at me : " Indecent ! 
 Good Lord ! Indecent ! How can it be indecent ? What 
 do you mean? We're married. Where's the inde- 
 cency ? " It was too much for him. He could only 
 gasp. " You are the queerest the words you use 
 whoever heard of a woman calling it indecent to love 
 her husband. If you loved some one else I could under- 
 stand. It isn't even as if we'd got bored with each 
 other. We've only been married four years. What does
 
 210 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 it mean ? " He made hopeless gestures with his hands, 
 strode about wildly, knocked something over. He was 
 futile and ridiculous. Suddenly I burst into violent tears 
 and ran out of the room, up the stairs, into the nursery, 
 and buried my head in little Humpy's woollen blankets. 
 The nurse was greatly shocked at this.
 
 PART THREE
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 IROQUOIS was very amusing over its new Grand 
 Opera. Up to the year nineteen nine it had been 
 content with a month's visit from the New York 
 Metropolitan Opera, but in nineteen five old J. J. 
 Jameson's daughter married Jim Armstrong and came 
 to live on Jefferson Drive, and in five years, with her aid, 
 Iroquois had achieved one of its dearest ambitions, its 
 very own Grand Opera. The city very nearly burst with 
 pride, and it did the strangest things in the effort to 
 carry it off, and subsequently it nearly strangled to death, 
 the Puritan part of it, over the Russian ballet. But it 
 was happy through all these uncomfortable phases, as 
 happy as any young country girl in a very much too 
 expensive and too modish new frock. You can imagine 
 a very innocent and rather vain farmer's daughter putting 
 on a Paris frock for the first time, a Paris frock which 
 she had paid for herself out of the money she made 
 in new-laid eggs. That's the sort of way that Iroquois 
 behaved. Maybe I exaggerate a little, not much. Of 
 course, when I talk of Iroquois in this connection I refer 
 particularly to the smart set, not to the great German 
 community who filled the gallery and stalls and made 
 opera pay, but to those satellites of Mrs. Armstrong who 
 took boxes for the season rather than incur her dis- 
 pleasure, and in the smart set I refer particularly to the 
 women, Mrs. Charlie Bowers with her friends, and 
 Louise with her younger friends. These constituted 
 
 213
 
 214 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 society, and these undertook to establish the legend that 
 Iroquois was one of the world's centres of culture, and 
 fashion. 
 
 I must separate the women from the men, because 
 the men insisted, by the brutality of their cynicism, in 
 being separate. While the Mrs. Charlie Bowers' set 
 adored the opera, and the Louise Bowers Van Orden set 
 adored it extravagantly, their husbands, consenting to 
 pay, reserved the right to grumble and growl and sneer 
 at the whole show. Iroquois was, of course, the finest 
 town on earth; look at its railway-station and factory 
 chimneys, its stockyards and its office buildings. Why 
 the dickens did it have to go in for an Opera! Music 
 was a bore, and they refused to be tortured. They would 
 pay, certainly, because they could afford to pay, and 
 because they were devoted American husbands, and 
 because it was a part of the life-game to let women 
 make fools of themselves, but they refused to sit through 
 four hours of that stuff in the boxes which cost them 
 each fifty dollars a night. They formed a conspiracy 
 and elaborated a plan. Every blessed night they escorted 
 their wives to their seats, adjusted wraps, proffered pro- 
 grams, made themselves agreeable until the overture 
 began and the lights went down. Then, under the cover 
 of darkness, they disappeared. A subterranean passage 
 led from the Opera House to the Club, and to the Club 
 they went. Two minutes before the end of the act a 
 bell rang in the Club bar, summoning them back, so 
 accurately timed that when the curtain descended and 
 the lights went on again, there they were in their places 
 applauding with genuine American enthusiasm. During 
 the entfacte they were very much in evidence; with the 
 beginning of Act II. they disappeared again.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 215 
 
 It was, I believe, Jim's idea. He is a cheeky philistine ; 
 quite cheeky enough to originate the scheme out of an 
 agony of anticipated boredom. You see, Young America 
 has not yet consented to be bored. 
 
 And Louise, I would have you know, was satisfied. 
 She saw nothing shameful or absurd in her position. 
 She sat complacent and bejewelled in her half -empty 
 box, and allowed Jim to spend his time getting drunk 
 in the Club ; and so long as he and the other men whom 
 she had previously dined were there in the interval fussing 
 over herself and her female companions, she didn't mind. 
 Louise can't, as a matter of fact, tell one note from 
 another. She is almost completely tone-deaf, but she 
 went to the Opera three times a week for the three months 
 of the winter that I was in Iroquois, and she consistently 
 kept up the most elaborate, detailed fiction of her appre- 
 ciative enjoyment. How she picked up so much par- 
 ticularized information I can't imagine. Her data were 
 extraordinary. She could rattle on about the score 
 and the tone-qualities of this and that voice, and the 
 dramatic technique of another, and the scenic effects of 
 such and such an artist, without ever giving herself away 
 the slightest bit. The only suspicious thing about all 
 her talk was its extreme glibness. It came so fast and 
 with such smoothness. To make it quite perfect, she 
 ought to have affected a slight hesitation as an evidence 
 of mental effort. It is rather pathetic, if you wish to 
 look at it that way, to think of that stupid child, decked 
 out in her extraordinary finery, turning a carefully- 
 arranged face towards a volume of meaningless sound 
 and pretending to be thrilled to the soul ; while her hus- 
 band was getting drunk and more drunk, and learning 
 to despise her poor little attitudes. You see, Louise had
 
 2i 6 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 been to Dresden and Paris and Vienna, and she had 
 seen kings and queens at the Opera, and women whose 
 faces she recognized from newspapers as great person- 
 ages. The Opera, as it happened, was the one place 
 where she had, so to speak, sat down with, or at least in 
 the same room with, Royalty, and so the Opera an 
 Opera Grand Opera in general terms, seemed to her 
 quite naturally the aristocratic thing, and the nearest 
 thing America could get to Court. I fancy it was a 
 pleasure to her to think, as she sat there with a truly 
 regal chain of pearls round her throat, that queens and 
 empresses and princesses were sitting just as she was 
 sitting, in boxes in Opera Houses all over the world. The 
 thought, undoubtedly, gave her an exquisite sense of 
 doing the right thing. And she knew, as I say, just how 
 to behave, just how to sit rather stiffly and to applaud 
 with assumed nonchalance, and to use her fan and bow 
 across the arena, and talk to men over the back of her 
 chair. Oh, yes, she knew perfectly how to behave. Only 
 once did I see her at a loss. It was during the first 
 performance, in Iroquois, of the Russian ballet. Louise 
 had never seen the Russian ballet. It took her by 
 surprise; she had no attitude ready, and, poor child, 
 her little mind, for once caught unaware, exposed to a 
 naked fact of some beauty and great strangeness, recoiled 
 instinctively. All the Puritan instincts of her forefathers 
 and her grandmothers, let loose for once, rushed to the 
 rescue. 
 
 It wasn't, of course, the real Russian ballet; Nijinsky 
 wasn't there, or Karsavina, or any of the first-class 
 people; but it wasn't bad at all, and I enjoyed it. I was 
 with Louise and Sally Comstock, and somehow in the 
 middle of it, I became conscious of an acute discomfort
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 217 
 
 somewhere round me or near me, and then gradually 
 I realized that it emanated from Louise and Sally. I 
 looked at them over my shoulder in the half-light. They 
 were neither of them watching the stage, or rather, they 
 seemed to be trying to, or trying not to, I couldn't tell 
 which. They were casting queer little embarrassed 
 glances round them. Louise's expression was comic. 
 Her upper lip was pulled way down, her mouth pursed 
 primly, while her eyes were positively rolling. She was 
 shocked, and Sally too. I observed this with amaze- 
 ment. For a full moment I couldn't imagine what had 
 shocked them. It actually didn't occur to me to connect 
 the scene on the stage with their embarrassment. You 
 see, they had such a very slight advantage over the , 
 dancers in the matter of clothes that it was difficult to 
 see how they could object to the sight of those rather 
 beautiful bodies swathed in chiffon. But still, there it 
 was. When the ballet was over they knew not what to 
 say. Louise's cheeks were quite crimson. And when 
 Jim came forward announcing that he had been watching, 
 and that " Gee, that dancer was a peach ! " she glared 
 at him like an outraged little saint. Truly, in her sudden 
 exposure, with all those trappings of manner stripped 
 off, she seemed incredibly young, and Jim himself, his 
 face flushed with wine, looker rather like a drunken 
 cherub. I felt a sudden pain at my heart as I looked at 
 them, the sort of pain a mother feels for naughty and 
 unhappy children. 
 
 Louise tossed her head. "I don't like it." Jim 
 laughed. " Oh, you don't, eh ? Why not ? I think she's 
 fine! I'm going to make her acquaintance." He was 
 deliberately tormenting her. He was bragging absurdly, 
 and he was obviously a little just a little befuddled.
 
 218 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Louise was on the point of tears, and for once stared 
 blindly and unconsciously into the crowded theatre. For 
 the moment she forgot absolutely what she was there for, 
 what she had made herself into. As a clever imitation 
 of a decadent she had ceased to exist. She was just 
 a woman quaking with jealousy and outraged propriety. 
 I suffered for her and with her, and for them both, 
 and at the same time I positively envied them. They 
 had the power to torment each other, and give each other 
 exquisite pleasure. They had sufficient vitality to 
 squabble, and sufficient idealism to make it up. They got 
 on each other's nerves so dreadfully that they didn't 
 care how they behaved in public, and yet they believed 
 in the romance and inviolability of their own relation- 
 ship. I could tell by the way they glared at each other 
 that there was going to be a scene when they got home, 
 a blind scene of fury over something they neither of 
 them understood. They would fight over the sanctity 
 of their home and the purity of their marriage without 
 knowing it, with fierce, instinctive passion. Louise would 
 reduce him to the dusf by a display of sheer fiery virtue, 
 and he would be ashamed of his lapse, of that look at 
 the little dancer's body. Probably, in the car going home, 
 she would accuse him of not loving her. She would 
 refuse to be kissed or comforted, and she would wildly 
 upbraid him for drinking too much, and at length he 
 would be frightened and humbled by her intensity, and 
 would take her in his very repentant arms, promising 
 never to look at an actress or a dancer, or any woman 
 under the sun, but to love only herself, for ever and 
 ever. 
 
 I felt, as I say, very old and depraved and well- 
 mannered, as I watched them squabbling valiantly in
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 219 
 
 that box at the Opera ; and I felt jealous of their youth, 
 for it seemed to me then that they would last out and 
 win through. I didn't foresee what was going to happen, 
 for I didn't realize just how stupid Louise was. At 
 that time Jim was still more or less under the sway of 
 her charm; and I didn't even think of his coming to 
 hate her. You understand he never made love to me, 
 not then or at any time. He never even played with 
 that idea. I don't feel at all guilty toward Louise. It 
 was none of my doing. Even if I had hated and ignored 
 her, I couldn't have done it. Something curious, an 
 image of God, or a pillar of fire or something, stood 
 between us, and to the very end we looked at each 
 other as from a great distance, across an impassable gulf. 
 It wasn't that I felt I had to be true to Binky. I 
 didn't; but I simply couldn't go in for an intrigue with 
 Jim. It was impossible. We both realized, I suppose, 
 when we began to realize things, that nothing was any 
 good but the perfect and the final and the complete thing. 
 But all this about the Opera probably seems to have 
 nothing in particular to do with Binky and me and our 
 affairs. It has, however, because it was there, during 
 a performance of " Le Jongleur de Notre Dame," that 
 he saw Phyllis. She was in her box directly opposite. 
 Her gown was of turquoise blue, cut very low, and she 
 was, under all that glaring light, of almost unreal fair- 
 ness. Whereas the outlines of other women were blurred 
 and their colour dimmed, she shone as though there were 
 something peculiar in the texture of her hair and skin 
 that made it reflect light, as though she were a creature 
 made in something harder and smoother and more trans- 
 parent than flesh. Not that her surface or her outlines 
 are hard, Nothing could be more tender and seductive
 
 22O 
 
 than the long, soft curve of her white bosom, or the 
 dimples in her shoulders, but her effect at a distance was 
 of a porcelain smoothness. Binky positively blinked 
 when he caught sight of her. " Who is she ? " he asked. 
 " The shiny one in pale blue? " 
 
 "Oh, that's Phyllis Mrs. Patrick O'Brien. I've 
 told you about her. Patrick O'Brien is Mayor of Iro- 
 quois the youngest we've ever had." 
 
 Binky made a grimace. Just what it indicated I don't 
 know. Perhaps he remembered about Pat, the " Mick." 
 I had probably told him the story. Pat had appeared 
 in the back of the box, huge and red and ill-clothed, with 
 a bulging shirt bosom. He loomed there behind her 
 like an uncomfortable mountain. There were three 
 other men in the box, but no women. Among the men 
 was Tommy Dodge, fatter than ever, but small beside 
 Pat. Tommy was being very attentive. He leaned for- 
 ward and adjusted a magnificent white fur wrap over 
 Phil's shoulders. How well I understood the significance 
 of that white fur! Phil wriggled into it deliciously, 
 tilted her brilliant, golden head a little and smiled 
 dazzlingly at Tommy. I could almost hear her purr. 
 She had at last all the soft fur wraps that her heart 
 could desire, and her smile travelled over Tommy's placid, 
 devoted head to her husband, the source of all comfort, 
 and included him in its radiance. She beckoned to him 
 with one white finger, resting an arm on the back of her 
 chair and rubbing her chin gently along the fur. Her 
 husband came forward, bent down to her, burst into 
 a roar of laughter. Tommy and the other men joined, 
 Phyllis snuggled into her white nest, dimpled and chat- 
 tered, and made them laugh again. 
 
 J don't know how it is, but Phyllis, wherever she.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 221 
 
 happens to be, gives the impression of being almost too 
 attractive and amusing. Not only is she the centre of 
 men's attention, but the attention they give her is of an 
 abandoned, bacchanalian character. Men are always, in 
 her vicinity, more than usually animated and noisy. She 
 seems to galvanize even very stodgy, well-behaved people 
 like Tommy Dodge, into an absurd activity. There was, 
 for instance, about that box of hers that night something 
 different from the other boxes ; something almost rowdy, 
 but as Phil's gown was perfect, and she sat almost 
 motionless, and the men really did nothing at all out 
 of the way except laugh, I can only put it down to the 
 fact that they were actually having a good time, and 
 that no one else was. 
 
 I had an opportunity, before the lights went down, 
 of noticing half-a-dozen inimical pairs of opera-glasses 
 levelled in their direction. I say inimical, because I 
 know they were levelled at Phyllis by her enemies, but 
 I can't, of course, tell whether the way they were actually 
 used betrayed their animosity. Levelled opera-glasses 
 always seemed antagonistic to me. I shudder under them. 
 Phyllis didn't shudder. She ignored them, just as she 
 ignored everything unpleasant. Even Mrs. Charles 
 Bowers, glittering with jet and diamonds and staring 
 through her, could not disturb her serenity. 
 
 Of course, when I first got home, some three months 
 before this, I was completely unaware of anything 
 peculiar in Phil's social position. It seemed rather funny 
 even to think about social position in Iroquois. I half 
 expected to find Louise and Phil sitting in my father's 
 pantry eating chocolate-cake together ; certainly I expected 
 to resume the old friendship with my two best friends. 
 That was one thing that had tempted me across the
 
 222 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Atlantic. I felt lonely, and I wanted a companionship 
 more homely and comforting than that Clem and Monica 
 could give me. What I found was certainly a more real 
 thing than intercourse with Clem and Monica, but it was 
 scarcely more comforting. Phil and Louise were not 
 on speaking terms. Louise professed to have some mys- 
 terious reason why it was absolutely impossible for her 
 to know Mrs. Patrick O'Brien. Other people could know 
 her if they liked, some did and some didn't, but she, 
 Louise, had nothing whatever in common with her, and 
 there were reasons. 
 
 Phil refused to enlighten me. I was obliged to piece 
 things together for myself. I gathered that society was 
 in a quandary. It didn't know what to do about the 
 O'Briens. The mere fact that Patrick O'Brien had 
 been a " Mick " didn't matter. It was, as a matter of 
 fact, lost sight of, or never known, certainly not once, 
 to my knowledge, brought up against him. So much 
 for democracy. He was a self-made man, and a local 
 power. He ran several newspapers and was active in 
 politics. It was taken for granted that his politics were 
 not more high-minded than any one else's, but he was 
 a good enough sort of chap all the same, and he was, on 
 the hearty demand of Jim Van Orden, admitted to the 
 Club. When I heard this, I began to suspect the rea- 
 sons for Louise's attitude. Jim was not the only husband 
 who had insisted on his wife asking the O'Briens to 
 dinner. Whether the men were just flatly infatuated 
 with Mrs. O'Brien, or had delicate financial dealings with 
 O'Brien himself, I couldn't make out, but I imagined 
 it was a little of both. Anyhow, I remember one Opera 
 night when Jim deliberately spent two entire entr'actes 
 in the O'Briens' box, because Louise had neglected to
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 223 
 
 include them in a dinner-dance, and Louise finally went 
 home alone at the end of the third act. 
 
 It was all very absurd. I can only explain the attitude 
 of the wives in the crudest terms. Mrs. Patrick O'Brien 
 was the prettiest woman in Iroquois, and they were all 
 jealous. She had never made her debut so they could 
 quite easily consider her an outsider. She had married 
 a politician, and politics was only beginning to be decently 
 interesting in New York and Philadelphia, and not at all 
 so in Iroquois. They were rich, but not too rich to be 
 ignored as long as Mrs. Armstrong would lead the way. 
 You've no idea how crude it all was. Having sat at the 
 same dinner-table, Phil and Louise would meet, perhaps, 
 at the ribbon counter in Braddock's the next morning; 
 and Louise would stare through her ; that was the sort of 
 thing. 
 
 It must have been extremely galling, and I confess 
 I admired Phil's behaviour through it all. It was plucky 
 and it was clever. She never tried to get back at them, 
 and she never cringed or toadied. It seemed to amuse 
 her. When they were rude, she laughed that little snick- 
 ering chortle of hers, and she exaggerated her naturally 
 indifferent, careless manner. Deliberately, I mean, she 
 did things to shock them, funny little things, just to give 
 them something to talk about. I remember one night 
 when she dined with me, she had a bad cold, which I'm 
 sure she pretended was a much worse cold, and much 
 more disagreeable than it really was. She kept blowing 
 her nose till it was crimson, and turning all her P's into 
 B's and T's into D's. That was her kind of bravado. 
 To spite the women who were jealous of her charms, she 
 threw them away and dissolved into the snuffles ; we were 
 all sneezing and saying " I don-do w," before the evening
 
 224 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 was over. I thought it very funny. Phyllis was cer- 
 tainly one of the people in Iroquois with a sense of 
 humour. I have never seen any one else make Jim laugh 
 as she did. Jim has an absurd laugh. It's not a big 
 ha-ha, but a little tight falsetto sound that chokes and 
 struggles and makes him weep. He screws up his face 
 and his eyes water, and he writhes in his chair. He did 
 that night at the Opera. It must have been very unpleas- 
 ant for Louise. Her box was only three away, and the 
 most she could do was turn her back in the direction of 
 her husband's giggles, which she did, until at last it 
 was too much for her, and she went home. 
 
 Jim, as a matter of fact, was never seriously infatu- 
 ated with Phil, of that I feel sure, though, Heaven knows, 
 I don't see why he was not. I'm sure I couldn't have 
 resisted her any more than did Binky. I never blamed 
 Binky. I saw it all coming as plainly as if I'd been a 
 crystal-gazer; that very first night she was, as I've said 
 before, just exactly the kind of a person for him. 
 Together they could laugh and frivol and slide over 
 the surface of things gracefully and beautifully, to their 
 hearts' content; never disappointing each other, never 
 troubled by the mysteries of existence, never frightened 
 by the passing of time. Yes, they were perfectly fitted, 
 and I saw it, and I threw them at each other. I don't 
 know why. I don't think I really thought seriously at 
 first of finding a way of escape, by giving him to her 
 for good. Pat must have always loomed rather a big 
 obstacle to that plan. No, I imagine it was more just 
 out of a perverse desire to spite Iroquois society. It 
 seemed rather fun to make Phyllis the queen of that 
 season, for I soon saw that there was a legend about 
 Binky, and that any one he chose would be considered
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 225 
 
 favoured of the gods. He wasn't a duke yet, but he 
 was going to be. Mrs. Charlie Bowers never allowed 
 Iroquois to forget that. 
 
 If I had only known how soon it was going to be, 
 I might have behaved differently, but I didn't know, how 
 could I ? that dear, beautiful, decrepit Uncle Archie was 
 going to relinquish his fastidious hold on life just at 
 the precise moment when his doing so would get Binky 
 into a fix; Binky and me too. Uncle Archie, I always 
 knew, was a perverse creature with a taste for annoying 
 his family, but I couldn't have foreseen that he would 
 die just in the nick of time to tie me up for ever and 
 ever.
 
 CHAPTER Two 
 
 I HAD been in Iroquois for about three months 
 before Binky arrived. He followed me with some 
 idea of " making-up " what he thought was a quarrel, 
 or of at least clearing up a misunderstanding. Poor 
 boy! The misunderstanding was all on his side. He 
 would never, I'm sure, have been made to see that this 
 wasn't a case for reconciliation; that what had really 
 happened was not at all in the nature of a quarrel. He 
 is a natural, simple creature, and the idea in his mind 
 was that I was displeased with him somehow, and that 
 he must try awfully hard again to please me ; that was 
 all. That was his purpose in coming, and he actually 
 was beginning to make love to me all over again in a 
 timid, rather awkward way, when Phyllis caught him. 
 I saw it all plainly enough. I might have kept him 
 off Phyllis, I suppose, just by receiving him a little 
 differently. I couldn't. It would have been too indecent. 
 Surely flirting with one's husband is a horrid per- 
 formance, especially when It's very difficult to 
 
 explain. 
 
 I didn't dislike Binky. I even began to like him again, 
 quite differently, in Iroquois that winter. He seemed 
 to me a finer product, in many ways, than the Amer- 
 icans. I began to see that lots of reticences and denials 
 of his that I had believed in were due to coldness in him, 
 were really due to fine feeling. In the midst of the 
 
 226
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 227 
 
 extreme domesticity of Iroquois, I began to appreciate 
 his negations along that line. 
 
 Jim and Louise quarrelling over that Russian dancer 
 had seemed to me rather appealing, but as the winter 
 went on, I got tired of that sort of thing. Young mar- 
 ried people in Iroquois gave me the impression of having 
 risen together in a state of conjugal and amorous irri- 
 tation from a double bed, and of being about to retire 
 there again as sure as the sun went down and the lights 
 of society went out. Husbands seemed perpetually con- 
 scious of their wives, and wives of their husbands. They 
 caressed and squabbled continually in public; they made 
 remarks that lit up in sudden high lights the most private 
 corners of their households ; they gave away secrets about 
 themselves, let you into the palpitating centre of their 
 family life. It was all rather unpleasant, and Binky, in 
 contrast, was a great relief. He was always so perfectly 
 and just sufficiently unaware of my existence, and he was 
 so shocked at the way they behaved that I felt positively 
 more drawn to him than ever before; that is, I felt 
 drawn to him in a new way. I remember one night at 
 Mrs. Bowers', when Louise lost her temper and called 
 Jim " a disgusting man," and rushed out into her motor 
 through the snow, with no cloak on. Binky simply 
 didn't know what to make of this performance. I re- 
 member his standing to one side and looking from Jim 
 toward the door through which Louise had disappeared, 
 and back to Jim in blank amazement. Jim behaved very 
 badly. He lit a cigar, turned his back on his mother- 
 in-law and sat down. She, being a clever women, made 
 no move at all, but the room was electric. It wasn't a 
 large or formal dinner-party, only Tommy Dodge and 
 one or two others and ourselves, but still one doesn't
 
 228 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 quite expect that sort of thing. Binky's face was comic. 
 He, at length, looked at me, cocking an interrogatory 
 eyebrow. I followed Louise, and sat with her in the 
 motor until at last Jim came out with his coat and hat on, 
 and took her home. 
 
 I began, as I say, to like Binky, in Iroquois, all over 
 again, in a different way, only that is the point, it was 
 quite different. He wasn't the man I'd been in love with 
 and married. He was another. It was just as if I'd gone 
 to church with Mr. Smith and found myself coming back 
 with Mr. Brown. Naturally, if one had been in love 
 with Mr. Smith one wouldn't welcome the embrace of 
 Mr. Brown, a stranger, even if a pleasant stranger. It 
 was like that, slightly complicated by the fact that 
 Brown and Smith had many of the same characteristics 
 and mannerisms, and that the man I now lived with 
 made me sad sometimes by reminding me of the other 
 one. 
 
