- 
 
 o
 
 A PURITAN BOHEMIA
 
 A PURITAN BOHEMIA 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET SHERWOOD 
 
 AUTHOR OF "AN EXPERIMENT IN ALTRUISM" 
 
 LEONTES. Where's Bohemia ? Speak. 
 LORD. Here in your city. 
 
 WINTER'S TALE 
 
 Nefo gorfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1896 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Norfnoob 
 
 J. S. Cushing & Co. Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mi. U.S.A.
 
 A PURITAN BOHEMIA 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 " I go to prove my soul 
 
 BROWNING'S Paracelsus. 
 
 " You hold my whole life in the hollow 
 of your hand, like that." 
 
 The speaker held out a broad palm, and 
 a great drop of rain splashed into it. 
 
 " Whatever strength or talent I possess 
 is vowed to your service." 
 
 "You are letting the rain drop on my 
 face," said the girl, with an accent of 
 reproach. 
 
 The young man righted the umbrella 
 and gazed gloomily, past the west-bound 
 steamer that lay off the wharf, out toward 
 the sea. The twinkle had died out of his 
 
 2229092
 
 2 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 eyes. His stalwart figure drooped a lit- 
 tle with an expression of defeat. Anne 
 Bradford glanced up at him, and a look of 
 pity softened the merry determination of 
 her face. 
 
 " I can't do it, Howard," she said softly. 
 " It would spoil my whole life." 
 
 "Tell me why," he demanded, with an 
 impatient shake of his head that brought 
 a lock of hair down over his forehead. 
 
 " I haven't time," answered the girl 
 mischievously. 
 
 "The steamer doesn't start for fifteen 
 minutes," he groaned. 
 
 " I mean that I haven't time to take 
 care of you. I am too busy." 
 
 "I won't waste your time." 
 
 " But I am serious. This is no laugh- 
 ing matter," said the girl reprovingly. 
 
 " I had an idea that you thought it was," 
 he muttered. 
 
 "I have my work to do, the work that I 
 have wanted ever since I was a little girl. 
 I have spent five years here in getting 
 ready for it. Now I wish to go back to
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 3 
 
 America to try my power. It will take all 
 my time and strength and devotion " 
 
 "That's just the way," he interrupted, 
 "that the modern young woman talks in 
 story-books. You have read too many 
 novels. She is always bent on a solitary 
 and egoistic life, but in the end she always 
 gives in." 
 
 " That is only in story-books," retorted 
 Anne Bradford. " And I'm not a modern 
 young woman. I am old-fashioned, and 
 very much like my Puritan grandfather." 
 
 " I wish," said Howard Stanton, with a 
 sudden flash of impertinence, "that you 
 were a little bit more like your Puritan 
 grandmother." 
 
 " You see," said Anne wistfully, " I've 
 got to do it all myself. I am not a genius, 
 and yet I think that if I was born for any 
 purpose it was to paint pictures. Is trying 
 to find one's best self-expression egoism ?" 
 
 Her eyes were following the red-brown 
 sail of a tiny boat, just disappearing in the 
 fog. She would like to catch and keep 
 that colour effect.
 
 4 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Howard Stanton looked down in silence. 
 It was useless to plead. There was resolu- 
 tion in every line of the little figure in 
 the gray-checked travelling-dress. The 
 obstinacy of that clear-cut face under the 
 visor of the close-fitting cap he had known 
 since childhood. 
 
 " I can't stand it, Nannie ! " he ex- 
 claimed. " Reasons and arguments simply 
 have nothing to do with it. I cannot 
 stand it to wait here and see you sail 
 away out of my life. You are in the 
 warp and the woof of the whole of it. I 
 have loved you ever since I was five years 
 old." 
 
 The vehement words of the young man 
 and the girl's broken answers were drowned 
 in the noises of the wharf and the sound 
 of the water breaking on the piles. Pres- 
 ently there was a lull. A cry of " All 
 ashore ! " came from the steamer. Anne 
 Bradford paused on the gang-plank and 
 looked up, hurt by her sympathy with this 
 strong feeling that she could not under- 
 stand.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 5 
 
 " Plunge into your work," she said re- 
 assuringly. " You came to Europe to 
 work, you remember." 
 
 " No," he answered, " I came to Europe 
 to find you. I can't do my work without 
 you." 
 
 " And I can't do mine with you. Isn't 
 it unfortunate ? Now you must go 
 ashore." 
 
 " I am not going ashore," he asserted 
 doggedly. " I am going to stay on the 
 steamer and go home too." 
 
 The girl grasped her travelling-bag. 
 
 " If you stay on, of course I must go 
 back." 
 
 As the vessel moved away the young 
 man stood among the boxes on the wharf, 
 his head uncovered in the rain. Anne 
 Bradford watched from the slippery deck. 
 The city, with its one cathedral spire, 
 faded in gray mist beyond the flat green 
 fields and shadowy windmills. 
 
 " Europe is all over for me," she 
 sighed. 
 
 The fog: in the air and the moisture in
 
 6 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 his eyes soon hid from Howard Stanton 
 the little figure at the vessel's stern. He 
 turned on his heel. 
 
 " Theories be damned," he said savagely 
 as he strode away.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HALF-WAY up the hill lay the Square. 
 The streets that bounded it on north and 
 south sloped westward to the river. On 
 the east they climbed the hill and disap- 
 peared. The elm trees and the ragged 
 willow in the centre of the Square were 
 gray with dust. It was late September. 
 
 The place had an air peculiarly its own, 
 representing, in its dignified seclusion, the 
 ideal aspects of an old New England city. 
 Long ago wealthy merchants had built 
 these wide brick houses. Now artists, 
 poets, scholars, and musicians, the build- 
 ers of houses not made with hands, had 
 become inheritors of the large rooms, with 
 windows overlooking the roofs and chim- 
 neys of the city and the winding river in 
 the west. 
 
 Late one afternoon Anne Bradford 
 walked slowly home. A sleepy quiet 
 7
 
 8 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 brooded over the Square. Suddenly the 
 silence was broken by the sound of many 
 feet, for the doors of the Music Hall had 
 been thrown open, and a crowd of women 
 passed out. A lecture on Dostoievsky 
 was just over. Then a cab came rattling 
 down High Street and stopped at the 
 entrance to a low, irregular structure 
 bearing the inscription, " Rembrandt Stu- 
 dios." From the cab stepped a tall 
 young girl in an extremely well-cut gown. 
 She stood for a minute with her red-brown 
 dress and auburn hair outlined against 
 the dull green ampelopsis that covered 
 the building's front. Her cheeks were 
 flushed. Anne Bradford caught her look 
 of keen interest in the faded brick fagade, 
 the battered stone lions that guarded the 
 entrance, and in the preoccupied women 
 passing two by two. 
 
 " What is that child doing in Bohe- 
 mia ? " wondered Anne, noticing that her 
 trunk was being carried in. " It is some- 
 body new in search of the ideal life. She 
 ought to know that she cannot enter
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 9 
 
 the kingdom of the ideal in clothes like 
 that." 
 
 The girl disappeared behind the great 
 oak door. Anne followed, pausing for a 
 minute to bow to some one across the 
 Square. It was a lady in widow's dress. 
 Something in the slender, erect figure 
 with the sweeping black robes smote 
 the artist's heart with a sudden sense of 
 pity. 
 
 " I wish I knew more about Mrs. Kent," 
 she said to herself. 
 
 A polite voice interrupted her. 
 
 " If you please 'm, I've brought home 
 your laundry, and could you pay me 
 now?" 
 
 A child stepped forward from the stairs, 
 watching Miss Bradford expectantly. She 
 was an odd little creature. The business- 
 like manner seemed strangely out of keep- 
 ing with the plump cheeks and the short 
 calico gown. 
 
 "Yes, Annabel, I am going up directly." 
 
 "There's a new young lady," whispered 
 Annabel confidentially. " Her name's
 
 io A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Miss Wistar. I saw it on her trunk and 
 she smiled at me. She's awful pretty." 
 
 Anne Bradford slowly mounted the 
 stairs, carrying in one hand a tiny bag 
 of rolls for her breakfast, in the other, 
 three new tubes of paint.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 " A pleasant land, not fenced with drab stucco, like 
 Tyburnia or Belgravia; not guarded by a huge standing 
 army of footmen; not echoing with noble chariots; a 
 land of chambers, billiard-rooms, supper rooms; a land 
 where soda-water flows freely in the morning; a land of 
 lotus- eating (with lots of cayenne pepper); of pulls on 
 the river ; of delicious readings of novels, magazines, 
 of saunterings in many studios; a land where men call 
 each other by their Christian names; where most are 
 poor, where almost all are young." 
 
 THACKERAY'S Philip. 
 
 IT was not this old Bohemia that cen- 
 tred in the Square, but a new Bohemia, 
 woman's Bohemia in a Puritan city. 
 
 In certain aspects the old land and the 
 new are alike. This too is a country with- 
 out geography, a kingdom of the air. It 
 has no continuous history. All is shift- 
 ing, changing, kaleidoscopic. Here the 
 very furniture has an air of alertness, as if 
 about to depart. The inhabitants, driven 
 like sand across the desert, stop only for 
 
 " A moment's halt, a momentary taste 
 Of Beimr "
 
 12 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 For this is a land of quest. One does 
 not come to rest or stay, only to search 
 for that which one has not yet found. 
 
 " As we proceed, it shifts its place," 
 
 and the days go by in swift pursuit. 
 
 But here .is none of the reckless, happy- 
 go-lucky temper of the London Prague or 
 the Paris Latin Quarter. Life is earnest, 
 sad, ascetic. Its only lotus-eating is hard 
 work. The shadow of grief rests over it, 
 for women whom life has robbed come 
 here to forget their sorrow, if may be, in 
 philanthropy or in art. Here eager girls 
 toil with pen or canvas, keys or strings. 
 
 Each has a purpose. The little black 
 bag that the Bohemian carries is a symbol 
 of an aim in life. It may hold books, or 
 manuscript poems, or comments on Aris- 
 totle. It may hold boxes of crackers or 
 jars of marmalade. Whatever its contents, 
 it is always full. 
 
 These earnest women suffer loneliness, 
 and, it may be, failure. But they have 
 freedom and pleasant companionship, long
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 13 
 
 walks by river-bank or bridge, long discus- 
 sions by tea-table or by fireplace. For the 
 hardship there is compensation. Here the 
 ideal has become real. One may hear the 
 Bohemians condemning, over a luncheon 
 of coffee and rolls, the ascetic idea, and 
 expressing belief in controlled Epicure- 
 anism. Bread and cheese for the body's 
 diet ; Transcendentalism for the mind : 
 muddy crossings for the feet ; for the 
 soul, the paths among the stars. 
 
 The charm of evanescence belongs to 
 this life. Work and friends are doubly 
 dear when every morning brings the 
 thought that they may vanish. For the 
 mortality is great in Bohemia. It lies hard 
 by the borderland of life, life with its 
 ordered sequences of birth and death, of 
 marrying and giving in marriage, of family 
 happenings. A constant fear walks with 
 one that one's friend may at any moment 
 be drawn to that bourne whence none 
 return to Bohemia. 
 
 The charm of the unexpected belongs to 
 it. Who knows what choice spirit may
 
 14 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 come to abide in the next studio or in the 
 vacant suite ? Any day may bring within 
 the borders a victim to be sacrificed to 
 one's art, or a friend to be grappled to 
 one's soul. 
 
 The gathering of the inhabitants is 
 ruled by seeming chance. Women drift 
 hither through lack of strong ties to hold 
 them back. Others come to whom this is 
 but a halting place in a road to a chosen 
 goal. A whim, a momentary wish, an old 
 ambition revived, guide many feet to 
 Bohemia. 
 
 This is hence a peculiar race, bound to- 
 gether, not by ties of birth and family, 
 only by community of interest, of hope, of 
 suffering. As in the world of mediaeval 
 story here are neither old people nor young 
 children, only the vigorous, ready for 
 battle. 
 
 Yet bits of everyday life float into 
 Bohemia. Children come to play in the 
 Square. Humble lovers stroll past, arm 
 in arm, and little girls with braided hair 
 walk through to school. Frail old ladies
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 15 
 
 with nodding curls and men with hair like 
 white spun silk go tremulously by, wonder- 
 ing at the queer life of this secluded spot. 
 
 The place is as quiet as a motionless 
 pool at the side of a moving stream. 
 Hence the tales of Bohemia are not full 
 of strange incident. The hero of romance 
 does not dwell here, and the villain is un- 
 known. There are few men in this new 
 country. Man here is a memory, a shadow, 
 rarely a reality. 
 
 And the stories are incoherent. Only 
 moments of life are represented. Here 
 are but the beginnings and the endings 
 of stories, often the ending that comes 
 after the climax, sometimes the climax 
 itself. Residence in Bohemia is perhaps 
 only as long as the working out of a mood. 
 Therefore its romances are not orderly 
 developments of plot and counterplot, but 
 merely bits of vivid experience in busy 
 people's lives.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 " Truly ... in respect ... of itself it is a good life. 
 In respect that it is solitary I like it very well, but in 
 respect that it is private it is a very vile life. ... As it 
 is a spare life, look you, it suits my humour well." 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 "DON'T stop working," begged Mrs. 
 Kent. "I do so like to watch you." 
 
 Anne pushed the ruffle of her blue 
 gingham painting-apron away from her 
 face, and took up her brushes again. She 
 was retouching, from memory, a study of 
 an old sailor. 
 
 Mrs. Kent stooped to pat Miserere, the 
 studio cat, then looked at the pictures on 
 the walls, an old woman, drinking tea; 
 a white-haired man, warming his fingers 
 over the last coals of his fire ; a young 
 Italian mother, with a brown baby in her 
 arms. 
 
 "The things you do have an unusual 
 charm for me," said the caller. 
 
 "Yet I am an utter failure, so far as 
 16
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 17 
 
 any recognition of my work is concerned," 
 responded the artist cheerfully. 
 
 "You have not been working long 
 enough." 
 
 "Ever since I came back to America. 
 That is four whole years. I haven't ex- 
 hibited a single picture, nor sold one. But 
 I'm having a beautiful time. Maybe if it 
 weren't so hopeless I should not be so 
 enthusiastic about it." 
 
 "That is hard philosophy," said Mrs. 
 Kent, with her sad little smile. " Do you 
 suppose that I could apply it in my charity 
 work ? " 
 
 It was a peculiar room. The old- 
 fashioned furniture had brought into the 
 world of art a suggestion of serious and 
 ascetic New England life. A tall old clock 
 stood by the cast of Psyche. The cherry 
 desk, where the artist's father had written 
 sermons for thirty years, was crowned by 
 a Venus de Milo. From claw-footed table 
 and high-backed chairs reminders of the 
 Vermont parsonage stole across the warmth 
 and colour of the studio. Over the door
 
 1 8 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Anne had hung a sketch of her father's 
 face stern, spiritual, Puritan. 
 
 The studio was like Miss Bradford. So 
 were the pictures. Mrs. Kent looked at 
 them again, wondering at the likeness be- 
 tween the artist and her work. There was 
 careful rendering of the wrinkles, the lines 
 about the mouth, the curving of the lips ; 
 but the eyes were Anne's own. Into them 
 all had crept that look of mingled thirst 
 for life and fear of life, and they looked 
 out wistfully from the canvases, full of 
 sadness, as if trying to understand. 
 
 Mrs. Kent glanced at the artist's clear 
 gray eyes, determined mouth, and smooth, 
 parted hair. 
 
 "You must never give up." 
 
 "I can't," Anne responded, putting the 
 finishing touches on a thumb. "The work 
 won't give me up. It holds me as a cat 
 does a mouse. You see, it has always 
 been the one thing in the world for me, 
 and life has had no meaning apart from it. 
 I want to be genuine not like other 
 women. Most women wear their careers
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 19 
 
 as if they were jewelry. Work is only a 
 new species of ornament. They aren't 
 great enough to lose themselves in it. 
 
 " Only I should like one wee bit of en- 
 couragement ! The master never stopped 
 at my easel, as he always does in books, 
 to say, ' You have a touch. There is a 
 future before you.' I've got nothing to 
 depend on but my belief in myself." 
 
 " It is all very wonderful to me," said 
 Mrs. Kent, rising to go. " How can you 
 interpret people's faces in that way with- 
 out having had their experience ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I have an idea that 
 you can interpret other people's lives bet- 
 ter if your own isn't too much tangled up. 
 Lack of life is life's best interpreter." 
 
 There was a knock at the door. The 
 janitor had brought Miss Bradford a card. 
 She stood for a minute, turning it over in 
 paint-stained fingers. 
 
 "Say that I will come down directly." 
 
 Then she went back to her canvas and 
 spoiled the thumb. 
 
 Five minutes later Anne walked down-
 
 20 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 stairs with Howard Stanton's card in her 
 hand. Miserere accompanied her to the 
 reception-room door, then dashed away to 
 play with the other studio cats, Victoria Re- 
 gina, and Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. 
 
 Anne tore up the card, then wondered 
 helplessly what to do with the pieces. It 
 was strange that Howard should come 
 just now. But then, it was strange that 
 he had not come before. She must be 
 rather formal at first. Memories drifted 
 to her of scenes where she had met him 
 in imagination. In imagination she had 
 been quite self-possessed. Now she was 
 undeniably ill at ease. This was only be- 
 cause of her haunting anxiety lest she had 
 spoiled this man's life. 
 
 As she entered, the young man rose 
 and held out his hand. He, apparently, 
 was not embarrassed. 
 
 " I am presuming upon our old acquaint- 
 ance," he said. " Chance has brought me 
 to the city " 
 
 " Why, Howard ! " gasped Anne. She 
 had not meant to be so formal as that.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 21 
 
 He had not changed, she thought, as he 
 drew a wicker chair out for her from its 
 position by the Van Dyck portrait. He 
 had the same voice, the same light brown 
 hair, though the lock over the forehead 
 was gone. Anne suppressed a desire to 
 tell him that he had grown, remember- 
 ing that he was six feet two when she 
 saw him last. She wondered vaguely at 
 her own surprise in finding him so ro- 
 bust. 
 
 " When did you return from Europe ? " 
 she asked stiffly, then repented having 
 spoken. That seemed like alluding to 
 their last meeting. 
 
 "A year and a half ago. I studied in 
 Paris first, then went to London for inspi- 
 ration." 
 
 "London!" 
 
 " People do not usually go to London 
 for art. But French art is dead, except 
 for the Symbolists." 
 
 This sweeping assertiveness seemed very 
 familiar. 
 
 " I got hold of some good ideas among
 
 22 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 the London Socialists. There's a move- 
 ment afoot for the popularization of art. 
 It is indirectly the work of Ruskin. After 
 I came home I taught a year, just to send 
 the message on." 
 
 Anne lifted her eyebrows. 
 
 " You have a new theory ? " 
 
 " I have," he answered. " Moreover, 
 I've got a commission, to design frescoes 
 for a room in the City Hall." 
 
 " Here ? " cried Anne eagerly. Then 
 she corrected her manner. 
 
 "You have been very successful. I 
 saw notices of your two Salon pictures. 
 Why did the Art Review call you an 
 impressionist ? " 
 
 " It's a perfectly harmless term, as it 
 doesn't mean anything." 
 
 " You always were something of an im- 
 pressionist in temperament ! " 
 
 Howard changed the subject abruptly. 
 He had come to bespeak Miss Bradford's 
 interest in a pupil of his, Miss Wistar, now 
 at the Rembrandt Studios. Anne politely 
 promised to call.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 23 
 
 The difficulties of finding their bearings 
 in these new waters increased. They 
 talked of Hazleton, of their childhood, of 
 the water-colour exhibition. Finally they 
 drifted into a half-merry quarrel over theo- 
 ries of work. Once again the old, boyish, 
 emphatic manner broke through the new 
 reserve. 
 
 " Realism ! There's nothing in it, French 
 realism anyway, but impure taste and false 
 accuracy." 
 
 The caller accepted with apparent inter- 
 est an invitation to come again. In the 
 street he fell to thinking. 
 
 "Anne has not changed in the least, 
 but she looks tired. She has been work- 
 ing too hard. And her father's death was 
 hard for her." 
 
 He had not expected the reminder of 
 old days to be so poignant. 
 
 Anne went back to the studio and 
 picked up her brushes. Howard had im- 
 proved beyond her best hopes for him. 
 He was not a blighted being, but was 
 self-poised, interested in his work.
 
 24 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "I am glad it has all ended sensibly," 
 she said to herself. " He's very satisfac- 
 tory, almost too satisfactory." 
 
 Then her eyes clouded, and she could 
 not see the thumb.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HELEN WISTAR had spent three days 
 in finding appropriate furniture for her 
 studio. She looked with satisfaction at 
 the sofa-bed, draped with unhemmed brown 
 denim, the pine chiffonnier, the huge screen 
 covered with burlap. Three willow- ware 
 cups, with plates to match, some plated 
 spoons and forks, and a tiny coffee-pot 
 decorated a shelf on the wall. These 
 were for her housekeeping. 
 
 " I'm so glad I'm here at last ! " she said. 
 
 She took the " Fabian Essays on Social- 
 ism " and Ruskin's " Political Economy of 
 Art" out of her trunk and put them on 
 the floor. 
 