 I remember the night that he arrived. I came in from 
 somewhere to find him talking to my father, and his 
 appearance set my nerves jumping. He looked so very 
 English and so very attractive standing there before 
 the fire in my father's library. Perhaps it was that 
 Iroquois set him off well ; perhaps it was that I'd for- 
 gotten how much handsomer he was than other men. He 
 had changed into evening clothes and dined, and he was 
 all perfect from top to toe, with that glowing sunny look 
 on his face that I had found so wonderful at the begin- 
 ning. It had reached me again and made my heart flutter. 
 No, I wasn't impervious to his charm. I remember 
 staring at his head with its close-cropped, greyish hair, 
 and the slight suggestion of side whiskers that he culti- 
 vated, and I remember admitting to myself that he was
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 229 
 
 very good to look at; in fact, too good to look at; and 
 I felt rather sick at heart. And when he came forward 
 quickly to meet me, I was tempted yes, temptation is 
 the word and the whole affair was dreadfully compli- 
 cated by my father sitting there in his deep chair, watch- 
 ing us benevolently from under his shaggy white eye- 
 brows. I remember shivering when I kissed Binky. I 
 won't pretend to interpret that shiver. It was not repul- 
 sion, and yet I wouldn't have kissed him at all, except for 
 my father watching me so happily. 
 
 One thing was perfectly clear in that moment, that I 
 must go on deceiving my father. 
 
 I had no idea, as I say, when I went to America, of 
 leaving Binky permanently or getting a divorce or any- 
 thing of that sort. I still regarded marriage as a per- 
 manent and sacred thing, and I hadn't reasoned things 
 out in my own special case. I had just come away, to 
 get clear of something unpleasant, a spectre that had 
 reared an ugly head in the house. 
 
 Those weeks after the meeting with Claire Hobbes 
 in the Park had been very unpleasant. I must have 
 behaved quite abominably. I grew thin and irritable. 
 Doctors were called, and talked about a nervous break- 
 down. I don't know who sent for them. Binky, I sup- 
 pose, or Aunt Cora. I remember Aunt Cora making 
 grim, sarcastic remarks about nerves. She seemed to 
 me then very inhuman and foreign, so did Monica and 
 Clem and everybody else. They all became suddenly 
 aliens and strangers. I wanted overwhelmingly to go 
 home, and so, at last, in October, I went, taking the boys 
 with me, and leaving Binky rather crestfallen and sulky, 
 rather like a small boy who doesn't know whether he's, 
 been naughty or not.
 
 230 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 You see, Binky is not fickle in his tastes. He is a 
 creature of habit. He has always liked vermouth, and 
 he will always like vermouth. He has always had a 
 weakness for a greenish flannel suit, and he will always 
 like greenish flannel for suits. His friendships with men 
 are invariably mild and permanent. He never out-shoots 
 himself or bursts into an enthusiasm that evaporates, as 
 I do. He never has expected more of people than they 
 have in them to give, except, possibly, in the case of 
 Phyllis. Indeed, he expects so little, that when he gets 
 what he wants he is not bored with it. Dissatisfaction 
 and disillusions come from longing for the unattainable. 
 Binky doesn't long. His crop of wild oats was meagre. 
 Claire Hobbes satisfied him for six years. He might 
 have been true to me for twenty. 
 
 Some people would say I ought to have sacrificed 
 myself and my fancies to keep my husband respectable. 
 I couldn't. 
 
 I don't suppose at first when I locked my bedroom- 
 door, that I even thought about what Binky would do. 
 Probably I had some vague idea of a celibate life for 
 both of us certainly for myself ; but when I left for 
 America I remember thinking, that now he could go 
 back to Claire. I even deluded myself into the belief 
 that I was doing him a service in leaving him free to go 
 to her. 
 
 He didn't go, probably because he didn't want to. 
 I don't know whether she had accepted Britton by that 
 time or not. Anyway, it doubtless seemed to Binky in 
 rather bad taste to seek her out again. It might, con- 
 ceivably, have been as impossible for him to return to 
 her as for me to resume old relations with him. I
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 231 
 
 wonder if it was like that! I shouldn't be at all sur- 
 prised. 
 
 Anyhow, he sulked for a couple of months, and wrote 
 me funny little letters about being bored, and tried to 
 break his neck learning to manage an aeroplane, and then 
 he just packed up and came after me. He didn't warn 
 me that he was coming; that is, he didn't give me time 
 to stop him, merely sent me a wire the day he sailed from 
 Liverpool. 
 
 My feelings, when I received it, were mixed ; but mostly 
 I felt dread and fatigue. I was so tired, so very tired, 
 and I had a great dread of the emotional effort involved 
 in meeting him. There must have been something the 
 matter with me physically liver or anaemia, or some- 
 thing for I'm not a naturally tired person. My father 
 evidently was troubled about me, because he asked me 
 twice to see a doctor, and the second time I quite lost 
 my temper and said, " No, I won't ! " very rudely, and 
 then burst into tears. Those tears and my look, which 
 were rather ghastly, must have started him wondering. 
 I didn't think of it at the time, but I imagine he thought 
 Binky had been horrid to me in some way. He never 
 questioned me, of course, or talked about Binky, but I 
 remember now that he looked immensely relieved when 
 Binky's letters began to come, and positively beamed 
 when they ended in that cablegram. It arrived at break- 
 fast-time. We were all down for breakfast. Father 
 and Jerry and Archie and Humpy. I had got into the 
 habit again of coming down to breakfast, because I 
 woke so frightfully early, and because, too, breakfast 
 was nice. I liked pouring out my father's coffee, and 
 tying on the boys' bibs, and talking to Jerry before he
 
 232 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 went to the works. Those were very nice breakfasts, 
 with their solid lamb chops and fried potatoes and pan- 
 cakes and maple syrup, with the children stuffing to 
 the bursting point, and my father half hidden behind his 
 newspaper, handing his coffee-cup across to me, and 
 Jerry's ugly, grinning face to look at and his American 
 talk to listen to. My father's eyes were on me when 
 I opened the cable. " Oh," I said, " Binky's coming 
 sailed yesterday." And then I looked up and found him 
 beaming. What could I do ? I couldn't say, " Oh, 
 bother, I'm too tired ! " though the words were on the 
 tip of my tongue. It was quite obvious to me, all at 
 once, that I must pretend, at all costs, that I was glad. 
 Fortunately, while I was elaborating a smile with which 
 to meet my father, the boys began pounding on the 
 table with spoons and forks, yelling with their mouths 
 full about Daddy and big ships, and so on; just as if 
 they were the adored sons of a perfect father, and 
 presently I was quite brightly talking about how nice it 
 would be and how funny Iroquois would seem to Binky, 
 but how much funnier Binky would seem to Iroquois. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to have told my father then. Cer- 
 tainly he deserved the truth, and he might have helped 
 me. Perhaps I ought to have realized that he was bound 
 to know some day, but I couldn't tell him. I couldn't 
 tell him until I was much more nearly beaten than I 
 was then. 
 
 I dreaded Binky's arrival because I was tired, and I 
 was annoyed by being interrupted in my very lazy and 
 leisurely enjoyment of my family. My father and Jerry 
 and I had been having such nice evenings together, with 
 Dick coming in to make a fourth sometimes. We played 
 bridge or read aloud by turns, and we talked a lot about
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 233 
 
 South American railroads and Egyptian excavations 
 and the running of newspapers and the beginning of an 
 American national drama. In the day-time I rummaged 
 about in the garret among old books, or took the children 
 out for a walk along the lake, or went to a lecture in 
 the University, or to a concert with my father. Jerry 
 and I made, too, excursions to the west side, to visit the 
 funny old German shops we used to frequent, and some- 
 times I went with him to the works, and twice we had 
 actually been down on the farm for the week-end : once 
 in early November when the maple trees were all crimson 
 and gold, and once in December when the branches were 
 bare and the air was bitter-sweet with the taste of winter. 
 
 I went to Iroquois in October, and Binky followed me 
 just after Christmas. The Iroquois season, such as it 
 is, was at its height. I foresaw that we should be on 
 the run every moment. Binky was too big a prize to 
 let slip by hostesses all agog with curiosity. I was tired 
 at the very thought, and I was afraid. I was afraid 
 of Binky himself, and I was afraid of that feminine 
 curiosity. It seemed to me that I should have to elab- 
 orate a very perfect defence indeed against the eyes of 
 Mrs. Charlie Bowers. It's an awful thing to be found 
 out in failure and unhappiness by your neighbours. And 
 then, there was my father. I was in for deceptions all 
 round. I could see that, and yet it never occurred to me 
 that Binky himself would be deceived, or how very awk- 
 ward that would be. 
 
 If I had known that Binky was coming as a suppli- 
 cant, I should have avoided that pitfall, but I didn't. I 
 thought that probably at the bottom of it all was some 
 money trouble. Our money affairs had never been put 
 on a very definite basis, and it had occurred to me that
 
 234 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 perhaps Binky hadn't enough to go on with when I left 
 him. His position might have become extremely embar- 
 rassing. As long as we were happy, everything had 
 been smooth enough. We both hated money matters. A 
 secretary person paid all the household bills. Binky's 
 own pay and income, about a thousand a year in all, 
 kept him in pocket-money, and we pooled the rest in a 
 common account ; that is to say, money came from Amer- 
 ica to me, I paid it into the bank, and we both drew on 
 it for whatever we wanted. There was enough of it, 
 and so, as I say, as long as we were together and happy, 
 nothing mattered. 
 
 But now that I had been in America three months, 
 it was quite obvious that Binky's bank account must 
 be getting low. It would be difficult in the circum- 
 stances for him to write and ask for a remittance. I 
 ought to have made some definite arrangement with 
 him before I left. It was a horrid muddle. I felt em- 
 barrassed. It seemed to me a difficult and disagreeable 
 thing to hand over money to Binky now. It was too 
 much like paying a head-footman. I felt how horrid 
 it was for him to be dependent on me, and I determined 
 to get my father, as soon as Binky arrived, to make him 
 a formal settlement. I wanted to make him quite inde- 
 pendent of me, so that he needn't be nice to me at all, 
 and I wanted my father to do this, without suspecting 
 my reasons for wanting it. You'll admit that the situ- 
 ation was a little difficult. 
 
 Because I thought Binky quite safely immersed in his 
 monetary worries, and because I wanted my father to 
 think me quite adequately in love, I smiled on my hus- 
 band too cordially the evening of his arrival. I stifled 
 that faint feeling that had enveloped me when I first
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 235 
 
 looked at him, and I kissed him on both cheeks and 
 laughed a little and patted his hand, and let him talk 
 on about his trip, as though I had been thirsting for 
 the sound of his voice. Not until we said good-night to 
 my father and went upstairs, did I realize what I had 
 done. 
 
 Binky followed me into my room and stood in the 
 doorway. I had a suite of rooms on the second floor; 
 my own old rooms had been done up for me, and the 
 schoolroom turned into a boudoir, and beyond this, what 
 used to be Dick's room, had been got ready for Binky. 
 I started to dismiss him with a tired gesture, but his 
 face startled me. A queer deprecatory smile trembled 
 on his mouth. His eyebrows were lifted in a questioning 
 gaze, timid and hopeful and self-conscious. For one 
 minute I stared at him, appalled, while the essential 
 and eternal horror of all human relationships and the 
 general craziness of the universe seemed to scream at 
 me and dance before my eyes. Then I said, " You must 
 be tired, Binky, dear! Good-night." And his face 
 straightened and grew rigid, and he went away. 
 
 I suspect him of lying awake for a little time that 
 night, making up his mind slowly to win his way back 
 to me, for during the next week he was altogether 
 delightful, and pathetically considerate. He tried so 
 hard to be a good boy. He went down to the works 
 with my father and lunched with Jerry, and in the after- 
 noon went tobogganing with Arch and Humpy, bringing 
 them both in, as happy as kings, for tea in my boudoir. 
 It is funny to think of our all having tea together in 
 that room, with the snow flying by the windows and the 
 grey-green lake surging up the ice-coated beach. The 
 children were boisterousy happy, and Binky played with
 
 236 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 them as I have never seen him play before, or since, 
 for that matter. Sometimes I wonder if that might have 
 been the beginning of something new and fine between 
 Binky and me, possibly, I'm not sure. I may have made 
 a mistake in suspecting his devotion, but I did suspect 
 it. I couldn't get out of my head the fact that he was 
 dependent on me for money. 
 
 It happened that just a week after Binky arrived, I 
 had managed to talk things out satisfactorily with my 
 father, and so when Binky came in one afternoon, quite 
 obviously screwing himself up to a moral effort of some 
 kind or other, I was prepared for him. I can see now 
 that I misunderstood him. I can see now that I snubbed 
 him, and hurt him. He began to feel about for a way 
 of expressing himself, and I handed him an envelope 
 making a rich man of him in his own right. I remember 
 now his face going brick-red. I can feel now the morti- 
 fication he felt then; but I didn't realize it at the time. 
 I was suffering too much myself to think about his 
 finer feelings. I don't mean that I rudely flung the 
 money at him. I did it as casually and lightly as I could, 
 but it must have been rather a slap in the face for 
 him all the same. I remember his almost gasping for 
 breath. I remember the queer sound of his ejaculation. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " my dear how fearfully good 
 of you but what made you what put this into your 
 head what ? " Binky isn't a very articulate per- 
 son at any time. He was at a loss. He gave it up ; 
 just looked at me a moment, flushing, miserably troubled, 
 bewildered, then he gave himself a fling and came a quick 
 step nearer. 
 
 " Joan there's something I'm stupid tell me 
 
 Can't we?" He made as though to hold out
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 237 
 
 his hands. I stiffened. I couldn't help it. " Can't 
 
 we ? " he repeated. His eyes sought mine, sought 
 
 to fill out the deplorable lack of his speech, but I under- 
 stood well enough. I understood so well that I felt 
 terribly sorry for both of us. He came quite close, and 
 I was obliged to draw away and speak hurriedly. 
 
 " No no it's impossible." 
 
 He made a vague, exasperated gesture. 
 
 " But what's it all about ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " You think I am a cad not to tell you about the boy and 
 Claire?" 
 
 " No, not just quite that." 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 " I can't explain but it's finished. It's different 
 you're different. It's impossible to go back, behind it 
 I mean to what was before." 
 
 There was no more said, and no more to say. 
 
 Together we stared at it the difficult situation 
 but I doubt if it was clear to him as it was to me. 
 He saw only an immediate disappointment. I saw the 
 future, and as I watched him pocket that legal envelope 
 and turn away, I realized that the money, even now 
 that I handed it over to him, helped to bind me, and 
 would always help to keep me bound, to him.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 IT'S a funny thing to think of beautiful Uncle 
 Archibald walking gracefully toward his grave, 
 while Binky and Phyllis, with equal grace, danced 
 down the path of romance. It's a funny thing to think 
 of how during those two months none of the three of 
 them had any idea that their respective paths were going 
 to converge suddenly, and stop short at a hole in the 
 ground six feet long by two wide. 
 
 Phyllis had, of course, heard of Uncle Archibald, but 
 if she thought of him, it was as an obstacle to Binky's 
 greatness, and if by any remote chance she ever contem- 
 plated his death, it must have been with feelings of 
 pleasant anticipation. It could never have occurred to 
 her that his falling like that, off his horse, and hitting 
 his slender head against a gate-post, could possibly spoil 
 her life. 
 
 Phyllis had always been able to do whatever she wanted 
 with men. Binky looked much more tractable than Pat, 
 and of course he would have been entirely amenable had 
 it not been for just that one thing. Claire Hobbes under- 
 stood the situation. Phyllis didn't. Phyllis is very, 
 very fascinating, but she isn't quite fascinating enough to 
 bewitch Uncle Archie's ghost into letting Binky off. 
 
 I've no doubt that if Uncle Archie had lived a month 
 longer, Phyllis would have had her way. That proves 
 she was stronger ; I mean her hold on Binky was stronger 
 
 238
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 239 
 
 than Claire's. Of course I helped her. I had helped 
 her by giving Binky that legal envelope just the day 
 before he saw her, and I was prepared to help her further 
 by divorcing him, but even so, I must admit that, all 
 on her own, she reduced Binky to something very much 
 like pulp, and Claire Hobbes never did that. Claire had 
 cared too much. Phyllis is very dangerous in her shal- 
 lowness, and very safe. She can let herself go with 
 absolutely no fear of anything in her, any primitive, wild 
 instinct of any kind, carrying her too far. She can purr 
 and laugh and kiss and be kissed, and caress and be 
 caressed without any feeling whatever of insecurity. 
 Claire looked like a cold creature, but she is at white heat, 
 compared to Phil. 
 
 Patrick O'Brien knew this, I mean he knew that his 
 wife was essentially chaste and cold, so he let her go 
 her own way in perfect freedom. He trusted, not to 
 the fineness of her character, but to the insensibility 
 of her beautiful flesh. I suspected this from the begin- 
 ning, partly, perhaps, because I knew Phyllis, but also 
 because any one could see that her husband was close 
 kin to a slave-driver. I don't mean to say that Phyllis 
 was mistaken in thinking she had power over him. Of 
 course she managed him up to a point. She managed him 
 because he liked being managed. It amused him to trot 
 about her, while she flicked his nose with the sharp, 
 dainty little lash of her tongue. It amused him, and it 
 brought him his reward. He was working, so to speak, 
 for his dinner. When he was good she rewarded him 
 with favours, with the particular dainties for which he 
 had an insatiable appetite. I don't mean to suggest that 
 this case of beauty and the beast was any more sordid 
 than heaps of other marriages. On the contrary, Mr.
 
 240 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 and Mrs. Pat O'Brien were rather an entertaining couple. 
 They were both clever, both ambitious, and together they 
 manipulated the world, laughing at its attitude toward 
 themselves. 
 
 There was something provocative of envy as well as 
 disapproval in the way they lived. They always seemed 
 to be having an extraordinarily good time. One saw 
 Phil flying up the drive in a motor piled full of men, 
 or dining at the Saddle and Cycle Club in the same sort 
 of company, always laughing, her eyes shining, sometimes 
 accompanied by her husband, sometimes not, but always 
 happy, always making her companions laugh. One saw 
 Pat playing snow-balls with his children and a crowd of 
 others on Sunday morning, or ice-boating on the lake, 
 a sport too dangerous for most. They gave, too, excep- 
 tionally good dinners, followed by informal dances, that 
 were supposed to be extremely rowdy by those who 
 didn't go. I used to go. I admit that they were lively 
 affairs, very hilarious and very exhausting, rowdy, if you 
 like to call rowdy anything so delightfully breathless and 
 full of laughter, but not horrid in any way. There was 
 nothing depraved or bored in the way we danced. Phyllis 
 was easily the best dancer in Iroquois. She knew every 
 variation of every dance in the grizzly-bear, bunny-hug 
 line, but her dancing was anything but vulgar. It had 
 actually a kind of poetry about it, that eccentric, comic 
 poetry that is so expressive of the vitality of America; 
 and her partners were charged with the same thing. 
 They were light-hearted and gay and silly; at their 
 worst only too noisy, and degenerating toward morning 
 into something perhaps too much like a small boy's 
 " rough house." Women were obliged to mop the per- 
 spiration off their faces, faces that grew crimson with
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 241 
 
 exertion. Breath came in gasps. Snatches of song 
 burst out unexpectedly and exploded in laughter. Fur- 
 niture was broken sometimes. A good deal of glass 
 was smashed. Tommy Dodge, sliding down the ban- 
 nisters, once fell on his head and got himself a black 
 eye; but it was all innocent enough, unconceivably inno- 
 cent and young. Sometimes we kept it up till daylight, 
 and cooked a sort of breakfast, or a continuation break- 
 fast-supper, on chafing-dishes. As I remember it, we 
 were always ravenous and greedy. I can remember, it 
 seems to me, eating great quantities of creamed oysters 
 and lobster Newburg and baked beans, and drinking 
 quarts of coffee. Phyllis was very clever with a 
 chafing-dish; she could cook almost anything. She 
 would put an apron over her dress and go about it as 
 she used to go about getting her father's dinner in 86, 
 Oak Street. I remember Binky's watching her, in bliss- 
 ful absorption, make some sort of wonderful mushroom 
 concoction. I remember his gingerly putting in the red 
 pepper according to her instructions, and then when it 
 was finished I remember his amazement when he watched 
 her eat. She ate rapidly and with all the gusto of child- 
 hood ; positively shovelled things down through her 
 delicious mouth, cleaned her plate in no time, and 
 wrinkled up her nose at him and smacked her lips. It 
 was a new experience for Binky. He had never seen 
 anything like it, or like her, before. 
 
 It was incredibly fresh. You know how bored people 
 sometimes amuse themselves in London. It was as differ- 
 ent from that sort of thing as gathering nuts in May 
 is from walking the streets round Leicester Square.
 
 242 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Binky loved these Sunday-night parties. He isn't a 
 wonderful dancer himself, but he used to stand and watch 
 Phyllis romping up and down her drawing-room in her 
 inimitable style, so funny and so full of grace, with a 
 positively idiotic delight, and he used to make me teach 
 him new steps by the hour. I was nearly as keen on 
 dancing in those days as Phil. Pat and I became only 
 less expert together than Phil and Tommy, who were the 
 wonders of Iroquois. 
 
 It makes me rather sad to think of it now. I heard 
 of somebody who had seen Pat at Sans Souci, the other 
 day, in New York. He has, so they tell me, lost his 
 head over that Miriam Allys, the dancer. He was sit- 
 ting at her table; goes there every night when he's in 
 New York, I believe. It's rather too bad. I'm certain 
 Phil had a real affection for her husband; so had I. 
 There was something very attractive about his big 
 laugh, his hulking form with its tremendous muscles, 
 his storms of talk. He was a tremendous brute with 
 a tremendous brain. Nobody knew how he had got 
 on so fast, had made so much money, or had gained 
 so much political influence, but the sight of him plung- 
 ing down town in his very long red car, wrapped in a 
 huge fur coat, was enough to convince anybody that 
 he could drive straight through the Consolidated Light 
 Company's office buildings like a battering-ram, and 
 come out the other side unhurt, if he wanted to. I feel 
 pretty sure that his business methods, as well as his pol- 
 itics, were, to say the least, rather shady. I can im- 
 agine him playing newspapers and street railroads and 
 public offices one against the other quite unscrupulously, 
 but, on the other hand, not meanly. Though he shov- 
 elled up and dabbled in, and levelled down and piled
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 243 
 
 up, cartloads of all kinds of muck and dirt, every day 
 of his life, there was about him something essentially 
 clean. Men liked him most men not Binky ; he was 
 rather too much for Binky to swallow. There were 
 his neckties, which were never right somehow, though 
 Phyllis .probably chose them. They were nice enough, 
 but he always put the wrong one on with the wrong 
 suit, and it invariably travelled toward one of his 
 ears. His clothes, which were almost too obviously 
 expensive clothes, never seemed to fit. Their cut was 
 good, but his movements were so constant and rapid 
 that his coat and trousers and waistcoat and collars 
 were for ever being pulled up and out in the wrong way. 
 He had, for instance, a habit of stretching his arms 
 suddenly straight out, and then he would forget to pull 
 down his sleeves, and they'd stick on his biceps with 
 the cuffs coming only to within an inch of his large, 
 hairy, red wrists. The same with his trousers, which 
 he was always hitching up until one could see a bit 
 of garter and calf above a beautiful silk sock. It seemed 
 too bad that he was so very uncomfortable in such 
 very good clothes. It gave one a feeling of its being 
 a waste and extravagance for him to wear anything at 
 all, he would obviously have been so much more com- 
 fortable and unembarrassed in nothing. Of course Binky, 
 who could look elegant in a pair of ragged cotton 
 trousers and a celluloid collar, and to whom the wearing 
 of clothes, however old and shabby they may be, is almost 
 a religious rite, of course to him, Pat seemed simply 
 a grotesque bounder. Poor Pat! His great red paws, 
 with their wonderfully manicured finger-nails, were 
 funny. They would have been pathetic if anything about 
 so successful a person could be ; and his walk was rather
 
 244 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 like an elephant treading on eggs. He would come into 
 Phil's drawing-room on tiptoe, his boots squeaking. He 
 would lift his feet carefully, and haul one up suddenly 
 if anything creaked, as though afraid he might go 
 through into the cellar, or smash a baby under his 
 foot. And Phyllis would laugh and pull him down to 
 her and straighten his necktie and smooth his hair, and 
 sniff at his cheek with her delicate nose to see if he 
 had let the barber perfume him, a weakness he had 
 of which she strongly disapproved. If he smelt of 
 perfume, then she would send him up to wash it off, 
 and he would go, meekly turning an enormous, ashamed 
 back on us, and then in the hall would start upstairs 
 with a terriffic audible bound. Binky, as I say, didn't 
 appreciate him, but Jim always said he was a " darned 
 nice fellow." They Jim and Pat played golf to- 
 gether sometimes, and went duck-shooting. Pat was a 
 splendid athlete. You remember that it was on the 
 football field, playing for Columbia, that he first came 
 to light after his disappearance. I believe after that 
 football game Jim, in a way, took him up, and a queer 
 sort of friendship developed of which Louise didn't at 
 all approve. She used to say that Pat was a very bad 
 influence for Jim, made him drink too much and got 
 him into dishonest business transactions. She even went 
 so far as to tell me one day, that there was a real 
 estate deal on, which had to do with the Red Light 
 District the Red Light District is made up of houses 
 of prostitution and that Pat had offered to help Jim 
 make a hundred thousand out of, indirectly, the white 
 slave traffic. She told me this when things had rather 
 come to a head between Binky and Phyllis, and when, 
 too, she was though I didn't know it beginning to
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 245 
 
 be jealous of me. I could see she was very much 
 excited and I told her flatly I didn't believe it; but I 
 don't know. It might have been true. I know my father 
 once turned down a similar proposition made by old 
 Michael O'Brien, Pat's father, when he was political 
 boss of the Democratic party. I remember overhearing 
 something that passed between my father and mother 
 about it, and of her telling me afterwards, apropos of 
 nothing, that though sometimes she was frightened at 
 our being so rich, she was glad, so glad to know it was 
 all clean money. 
 