 Somebody knocked. 
 
 The girl greeted her visitor with an 
 embarrassed self-possession, gazing with 
 wide-opened brown eyes as she heard her 
 name. 
 
 "Miss Bradford? Oh, do you know, I 
 25
 
 26 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 have a note of introduction to you from 
 my old art teacher, Mr. Stanton ! " 
 
 She gracefully offered Anne a wooden 
 kitchen chair, and seated herself on a pine 
 box under the window. 
 
 Anne was puzzled. The bare walls and 
 cheap furniture wore the desolation of ap- 
 parent poverty. But a gold-mounted trav- 
 elling-bag stood in one corner. From the 
 box where her hostess was sitting, the 
 strong light bringing out all the rich col- 
 ouring of her hair and lashes and curving 
 cheeks, came the gleam of the silver fur- 
 nishings of her toilet-table. 
 
 " Yes," Anne was saying, " I knew Mr. 
 Stanton when we were children. We 
 went to the same village school. My 
 father was the minister. His father 
 owned the mills." 
 
 " Mr. Stanton has very remarkable theo- 
 ries about art," observed the girl solemnly. 
 
 " He used to have when I knew him," 
 Anne replied, smiling in reminiscence. 
 " What are the new ones ? " 
 
 " He thinks that art should not be mo-
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 27 
 
 nopolized by the cultured classes, but 
 should be shared with common people." 
 
 "That isn't precisely an art theory, 
 is it?" 
 
 "It is the new art," answered Helen 
 with sudden dignity, "the art that is no 
 longer selfish, but that recognizes the 
 claims of human brotherhood." 
 
 Decidedly the child was interesting. 
 That little air of self-importance was 
 charming, taken in connection with the 
 rounded outlines of her face. Anne 
 watched her hostess unobserved. Those 
 gray eyes never seemed to see, yet noth- 
 ing escaped them. 
 
 " She is just a bewitching baby," said 
 the caller to herself, " masquerading in the 
 manner of a woman of the world." 
 
 " Mr. Stanton always was an enthusi- 
 ast," she remarked. " He has not changed, 
 unless he has found an enthusiasm that 
 lasts." 
 
 " Oh, Miss Bradford ! " cried Helen. 
 "Don't!" 
 
 A look of swift intelligence flashed into
 
 28 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Anne's face, but she turned toward the 
 girl with her usual inscrutable smile. 
 
 "Mr. Stanton's teaching has opened a 
 whole new world for me," said Helen 
 bravely. Her face had grown severe over 
 Anne Bradford's flippancy. " I see every- 
 thing differently now. I never knew be- 
 fore that it is wrong to shut one's life away 
 from poorer people, and to live selfishly 
 with one's own beautiful things. Now, I 
 don't want to keep any part of my life, my 
 aim, or hope, or achievement, to myself." 
 
 She stopped, excited and embarrassed. 
 
 "The eagerness of the young to give 
 what they have not got is very sweet," 
 thought the guest. 
 
 " I am carrying out one of Mr. Stanton's 
 suggestions now," said Helen shyly. " I 
 am going to study, of course, but that isn't 
 what I am most interested in. I have come 
 here in order to find out all about the lives 
 of poor artists who have to struggle for an 
 education. I am going to live with abso- 
 lutely no luxuries, and am going to try to 
 help them.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 29 
 
 " It was hard to come," she added. "My 
 family disapprove. They say that it is 
 very foolish and very improper." 
 
 " Do they need you ? " 
 
 Red colour surged to Helen's cheeks. 
 
 "That's the way everybody talks ! " she 
 cried. " If I were a man, I should by gen- 
 eral consent have a right to live my own 
 life. But just because I am a woman, 
 with an aim of my own, nobody under- 
 stands. 
 
 " You see," she pleaded, " it is impossi- 
 ble for me to live out at home my beliefs. 
 It is a Christian home, they say, and yet 
 my family feels a great deal more respon- 
 sible to social convention than to its faith. 
 I cannot have simple relations there. My 
 position in regard to the maids in my 
 father's house contradicts my idea of the 
 Gospels." 
 
 " You are a new kind of Saint Francis," 
 said Anne with a smile. " You seem to 
 have taken a vow of poverty and dis- 
 obedience." 
 
 The door was suddenly pushed open.
 
 30 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 A little girl in a calico gown and broken 
 straw hat appeared. 
 
 " Why, Annabel ! " exclaimed Miss Brad- 
 ford. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, ma'am," said Anna- 
 bel, with utmost politeness, to the mistress 
 of the studio. "You said 'Come,' didn't 
 you ? My mamma wanted me to ask you 
 if you have any laundry. The janitress 
 recommended you." 
 
 " How are your little sisters, Annabel ? " 
 asked Anne. 
 
 " Pretty well, thank you. They've almost 
 got to Greenland." 
 
 Annabel still panted from rapid walking. 
 
 "I thought they were going to Japan." 
 
 A troubled look came into the child's 
 face. She touched Miss Bradford's arm 
 affectionately ; then her eyes brightened 
 in triumph. 
 
 "They're going to Greenland first, and 
 Japan afterward. I've travelled a good 
 deal in my day, too," said Annabel, look- 
 ing up guilelessly into Miss Wistar's face. 
 " It runs in the family. I went with my
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 31 
 
 sailor uncle to Switzerland and Greenland 
 and Iceland and Africa and New Jersey ! " 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Miss Wistar gravely. 
 
 "We went past Asia too, but we didn't 
 stop to Asia." 
 
 " That's Annabel," explained Anne, 
 after the child had gone. " Her real name 
 is Sarah Orr. She insists on Annabel 
 because it is romantic. She is the main- 
 stay of an entire family. It is ' personally 
 conducted ' by Annabel. She's one of the 
 most interesting characters in Bohemia." 
 
 " Why does she tell such queer tales ? " 
 
 "That's genius. It is Annabel's way 
 of escaping from her hard world. Her 
 imagination has been fed by geography 
 and a few stray books. She lies with such 
 accuracy and precision that she would de- 
 ceive the very elect. Sometimes she tells 
 the truth, and that complicates things. 
 She never lies about business matters." 
 
 Miss Bradford lingered on the threshold. 
 
 " It is rather strange that Mr. Stanton 
 should come here to work just now," she 
 said.
 
 32 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "Here!" cried Helen. 
 
 "Yes. Didn't you know?" 
 
 "No. I thought he was still at Eliot." 
 
 Across the way an open door gave a 
 glimpse of the mysterious recesses of a 
 studio. Hidden behind the tall green 
 plants and Japanese screens was some 
 one playing a violin. 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed the girl. " It is glo- 
 rious ! Life is so free, and so full of things 
 to do ! " 
 
 " Maybe the child thinks that this is 
 altruistic passion, but I doubt if it is," 
 meditated Anne. 
 
 Suddenly Helen turned, with a quiver 
 on her lips that completed the conquest 
 of the older woman's heart. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Bradford ! I do so want to 
 help ! Do you think I can ? "
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 "Then with the knowledge of death as walking one 
 
 side of me, 
 And the thought of death close-walking the other side 
 
 of me, 
 And I in the middle as with companions and as holding 
 
 the hands of companions " 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 FROM her windows Mrs. Kent watched 
 the life in the Square with something akin 
 to interest. Picturesque models came and 
 went. Artists walked in meditation under 
 the trees. The shabby clientele of the 
 Charity Organization used it as a thorough- 
 fare to the great Charity Building on High 
 Street. 
 
 Outside there was only the sight of 
 strange faces, and the sound of unknown 
 feet ; within, the four walls of her room, 
 and her thought of the past. Memories 
 of old days drifted between her and the 
 pamphlets which she persistently tried to 
 read. On autumn evenings, when there 
 D 33
 
 34 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 were concerts in the Music Hall, the insis- 
 tent cry of music set broken chords to 
 vibrating and destroyed her hard-won calm. 
 
 Mrs. Kent had come to the city, she 
 told herself, to forget her sorrow in caring 
 for the poor. There were no claims upon 
 her now. But she had not come to forget. 
 She had come to remember. She wanted 
 solitude, where the sound of familiar voices 
 would not break the silence of her grief. 
 Throughout the meaningless future she 
 would keep fast hold of the meaning of the 
 past. 
 
 Six months of work in the Charity Build- 
 ing; endless reports; endless committee 
 meetings on spring afternoons and hot 
 summer mornings ; then suddenly the 
 monotony was broken by the sight of a 
 new face across the table. Anne Bradford 
 had begun to take her dinners at the house 
 where Mrs. Kent lived. 
 
 They were friends now. They had 
 walked together, and had talked of many 
 things. There was something contagious 
 in Anne's interest in life and in people.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 35 
 
 " I called on my new neighbour yester- 
 day," said Anne, as she strolled one day 
 with Mrs. Kent about the Square. " She's 
 charming. She has spent a year in a 
 woman's college, and is very wise. Now 
 she's going to make the world all over." 
 
 " Don't laugh at her," begged Mrs. Kent. 
 
 "I'm not laughing at her. I like her 
 immensely. She belongs to a wealthy old 
 Connecticut family. Their religious, social, 
 and economic views are not to her mind. 
 Her criticism of her unenlightened parents 
 rather stuns one. She has come on a mis- 
 sion to us, because her conscience won't 
 permit her to stay at home. It used to be 
 the bad boy who ran away from home. 
 Now it's the good girl, in search of philan- 
 thropic adventure." 
 
 Mrs. Kent smiled. 
 
 "The child is brimful of that vain, hun- 
 gry, ungenerous idealism of the young," 
 continued Anne. " Heaven deliver us all 
 from the abstract wisdom of the utterly 
 untried ! " 
 
 "Is she an artist?"
 
 36 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " That depends on your definition," 
 Anne replied dryly. " She decided to keep 
 on with art, after a year's study, because 
 her instructor showed her how really seri- 
 ous a thing art is ! " 
 
 From these slight demands for human 
 interest, Mrs. Kent turned with relief to 
 her work. This was largely mechanical. 
 She did her duty with precision, and went 
 her way, sweet, sad, and remote. The 
 harder the work, the more content she 
 was. She liked to come home late in the 
 afternoon, so tired that the old sense of 
 physical and mental paralysis which had 
 come to her when she first knew how 
 great a grief was hers, returned and took 
 possession. That feeling carried her back 
 nearer and nearer to all that she had lost. 
 
 Her imagination slowly acquired a new 
 power. Through the golden autumn air 
 and the misty rain, scenes from her former 
 life drifted back to her. In the long 
 silences she said over and over the old 
 words, those that she had listened to, 
 those that she had spoken. She had
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 37 
 
 forgotten nothing. Even in the street her 
 feet beat time to the familiar phrases. 
 Playing both parts in this dialogue of 
 memory, she came to feel that both voices 
 were one, and she forgot to regret the few 
 bitter words that had broken the happiness 
 of those years. 
 
 Grief turned often into rebellion. Once 
 a glimpse of Anne Bradford and Miss Wis- 
 tar walking together under the falling 
 leaves brought hot tears to Mrs. Kent's 
 eyes. It was like looking from the end 
 of life down a long vista, into the hope 
 and freshness of life's beginning. For her 
 life was over, yet she was still so young. 
 
 "Please, will you come to the studio 
 for a Bohemian supper ? " Anne Bradford 
 begged one day. "And will you play 
 chaperon ? " 
 
 " Chaperon ? " 
 
 " For Miss Wistar. An old playmate 
 of mine has turned out to be her art- 
 teacher. I wish to invite him to meet 
 her." 
 
 Mrs. Kent consented with reluctance.
 
 38 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Perhaps it was her duty. Yet this was 
 hard for one who asked only that she 
 might walk on softly in the bitterness of 
 her soul, guarding for herself the hush 
 that lies about new-made graves. 
 
 She had grown almost content, living in 
 the constant presence of the dead. Now 
 a sudden change of work disturbed her. 
 She was asked to leave her books, and to 
 do district visiting in the slums. The 
 swarming people irritated her. The sights 
 and sounds made her ill. She could not 
 really care, she said to herself, about the 
 wretched people she was trying to serve. 
 Yet the thought of them troubled her 
 dreams. At night their faces followed 
 her on her journey to the past. Soiled 
 fingers seemed to clutch her gown as she 
 walked the old, familiar ways. 
 
 She went on in a maze. That old ex- 
 pectation of finding on the other side of 
 each shut door the face she loved went 
 with her to the slums. But the open 
 doors revealed only dirt, misery, sin. 
 Again and again the rebellious cry arose.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 39 
 
 The soul she loved had heaven ; and 
 she ? the blank brick walls, the long, 
 muddy walks, the loathsome faces. 
 
 One wicked old woman with a passion 
 for drink, two Italians out of work, and 
 a family of motherless children were given 
 to her care. 
 
 One day in late October Mrs. Kent 
 made her usual round of visits. It was 
 her birthday. She found that the old 
 woman had turned her daughter out of 
 doors. 
 
 The visitor walked slowly away, looking 
 back toward the window of the basement 
 room. 
 
 "My birthday gift," she said, "is a 
 share in another's sin."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A SUMMER fragrance drifted through 
 Anne Bradford's studio from the cedar 
 branches nailed to the wall and the pine 
 cones burning in the fireplace. The light 
 of the fire and of the hanging lamp made 
 curious effects in the great apartment. 
 Spaces among the rafters were shadowy 
 still. A Winged Victory, standing above 
 a low partition that shut off another 
 room, shone out in bold relief against the 
 darkness. 
 
 It was odd and picturesque, with its 
 irregular nooks and angles and its gallery 
 on the east, reached by a winding stair- 
 way. Here two windows looked out upon 
 the Square. An Indian hammock hung 
 in one corner of the room. In another 
 was a low divan, covered with a Bagdad 
 curtain. The dull reds and olives of rugs 
 and portieres were relieved by a single bit 
 of vivid colour, the scarlet robe of a cardinal 
 in a picture on the easel. 
 4 o
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 41 
 
 The hostess was sitting by a white- 
 fringed table, making coffee in a Turkish 
 coffee-pot. On the wall, just above the 
 gleaming glass and silver, hung a mask 
 of Dante. The sneering face of a Notre 
 Dame devil looked down from the corner. 
 
 "My conclusion is," Howard Stanton 
 was remarking, " that, unless I can make 
 my art express my best thought about life, 
 I must abandon my art. And the sum 
 and substance of that thought is this : 
 that life is just a chance to enter into 
 other people's lives and help develop 
 them." 
 
 His face wore an expression unneces- 
 sarily heroic. Helen Wistar was looking 
 at him with the old, rapt expression of 
 the lecture-room. He always took him- 
 self seriously when she was near. 
 
 "Nobody must speak for a minute," 
 begged Anne, "or I shall spill the water." 
 
 She slowly poured the coffee into tiny 
 Sevres cups and gave the tray to Anna- 
 bel, who had just removed the salad plates 
 and was anxiously waiting. Annabel wore
 
 42 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 her Sunday gown of blue nun's veiling. 
 The unwonted responsibilities of her 
 present task had deepened her care-worn 
 expression. 
 
 " Now please," said Miss Bradford, com- 
 ing back to the fire, " what were you talk- 
 ing about ? " 
 
 "Oh, about living," answered Mrs. 
 Kent. She was sitting in an old-fashioned 
 arm-chair, the light falling softly on her 
 smooth pale hair. 
 
 "Living? Is that all?" asked Anne 
 with a laugh. " Life's just a chance to 
 watch other people's lives and put down 
 what you see. It is a stepping-stone to 
 art." 
 
 "Isn't life," said Mrs. Kent slowly, 
 "simply a chance to live?" 
 
 She said "live," but she meant "love." 
 
 Helen looked up from her seat on the 
 divan and flushed slightly. Mr. Stanton 
 was the only person who made her feel shy. 
 
 " I wonder," she said, " why one can't 
 do one's work, and help people, and live 
 besides ? "
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 43 
 
 " O child, the gifts of the gods are more 
 precious than that," cried Anne. "Wait 
 until you find yourself rendering thanks 
 for a fragment of any one of these things." 
 
 "Or a memory," said Mrs. Kent, so 
 softly that no one heard. 
 
 Here Miserere crawled to Mr. Stanton's 
 feet. 
 
 "Tell me your notions about life, 
 Tabby," said the young man, picking the 
 animal up. 
 
 "Tabby!" exclaimed Anne with indig- 
 nation. " His name is Miserere. He is 
 a fin-de-sihle cat, with a point of view. 
 Miserere is the only pessimist in Bohemia. 
 Life for him is a long pursuit of good 
 things to eat, and he's unhappy because 
 he can't have too many." 
 
 "Do you call this Bohemia?" asked 
 Howard. "Where's the 'old hat stop- 
 ping a chink in the roof ' ? The real 
 thing has none of this elegance." 
 
 " It is Bohemia. It all began, my share 
 of it at least, with that." Anne held up 
 her white and gold cup. " I went out to
 
 44 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Saint Cloud one day on one of the little 
 steamers, les hirondelles. I walked down 
 the Alice du Chateau to Sevres and 
 bought this cup. And then and there I 
 planned my domestic life. Oh don't speak 
 of Paris ! It makes me homesick. I can 
 see the leaf-shadows on those tree-trunks 
 now." 
 
 Sitting by the fire they discussed many 
 things, art, philanthropy, Paris, hopes, and 
 aims. They spoke with the tremendous 
 earnestness of those who consider their 
 abstract views of value ; they listened with 
 eager interest to one another's opinions. 
 They had talked themselves sleepy and 
 ambitious when Mrs. Kent begged to 
 know more of Mr. Stanton's theory. 
 
 "It is very simple," he replied, "only 
 this, that art must learn to reflect the 
 great teaching of the age, the reality of 
 human brotherhood. It can no longer 
 stand aloof, the plaything of a favoured 
 few. Its selfishness is self-destruction. 
 To my mind its only fortune lies in iden- 
 tifying itself with common life."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 45 
 
 He scrutinized the faces of the two girls. 
 It had never occurred to him before that 
 Miss Wistar was so beautiful. She was 
 thinking, as she had often thought, that 
 he looked like some old, fair-haired Saxon 
 hero. 
 
 He went on with growing vehemence, 
 vainly trying to kindle in Anne's eyes the 
 light that glowed in Helen's. His boyish 
 manner had disappeared. 
 
 " This must be his academic air," thought 
 Anne mournfully. " He is almost pom- 
 pous. Yet he is ridiculously like himself 
 at ten. That is partly because of the cleft 
 in his chin." 
 
 The art of to-day has a threefold mis- 
 sion, he was saying. Its products must 
 be shared with the people ; art schools 
 must be established to train the children 
 of the poor, and to discover latent talent 
 that now goes to waste ; and the lives of 
 the poor must be studied seriously. 
 
 " It is time for the Dresden china inter- 
 pretation of human life to disappear. Art 
 must enter the arena. It must partake of
 
 46 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 human struggle. It must show the beauty 
 and the sadness, the hardship and the 
 pathos, of common people's lives." 
 
 " Did you remark that you are going to 
 say all this in your pictures ? " asked Anne. 
 
 " I am going to try." 
 
 " People's lives are hard to understand," 
 said Mrs. Kent slowly. "How can you find 
 out really about the poor ? " 
 
 " By going to live with them, sharing 
 their conditions," he answered. "There 
 is no other way. It is a problem, but the 
 problem is all we have left." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Anne. 
 
 " I mean that the century has taken 
 away our old illusions. The only thing 
 we've got is a chance to make life more 
 comfortable for other people." 
 
 " The century hasn't taken away my 
 palette and brushes," murmured Anne. 
 " I don't feel quite lost while I have 
 them. This seems like old times. When 
 you were eight, you were going to be a 
 missionary. Then you were artist, states- 
 man, and great actor by turns."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 47 
 
 "Where is Annabel ? " asked Mrs. Kent. 
 "She ought to go home. It is growing 
 late." 
 
 Annabel, forgotten, had been amusing 
 herself behind the screen with a scrap of 
 drawing paper and a yellow crayon. Dis- 
 covered, she held up her sketch. 
 
 " Ain't that a nice picture ? " she de- 
 manded. 
 
 She had drawn, in wavering lines, a high 
 stone wall, where a cat was sitting, gazing 
 at the setting sun. The cat's whiskers and 
 the sun's fierce rays met. 
 
 " There's a great deal of literature in 
 that," commented Howard Stanton, "and 
 it's modern, quite in the poster style." 
 
 " It is very much in your line," sug- 
 gested Anne. " You ought to teach 
 Annabel. I think that she would be a 
 disciple." 
 
 " I should like to," replied the young 
 man. " Do you want to learn to draw, 
 Annabel ? " 
 
 " Yes, please," responded the child. 
 
 " Now we shall see," said Anne gayly,
 
 48 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " how Mr. Stanton carries out his theories 
 about the discovery of latent talent. Run 
 home, Annabel." 
 
 Here somebody put more pine cones 
 upon the fire, and the subject of conver- 
 sation shifted to pine cones.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HELEN WISTAR put away her pretty 
 gowns, and sent home for a hat that was 
 three years old. An inexperienced seam- 
 stress made her an unbecoming gray serge 
 dress. Helen looked down at her clumsily 
 fashioned skirt as a martyr might look at 
 his flames. It meant fulfilment of her 
 mission, but it hurt. 
 