 My father never said anything to me about Patrick 
 O'Brien, and never objected to my having him in the 
 house, so I judged that he wasn't as black as Louise 
 painted him. It's difficult to imagine a man, really a 
 bad lot, who enjoys life so much. Pat's face is as 
 entertaining as Park Lane on a sunny day. It is full 
 of light and movement, far too alive to be ugly. Indeed, 
 his red, curly hair, his enormous, mobile features, and 
 his unruly voice which he tries to soften, and which 
 bursts suddenly from a small falsetto into a bass roar, 
 makes him a most amusing creature. I can understand 
 perfectly why Phyllis married him. I don't think she 
 needs any justification, but if she does, it lies in his 
 terrific hunger for her. It must be wonderful to feel 
 yourself as delicious to a man as that. It must be won- 
 derful and fearful and intimidating. I can quite under- 
 stand Phyllis giving in to Pat; what I can't understand 
 is her wanting to leave him for Binky; for it wasn't, 
 you understand, altogether or even primarily her hope 
 of stepping into Aunt Cora's shoes that allured her. It 
 was the idea of belonging to Binky himself. I suppose 
 he attracted her by force of contrast, and I suppose, too,
 
 246 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 that Pat's insatiability did begin to pall. I remem- 
 ber her telling me that some friend of hers always made 
 herself drunk on whiskey when she went to bed as a 
 help through a disgusting ordeal. Phil didn't suggest 
 that she herself ever had to resort to getting drunk, 
 but her telling me this, in the way she did, led me to 
 think somehow that she didn't enjoy much the sort of 
 thing that goes on in bedrooms. 
 
 And then Binky must have seemed rather wonderful 
 to Iroquois. He was, after all, the heir to a dukedom, 
 and Phyllis was enough of an American to find that 
 attractive. The little house in Oak Street and the steamy 
 kitchen, and her father's very long, living death in the 
 front bedroom, were still fresh in her mind. Pat, of 
 course, had released her from these nightmares, but 
 there must have existed still a sufficiently horrid past 
 to make the vision of ducal castles seem a magnificent 
 future. Phyllis is essentially a restless person. Pat had 
 done all that he could for her; at least so it seemed to 
 her, and she wanted a change. She is greedy, too. She 
 gobbles up life, just as she gobbles up food. " Fun," 
 she says, is what she wants, " fun, and still more fun." 
 Binky, doubtless, represented to her an endless good 
 time, and she probably gathered that the sort of fun 
 he would give her would be of a more finished and 
 refined kind than anything she could have with Pat. I 
 am perfectly certain, from little remarks that she lei 
 drop, that she thought Binky a most depraved person. 
 He must have made himself out one before her. You 
 can't blame him! She so obviously enjoyed it when he 
 told dreadful stories about his enormous losses at baccarat 
 and his etherizing parties in Paris, that he had to pile 
 it on. And then, of course, he is more depraved in his
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 247 
 
 tastes than the men she knew. Simple soul that he is, 
 he has been touched with the peculiar deadly ailment of 
 his class, and he has become acquainted with boredom. 
 Genuine, unassuming boredom places a man at a great 
 advantage. Binky fairly kinged it over Iroquois. He 
 started a gambling club, and he taught Jim and Tommy 
 Dodge and a lot of others how to enjoy opium, and his 
 taste came to be considered the very last word in re- 
 fined dissipation. At first, I'm sure, he was quite natural 
 about it and unconscious, but later on, when he saw 
 how it made Phyllis open her blue eyes and shiver, I'm 
 sure he went on at a wilder and wilder pace, just to 
 please her. He really behaved rather badly. It was 
 stupid of him. I'm sure he did the young men of Iro- 
 quois more harm in two months than the Ebenezer Sprott 
 Church could undo in a year of revivals. And it did 
 him no good. It only made Pat hate him. It was only 
 laying up for Phyllis a very terrible hour at the hands 
 of her husband. 
 
 Knowing Binky as I did, I didn't realize what was 
 going on. I didn't see the murky cloud of glory that 
 hung over him, though I might have known if I had 
 only remembered how he appeared to me when I first 
 saw him. I had forgotten all that, and it never occurred 
 to me that Pat hated him until one night at their house 
 when Binky was playing the piano, and I caught sight 
 of Pat's great red face scowling down on Binky's long 
 back. Pat, of course, would be inclined to despise any 
 man who could play the piano, but there was more in 
 his look than contempt; there was rage and hatred, the 
 rage of a very powerful beast against a creature too 
 weak to be attacked. Then his eyes travelled across 
 to mine. It was a horrid moment. All the rest were
 
 248 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 singing and fooling about the piano. I got up and 
 crossed to Pat where he stood in the door behind them. 
 I think I intended to speak to him, but when I got near 
 I couldn't. I was too frightened. His necktie was, as 
 usual, under one ear, and his small diamond shirt-studs 
 glinted foolishly in his vast shirt bosom, and he glared 
 at me. I could think of nothing but one evening years 
 and years before, when he and Phyllis and I stood at 
 the top of Oak Street. I remembered distinctly the 
 hole in his trousers and the dirt on his hands. I must 
 have stood idiotically speechless in front of him for fully 
 a minute, until he, all of a sudden, burst into a roar 
 of laughter. It was so terribly loud that Binky stopped 
 playing instantly, and every one looked up, startled, and 
 stared at him, a motionless group of figures, and Pat 
 went on laughing at them. It was like a bull bellowing at 
 a lot of sheep.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 I DO N'T want to be too hard on Louise, because 
 she's dead, and because, too, I realize now that at 
 the very last, when it was too late, she was beginning 
 to learn something about reality. I believe she made a 
 discovery just before she died so tragically. I believe 
 she came directly up against her own soul after years 
 and years of dodging it in and out of the elaborate 
 furniture of her absurd existence. It must have been 
 a terrible thing for her to come to grips with her own 
 immortal self, and not the least terrible part of it must 
 have been the discovery of how that self actually appeared 
 to Jim. I believe that was what unhinged her. Her 
 extremely silly behaviour during those last dreadful 
 days at Saracens was due to nerves, and the nerves 
 were due to the sudden visions of Heaven and Hell 
 that had been vouchsafed to her by a capricious God. 
 I can't explain it any other way than by saying that 
 God behaved very badly to Louise. He let her go on in 
 her poor little lying, attitudinising way until it was too 
 late, and then He gave her a vision of Himself, just when 
 the sight would unnerve her most dangerously and make 
 her blunder most hopelessly with Jim. If He, the Om- 
 nipotent, had any idea of really bringing her to life, of 
 making her into a new creature, and of restoring those 
 two poor things to happiness, He should have appeared 
 to her sooner that's all. No the case is black against 
 Him. It suggests a past master in irony. 
 
 249
 
 250 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Of course God didn't have any more to do with it 
 than Mrs. Bowers; perhaps not so much. I seem to 
 see Mrs. Bowers squabbling with Him all the way, as 
 to which of them should have most to say about Louise's 
 fate. I seem to see two figures always hovering about 
 whenever anything important happened; that is, when 
 a baby was born or a new motor was bought or a dinner- 
 party given; and it is the little modish figure of Mrs. 
 Bowers that always ousts the other, the shadowy Divine 
 one. 
 
 Perhaps you think this mention of God in connection 
 with Louise and her mother out of place. It isn't. He 
 existed for them, and they were afraid of Him while 
 they professed to despise Him. They were afraid of 
 Him and they were afraid of the devil, and they proved 
 this by the nervous manner in which they avoided the 
 church and the extreme energy with which they tackled 
 moral questions. Both Louise and her mother were 
 capable of great excitement over wickedness. Heaps 
 and heaps of things were to them wrong. Louise had 
 been brought up to be a good girl, and a good girl she 
 remained to the last day of her life. I mean she avoided 
 wickedness as she understood it; that is, she kept the 
 law which was a remnant of the law which her Puritan 
 forefathers had laid down. I don't suppose she ever 
 told a lie, or ever looked upon another man to want 
 him, or ever stole anybody's property of any kind, or 
 did any of the obvious things that are forbidden in the 
 Ten Commandments. Sex immorality was to her a hor- 
 rible thing. This was no affectation on her part. It was 
 inconceivable to her that any decent woman, any mod- 
 erately clean and intelligent woman that is, should com- 
 mit adultery. And besides not doing those things which
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 251 
 
 she ought not to do, she had a positive ideal of the 
 things she ought to do, and she actually tried to realize 
 it. She saw herself as a charming and faithful wife, 
 and as a good mother. She was most particular about 
 her child, a very severe and affectionate disciplinarian; 
 and all her antics, which drove Jim so nearly crazy, 
 were calculated to keep him in love with her. 
 
 I quite admit that she was a more logical person 
 than I ; I don't want to minimize her virtues, but you 
 see this sort of religion of the right thing to do didn't 
 make her in the least kind or generous or loving. And, 
 personally, I can't see that being a moral person without 
 any single generous impulse, or even any small capacity 
 for suffering with other people ; I can't see that it's 
 any use. I sometimes think that it would have been 
 an excellent thing for Louise to have fallen from her 
 place as a virtuous wife and mother. If she could have 
 had just one vital and illegitimate experience, one expe- 
 rience which could not be pigeon-holed in its little place 
 in the ridiculous social scheme that was her universe, 
 she might have been different. However, she never had 
 such an experience. Her mother, I imagine, had made 
 it quite impossible that she ever should have. She had 
 snipped and clipped away at the child's mind so cleverly 
 and consistently, that it was impossible for her ever to 
 dream of any adventure beyond the confines of respect- 
 able luxury. I've heard of a mother who stands at her 
 children's beds when they are asleep, and influences 
 their character by repeating to them ideas which sink 
 into their minds without their knowing it. Rather a 
 mean advantage to take of them, it seems to me. I 
 don't suppose Mrs. Bowers ever did just that, but all 
 during the period of Louise's adolescence, when her
 
 252 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 little mind was yet half asleep, I can hear Mrs. Bowers 
 repeating over and over : " The great day of your life 
 is your wedding-day. The most important thing in life 
 is marriage. Always be certain that your husband adores 
 you, for in this way you will make your happiness se- 
 cure. Money and jewels and a nice house are far more 
 lasting than the excitement of flirtation. You won't 
 be able to avoid having children if you want to, so make 
 up your mind to love them. Children will save you 
 from boredom and give you a hold over your husband. 
 Be sure your children adore you. Their love will save 
 you from despair," etc., etc. And over and over again: 
 " Always be certain that your husband adores you. Let 
 him give you presents. Let him not have anything to 
 do with other women. Men are queer, but pretend that 
 he should be true to you just as he expects you to be 
 true to him." I seem to hear Mrs. Bowers running on 
 and on in a kind of hypnotic monotone, while she stood 
 guard over Louise's youth. I seem to see her as a very 
 stylish witch, a witch by Poiret, murmuring incantations 
 over her daughter, casting a spell upon her from which 
 she was never to free herself. It sounds absurd, but 
 if you had seen her as I have, swooping down on them 
 in their own menage, positively the witch's broomstick 
 was as visible as her hat. 
 
 Louise and Jim lived in a very expensive up-to-date 
 flat on Jefferson Drive, just around the corner from 
 Mrs. Bowers. Louise had a telephone by her bedside, 
 and telephoned her mother every morning, and in the 
 middle of the night too, for all I know. You can im- 
 agine that to a jumpy person like Jim, it might have 
 been a cause of annoyance that even his wife's bed was 
 exposed so actually to the presence of his mother-in-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 253 
 
 law. There was always the danger of that telephone 
 ringing and of that peculiar thin, smooth voice begin- 
 ning to talk at the other end. I don't mean that Mrs. 
 Bowers was ever so tactless as to ring them up in the 
 middle of the night, or that she deliberately annoyed Jim 
 any more than was necessary; on the contrary, she was 
 always soothing him and purring over him, and for ever 
 professing to take his side against Louise. The hor- 
 rible part was not that she invariably backed up Louise 
 against him, but that she was always there to take one 
 side or the other, and there always were sides to take. 
 Violent disputes were the usual thing in that house. 
 Jim was, to put is mildly, an eccentric sort of person 
 to live with. He has a very quick temper and an acute 
 ear for the truth. Hypocrisy hits him on the raw, and 
 when he is hit on the raw he does not behave always 
 like a gentleman, not, for instance, like Binky. When 
 Binky is annoyed, he laughs and turns his back. Not 
 so with Jim. He grows purple, his teeth chatter, he grabs 
 things in his hands and breaks them. He is terrifying 
 because you can see that he is terrified of himself. A 
 lot of devils seem to be let loose in him, and his effort 
 to hold them in is painful. Usually he succeeds. I 
 surmise this, because it alone explains Louise's stupid- 
 ity. She simply never realized what was going on be- 
 fore her eyes, or she couldn't have persisted in annoy- 
 ing him so. You'd think even she, stupid as she was, 
 might have understood those agonizing signs, might 
 have foreseen what would one day happen, but she 
 didn't. 
 
 On the rare occasions when he did lose control, she 
 always found an explanation which satisfied her, and 
 which had nothing to do with the truth. Usually she
 
 254 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 would put it down to drink. When I picked her up 
 off the floor behind that meagre fringe of palms, that 
 masked her so completely from the dancers, at that 
 dreadful fancy-dress ball in New York, the first word 
 she whispered was champagne, and on the way back 
 to our hotel she kept repeating : " I could never forgive 
 him, Joan, never, if I didn't know that it was the cham- 
 pagne." 
 
 I tried that night to get at the truth with her, to make 
 her see it, but it was impossible. 
 
 We were in New York together, Jim and Louise and 
 Binky and I, staying at a hotel for a few days, and 
 that night we had gone to a big affair, a Bal Masque. 
 It was in the middle of it, about one o'clock, when Jim 
 came to me. I was dancing. He caught me on the edge 
 of the ballroom and dragged me away from my partner, 
 whoever he was, I've forgotten. 
 
 " Louise wants you," he said curiously. " Hurry 
 Binky's watching her keeping them off " 
 
 I fourid her lying on the floor in an alcove, behind 
 some palms, and Binky standing over her helplessly, try- 
 ing, I suppose, to shield her from the eyes of New York. 
 She lay perfectly still in a pool of water. I suppose it 
 was water, but it may have been champagne, the cham- 
 pagne she was always talking about. 
 
 At first, the fact that Jim had knocked her down, 
 didn't occur to me. I'm not sure even now that he 
 did. When he saw how terrified I was, he laughed. He 
 laughed more disagreeably than I've ever heard him 
 laugh. 
 
 " She's faking," was all he said. 
 
 Perhaps he struck out at her and she let herself be 
 knocked down. I don't know. I can't tell. He must,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 255 
 
 anyway, have hit her, or started to. It's impossible 
 to tell how much of it all was hysteria on her part, or 
 fake, as he called it. She, poor child, didn't know her- 
 self ; but she wasn't really unconscious or even in a 
 faint. Binky told me afterwards that she wouldn't let 
 him lift her up till I came. When he tried to, she 
 rolled her eyes and gave a sob and said " No no 
 leave me alone," in such a loud voice, that he gave it 
 up, afraid curious people would crowd in on them. He 
 just stood there for those long minutes while Jim went 
 to get me, and I suppose he suffered more than any 
 of them in a way, thinking every second that he would 
 be discovered with a lady soaking wet on the floor behind 
 him. 
 
 I sent him for our coats. Hers was a long fur one, 
 fortunately. I managed to get her on to her feet, to 
 wrap is round her, and then the four of us went round 
 and down a side stair and so, with Louise clinging to 
 me, her teeth chattering, and Jim following in a fury 
 behind, we got into our car. 
 
 Jim disappeared when we reached the hotel. I don't 
 know where he went. 
 
 At the door of the lift he snarled to me 
 
 "She's done it before, I tell you. It's pretending!" 
 and then went off. Binky didn't see him again till next 
 day. 
 
 It seems that some woman, dressed like I don't know 
 what, had been flirting with Jim. He had danced with 
 her, and she had hugged him with long bare arms and 
 had kissed him, so Louise said. It's quite possible. 
 You know what people are at these affairs, and what 
 they will do, even quite good people and Americans at 
 that, to the noise of a drunken rag-time. Anyhow
 
 256 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Louise went after them. She dragged him into that al- 
 cove and made a scene. When he laughed and said 
 it had been nothing but horse-play, she proceeded to 
 show him herself what the other woman had done to 
 him. I mean that she proceeded to illustrate on him 
 the embrace she thought so beastly and then he knocked 
 her down. 
 
 This is as she told it to me while I was stripping off 
 her clothes. And then she fainted, and he threw a jug 
 of water or something over her. 
 
 " Thank God I'm clean, anyway ! " she said, while I 
 rubbed her with a bath-towel. 
 
 I tried to explain to her how it would affect a man 
 like Jim, or any other man for that matter, who cared 
 about his wife's immaculateness how it would affect 
 him, to have her suddenly play the part of a cocotte 
 to him, but do you suppose she could see it? No. She 
 couldn't even see that there was anything to see. 
 
 She kept repeating that thank God she was clean, and 
 always had been clean, and that if it weren't for his being 
 drunk she would never forgive him. 
 
 " But what did he say, Louise, when you kissed him 
 like that?" I urged. 
 
 " He said ' Damn you ! What do you think you 
 are ? ' and knocked me down." 
 
 " Don't you see, my dear, don't you see? " 
 
 " See what ? He was drunk. He knocked me down." 
 
 It was hopeless. I got her into bed and gave her 
 a hot drink and sat by her table a little, and then went 
 off to my room to think it over. I saw at least one 
 thing very clearly. Jim's rage, his sudden fury, proved 
 that he still cared for her. Poor little Louise! She 
 still possessed something that he prized very highly.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 257 
 
 I found Binky wandering about in my room. He was 
 very much disturbed. 
 
 " Do they do this sort of thing much over here ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " No. At least, I don't know. Perhaps they do. 
 They're not all like Louise and Jim. Nobody's quite 
 like Jim." 
 
 " I never saw any one the least like her." 
 
 " Oh, she's not unique at all ! " 
 
 " But, my dear, it beats me it absolutely beats 
 me " 
 
 " What beats you ? " 
 
 " She does. She's so blasted silly she doesn't know 
 anything ! She's married. She's had a kid. She doesn't 
 know anything " 
 
 " I know." 
 
 When he left me, I thought a long time about Louise's 
 chastity. She was mother of a child and as chaste as 
 a nun. Of course I ought to have known how it would 
 turn out. 
 
 Mrs. Bowers had once probably told her that cham- 
 pagne excited a man's passions, and so she beautifully 
 forgave Jim the next morning when he promised to 
 be teetotal for a month, and she let him walk her 
 up Fifth Avenue to Tiffany's and buy her an emerald 
 that she had long coveted. When I saw the emerald, 
 my heart sank, but Louise took me aside and kissed 
 me, and said she was quite happy again now and certain 
 of Jim's love for her. I just looked at her. I was 
 speechless. It seemed to me that even if she had for- 
 given Jim, I could never forgive him. He had struck 
 her, and in striking her he had struck me, and I had lain 
 awake all night loathing him for it, and now, the next
 
 258 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 day, Louise was quite happy in the secure possession of 
 his love and a new emerald ring. 
 
 That afternoon Jim and I had the first, and one of 
 the very few, conversations, which need ever have 
 excluded his wife. He came into the sitting-room of 
 our suite an hour before dinner. Louise, he said, was 
 shopping. He was ill at ease. His eyes were very 
 dark, and at times they looked ashamed, and at times 
 they looked just as they used to look when he was a 
 little boy in knickers. He smoked several cigarettes in 
 silence. 
 
 "Well, what are you thinking?" he brought out at 
 last. 
 
 " I didn't "know you were that kind of a brute," I said. 
 
 He kicked a footstool. " I tell you Louise is a dog- 
 gone idiot," he burst out. " She pretended to fall down." 
 
 " Did you hit her? " I asked. 
 
 " No, I didn't ! She fell down. She'-s done it before. 
 
 She pretends ' There was an agony in his voice 
 
 an agony of shame and anger and disgust. I thought 
 of Louise's emerald ring and her smile. Perhaps she 
 was pretending to me too, that she was happy. How 
 could I tell ! I felt very depressed. 
 
 " Women make me sick," muttered he, walking around 
 the room. It is one of his favourite remarks. I didn't 
 answer him. I merely sat looking at him. I couldn't 
 loathe him. I had a strong desire to take him in my 
 arms and comfort him. He was obviously suffering so 
 much more than any one else and I foresaw that 
 he was going to suffer more and always more, of that 
 horrid pain of shame and remorse and disgust. 
 
 " Your father used to drink too much," I said, by way 
 of relieving the tension. We both knew perfectly well
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 259 
 
 that we both knew he wasn't drunk, but I gave him some- 
 thing to hide behind if he wanted. 
 
 " I had only had half a bottle," he growled, and then 
 I was very glad he didn't accept my invitation to hide. 
 That was all I got out of that talk. I don't think we 
 said anything more. Do you call that not playing the 
 game by Louise? If you do then I'm guilty, and if I 
 am guilty I only wish to God I'd got a little more out 
 of it.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 THE weather had a lot to do with it. If it hadn't 
 been for the weather there would have been 
 no week-end at Otrago Lake. Phyllis wouldn't 
 have fallen off the iceboat, and things with Binky 
 wouldn't have come to a climax so soon, or perhaps ever. 
 Uncle Archie, that is, would have had time to die before 
 they did come to a climax, and Jim and I should never 
 have been put in the way of meriting Louise's displeas- 
 ure, for Louise would not have been snowed up in New 
 Jersey. It is all a network of accidents hanging on a 
 single if, but granted the if, which was the blizzard, 
 the rest was inevitable. I mean that after the blizzard 
 in Iroquois, which was the same blizzard that stopped 
 the trains between New Jersey and New York, making 
 Louise a prisoner, it was inevitable that I should think 
 of a week-end in the country. The thermometer stood 
 at a steady zero, presaging some days at least of frost. 
 The air had that extraordinary clean-washed feeling 
 following a storm. It sparkled and crackled with the 
 electricity of the icy sunlight, and the whole world was 
 marvellously white with snow. There would be skating 
 and tobogganing and ice-boating if the wind had swept 
 enough of the lake clear of snow, and the trees would 
 be trimmed with a lace of frost and icicles, and we 
 could keep warm inside somehow, with large enough 
 log-fires and plenty of blankets. Granted the blizzard 
 
 260
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 261 
 
 then, the week-end was inevitable ; granted the week- 
 end and the ice-boating, it was inevitable that Phyllis 
 should stand up in the bow while they were going 
 ninety miles an hour, and should fall off. Granted that 
 she was knocked unconscious for the moment, it was 
 also inevitable that Binky should give himself away, 
 and so on. 
 
 Poor Binky ! He had never been on such a week- 
 end in his life. Never in his life had he sought pleasure 
 in such acute discomfort. When I think of that country 
 house built of wooden shingles, with its dozens of broad 
 windows rattling in the night wind, its wide verandahs 
 piled high with snowdrifts and its uncarpeted floors, I 
 wonder that I dared take Binky there. It wasn't at 
 all the sort of thing he was used to. Binky doesn't 
 mind roughing it when he's got to, that is, when he's 
 with his regiment, though even on active service he 
 manages to do himself pretty well. He went off the 
 other day with a servant, two horses and two grooms, 
 and about a hundred pounds of luggage above the allowed 
 amount, most of which consists of folding baths and 
 flat-irons for pressing clothes and food from Fortnum 
 and Mason's. 
 
 Binky, in peace-time, likes things done in a special 
 way. He likes his man to call him once gently at seven 
 o'clock in the morning, then again at seven-thirty, after 
 a doze, and finally, at eight he likes to be told firmly 
 that his bath is ready. He likes to come in from hunting 
 to a large tea-table by a small but pervasive coal fire. 
 He likes to wander down to a late breakfast and eat 
 his porridge with his head out the window, while he 
 talks about the weather to one of the keepers or gar- 
 deners or somebody. He likes to play bridge between
 
 262 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 midnight and three in the morning, with hot kippers 
 and coffee between rubbers. He likes Women in the 
 house who disappear for long intervals, and who don't 
 mind the men being out all day shooting. His perfect 
 sixty-hour week is divided up something like this: 
 Twenty hours with a gun ; twenty hours, i, e., three nights 
 of six to seven hours each, of sleep; ten hours given 
 over to eating and its attendant ceremonies of smoking 
 and talking, and ten hours given to ladies, billiards, and 
 bridge. 
 
 You can see for yourself that a mid-winter picnic 
 at Otrago was not quite planned to suit him. He would 
 never have stood it for a moment if he hadn't been 
 very much in love. It is not the least of Phil's tri- 
 umphs that she made that week-end seem to him not 
 only bearable, but even an enjoyable sort of an esca- 
 pade. If it hadn't been for Phyllis he would certainly 
 have called it one of my mad freaks, and now from 
 the solid English comfort of this place it seems to me 
 that it was. 
 