 She practised the severest economy, 
 even refusing herself sufficient food, in 
 order to taste the sweets of poverty. The 
 money thus saved for Helen had money 
 in plenty, she confessed to herself with 
 reluctance was to be devoted to strug- 
 gling women. But the struggling women 
 were hard to find. They looked exasper- 
 atingly well cared for and even happy, the 
 teachers, artists, doctors, and musicians 
 who passed through the Square with their 
 little black bags. Helen was grieved by 
 their self-sufficiency. She was ready to 
 E 49
 
 50 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 carry the burden of the world, but she 
 could not find it. 
 
 Often the sight of black-clad matrons 
 on the street, a glimpse of lace curtains 
 in drawing-room windows, or the fragrance 
 of tea in her own studio, brought back a 
 sudden sense of. home. Remorse for her 
 desertion always mingled with thankfulness 
 for her escape. 
 
 " I can never go back," she said often 
 to herself, " to waste my days in planning 
 clothes and making formal calls." 
 
 Bravely persisting in her search for 
 service, she joined the Women's League. 
 She employed every pretext for making 
 the acquaintance of the artists in the 
 building, and, in a fit of renunciation, she 
 gave her sealskin cape to Annabel. 
 
 Annabel had become a familiar figure 
 in her world. One afternoon, when the 
 three friends were talking in Anne Brad- 
 ford's studio, the child entered and put 
 down her bundle with .an air of great im- 
 portance. 
 
 " I can't bring your laundry on Saturday
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 51 
 
 nights any longer, Miss Bradford. Will 
 you mind if I bring it on Friday ? " 
 
 " Not in the least." 
 
 Annabel seated herself in the largest 
 chair in the studio and folded her hands. 
 
 " I'm a-going to a art school. It's Mr. 
 Stanton. Ain't he lovely ? I'm going to 
 be a artist. I can make beautiful pictures 
 now, and I ain't been at all." 
 
 The child was excited. Three pairs of 
 eyes were looking at her, and her dramatic 
 instinct rose to the occasion. 
 
 She told them how Mr. Stanton had 
 appeared one morning at her mother's 
 door ; how he had said that she, Annabel, 
 had undoubted talent for art and ought 
 to be sent to school. Finally he had 
 offered to come to board with Mrs. Orr, 
 thus enabling her to pay for Annabel's 
 tuition. 
 
 " So he's coming next week Monday at 
 nine o'clock," said Annabel impressively. 
 " He's a-going to have the front room and 
 three chairs and a table." 
 
 "Annabel has a great deal of manner,
 
 52 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 hasn't she?" said Mrs. Kent with a smile, 
 when the child had gone. 
 
 " ' All the repose that stamps the caste 
 of Vere de Vere/ " Anne replied. " A 
 queen might envy Annabel's savoir faire ; 
 but a queen should not be blamed for 
 not having it. She could never have 
 Annabel's opportunity for knowing the 
 world." 
 
 " Isn't that rather fine in Mr. Stanton ? " 
 said Helen. 
 
 " Why, you didn't believe that, did you ? " 
 cried Anne. "That is one of Annabel's 
 yarns. Next time she will tell you what 
 Mr. Stanton says and what he eats. By 
 the next time she will have forgotten it 
 entirely." 
 
 "But the child spoke so earnestly," re- 
 monstrated Mrs. Kent. 
 
 "The earnestness is always in direct pro- 
 portion to the size of her fiction," said 
 Anne. "I could almost have believed 
 her if it had not been for the three chairs 
 and the table. Annabel is especially exact 
 when she lies."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 53 
 
 " Anyway, it would be like Mr. Stanton," 
 maintained Helen. 
 
 " It would be like him to plan to do it," 
 corrected Anne. " I used to call him 
 ' John-a-Dreams.' " 
 
 "That isn't fair!" cried Helen hotly. 
 " I don't see how any one could try harder 
 to carry out his ideas." 
 
 " He has changed a little," Anne ad- 
 mitted. " Something has given focus to 
 his energy." 
 
 "Why is he interested in the poor?" 
 asked Mrs. Kent. 
 
 " He said one day last winter," answered 
 Helen, growing rather red, "that some 
 rather bitter experience had shown him 
 the selfishness of trying to get the things 
 you want, and had made him think about 
 the things that other people want." 
 
 "Did he say that?" asked Anne. It 
 was her turn to flush. " Oh, Mr. Stanton 
 is very modern," she said carelessly. " He 
 is blase about some things, thoroughly dis- 
 illusioned, but busy making new illusions 
 as fast as possible."
 
 54 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Helen slipped away. The conversation 
 was not to her mind. 
 
 Mrs. Kent looked troubled. " There is 
 something morbid in that girl's intensity," 
 she said. " She is under strong emotional 
 tension all the time." 
 
 " Isn't there a little dash of longing for 
 excitement in Helen's yearning to do 
 good ? " asked Anne. " The Lord made 
 her for great crises, but unkindly forgot 
 to make any crises for her." 
 
 " You are all like that," answered Mrs. 
 Kent demurely. " I don't understand the 
 mental and moral and spiritual restlessness 
 of the young of to-day. Perhaps it is only 
 the uneasiness of those who have not yet 
 found their places in the ranks. You go 
 about with an expectant air, as if imagin- 
 ing that some ineffable thought or experi- 
 ence will tell you the next minute all there 
 is to know." 
 
 Anne laughed. 
 
 " We aren't all quite so much at sea as 
 Helen is. She has been developed a little 
 on too many sides. Did the woman's col-
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 55 
 
 lege do that ? She is impotent because of 
 too many good but contradictory ideas. 
 She wishes to ' amount to something,' but 
 finds it hard to decide what to do. Just 
 think," Anne's gray eyes twinkled, "of 
 wanting to amount to something without 
 knowing what you want to amount to ! " 
 
 Outside, in the Square, Helen was cool- 
 ing her cheeks in a dense fog. It was all 
 so baffling ! If she could only tell what 
 to do ! Here, as if in answer to her ques- 
 tion, Mr. Stanton appeared. 
 
 " I was trying to find you," he said, 
 turning to walk with her. " I have a great 
 favour to ask." 
 
 The girl's eyes shone. 
 
 " I am planning a picture. It is my first 
 serious attempt to give my message to the 
 world. I want to ask you, if I dare, to 
 pose as the chief figure in it. Miss Brad- 
 ford has kindly consented to let me do the 
 work in her studio." 
 
 " It will be a very great pleasure," said 
 Helen. " I shall feel that I am helping." 
 
 Howard looked down at the girl. An
 
 56 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 indefinable change had come over her with 
 the putting on of her altruistic clothes. 
 
 " Aren't you well ? " he asked anxiously. 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 They walked round and round the 
 Square. Moisture clung in little beads to 
 their hair and their clothing, but they did 
 not notice. Mr. Stanton outlined his plans 
 for the future. It was sweet to have his 
 ardent belief in his theories confirmed by 
 Helen's ardent belief in him. He was go- 
 ing to start a course of lectures on art for 
 workingmen, and a night school for factory 
 girls. 
 
 As he talked, the sound of bells floated 
 up to them from the city buried in mist. 
 Helen's courage came back to her in great 
 throbs.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MR. STANTON'S great picture was begun. 
 In one corner of Anne Bradford's studio 
 Helen posed for Art, asleep. The picture 
 was to be symbolic. It was the old myth 
 of the Sleeping Beauty worked over with 
 a modern interpretation. A lovely woman, 
 dreaming, with half-shut eyes : that was 
 Art. A ragged figure creeping up and 
 putting a wasted hand through the hedge 
 of thorn : that was Need. The sleeper 
 was to be awakened, not by the old-fash- 
 ioned lover's kiss, but by a cry for the 
 new, better, all-embracing love, the love of 
 human kind. 
 
 " I simply can't do my work for watch- 
 ing you," said Anne at the first sitting. 
 " I am eager to see how you are going to 
 paint all those ideas about art and the 
 people." 
 
 " I am not going to paint. I am going 
 to suggest," answered Howard. 
 .57
 
 58 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "But you are working with paint," 
 remonstrated Anne. " Whatever you do 
 must be done with that. How can you 
 paint philosophy ? " 
 
 The work went on while autumn drifted 
 into late November. Now and then dead 
 leaves were blown into the studio through 
 the open skylight. Sometimes rain fell on 
 the roof. Mrs. Kent, embroidering by the 
 fire, listened, in awe tempered with amuse- 
 ment, to fierce debates concerning art and 
 life. Her three young friends played too 
 deftly with notions concerning human ex- 
 istence, she sometimes thought. They 
 were "wise because until now nothing had 
 happened to them." 
 
 Helen Wistar drank in eagerly all her 
 master's teaching. As he worked he talked 
 much about merging one's life in the life 
 of the whole. It was well for the girl that 
 her eyes were closed, otherwise Howard 
 might have grown to understand the look 
 in them. Only Anne understood that look. 
 To these remarks Anne listened with 
 an angry sense of her own limitations.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 59 
 
 "I never heard so many sublime ideas 
 in my life," she said mournfully to herself 
 one day. " People as good as that are no 
 company for me." 
 
 " Speaking of sharing the hardships of 
 the poor," she asked suddenly, "did you 
 go to live with Mrs. Orr, or did Annabel 
 make that story up ? " 
 
 "No. It is true," answered the young 
 man, reddening a little. 
 
 "I knew it ! " cried Helen triumphantly. 
 Howard failed to see the sudden beauty 
 of her wide-opened eyes. 
 
 "Are you comfortable?" asked Mrs. 
 Kent anxiously. 
 
 " Not luxuriously comfortable," answered 
 Howard with a laugh. " I rather think 
 that my pillows are filled with green apples. 
 And the table well, unlike Dives, we do 
 not fare sumptuously every day. The 
 toast is always cold, for instance." 
 
 "You are a new kind of hero, aren't 
 you," murmured Anne, "ready to eat cold 
 toast for the good of the masses." 
 
 "The children are very satisfactory,
 
 60 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 however. You are going to see Anna- 
 bel immortalized in allegory on the walls 
 of the City Hall. They delight in pos- 
 ing. The little brother makes a famous 
 cherub." 
 
 The young impressionist worked rapidly. 
 Anne almost held her breath as she watched 
 his sweeping strokes. His touch was firm, 
 despite his eagerness. The drawing had 
 been finished ; the colour was being sketched 
 in. Grass and trees were violet. That 
 was necessary to give the true values. 
 The sky was pale green. Art's lovely 
 hair, its auburn shades brightened to red, 
 for that was what it meant to him, the 
 artist said, fell over the side of the couch 
 and curled round one of the branches of 
 the hedge of thorn. The light effects were 
 mystic, wonderful. 
 
 The two artists ceased to quarrel over 
 beauty, line, and colour. They were ab- 
 sorbed in considering the intellectual val- 
 ues of their work. 
 
 "So this is the way," said Anne one 
 afternoon, deserting her own easel, "in
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 61 
 
 which you paint the hardship and the sad- 
 ness and the pathos of common people's 
 lives." 
 
 "This is the way in which I make a 
 symbol of it. I am not painting a single 
 object. My aim is broader than that. 
 The merely individual is eliminated for the 
 sake of the typical. That figure embodies 
 a truth " 
 
 ''Not anatomical truth," said Anne 
 dryly. 
 
 "Frankly, not anatomical truth." 
 
 "Wouldn't it be just as symbolic if Art 
 looked able to stand up, if she chose ? " 
 
 "That isn't the point," answered How- 
 ard. " She has something else to do. 
 She clothes as with a garment a spiritual 
 verity." 
 
 " I'd rather paint the things I see than 
 the things I dream," said Anne sturdily. 
 
 "I prefer to paint the things I both see 
 and dream," retorted Howard. "The art- 
 ist cannot afford to let brute fact master 
 him. Art is no servile copyist. Her own 
 divine idea must shape her work."
 
 62 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " Of course ! That is one of the com- 
 monplaces of the studio. But there ought 
 to be some correspondence between out- 
 ward fact and one's inner sense of things. 
 You can't spin truth wholly out of your 
 own brain. I am sure that this attempt to 
 paint abstractions is only a fad. You will 
 outgrow it." 
 
 Mrs. Kent smiled. She liked the way 
 in which the two friends patronized each 
 other. Helen started in dismay. 
 
 An hour passed. Again Anne's voice 
 broke the silence. 
 
 " Isn't that colouring an impertinence 
 to nature ? Do I bother you ? Am I a 
 nuisance ? " 
 
 "Rather." 
 
 " I wish to learn," she remarked meekly. 
 
 "You are an exceedingly belligerent 
 pupil." 
 
 "I'll go away in a minute. I just want 
 to ask why you degrade part of nature as 
 unworthy of your work. It all seems to 
 me worth reproducing as perfectly as pos- 
 sible the little common things that the
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 63 
 
 unenlightened do not see. Every trace of 
 human expression is sacred to me." 
 
 " I simply go one step further. You 
 copy facts, you say. I try to distill from 
 facts an inner meaning. I try to express 
 my sense of things. It is my reaching out 
 after the unattainable, la verite vmie." 
 
 "Nobody," said Anne solemnly, "has 
 any right to know the abstract meanings 
 of things until he has grasped the signifi- 
 cance of the concrete." 
 
 " But your realist, in copying the con- 
 crete, fails to represent any thought of his 
 own." 
 
 "Perhaps," suggested Anne, "he thinks 
 that he is putting down fragments of a 
 larger thought than his own. He may be 
 humble enough to realize that he hasn't 
 grasped all truth. In doing that unpre- 
 tentious work doesn't he try to suggest 
 the worth and the mystery of every mean- 
 est fact of life?" 
 
 " That work lacks significance. It gives 
 you no chance to express your idea of the 
 meaning of things."
 
 64 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "And yours lacks reverence," retorted 
 Anne. " It gives you no opportunity to 
 express a belief in the Creator's meaning 
 in things." 
 
 Howard sighed in mock despair. 
 
 " Miss Wistar is the only person who 
 understands me," he said, with a look that 
 brought hot blood to the girl's cheeks. 
 " If my work amounts to anything it will 
 all be due to her."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 " DON'T, please," begged Anne Bradford. 
 
 Her companion was silent. A moment 
 before he had been eloquent. 
 
 "You are going to say, as you did four 
 years ago, that you need me, that your 
 art would be better for my companionship, 
 and that I ought to sacrifice my work to 
 yours." 
 
 Her voice, which she so wanted to be 
 firm, choked a little. There was a pause, 
 and still Howard Stanton said nothing. 
 
 " Your art doesn't need me so much as 
 my own art needs me ! " she cried pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 "Nannie," said the young man, "haven't 
 you found out yet that your art needs me ? " 
 
 " No indeed. You would ruin it. You 
 would make me think about other people, 
 and selfishness is the soul of my art. A 
 very little of the brotherhood of man would 
 spoil my pictures entirely." 
 F 65
 
 66 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 It was a great relief to be able to 
 laugh. 
 
 They were standing in the reception- 
 room of the studio building, close by the 
 Van Dyck portrait. 
 
 " Won't you sit down ? " asked the guest 
 politely. 
 
 " I am very busy this afternoon," sug- 
 gested the hostess. 
 
 "That's too bad," said Howard, drawing 
 a chair out for her. " I really must see 
 you. You haven't given me a chance to 
 talk with you alone since I came." 
 
 Anne looked industriously out of the 
 window. There was a red Indian-summer 
 haze in the air. Down High Street the 
 last rays of the sun shone on the long 
 rows of windows and on the scarlet vines 
 that covered the houses. Branches of 
 naked elm trees stood out gray against the 
 glow in the west. 
 
 " I thought you had changed your 
 mind," said Anne. 
 
 " Did you indeed ? Then why have you 
 taken such pains to avoid me ? " he an-
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 67 
 
 swered. " It unfortunately isn't a ques- 
 tion of changing my mind." 
 
 "You promised four years ago not to 
 follow me." 
 
 " I didn't follow. I came here to design 
 frescoes. Fate, not I, broke that promise." 
 
 The little artist leaned .back in the great 
 leather-cushioned chair. Her hands were 
 clasped nervously in her lap. Her face 
 was puzzled. 
 
 " I don't see why you care for me in 
 that way," she said mournfully. "I'm an 
 ugly, strong-minded old maid of thirty. 
 I'm not the kind of person to fall in love 
 with. I'm the kind of person who works." 
 
 "You aren't thirty. You were twenty- 
 seven on the second day of April. And 
 I didn't fall in love with you. I have 
 loved you ever since I can remember, 
 at five, ten, sixteen, and ever since. My 
 love for you is one of the constants in my 
 character." 
 
 He drew from his pocket a tiny photo- 
 graph. It was the thin, eager face of a 
 little girl of thirteen.
 
 68 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "Let me see it!" cried Anne. "It 
 looks hungry and fierce. What big eyes 
 it has ! It is a kind of composite of Little 
 Red Riding Hood and the wolf." 
 
 She gave it back. 
 
 " I ought to have taken that away from 
 you," she said lightly. "The young 
 woman in fiction always gets her picture 
 back and burns it." 
 
 "We're not in fiction," sighed the young 
 man. " I sometimes wish we were. No, 
 you can't have it, Nannie. Tell me : is 
 there anything except your theory about 
 work that stands between us ? " 
 
 " Isn't that enough ? " 
 
 " Why you think you can work better 
 for a maimed and incomplete life I don't 
 see ! " he exclaimed. " A man doesn't 
 make up his mind that he can't live his 
 life and do his work too. He knows that 
 his life will be better for the work, and 
 his work for the living." 
 
 He saw his advantage and pursued it. 
 
 " I never asked you to give up your art. 
 I care too much about you to want you to
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 69 
 
 be my wife if I did not think that your 
 work would be all the better for your com- 
 ing to me. Looking at it impersonally it 
 seems to me that you are making a great 
 mistake." 
 
 " It isn't very modest in you to say so," 
 murmured Anne, turning away from the 
 steady gaze of his blue eyes. " No, I can- 
 not do it. I haven't any feelings. I have 
 only a Puritan conscience that has turned 
 its attention to art." 
 
 "You are attempting," he continued, 
 "to interpret human life by painting pict- 
 ures of faces. How can you understand 
 when you know so little about life ? You 
 have plenty of theory. You know how 
 they paint portraits in Paris, and how they 
 paint them in New York. But you know 
 little of the experience that makes faces 
 worth painting. A human face is a record 
 of a whole life. How can you read there 
 the traces of love and joy and sorrow until 
 you know what love and joy and sorrow 
 are ? " 
 
 " I'll be a symbolist," said Anne mis-
 
 70 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 chievously. " Then the less I know about 
 human expression the better." 
 
 He did not listen. 
 
 " You know that this is true. If you 
 don't you will find it out as you grow 
 older. Then why won't you come and 
 learn your art by living ? " 
 
 The tone angered her. 
 
 " The general and the particular aren't 
 quite the same. Saying that I ought to 
 know love isn't quite the same as saying 
 that I ought to be your wife. 
 
 "Don't look like that, Howard," she 
 begged, a minute after. " I did not mean 
 to be unkind. Tell me : do you mean on 
 general principles that my pictures ought 
 to look as if I did not understand things, 
 or do they look so ? " 
 
 " They do look so, I think," he answered 
 slowly. " It isn't honest human feeling, 
 but a woman's notion of things she hasn't 
 known." 
 
 A startled look came into Anne's eyes. 
 
 " At least," she said coldly, " I am not 
 a monster. I shall not sacrifice you to my
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 71 
 
 need of experience. You have used the 
 wrong argument." 
 
 " The trouble with you, Nannie, is that 
 you think too hard. Your conscience has 
 got into your feelings." 
 
 " The trouble with you is," said Anne 
 with a laugh, " that you show the mascu- 
 line tendency to follow blind impulse. 
 You won't listen to reason." 
 
 " I haven't had a chance," said Howard. 
 
 " I am going to make a confession," 
 said Anne. " I simply am not fit for any 
 human experience, because I am cursed 
 with an artistic temperament. No matter 
 what I am doing, a second consciousness 
 is always there, playing spectator. It is 
 impossible for anything that I feel to be 
 other than material for my art." 
 
 " This only proves my point ! " he cried. 
 
 " It means that you have never cared 
 
 enough for anything to get beyond the 
 
 point of dramatic insight. I think I could 
 
 make you care." 
 
 " I think you couldn't." 
 
 " Is it quite true, however ? As I stand
 
 72 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 here, begging for your love, am I nothing 
 but material for you ? " 
 
 "Nothing," she answered resolutely. 
 " I think only how you look while you are 
 doing it, then how I look while you are 
 doing it. It is simply a picture for me." 
 
 After Howard had gone Anne sat for a 
 long time in the big chair. 
 
 " That was brutal," she said to herself, 
 "but it was true. At least, there was a 
 little truth in it."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HOWARD STANTON stood by his window 
 in the early morning, looking for the first 
 flakes of the first snow-storm. Outside 
 the dull air waited and listened. A post- 
 man passed down the street, the blue of 
 his uniform breaking the dingy red of the 
 houses opposite. He walked swiftly. 
 Few letters came to Wiggin Avenue. 
 