 I wonder that I dared call it a house-party, and I 
 wonder where the pleasure came in. We must have been 
 possessed, for, after all, we weren't so very young; and 
 it was far more like a polar expedition than a pleasure 
 picnic. " Green Gables " is a nice enough house in the 
 very hot months of summer. My father built it about 
 twenty years ago, and on a hot day, with its red-and-white 
 striped awnings shading the already shaded verandahs 
 and the willows below drooping into the waters of the 
 lake, it is quite charming; but it was not built for a 
 winter camp. It hasn't even a furnace. We wore 
 sweaters and furs at dinner. Our noses were blue with 
 cold. We pulled the dining-room table almost into the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 263 
 
 fireplace, and Phyllis and Katherine and Sally and I, 
 sat on the fireside with the men opposite, but in spite 
 of our scorching backs against a blazing fire of birch- 
 logs and pine-cones, our breath made little clouds of 
 steam, and Phyllis's fingers were so stiff she had to 
 let Binky cut up her meat for her. This he did quite 
 solemnly, as a kind of religious rite, and his tender, 
 serious care over those little bits of meat destined for 
 Phil's mouth was the more noticeable because we were 
 so very uproarious. I don't think a dozen civilized 
 grown people ever made so much noise. It all seemed 
 to help keep us warm. We ate as fast as we could, and 
 after dinner we played blind-man's-buff and leap-frog, 
 and danced for so long at a time as Binky could manage 
 to play the piano. I can't remember Binky ever sacri- 
 ficing himself to other people's fun so patiently before. 
 Doubtless, when Phil came to him, flushed and laughing, 
 to rub his poor stiff hands, he was compensated. Per- 
 haps just the sight of her romping up and down with 
 her hair flying, her figure in its white sweater and white 
 woollen skirt swaying, was enough for him. I confess 
 I have never seen her look more entrancing ; she seemed to 
 sparkle and glitter. 
 
 It was on Sunday afternoon that she fell off the 
 iceboat and cut her bright, beautiful head open, and 
 so disastrously destroyed Binky's all but perfect and 
 unshakable self-possession. I had contemplated Binky's 
 self-control for five years, and except for that one 
 instance when I refused to go on filling the role of 
 complete wife to him, I had never seen it seriously 
 shaken. I don't call his little self-indulgent bursts of 
 temper instances of his losing poise. They were man- 
 nerisms which he allowed himself, consciously, and even
 
 264 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 in that scene of ours, he had himself pretty well in 
 hand. But on this occasion he was done for; left 
 quaking and exposed, a poor suffering human, utterly 
 self-forgetful in his panic; and I take it that this is 
 the highest possible tribute he could ever pay to any 
 woman, and he paid it to Phyllis. He never paid it 
 to me, and I am certain he never paid it to Claire Hobbes. 
 She never gave him the opportunity, I suppose. It 
 wouldn't have been like her to fall off her horse, for 
 instance, on the hunting-field, and frighten him into 
 thinking she was dead; but even if she had, I doubt 
 if he would have crumpled up over it, the way he did 
 over Phil. There was nothing tender and helpless about 
 Claire. If she had fallen, she would have fallen cursing 
 her luck, and he, with the help of two or three other 
 men, would have picked her up and poured brandy 
 through her lips, and she would have opened her great 
 cold eyes and smiled sarcastically at them and herself, 
 and then he would have taken her home muttering: 
 " My dear, you did give me a nasty shock, you know." 
 And she would have laughed shortly with the first 
 inflowing of vitality, and have very successfully pre- 
 tended that she was not hurt. And all the time he 
 would have been the perfect gentleman, and on the whole 
 the chivalrous lover, just a little put out at having to 
 miss being in at the finish. But with Phyllis it was 
 different. Phyllis, in spite of her abundant health and 
 incorrigible appetite, looks a tender, soft thing. In spite 
 of her mocking lips and flippant matter-of-fact talk, her 
 eyelashes curl appealingly, and her eyes drag out of 
 men's hearts the sentimental desire to protect. Phil is 
 no clinging vine. She doesn't play the part of the for-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 265 
 
 lorn beauty. On the contrary she laughs at misfortune, 
 is reckless of her charms, and this very habit of mind 
 makes her personality more appealing. One marvels at 
 any one with such skin and such dimples not wrapping 
 them, as it were, in cottoji-wool, and at any one with 
 such eyelashes not using them for languishing purposes. 
 Phyllis doesn't. Nevertheless, it had been given her 
 so to play upon Binky's senses and his fancy, that she 
 had almost completely destroyed the being whom it had 
 taken his ancestors generations to bring to perfection. 
 He must, weeks before that Sunday, have ceased to 
 exist as we know him Claire Hobbes and I though 
 his shell, that is, his looks and his manners and his 
 clothes and all that inherited part of him, covered up 
 the devastation of soul that Phil had wrought and hid 
 from me, till that hour, the awful effect she had had. 
 I don't blame Phyllis for enslaving him. She quite 
 honestly believed I didn't mind. She had gone to 
 some trouble, I remembered, to sound me, to find out 
 whether I cared, and I believe if she had thought it 
 would hurt me very much, she would not have pursued 
 him and the ambitious dream he embodied for her. I 
 had never actually talked to her about Binky, but I 
 can quite believe that I gave her to understand " we 
 lived apart," as the saying is. There is something very 
 straight and sporting about Phil where her women 
 friends are concerned. With men she is the unscru- 
 pulous, the alluring, devastating, and lying female; but 
 with women she is honourable. Anyhow, I know she 
 must have thought she gathered from what I didn't say, 
 if not from what I did say, that I wanted to get rid of 
 Binky, and so she had gone ahead with that deliberate
 
 2 66 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 scientific process, so highly developed by American women 
 and so fantastically veiled in frivolity and seeming inno- 
 cence, of reducing the male to helplessness. 
 
 Pat and Jim and I and Katherine Beaumont had 
 been tobogganing. The road from Green Gables to the 
 village dips down a hill about a mile long. We coasted 
 down the hill and were drawn up it again by one of 
 the farm horses. We had been enjoying ourselves, for 
 the air was clear as crystal, and the world very beau- 
 tifully white under a dazzling sun. Pat, especially, had 
 seemed to be in riotous spirits, and as we walked home 
 through the grounds, at about four o'clock, with a red 
 winter sun low behind us, touching the snow with a 
 rosy, coppery glow, he and Jim snow-balled each other 
 energetically, yelling and snorting and prancing about 
 like youngsters; and then, suddenly, as we rounded a 
 bend in the drive and emerged from behind a clump of 
 firs, we saw the lake, and Phyllis being carried up from 
 the shore by Tommy Dodge and Jerry, and I, at least, 
 saw Binky staggering round them, getting in the way, 
 wobbling in his gait and making crazy, zig-zag tracks 
 in the snow, quite as though he had gone mad or had 
 had a stroke that had deprived him of the control of his 
 limbs. 
 
 The lawns of Green Gables are about fifty feet below 
 the house. They stretch smooth and flat to the edge 
 of the lake, rather like the lawns of some of those places 
 on the Thames. We were, you understand, on the drive- 
 way, above the lawns, on a level with the front door of 
 the house, and we looked down on the approaching 
 group, mystified, for an instant, long enough for us 
 to take in the whole smooth tablecloth of snow, and the 
 iceboat's sail flapping by the pier, and the metallic ex-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 267 
 
 panse of the frozen lake, and Phil's limp figure in its 
 turquoise-blue clothes, sagging between the two men; 
 and Binky coming on, detached from them, and behaving 
 so strangely. I believe it was Pat who dashed down 
 the slope first, but we all arrived pretty much together, 
 and I remember, just as I took in the colour of Binky's 
 face, that I stumbled into a deep drift, it must have been 
 over a sunken flower-bed or some such hole in the 
 lawn, and I floundered there for a minute, helplessly 
 staring up at Binky. The colour of Binky's face was 
 a queer yellowish-green against all that whiteness, and 
 his mouth was working queerly, and he was trying to 
 say things. As I picked myself up, I remember recog- 
 nizing suddenly, in a flash, that I must take care of 
 Binky, not of Phyllis; the others would do that. Pat 
 had already gathered her in his arms by the time I 
 had straightened up, and had leaped ahead with her, 
 and as Binky started to stagger after him, I caught 
 hold of his arm. 
 
 He turned on me frantically, fiercely. 
 
 " Help me," I said very distinctly. That stopped him 
 for just the necessary second, but his eyes were silly and 
 his mouth still working. 
 
 " She fell. She fell off you know the boat - 
 ninety miles an hour." His words were furry and in- 
 distinct. A spring seemed to have snapped inside him. 
 All his mechanism seemed to have gone wrong. He 
 kept moving his tongue round his lips. His eyes and 
 his lips and his head and his hands, all moved errat- 
 ically. I took his arm and guided him toward the 
 house. He jerked and pulled and hung heavily by turns, 
 and I hated him, and felt sorry for him, and wanted 
 to laugh at him, and wanted to cry over him with
 
 268 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 rage. I travelled at least ten miles on my way to the 
 house, and I lived through ten years of chagrin and 
 jealousy and rage, and by the time we got there, I was 
 for the most part just sorry for him, and I was deter- 
 mined to cover up his feelings, which he was so pitiably 
 displaying. Also, I was frightened, frightened at the 
 prospect of what would happen if others saw what I saw, 
 particularly if Pat saw. 
 
 Binky kept muttering, " she fell God she fell 
 
 " and kept trying to hurry on while I dragged 
 
 back. It probably took us only five minutes to reach 
 the house, but by the time we got into the lighted 
 hall the others had disappeared. There was no one, 
 and nothing but a blazing fire and a tea-table set for 
 tea. Feet were moving overhead hurriedly, chairs scrap- 
 ing, Pat's voice was heard shouting something, and at 
 that sound Binky made for the stairs. I caught his 
 coat-tails, or perhaps it was the end of his woollen muffler, 
 something, anyhow. 
 
 " Binky," I said loudly and angrily, " sit down here. 
 Don't be a fool ! " He turned vaguely. " Don't be a 
 fool ! " I repeated. His eyelids quavered with a faint 
 sign of intelligence. I shoved him into a chair, and 
 poured him out a stiff peg there was, fortunately, an 
 array of drinks on the second table and then I stood 
 contemplating him as he drank it. 
 
 I stood contemplating the dream of my romantic youth, 
 the illusion of my marriage, and the distressingly com- 
 plicated problem of the future. And Binky drank the 
 whisky meekly, and held the empty glass out for me 
 to take. I took it, and as I took it our eyes met. His 
 were crazy no longer. They held a perfectly lucid and 
 honest and desperate appeal. Their expression was
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 269 
 
 different from anything I had ever seen in them before, 
 and it renewed the ugly pain of envy in my heart. 
 Binky had never been so real before. Nothing that had 
 had to do with me had ever forced him to recognize the 
 bare realities of human helplessness and loneliness and 
 fear in the face of a threatening universe, as had this 
 accident to Phyllis. It almost seemed as I met Binky's 
 eyes, that I saw in them the fear of an angry God, whom 
 he had slighted and snubbed all his life, the admission 
 of an eternal truth which he had been trained so carefully 
 to deny. 
 
 I couldn't be sorry for him any longer; for myself, 
 yes, but not for him, or for Phyllis. They had some- 
 thing which I had been dreaming about and looking for 
 all my life. I felt out of it. I felt that my life had 
 been a dreamy, commonplace thing, compared to that 
 of Binky and Phyllis. That they had only just come 
 to know one another didn't matter. They had, it seemed 
 to me, the whole of life and eternity together, and I 
 envied them the whole of eternity. 
 
 In answer to his look I went upstairs, motioning to 
 him to wait. I found Phyllis on her bead, under a heap 
 of quilts, her eyes open, smiling faintly, and faintly 
 gurgling with amusement over Katherine, who was 
 rubbing her feet, and Pat, who was giving her something 
 hot with a spoon, and Tommy Dodge, who was preparing 
 a plaster for her forehead, and Jerry, who was blowing 
 at the fire in the grate. I stood in the doorway and 
 watched for one second or two, and strangely enough 
 it dawned on me then, what was the secret of Jerry's 
 bachelordom. He was in love with her too. They all 
 were. I watched his back as he fussed over the fire, 
 and I marvelled at Phil's power of absorbing men like
 
 270 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Jerry and Tommy Dodge, at her faculty for standing 
 between them and other women. 
 
 " Binky," I said, " is very much upset. He feels re- 
 sponsible." 
 
 She turned toward me under the quilts they had 
 piled over her, and said a little weakly, but with her 
 usual sweet, gay flippancy: 
 
 " Tell the poor angel I'm fine." And then she gave 
 one of her little chuckles, and opened her mouth for the 
 spoonful of brandy her husband was holding over her. 
 It spilled. 
 
 " Oh Pa-atrick it's gone in my eye," she whim- 
 pered, laughing. And I turned and went downstairs. 
 
 " She says to tell you she's fine, and she really is all 
 right," I said to Binky. 
 
 He was sitting where I'd left him, and he leaned 
 forward and covered his face with his hands, and pres- 
 ently a long shuddering breath shook him, and then 
 another. One wouldn't quite call it crying, or sobbing. 
 He made a tremendous effort to stop it, that queer 
 working of his lungs, but he couldn't seem to for a 
 moment. I turned away and stood looking into the fire, 
 and listening to him. It seemed a very long time 
 before he was quite quiet, then I said, without turning 
 round : 
 
 " You must be careful of Pat." He gave a sort of 
 grunt. " I think," I went on, after a little, " that it would 
 be a good plan for you to go down to the village for the 
 doctor." 
 
 " Yes, that's a good egg," he assented. 
 
 I turned then, intending to go up and suggest this, 
 and I started to call as I turned, to Pat or some one, 
 when I looked up and saw Pat standing at the top of
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 271 
 
 the stairs in the gallery, looking down at us. He had 
 a cup in one hand and a spoon in the other. It was 
 impossible to judge how long he'd been there, but he 
 was standing perfectly still, and staring down at Binky 
 with a curious, a very curious, look on his face, and I 
 had the impression that he was very uncomfortably 
 hampered by having that cup and spoon in his hands. 
 
 "Oh, Pat, I was just suggesting that Binky should 
 go for the doctor ! " I don't know what my voice sounded 
 like. 
 
 " It's not necessary," he rejoined, calmly enough. 
 
 " It's just as well to be on the safe side," I argued. 
 " Please let me." 
 
 " All right. Do as you like." He turned back along 
 the gallery and went into the bedroom again, the boards' 
 creaking under him. Had he crept out on purpose, care- 
 fully silent, to watch Binky, or had we both been so 
 intent on our thoughts as not to notice the noise of his 
 feet? 
 
 " You'd better go round to the stables and order the 
 sleigh yourself," I suggested. 
 
 " Right oh ! " said Binky, getting up. We stood looking 
 at one another. We said nothing. And as our eyes 
 continued to meet, that look seemed to include many 
 things, among them a leave-taking. It was as though I 
 said " Good-bye " to Binky then, once and for all, as I 
 let him out into the cold. 
 
 I realized it when he had gone. I would see him 
 through. If I could make it possible, he should have 
 Phyllis, he should have her soon, but whatever happened, 
 he and I would be intimate no longer. We would meet 
 differently and more easily than heretofore, because it 
 was all finished, the effort, between us.
 
 CHAPTER Six 
 
 IT was curious, lying awake during the night, with 
 the winter wind shaking that flimsy house and 
 Binky in the bed next to me under his heap of 
 blankets and rugs, staring at the ceiling, perfectly still, 
 hour after hour. It seemed incredible that I had ever 
 belonged to him. He was a stranger, and his presence 
 there was an accident. The situation reminded me of 
 some old story about two solitary travellers lost in a 
 storm, who were shoved grotesquely into the same bed- 
 room by a ruthless landlord. The disorder of the room 
 and its discomfort made it seem more like a half-way 
 house on a mountain road than like a dwelling. It was 
 so cold, so bare, so utterly incompetent as a room. My 
 father hadn't lived in the house for years, and this room, 
 which had once been my mother's, all white furniture 
 and pretty cretonne, was now denuded. We each had 
 a camp-bed. There was an odd old dressing-table and 
 a chest of drawers, and our bags lay open on the bare 
 floor. Powdery snow filtered through the loose case- 
 ments of the windows. Bits of tissue-paper, which had 
 wrapped up my clothes, fluttered in the draughts that 
 blew under the doors. I lay under two blankets and 
 a carriage-rug and a fur coat, my feet drawn up under 
 me to keep warm. The sheet, farther down, was chilly. 
 I dared not stretch out or move, and the weight of my 
 coverings was heavy. I had a ridiculous vision of being 
 
 272
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 273 
 
 snowed-up there for ever, with this man who wanted to 
 get away to meet his beloved. 
 
 My maid had made a large fire in the fireplace with 
 coal from the kitchen as well as wood. It gasped and 
 flared in fitful draughts that came down the shallow 
 chimney. It flung grotesque shadows on the ceiling and 
 walls, and flickered on some old prints in oval frames, that 
 I remembered liking very much as a child. 
 
 The passage of relentless time, which had destroyed 
 the life of this room and turned me from a vigorous 
 child into a futile adult, appeared to me as an embodied 
 enemy. I perceived that experience tears one to pieces 
 bit by bit. It seemed unfair that inanimate things should 
 survive so much longer than human beings. The old 
 pictures of sweet women with parted hair and children 
 folded in their arms, would outlast all the passions and 
 affections of our family, who had lived in that house and 
 hung them there on the wall. 
 
 I thought of all the places on the earth where I had 
 lived, and how they had left their marks on me, but 
 had received none from me in return. There was my 
 bungalow in India, inhabited now by other people as 
 insignificant as ourselves. It gave me a despairing feel- 
 ing of waste to think that I should never go back there. 
 It was as though I had sunk large sums of money in 
 various enterprises that had failed. All the energy I 
 had put into the Anglo-Indian menage, all the love I 
 had lavished on that dwelling of my husband's, had gone. 
 I was the poorer for it. I had nothing to show for 
 it. The same with this room. What had become of 
 my mother's kisses and her smiles, and the tears she had 
 shed there? The atmosphere of it was no richer for the 
 great number of precious hours she had spent there,
 
 274 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 teaching us to read, healing our bruises, spending herself. 
 The room was indifferent. It held no memories. It had 
 become ugly, and yet it remained a useless erection, 
 sticking up into the air, its walls protesting somewhat 
 vainly against time and space and the wind. 
 
 Now Binky and I were there pouring into the in- 
 sensible place all the bewilderment and anguish and hope 
 and regret of our weak souls. Only the wind seemed 
 akin to our humanity. It made a noise of whining and 
 whistling, of spasmodic shrieking and little whimpers. 
 I felt that the wind was talking for us who were dumb. 
 It was full of aimless complaint and futile regret and 
 silly apology. It threatened hysteria, and then fell into 
 ingratiating gibberish. 
 
 At about three o'clock I got up to replenish the fire. 
 
 " My dear, let me." His voice startled me, sounding 
 as it did just like his voice. I crawled back to bed and 
 watched him shovel on coal. He had to fuss over the 
 fire for some time, and he knelt there shivering in his 
 dressing-gown with his back to me, and I thought sud- 
 denly of how courteously and with what delicacy he would 
 take care of Phyllis. And immediately I remembered 
 the whole of our life together, and knew that he had 
 always shown courtesy and delicacy to me. 
 
 " There, I guess that'll last for a bit ! " He climbed 
 back into his bed. The wind took up the conversation 
 again. 
 
 I began to hate the wind's talk. Binky's interposition 
 had brought everything into focus prosaically. The wind 
 no longer expressed what I was willing to feel. It inter- 
 fered with my thoughts. I fastened my eyes on Binky's 
 trousers that hung on a peg by the door. The braces 
 hung loosely down in two irregular loops. The legs of
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 275 
 
 them dangled crooked. I wanted to be quiet, and plan 
 what I should do, but that whining, useless lament outside 
 kept on and on. 
 
 Would it be possible to undo my marriage and begin 
 again? I was twenty-five years old! It seemed to me 
 that I had enough vitality to begin the business of life 
 again. I would live with my father. We would take 
 up our old occupations, resume our old habits. He would 
 provide a sufficient reason for living even though 
 Binky asked me to let him go, and the children as 
 well. It was impossible to think clearly about losing 
 Arch and Humpy. Their round, firm legs, their bushy 
 heads, their boisterous voices, confused me. I found 
 myself erratically wondering if they needed new clothes. 
 They would soon be too big for tunics and knickers. In 
 a year or two they would have to go to school. The 
 English system demanded that they go away from me. 
 Binky would be shocked if I implored him to let them 
 stay at home until they were a little bigger, a little 
 more substantial. How could babies six years old stand 
 up against the pushing crowd of the world? I had for- 
 gotten, for the moment, that Binky would take them with 
 him across the Atlantic, and that I was to stay in Iro- 
 quois. 
 
 I flung it all, with a violent effort of will, out of my 
 mind, and began to count sheep going through a gate. 
 I counted three hundred and sixty-five. They scrambled 
 about, bumping into each other, grubby, senseless things, 
 and then I perceived that it was growing light in the 
 room. There was a drift of snow on the floor under 
 the windows, but it seemed to have stopped snowing now. 
 The light was clear with a promise of a sun about to 
 rise in a cloudless sky. I had not much more time in
 
 276 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 which to decide what I was going to do. Suddenly Binky 
 spoke. He asked that same question. He took every- 
 thing between us for granted, all the facts, I mean, of 
 our mutual understanding. 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " You'd like to to get rid of me, I suppose? " 
 
 I looked at it. I felt unutterably weary at the sight 
 of it. 
 
 " It doesn't matter what I'd like," I said, after a 
 little. 
 
 " It's for you to decide." He moved and raised 
 himself on his elbow, and I knew he was looking at me 
 now. 
 
 " No. You see, you want something. I don't think 
 I want anything. There's nothing I can want ! " I was 
 thinking of Jim. Jim hadn't come into it before. " Ex- 
 cept the children," I added, and then that fearful tired- 
 ness seemed to turn me quite cold, dreadfully cold. 
 
 The silence now was complete, except for the little 
 sounds of the fire and the clock and footsteps moving 
 somewhere. The wind had died down. Presently a 
 shaft of sunlight shot into the room. I closed my eyes 
 and heard him get out of bed, and move about the room 
 gathering up towels and soap and clothes. He pulled up 
 the blinds and threw more wood on the fire. At the door 
 he paused. 
 
 " I leave it to you," he said, before he went out into 
 the hall. 
 
 Pat had to leave by an early train, and all the rest 
 went with him except Phyllis and Binky and Jim and 
 myself. I was to see that Phyllis got comfortably home.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 277 
 
 The doctor said, of course, that she had had a wonder- 
 ful escape, but would feel the effect of the shock for 
 some days. We left Otrago at eleven o'clock, driving 
 in a sleigh to the station. My father's private car was 
 attached to the train, and I arranged Phyllis carefully 
 on a couch with pillows and rugs and a hot-water bottle. 
 
 " Good heavens, my dear, I'm all right ! " she kept 
 insisting. " I'm fine ! I don't feel badly a bit." She 
 lay languidly smiling and playing cat's cradle with Jim. 
 Binky sat watching them. 
 
 " You're a clumsy thing, Jim, my boy ! " she gurgled, 
 pulling the string away from him. " But you've got the 
 prettiest baby eyes. Hasn't he, Joan?" 
 
 " Go on, you've seen my eyes before," muttered Jim, 
 flushing. 
 
 " But I never noticed how curly your eyelashes are. 
 Do you remember when Pat gave you a black eye ? " 
 
 "When was that?" put in Binky. 
 
 " That was when Pat lived over a saloon in Grant 
 Street," she laughed. " Poor old Pat ! He used to 
 frighten us out of our wits. Our mothers wouldn't let 
 us play with him. Jim used to be very good with his fists 
 the best fighter in the ' Hot Push.' " 
 
 " What was the ' Hot Push ' ? " asked Binky. 
 
 " It was a youthful American version of the Turf 
 Club." She gurgled entrancingly through half-shut eyes. 
 " Give me a cigarette, there's a dear ! " Binky obeyed. 
 
 Jim and I went to the rear-end of the car, and sat 
 watching the track slide away from under the train. 
 Here and there through the snowy country, a grey, 
 wooden farm-house lifted its shingled roof out of the 
 snowdrifts. An occasional waggon struggled along a
 
 278 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 deep-rutted road. We talked very little. It didn't seem 
 worth while trying to make-believe, and I hadn't the 
 courage to find out how much he perceived. 
 
 It was a two hours' journey. We got to the Central 
 Station at one. A thaw had set in, and the languor 
 of the weather seemed to me all of a piece with my 
 own languor. The snow was already grimy, and was 
 turning to slush. Water dripped from every roof and 
 gable, and ran gurgling in the gutters. What was the 
 use of anything, I thought, if the glory of a blizzard could 
 dissolve into mud in two days? The softness of the air, 
 a travesty of spring, made me feel sick. 
 
 Phil's car and mine were waiting for us. She nestled 
 back into hers, and looked out at me from her dark 
 furs, her snowy face wistfully tired. There was a patch 
 of surgeon's plaster showing under her pale hair, but 
 her face was as lovely as the face of a frail and weary 
 goddess. 
 
 " Binky will take you home," I said. 
 
 She demurred. " I'm all right, Johnny, darling, I am 
 really. He needn't bother." 
 
 " He may as well," I insisted. " Jim will come with 
 me. I'll drop him at the club." At that Phyllis very 
 slightly raised her eyebrows and smiled a vulgar little 
 meaning smile. I turned away quickly. She seemed to 
 me, of a sudden, utterly worthless and coarse. Her smile 
 had said as plainly as words, that in that case she wouldn't 
 worry about me any more. I had not been completely 
 miserable until that moment. 
 