 As Howard gazed he was conscious for 
 the first time of how many mornings he 
 had stood there, waiting, like a girl, for a 
 letter. This quickening of the pulses at 
 the sight of the postman was not new. 
 It was as old as that familiar, vague ex- 
 pectation of help somewhere from out- 
 side. There was nothing in the world 
 that he wanted except that impossible 
 letter from Anne, telling him that she 
 had relented. 
 
 " I must be a hopeless idiot," he said, 
 thrusting his hands into his pockets. He 
 73
 
 74 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 walked up and down the room, whistling 
 dismally. 
 
 Two months in this little den, with its 
 dirty walls, its rough, splintering wood- 
 work, and the abominable folding-bed with 
 its green canton-flannel curtain ; a lecture 
 a week to workingmen ; long hours of toil 
 over his frescoes ; and those indescrib- 
 able dinners that drove him night after 
 night to dine at a down-town hotel in order 
 not to lose his identity, 
 
 " And what in the mischief does it all 
 amount to," demanded the young giant of 
 himself fiercely. Then he ran into the 
 corner of the great red plush chair that 
 faced the great purple plush chair. It was 
 the corner that he usually ran into. 
 
 " The way of reformers is hard," he 
 said, sitting down in the purple chair with 
 a groan. 
 
 Mrs. Orr came in to make up the folding- 
 bed. She was a dishevelled little woman 
 in a limp, ash-coloured wrapper. As she 
 worked, she talked rapidly of the wrongs 
 she suffered at the hands of her customers.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 75 
 
 "I suppose," thought Howard, watching 
 her as she folded up the coverlet, " that in 
 order to be consistent I ought to do that. 
 What right have I to ask people to do 
 things for me that I wouldn't do myself ? " 
 
 But he conversed cheerfully, even while 
 Mrs. Orr rearranged his canvases, placing 
 one picture where its corner poked into 
 another. Presently she went away, send- 
 ing Annabel in to dust. 
 
 Annabel paused by the cheap little book- 
 case. 
 
 " I like to read," she said suggestively, 
 trailing her dust-cloth into some water that 
 had overflowed from a vase, and dragging 
 it over a new copy of La Farge's lectures 
 on art. " I'm awful fond of books." 
 
 "Are you ? " said the young man, coming 
 out of a fit of abstraction. " Oh see here, 
 Annabel, don't do that. Books oughtn't 
 to be mopped, you know. What do you 
 like to read ? " 
 
 "Everything." Annabel's eyes began 
 to shine, and she seated herself for a con- 
 versation.
 
 76 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " I like Shakespere best," she said. 
 
 "What do you like best in Shakespere?" 
 
 The child wriggled in her seat, looking 
 slightly nonplussed. 
 
 " I've been in Shakespere's house," she 
 said evasively. 
 
 " Where is it ? " demanded the inquisi- 
 tor. 
 
 " I've forgotten the name," said Annabel, 
 yawning. 
 
 "Tell me what parts of Shakespere you 
 like best." 
 
 "The poems, all of 'em," said Annabel 
 boldly. 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Mr. Stanton. 
 
 "And," continued Annabel after a mo- 
 ment's consideration, " I like Lady Clara 
 Vere de Vere best of all." 
 
 The child was hurt by the laugh that 
 followed. 
 
 " Did you ever read ' The Children of 
 the Abbey ' ? " she asked reprovingly. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "That's lovely," said Annabel with the 
 air of a hardened litterateur. "Wouldn't
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 77 
 
 you like to have me read you some after 
 I've washed my dishes ? " 
 
 "Certainly," said the artist. 
 
 Annabel went away. Mr. Stanton took 
 out his notebook to examine his last 
 sketches. There was something the mat- 
 ter with Wisdom, the figure for which 
 Annabel had posed in a long red table- 
 cloth. She had stood upon the kitchen 
 table for it, and had tumbled, hurting her 
 arm. He touched the drawing with a pen- 
 cil, then threw the notebook away. He 
 could not work this morning. 
 
 Standing again at the window he looked 
 out at the fast-falling flakes of snow. The 
 old restlessness was strong upon him. 
 Something denied had kept him from ever 
 feeling at home in the world. 
 
 Just now he did not care whether the 
 poor were helped or not. He did not care 
 about his work. One thing he wanted, 
 and one only. That was to touch the soft, 
 brown hair parted over Anne's forehead. 
 
 How many times, in how many places, 
 he had lived this mood over ! In the old
 
 78 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Paris days he had sought relief in walking, 
 through the Bois de Boulogne, in the 
 Versailles Gardens, down the Avenues des 
 Champs Elysees toward the setting sun, 
 anywhere, everywhere. He had walked 
 by river and wood, but Anne had not been 
 there. 
 
 Then the passion had relented. New in- 
 terests softened the old grievance. Would 
 this be true again ? 
 
 Annabel came back with her book. It 
 was a tattered copy of the old novel. She 
 proudly accepted Mr. Stanton's invitation 
 to sit down in the red chair. Her apron 
 was very clean ; her face bore traces of 
 recent scrubbing. 
 
 "Did you ever see a Unitarian, Mr. 
 Stanton ? " she asked, thinking that some 
 general remarks would be appropriate. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I never did," said Annabel in a low- 
 ered voice. " They're awful, ain't they ? 
 They don't believe into a God, or a heaven, 
 or a hell, or angels, or devils, or nothin'. 
 But they worship idols, they do ! "
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 79 
 
 Then she opened her book. Carefully 
 picking her way among the big words, she 
 read bits of her favourite scenes : 
 
 " ' The pale and varied blush which 
 mantled the cheek of Amanda at once 
 announced itself to be an involuntary suf- 
 fusion, and her dress was only remarkable 
 for its simplicity ; she wore a plain robe 
 of dimity, and an abbey cap of thin muslin 
 that shaded, without concealing, her face, 
 and gave to it the soft expression of a 
 Madonna ; her beautiful hair fell in long 
 ringlets down her back, and curled upon 
 her forehead. 
 
 "'"Good heaven!" cried Mortimer, 
 "how has your idea dwelt upon my mind 
 since last night : if in the morning I 
 was charmed, in the evening I was en- 
 raptured." 
 
 Annabel paused. An idea had struck 
 her. 
 
 " I think Amanda looked like Miss 
 Wistar, don't you?" 
 
 " I guess so," said the artist moodily. 
 
 " I like Miss Wistar best, don't you ?
 
 8o A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 I mean, except you. I like you best of 
 all." 
 
 The child fingered over the leaves, and 
 began again : 
 
 " ' Lord Mortimer received the lovely 
 trembler in his arms. He softly called 
 her his Amanda, the beloved of his soul, 
 and she began to revive.' " 
 
 " Isn't that a queer book for a little 
 girl ?" asked the listener. 
 
 " My mamma said it was a little girls' 
 book. It's 'The Children,' you know, 'of 
 the Abbey.' 
 
 " ' Lord Mortimer trembled universally, 
 and was obliged to have recourse to his 
 handkerchief.' ' 
 
 A sleepy laugh came from Mr. Stanton's 
 chair. Sad thoughts and the falling snow 
 and Annabel's droning voice were sooth- 
 ing him to rest. Annabel turned back to 
 the first part of the book : 
 
 " ' Lord Mortimer was now in the glow- 
 ing prime of life: his person was strikingly 
 elegant, and his manners insinuatingly 
 pleasing ; seducing sweetness dwelt in
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 81 
 
 his smile, and, as he pleased, his expres- 
 sive eyes could sparkle with intelligence, 
 or beam with sensibility ; and to the elo- 
 quence of his language the harmony of 
 his voice imparted a charm that seldom 
 failed of being irresistible.' " 
 
 Annabel looked over at the crumpled 
 hair, flushed cheeks, and slightly opened 
 mouth of the artist. 
 
 "That's like him!" said Annabel. 
 "Ain't it nice?" 
 
 For to Annabel had come that joy of 
 the born artist when life plays for him the 
 first time the drama he has cared most for 
 in books.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 "The river went weeping, weeping! 
 Ah me, how it did weep ! 
 But I would never heed it, 
 The weeping of the river . . . 
 The stars poor stars were weeping 
 But I would not hear their weeping 
 Whilst yet I heard thy voice. 
 Then these, the river with its weeping, 
 The piteous stars, the miserable men, 
 All prayed the earth's dark depths to take thee from me, 
 That so my woe might understand their woe. 
 And now I weep." 
 
 The Bard of the Dimbovitza. 
 
 MRS. KENT had taken many steps in 
 her quest : down crowded shopping streets, 
 past dime museums and cheap theatres, 
 through the Italian square where intoler- 
 able hand-organs played forever " Home, 
 Sweet Home." The cries, the jolting of 
 the wagons, the heavy beat of horses' hoofs, 
 and the sight of great loads of leather, 
 granite, lumber, along the shipping streets, 
 brought her a certain relief. In merely 
 82
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 83 
 
 watching the hard play of life there was 
 a sense of escape. 
 
 Very often Anne went with her. Mrs. 
 Kent marvelled at the artist's insight into 
 the expression of inanimate things, her 
 swift recognition of human feeling. It 
 was Anne who pointed out a door-step, 
 worn by many feet ; a bit of New England 
 garden, sunflower or hollyhock, among 
 the swarming tenements ; the curve of a 
 woman's arm as she held her child. 
 
 They enjoyed the pleasure of confiden- 
 tial intercourse in a crowd. They talked 
 of themselves, of their friends, in half- 
 whispers, the sentences interrupted often 
 by a long line of passers-by. 
 
 One day, threading their way among the 
 old-clothes shops of Salutation Street, they 
 spoke of Howard. 
 
 "I like him," said Mrs. Kent. "He 
 has preserved such a freshness and sweet- 
 ness through all the experiences of his 
 student life." 
 
 " He is a nice boy," Anne responded 
 cordially. " Only he's spoiled. You see,
 
 84 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 he is the only son of a wealthy father. 
 He always wanted too many things and 
 he always got them. He lives in spasms. 
 An idea possesses him and he thinks it 
 is the only idea in the world, until a new 
 one comes. And he insists on immediate 
 responses to all his demands. What he 
 needs is discipline." 
 
 Mrs. Kent looked down and smiled. 
 
 "You seem to have studied him very 
 thoroughly. That temperament is usually 
 sufficient punishment for itself, isn't it ? " 
 
 "Then," Anne continued, "he's too ego- 
 istic. He says 'I ' too often." 
 
 " That very egoism shows lack of self-con- 
 sciousness. It is the egoism of a child." 
 
 "The fact is," said Anne with a laugh, 
 "there are two of him, boy and fanatic. 
 He's a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 
 I like the boy very well. Look ! " she 
 cried, touching Mrs. Kent's arm. " See 
 how that composes ! " 
 
 It was a group of chattering Italian 
 women on a dark side street. Children 
 were playing about them.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 85 
 
 " Those children all look ill," remarked 
 Mrs. Kent sadly, as she guided Anne down 
 the narrow alley way. " Most of them 
 are bow-legged." 
 
 " Oh dear ! " groaned Anne, " I never 
 thought of that ! I just saw how pictur- 
 esque it all was, the bright kerchiefs and 
 the wrinkled faces and the brown curls of 
 the children. I don't believe I've got any 
 human instincts. Why are people made 
 with eyes that see only one thing and 
 hearts that wish only one thing, unless 
 they are meant to have it ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Only that I can't imagine how one 
 can look upon the world as anything ex- 
 cept material for pictures. It is madden- 
 ingly full of things to paint. There is no 
 time to lose." 
 
 "You don't lose much." 
 
 " I know. But it all seems so selfish. 
 An idea gets hold of me and then the 
 heavens and earth seem made to help me 
 express it. Patches of colour on garden 
 walls, and the sunlight on far-off things,
 
 86 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 and the look on faces in the streets show 
 me how to do it. I can't see anything 
 else, or think of anything else." 
 
 They passed one of the city's old bury- 
 ing-grounds, which make sudden silences 
 along the busy streets. The clear sunlight 
 on the leaves shading those forgotten 
 graves brought tears to the artist's eyes. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, "the pain of life 
 presses down so heavily that I cannot bear 
 it. I sometimes wonder if the reason why 
 I am hard-hearted is because things hurt 
 me so that I cannot feel." 
 
 On Sunday afternoons Howard usually 
 accompanied Mrs. Kent. He was a wel- 
 come guest. The wicked old woman called 
 him a beautiful young man. The girls in 
 the Italian families flushed with pride at 
 the honour of his calls. Children swarmed 
 upon his knees. Babies rode upon his 
 shoulder. He had a chivalrous way of 
 protecting the 'helpless. He stopped one 
 day abruptly in an exposition of his views, 
 to guide an aged rag-picker across the 
 street. Returning, he finished his disser-
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 87 
 
 tation. It was a mistake, he said, to care 
 for the sick and the afflicted, the relics 
 of the past. One should face toward the 
 future, spending all one's effort on those 
 for whom there is still hope. 
 
 It was midwinter. Morning after morn- 
 ing Mrs. Kent was wakened by the sound 
 of the shovelling of snow. It fell with a 
 thud, like the dropping of sod upon cof- 
 fin-lids. To her bitter questioning as to 
 why so great a love had been given her 
 only to be taken away, no answer came, 
 until, in a brief moment of experience on 
 a cloudy winter day, she caught a sudden 
 flash of the hidden meanings of things. 
 
 Her old feeling of the senselessness of 
 all she did had followed her that afternoon. 
 Only the mechanical acts of existence were 
 left her, for the past was slipping, and she 
 could not hold it back. She saw herself 
 passing into a gray indifference. 
 
 As she climbed the tenement-house 
 stairs she clung to the railing. She was 
 dazed. Everything seemed crumbling away 
 like ropes of sand. Then she summoned
 
 88 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 her courage and knocked at a grimy 
 door. 
 
 Half an hour later she came downstairs 
 with the light of a new knowledge in her 
 eyes. She could never define for her- 
 self the precise nature of the experience 
 through which she had passed. In the 
 room she had entered was a woman sob- 
 bing at the side of her little child, who 
 lay dead with the print of his tiny fingers 
 still visible in the dirt on his cheek. 
 
 As she went away Mrs. Kent paused 
 for a minute in the hall. Then she leaned 
 her forehead against the rough plaster with 
 a little sob of sheer joy. It was good to 
 be hurt like that by another's pain. She 
 bowed her head in thankfulness for a sor- 
 row that had become ^to her a key to the 
 grief of all the world.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 " Ye pilgrim folk, advancing pensively 
 As if in thought of distant things, I pray 
 Is your own land indeed so far away 
 As by your aspect it would seem to be? " 
 
 ROSSETTI'S Translation of Dante's 
 Vita Nuova, 
 
 BOHEMIA had cast its spell upon Miss 
 Wistar. She revelled in the waywardness 
 of her new life. Lunching every day at a 
 restaurant ; breakfasting when she chose 
 in her studio ; exploring at her own will 
 the irregular streets of the old city, this 
 was freedom, this was reality. 
 
 " How can people go on living in stiff 
 houses and doing the same things over 
 every day ? " she asked Anne Bradford one 
 rainy noon, over an improvised luncheon 
 of caraway cakes and tea. 
 
 " Giving stupid dinners and luncheons 
 and receptions," Anne rejoined. 
 
 "And making senseless calls. Oh, this 
 is the only life to live ! " 
 
 The severity of Helen's mood abated. 
 89
 
 9O A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 She was almost gay. There was an intoxi- 
 cating interest in the life in this new coun- 
 try. Queer things happened in this queer 
 building : theatricals, concerts, art exhibi- 
 tions. Monks and satyrs and long-trained 
 queens wandered through the corridors on 
 the evenings of masquerade balls. Col- 
 lege boys in feminine costumes laughed in 
 corners between the acts of the plays they 
 gave. 
 
 Greater than the charm of the social life 
 that Helen watched was the social life she 
 shared. A pleasant feeling of comradeship 
 had grown up between the four people 
 whose paths had crossed in Bohemia. The 
 evenings in the studio when they sat to- 
 gether, discussing life and literature and 
 art gave Helen a cheerful feeling of dis- 
 sipation. Here Anne Bradford said wise 
 things that Helen did not believe ; Mrs. 
 Kent said wise things that Helen did not 
 understand ; and Howard Stanton said wise 
 things that 
 
 " Marked the boundary 
 Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 91 
 
 The excitement of all this made Helen 
 feel that she was at last in the great cur- 
 rent of life. The sternness of its struggle 
 was hers. 
 
 " Suppose we form a Round Table fel- 
 lowship," said Anne Bradford one even- 
 ing. " My tea-table shall be the social 
 centre." 
 
 " I consent, with rapture," responded 
 Howard. 
 
 "It is queer," Anne continued, "but, 
 do you know, I cannot find any interesting 
 people outside of Bohemia." 
 
 " Or any interesting ideas," said Helen ; 
 "but that's the same thing." 
 
 "Or any good coffee," added Howard, 
 lifting his cup. 
 
 Snow lay on roof and on garden wall, 
 and east winds wailed in the streets. In 
 the Square the long willow branches waved 
 in falling snow and fitful sunshine. But 
 the wind in their faces, and the mud and 
 snow of the ways they walked, were as 
 nothing to the seekers for the ideal. 
 Howard Stanton went on making great
 
 92 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 washes on his canvas. Anne worked with 
 imperceptible strokes, humming sometimes, 
 
 " Point d'hiver pour les cceurs fiddles. 
 Us sont toujours dans le printemps." 
 
 Under the stimulus of this new life, 
 where hope and fear and desire chased 
 one another in quickly shifting moods, 
 Helen Wistar woke to a consciousness of 
 the time already lost at twenty. Her 
 masters were teaching her mere technique. 
 In that which was to her the very soul of 
 art she was making no progress. She was 
 tired of plaster heads and of ragged models. 
 What good could ever come of painting 
 just what one saw ? One's thought of 
 what the world should be ought to be ex- 
 pressed in one's work. 
 
 She too would paint a picture, embody- 
 ing her new belief. In a misguided 
 moment she confided her idea to Anne. 
 A belligerent intimacy had sprung up 
 between the two girls. 
 
 Anne, after a losing struggle with her con- 
 science, betrayed the same to Mrs. Kent.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 93 
 
 " Helen is painting a picture," said the 
 artist, the corners of her mouth twitching. 
 " She calls it symbolic. It is the rich 
 young man of the Gospels going back to 
 his own selfish life. There's a group of 
 ragged people in the foreground. One 
 model posed for them all. The young man 
 is turning away. Only, the perspective is 
 queer, and the canvas is so crowded with 
 the poor that there isn't going to be much 
 room for the rich young man." 
 
 " Can the child draw ? " 
 
 " No, but she can feel," said Anne 
 slowly. " She has too much ambition in 
 her heart, and not enough in her fingers. 
 We women are all like that. We'd rather 
 think how glorious our work is than do it." 
 
 " Helen is one of those whom the gods 
 send far off to find that which lies nearest 
 at hand," responded Mrs. Kent. 
 
 From the interesting people who had 
 become her friends, Helen turned wistfully 
 to those whom she wished to help. Her 
 serious purpose had not been forgotten. 
 She watched her fellow-Bohemians with
 
 94 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 interest as they went their way, in the 
 city, yet not of it. Through its streets 
 and its shops they walked with an air of 
 seeing something a long way off. They 
 mingled with young ladies and matrons at 
 crowded shopping-places. But, standing 
 by the pin, tape, and braid counter, they 
 discussed in one breath the world-will of 
 Schopenhauer, the spirituality of Pre- 
 Raphaelitism, and the kind of velveteen to 
 be used for facings. They stopped be- 
 tween courses in their luncheons to put 
 down points in their notebooks. They 
 talked Theosophy in the street cars. 
 They argued of the ideal on muddy 
 corners. 
 
 Reverence mingled with Helen's pity 
 for them. Their ignoring of material com- 
 forts condemned her traditions. Their 
 longing for the intangible roused her 
 aspiration. But she could not reach 
 them. All around her, they were yet 
 remote. 
 
 Certain words of Anne Bradford filled 
 her with vague misgiving.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 95 
 
 "You cannot do it, my dear. Your 
 little economies are only affectation. The 
 real struggle you cannot possibly under- 
 stand." 
 
 "But," pleaded Helen, "I am so sorry 
 for these women." 
 
 "Doubtless they are sorry for you." 
 The little artist set her lips firmly to- 
 gether. " If I have any grip on my art, 
 it is because I have to fight for it. Thank 
 Heaven for the things that are hard ! " 
 
 Helen grieved much over Anne's lack 
 of sympathy. 
 
 " Miss Bradford makes me feel as if 
 nothing were worth while," she said 
 mournfully, one day, to Mr. Stanton. He 
 had overtaken her as she crossed the 
 park, in the late afternoon. All about 
 them lay deep snow. Above, the bare 
 tree branches stood out against broken 
 purple clouds. There were gleaming lights 
 in far-away shop-windows, and in the 
 crawling electric cars. 
 
 " Never mind. It is all worth while," 
 said the young man reassuringly.
 
 96 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " Isn't Miss Bradford rather blind to 
 the ideal aspects of things ? " 
 
 " Some things," answered Howard 
 grimly, "and given to over-idealizing in 
 others." 
 
 There was one small person whom 
 Helen was able to reach and influence. 
 This was Annabel. The child loved Miss 
 Wistar. The sealskin cape had touched 
 a chord in her nature that nothing had 
 ever touched before. Helen had begun 
 to teach her in the evenings. Annabel 
 cast about in her mind for some way of 
 showing her gratitude to her benefactor. 
 
 " What do you s'pose I heard Mr. Stan- 
 ton say the other day ? " she asked sud- 
 denly, on the night of the third lesson. 
 Annabel had been slightly bored, and was 
 pining for excitement. 
 
 "How can I tell?" 
 
 " I was a-coming through the hall. My 
 little brother was ill, and I was taking him 
 some broth. It was chicken broth," said 
 Annabel, with an air of giving circum- 
 stantial evidence. "Mr. Stanton's door
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 97 
 
 was open, and I heard him say, ' Helen. 
 O my Helen ! '" 
 
 " Go on reading," commanded Miss 
 Wistar. 
 
 "And then he said, 'Gracious heavens! 
 How can I ' " 
 
 Annabel was sent home in disgrace. 
 Miss Wistar sat alone a long time, in 
 the dark, thinking. The child was so 
 pleased with this new bit of fiction that 
 she stopped at Miss Bradford's studio and 
 repeated it, with additions.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 " Console-moi ce soir; je me meurs d'esperance." 
 
 La Nuit de Mai, ALFRED DE MUSSET. 
 
 ANNE BRADFORD could not sleep. There 
 was a concert in the Music Hall, and the 
 wailing of the violins disturbed her. It 
 seemed as if the bows were being drawn 
 across her nerves. 
 
 At last she rose and came into the 
 studio, in her gray wrapper. One star 
 was shining through the skylight. Anne 
 lit her hanging lamp and made a fire in 
 the fireplace, then stood over it, shivering, 
 and warming her hands. 
 
 She studied anxiously her new picture 
 on the easel. The work was bad. For 
 weeks she had accomplished nothing worth 
 while. And why ? she demanded impa- 
 tiently. This mental disturbance was only 
 superficial. She was perfectly sure of 
 herself. Some day Howard would learn 
 to care about Helen. Even now he did 
 98
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 99 
 
 not realize how much he depended upon 
 her. 
 
 " I shall be glad," said Anne firmly. 
 But she knew better. 
 
 She smiled, remembering the tears she 
 had shed on the day of his first call. They 
 were tears of regret in not finding herself 
 mistaken in the old decision on the wharf. 
 The four years' silence had been eloquent. 
 
 " Whoever wants to prevail with me 
 should stay away," thought Anne, walking 
 restlessly up and down. " The winds and 
 the stars will plead his cause more elo- 
 quently than he. Only, it will be fatal 
 for him ever to come back ! " 
 
 She wondered if in every experience the 
 gods had prepared for her disappointment, 
 trying to pit reality against a dream. 
 
 Taking up her brushes she began to 
 paint. Then the music became a voice, a 
 cry for all she had wanted and had missed 
 in life. That was a false stroke ! She 
 laid down her palette and put out the light, 
 then curled up on the rug before the fire. 
 
 Self-expression ! To leave a record of
 
 ioo A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 her way of looking at things, that was 
 all she had striven for. Her thoughts 
 drifted back to that summer afternoon in 
 the Cluny Garden, when grass and trees 
 and the queer bits of Gothic architecture 
 lay deep in shade. The consecration of 
 that hour could not have been a mistake. 
 She reached vainly back for the inspira- 
 tion- of the mornings when she had crossed 
 the Pont Royal on her way to the studio, 
 and had seen the sun coming red through 
 the mist behind the Notre Dame towers 
 and the spire of the Sainte Chapelle. Her 
 sight had been clear in those days, her 
 purpose single. 
 
 She sat with a background of shadow, 
 an unwonted look of self-distrust in her 
 delicately cut face. The leaping flame on 
 the hearth lit up the Winged Victory, and 
 touched the sneering lips of the devil of 
 Notre Dame. 
 
 "Anyway," she said at last with a 
 laugh, "after wrestling with a Notion for 
 four years, and almost getting the better 
 of it, I am not afraid of a man. Whatever
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 101 
 
 happens, I'll follow the old desire. It is 
 the nearest thing to a soul that I have 
 ever had. But I am not sorry that I 
 have been obliged to think it all out 
 again. Now it is settled forever." 
 
 Feeling safe in this new resolve, she set 
 her fancy free. The last strains of music, 
 tender, sweet, floated up to her. They 
 came like the touch of pleading fingers. 
 She rose with a start, a flush of guilt upon 
 her face. There was a sudden gleam from 
 the fire. From the wall certain words that 
 she had painted on the back of an old 
 palette shone out like a reproach, 
 
 " Se tu segui tua stella." 
 ***** 
 
 At eight o'clock in the morning Miserere 
 woke, and stretched out his gray paws on 
 the soft divan. His mistress was late. 
 He gave one soft, sleepy, injured mew. 
 The old grievance against life came back 
 to him with returning consciousness. 
 
 Miserere was unhappy. His was the 
 heritage of the man
 
 IO2 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " Who vainly pants 
 For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants." 
 
 A sullen look crept into his eyes. He 
 lashed the couch with his tail. 
 
 " Strange pangs would flash across Childe Harold's 
 
 brow, 
 
 As if the memory of some deadly feud, 
 Or disappointed passion, lurked below." 
 
 He wanted to know how to get into the 
 larder. It was this withheld knowledge 
 that made him mew. Life was for him 
 a long fever because of the unequal re- 
 sponses to his demands upon the material 
 world. 
 
 Presently his mistress appeared. From 
 the corner she brought a little oak table, 
 and over it threw a white cloth. Then, 
 behind a great brown canvas screen where 
 golden-rod was painted, she made her coffee 
 on a tiny gas stove. The raven, as she 
 called the milkman, put down a jar of 
 cream outside her door. Miserere heard 
 it, and went to sit close by the crack. 
 
 Anne smiled when her breakfast was 
 ready. It was all so old-maidish, the
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 103 
 
 Sevres china, the diminutive spoons, the 
 rolls, the jar of marmalade. Long shafts 
 of light came into the studio. Anne 
 thought of the way in which the autumn 
 sunlight used to crawl in the early morn- 
 ing up the meadow by 'her father's parson- 
 age. The grass was always covered with 
 misty cobwebs that glistened in the sun. 
 That was so long ago. 
 
 She poured her coffee into the white 
 and gold cup. Miserere jumped mewing 
 to her lap. 
 
 " You miserable, carnal-minded beast," 
 she said, touching him affectionately. 
 "You will never be happy, because you 
 want the wrong thing. Somebody said 
 once, ' Man is not a happy animal, because 
 his appetite for sweet victual is so enor- 
 mous.' You are like man." 
 
 There was a knock at the door. The 
 janitor had brought Miss Bradford a letter. 
 It was a typewritten refusal of the two 
 pictures that she had sent to the Botticelli 
 Art Club for the winter exhibition. 
 
 " I expected it," she said quietly, but
 
 IO4 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 her eyes grew moist. She was a failure. 
 Her ambition had outstripped her gift. 
 
 " I needn't have been so supercilious, 
 Miserere," she remarked, stroking the cat's 
 gray head. "I'm like you, after all. I 
 thought that it was work I cared for, 
 the discipline of hand and brain. But 
 I rather think I wanted only ' sweet 
 victual.' " 
 
 Then she reddened at the memory of her 
 thoughts of the night before. 
 
 " A woman's despair with complica- 
 tions " - she said, half laughing, " is very 
 dangerous. I can't surrender now, any- 
 way. Whatever love is, it isn't a second 
 choice." 
 
 She pushed the table away. She was 
 not hungry. 
 
 "'Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass,'" 
 
 she quoted sadly. " I have more : bread, 
 and tears, and jam." 
 
 Then she put on her painting-apron. 
 
 " I wonder if the gods really want me 
 to give up," she asked herself meekly,
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 105 
 
 as she mixed her colours. She set her 
 lips. 
 
 "I don't care if they do, I sha'n't! 
 After all, there's some pleasure in failing 
 in the one thing you really want to do."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 " MAY I ask what that red patch in the 
 lower left-hand corner of the canvas is ? " 
 asked Anne. 
 
 She was looking at "Art and Need." 
 The picture was almost done. Weeks of 
 weather as variable as Anne's moods had 
 passed. Now the days were longer, and 
 the changed light of the sun had become 
 a prophecy of spring. 
 
 "That? Grass, in the sun," answered 
 Howard, squeezing more red paint from a 
 tube. 
 
 " And the allegorical significance of the 
 grass ? " 
 
 " Depends upon the spectator," answered 
 the artist. " It means that which it means 
 to you. Symbolic art is no ready-made 
 product. Its office is to evoke, to draw 
 forth from you, to make you a creator." 
 
 Anne groaned. Howard's eyes twinkled. 
 
 " In all impressionist work, of course, 
 1 06
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 107 
 
 the colours blend in your eye, not on the 
 canvas. Here, in addition to that, the 
 various elements of truth must blend in 
 your soul in order to have coherence. 
 'All art is what you do when you look 
 at it.' " 
 
 "Isn't that a subterfuge of the artist 
 who hasn't energy to make his work per- 
 fect ? " 
 
 " Perfection is limitation," answered 
 Howard gravely. " Symbolism means 
 trying to say more than can be said. 
 The message transcends expression. Its 
 imperfection is its greatness." 
 
 "Then there ought to be two kinds of 
 expression," said Anne. " If the Art 
 Club accepts this, I am going to write 
 an explanatory poem for you to tack to 
 the frame. It is positive cruelty to the 
 masses to give them sa much hidden 
 meaning." 
 
 "The picture will speak to those who 
 can listen. If you are the right spectator 
 its meaning will flash upon you. For this 
 is given it the touch of strangeness, of
 
 io8 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 mystery. The soul of things can be 
 apprehended only by the soul. The in- 
 terpretation is the measure of your 
 nature." 
 
 " I feel very small," said Anne. " Please 
 excuse me for living." 
 
 Anne did not try to work. She sat 
 lazily in her grandfather's arm-chair, think- 
 ing. Once she looked up with her sauciest 
 smile. 
 
 "Don't you think," she asked, "that 
 you have too many fine ideas about art to 
 be a real artist ? " 
 
 " May I return the compliment with 
 interest ? " 
 
 Anne dropped into a reminiscent mood. 
 
 " You always did things like that," she 
 said. "Do you remember that when we 
 made mud pies you always did cherubs 
 and angels ?" 
 
 " And you made dogs and cats," re- 
 joined Howard. " Doesn't it all seem a 
 thousand years ago ? " 
 
 " I remember your Judgment Day scene. 
 There was a great shapeless figure in the
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 109 
 
 centre, and on either side rows of beings 
 made of round balls of mud and little 
 sticks. The sheep had white legs and 
 arms. You peeled the bark off for them. 
 You left it on for the goats. It was all 
 very dramatic. Your art always was half 
 literature." 
 
 Howard said nothing. 
 
 "And now," continued Anne audaciously, 
 "it's all literature." 
 
 " I remember one woolly lamb that you 
 made out of clay," the young man re- 
 marked. " It looked as if it could bleat. 
 Your father was so pleased. And I was 
 very proud of it." 
 
 "That was your way," said Anne. " You 
 liked to hear me praised. I was horribly 
 jealous. Once I hid in the parlour and lay 
 on the floor kicking and crying, when you 
 had drawn an angel and father had called 
 you a genius." 
 
 " It looked just like you, Nannie," said 
 the artist. " I can see now its little round 
 cheeks. Its robe was patterned after your 
 blue gingham apron."
 
 no A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Mrs. Kent glanced at Anne's flushed 
 face, and renewed her resolve to help this 
 young man win his battle. Helen opened 
 her eyes wide at the sound of the old 
 child-name, then closed them again. Af- 
 ter all, it was natural that he should use it. 
 
 "Well," said Anne, almost forgetting 
 her own confusion in her enjoyment of 
 Helen's surprise, " you made a good begin- 
 ning. I am sorry to see you taking up a 
 theory of art that seems to me cowardly. 
 Your idealism shirks the battle with things 
 as they are." 
 
 " But you are no more a realist than 
 I am." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean," said Howard, laying down 
 his brush and looking at the pictures on 
 the walls, "that you put into those faces 
 all sorts of heroic emotions that the people 
 never had. You make the wrinkles deeper 
 than they really are, and you idealize the 
 feelings that they stand for. Your people 
 all look hungry, and not for bread and 
 butter."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 1 1 1 
 
 " Please speak slowly so that I can take 
 all this in," said Anne. 
 
 " Look at that old sailor," the young 
 man continued relentlessly. " He is in- 
 tense, pathetic. There's no recognition in 
 that face of his love for tobacco, for 
 instance. It is all a little bit hysterical, 
 and feminine." 
 
 " It isn't feminine," said Anne angrily. 
 " Say anything but that." 
 
 She went to work in silence. 
 
 "Mr. Stanton, you are getting thin," 
 remarked Mrs. Kent abruptly. " That do- 
 mestic experiment will ruin your health. 
 Aren't you tired of it ? " 
 
 " It palls, at times," he confessed. 
 
 "And isn't your night school wearing 
 on you ? " 
 
 " It takes some strength from my work, 
 but I expected that." 
 
 " How beautifully our various efforts neu- 
 tralize each other," said Anne pensively. 
 " That lecturing keeps you from painting 
 more symbolic pictures." 
 
 "Thank you," said Howard. " No, Mrs.
 
 H2 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Kent, my work does not suffer much. And 
 I have made a deliberate choice. I simply 
 cannot bury myself in art dreams in a 
 world so full of suffering and ignorance 
 and crime." 
 
 " I don't see," said Anne crossly, from 
 her corner, " why I've always been cursed 
 with a desire to do my own work. Life is 
 so short, and the evenings come so soon. 
 How can we be acquitted if we do other 
 people's tasks, and leave undone our own ? 
 It seems to me as if nowadays everybody 
 is so bored with his own life that he wants 
 to live somebody else's life." 
 
 " Oh," cried Helen. " Don't say that ! " 
 
 " It isn't that," said Howard. " People 
 are just trying to forget their own de- 
 mands." 
 
 " A deliberate determination to forget 
 yourself amounts to a deliberate determi- 
 nation to remember," Anne remarked sen- 
 tentiously. " I suppose that I am mean 
 and selfish and unenlightened," she added, 
 clenching her little hand ; " but I'd rather 
 be able to paint well those wrinkles around
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 113 
 
 my old sailor's eyes, than to teach all the 
 masses in the world how to draw." 
 
 "You don't love human nature enough," 
 said Howard. 
 
 " You don't love it enough to paint it as 
 it is," Anne retorted. " All your idealism 
 is made up of disrespect for the facts of 
 life."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 HOWARD STANTON strode into the As- 
 syrian room at the Art Museum. In one 
 corner stood Anne, studying a relief. She 
 turned and faced him. 
 
 " I see where you got your ideas of 
 perspective," she remarked impertinently, 
 pointing to the feet of an Assyrian king. 
 
 "Nannie," said the young man, "you 
 have abused me too much to send me 
 away now. You " 
 
 " Let's talk about the weather," sug- 
 gested Anne. 
 
 "I should not speak of this again," he 
 protested^ "if I did not know that you 
 really do care for me." 
 
 " I never said that I did not." 
 
 " Then why won't you accept the logical 
 consequences ? " 
 
 " Because I do not care enough. I 
 know that my nature could be stirred 
 more deeply." 
 
 114
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 1 1 5 
 
 " Are you quite sure ? " 
 
 " Quite," Anne replied mendaciously. 
 " Howard, will you do something for 
 me ? " 
 
 "Anything in the world." 
 
 " Change the subject." 
 
 " Oh," he said with regret. " That is 
 the one thing in the world that I cannot 
 do for you." 
 
 " Down under all your altruism," Anne 
 remarked, " I detect the primal selfish- 
 ness of man." 
 
 They were in the Early Greek room. 
 Apollo looked down at them with his 
 archaic smile. 
 
 " Moreover," Anne continued, " I am 
 not sure of you." 
 
 " I should think that you might be sure 
 by this time ! " cried the young man hotly. 
 " Will fifty years of waiting convince you 
 better than twenty-five have done, of my 
 steadfastness ?" 
 
 " There has always been," said Anne 
 impressively, "a kind of spiritual incon- 
 stancy about you. Ever since you were
 
 n6 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 a boy your soul has fluttered from one 
 ideal to another. You could never make 
 a complete surrender to anything. Isn't 
 this latest theory a kind of escape from 
 complete devotion to your art ? It seems 
 to me an excuse for your temperament." 
 
 The young man grew pale. 
 
 "I've been pretty constant to one thing," 
 he said. " My surrender to you has been 
 too complete for my own good." 
 
 " That's the reason why I won't give up. 
 One can be constant only to the unattain- 
 able. I don't wish to be numbered among 
 your achievements." 
 
 " I consider that very feminine and very 
 young," Howard remarked. " Haven't I 
 worked pretty hard over my successive 
 enthusiasms ? " 
 
 " Yes," Anne admitted, " you have a 
 strong will, only there is something be- 
 hind it that wobbles. Now I must go 
 away. Mrs. Kent is waiting for me." 
 
 " I sha'n't forget that you said you like 
 me." 
 
 " If I liked you enough," said Anne
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 1 1 7 
 
 earnestly, "my whole soul and strength 
 and devotion would go out to you. I 
 should lose myself in you." 
 
 "The trouble with you, Nannie, is that 
 you are clinging to the notion of some 
 supernatural kind of love. You can't see 
 the worth of the love you have. If you 
 don't find the ideal in the actual, you 
 won't find it at all." 
 
 " I wish you would carry that idea into 
 your painting," Anne remarked, as she 
 left the room. 
 
 " I wish you would carry your idea of 
 painting into your life," retorted Howard. 
 
 Anne found Mrs. Kent standing by a 
 cast of a Templar's tomb. 
 
 "What is the matter ? " she asked when 
 she saw the girl's face. 
 
 " Nothing ; only, isn't life puzzling enough 
 without mixing it up with love ? " 
 
 " Puzzling ? I thought you said that 
 one could understand the whole by look- 
 ing on." 
 
 " Nobody can understand anything," 
 Anne remarked crossly.
 
 n8 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " Why don't you give up ? " 
 
 " Because," murmured the girl, touching 
 the crossed feet of the warrior, " I haven't 
 worked and planned and hoped for that all 
 my life. I have something else to do." 
 
 "You might do your work better." 
 
 "Don't say that. It is commonplace, 
 and besides, it isn't true. You can learn 
 better by seeing and not sharing. Your 
 feeling of the beauty and the worth and 
 the hurt of things is all the keener for the 
 sense of lack. What man wants is better 
 in art than what man has." 
 
 "Queer sentiments for a realist," re- 
 marked Mrs. Kent. 
 
 "There is a kind of irony about the 
 whole thing, if you are right. Those who 
 have the experience can't use it in art, 
 and those who pursue art haven't the ex- 
 perience. The two are indispensable and 
 incompatible. Anyway, I am not like 
 that." 
 
 "Like what?" 
 
 "The cold-blooded young woman who 
 worships an art-ideal and crushes her heart.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 119 
 
 She never existed anyway outside of a 
 story-book. I simply don't like Howard 
 enough for that." 
 
 The two friends were walking slowly 
 through the great deserted rooms. 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 " If I did I should be satisfied. Love is 
 the one thing in which there should be no 
 doubts." 
 
 A queer look came into Mrs. Kent's face. 
 
 " That is very foolish. Do you mean 
 that you, like the old novel-writers, think 
 of love as one long, untroubled, mutual 
 spasm ? " 
 
 " I sha'n't tell," answered Anne, laughing. 
 
 " ' He clasped her in his arms in one 
 long ecstasy ' no longer serves as a solution 
 of that problem. Don't let a Fireside Com- 
 panion ideal keep you from the happiness 
 of your life." 
 
 " I've never seen the Fireside Compan- 
 ion" Anne remarked loftily. 
 
 "Neither have I," said Mrs. Kent with 
 a smile. " Intellectual women are queer. 
 You are twenty-seven years old, but in
 
 I2O A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 some ways you aren't seventeen. You 
 must not carry a child's notion of absolute 
 surety into the life of a grown-up woman." 
 
 " But I chose my work," persisted Anne. 
 "I haven't time for luxuries." 
 
 "Love is not an indulgence," said Mrs. 
 Kent severely. " It is a life-long battle. 
 It is an agony, a doubt, a temptation, per- 
 haps a triumph. It is no easy way of 
 escape, but the hardest road, and the sweet- 
 est, that human feet can tread." 
 
 Anne's fingers reached out and touched 
 the soft black veil. 
 
 "It is too hard," she whispered. 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Kent slowly, "it is not 
 too hard. It is good to know the larger 
 meanings of life, even if they must be 
 learned with many tears. One learns all 
 through love, except what has to be learned 
 through death. It gives one the keys to 
 everything, the lives of saints, the lives 
 of sinful men and women too. 
 
 " Listen. When I was a girl I, too, was 
 puzzled vaguely about everything. Then 
 suddenly love came. But the old doubts
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 121 
 
 haunted me, and the fear that love would 
 slip away walked with me. Life was more 
 bitter and life was more sweet because of 
 love, and it was harder still to understand. 
 