 " She's not worth it," I said to myself savagely. I 
 had wanted to believe that she was worth Binky's atten- 
 tions. It was humiliating to me, in the extreme, to hand 
 him over to a vulgar creature. I marvelled at his taste,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 279 
 
 that was so fastidious and sure, among values that he 
 was accustomed to. I couldn't put it all down to her 
 strangeness and newness. He must have seen evidences 
 of her poverty of mind, but then, after all, she had 
 dazzled me for years. 
 
 Jim must have known by that time, if not before, what 
 it was all about. I was conscious as we drove through 
 the crowded, clanging, slippery streets, that he, too, was 
 nervous and tired. 
 
 " Come and have lunch with me," he said abruptly. 
 
 " No, thanks, I must get home." 
 
 " Nonsense, there's no one at home for you to hurry 
 back to." 
 
 " I don't want to, Jim." 
 
 " Let me come home to lunch with you, then." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I don't want you to. I'll lunch with the children. 
 I'm very tired." 
 
 I saw, by his reflection in the glass of the motor, that 
 he was unhappy. He didn't know what to do for me. 
 There was nothing he could do for me. He looked so 
 sweet and so perplexed that I laughed, but when I put 
 him down at the club, I kept him for a moment standing 
 there at the window of the car. I couldn't bear to 
 let him go. For that one moment I was very near 
 throwing it all over. It seemed to me that if I left 
 him there and went home alone, I should be alone for 
 ever. I thought of the other two rolling smoothly back 
 together, cosy and happy, with all the wonder and ro- 
 mance of their discovery ; and I held on to Jim. 
 
 "Jim," I said, "Jim!" He had his hand on the 
 ledge of the open window. I grabbed it. " Jim," I
 
 280 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 said again. I couldn't bring out another word. His 
 face grew dark in that strange way, expressive of a 
 tumult inside him, his dear, chubby, absurd face ; I clung 
 to the sight of it. The expression in his eyes seemed 
 to hold for me all the sweetness and all the idealism 
 of our youth. I felt that I was going to move away 
 from him up Jefferson Drive, straight into a hopeless 
 middle-age. 
 
 " Only tell me what to do," he muttered. 
 
 " Nothing. There's nothing." I flung myself back 
 against the cushions, and he, after a moment's hesitation, 
 turned away into the club. 
 
 I lunched with Arch and Humpy. They were noisily 
 glad to see me. They choked me with hugs. Their 
 charm tortured me. My father didn't come up. I went 
 up to his room and sat down in his chair to wait. I 
 had never been so tired in my life. I felt that if he 
 didn't come home soon I should die of tiredness. After 
 a time I noticed that tears were squeezing themselves 
 under my closed eyelids. There was nothing in it for 
 me, any way you looked at it. My mind kept revolving 
 about that fact dizzily, and for the rest all my energy 
 was taken up in not thinking of Binky and Phyllis. 
 They were at home together now. Pat was down town. 
 I tried very hard not to visualize them together, not to 
 wonder what they were saying to one another. I la- 
 boured and toiled with my brain to keep them off and 
 shut them out, but I heard them talking about me. 
 They referred to me very kindly and considerately. They 
 admitted my good points. They surmised, indeed, they 
 felt sure that I should behave well. Good God! All 
 the time they so tactfully alluded to me, they were hating 
 me for being there.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 281 
 
 It was dark in my father's room when he came in. 
 
 " Joan ! " he exclaimed, as he turned on the light. 
 
 " Yes, I've been waiting for you." 
 
 I remember quite distinctly the clothes he had on, 
 a greyish-brown tweed suit. His face was reddened 
 by the cold, and his hair rather rumpled. Evidently in 
 spite of the thaw of midday he had been to the Winter 
 Club for the curling. He stood smiling and chafing his 
 cold hands. 
 
 " Yes, I've been waiting for you," I said. 
 
 He came quickly toward me, and as I looked up at 
 his tall figure, his white hair, his deep eyes under 
 their fierce eyebrows, I stiffened under the terrible surge 
 of temptation to throw myself into his arms and blurt 
 it all out. 
 
 " I wanted to talk to you," I said, biting off my words 
 in a panic. It was so very dangerous. I was so very 
 near breaking down. I had to tell him something, just 
 enough to explain my conduct, not enough to let him 
 know the truth. I got up and pushed him into the chair, 
 and sat on the arm of it a little behind him, so that he 
 couldn't see me. 
 
 " I wanted to tell you that I'm not going back to London 
 with Binky." 
 
 " Is he going back ? " 
 
 " Yes, of course, sometime soon. I mean that I'm 
 not going back with him at all." 
 
 He gave an exclamation and tried to move round in 
 his chair, but I held him with my arms round his neck, 
 and talked over his head. 
 
 " Sit still, dear, let me tell you." I kissed the top 
 of his head to gain time. " I am going to stay with 
 you always. I'm not going back. You are my father,
 
 282 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 and you must keep me here. Binky and I are not 
 going to live together any more." 
 
 I had not realized what a shock it would be to him; 
 had not at all anticipated how he would take it. It 
 seemed utterly strange to me that I should call down 
 his anger on me just then, of all times, when I was 
 so very tired. He had been angry with me so seldom 
 in my lifetime. I had forgotten what his anger was 
 like. 
 
 It seems strange to me now that I should have been 
 so stupid about my father. He was an American. I 
 seemed to have forgotten that. I seemed to have for- 
 gotten the passion with which Americans believe in moral 
 laws and ideals. But that was only a part of it. I 
 had never realized what it had cost him to give me to 
 Binky. He had almost completely effaced himself during 
 the days before my marriage. He had been there solely 
 as a support, and I had taken his support as a matter 
 of course. I had taken it lightly, in feverish happiness, 
 quite unaware of the enormity of his sacrifice. He 
 had never let me see how lonely he was when I left 
 him, but I saw it all now. I saw him going back to 
 Iroquois without me, and settling down there with Jerry 
 to the contemplation of my life and my happiness and 
 my future. I saw him playing countless solitary games 
 of patience in the long evenings, while he thought about 
 me and my husband and my children. He had sunk 
 far more of the capital of his affections and his vitality 
 in my venture, than I had ever put into anything. He 
 had speculated on a vast scale in my enterprise, and 
 at my request, and with only my guarantee. It was 
 as though he had been ruined by my treachery. I had 
 taken the riches of his heart and had embezzled them.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 283 
 
 He was on his feet now, and his appearance was 
 terrible. His passionate anger was commensurate with 
 his love for me and his hope. I was frightened. 
 
 " How dare you talk so lightly of leaving your hus- 
 band ? " he thundered. He seemed to grow enormously 
 tall. He seemed of a tremendous weight, and I felt that 
 if he fell on me I should be crushed. 
 
 " Father," I said, " father ! " I held out my hands 
 to him. 
 
 He ignored them. " What do you mean by all this ? 
 Have you been deceiving me? You told me just the 
 
 other day " He glared. His eyes were on fire, 
 
 and I cowered under his glare. I felt guilty. I knew 
 that I was guilty. 
 
 " Yes, I've been deceiving you." The fact that I had 
 deceived him from the beginning, when Binky first made 
 love to me, suddenly became of immense importance, a 
 final and tremendous condemnation. 
 
 " How long has this been going on? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Has he been untrue to you ? " 
 
 " No not exactly." 
 
 At that he burst out again. " Good God ! Not exactly 
 not exactly untrue ! " 
 
 I perceived how terribly different were the standards 
 of different men. I sat aghast at this recognition of my 
 father's exact and splendid emphasis. Loyalty was an 
 absolute thing. I saw this strangely. 
 
 He was waiting for me to go on, and I fumbled for 
 words. 
 
 *' He doesn't care for me now, and I don't care for 
 him as I used to. That's all." I shuddered to find 
 myself lying again to him. " You see, I can't live with
 
 284 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 him if I don't love him. How can I live with him 
 if I don't love him? My dear oh, my dear I am 
 very unhappy. Don't be so terribly hard. Don't 
 I I can't bear it. I am so very lonely. I am so 
 tired." I broke down then. I slid into the chair and 
 shook violently. It was no good trying to control my- 
 self. 
 
 His anger did not subside at once. He turned away 
 from me with a groan. It seemed to me a long time 
 before he came to me and lifted me and took me in his 
 arms. 
 
 " My child, my child ! " he muttered then, terribly 
 moved, terribly shaken. 
 
 " I will tell you everything," I said at last. " I had 
 better tell you everything." 
 
 And so I told him some of the things, everything 
 that I could remember and make clear to him about 
 Binky and myself. I told him how, when I learned 
 about Binky's other son, I had found it impossible to 
 go on as before. And I told him how we had grown 
 more and more estranged since then, but I didn't tell 
 him about Binky and Phyllis. I couldn't. It was im- 
 possible to name them to him, together, and besides that 
 wasn't, it seemed to me, my business. 
 
 When I had finished he sat still, so still that I was 
 as frightened by his silence as by his thunder. He 
 looked sad and old, and a kind of feebleness seemed to 
 have come upon him. I had always thought of him as 
 magnificently strong and I knew then that he was 
 broken, and that I had done it. Something had snapped 
 within him, and he would grow old now. My under- 
 standing of what was in his mind was the worst of all 
 the things that had come to me.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 285 
 
 " After your mother died, when you were still a child, 
 I was afraid for you," he said at last. "But" he 
 hesitated as though the words hurt him " I trusted your 
 taste." It was a curious thing for him to say. He 
 was sinking in his own furious disappointment in the 
 greater sense of my tragedy. He was so fine, so great. 
 He would never reproach me. I saw that. I was his 
 own, and my doom was his own, for he regarded it 
 as my doom. He knew that I had ruined my life. He 
 knew what I had missed, for I had missed what he had 
 had. 
 
 " Death," he went on, " is nothing. I have not lost 
 your mother in death." 
 
 " I know that," I whispered, watching his face in my 
 despair. 
 
 I learned, too, in that hour from him what I had 
 missed. I saw the supreme beauty of loyalty, the costly 
 beauty of faithfulness. 
 
 We sat silent together, clinging together until Edward 
 knocked on the door and said that dinner was served. 
 I remembered then where Binky had gone. Had he 
 come back, I wondered? Surely he must have come in 
 long ago! Pat would have come home. I shuddered 
 with disgust. My father's presence made that muddle 
 disgusting to me. 
 
 He stopped me as I was leaving him, and a strange 
 severity came into his voice again. 
 
 " You must see it through, Joan." 
 
 " See it through ? " I echoed. 
 
 " You can't get out of it. It's yours. He is yours. 
 You chose him." 
 
 " But " I stammered. He cut me short. 
 
 " You must " And then as I slunk away he added
 
 2 86 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 to my back : " You will, in time, come to like him again, 
 if you see it through." 
 
 How did he know? I felt at the time that he was 
 completely at sea. I could think only of Binky and 
 Phyllis, and their hatred and their pleasure. Wasn't 
 it strange that he saw through and beyond it all? I 
 was still blinded by all the cheap things I had gathered 
 out of life, the cheap pleasures and excitement and sen- 
 sations and vanities I had so greedily purchased. I 
 was still to go on dealing in this rubbish, buying it 
 more and more feverishly. The arresting vision opened 
 to me by my father wasn't enough to last me very 
 long. He hadn't succeeded in really pulling me out of 
 the muddle. His trust was, after all, a mistake, and 
 yet what he prophesied has come true only not as 
 he hoped. He didn't foresee the war. It took the war 
 to bring about what he said. It's curious, his knowing 
 ahead like that. 
 
 I found Binky downstairs in the hall. He was not 
 dressed for dinner. He stood there with a telegram 
 in his hand, and as I came down he looked at me like 
 a person struggling to rouse himself out of a horrid 
 sleep. 
 
 " Uncle Archie is dead," he said.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 ONE had no right, I suppose, to expect Phyllis 
 to understand or even ignorantly to fear any- 
 thing so vaguely imperative as the command 
 of Uncle Archie's ghost. It was natural that she should 
 think that if she only kicked energetically enough, her 
 proficient little feet could disperse that fact which was 
 to her as nebulous as a cloud. How could she possibly 
 know that a thing so vague as Binky's obligation was 
 still as hard and fixed as a star, and as far out of 
 reach of her spurning toe? Her antics were as futile 
 and unbecoming as though she had literally aimed one 
 foot after another in violent and rapid succession toward 
 some shrouded constellation in the heavens. So, at 
 least, they seemed to me, but to Binky, who was so 
 under her spell, they must have seemed merely bewilder- 
 ing and disappointing. He was too surprisedly, too 
 utterly unprepared for her attitude to think it absurd. 
 It seemed to him as unaccountable as the reversing of 
 the law of gravitation, and he stared at it with a kind 
 of awe, just as he would have stared if she had jumped 
 into the air and gone on upward over the roofs. That 
 describes the two of them fairly well. She jumped, 
 and he expected her to come down again to meet him on 
 some sort of solid ground of understanding, but instead 
 she flew away out of his sight with a whirl of her petti- 
 coats, and he was left gaping. 
 
 I gathered from his agitation and from what he said 
 
 287
 
 288 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 to me and did not say, that he had received a rebuff 
 almost at once, when they drove o& to her home together 
 from the railway-station. It was a case of his having 
 taken everything for granted, in the way my father 
 called so very English. She had allowed him, he thought, 
 to take everything for granted. The thing seemed to 
 him of a great and beautiful simplicity. These things 
 are, in his world. But he was not in his world. He 
 was in Phil's very attractively crowded drawing-room, 
 a drawing-room crowded with every conceivable co- 
 quettish obstacle to the business of passion. And he 
 found himself up against the most bewildering array 
 of reservations, prohibitions, demands, and scruples. He 
 gave the impression, that evening, of a man who had 
 come straight from embracing a hornets' nest, or at 
 least a nest of flies that buzzed as annoyingly as hornets, 
 if their sting was not so deadly. All those things she 
 professed, and the things she promised, and the things 
 she exacted, were singing still in his ears. All her kisses 
 and her stings and her little slaps on his face. It was 
 impossible for him to hide from me the signs of them. 
 I heard them and I saw them, and I marvelled that he 
 wanted to go back to that torment, for he did. He 
 was eager to be stung so long as he might be kissed. 
 Such was the sweetness of her lips that he would do 
 anything that he might drink it, except just that one 
 thing. 
 
 Phyllis is very clever. She was clever enough to mix 
 just the right proportions of drugs and poisons and 
 stimulants in the drink she gave him. She got him into 
 the most pitiful state, more than half demented, wholly 
 intoxicated, and then she sent him reeling from her. She 
 kept him there in the most perfectly calculated proximity,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 289 
 
 at just the most deadly minimum of distance for five 
 hours, and then at exactly ten minutes to six she flung him 
 lightly out of the door, allowing herself ten minutes to get 
 ready for Pat. 
 
 Binky came home and found the telegram. Up to 
 that point he had, I gathered, been undecided. His 
 struggle with her had been half-hearted. She had almost 
 succeeded in making a double divorce and marriage with 
 her seem possible. 'He wasn't then quite inevitably 
 tied. Under her hypnotic murmurs he had almost per- 
 suaded himself that he was a free agent. The prize 
 that she dangled before his eyes seemed worth thei 
 sacrifice of his self-esteem. He was, when she had 
 finished with him, resolved to try to get out of the 
 tangle of his financial indebtedness to us, my father and 
 me. But Uncle Archie, with that final capricious act of 
 death, as he put it afterwards, settled his hash. It was 
 hopeless. 
 
 Such violent adjustments in such a short space of 
 time are confusing even to write about. When he an-, 
 nounced the news to me, in that almost imbecile tone, 
 before dinner, I had the sensation of falling from a 
 great height on to a very soft, uncertain surface, and of 
 sprawling there helplessly. I felt like a circus-performer 
 who had dropped from a trapeze, and was obliged to 
 walk across one of those great sagging nets they sling 
 under trapezes. I made for the ground cautiously and 
 with difficulty, unaccustomed to such performances. The 
 thing swung and quaked under me. 
 
 Jerry saved us at dinner. We couldn't talk to each 
 other, my father and Binky and I, so we all talked to 
 him. We kept our eyes on his face. We clung to him, 
 at least Binky and I did, We wrapped ourselves up
 
 290 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 in the sane light of his broad, freckled face, and tried 
 to reflect it back to him, and he, all unaware, saved me. 
 Dear Jerry! He liked Binky always, and he likes him 
 now. He loved Phyllis always, and he loves her now. 
 He has always helped us. He is one of those priceless, 
 insignificant people who make it comfortable for egoists 
 in this world. 
 
 I went up to my room at once after dinner. Binky 
 would have to tell my father about Uncle Archie. I 
 didn't want to be there, for I didn't know what I 
 could say. I knew he would follow me. There were 
 things we had to talk over. He would be going off at 
 once, and I had to make up my mind what I was going 
 to do. I knew what there was to do, but I felt for 
 those long minutes when I sat alone, that it was im- 
 possible to do it. And yet if I didn't, where was 
 I? My father wouldn't help me. He expected the im- 
 possible of me. And now that Uncle Archie was dead, 
 I could no longer delude myself into thinking that the 
 children were mine. I was theirs certainly. I was to 
 follow them as a slave, loving them fiercely and im- 
 potently, trying, with futile, fumbling hands, to ward 
 off evils and dangers from them; but they didn't belong 
 to me, they belonged to those houses and castles and 
 traditions and conventions over there, in that country of 
 Binky's exacting ancestors and relations. Wouldn't it 
 be better for me to let them go? They wouldn't want 
 me much, for very long. I saw my life as a humiliating, 
 ignominious thing. Was it worth living for ever in a 
 false position, so that I might work for them and be loved 
 by them a little, and hurt very much ? I saw Aunt Cora 
 beckoning to me peremptorily, and Clem and Monica 
 gracefully waiting for me to be led like a lamb to the
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 291 
 
 slaughter. I saw crowds and crowds of relations calmly 
 expecting me to play the part they had so graciously 
 given me in their funny old English pantomime. It 
 angered me to think they had power over me as well 
 as Binky ; yet they had. They had the power of an 
 established and arrogant sect over a poor little hea- 
 then. If I didn't accept baptism at their hands they 
 would take my children from me and pronounce a ban 
 against me. It was almost altogether a question of the 
 children then. Binky didn't come into it, until he brought 
 himself in. I had taken leave of him only twenty-eight 
 hours before, and I was incapable of constructing a new 
 world with him in it again. 
 
 He brought himself in, however, with the look of 
 utter helplessness that greeted me when he opened the 
 door. My heart sank as I looked into his face. I knew 
 then that I couldn't go back on him, and, although his 
 first remark and most of his words, that night, kept 
 obscuring the issue by hurting me quite irrelevantly, I 
 still knew all the time what the issue was and what the 
 outcome would be. 
 
 His first remark was : " I don't understand her she 
 beats me." He dropped into a chair and remained there, 
 huddled up and crumpled. I was waiting for him to 
 curse Uncle Archie for dying, and I was utterly aston- 
 ished. I didn't realize at the moment that he'd no time 
 to think things out, that all the complicated bits of his 
 puzzle were lying about loose in his mind, and that he 
 just picked up the first one and handed it over to me. 
 It became clear, however, soon enough, that I was to 
 put the thing together for him. He couldn't without my 
 help. Phyllis had seen to that by deranging his wits and 
 playing the devil with his nerves.
 
 292 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " You know her better than I do. What's her idea? " 
 He sunk his chin into his collar. He had on still the 
 clothes he'd put on at Green Gables that morning, and 
 he appeared, for him, almost grubby. His face was 
 mottled, too, and puffy about the eyes. It looked rather 
 as it looked the other day when he came home on a 
 week's leave. Phyllis had left traces very similar to the 
 traces of the war. 
 
 " Her idea," I said, " is marriage." 
 
 He pondered over it. 
 
 " Yes. I suppose it was." 
 
 " It is," I corrected. 
 
 " Yes, of course. She doesn't know. I only got the 
 telegram at dinner-time." He brought this out pettishly, 
 annoyed at my preciseness, as a sick child might be an- 
 noyed with a nurse. 
 
 " It still will be," I said again. 
 
 He gave himself a jerk. "What do you mean by 
 that?" 
 
 " I mean it still will be when she knows all all the 
 more so." 
 
 He looked at me suspiciously for a moment. For 
 one moment he distrusted me. The thought passed 
 through his mind that I was going to try and turn him 
 against her. 
 
 " It's not," I said, " that she only wants your par- 
 aphernalia. It's simply that she won't see why she 
 shouldn't have it all thrown in." 
 
 He stared. He stared a long time, then because it 
 was too much for him, all at once he went back to the 
 beginning again. 
 
 " I had to tell her today that it was all a question 
 for you, not for us." He ground his teeth. A hot flush
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 293 
 
 of anguish spread over his face. " I had to tell her that 
 if you chose to get rid of me I should be a pauper." He 
 could scarcely get on with it. " I had to tell her your 
 father had made settlements that that would have 
 to be re rearranged that it would be a question of 
 being poor. I said I didn't mind that, but she took 
 it queerly." 
 
 "How did she take it?" 
 
 " She laughed and put it off switched into some- 
 thing else." 
 
 I felt very sorry for him. I saw her switching off 
 into something else kisses and laughter and wheedling 
 but it was not my business to see all that, it was my 
 business to get the main point clear. 
 
 " And when she came back to it? " I asked. 
 
 " She said any one could do anything if they wanted to 
 enough." 
 
 " There you are ! " I burst out. " That's her point of 
 view." 
 
 We seemed to have completed a definite section of the 
 puzzle. We paused together and looked at it, and then 
 he brought out all irrelevantly, with a groan, and quite 
 unconscious that he spoke aloud: 
 
 " I didn't want to discuss things. I didn't want to 
 talk at all." He groaned again inarticulately like a sick 
 man horribly hurt, and then I caught the words : " God, 
 what a lot of talk ! " He twisted and gave himself a 
 wrench, and jumped to his feet, suddenly conscious of me 
 and of the display he was affording me. 
 
 " I'm a swine to come to you like this. I beg your 
 pardon. I've no right it's ridiculous absurd 
 worse." 
 
 I said nothing. What could I say? It was ridiculous
 
 294 THE Ro MANTIC WOMAN 
 
 or it would have been if it hadn't been so dreadful if 
 I hadn't seen the vulgar cruelty of Phyllis so clearly 
 marked on him. 
 
 " I shall have to leave tomorrow sail on Wednes- 
 day." He tried to assume a dry, definite tone, but it 
 broke down at once, for he was up against horrors 
 again. He had something to ask of me about myself. 
 He choked over it. He couldn't bring it out. He 
 turned his back, kicked the fire, and then again he 
 went back, abandoning the thing that was too much for 
 him. 
 
 " I must see her tomorrow. How can I ? " 
 " I will get her here if you can't go there," I said 
 coldly. I wanted to get on with the real business. His 
 good taste saved him from thanking me. He was 
 stranded again. 
 
 It was terribly hard for him, poor dear! He is a 
 sensitive creature, not so sensitive as Jim was, but more 
 so than I had ever given him credit for. He felt that 
 he had been guilty of very bad taste in letting me see 
 how much he cared about Phyllis. That is how it would 
 appear to him. I was, so I perceived long afterwards, 
 on a different plane altogether. His idea was somewhat 
 similar to that of a little king in his own kingdom. He 
 regarded me, though it may sound absurd, as his con- 
 sort, and his love-affairs ought not to have been dragged 
 into my presence. Now that he had actually come into 
 his inheritance, and he saw us fixed in our little chairs 
 of state, it seemed to him that he had almost insulted 
 me. This woman who had brought a dowry to his 
 bankrupt house, had been humiliated. He was ashamed. 
 He was also rather frightened. He realized that it was
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 295 
 
 quite conceivable that I should abdicate. If I chose 
 to abandon him, he could not possibly ask me to 
 stay. He had no right to, and with all that formal sense 
 of his own dignity put aside, he had too much respect 
 for me. 
 
 He stood with his back to me, in silence. " I shall 
 catch the Mauretania," he brought out again. " And 
 you ? " at last he managed to mutter into the fire. " What 
 are your plans?" If he hadn't turned around to face 
 me at last I waited long for him to turn I don't know 
 what I should have said. I couldn't have said what I 
 did if I hadn't seen in his face finally, while I tortured 
 him staring at it, that Phyllis was, after all, of secondary 
 importance, that he was really urged by an impulse deep 
 enough, compelled by a summons serious enough, to carry 
 him through, afterwards. 
 
 " I shall follow you with the children," I said then. 
 
 The silence that succeeded this was precarious. I was 
 in a panic lest he give away. It seemed to me of tremen- 
 dous importance for us, for the whole of the dreary, com- 
 plex future, that he should take it casually and with a 
 certain stiffness. It came to me of a sudden, that his 
 nonchalance was, after all, of a piece with his religion, 
 and that it had to do with the central spring in him. If 
 that spring snapped now, it seemed to me we should col- 
 lapse together, and the dignity of the future, which was 
 the one thing left to us, would be gone. 
 
 He quivered, as I say, he trembled on the very edge 
 of a humiliating breakdown. He all but put out his poor, 
 grateful hands to me. If he had, I should have always 
 beheld him as contemptible. I might even have thrown 
 him over after giving him my word. But he caught him-
 
 296 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 self in time. I saw it all come back to him. It was as 
 though Uncle Archie had thrown his own beautiful mantle 
 over him to cover up Phil's dirty little finger-marks. 
 