 " I was married just three years. They 
 were years of great joy and great pain. I 
 used to say that I was in the corner of 
 paradise that was hard by hell. Then a 
 day came when they told me that my little 
 child was dead. His father died next day. 
 
 " It was a bitter lesson. I am only now 
 beginning to see that when one is too 
 happy, or too unhappy, or both, to care 
 about other people, God finds a way to 
 make one care. Perhaps, if one learns 
 only half of one's lesson in the morning, 
 one is always set to learn the other half in 
 the afternoon." 
 
 They left the Museum in silence. Out- 
 side, the frosty dust, blown high into the 
 air, was turning gold-colour in the light of 
 the sun. The one Florentine spire of the 
 city stood gray against the sky. Through 
 its delicate traceries shone the yellow of 
 the west.
 
 122 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " It is because love is the surest way of 
 forgetting one's self," said Mrs. Kent, 
 " that I want you to know it. Marriage is 
 self-abnegation " 
 
 "Marriage, as I have observed it, is 
 mostly co-operative selfishness," inter- 
 rupted Anne. "The trouble is, we are 
 talking as if this were an abstract question. 
 In reality there aren't any abstract ques- 
 tions, only individual problems. I cannot 
 consent to marry the wrong man because 
 marriage in general is a good thing ! " 
 
 She looked reproachfully at Mrs. Kent, 
 as they parted at the door of the studio 
 building. 
 
 " Even you have deserted me. I've no 
 one to stand by me but myself. I'm not 
 an English princess ; I'm not a favourite 
 of the Sultan, and I won't be married 
 unless I want to." 
 
 Anne climbed the stairs wearily. Once 
 she stopped, and put her head down on 
 the railing. 
 
 "Oh, I wish I did care!" she said, half 
 aloud. "I wish I could!"
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 " HE did, Miss Helen. I heard him say 
 it just as plain. He was coming through 
 the hall, and it was dark, and he didn't 
 see me. An' he said, ' O my Amanda, 
 how smoothly must that life glide in 
 whose destiny you share ! ' ' 
 
 "'Amanda'?" 
 
 The old, puzzled look came into Anna- 
 bel's eyes. She wriggled in her chair. 
 
 " No, he said ' Helen.' He was talking 
 about you." 
 
 The child felt encouraged by the silence 
 that followed. 
 
 " He said some more," she remarked 
 suggestively. 
 
 Miss Wistar was tempted, and she fell. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " He said, ' I shall suffer a trembling 
 apprehension until I call you mine.' " 
 
 Helen laughed, wondering where the 
 child had found the absurd phrases. Was 
 123
 
 124 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 there a basis of fact for the palpable fic- 
 tion ? Helen had never read "The Chil- 
 dren of the Abbey." 
 
 " Annabel," said the young teacher 
 severely, a minute later, " are you telling 
 me the truth ? " 
 
 " I thought that was what he said," 
 answered Annabel mournfully. " I didn't 
 hear it all. Anyhow, I often hear him 
 talking to your picture." 
 
 Miss Wistar's mouth was more stern 
 than her eyes. 
 
 "Mr. Stanton hasn't my picture. He 
 couldn't possibly have it unless I gave it 
 to him." 
 
 The child hesitated for a minute. When 
 she spoke, her voice almost carried convic- 
 tion to herself as well as to Miss Wistar. 
 
 "He painted it, I guess. It's a little bit of 
 a one. I see it every morning when I dust." 
 
 Life had begun to play havoc with 
 Helen's work. Her mission turned into a 
 long reverie. When she drew, her fingers 
 trembled. Then she stopped and watched- 
 the sunshine, her eyes full of dreams.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 125 
 
 Yet her wish to know women who toiled 
 for art was being slowly fulfilled. She had 
 watched them in public places, or at their 
 windows in the Square, talking, two and 
 two, as they slowly rocked. Now she 
 learned something of the inner conditions 
 of their life. Some lived in daintily fur- 
 nished suites ; others, in sky-parlours, 
 lunching, perhaps, on doughnuts, two for 
 five cents. All were nomadic, increas- 
 ingly distrustful of boarding-houses, un- 
 certain where to dine. Tangent-wise they 
 touched the life of the world beyond the 
 Square, going out now and then to dinners 
 or receptions. 
 
 Their generous comradeship impressed 
 the girl. They shared one another's hard- 
 ships, criticised one another's pictures, cor- 
 rected one another's proof. Helen heard 
 them quarrelling generously at luncheon 
 time over which should have the smaller 
 bit of steak, which should pay the uneven 
 cent. Strong friendships formed a part 
 of the courage with which these women 
 faced the thought of a lonely age, when
 
 126 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 they should perhaps have nothing left 
 but a point of view. 
 
 Helen made a half-dozen acquaintances 
 among the women of the Rembrandt Stu- 
 dios, and in doing so learned a half-dozen 
 tragedies. Each had "had a history"; 
 each had taken refuge in some new belief. 
 
 In Number 12 lived a plump and jovial 
 little lady who owned a pet monkey named 
 the Czar. The Czar was the terror of the 
 building. His mistress was not an heroic 
 figure, yet for twenty years she had been 
 toiling to pay the debts of a worthless 
 brother, and so save the family from dis- 
 grace. 
 
 She was a Christian Scientist. 
 
 The Theosophist was a slim maiden lady 
 who did flowers in water colour. Hers was 
 the tragedy of not having been called upon 
 to suffer. All the pathos of protracted girl- 
 hood was in that air, as of one who has not 
 arrived, yet is not pursuing, only waiting. 
 
 For the owner of Number 2 art meant a 
 faithless husband. She had found conso- 
 lation in Astrology.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 127 
 
 There was a Whitmanite who did huge 
 landscapes. The short-haired girl who as- 
 pired to be an animal sculptor was a fol- 
 lower of Ibsen. She talked much of the 
 emancipation of woman from domestic life. 
 Sometimes, as she toiled with wet clay, she 
 wiped a tear away from her cheek with her 
 short coat-sleeve. She was thinking of her 
 dead lover. 
 
 The Baroness was the only inhabitant of 
 this world of definite work and vague spir- 
 itual enthusiasms who had not a pet notion. 
 The Baroness made beautiful embroidery. 
 
 Helen learned much from these women. 
 There were questions of vast import to 
 discuss : how to make drapery out of fish- 
 nets ; how to convert the lower part of a 
 book-case into a pantry ; how to make ball- 
 costumes out of Japanese crepe paper ; how 
 to know when Welsh rabbit was done. 
 
 In return Helen taught them her views. 
 
 " What does Miss Wistar mean by call- 
 ing herself a Socialist ? " the Christian 
 Scientist asked one day of Anne Brad- 
 ford
 
 128 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " I don't know," said Anne. " Neither 
 does she." 
 
 " She said," continued the owner of the 
 Czar, puckering her plump forehead, "that 
 she could not conceive of Christianity 
 apart from Socialism." 
 
 Anne only laughed. 
 
 Helen found her relations with these 
 women less simple than she had expected. 
 She had a puzzled feeling that her pity for 
 them was met by an answering pity for her. 
 In their definiteness of aim was a certain 
 rebuke. The only thing about her that 
 they thoroughly appreciated was the col- 
 our of her hair. 
 
 " I am sorry for that child," said the 
 Astrologist to Mrs. Kent. " She is so 
 young and rash. She has so much to 
 learn." 
 
 " Helen isn't accustomed to think that 
 it is the young who have much to learn," 
 answered Mrs. Kent. 
 
 The boyish sculptor of animals said that 
 Miss Wistar did not know where she 
 was at.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 129 
 
 In despair Helen went one March after- 
 noon to Mrs. Kent to ask why all that 
 she tried to grasp slipped so persistently 
 through her fingers. As she crossed the 
 Square she watched the naked branches 
 of the trees, sharply outlined against the 
 red brick walls where the late sun was 
 shining. In Mrs. Kent's window stood a 
 jar of golden daffodils. Helen caught a 
 glimpse of a slender hand and a bit of 
 black sleeve. 
 
 " Shall I tell you what I really think ? " 
 asked Mrs. Kent, when she had heard the 
 girl's complaint. Helen had buried her 
 face among the pillows on the lounge. " I 
 think that you are taking the wrong road. 
 There is only one way of entering people's 
 lives. That is by sharing the common ex- 
 perience. This external way of trying to 
 help will never make you understand. 
 One must share life itself, the joy of it, 
 the pain of it, if one is to know. 'He 
 that entereth not in by the door of the 
 sheepfold, but climbeth up some other 
 way '"
 
 130 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Helen started to speak, but paused. 
 She could not explain. 
 
 Mrs. Kent laid her hand on the girl's 
 bright hair. 
 
 " Haven't you run away from the one 
 school where you can learn to be of use 
 to your world ? It is only through love 
 and its responsibilities that one can help. 
 They tell me that you cannot conceive of 
 Christianity except from Socialism. Can 
 you conceive of Christianity that does not 
 involve doing your duty to your own 
 people ? " 
 
 For wounds like these there was balm 
 in Howard Stanton's occasional remarks. 
 
 " I can't tell you how I value your 
 sympathy," he said one day. "There are 
 so few people who understand." 
 
 These sayings mingled in Helen's mind 
 with Annabel's queer romancing. It was 
 small wonder that she more than half 
 believed the child.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 IT was almost spring. The florists' 
 windows were full of yellow primroses, of 
 hyacinths, of blood-red tulips. Sunshades 
 and dimity gowns appeared in the dry- 
 goods shops. In the street, a vender's 
 cry of " Strawberries, fresh strawberries ! " 
 floated across fast-falling snow. 
 
 The annual March exhibition of the 
 Art Club opened to-day. Pieces of clever 
 work covered the walls of the club-rooms. 
 There were landscapes, seascapes, faces, 
 figures, interiors. A white Indian mosque 
 jostled the corner of an old New England 
 garden ; a view of Siberian convict life, in 
 the style of Verestschagin, rested by the 
 portrait of an anaemic woman, painted in 
 the manner of Whistler ; and a daring 
 study (inspired by Zorn) of six people in 
 a theatre box, full in the glare of electric 
 light, hung close to Anne Bradford's tiny 
 picture of the old sailor. 
 
 In most of the work a mannerism was
 
 132 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 apparent, a touch of impressionism, some 
 trick of colour. American art, as repre- 
 sented here, betrayed an eclecticism, a 
 lack of standard, of conviction. Skill in 
 drawing was less important than a certain 
 dash in laying on colour and in making 
 bold outlines. 
 
 All day, people streamed up the steps 
 and through the broad doors of the club- 
 house. Carriages blocked the street. El- 
 derly ladies from Riverside Bank panted 
 up the steps. Art students from the West 
 End scrutinized, praised, and blamed. 
 Amateur critics looked knowingly through 
 half-shut eyes, and spoke in disparage- 
 ment, fearful of approving something that 
 another might condemn. 
 
 Helen came very early, in her little 
 worn jacket and the old bonnet. Howard 
 Stanton accompanied her. They climbed 
 the steps in eager excitement, and pushed 
 almost rudely through the crowd to find 
 the picture. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Howard with a sigh of 
 satisfaction. " That's great ! "
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 133 
 
 In the choicest bit of wall-space, just 
 opposite the entrance to the inner room, 
 hung "Art and Need." Something in its 
 style had impressed strongly the presiding 
 committee. They had given it a place of 
 honour. Anne Bradford's little picture 
 had been assigned to the darkest corner. 
 
 Coming in from the outer room, one 
 saw "Art and Need" full in the light of 
 the roof-window, a miracle of opalescent 
 colour, with the beautiful sleeping woman 
 in the shadow of suggested trees. Even 
 the hands and the arms were drowsy, and 
 the white fingers slept. 
 
 Helen gazed in silence. People crowded 
 past, pushed her hat awry, stepped on her 
 foot, but she did not know it. Her eyes 
 were moist when she raised them to 
 Howard Stanton's. 
 
 " I am so glad ! " she whispered. 
 
 He bent his head to listen, and laughed 
 excitedly. 
 
 " It's rather better than I expected, as the 
 old gentleman said when he went to heaven. 
 Won't you come over here and sit down ? "
 
 134 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 He found a chair for Helen, and stood 
 leaning over the back. 
 
 The artist had been right. His picture 
 meant many things to many people. 
 
 " It must be Cleopatra," said one lady, 
 who had not examined the catalogue. 
 
 " Or fair Rosamond in her bower," sug- 
 gested her companion. 
 
 "And that little dark figure?" asked 
 the first speaker. 
 
 " Maybe that's Cleopatra's conscience," 
 laughed the other. " It ought to be called 
 'The Queen's Nightmare.' ' 
 
 Just here a tall girl with a Burne-Jones 
 profile drifted past. She cast a long and 
 intense look upon the picture. 
 
 "It is an annunciation," she said, "in 
 modern style. The little brown figure is 
 an angel in disguise." 
 
 " How can they be so stupid ? " asked 
 Helen, looking up. Howard only chuckled. 
 Once he laughed outright. The great 
 Leighton Reynolds, white-haired dictator 
 in this little world of art, paused before 
 the picture.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 135 
 
 " Here's an artist," he remarked, " whose 
 contempt for nature is apparently not the 
 result of familiarity." 
 
 The artist and his model waited in 
 silence, watching the spectators. Few 
 people noticed them. A fellow-artist, 
 coming up to congratulate Mr. Stanton, 
 detected the slight resemblance between 
 Miss Wistar and the half-averted face in 
 the picture, and felt wise. 
 
 " I don't care what the result is," Howard 
 said at last, breaking a long pause. " I 
 have put the very best of myself into that 
 work." 
 
 His seriousness deepened the note of 
 generalized tenderness in his voice. Helen 
 had before mistaken a physical character- 
 istic for emotion. 
 
 " All my hold on life is in that face. It 
 stands for my entire aspiration, my ulti- 
 mate hope." 
 
 Helen looked up quickly. She thought 
 that Mr. Stanton was speaking about her. 
 One little gloved hand slipped out toward 
 him, but he did not see it. His eyes
 
 136 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 were fixed upon the picture. He was 
 thinking about the allegory. 
 
 Helen drew her hand back in shame. 
 
 " Of course he can't say more," she 
 thought, "while I am alone and so far 
 away from home." 
 
 Her hero-worship deepened in fervour. 
 
 " If it had not been for you, Miss 
 Wistar," her master was saying, " I should 
 not have had the courage to go on. You 
 make a man believe in himself. But look 
 here," he added rudely, "we haven't 
 thought about Miss Bradford's old sailor. 
 Where is he?" 
 
 Patient search revealed the picture in 
 the corner. 
 
 " It's a beastly shame," said Howard 
 Stanton fiercely. " They've hung no end 
 of trash in better places." 
 
 As they turned to go a plump old gen- 
 tleman crowded past them, panting in his 
 efforts to reach the centre. He caught 
 'sight of the symbolic picture, and exam- 
 ined the catalogue in wonder. Then he 
 put a glass to one eye, and gazed.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 137 
 
 " Art and Need ! Art and Need ! " he 
 stormed. " A yellow woman and blue 
 grass and a purple boy ! Art and need of 
 common sense, I should say ! " 
 
 The artist and his model came away in 
 a fit of childish laughter.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SOMETHING unexpected happened. Anne 
 Bradford, corning home late one afternoon, 
 stopped by the mail-box to open a letter 
 and to tear off the cover of a. new number 
 of Art and Life. In the leading article 
 she caught sight of her own name, and she 
 sat down on the stairs with a little gasp. 
 
 The critic described her picture at the 
 Art Club exhibition. It was only an 
 unpretentious study, he said, of an old 
 sailor. There was a pathetic quiver in 
 the wrinkled lip. This was a sad ending 
 for a life spent on the high seas. The 
 critic praised the peculiar faithfulness to 
 detail, combined with a poetic inspiration. 
 This carefulness of workmanship was re- 
 freshing after the high-handed methods of 
 the impressionists, symbolists, sensation- 
 alists. Perhaps this was one of the wel- 
 come signs of a coming reaction. 
 
 A few days later Miss Bradford received 
 138
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 139 
 
 a note from the secretary of the Hague 
 Art Club. Their exhibition was to open 
 in a few days. Usually only the work of 
 club members was exhibited. The excep- 
 tional praise given to Miss Bradford in the 
 April number of Art and Life made the 
 members of the club desirous of seeing 
 more of her work. Would she do them 
 the honour of sending two pictures to 
 their exhibition ? 
 
 Anne read the letter with an unmoved 
 face, then put it down on the cherry desk 
 and looked at it. 
 
 " It seems utterly impossible," she said, 
 touching the envelope caressingly. Then 
 she laughed. 
 
 " I believe that I have a feeling of 
 deeper sentiment about that type-written 
 communication than I've ever had about 
 any concrete thing before. Think what 
 it means ! " 
 
 Two weeks later a long article about 
 Miss Bradford's work appeared in The 
 Continent, one of the city dailies. It 
 was entitled, "A New Realism." The
 
 140 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 critic was apparently excited. He called 
 upon his readers to see how unique this 
 work was. What technique ! What sen- 
 timent ! Here the accuracy of the realist 
 was combined with the sentiment of the 
 symbolist. (The art-critic on The Con- 
 tinent was also literary critic for The 
 Spectator). In these pictures one saw 
 not only a new style but a new inspiration. 
 Here was an interpretation of life. 
 
 "There is a certain quaintness in the 
 work," the critic said. " Under all the 
 traces of human suffering (note Miss Brad- 
 ford's rendering of wrinkles) there is a 
 deep, inextinguishable joy in living. These 
 are faces of those scarred in battle, yet 
 glad of the fight. It is a realism that is 
 both joyous and spiritual." 
 
 " Permit me," said Howard Stanton, 
 taking off his hat with a profound bow 
 when he met Anne in the street the next 
 day, " to salute the founder of a new school. 
 I'm very sorry for you," he added, a 
 minute later. "What will you have to 
 fight with now?"
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 141 
 
 There was a reaction from the passion 
 for symbolism which had already lasted 
 several weeks. Miss Bradford's work and 
 that of a young Danish realist became the 
 fashion. 
 
 Anne hardly realized her success until, 
 among her notes of congratulation, she 
 found a line from the great Leighton 
 Reynolds. 
 
 " You have style," he said. " I find a 
 certain force in your pictures unusual in 
 feminine work." 
 
 Anne felt stunned. She decided to go 
 for a walk. Passing down the old familiar 
 streets, she asked herself sadly if she were 
 too old to care. Surely this praise meant 
 the confirmation of the hope for which she 
 had spent her life. 
 
 She was walking in the direction of the 
 tenement-house district. Here was the 
 corner where the thought of the sailor's 
 picture had flashed upon her. A little 
 farther was the crumbling wall that had 
 served as a background for the Italian 
 mother with her baby. Her work was
 
 142 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 everywhere. She had beaten out her 
 ideas with her footfalls. Now her prayer 
 had been granted, and she felt only this 
 creeping numbness. 
 
 Climbing the hill to the old burying- 
 ground, she found herself giving an ex- 
 ultant little laugh. Then her knees 
 trembled, and it became hard to walk. 
 She grasped the churchyard railing, and 
 leaned her forehead against the iron. Oh, 
 she did care ! She had created something 
 that seemed to live. She had justified her 
 existence. 
 
 As she walked home, she saw that the 
 tops of the willows in the park were yellow. 
 The sky wore the expectant blue of early 
 spring. 
 
 The mood of exultation lasted nearly a 
 week. Anne had to adjust life to a new 
 emotion. She had accepted failure. Her 
 whole life had been in accord with that. 
 Now a sudden change had proved her old 
 reckonings false. She must learn to ac- 
 cept success 
 
 Mrs. Kent was filled with pride. Helen,
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 143 
 
 too, was pleased, but puzzled. Anne won- 
 dered why Howard had deserted her at 
 this moment. She had not seen him for 
 a week. It was Annabel who solved the 
 mystery. 
 
 " Mr. Stanton's got measles," she said 
 with an important air. " My little brother 
 had 'em, and my mamma said, two weeks 
 ago, that Mr. Stanton had sympathies of 
 'em." 
 
 " Measles ! " gasped Anne. 
 
 "My mamma takes care of him. It's 
 very hard work. Sometimes " Anna- 
 bel's eyes gleamed " he's out of his 
 head, an' then he talks about Miss 
 Wistar. He called her a angel the other 
 day." 
 
 There was no way of helping. 
 
 "I can't go to carry him quivering jel- 
 lies on a tray, as young ladies do in Eng- 
 lish stories," said Anne lightly. "Think 
 of that lofty head laid low by measles ! " 
 
 She turned to her work. After three 
 days of struggle, she put her brushes 
 away. A great unrest possessed her.
 
 144 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " I can't do it ! " she said mournfully. 
 "I'm spoiled by compliments." 
 
 Her fingers were like lead. The joy in 
 creating was gone. She sat one day on a 
 hassock in the centre of her room. On 
 the floor lay the three pictures that had 
 won her world for her. Anne examined 
 them with unfriendly eyes. 
 
 " Howard is right," she said dejectedly, 
 " but I wouldn't tell him so. They call 
 this realism, but it isn't. I'm an impostor. 
 It's nothing but distance from the hard- 
 ships of living that lends enchantment to 
 my rendering of life." 
 
 " What is the matter ? " asked Mrs. 
 Kent, coming in half an hour later. Anne 
 was still upon the hassock, her chin rest- 
 ing in the hollow of her hand. 
 
 " My courage has given out," said Anne, 
 rising. " I'd give back all my success for 
 any one of my old illusions about it." 
 Her laugh had a note of pathos in it. 
 " There was a certain inspiration in fail- 
 ure, but I can't bear up under approval. 
 I shall never do any more good work."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 145 
 
 " That doesn't sound like you." 
 
 " Giving you at twenty-seven what at 
 twenty you wanted and could not have," 
 Anne continued, " is adding insult to in- 
 jury. It is like granting the refused per- 
 mission to go to the matinee after the play 
 is all over. You have none of the benefit 
 of consistent discipline, and yet none of 
 the fun." 
 
 " But giving you at twenty-seven what 
 at twenty-five you had not earned," said 
 Mrs. Kent with deliberation, "is very dif- 
 ferent, and quite as much as you de- 
 serve." 
 
 " There's truth in that," Anne answered 
 meekly ; " only I liked doing my work bet- 
 ter than I like listening to all this talk 
 about it." 
 
 " There speaks the artist ! " said Mrs. 
 Kent. " Be comforted, my child. There 
 is undoubtedly enough failure in store 
 for you in the future to keep up your 
 spirits." 
 
 The next morning Anne drooped over 
 her breakfast.
 
 146 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " The glamour has departed from Bohe- 
 mia," she said, looking sadly at her china. 
 " A teacup is only a teacup now, and it is 
 nothing more." 
 
 The studio looked dingy and full of cob- 
 webs. The marmalade was sticky. 
 
 Anne looked at her pictures in disgust. 
 Self-expression ! It was there. She had 
 succeeded in putting on canvas something 
 of her inner view of things. Self it had 
 always been herself ! That was in the fur- 
 nishings of the room, in the painted faces 
 on the walls. Oh, if she could only escape 
 from the loathsome closed circle ! 
 
 She flung herself upon the sofa, burying 
 her face in a pine pillow. Its pungent 
 odours brought back the old child-days. 
 
 " You have succeeded," she murmured, 
 "and I'd like to know of what consequence 
 your self-expression is, anyway ! " 
 
 Outside was the twitter of nesting spar- 
 rows. Her spirits beat against the enclos- 
 ing bars like the wings of an imprisoned 
 bird. Presently she lifted her face and 
 laughed.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 147 
 
 " Nothing sadder can happen to any 
 man than to get what he wants. Hence- 
 forth I shall pray daily : ' Grant me any- 
 thing, O Lord, except the desire of my 
 heart.' "
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE April air had grown warm and 
 sweet. Each day the sun went down in a 
 golden haze. The willow branches were 
 long ripples of pale green. Along the 
 busy streets and in the quiet Square, flower- 
 boys stood with baskets of pansies, arbu- 
 tus, anemones, violets, " fi' cents a bunch." 
 In the air a fresh quick wind beat with the 
 beating of the pulses. 
 
 Through the swift days of sunshine 
 dashed with rain, Helen followed a vision 
 of Howard, ill and beyond her reach. 
 Anne wandered, uneasy and idle, about 
 Bohemia. For Mrs. Kent the past grew 
 warm in the sunlight that fell upon her 
 face. And Howard ? 
 
 Howard stood one day by his window, 
 pale still from his recent illness. Mrs. Orr 
 and Annabel were busy in the room. 
 
 " Give me days of golden glory, 
 With my windows open wide," 
 
 he hummed. 
 
 148
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 149 
 
 But Mrs. Orr forbade him to open the 
 window. 
 
 " Sure as you do, you'll have a relapse," 
 she insisted, as she left the room, "and 
 me with Tommy and Sarah and you all on 
 my hands." 
 
 He sank meekly into a chair. 
 
 " I haven't the nerve to assert myself," 
 he said. " My spirit is broken by an 
 infant disease." 
 
 He looked languidly at the pile of mail 
 that had accumulated on his table during 
 the past weeks. Then he tore off the 
 cover of the Art Review. 
 
 " My little sisters are both drowned," 
 remarked Annabel mournfully. 
 
 "What little sisters?" he asked absent- 
 mindedly. He was reading, not without 
 interest, some comments on his work. 
 
 "Not a mere tour-de-force a keenly 
 intelligent facility sensitive and thought- 
 ful method a not unnatural divergence 
 into purely subjectless and impersonal mo- 
 tifs subtle in effect, ingenious in process 
 note the intensity of expression "
 
 150 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "That's not bad," commented the artist; 
 "only I don't half deserve it. A little 
 sharp criticism would be better for me." 
 
 " My little sisters, Euphrasia and 
 Amanda," continued Annabel, in a rather 
 loud tone. 
 
 "Oh," answered Mr. Stanton. "I re- 
 member your little sisters. But I thought 
 their names were Ellen and Malvina." 
 
 " I guess I'd better go and get my dust- 
 cloth," remarked Annabel. When she 
 came back her face had brightened. 
 
 " My little sisters have two names 
 apiece," she said patronizingly. " I couldn't 
 explain, because I was in a hurry. Please," 
 she added in a whisper, "don't say any- 
 thing to my mother about my little 
 sisters." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because it will make her feel so bad. 
 My mother was very fond of them. It's 
 awful hard for her." 
 
 But Mr. Stanton was busy with another 
 article. He had found it in the News of 
 two weeks ago.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 151 
 
 " Mr. Stanton has attempted the impos- 
 sible with commendable courage," wrote 
 the critic, "but without succeeding in 
 making it convincing. In facing 'Art 
 and Need ' we stand in the full blast of 
 the orchestral colour-box. His gorgeous 
 skies, of greenish hue, combine with his 
 trees of violet to set forth an idea better 
 adapted to the lecture-platform than to 
 canvas. This is mere rhetoric." 
 
 "The idiot!" remarked Mr. Stanton 
 politely, tossing the paper across the room. 
 
 He was not comforted even by the 
 mystic notice in the Spectator. 
 
 "While it might be urged that Mr. 
 Stanton's design is rather decorative than 
 pictorial, suited rather to large architect- 
 ural spaces than to a single canvas, there 
 is an unspeakable something about the 
 work that holds the spectator. In this, 
 reduced as it is to the indifferent naked 
 typical, one detects a soaring quality. 
 Here is a constant aspiration toward the 
 unattainable. Here is an insatiable need 
 of the beyond. A brilliant future "
 
 152 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " Oh, rats ! " interrupted the artist. He 
 lost himself in gloomy thoughts. His 
 admirers misinterpreted him. His critics 
 misrepresented him. And what did .it all 
 matter? Anne Anne would not listen. 
 He had chosen the wrong guiding-star, and 
 all his reckonings were false. 
 
 " I'm like that young man of fame," he 
 mused. " My brilliant future is behind me." 
 
 His convalescent melancholy took a 
 didactic turn. 
 
 " Annabel," he said, turning to the child, 
 " we have made a mistake about you. You 
 ought to have been a story-writer. You 
 have a genius for circumstantial inven- 
 tion." 
 
 " What is that, sir ? " 
 
 " It's lying," said the young man 
 gravely. " Now it's all very well, Anna- 
 bel, for you to make things up when 
 people know that you are telling stories. 
 But when you are trying to make people 
 believe what isn't so, it's downright 
 wicked. It's mean. You might do no 
 end of harm."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 153 
 
 Annabel looked bewildered, then burst 
 into tears. 
 
 "Oh, stop that!" said Mr. Stanton 
 cheerfully. " I'm not scolding. I just 
 wanted to make you see. What are you 
 crying for ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid you won't like me any 
 more," sobbed Annabel, drying her eyes 
 in the cheese-cloth duster. 
 
 "Yes I shall. I like you very much. 
 You are the nicest little girl I know. But 
 I want to be able to depend on what you 
 say. Did you think that I believed your 
 yarns ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well, I didn't. You are just as trans- 
 parent as glass." 
 
 " I can't help it," wailed Annabel. " I'm 
 just sick of living. I don't have any 
 pleasures. I wash my little brother every 
 day, and scrub my steps, and work from 
 morning till night. When I go out I see 
 the same wagons standing in front of the 
 same houses every day. My life is pe'rfect 
 misery."
 
 154 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " There, don't cry," said the young 
 man. " I didn't mean to hurt your feel- 
 ings. You haven't told any lies about me, 
 I know." 
 
 " Yes I have," howled Annabel. 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " I told Miss Wistar and Miss Bradford 
 things because I liked you. I told them 
 how good you was." 
 
 " Is that a lie ? " 
 
 " I told 'em how you brought things 
 home for us, and how one day you was 
 a-bringing home a mop and pail, and you 
 had a high silk hat on. And an old gen- 
 tleman came along and you said, ' You 
 wouldn't do things like this for poor 
 people ! ' ' 
 
 The young man shouted with laughter, 
 then became suddenly grave. Annabel 
 was on the qui vive. Confession was 
 almost as dramatic an experience as lying. 
 
 "Tell me what else you've done," said 
 Mr. Stanton sternly. " Have you told 
 Miss Bradford any more things that 
 aren't true ? "
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 155 
 
 "Yes," whimpered Annabel. " I've told 
 her the things you've said about Miss 
 Wistar." 
 
 "What have I said about Miss Wistar?" 
 
 The fixed idea in Annabel's imagination 
 had become half reality. 
 
 " Why, when you talked to her picture," 
 said Annabel reproachfully. 
 
 " Her picture ! " gasped Howard. 
 
 "Once," asserted Annabel, "when you 
 was sick, you said, ' O my Amanda, the 
 task of forgetting you could never be ac- 
 complished.' And once you said, 'To you 
 I am bound by a sentiment stronger than 
 love, by honour.' ' 
 
 Annabel's eyes were shining with inter- 
 est through her tears. Mr. Stanton had 
 grown white with anger. The child was 
 frightened. 
 
 " Have you told any of this nonsense to 
 Miss Wistar ? " 
 
 "No," answered Annabel eagerly; "not 
 a word. Honestly I haven't." 
 
 "Then," he said with a sigh of relief, 
 "you haven't done quite as much harm
 
 156 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 as you might have done. But you've 
 come pretty near it. This explains the 
 ' inconstancy/ " he muttered under his 
 breath. 
 
 "I'm glad I didn't tell Miss Wistar," 
 said Annabel guilelessly. " I thought you 
 wouldn't like it."
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 " Love is begun : this much is come to pass. 
 The rest is easy." 
 
 In a Balcony, BROWNING. 
 
 THE heavy door of the Inebriate Asylum 
 closed with a thud behind Mrs. Kent. She 
 turned her face toward home. The wicked 
 old woman was safe at last behind that iron 
 door. 
 
 All about, laughing Italian children' were 
 playing in the sun. Above was the glory 
 of May sunshine. Mrs. Kent felt a sud- 
 den reaction from a long strain. Her 
 anger with the unnatural mother was melt- 
 ing into a sense of deep kinship. Her pity 
 came back upon herself with a sense of 
 forgiven sin. 
 
 " For none may walk in perfect white 
 Till every soul be clean," 
 
 she murmured. 
 
 Across the warm air came strains of
 
 158 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 funeral music. There was a beat of muf- 
 fled drums. The Roman Catholic church 
 near by was draped for a soldier's funeral. 
 
 Mrs. Kent stood still while the slow 
 procession passed. The colours of the 
 flag shone bright against the sombre crepe. 
 She watched the faces of the mourners, 
 comic in their self-importance, or tear- 
 stained with real grief. Then she went on. 
 
 The rude music turned her walk into a 
 march of triumph. She had found at last 
 the way of the wandering of her feet. 
 These grimy alleys had led her to a goal. 
 Grief had solved her problem in making 
 her aware of the encompassing grief. 
 Life with sorrow in it was a better thing 
 than life without sorrow could be. 
 
 " After knowing joy like that and pain 
 like that, one has a right to share every 
 trouble," she whispered. 
 
 She looked at the passing faces and 
 smiled. A larger life was hers. This 
 was her people. Her life was one with 
 theirs, the sin of it, the suffering of it. 
 The music of their funerals was sounding
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 159 
 
 for her dead. She had cared for that 
 child as if it had been her own, and the 
 touch of its mother's hands had been as 
 the touch of dear dead hands upon hers. 
 
 Then her own sorrow came sharply back 
 to her. 
 
 "Oh," she cried under her breath, "if I 
 could only forget, forget " 
 
 Would forgetting her own hurt mean 
 forgetting the world's pain ? She walked 
 swiftly on in half-ecstatic weariness. Just 
 now it seemed that the glory and the grief 
 of life are one. 
 
 As she entered the Square she was con- 
 scious of colour and of fragrance. The 
 young leaves on the elms and the willows 
 shimmered in the sun. Flower-boys stood 
 at the corners with their baskets. The 
 odour of new grass was in the air. 
 
 At the entrance to the studio building 
 stood Anne with Howard Stanton. He 
 stooped and picked a bunch of violets 
 from a basket for her. The sound of 
 their laughter and the chirping of the 
 birds drifted to Mrs. Kent's ears.
 
 160 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 Mrs. Kent looked at them with pity 
 in her eyes. They were so happy, she 
 thought, misunderstanding. She, who 
 had suffered the extreme hurt, was safe 
 and sheltered in her great grief. She 
 could not be afraid again. 
 
 Then once more that sudden sense of 
 her own hurt smote her, and her life went 
 out in the cry of the human heart for its 
 own. A pitying wind had blown her long 
 black veil across her face.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 ANNE and Howard lingered in the 
 Square after Mrs. Kent had passed. They 
 watched a procession of women filing out 
 of the Music Hall after a Bach recital. 
 
 "See," observed Howard. "There's 
 the woman-question incarnate." 
 
 "That isn't the question. It's the 
 answer," Anne replied. 
 
 " I feel sadly out of place here." 
 
 " You always were. Bohemia is no 
 place for a man." 
 
 " Well, I am going away. My work is 
 nearly done." 
 
 " Going away ! " exclaimed Anne. " Just 
 look at those women," she added quickly. 
 " Don't they seem intelligent and self- 
 reliant ? " 
 
 "And forlorn," he responded ungal- 
 lantly. "They always look as if they 
 were going to some place very fast, but 
 as if they didn't belong anywhere." 
 
 M 161
 
 1 62 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " What will become of your night school 
 when you go away, and of your lecture 
 course ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said the young man 
 with a sigh. 
 
 " You reformers are all singularly irre- 
 sponsible," said Anne severely, "in regard 
 to the new aspirations that you rouse. 
 You create a demand for yourselves, and 
 then you disappear. It's very bad political 
 economy." 
 
 Looking down he thought he saw a 
 slight quiver in her lip, and he exulted. 
 
 " Aren't you going to invite me up to 
 see what you've done to the picture ? " he 
 asked, with Machiavelian intent. 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 He held the great door open, then they 
 climbed the stairs together. Howard's 
 step was not yet firm. 
 
 He eyed the sailor's picture critically. 
 
 " That's better," he said. " You've got 
 some of the man's real stupidity into it. 
 Before, he realized too keenly his own 
 pathos. But see ! The background is
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 163 
 
 mixed up with the shoulder. Put a single 
 stroke here." 
 
 Anne obediently squeezed some Brus- 
 sels brown from a tube and took up her 
 brush. 
 
 " Will you come to the studio for a fare- 
 well supper before you go ?" 
 
 "With pleasure," he responded. Then 
 he muttered something under his breath. 
 
 "Don't do that. It isn't polite," said 
 Anne. 
 
 " If it only weren't for your accursed 
 theory," he groaned, with a sick man's im- 
 patience, " we could do our work together, 
 sharing the failure and the success." 
 
 " Perhaps it is your philanthropic the- 
 ory," suggested the girl. 
 
 " I'll give it up ! I'll give up anything 
 in theory or in practice if you will change 
 your mind." 
 
 " Oh no you won't. I shouldn't respect 
 you if you did." 
 
 " I didn't quite mean it," he confessed. 
 "Only, most theories are trash when it 
 comes to a question of living."
 
 164 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "You see," observed Anne, "I could 
 never enter into that part of your work. 
 I could not devote myself to you and the 
 masses too." 
 
 " You devote yourself to me, and I'll 
 take care of the masses," he answered, 
 laughing. 
 
 " Let's never speak of it again," begged 
 Anne. 
 
 "Well," said Howard, "I've found out 
 one thing. The individual love isn't com- 
 plete without the other. One must care 
 for humanity more than " 
 
 " Why don't you go and say all these 
 things to humanity ? " murmured Anne. 
 
 " I shall, if you persist. I shall go to 
 live in the slums, and shall turn every cent 
 I've got into a workingmen's college." 
 
 " Do it ! " cried the girl. " I like your 
 doing these things. Only I sometimes 
 think that there is the least bit of pose in 
 your attitude." 
 
 " Perhaps there is," he answered humbly. 
 " I am never quite my real self except 
 when I am with you. But I give up the
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 165 
 
 battle. Either you are incapable of a 
 great devotion " 
 
 Anne's nostrils dilated. 
 
 " The meanest device of those who have 
 not been able to stir your nature to its 
 depths is to suggest that it has no depths," 
 she remarked loftily. 
 
 " Oh, you have taken a vow, and you 
 don't dare break it." 
 
 " I haven't ! " cried Anne. " No woman 
 ever makes a resolution like that without 
 leaving a reserve clause in it. Only, you 
 aren't in my reserve clause." 
 
 "Then it is just that old child-perversity 
 of yours. You won't give up, simply be- 
 cause you do care. For I believe you do 
 not know your own mind about the 
 matter. You change your point of view 
 so often. You give a. different reason 
 every time." 
 
 " I seem to be consistent in my deci- 
 sion," said Anne, painting steadily. " I 
 have told you that I cannot serve two 
 masters. Perhaps it is because I am a 
 woman. Perhaps it is because I am I.
 
 1 66 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 And I've told you that my feeling is inade- 
 quate." 
 
 "You are trying to reason it all out," 
 cried Howard impatiently. " Why don't 
 you follow instinct ? " 
 
 " I do. You feel that it is right, I feel 
 that it is wrong. Why should your feel- 
 ing prevail ? " 
 
 " Don't be logical ! Logic isn't becom- 
 ing in a woman," he answered with a 
 laugh. 
 
 Anne's face grew wistful. 
 
 " You see, it would be cruel to you to 
 consent when I don't care enough. Be- 
 sides," she added, with changing mood, 
 " I told you long ago that I am a deliber- 
 ate egoist." 
 
 " The only perfect egoism lies in self- 
 surrender. One. can't fulfil one's person- 
 ality all alone." 
 
 "That," said Anne, "almost wins me." 
 
 Striding up and down, Howard watched 
 her as she worked. The penetrating odour 
 of violets filled the room. He would al- 
 ways remember her as she looked now.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 167 
 
 " It all rested with you. You have 
 decided it," he said vehemently. " If it 
 is really better for you I am glad. But 
 I don't believe that it is. And I sha'n't 
 quite let you go. You can never get away 
 from me. I shall haunt you. I'll be the 
 blunder you will revert to, the unanswered 
 question, the other possibility " 
 
 In his strong emotion he bent his head 
 and kissed her. 
 
 " If you please 'm," said a polite little 
 voice at the door, "I came to see if you 
 wanted me to do any errands." 
 
 It was Annabel, gazing into the studio 
 with fascinated eyes. The door had been 
 left slightly open. 
 
 Anne's face was white when she said 
 good-bye to Howard. 
 
 " If I ever wavered, now I am sure : I'll 
 never surrender, never ! " 
 
 In the fading light in the Square How- 
 ard Stanton saw upon his coat-sleeve a 
 tiny fleck of brown paint. 
 
 " I'm a monumental fool," he said to 
 himself.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 HELEN WISTAR came in out of the twi- 
 light in a mood half tragic, half joyous. 
 She had been walking along the river. All 
 the way her feet had beaten time to the 
 music of her thoughts. 
 
 She scrutinized her picture in the gath- 
 ering darkness. Was it so bad ? That 
 very morning Mr. Stanton had pronounced 
 severe judgment upon it. 
 
 "The drawing's all wrong," he had said 
 with frankness. " And it is neither one 
 thing nor the other. Your figures aren't 
 people and they aren't symbols." 
 
 Something on the canvas had caught his 
 attention.- He had examined it closely,' 
 then had turned toward Helen with as- 
 tonishment in his eyes. The girl looked 
 hurt. 
 
 "Miss Wistar," he had said, in that 
 voice which so often caressed the listener 
 without the owner's will, "you weren't 
 1 68
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 169 
 
 meant for this kind of thing. There is 
 surely something better in store for you 
 than the dry bones of art." 
 
 Yes, the picture was bad. -Helen real- 
 ized this as she looked at it in the fading 
 light. But it did not matter. Sorrow for 
 the loss of the lesser thing only added 
 glory to the greater. 
 
 She seized a large brush, and, with a 
 pretty, melodramatic motion, dashed a long 
 streak of red paint across the canvas. 
 
 "Vanish!" she said, half laughing. "So 
 my hopes perish." She pushed the easel 
 away from her. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Helen ! " cried a wildly excited 
 voice. " Oh, Miss Helen ! what do you 
 'spose ? " 
 
 It was Annabel, breathless with excite- 
 ment. Her little straw hat was hanging 
 by its elastic to her neck. The pupils of 
 her eyes were dilated. 
 