 " That's all right, then ! It's good of you, my dear, 
 to take all the fag of travelling with them alone." He 
 did it very well. He did it beautifully, even to the finish- 
 ing touch of pulling out his cigarette-case, twisting a 
 piece of paper, which he held to the fire, and lighting his- 
 cigarette with it, before he said " Good-night," and left 
 me.
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 IN the meantime, Louise had set going the little buzz- 
 ing clock of her doom. That's the second time I've 
 used this word " doom." It's a big word to use twice 
 in a story, but it is no bigger than my father's feeling 
 about me, and it is quite conventionally apt as regards 
 poor Louise. Any one would admit it in her case. It 
 wasn't only that she made him kill her, but that she 
 brought him finally to it, just when she might have begun 
 to live. 
 
 I have tried to see things clearly. I have thought about 
 it all for so many hours and days and nights, that I know 
 now that it was not my doing. If I had to condemn 
 myself as regards Louise, I could never say a word of 
 all this. I could never write a word about my own life 
 except one word. Of course there have been hysterical 
 times when I have blamed myself and lacerated myself, 
 but that sort of thing is just the revenge of God for 
 having been slighted in other connections. As I've said 
 before, I might have saved them both by being true to 
 Jim long ago, when there was a chance of marrying him, 
 but for the afterwards, as regards Louise, my conscience 
 is clear. 
 
 It seems that she came home after the blizzard, having 
 telegraphed the time of her arrival, that she arrived at 
 nine o'clock by the "Twentieth Century" from New 
 York on the Monday morning, and that Jim was not there 
 
 297
 
 298 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 to meet her. The car was at the station, but no Jim, and 
 the chauffeur told her his master was out of town. Two 
 shocks: the first, not seeing Jim, who had always met 
 her at the station on every single occasion when she'd 
 been away without him; the second, that he was out of 
 town, for he had declined to accompany her on her trip 
 to New York on the ground that he was too busy. Jim 
 had not lied to her. She had gone to New York for a 
 week, and he had gone to Otrago for two days, but she 
 couldn't be expected to know that all at first, or to admit 
 the importance of the difference when she did know it. 
 She hurried home, and was told by the butler that Mr. 
 Van Orden had gone with Major and Mrs. Dawkins to 
 Otrago Lake, and had not returned. At eleven o'clock 
 she telephoned me. I remembered afterwards that Ed- 
 ward told me she had telephoned. She got little satisfac- 
 tion out of Edward. By this time, in an acute state of 
 irritation, not knowing what to do with herself, she or- 
 dered the car again and rushed round to her mother to 
 talk it all over. Her mother was out too. That was 
 most unfortunate for all of us. For once Mrs. Bowers 
 was needed, and for once she was not there. Louise 
 would have complained of Jim for going away without 
 telling her, for not being home to meet her, for being an 
 indifferent husband, and that would have been the end of 
 it. Mrs. Bowers might have helped us all by providing 
 poor Louise with a safety-valve, but she didn't, and 
 Louise, feeling forsaken and deceived by all the world, 
 with a train headache and an empty stomach she had 
 eaten, of course, no breakfast ordered the car again 
 and went whizzing down town to buy things, the spending 
 of money being the only outlet for her distress, that she 
 could think of. As luck would have it, in the middle of
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 299 
 
 Jefferson Drive she met Patrick O'Brien, standing in the 
 snow leaning over the hood of his machine. Under or- 
 dinary circumstances she would have given him the cold- 
 est and smallest of nods, but some demon of intuition 
 possessed her. She saw his bags in the front of his car, 
 and she stopped, beckoning him to cross the road to her. 
 He presented his huge head, that she disliked so in- 
 tensely, at the window of her brougham it always made 
 her squirm, she said, " it never looked clean, that bush of 
 red " and she asked him peremptorily, showing her 
 white, sharp little teeth, where he had been. He in- 
 formed her in one long, hurried breath, that he'd come 
 from Otrago, was in an awful hurry, had to get home and 
 change, and meet a man on business, and hoped she'd had 
 a good trip but she kept him. 
 
 " Where's your wife? " 
 
 " I had to leave her. She'd knocked her head open 
 ice-boating." Then a gleam came into his face. Pat has 
 a savage sense of humour. " I left her to Major Daw- 
 kins. He'll bring her home all right ! " 
 
 " Not alone ? " panted Louise, breathless with horrid 
 discoveries. 
 
 " Oh, well, no not quite. Your husband and his 
 wife are with 'em." He gave a guffaw. " We had a 
 hot time, I can tell you. Too bad you weren't there ! So 
 long." She let him go. 
 
 It's easy enough to see how it would affect her, pro- 
 vided you remembered how she hated Phyllis, and all too 
 easy if you admit that she was already, indeed had been 
 always, jealous of me. 
 
 She didn't go down town, she turned round and went 
 home. She took off her things and sat down and waited 
 for Jim. He didn't come. She refused lunch, and sat
 
 300 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 on working it out, working it out. It's funny to think of 
 her sitting there thinking deadly things about me and 
 Jim, while I was sitting thinking too, in my father's 
 room. 
 
 Jim told me about it long, long afterwards after 
 we had buried her before he went away. He told me 
 that it all began then, that day, and he suggested, in that 
 weary detachment, as though he were the dead one talk- 
 ing to some other man who was alive, that it hadn't seemed 
 to pay, being good. He always puts things in those 
 funny, childish terms. He'd been good, he said, for 
 ten years, had never let himself think of me or dream 
 of me as his love, and it hadn't made him happy or brought 
 him any reward. Jim's language is sometimes very 
 quaint. 
 
 I remember so well the way his words echoed in the 
 billiard-room at Saracens. Sometimes he spoke very loud 
 and sometimes in a whisper, but all the time with a 
 peculiar distinctness, the kind of mediumistic distinctness 
 that my mother's voice used to have when she prayed 
 over me. While he was talking, he walked slowly round 
 the billiard-table with his hand rubbing along the cushion. 
 Opposite the window he would stop and look out, and 
 then resume his walk again. It was a day of mist and 
 rain. The fog rolled up to the windows and rolled back 
 again, revealing the green lawns and the brown trees. 
 Sometimes we were shut in by the blanket of it, and then 
 we were released again. His pauses at the window were 
 longest when he could see nothing, and his voice then 
 came to me in a whisper. 
 
 " I was untrue to you always, so that I could be true 
 to her. She was like that. She twisted me into knots. 
 She made me crooked with the whole world. I loved
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 301 
 
 you. You were my sweetheart I mean you were the 
 wife of my soul, but I always kissed her whenever she 
 wanted me to, and I didn't kiss her when she didn't want 
 me to." He said all this, staring away, at me or through 
 me, it didn't matter, always as though I weren't there. 
 Actually as the light waned and the room grew dark, he 
 talked to me about myself in the third person. It was 
 very curious and terrible. He would say, walking away 
 down the table: 
 
 "Louise had no right to be jealous of Joan!" And 
 then coming up the other side : " I gave my wife all she 
 wanted I swear I did, until she began to make that 
 awful fuss. She kept it up for three years the fuss. 
 She said things about Joan. I wonder what made her? 
 I don't understand ! " stopping at the window. " She 
 didn't want any more children after that first one. She 
 didn't want me to love her much. She only wanted me 
 to be always there dancing attendance, and she wanted 
 those sables, and I gave them to her, and the diamonds 
 and emeralds. It must have been that she-devil, her 
 mother ! If I'd had the nerve to kill her mother, it would 
 have been all right. All right in a way. Of course it 
 couldn't have been very right for me, anything, because 
 I lost my -nerve when I was a kid. I was afraid of Joan. 
 She was wild." 
 
 He looked small under those great windows. He is 
 small, but that expanse of glass seemed to diminish him 
 very much. Presently he would realize that it was there 
 behind him in a chair by the fire. 
 
 " You admit that you were wild, don't you ? You must 
 blame me, of course, for not trusting you then, when you 
 kissed me in the sun, but you admit that you were danger- 
 ous. I was afraid of you, and afraid of drinking too
 
 302 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 much." He went on walking. " There was nothing wild 
 about Louise. She did her best, too, to make me give it 
 up drinking, I mean but you can't do that sort of 
 thing without loving very much. You see I had to have 
 something I've always, constantly, wanted to be drunk. 
 I love getting dr.unk. When I'm drunk I'm not afraid. 
 Louise was good. I should think she drank about a 
 thousand gallons of milk while she lived with me. You 
 could taste the milk on her lips, though they didn't look- 
 like that. She used lip-salve, but she thought it wicked 
 to put rouge on her cheeks. She liked to have men ad- 
 mire her, but she never let them make love to her. She 
 was mine. I never let any one else look at her. If I 
 saw a man looking at her, I kicked him out of the house. 
 She was my prize doll that I'd bought. I kept her tied 
 up in a box, and she liked it." There was no energy in 
 all this, merely that cruel distinctness. " She liked to 
 have rows so that she could make it up again. I expect 
 that's what she wanted this time. I couldn't stand any 
 more making-up. We'd had three years of rows. The 
 first one was that day when she got home from New York 
 the first real one. She asked me how I dared go to a 
 house-party where the O'Briens were. It's funny their 
 being here this time. She seemed to think I had been 
 guilty toward her, in going to stay in the same house 
 with Phyllis. She said Phyllis was having a low intrigue 
 with your husband a low intrigue, that was her ex- 
 pression. I let her go on about Phyllis. Phyllis's reputa- 
 tion wasn't any of my business. Then she said something 
 about you, and how living in London had made you de- 
 praved. I don't know where she got that word ' de- 
 praved ' I shut her up then I suppose my getting 
 angry gave her her cue. She said she'd no doubt you
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 303 
 
 would like to console yourself with an intrigue on your 
 own. You can't blame me for getting angry then. It 
 was the least I could do for you. I told her if she ever 
 spoke of you again I'd smash her face. It's funny how 
 people who know how to be polite can talk when they're 
 angry. She was frightened then. She never did men- 
 tion you again to me not in all that three years of rows 
 but she was always thinking about you, I expect. 
 I didn't know or I never would have let her come here. 
 I don't see how she could have kept on thinking you 
 were out of sight. You've been out of sight most of the 
 time. I've never been to see you. I've never written to 
 you. 
 
 " I used to go away when I couldn't stand it any 
 longer. I went to Ireland once, for some hunting. She 
 never believed I hadn't been to see you. She kept asking 
 me all about that trip, where I'd stayed on the 15th and 
 the i6th, wanted me to account to her for every hour. I 
 did, but she thought I'd lied and had squeezed in London 
 somehow. I was only in Ireland a month. I never 
 stayed away from her long. I would have managed all 
 right if she had been willing to do her part. I mean I'd 
 have kept respectable. It's the business of loving wives 
 to keep their husbands respectable if they don't want to 
 be jealous. She didn't ever mention you, but she was al- 
 ways making scenes about other people. What had they 
 got to do with her? I didn't love them. She found out 
 once that I had a flat in New York and kept a little girl 
 there. She was a nice girl. She was kind to me and 
 honest. I kept her from starving. She had a kid five 
 years old. She was quite happy in that flat. There was 
 a fearful row when Louise found out. I told her it was 
 none of her business. The woman had nothing to do
 
 304 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 with her. She said that I was her husband and belonged 
 to her that marriage was a sacred thing. I suppose she 
 was right in a way about marriage, only ours wasn't 
 a marriage any more, or ever, for that matter. She 
 brought her mother into it. I told her the mother to 
 go to the devil. Louise didn't want me in her bedroom, 
 so I'd made other arrangements. Her mother wasn't 
 shocked a bit. She winked. Her wink was the ugliest 
 thing on God's earth. It made Louise look quite beau- 
 tiful. I suppose I was rather glad, somehow, that Louise 
 cared. Her rows were better, anyhow, than Mrs. 
 Bowers's pats. I gave up the flat in New York. Louise 
 was happy for a couple of months, but she got frightened 
 about having another kid. She played the martyr, made 
 me feel like a brute, so I left her alone again. Curious 
 she never enjoyed it! I couldn't go on bothering her, 
 seeing her grit her teeth. And I couldn't stand her pose 
 of the long-suffering woman. I gave it up. I was a 
 monk for a time. You can't go on like that indefinitely. 
 One of my wife's friends angled for me. I was hooked: 
 I hated her. She used to lunch with Louise, and say she 
 was her dearest friend. Once I caught them kissing each 
 other. It made me sick. I went to South America with 
 Jerry. Jerry did me a lot of good. Then the kid died. 
 Louise nearly went off her head. I thought she had. I 
 don't know why that didn't save us. It must have been 
 the she-devil interfering again. Louise was a mother 
 you know what kind of a mother she was. Her occupa- 
 tion was gone. She was very queer. Then her mother 
 suggested her having another child. She had hysterics, 
 said she wasn't going through all that again. It would 
 kill her. To have one child born and one child die was 
 enough. I took her to Japan. She got better. She be-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 305 
 
 gan her old tricks. Then she insisted on coming here. I 
 thought it was safe. I thought she'd forgotten." 
 
 It was quite dark when he finished. He had talked for 
 a long time, walking round and round the billiard-table. 
 I couldn't have stopped him if I had wanted to. And I 
 didn't want to. There was no reason why he should talk, 
 and no reason why he should keep still. 
 
 It was all over, and we were all dead to each other, 
 though Louise was the only one who had been put away 
 into the ground and into oblivion. It wasn't necessary 
 for him to consider her any more she was dead, and 
 he was dead too to trick himself with sentimental lies. 
 He just looked at it with the awful calm of a dead person. 
 He had never been calm before. All his life had been 
 a tumult. That was over. He had given it up his 
 struggle. The hope which had lived in him to make him 
 passionate and restless, was gone now. He had always 
 hoped, up to that very last night, that loth of September 
 two years ago, that he would be able somehow to reconcile 
 his life with truth, that he would be able to reconcile 
 Louise with me, in his own mind. Now he had done 
 away with us both. You see how completely I have lost 
 him! Some one told me, the other day, that he had 
 joined the French Foreign Legion and had gone to the 
 war. I don't know. It makes no difference to me. 
 There is not even any joy for me in thinking that he may 
 die bravely. A dead man can't die again. 
 
 Louise carried his soul with her into that coffin that we 
 buried at Saracens. I knew it, as clearly as if I'd seen 
 her dead hand take the heart out of his breast and hide 
 it under the clothing of her corpse. He had no moral 
 sense nor any regret nor any desires after that. One 
 can't criticize his taste in talking to me, for he had no
 
 306 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 sense of human values. His brain was spinning in a void, 
 spinning and throwing off memories as a top, covered 
 with liquid, would throw off drops as it spun. I don't 
 know how he has been living since then. I suppose he has 
 been eating and sleeping and smoking and drinking. I 
 don't know. An automaton if properly made would put 
 on its clothes and take them off again. I expect he'll 
 do all the usual things in the usual way, until the ma- 
 chinery stops. 
 
 It's strange that Binky should still be for me a living 
 person when Jim is not. The other day, when Binky was 
 going back to the front after his week at home, he, too, 
 took a dive back into memories. I went with him to the 
 train that terrible one o'clock from Victoria that takes 
 them all back, poor dears. There was a fog, and the 
 thick yellow darkness, the murky station lights and the 
 noise, gave an added horror and excitement to all those 
 " Good-byes." Belgians and French were going off, too, 
 with our own khaki heroes. A child was crying loudly, 
 as though its silly little heart would break, and women 
 whose hearts were breaking, showed faces white and 
 dreadful in the unreal gloom, and men were trying to 
 be what men are expected to be in these days. It affected 
 Binky and me. That long train that was to tear itself 
 out of the aching side of London and carry them all off 
 to the hungry war, how could it but affect him ? Do you 
 think it weak of me to be moved because he was going 
 back perhaps to be killed? He looked rather splendid to 
 me in that dimness, wrapped in his draggled great-coat 
 and muffler, and with his face still weary and lined, and 
 his hair showing white at the sides. He looks old since 
 the war, quite old, but there was that same brightness in
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 307 
 
 his eyes for a moment, when he gave a hitch to my elbow 
 and said: 
 
 " My dear, you're so good to me ! It's been a ripping 
 week ! " He looked down, and his expression deepened. 
 " You've stood by me," he said shortly. "If you hadn't 
 
 stood by me " He looked around. He seemed to 
 
 want to say that I somehow had had something to do with 
 giving him this chance. I was glad I am glad, but as 
 I say, if Jim is there and if he dies unnoticed somewhere 
 on the battlefield where a million men are dying, it can 
 make no difference. It can't help. Louise saw to that.
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 WHENEVER I have felt like hating people, 
 something has always happened to make me 
 feel sorry for them. It was so with Phyllis. 
 She had abused Binky's passion as only a vulgar coquette 
 could do, and I was beginning to feel I had a right to hate 
 her, when she fled to me, with the tale of how her hus- 
 band had beaten her. She didn't exactly tell me how he 
 had done it, whether with a stick or a slipper or a whip, 
 but the fact was clear enough. I didn't want to hear 
 I tried to stop her I didn't want to know whether it 
 was her body or her spirit that had suffered most, and I 
 don't want to think of it now. I can't bear to allow my- 
 self to wonder whether he did it in blind rage or to the 
 accompaniment of brutal laughter. I hope it was the 
 former, but I'm afraid it was the latter. If it had been 
 blind rage I don't see how he could have let Binky 
 escape, or how he could ever, even after an interval of 
 three years, have brought Phyllis to stay with us. That 
 was a lurid flare of his sense of humour that was his 
 boisterous revenge on Binky. He wanted us to see how 
 perfectly he had subdued her and how little it all mat- 
 tered. 
 
 It was the morning after Binky left to catch his boat 
 in New York, that we three, Louise and Phyllis and I, 
 had our uncomfortable and futile seance. I was in bed 
 with one of those headaches which cannot be conjured off 
 
 308
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 309 
 
 with any nervous effort of will, or done to death with 
 drugs. I had my head tied round with a wet towel, and 
 I lay on my bed listening to the throbs in it, that punctu- 
 ated the echo of Binky's final talk. He had given me to 
 understand that Phyllis regarded his departure as flight. 
 He had warned me that I might have her to deal with. 
 With a wild vagueness he had announced that he didn't 
 know what she might not do or say. His state was piti- 
 ful. He seemed to think he might have to come back to 
 set things right, either for me or for her, or for both of 
 us, I couldn't make out which. If he' could come back 
 in a month or so, he would wire me, but if things were too 
 exacting and binding and muddled over there, he would 
 simply have to leave it to me, to get loose by myself. 
 His idea of my difficulty in getting loose, measured, to 
 my mind, the extent of the fuss she had made, the 
 extent to which she had tied him up and intimidated 
 him. 
 
 I had shut them into my boudoir the day before, and 
 had stood guard, as it were, in the library. Heaven 
 knows what went on behind those closed doors, not much 
 in the way of love-making, I imagine. Not much, that is, 
 as I should measure the possible wealth of a lover's leave- 
 taking. His announcement of his uncle's death had had 
 the effect I had prophesied. He admitted this to me with 
 something like a cry of rage at my being too awfully 
 clever. It hurt him to find out that I knew her really so 
 well, for he must have known that my scrupulous lack of 
 blame proved I despised her. 
 
 We had, too, on top of it all, been obliged to keep 
 an engagement to dine with Mrs. Bowers, and to our 
 dismay had found it a big affair, bigger, I suspected, than 
 she had intended twenty-four hours before. His new
 
 3io THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 dignity had been too much for her. Her lapse from 
 taste was, in a person so punctilious, what you may call an 
 awful give-away. I can hear her telephoning her choice 
 friends to come and say good-bye to us. We had ex- 
 pected a family dinner. We were suddenly in mourning 
 and should, on no account, have let her inveigh or brow- 
 beat us into dining with her had we known. It's funny 
 the way I am obliged to use the " we." The publicity of 
 our union .was one of the most ironic things about those 
 days. Our pictures side by side in the papers ! Our new 
 names coupled together all over the place. 
 
 I don't doubt that Patrick waved some of those papers 
 in Phil's face. I don't doubt that she suffered the most 
 acute anguish possible to a greedy soul. She had felt 
 so sure; she had had the whole thing in her hands, her 
 lovely, white, covetous hands, and it was slipping from 
 her. No wonder she made violent efforts to save it. 
 Her incredible foolishness in telling Pat at all was just the 
 last resort of her frantic little mind. 
 
 It was as plain as daylight when she burst into my bed- 
 room against the warnings of my maid and Edward and 
 even of my poor father, it was plain what had happened. 
 I believed her at once. 
 
 " He beat me last night ! He beat me ! " she whim- 
 pered. Of course I believed her. It was just what he 
 would do. 
 
 She cried a good deal. She blew her nose repeatedly. 
 She was not pretty with her eyes all swollen and her nose 
 red and her lip twisting, and I felt sorry for her. I saw 
 that some day she would lose all her good looks and her 
 sense of humour I even thought that they had deserted 
 her already. I didn't reckon with her extreme adaptabil- 
 ity, her wonderful faculty for recuperation. When she
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 311 
 
 came here the other day, two years ago, she had completely 
 forgotten. The fact that she had once admitted to me 
 that her husband had beaten her was nothing to her. She 
 was not in the least ashamed to be seen by me, following 
 him in perfect complacent docility, playing her little hol- 
 low game of the circus lady and the tame beast. 
 
 I let her cry on the foot of my bed, remarking mildly 
 that my headache made it impossible for me to get worked 
 up over anything. 
 
 " But what am I to do ? " she wailed. And then in a 
 whisper. " Has he really gone ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said, my head rigid, my face to the ceiling. 
 She went on sniffling. 
 
 " I've burned my bridges," she announced at last ab- 
 surdly. 
 
 " What do you mean by that ? " 
 
 " I mean that of course I can't go back to Pat now." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " And as I I love Humphrey, and he loves me " 
 
 I must have smiled. It was her calling him Humphrey 
 that made me smile. 
 
 " So you think it's funny ! " she broke in. " Of course 
 I knew you didn't care, but I can't see why it's funny! " 
 
 " It's not funny," I said roughly. 
 
 " Well you smiled ! " 
 
 " It's not funny but you are ridiculous. Of course 
 I'm sorry Pat beat you. I'm sorry for my own sake as 
 well as yours. It gives you an advantage over me of 
 which you immediately avail yourself." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean, Johnnie ! " 
 
 " No, I suppose you don't." 
 
 There was a silence. After a while she began again, 
 still crying:
 
 312 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " I felt it only right to tell Pat I was in love with 
 Humphrey. I expected he would divorce me." 
 
 "And he hasn't?" 
 
 " It was only last night." 
 
 " These things are done so quickly in America," I mur- 
 mured. 
 
 " How horrid you are to make fun of it ! I mean that 
 Pat refused." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " He won't let me go. He swore it by a lot of Irish 
 saints." 
 
 " Then that's settled." 
 
 " Oh no," she contradicted quickly. 
 
 There was another silence. She began wandering dis- 
 consolately round the room. Presently she stopped be- 
 fore the glass and straightened her hat and gave little pats 
 to the golden loops of her hair. As though drawing 
 courage from her reflection, she began powdering her nose 
 and talking at the same time. 
 
 " Humphrey says it's impossible for us to marry but 
 what do you say? You don't want to live with him, do 
 you after after all this now that he's in love with 
 me?" I stared at the incredible vulgarity of her. She 
 went on giving little dainty dabs to her nose with my 
 powder-puff. 
 
 " You know quite well that it's not my will that stands 
 in your way." 
 
 " You mean Pat, then? Oh, I could divorce him if he 
 won't me. There's plenty of evidence enough, any- 
 way." 
 
 " I don't mean Pat I mean Binky. I couldn't divorce 
 Binky if I wanted to." I mused a moment over the 
 quality of her mind that so easily visualized the double
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 313 
 
 divorce business. It came over me with relief that I 
 couldn't and needn't explain to her. "In any case," I 
 went on almost joyfully, " I don't want to divorce Binky, 
 and I'm not going to. You can come over and live with 
 him if you like. He has several houses I sha'n't in- 
 terfere." 
 
 It took her breath away. 
 
 " Do you think do you think for one minute I 
 would be be his mistress ? Do you think ? " 
 
 " No, I didn't really think you would. I know you're 
 excessively moral. Your beastliness is quite another sort 
 of thing." I sat up in bed. I was sick of her. What 
 difference did it make to me whether Patrick beat his cook 
 or his wife? "You are only a fiend, my dear, not an 
 immoral woman. You like to drive men out of their 
 wits, but you don't care about satisfying their wants. If 
 I had any hope of your ever going to bed with Binky, I 
 shouldn't be so hard on you." 
 
 It was then, while Phyllis was staring at me with her 
 mouth open, aghast at my hideous language, that Louise 
 came in on top of us. I looked at her. It was too much 
 for me. I gave a kind of hysterical yell of laughter, and 
 grabbed my towelled head in my hands. "And here's 
 Louise," I cried. " What's up with Louise ? Why do 
 you all come to me ? What can I do for you ? For God's 
 sake leave me alone ! I've got a headache." 
 
 My violence brought them together. They stood side 
 by side facing me, grave and frightened. I laughed at 
 them. They didn't like my laughing at them. They were 
 so upset by it that they forgot they hated each other. 
 " What's the matter, Louise? " I shouted. " Out with it. 
 What's the matter? " The noise I made seemed to pro- 
 duce a kind of explosion in her brain.
 
 314 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " Jim's gone away," she blurted out. " Gone, I mean, 
 in a rage I don't know where ! " Then she caught her- 
 self, but it was too late. 
 