 "I always thought it was you," gasped 
 Annabel. 
 
 " Thought what was I ? " asked Miss 
 Wistar, bewildered.
 
 170 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " Her, Miss Bradford. I mean him. He 
 came into Miss Bradford's studio, and she 
 said, ' Gracious heavens ! What can have 
 brought you- here ? ' ' 
 
 "Who came?" 
 
 " Mr. Stanton ! " ejaculated Annabel. 
 "And then, and then he said: 'Deem 
 me not too precipitate, my Amanda, and 
 he passed his arm gently around her 
 waist.' ' 
 
 "Annabel, what are you making up 
 now ? " asked Miss Wistar, putting her 
 hand upon the child's shoulder. "You 
 said something like that once before. Who 
 taught you ? " 
 
 "It's true," whimpered Annabel, "true 
 as I live and breathe. I saw it. 'Alter- 
 nately he knelt at her feet, alternately he 
 folded her to his bosom.' ' 
 
 Miss Wistar's bewildered laugh brought 
 the child back from the world of her imagi- 
 nation. She looked up, hurt. Then she 
 spoke with a candour that carried convic- 
 tion : 
 
 "Anyhow, he kissed her. I seen him
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 171 
 
 do it, Miss Helen. And I always thought 
 it was you he liked, didn't you ? " 
 
 " No," answered Helen bravely but un- 
 truthfully, "never." 
 
 Annabel went away after a brief con- 
 versation. Helen stood by her ruined pict- 
 ure, shamefacedly conscious of what she 
 had been thinking when she made the 
 great red stroke. 
 
 "Oh," she said, gazing at her work with 
 wet brown eyes. " Why did I never see?" 
 
 Annabel's words had been a sudden flash 
 of light along the path of the whole winter. 
 It was all clear. Helen sat down on the 
 pine box and hid her face in her hands. 
 She had neither art nor life. There was 
 nothing for her hands to hold by. She had 
 failed to reach and help her suffering fel- 
 low-women. She had failed in art. Defeat, 
 defeat, defeat was written on the walls, 
 the windows, the furniture of the room. 
 All that the past months had done was to 
 create a great lack in her life that nothing 
 now could ever fill. 
 
 A practical thought at last stemmed the
 
 172 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 tide of her young despair. She remem- 
 bered that she had not washed her break- 
 fast dishes, and rose with a certain sense 
 of relief. She lit her lamp and put on a 
 white apron, then washed her china, drying 
 it daintily. There was comfort in the act. 
 It was a kind of link between this exist- 
 ence of shifting sand and the old life. 
 The linen towel in her hand and the tiny 
 dish-pan carried her thoughts back to the 
 days when her old-fashioned mother had 
 washed the silver in the mornings on the 
 dining-room table. 
 
 Helen paused, with soapsuds on her 
 hands, in sudden longing for the warmth 
 and comfort and safety of that unenlight- 
 ened home. She could see it distinctly 
 the elm trees by the gate, the green 
 embankment, and, inside the broad door, 
 the great hall with its deep fireplace and 
 leather-cushioned chairs. 
 
 " I am going back," she said simply.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 "Quelque terme ou nous pensions nous attacher et 
 nous affermir il branle et nous quitte; et, si nous le 
 suivons, il echappe a nos prises, nous glisse, et fuit d'une 
 fuite eternelle." Pensees, PASCAL. 
 
 " LET'S sit by the fire," suggested Anne, 
 " and utter ' cosmic platitudes ' for the last 
 time." 
 
 " It is too bad," said Mrs. Kent mourn- 
 fully. " The winter has been so interest- 
 ing, and now you are going away. That is 
 the trouble with Bohemia : nothing stays." 
 ."That's the trouble with life, isn't it?" 
 remarked Howard wearily. " Nothing 
 stays, except an endless process by which 
 we learn. We never really attain." 
 
 " Oh yes we do ! " contradicted Anne. 
 "The Lord usually gives you the thing 
 you want after you have begun to stop 
 caring for it." 
 
 "That's the first pessimistic remark I 
 ever heard you make," said Howard. 
 
 m
 
 174 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " I usually make my pessimistic remarks 
 when you aren't around," Anne replied. 
 
 A fresh wind was blowing into the 
 studio. Through the skylight two stars 
 were visible in the pale spring sky. A 
 fire had been kindled on the hearth, "for 
 sentiment," Anne said. 
 
 " How in the world," asked Howard, 
 "do you derive that notion from success 
 in the one thing you always wanted ? " 
 
 " Oh, success tarnishes your hope," 
 answered Anne with a laugh, "and makes 
 it suffer the fatal change from the thing 
 you want to the thing you have." 
 
 "Just what I said!" cried Howard tri- 
 umphantly. "The only possession lies in 
 not having." 
 
 " I told you that long ago," murmured 
 Anne. 
 
 "That was different altogether. This 
 is a general question." 
 
 "That was a childish notion about 
 heaven," Anne continued, "'They shall 
 hunger no more, neither thirst any more.' 
 Think how insufferable eternity would be
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 175 
 
 without the one thing that makes time 
 endurable." 
 
 " One wouldn't mind the endless chang- 
 ing," interrupted Helen from her corner, 
 " if one really learned anything. We just, 
 go round and round like squirrels in a 
 cage." 
 
 "Somebody," Anne remarked, "said 
 that all progress was simply a moving 
 round from one part of the circle to 
 another." 
 
 " That may be true," Howard answered ; 
 " only, when you get back to the starting- 
 point, you find that it isn't the same 
 point." 
 
 He rose to take Helen's cup, noticing, 
 as he did so, that her cheeks looked thin 
 in the firelight. 
 
 " It is for the last time," he said, as he 
 held out his hand. The girl started, and 
 Anne's pet Sevres cup fell to the floor. 
 Then, first, the young man caught the 
 expression in Helen's eyes when they 
 rested on him. 
 
 " That's symbolic," said Anne. " No ;
 
 176 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 I don't mind in the least. Bohemia began 
 with that cup, and all the illusions of 
 Bohemia perish with it." 
 
 " Mend it," suggested Howard, holding 
 up the fragments. " Life is nothing but a 
 putting together of the broken pieces. I 
 can imagine a process of learning through 
 loss that would make one's failures satis- 
 factory. By the way, when success comes, 
 it doesn't usually take the shape that you 
 expect. The Art Museum has offered to 
 buy my picture, on condition that its name 
 shall be changed !" 
 
 " Accept ! " cried Anne. " Change the 
 name every year. Think how many noble 
 truths you could illustrate." 
 
 The conversation drifted on through the 
 old, great themes. Half earnestly, half in 
 jest, they repeated worn remarks, weighed 
 down by that dull sense of foreboding that 
 haunts all partings. The sky above grew 
 darker ; the stars shone out more clearly. 
 
 " Isn't there anything that lasts?" asked 
 Helen despairingly. 
 
 " Yes," murmured Mrs. Kent.
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 177 
 
 " If I could only paint those lovely, tri- 
 umphant eyes," thought Anne, watching 
 Mrs. Kent's face in the flickering light, 
 " I'd call the picture ' Love and Death.' " 
 
 "You are all too impatient," said Mrs. 
 Kent. "Wait. In the great moments of 
 experience, one knows. One feels that 
 one is working with God at the heart of 
 things, and knows more than one can 
 explain." 
 
 " Suppose we haven't any great mo- 
 ments ? " said Howard grimly. 
 
 "There's your philosophy of learning 
 through loss," answered Mrs. Kent. "Mo- 
 ments of denial may be great." 
 
 She looked sadly at Anne. To her it 
 seemed that the girl had made the great 
 mistake of her life. 
 
 "That is pretty thin philosophy, when 
 it comes to personal application," said 
 Howard, shaking his head. 
 
 "Most philosophy is," suggested Anne. 
 
 <: After all, there's some truth in it. 
 Life is just a chance to learn by living out 
 your own life faithfully," Howard remarked.
 
 178 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 " Isn't it a chance to learn to enter 
 other people's lives ? " asked Mrs. Kent. 
 "One's joy and one's sorrow come to 
 make one understand." 
 
 " How can one understand other people's 
 lives," demanded Anne, "when it is so 
 hard to make the least sense out of one's 
 own ? " 
 
 "Oh dear!" groaned Helen, "you are 
 all saying just the opposite of what you 
 said at first. Don't you remember ? " 
 
 They did remember, and they laughed. 
 
 "All this confirms Mrs. Kent's idea 
 that opinions are not of much account," 
 said Anne. " Miserere is the only one 
 who has been true to his philosophy." 
 She stroked the cat lying in her lap. 
 " He has the only kind of philosophy one 
 can be true to." 
 
 " We have changed our points of view," 
 said Mrs. Kent meditatively. "That, is 
 because we have faced certain experiences. 
 Life always outstrips opinion. We learn 
 the secret bit by bit, and not by thinking 
 only. Every vivid experience is like touch-
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 179 
 
 ing the eyes of the blind. After it, we 
 see forces written over with meanings that 
 escaped us before. So we go creeping 
 nearer and nearer the heart of things. 
 There are worlds within worlds." 
 
 The studio was silent for a minute, ex- 
 cept for Miserere's purring. 
 
 "After all, the beauty of it lies in the 
 mystery," continued Mrs. Kent. " Life is 
 full of subtle hints, as if its experiences 
 were symbols of something greater, that 
 we cannot understand, yet." 
 
 " Oh dear ! " said Anne. " Life seems 
 to be a kind of game where the new ques- 
 tion rises to the lips of the man who 
 answered the last one. I suppose that the 
 privilege of saying the last word is reserved 
 for the last man." 
 
 It was growing late. Mrs. Kent rose 
 to go. Anne lit the lamp and gazed sadly 
 at her departing friends. 
 
 " It is going to be so lonely in Bohe- 
 mia ! " she said. " Mrs. Kent and I will 
 go about with slowly whitening hair, 
 holding converse with the ghosts of our
 
 180 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 friends. Then grass will begin to grow 
 in the pavement." 
 
 " The fellowship of the Round Table is 
 broken forever," said Howard, holding out 
 his hand in parting. 
 
 Anne's eyes grew dim. The world of 
 real people seemed for a moment to dis- 
 appear with those familiar faces that faded 
 away into the darkness of the corridor.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 " Along white roadways thou shalt travel 
 Whereon men thirst." 
 
 The Bard of the Dimbovitza. 
 
 THROUGH the hot July afternoon Anne 
 Bradford worked with fierce zest. An Ital- 
 ian boy was posing for her, a tiny creature 
 whose big brown eyes and pointed chin 
 suggested a baby faun. Anne's eyes 
 shone as she sketched the shaggy curls. 
 At length the child grew tired and she 
 sent him home. 
 
 The artist too was exhausted, but she 
 did not know it. She climbed the steps 
 to the gallery and looked out upon the 
 deserted Square. All the shutters were 
 closed. Only here and there a row of 
 small flower-pots upon a window-sill be- 
 trayed the presence of some lingering 
 Bohemian. 
 
 Anne leaned her elbows upon the win- 
 dow-seat and dropped her head upon her 
 
 181
 
 1 82 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 hands. Once again life was like wine 
 upon her lips in the joy of creating. For 
 days she had been toiling with her brushes, 
 painfully conscious of herself. Now had 
 come one of the divine moments when 
 work and worker are one. For other 
 people there were other ways of escape. 
 This was hers. 
 
 The winter and its perturbations seemed 
 very far away. Now that its troubles 
 were all over and nothing personal greatly 
 mattered, the old inspiration was coming 
 back. Hope and -fear and regret made 
 only a kind of mental atmosphere in which 
 the one reality of Anne's life, her art, 
 stood out in soft relief. 
 
 " If I can only keep out of my own way," 
 she murmured, "I can do something." 
 
 Even the disillusionment of success had 
 ceased to pain. To have expected satis- 
 faction from anything external had been 
 childish. In no flippant sense was it true 
 that the thing one has is not the thing 
 one wants. Truly one never reaches any 
 place without finding that the place is not
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 183 
 
 there. The worn ideas came to the girl 
 with the poignancy of a new experience. 
 She had all she wanted a chance to 
 work on. In store for her were perhaps 
 keener insight, greater skill, a firmer grasp 
 on the real meanings of things. 
 
 A spray of ivy outside the window blew 
 out into the sun. Its beauty brought 
 quick tears to Anne's tired eyes. For all 
 that the artist missed there was com- 
 pensation in the added preciousness of 
 little things. Surely, in a world so prod- 
 igal of life, there was a place for the mere 
 watcher. Among people who squandered 
 experience so recklessly there was room 
 for one whose task was 'to record. 
 
 It was a limited life, but one need not 
 suffer all in order to understand. He who 
 "raised the walls of man " made them not 
 altogether opaque. Oh, people did not 
 know how keen the taste of another's 
 experience might be ! For some, the 
 crumbs that fall from the rich man's 
 table have made a liberal feast. Here 
 was the eternal paradox of art, to feel
 
 184 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 all so sharply, to have nothing of one's 
 own. 
 
 Here, too, was the divine satisfaction 
 of the artist, to lose the consciousness 
 of self, to be only a mirror, reflecting the 
 faces of others. Not self-expression, but 
 accurate report, was what one should strive 
 for. From that criticism of her too ego- 
 istic work she would start out with a 
 prayer for clearer vision. 
 
 Yes, this was her home. She looked 
 out with quiet exultation at the Square. 
 Angle and corner, clinging wisteria and 
 quaint window were hers in peculiar pos- 
 session. For her remained strenuous en- 
 deavour, stern discipline ; for her, too, the 
 moments when the shaping idea took pos- 
 session, walked with her down the en- 
 chanted street. 
 
 Then, there was Mrs. Kent. 
 
 Anne thought of Howard with a remote 
 sadness. 
 
 " If it had not been for Mrs. Kent, I might 
 have given up. The real thing is too beau- 
 tiful to be imitated in any kind of sham."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 185 
 
 But apparently it was the real thing for 
 Howard. Oh, this was a puzzling world ! 
 
 It was not real for her. Down under 
 love and friendship and every human feel- 
 ing lay the artist passion. This alone had 
 haunted her at night, risen with her in the 
 morning, had been " nearer than breathing, 
 closer than hands and feet." It was the 
 deepest reality, as yet. To it should be 
 given the devotion of an undivided heart. 
 
 She was to be only a wayfarer, then, 
 past other people's lives. From the pict- 
 ure above the door her father's eyes 
 looked over to her with the old sympathy. 
 Into her mind came a fragment of the 
 Odyssey that she had translated for him 
 long ago in his study at Hazleton : 
 
 " Whoso draws near unwarned and hears 
 the Sirens' voices, by him no wife nor little 
 child shall ever stand, glad at his coming 
 home."
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 " THREE years ago to-day," said Howard 
 Stanton, "you went away from Bohemia." 
 
 "And a year ago day before yesterday," 
 answered Helen, "you came striding up 
 that walk. Do you remember?" 
 
 " Do I remember !" he cried. " I stayed 
 away as long as I could." 
 
 They were sitting on the veranda of 
 Helen's ancestral home. Ivy and clema- 
 tis and wisteria, climbing about the stone 
 pillars, made a green background for the 
 two heads. Before them stretched the 
 lawn that had been the pride of Helen's 
 great-grandfather. 
 
 "I told Sarah to bring out the tea- 
 things," said a soft voice from the door- 
 way. " Now I am going upstairs. I do 
 not care for any tea." 
 
 A gray-haired lady was standing behind 
 them. Family tradition lurked in the old- 
 fashioned curls at the sides of her face, 
 186
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 187 
 
 and in the stiff folds of her black silk 
 gown. Her brown eyes rested affection- 
 ately on Howard. She adored her daugh- 
 ter's fiance". 
 
 "Don't leave us," begged Helen. But 
 the mother had already gone. 
 
 Presently a maid appeared with a tray. 
 She was tall and thin. A becoming cap 
 rested on her brown hair. It was Anna- 
 bel Annabel, subdued by two years of 
 training into a most unnatural silence. 
 She skilfully arranged the table, then 
 disappeared. 
 
 It was a silver service. Cups and 
 saucers, cream jug and sugar holder had 
 been brought long ago by an ancestress 
 from England. Helen toyed with the 
 cups, then slowly made the tea. 
 
 "Tell me about Mrs. Kent and 
 Anne," she said. 
 
 "They've gone to live in a remarkable 
 apartment," Howard responded briskly. 
 " Page ; reception-room downstairs ; din- 
 ing-room in the suite. They have their 
 dinners sent up through hot tubes, or
 
 1 88 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 some such way. It is luxury that ought 
 to disturb Anne's conscience." 
 
 "And Anne's pictures? Her letters 
 say nothing about them." 
 
 "Anne is a success, even financially. 
 I am proud of her," said Howard, laying 
 a biscuit on Helen's saucer. 
 
 Helen looked at him. The old hero- 
 worship in her eyes was blended now with 
 something else. He was handsomer than 
 ever, she thought. The slight plumpness 
 was becoming. 
 
 "Howard," she asked slowly, "have you 
 ever been sorry that you came ? " 
 
 He put down his cup, and faced her in 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Sorry ? Oh, my darling ! My spirit 
 has come home at last, to the only home 
 that it has ever had." 
 
 She turned and faced him. Above the 
 creamy laces of her dress her face rose 
 like a brilliant flower. 
 
 " Do you ever wish that I were Anne ? " 
 
 "No," he answered firmly. "Anne is 
 Anne, and you are you."
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 189 
 
 " But you cared ! " 
 
 "I care yet, only differently. We're 
 the best friends in the world. Things have 
 fallen into the right place, that is all. I 
 sometimes wonder how the old boyish pas- 
 sion could have lasted so long. Now it is 
 settled. You see, there is nothing so com- 
 pletely gone, when it is gone, as a feeling." 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "Anne never quite sympathized with my 
 wish to help the unfortunate. She could 
 not enter into that. I feel more and more 
 sure that that is the enduring part of me, 
 my permanent self. In this you and I are 
 one.'' 
 
 " We must do a great many things," 
 said Helen thoughtfully. " Of course 
 we cannot leave mother, to go to live in 
 the slums. When father died I promised 
 to stay with her always. But we can help 
 with money." 
 
 " I'll go to the city frequently to see 
 how things are getting on." 
 
 Helen pointed, smiling, to a space among 
 the trees,
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 
 
 "That is where your studio is to stand," 
 she whispered. 
 
 Howard suddenly turned. 
 
 " Where's the symbolic picture that you 
 did? Did you destroy it." 
 
 " No ; it's upstairs," answered Helen, 
 flushing. "Please don't ask to see it." 
 
 But his wish prevailed, and Annabel was 
 sent to bring the picture from the garret. 
 She eyed her young mistress and her 
 lover affectionately. Annabel's artistic 
 sense of the fitness of things was satisfied 
 at last. 
 
 "Why!" cried Helen, as she looked at 
 the motley group, the disfiguring streak of 
 paint, and the retreating figure of the rich 
 young man, " that young man's face looks 
 like you. I never saw that ! " 
 
 "I did," said Howard. "It was the 
 picture that first made me think - " 
 
 "Think what?" demanded Helen. 
 
 " That you weren't meant for an artist," 
 he answered hastily, pointing to the dis- 
 torted drawing. Then he changed the 
 subject. The literary significance of that
 
 A Puritan Bohemia 191 
 
 half-portrait seemed unpleasantly appropri- 
 ate in the light of his present surroundings. 
 
 The sun went slowly down. Shadows 
 crept across the lawn. From marshy 
 places near, the notes of hylas came to 
 them, cool and sweet. The charms of love 
 and spring and twilight blended. 
 
 In the gathering darkness Howard took 
 the girl's soft hand and placed it against 
 his forehead. 
 
 " It is hard to believe," he said, " in sym- 
 pathy so deep. You are more real to me 
 than myself, the meaning of myself." 
 
 The white fingers caressed his hair. As 
 he spoke again, the words had a familiar 
 sound. Had he read them somewhere? 
 It did not matter. He was deeply in 
 earnest. 
 
 " You hold my whole life in the hollow 
 of that hand." 
 
 THE END
 
 An Experiment in Altruism, 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET SHERWOOD. 
 
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 An Ethical Movement. 
 
 A VOLUME OF LECTURES 
 
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 JM R. W. L. SHELDON has been for ten years Lecturer of the Ethical 
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 Ethical Movement inaugurated twenty years ago in New York City by Dr. 
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 tude of mind of one who has made of ethics a religion, and who believes in 
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 ology as an inspiring force to a certain class of minds, and they illustrate the 
 transition from an accepted orthodox faith to this ethical idealism, showing 
 to what extent such a change may or may not alter or influence one's gen- 
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 point may modify one's views about social or political institutions. At the 
 beginning of the volume is a short sketch describing the rise of the new Ethi- 
 cal Societies and their development throughout America and Europe. The 
 author gives his personal interpretation of what this new Ethical Movement 
 signifies as a tendency both in practical life and in the world of religious 
 thought. It is an individual statement throughout, with no efforts to speak 
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 religious teacher, but also to those that may be groping helplessly about, 
 unable to adopt an orthodox faith, yet longing for something to believe in or 
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