 " Good Lord, what a mess we're all in ! " I threw my- 
 self back on the pillows. " What a mess ! What a 
 mess ! " They were speechless. I sat up again, after a 
 minute, and looked at them. Louise had on a black velvet 
 thing trimmed with brown fur by Cherrut. Hec hat was 
 a tilted bowl fringed with ospreys from Georgette's. 
 Phyllis had over her frock the most luxurious of chin- 
 chilla coats. It reached down to her ankles. Very good 
 pearl ear-rings gleamed in her little ears. The powder- 
 puff had restored her face to at least a passable beauty. 
 
 " Man judgeth by the outward appearance, but the 
 Lord looketh on the heart. I don't know if that's the 
 exact way it goes." 
 
 " You're not going crazy, are you ? " asked Phyllis. 
 
 " I don't know. Do you remember our triumphirate ? 
 Poor little triumphirate! It's a funny thing, but I be- 
 lieved in it until four months ago, until I came home to 
 this damned city." I could hear Claire Hobbes' voice as 
 I spoke. I seemed to be talking as she did. I had a 
 feeling of kinship with her, in that moment. I thought, 
 with relief, that I was going back to the land where she 
 was, where people knew a little bit what the things in 
 this world meant, and what they were worth. Her hard- 
 ness and her brutality seemed of a sudden fine to me, in 
 the face of those two fluffy little conventional devils 
 standing there. 
 
 " I'm going back. I'm going to follow Binky back 
 there. I can't do anything more for you I'm not going 
 to help either of you." I glared at them.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 315 
 
 " But, Joan," gasped Louise, " you don't seem to un- 
 derstand ! Jim has gone ! " 
 
 " Let him go, then." 
 
 41 And I thought I thought you and your hus- 
 band " 
 
 " Never mind. Never mind. Don't think. Don't 
 ever think any more. It's bad for you. I've got a head- 
 ache. Go away. Leave me alone. Go and buy some 
 more clothes, both of you. You're not fit to be seen. 
 Go and get your husbands to forgive you and buy you 
 some more jewels." I must have been very rude. I 
 piled it on. I wanted to get them out of the room. It 
 was very annoying to me to see them there so smart, so 
 empty, so reeking with luxury and so intent on the idea 
 of being tragic heroines. 
 
 " Before I go I must ask you one or two questions." 
 Louise pursed her mouth. She looked very determined. 
 " Do you know where Jim is ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Did you know he'd gone away ? " 
 
 44 No." 
 
 44 Well, then, did you plan your house-party on pur- 
 pose because I was away ? " 
 
 " No ! " I shouted. " What on earth are you driving 
 at?" 
 
 Louise maintained her dignity and quiet beautifully. 
 " You knew quite well that he wouldn't have gone if I'd 
 been home." 
 
 "You mean that you wouldn't have, because I was 
 there ! " said Phyllis. 
 
 Louise lifted her chin. "Never mind what I mean." 
 
 Phyllis gave a little snort. " I don't mind, my poor
 
 316 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 angel. It's all so obvious." Phyllis was cleverer than 
 Louise always, and Louise knew it. She kept her eyes on 
 me. 
 
 " Remember, Joan," she said solemnly. " If Jim has 
 really gone I hold you responsible. I make no accusa- 
 tions, but I hold you responsible." Her manner was too 
 funny. It was just as solemn as it used to be when she 
 was a little stupid girl. She stared at me with her ob- 
 tuse blue eyes, and I waited for her finger to go into her 
 mouth as it used to do. I watched her curiously. She 
 was so interesting to me as her mother's product, that I 
 didn't think of answering her. " I always believed in 
 you, Joan," she said. " I always believed in our friend- 
 ship. If there's one thing I cannot forgive, it's in- 
 sincerity and treachery." She swept to the door. She 
 opened it gracefully, and with a toss of her smart veiled 
 head, went out of it. 
 
 " Cat ! " snapped Phyllis, as she disappeared. It was 
 the finishing touch. It made all the past echo dreadfully. 
 It made the whole thing incredibly real. It brought all 
 that childhood of ours into focus. I closed my eyes 
 dizzily. " Do go home, Phil," I murmured. " I truly 
 can't stand any more." 
 
 " I can't, Joan. I'm afraid." 
 
 " He won't beat you a second time." 
 
 " He might." She was really frightened. 
 
 " Well, if you can't go home, go somewhere else, go to 
 New York, Denver, Bermuda. There are lots of cosy 
 refuges for runaway wives on this earth." 
 
 " I haven't any money." 
 
 " I'll lend you some." 
 
 " I couldn't let you. I couldn't." 
 
 "Well, then "
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 317 
 
 She hesitated. She was thinking rapidly. Of course 
 she had known all the time she would have to stay with 
 Pat till Binky came for her, or something wonderful 
 happened. 
 
 " Couldn't you speak to Pat ? " she asked at last. 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " Yes he respects you. He admires you ! " 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 " Yes he said if it weren't for you he'd have horse- 
 whipped Humphrey." 
 
 " I don't believe it ! " 
 
 " It's true. He does admire you most awfully." 
 
 " \Vell I refuse anyhow. What could I say to 
 him ? It's preposterous ! " 
 
 " You could say you thought that considering we 
 Humphrey and I loved each other, and that you didn't 
 care, you and he ought to see us through." 
 
 I burst out laughing. I laughed very loud. I couldn't 
 stop. She left me, still at it.
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 
 THERE doesn't seem to be any particular point 
 in going over the history of the next three years. 
 I want to skip all that. I don't like the subject 
 very much. It's not interesting because no human pas- 
 sions were involved, and now, with the front page of The 
 Times sprawling on the floor and the " Killed in Action 
 Column " staring up at me, it all seems incredibly trivial 
 and silly. 
 
 Having taken a high line with Binky and Binky's Des- 
 tiny spelled to me with a capital D I found it wasn't 
 possible to keep it high. Being a duchess doesn't con- 
 stitute an occupation, and I am one of those people who 
 ought to have an occupation. I should have made a 
 good stenographer or cook or housemaid, a good any- 
 thing that meant hard work. I haven't a flair for idleness. 
 I don't loaf gracefully. After we had come back and 
 moved in, there seemed very little for Binky and me to 
 do, except amuse ourselves. We did that energetically 
 enough, certainly. We did it sometimes together and 
 sometimes separately. Binky didn't go to dances with me 
 because he doesn't like dancing, or to what we called 
 " Bohemian " parties, because he didn't like the long- 
 haired lot. I didn't go racing with him because I don't 
 like racing. But we lived in the same house most of the 
 time, and we went at the same time to other people's 
 houses. We had a number of common friends. In a 
 
 318
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 319 
 
 country where happy people do their best not to appear 
 happy, and where loving couples succeed in pretending 
 to dislike each other, we passed for almost anything that 
 people might want to think about us. Aunt Cora had 
 no fault to find with our behaviour. She was the nearest 
 thing to a parent that we had in the country, and as long 
 as our public performances were sufficiently dignified, she 
 didn't seem to bother about what we did in private. She 
 demanded, of course, a certain amount of attention. We 
 faithfully ate her roast mutton once a week when we 
 were in town. Indeed, Binky was very charming with 
 her. He used to consult her on the problems of the Turf. 
 She advised him about favourites. They used to hobnob 
 together cosily in Cadogan Square over a couple of glasses 
 of her oldest and nicest port, while I retired upstairs with 
 Clem and Monica. You can fill in for yourself a good 
 deal about me, when I tell you that I became quite 
 habituated to the company of Clem and Monica. We 
 were as thick as such thieves could be. We thieved 
 together continually, poking about in funny corners after 
 every kind of curious relationship and sensation. We did 
 lots of forbidden vulgar things, and created confusion 
 in a number of well-ordered bourgeois households and 
 contented Bohemian camps. Clem used to like to pick 
 men out of their comfortable little middle-class places and 
 make them giddy in her whirl for a bit. It was rather 
 cruel of her ! She always dropped them quite suddenly 
 when they showed signs of becoming nuisances. She and 
 Phyllis are something alike, I suppose. Only Clem had 
 never any ulterior motive. Her one reason for every- 
 thing was boredom. I used to marvel at the way she 
 escaped from her victims without even singeing her 
 fingers. I quite frequently burnt mine. People con-
 
 320 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 tinued to be disturbing to me. I never reached Clem's 
 perfect detachment. Human beings failed to become for 
 me grotesque or pretty mannikins. I was for ever seeing 
 possibilities in the affair. It was all very stupid. I was 
 looking for some really interesting person, and I used to 
 go farther than Clem before I was tired. It took more to 
 disgust me. And, as I say, I was continually getting 
 scorched, so that I got to like being scorched. I felt cold 
 and tired if I weren't playing with fire. I burned myself 
 quite badly sometimes. 
 
 Joseph was the poet that Clem and Monica took up. 
 They handed him over to me. He was half, or a quarter, 
 Roumanian Jew, connected with some good people in the 
 Balkans on his father's side, if you can speak of good 
 people in the Balkans. I suppose there are some. At 
 least his had been wild little princes once, so he told me. 
 If so, I don't quite see where the Jew came in. How- 
 ever, his mother was Irish, and she had made him quite 
 beautiful, beautiful enough to delude me, anyway. His 
 nose was very slightly hooked. He had a fine head and 
 eyes, very intelligent, luminous. 
 
 Binky didn't like him at all. His being a poet and a 
 Jew was enough to explain that. If he had been an artist 
 with a studio, and something to show 01. the walls, 
 Binky wouldn't have minded so much. He had been to 
 studios occasionally, and he acknowledged that that sort 
 of thing might amuse some people. But a poet ! There 
 was positively no place in the world for a poet, unless it 
 was a graveyard. He had heard of the Poets' Corner in 
 Westminster Abbey, and he was prepared to admit, on 
 the evidence of tombstones and libraries, that there had 
 been respectable persons, once upon a time, who wrote 
 verse ; but when a seedy-looking young man with a wild,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 321 
 
 shy look in his eyes appeared from the Tottenham Court 
 Road, waving ragged bits of paper, it was too much. 
 Once he came upon Joseph reading aloud in the drawing- 
 room to a group of us. Joseph was pale and calm through 
 the ordeal, but Binky was quite flustered. 
 
 " My dear," he blurted out, after they had fled from 
 him, "he's greasy he's dirty! How can you?" He 
 was speechless. 
 
 "He has a delightful mind," I argued, "if his finger- 
 nails are black ! " 
 
 " Good Lord ! ' said Binky. " Good Lord ! " 
 
 " Would you rather not have him come here?" 
 
 " As for that, my dear, you must please yourself. If 
 
 he amuses you Just so long as you don't ask me to 
 
 sit at the table with him. Ugh ! " 
 
 Joseph didn't amuse me. It was something more in- 
 triguing and painful than that. Ruffles amused me when 
 he had his innings. Joseph disturbed me. He suggested 
 to me ambitions and regrets. He made me want to cut 
 loose. He held out a promise of a beautiful, brilliant ab- 
 straction called "truth." 
 
 I'm sure Binky thought my interest in him was vulgar, 
 but I am not ashamed of it. I am only ashamed of not 
 seeing it through; of not, in very plain language, having 
 made him a friend. I have called my affair with him my 
 last adventure, because it was my last journey after an 
 idea, the last time that I showed any courage on behalf 
 of an impulse. He was strange to me, and for a time 
 wonderful, and I gave myself extravagantly to his 
 strangeness. I spent hours with him every day, listening 
 to his curious poems and his more curious talk. I 
 dropped my friends and my amusements in order to be 
 with him, and I forgave his ragged hair and unwashed
 
 322 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 hands because of his beautiful ideas. I don't know 
 whether he was a genius or not. If being very poor and 
 very irregular in one's habits, if having lots of enemies 
 and a small crowd of idealistic adorers, and no public for 
 one's poems, if these are signs of genius, he certainly had 
 them. But I don't know. I don't know anything about 
 geniuses. I only know that Joseph used to say things 
 that illumined the world strangely, that gave one a sense 
 of something more than reality, and that his poems dis- 
 turbed me. He made me feel myself a stupid fool, and 
 I clung to him and lived for a time on the stimulus of his 
 magnetism. 
 
 But I overdid it. I gave him money. He must have 
 laid up quite a balance in the bank during those days. It 
 seems incredible. I can't for the life of me get back into 
 that state of mind, but I remember that I had the idea 
 of adopting him, and of mentioning him in my will. I 
 went to him prepared to suggest it. I actually sought him 
 out in his cave in the north of London, with the purpose 
 of discussing it. I remember perfectly hurrying up 
 through the Park to the Marble Arch, and taking a bus 
 from there. I remember the look of the streets and 
 every incident of my mad journey, but I can't remember 
 very well what I felt like. I don't know why I took a 
 bus instead of a taxi to put myself more on a plane 
 with him, I suppose. Oxford Street was extraordinarily 
 full of people, all spending money. Joseph's poverty and 
 arrogance distressed and pleased me. He always ac- 
 cepted a loan with a furious, resentful air. 
 
 I walked the last part of the way. He lived in a block 
 of dingy flats, at the top of the house. The door of the 
 building was opened. The stuffy vestibule was empty. 
 Nevertheless it seemed a feat of great difficulty and dar-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 323 
 
 ing to turn into that gaping door between the two sets of 
 soiled, flanking windows. I climbed the five flights of 
 stairs in the semi-darkness, unmolested except by the 
 smells of cheap cooking and bad sewage. The landing at 
 the top of the stairs was very untidy. Bits of dirty paper 
 lay there. 
 
 I rang his bell and rang again, and then found a key 
 hanging on a nail by the door, and with it let myself in. 
 At the end of the narrow passage another door was open, 
 revealing the gruesome interior of an untidy bedroom. I 
 was staggered for a moment by the sight of lumped-up 
 bedding and a broken water-jug. The front room was 
 bare of both comforts and horrors. I sat down there on 
 one of the straight chairs. No trimmings in the room 
 no colour Joseph didn't like prettiness. I sat looking 
 out of the window. It was beginning to rain. The broad 
 fagade of a large warehouse cut by square windows 
 loomed opposite. He had told me that he had chosen the 
 flat because of the exceeding beauty of the warehouse. I 
 couldn't see it, but I wanted to. 
 
 He kept me waiting an hour. I had written that I was 
 coming and expected to find him waiting for me. He 
 gave me heaps of time to come to my senses. I sat there 
 in a fever. I don't know why. I must have been mad, 
 but there it is. I sat there waiting. 
 
 He had never said he loved me. We had never in- 
 dulged in the obvious. That was, I suppose, the trouble. 
 His reticence had too disastrously touched my imagination 
 and piqued my curiosity. My only ground for seeking 
 him out, and expecting to be welcome, was that he had 
 come to me constantly for three months, and that we 
 were not bored. 
 
 At last, after waiting an hour, I went into the other
 
 324 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 room and made his bed. I wonder what Binky would 
 say if I told him I once made up the bed of that ob- 
 jectionable poet? I was busy sweeping the floor when he 
 came in. 
 
 " That damned printer " he began, showing no sur- 
 prise at what I was doing. We went into the front room 
 and made tea, boiling the water over the gas. 
 
 " Come with me to Budapest," he flung out presently. 
 
 " I'd like to." The idea seemed very attractive. I 
 remember wondering whether one couldn't, in a disguise, 
 take the road with him for a little while. 
 
 " I'm going next month." 
 
 " It would be fun." I was tempted. " But you'd have 
 more fun without me." 
 
 " Not if you didn't mind being treated with a certain 
 simplicity." 
 
 " I should love it ! I'm bored." I laughed, feeling all 
 too serious. 
 
 I waited, but he went on gulping down his tea. Hav- 
 ing finished the large cupful, he sat looking at me with his 
 shy, searching eyes. Then he came and kissed me. It 
 was the first time he had ever kissed me. His were 
 strange, quivering kisses. 
 
 I gave myself up to them, wondering, while he crushed 
 my face in his hands and hurt it with his lips, wondering 
 why it was that decent people had in them no fire and no 
 poetry. It occurred to me that he had learned this mode 
 of love-making in the gutter. I tore myself from him at 
 last, and went to the window and looked down into the 
 muddy street. 
 
 " Well ? " he brought out curtly. 
 
 "Well? "I echoed. 
 
 " You're too dreadfully civilized," he muttered.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 325 
 
 I saw that I had come there to find out just that very 
 thing, and that my other idea was an excuse. 
 
 " I would like to help you," I said, " and then drop it." 
 He grunted, vaguely irritated. 
 
 " What do you want most in the world ? " 
 
 " A thousand pounds," he shouted, laughing. 
 
 " Very well." I turned and watched him. I saw him 
 weighing it in his mind. 
 
 " And then ? " he asked curiously. 
 
 " Ah ! then I shall have you off my conscience." I 
 left him with that. I don't remember anything else. I 
 actually did send him the money and he took it. I am 
 still wondering about his genius. If, in another hundred 
 years, he is admitted as such, I suppose I shall look down 
 from Heaven and feel it was not quite shameful. I didn't 
 see him again. He went, I suppose, to Budapest, and did 
 himself very well. That's all there was to the Joseph 
 affair. I put it down as it happened. 
 
 It's curious what people will do when they feel secure. 
 We were annoyed with the world for working so 
 smoothly, and we tried to upset it a little, or at least to 
 make it appear a little upset. We enjoyed doing things 
 backwards and upside down. Our amusement consisted 
 chiefly, as far as I remember it, in, figuratively speaking, 
 standing on our heads and walking on our hands. I re- 
 member introducing an era of Chinese customs as re- 
 garded meals. My dinners for some months began with 
 sweets and ended with boiled rice, as theirs do. I had the 
 happy idea one day at lunch. We didn't go in for chop- 
 sticks, but we had one dish for each course set in the 
 middle of the table, and all dipped into it with long spoons 
 and forks. Eight was the largest number one could man- 
 age that way. People liked to come to my octettes.
 
 326 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 Chronologically it conies in about the same time as the 
 death of Louise's little girl. It was just after that scene 
 in Joseph's room, that she began to write to me those 
 letters that make me think now that she was beginning 
 to find herself during the last year of her life. One can't 
 somehow get away from phrases like " finding one's self." 
 They don't mean very much, but what else is one to call 
 that growth in Louise's mind ? I wrote to her when little 
 Lou died, and she answered me and went on writing. 
 
 Her letters were extravagant, of course, and affected. 
 Their affectation nearly smothered the other thing, the 
 real little interest she was beginning to feel in human 
 beings. Now and then *she gave me little bits about 
 quaint people she was meeting. Once she wrote about 
 a sunset in the harbour of Yokohama. She spoke of the 
 limp sails of the sampans like the broken wings of birds 
 that had lighted there to die. She didn't say that she 
 felt like one herself ; that was what struck me. It was 
 the thing she might so obviously have said that her little 
 reticence seemed portentous, and it was queer, too, for 
 Louise to notice a sunset. She had never been senti- 
 mental. Sometimes she alluded to Jim. Jim was so 
 awfully sweet. She was sure of his love. That had all 
 too many echoes, had been said by her too many times, 
 but then she followed it up by announcing that she had 
 never understood before how nervous he was. She said 
 that sometimes she was frightened, and wondered if there 
 was insanity in his family. Shortly after this she an- 
 nounced she was going to see his mother when they got 
 round to Italy. And she did. go. She left him in Rome 
 and went back there alone. She wrote to me that she'd 
 had a long talk with his mother, and she didn't tell me one 
 word of what was said between them. I gather, how-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN . 327 
 
 ever, that the older woman didn't encourage her in the 
 belief that Jim might some day go off his head. I wish 
 she had. It would have been good for them both if 
 Louise had been frightened. I expect his mother felt 
 that too, afterwards. She, too, wrote to me once, because, 
 I suppose, it had happened in my house. She wrote to 
 ask where he had disappeared to. I couldn't tell her. I 
 don't know whether she tried to track him down or not. 
 I don't know how much she knew or suspected. She 
 couldn't have heard the facts from any one. No one 
 ever knew the facts but Binky and Britton and myself 
 and Claire Hobbes. The other people in the house could 
 only suspect, and they, I feel sure, never voiced their 
 suspicions. Binky saw them all off that next morning, 
 and must have made it clear to them that this thing must 
 for ever be a mystery to them, and dumbness concerning 
 it, a responsibility for ever. 
 
 Of course if Britton hadn't been there I don't suppose 
 we should have hushed it up with such absolute success. 
 He managed that part somehow. I don't know what he 
 did but I seem to have an impression of him, an over- 
 powering silent figure guarding the castle and all of us 
 who were huddled in it. There was just that little notice 
 that Claire Hobbes wrote out for me, saying that Mrs. 
 James Van Orden of Iroquois, U.S.A., had died very sud- 
 denly from a heart attack at Saracens, on the loth of 
 September, 1912. 
 
 We couldn't, of course, muzzle the American press, but 
 we managed to put them quite on the wrong track, and 
 all their idiotic stuff didn't do any harm. 
 
 " Let them rave about you and your friendship, and 
 the tragedy of this sudden illness, and the heart-trouble 
 in her poor family as much as they like," said Claire.
 
 328 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " It keeps people from asking questions. That's all we 
 want. It covers him up and his flight. Let them pile it 
 on the more the better." 
 
 Claire saw me through those days. She stayed alone 
 with Binky and me for a fortnight. And she kept Britton 
 there for a week, in the face of a clamouring War Office. 
 I don't know what awful things happened to the poor old 
 army. It was just the time of that Morocco business. 
 But Claire said Britton would make a fourth at bridge, 
 and so she kept him, and the three of them sat up with me 
 all night, for six nights, playing bridge. It was good of 
 them. I could lie down in the day-time with the windows 
 open and the sun shining in. The sun did shine. That 
 was good too. I'm grateful to God for that week of 
 sun! 
 
 And I'm grateful to Ruffles too. He saw Jim as far as 
 Paris. He stuck to him until he was quite certain that 
 he wasn't going to blow his brains out, and then he came 
 and told me how he'd seen the last of him. I don't know 
 that his going off with Jim did any good. Jim probably 
 wouldn't have done anything violent, anyway. All his 
 violence was spent. He was already dead and if he 
 had wanted to kill himself, it would have been just as 
 well to let him. But I'm grateful to Ruffles. He pro- 
 tected Jim. He kept the reporters off him, and hid him 
 from view till he could hide himself. 
 
 You see how it is that I've come to like Claire and 
 Binky. They played up so awfully well. I shall never 
 forget the very casual way in which Binky arranged for 
 the burial, and Claire saw to the laying-out of that poor 
 dead Louise, and the packing up of her clothes and the 
 sending back of her jewellery to Mrs. Bowers. And 
 then, you know, Binky actually went to America to see
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 329 
 
 Mrs. Bowers. It was only that that stopped her from 
 coming over. After the third cable from her, we saw 
 that nothing could stop her but somebody's going. We 
 sat with it spread out before us, two pages of cablegram. 
 It was addressed to Jim. 
 
 " Must know details. Greatly distressed that you won't 
 bring body home. Am told cannot force you to do so by 
 law. Don't understand. Propose to sail on the Maure- 
 tania next Saturday. Will the Duchess receive me?" 
 And a lot more. This had arrived the day Ruffles got 
 back from Paris. I stared at the words : " Will the 
 Duchess receive me ? " 
 
 " What does she mean ? " I asked. " Who is she talk- 
 ing about ? Receive her how ? " 
 
 " She means you, dear," said Binky, as though he were 
 talking to a sick little child. " She means, will you let 
 her come here?" 
 
 He put a hand on my shoulder and rubbed his face 
 against mine, as we stared at the cable. 
 
 " Oh ! " I said. 
 
 " Nothing will stop her but somebody's going," said 
 Claire. 
 
 " I'm going," said Binky. 
 
 " Then who will stay with me ? " I asked. I must have 
 been ill, I suppose. 
 
 "Who would you like?" 
 
 *' I don't know." I wondered about it. " I'd like 
 Claire and Aunt Cora," I said after a minute. 
 
 " That will be all right, then," said Binky, moving away 
 a little, but I remember holding on to him, so he sat down 
 again, taking my hand. We were on the terrace in the 
 sun. Binky was very nice to me during those days. 
 He used to tie the towel round my head when it ached,
 
 330 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 and he could pull it tighter than any one else. And he 
 would rub my feet when they were cold. And he brought 
 me my tea, taking the tray from the servant at the door 
 of my room. I couldn't bear servants to come into my 
 room. It was such an effort to look at them. But I 
 liked having Binky there. He did many little things for 
 me, and then he did that big thing. He went to Iroquois 
 and saw Mrs. Bowers and my father. He kept Mrs. 
 Bowers away and he brought my father back with him. 
 So you see, he must have managed it very well. My 
 father hadn't been to see us since we had left Iroquois 
 three years before. It was the nicest thing Binky could 
 have done bringing my father to me, himself. 
 
 I don't know how much Binky told him. He may have 
 told him everything ; I mean he may have told him exactly 
 what happened. I don't know. Anyway, he gave him to 
 understand that he, Binky, was very much frightened 
 about me, and my father came. I believe Binky thought 
 I might go insane. He need not have been so frightened, 
 but I'm glad in a way that he was. It showed me that 
 he was, after all, vitally concerned in my welfare. We 
 all seem to have been frightened. I was afraid of my 
 father. I heard the car come up to the door, and I went 
 out into the hall to meet them, feeling that I should faint 
 with terror. I noticed how tall my father was, taller even 
 than Binky, and how white his hair. He looked for a 
 moment like a stranger and I thought, " He has come 
 from Iroquois. He has come, but the distance between 
 us is too great. The separation has been too much ; my 
 faithlessness to profound. He can't bridge it. It's im- 
 possible." And then he took me in his arms. " Joan, 
 my darling," he said, and I knew all at once that I was
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 331 
 
 wrong, and I knew, too, what he would do for us. He 
 would demand that we should repay his trust in us. 
 
 He stayed a month, and I have a feeling that Sara- 
 cens, in all the years of its existence, has never held 
 within its great dramatic walls such a curious piece of 
 time, a month of such pregnant stillness. It was during 
 those days as if we existed in his belief, and as though, 
 still holding us up to it, he freed us from ourselves, our 
 vulgarity and our shame. 
 
 He knew the truth about us, and I felt that I was 
 learning it from him for the first time. 
 
 There was no one in the house but Aunt Cora, my 
 father and Binky and me. I have no memory of how 
 the days passed, but I remember one warm sunny day 
 that Aunt Cora sat in the walled garden knitting, my 
 father beside her. She had a cloak round her shoulders 
 and a rug over her knees, and her knitting-needles flashed 
 in the sun. Binky and I watched them from the bottom 
 of the garden. 
 
 It was when Binky looked at me and said, " We shall . 
 be old some day, and what shall we be like?" that I 
 realized what had been going on in him as in myself. 
 We'd been thinking, and that was wonderful in itself, and 
 I saw too that we'd been thinking honestly he on his 
 part and I on mine. 
 
 " You know," I said to Binky, " he has saved us." 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Binky simply. 
 
 I can't explain my father's visit, I can only leave it to 
 
 you. 
 
 Last August, when war was declared, he wanted me to 
 come to America with the children, but I said I couldn't 
 go so far away from Binky when he was fighting over
 
 332 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 there in Flanders. My father must have taken that as 
 the fulfilment of his prophecy. I suppose it was. Any- 
 way, I'm glad to think of him contented again about me. 
 He is an old man now. I imagine him playing patience 
 every night, and thinking, not too vividly, about Binky 
 and the war. 
 
 Phyllis wasn't in Iroquois when Binky was there, that 
 last time, but it wouldn't have mattered if she had been. 
 I don't think he ever wanted to see her again after that 
 loth of September. 
 
 There isn't any one that he cares for in that way now. 
 He isn't the sort that cares for women very much. There 
 have only been the three of us, Claire and Phyllis and I ; 
 and strangely enough, I remain near to him. There must 
 be something in marriage, even a marriage such as ours. 
 It lasts out and holds together when other things fly 
 apart. Binky likes me best now, and depends on me for 
 the kind of help that he needs out there. He wants let- 
 ters, lots of letters, from me. If he doesn't hear twice a 
 week he thinks himself very much neglected. He likes 
 me to tell him all about Arch and Humpy and the dogs 
 and the servants and the weather and the look of the 
 pastures and the condition of his Highland cattle and 
 what horses there are left. His face is old now, it has 
 the war written on it, but his heart has become the heart 
 of a child. Poor darling !
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 NOW that I've got back to the beginning, the night 
 of the loth of September, 1913, I find that I've 
 told you all sorts of things, almost everything 
 of importance, except just what happened that night. 
 I'm afraid, in telling the story, I've got into rather a 
 muddle. It's so difficult to keep distinct what I felt and 
 knew at various times, and what I feel and know now. 
 Now the war is on us, and my chief feeling is one of 
 fear, not any definite fear of Zeppelins or invasions, but 
 a vague, dreadful fear, an acute sense of insecurity. The 
 world is shaking, and its convulsions give one a feeling 
 of having, to put it vulgarly, gone dotty. It's as though 
 I saw all the tables and chairs in my room moving about 
 and falling over. Everything that was stable and was 
 made to hang on to, and sit down upon, and lean against, 
 is lurching. The great business of life seems to be to sit 
 tight, but one has a suspicion that even the law of gravity 
 may be loosed and that we shall find ourselves falling off 
 the earth. Before the 4th of August, people in their 
 secure little houses were enjoying their miseries and mak- 
 ing capital out of their difficulties, and splendidly gam- 
 bling on the future the dark future that seemed so 
 possible. Now it is all changed. It appears that the 
 conduct of life is largely a matter of unconscious calcula- 
 tions. One says good-bye and calculates that the chances 
 are a hundred to one, that one will meet this friend again. 
 But when I said good-bye to Binky the other day at the 
 
 333
 
 334 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 one o'clock from Victoria, the chances were a hundred to 
 one against his coming back. It's a curious thing to 
 have all the mathematics of life upset. It makes one feel 
 like being in a mad-house. The laughter of Arch and 
 Humpy rising in shrieks from the gardens seems incredi- 
 ble and wonderful. The security of childhood becomes 
 the most precious thing on earth. 
 
 So you see how difficult it is to remember what my 
 feelings were in 1913. I have told you about how the 
 American quartette descended on us at Saracens, and I've 
 told you about my clairvoyant moment at dinner, when 
 I saw through them all as though an X-ray machine had 
 been turned on them. I don't want to go into all the 
 complex impressions of their personalities and the queer, 
 surcharged atmosphere that their minds altogether there, 
 created in the house, because Louise's wretched mind 
 dominated them all for me as the evening went on, just 
 as her voice drowned their voices and her tragedy eclipsed 
 their little troubles. Phyllis and Binky may have been 
 under a strain ; no doubt they were. Pat may have been 
 uncomfortable, though I don't believe he was. Claire, 
 undoubtedly, drew a certain sinister satisfaction from 
 Phil's helplessness. But all those things scarcely count at 
 all compared to the dreadful tension stretched over Louise 
 and Jim. I had a feeling of something drawn round 
 them, very tight, enclosing them in a space like the inside 
 of a balloon, where the gases of their misery and dis- 
 trust swelled to bursting. And the final act was just the 
 bursting of a bubble that had been strained too long. 
 And it seems, now, scarcely more important in the sum 
 total of the world's tragedy than the bursting of a toy 
 balloon, buyable for a penny, and in competition with 
 the roar of armaments, scarcely more noisy.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 335 
 
 And yet, if we are immortals, all of us, then it was, 
 of course, much more than that, and the amount of pain 
 that was mine afterward, and the cowardly giving in to 
 the hopeless boredom of life that resulted from it, all 
 that will be balanced up against me, I suppose. I sup- 
 pose my giving in to Ruffles, when I knew there was 
 nothing in it, will be laid up against me. I don't know. 
 I don't care very much. It's so difficult to decide whether 
 that sort of thing really matters. To my father it would 
 matter so terribly, and to Binky it would it did 
 matter so little. I could never tell from his manner 
 whether he accepted it in knowledge or was altogether 
 unaware. But it's curious that Louise should have ac- 
 cused me of the thing that hadn't happened and was not 
 going to, because my father came to see us. 
 
 We never used the room in the Round Tower, except 
 as a kind of museum or rubbish-heap. I don't believe 
 any one had used it for anything else during the last hun- 
 dred years. I believe it was the original dining-hall in 
 the days when the tower was the whole of the castle. 
 The fireplace was large enough to roast a sheep in and 
 had old iron cranes and hooks fastened into the stone- 
 work. The walls were rough stone too, discoloured by 
 smoke. There was scarcely any furniture in it beyond 
 a couple of old settees and some deep, ragged chairs, and 
 those cases of relics relics from all sorts of wars in 
 all sorts of countries. I never took any interest in them, 
 and only remember a medley of helmets and swords and 
 chain-armour and queer coats and horns and plumes. I 
 have always had a feeling that there must be, among all 
 those things, some scalps and teeth and bones, but doubt- 
 less I'm wrong, and Binky's family has always been too 
 refined to bring home bits of its enemies. In any case,
 
 336 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I came to dislike the place. The windows were small 
 and deep-set, with iron gratings over them suggestive of 
 a dungeon, and all those trophies combined to oppress 
 me with the weight of too much family history whenever 
 I went there. I thought of poor little Arch and Humpy 
 inheriting the peculiarities of those grotesque plumes and 
 gloves. It was opposite the wing where the gun-rooms 
 are, and where Binky spent a good deal of his time, but 
 I scarcely ever went there, and never sat there. I don't 
 suppose Jim would have thought of it as a possible place 
 to hide in if Phyllis, after going rapturously over the 
 whole place, hadn't pounced on this as a perfect spot for 
 ghost stories. It was and we actually did spend the 
 hours between eleven and one there, on the night before, 
 the night of the 9th of September. That was the first 
 night of their visit, they only stayed two. Still, I don't 
 understand just how it was that Jim went there. It was 
 curious his finding the way. One had to go down long 
 corridors and through numerous doors, and down and 
 up several little flights of stairs. The very fact that he 
 did slink away so far, shows how he was feeling. A dog, 
 if it wants to hide, will take a lot of trouble to get to a 
 safe place, I suppose. It must have seemed to him that 
 it was only by going through all those doors and shutting 
 them carefully after him, that he could shut out the sound 
 of Louise's voice. That was evidently his motive. I 
 don't for a moment believe that he had any idea of blow- 
 ing his brains out. He was fond of guns and revol- 
 vers. He and Binky had spent two hours comparing 
 notes in the gun-room that same afternoon. I remem- 
 ber noticing, when I came on him there by the great 
 fireplace, that there were several guns lying about. He 
 had evidently been rummaging in the room opposite,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 337 
 
 and had brought them across where there was more 
 light. Why the round-room was lighted I don't know. 
 The servants must have wanted to anticipate every 
 caprice of the fair-haired American lady. Anyhow they 
 had lit the iron lamps and built up a big log fire, though 
 I don't suppose even their unfortunate zeal had led 
 them to put the drinks in readiness on the chance of 
 our coming. I rather think Jim must have asked for the 
 whisky. That's another funny thing he always hated 
 whisky and so, when I came on him sunk in an old 
 chair by the fire with a gun across his knees, I noticed 
 at once the decanter and the empty glass and the full 
 syphon. I noticed everything except the revolver beside 
 the tray at his elbow. 
 
 The impression that Louise and Jim had made on me 
 when they arrived was the more painful because so 
 unexpected. She was more than ill at ease. Her effort 
 was more than just an effort to behave well before a 
 number of strange, important people. It was an effort to 
 prove to me just how completely successful and contented 
 she was with Jim. And his was an effort not to give her 
 away, and not to be ashamed of her. 
 
 I had not seen them for three years, and her letters 
 had made me think they were happy together. I don't 
 mean that she lied to me. It must have been that 
 she really thought they were happier. When you re- 
 member the rows they had had, it's understandable that 
 she should think the comparative peace of their travels 
 was happiness. She had been making love to him after 
 her fashion for a year, and she felt almost sure of him 
 this time, sure enough, anyway, to bring him to Saracens, 
 unless, indeed, her coming there was to try him. How 
 do I know? How can I tell? I've tried to think it out,
 
 338 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 but it's all too difficult. I can see that her grotesque 
 vivacity may have been put on just to hide her misery, 
 but I can't tell with what feelings she came to us or 
 with what intention. Sometimes I think that the invi- 
 tation, with what it promised of grandeur, and to her 
 it did seem grand, was too much of a temptation, and 
 that she was wretchedly torn between her desire to visit 
 a duke in his castle and her unwillingness to throw Jim 
 and me together. If that is the case, then I am all the 
 more sorry for her. To think of her coming there all 
 sore with the anticipation of the jealousy she knew 
 would torture her, and yet so dreadfully eager to be 
 for a moment in our supposedly great world, that is 
 almost too painful for me. I can't bear to think of 
 the woman that was Jim's wife being the prey to such 
 feelings and the victim of the least dignified, for her 
 jealousy wasn't a contemptible or silly thing like her 
 ignorant snobbishness. I would rather think that she 
 came just to show me how much Jim loved her, and 
 to suggest that we might be friends again. I should like 
 still more, to think that she really felt drawn to me at last 
 for myself, and that her coming there was a warm, free 
 impulse. But I don't know. I shall never be able to think 
 it out. It is all too blurred by the horror of the outcome. 
 It was half-past eleven on that last night, the second 
 night, when I began my search for him, and it must have 
 taken me ten minutes to find him, perhaps fifteen. I 
 had been to the billiard-room and the dining-room and 
 the library and to Binky's study, as well as along the 
 terrace and out into the park, but it struck me as ab- 
 surd and useless to look for him out of doors, and I 
 hadn't spent long there, only long enough to be chilled 
 and to come in by the south door shivering. I calcu-
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 339 
 
 lated that he had been there alone two hours, for he 
 had left the drawing-room at a quarter to ten, only a 
 few minutes after the men joined us there. He had 
 stayed just long enough to see Louise curve her long 
 neck, twist her hands into a becoming attitude, and 
 look up at Britton with an idiotic smile. It's curious 
 how many curves Louise had. She was all arches and 
 curves from the top of her head to the instep of her 
 foot, and when she roused herself to an effort, these 
 curves accentuated themselves suddenly all at once, as 
 though worked all together by a spring. She would arch 
 her eyebrows and purse her lips and curl her fingers, 
 and do something funny with her toes, that made her 
 high-heeled little feet look conspicuous. That night 
 everything about her seemed exaggerated. She seemed 
 bent on overdoing it. Her dress was like a fancy dress. 
 It had wings and panniers. It was a quite wonderful 
 dress of a queer old-rose and gold and crimson, cut 
 no lower than Claire's black velvet, but seeming indecent 
 because her shoulders were so thin and her breast so 
 flat. Her slippers were gold and there was a crimson 
 rose in her corsage. She put us all in the shade. We 
 looked and felt dowdy beside her gorgeousness, just as 
 we looked and felt awkward in the face of her amazingly 
 varied manner, just as we were all struck dumb by 
 her shrill volubility. It was impossible to stop her. I 
 did my best. Even before Jim and the men came in 
 I had been doing my best. It made me unhappy. I 
 blushed for her, and I was angry. Clem's little smile 
 and Claire's icy detachment and Molly's blank amaze- 
 ment and Phil's wicked way of egging her on, made 
 me unhappy. I gave myself up to her during our 
 feminine half -hour over coffee. I tried to get her to
 
 340 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 talk entirely to me. I tried to talk myself and drown 
 her, but it was no good. Some ridiculous foreign prince 
 they had met in Paris had turned her little head. He 
 had asked them to his chateau in Normandy, he had 
 given them parties at Arminnville, he had advised her 
 about dressmakers. She would have liked to follow his 
 advice about dresses, but Jim had limited her expendi- 
 ture. There was an evening-cloak by Poiret she had 
 pined for and literally wept for, but Jim hadn't let her 
 buy it. She wasn't exactly peevish about Jim's hard- 
 heartedness, but she suggested that it was very saintly 
 of her not to be. And she eyed our uninteresting frocks 
 with tactful, gentle contempt. The wings of hers fell 
 in loose folds down her restless back, and she took them 
 on either side in her fingers, and stood poised before 
 us looking down on us with her pouting, piquant little 
 face simply coated with smug self-satisfaction. Perhaps 
 she was miserable even then, but it seemed quite clear 
 to us all at that time, that she took great pleasure in 
 knowing that she was the best-dressed woman in the 
 room. Poor Louise! I wonder if it hadn't been for 
 the prince and the Paris dressmakers whether she might 
 not have been saved to grow up. I don't know. 
 After all, the effect that Britton and Binky and Ruffles, 
 and particularly and fatally that Britton had on her, 
 was quite another thing from the affaire of the prince 
 and the dressmakers. If she had come straight to us 
 from little Lou's deathbed, I expect she would have 
 bridled with the business of fascination for Britton. 
 She had seen his pictures in the papers too many times, 
 had heard his name on too many lips ever to dream of 
 taking him as a human being. 
 
 It doubtless seemed a miracle to her that a man who
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 341 
 
 had already made history to such an extent, and who 
 was spoken of with awe even in America, should be 
 bending over the back of her chair. I don't blame 
 her for being thrilled about him. It was rather charm- 
 ing of her to feel like that, at least the youth and 
 enthusiasm at the bottom of it were charming, but it 
 was the dizzy play of her egoism in its vain little effort 
 to subjugate him, or at least to strain itself up to an 
 equally important height that she might be on a level 
 with him, which was so pitiful. 
 
 He was the first to come in through the dining-room 
 door, and she, all of a sudden, went into a marvellous 
 set of curves, as I've said, and tipping her head back- 
 ward and to one side, she shot a brilliant look through 
 her lowered lids and screamed out: 
 
 " Oh, Lord Britton, do come and tell me the rest of 
 that story about South Africa! " And then she laughed 
 nervously. 
 
 He obeyed, of course, in that gloomy way of his, and 
 his face, which is always stern, didn't give him away. 
 He met her just as he meets all the horrors of battle- 
 fields. It was no more disagreeable than a machine- 
 gun. He would walk across a bit of open, raked by 
 a Maxim, quite as deliberately. At least one thinks 
 of him like that, but maybe he runs like any sane 
 person. At any rate, he didn't run from Louise. He 
 stood quite stolidly while she rained her silly words 
 on him. He bowed now and then, and occasionally he 
 said, " Ah, indeed ! " and occasionally, " No, I believe 
 not." And his eyebrows never quivered from their per- 
 fect deference, while she smiled with all her little teeth, 
 and shrilled up and down the scale of her bright American 
 voice.
 
 342 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 " I'm told you hate women. Is it true ? Don't say 
 it's true. Why should you hate us, poor us ? " She 
 gave little tosses to her head to emphasize her words. 
 
 "On the contrary." 
 
 " How nice of you to say that." With a special stress 
 on the nice. " It must be so wonderful " another 
 crescendo " to be a General and command an army." 
 A sudden drop. " Only don't you worry about the men 
 that are killed? I should worry dreadfully." A long 
 cadence in a wailing tone. " I should lie awake nights. 
 Does it depress you horribly ? " 
 
 " No, I believe not.' 
 
 " I'm so disappointed not to see you in uniform." 
 Voice dropped. " Joan ought to have asked you to put 
 on yours just for us poor little backwoods Americans." 
 Voice rising again. " I would so like to see your medals. 
 You've got lots, I know. The King decorated you last 
 year, didn't he? I remember reading about it in the 
 papers. Do you know, you're always in the papers. In 
 the States, I mean. Every one will be frightfully jealous 
 to hear that I've met you. I had no idea we'd have such 
 a chance." 
 
 "You're very kind." 
 
 " Which do you like best, Africa, England or India ? 
 You've never been to America, have you? You should 
 come. We'd so love to have you. We'd hang all the 
 city with flags if you came to Iroquois. Wouldn't we, 
 Jim?" 
 
 " Of course." The tone of Jim's on top of her wavy 
 soprano voice startled me. It was thick and brutal. It 
 was more like the bark of animal rage and torment than 
 like human speech,
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 343 
 
 " Louise," I put in, " would you like some bridge ? " 
 
 " No, no, my dear. I'd much rather just talk to Lord 
 Britton if he isn't too awfully bored." Then very, 
 very archly : " Are you, Lord Britton ? " 
 
 " On the contrary." 
 
 " You go and play bridge or billiards, there's a dear. 
 We're all right. We'll just sit and talk. I'll take care 
 of him for you," and with a flourish of lace and silk 
 and wings and panniers, she settled herself down in 
 front of the fire, lifting her poor, pretty head with 
 its glinting, crinkly hair, tilting it far back, and pouting 
 up at him. It's incredible that she shouldn't have realized 
 what a spectacle she was making of herself. It ex- 
 posed her, as if she had stripped naked and danced be- 
 fore us. 
 
 The sight of her exposure was too much for Jim. 
 He turned off with a groan, giving me, as he slunk out 
 of the room, one sight of his face all flushed with shame, 
 his soft curly mouth twisted into a snarl, his eyes black 
 with humiliation. I don't know whether he had been 
 drinking much before that or not. I hadn't noticed at 
 dinner. I had been too taken up with the curious vision 
 of them all, Phyllis and Claire and Pat and Binky, but 
 now they all seemed unimportant except Louise. I 
 bundled them off to the billiard-room as soon as I 
 could. If Phil hadn't been so obstinate I could have 
 done it sooner, but she insisted on staying to watch 
 Louise's antics, and she got Binky to go to the piano 
 and made RufHes dance with her on a square of carpet, 
 and when she was tired of that she suggested, just, I'm 
 sure, to shock Louise, that we play musical chairs, or 
 what she called " Going to Jerusalem," and Ruffles wick-
 
 344 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 edly backing her up, and she got us all prancing and 
 whirling round until even Claire grew hot and breath- 
 less. Ruffles broke two chairs, Molly tore her petti- 
 coat, Pat upset a lamp. It was all quite like Iroquois, 
 and I romped and plunged about, sitting in people's laps 
 and falling over the furniture with my mind all the 
 time horridly fixed on Jim, and on Louise, who was 
 sitting there by the fire ogling Britton. 
 
 It didn't occur to me that she was watching me to 
 see if I would follow Jim. I hadn't the faintest idea 
 of keeping away from Jim to please her. I was strangely 
 troubled about him and I wanted to go after him, but 
 I felt that the kindest thing I could do for him was 
 to stick by her. I wasn't afraid of Britton, but I was 
 unwilling to leave her to the tender mercies of Phyllis, 
 so I stayed in the room, I stayed until her laughter 
 sounded in my ears like the voice of a soul in torment. 
 Maybe I imagine that because of what I know now. 
 At any rate, I'm sure she must have been getting tired 
 of keeping it up and she must have been getting very 
 nervous about Jim, and I can quite believe that by 
 eleven-thirty she was slightly hysterical. I heard her 
 shriek : 
 
 " Never go to Court ! Don't you really ? Unless 
 what? Oh, unless your presence is required. You 
 mean unless the King invites you ! " And I could stand 
 it no longer. I told Phyllis she had had her way long 
 enough, and if the men didn't get in a soothing game of 
 billiards they'd none of them sleep. I tore Britton away 
 from Louise's clutch. She relinquished him with a sigh 
 and a dazzling smile. I saw the four men out of the 
 room with Phyllis and Claire; and then I bolted, leaving 
 Louise to dear old Molly.
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 345 
 
 I wish I had not gone out of doors to look for Jim. 
 It was very cold and damp outside, and the wind blew 
 my hair about. I always get unnaturally white when 
 I'm cold, and probably I looked strange and more wild 
 than usual when she found me with him. She was in 
 the room two minutes after me. A horrible instinct 
 must have been in her to bring her straight to the spot. 
 
 '* Jim," I had said in the door, and when he didn't 
 look up or answer I went across to him. His breathing 
 was so heavy that I thought he was asleep. The old 
 lanterns in the wall didn't give much light, and the fire 
 had burned into a low bed of glowing embers. " Jim," 
 I said again, leaning over him. He looked up at me, 
 and I saw that he was befuddled. The expression of 
 his face frightened me. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " he asked thickly. " You ought 
 to leave me alone." 
 
 My idea was to get him to come back with me to 
 the others or to Louise, at least to the inhabited part 
 of the house, and eventually to bed. I put my hand on 
 his shoulder. 
 
 " Jim, dear," I said. " Come along. It's horrid 
 here." 
 
 " Come where ? " 
 
 " Come back to the billiard-room." 
 
 " I'm too drunk. Leave me alone." 
 
 " No, I can't. I'm unhappy about you. Come with 
 me." 
 
 " I'm too drunk. I'm not unhappy. I'm only drunk." 
 
 I tried to urge him to get up. 
 
 " Come, dear," I said again, then I heard quick breath- 
 ing behind me. 
 
 " Oh ! " gasped Louise. " Oh ! "
 
 346 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 
 I turned and found her there in the door, staring. 
 She ran forward and grabbed my arm and pulled me 
 away from him. Jim got up quickly, flinging the gun 
 off his knees. It fell with a thud. 
 
 "Oh, how dare you how dare you? I knew. I 
 knew where you'd gone. I knew it." 
 
 " What in hell are you doing here ? " he muttered. 
 
 She paid no attention to him. 
 
 " I've known all along," she screamed at me. " You've 
 done your best to spoil my life. You've always been 
 trying to get him away from me." I had retreated to 
 the door after she flung me away from him, and she 
 stood now between me and him, but staring at me. We 
 made a triangle but she faced me. 
 
 " Louise," I said, in what sounded to myself like a 
 whisper. " Be careful. Look at Jim ! " 
 
 " I don't want to look at Jim I want to look at 
 you. I want to know what you mean by making love 
 to my husband and lying to me. Your face gives you 
 away. You're white as a ghost. You know you're a 
 bad woman. You you're heartless, you're depraved. 
 I hate you. You've done nothing but lie to me for years 
 and years." 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! " shouted Jim. 
 
 " I won't hold my tongue. She's in love with you 
 and you are with her. You're lovers. She was leaning 
 over you. She was going to kiss you. Do you think I 
 can't see? Look at her face. I hate you both. But 
 you're not the only lover she's had don't you believe 
 it. She's had "
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 347 
 
 that man she calls Ruffles " She got no further. 
 
 Her fury had somehow drawn my eyes to her. I didn't 
 see what he was doing. I only heard a sharp noise and 
 saw her jerk forward and fall in a queer heap. Then 
 I heard Jim say, very stupidly, with the revolver dangling 
 in his hand : 
 
 " Shut up, damn you ! Shut up ! " 
 
 I remember straightening her head and her legs. She 
 had fallen so unattractively. I took her head in my 
 lap. She gave little shudders and moved her eyes and 
 tried to swallow. I don't know how soon she died. 
 
 It was Binky who came, and he brought Claire after- 
 wards to help him. They carried Louise upstairs between 
 them. No one else saw anything, and even Phyllis has 
 kept still about what she knows. 
 
 THE END.
 
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