EKTKAND SMITH-* 
 
 BOOK STORE 
 CACHES OF BOOK3- 
 
 39 MAIN ST. 
 
 9NONNATI. OHM
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 A LOVE EPISODE 
 
 BY 
 
 PITTS HARRISON BURT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 G. W. Dillinghaui Co., Publishers 
 
 MDCCCXCVIII 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 CoPYRIGHt, l8q8, BV 
 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM CO. 
 
 REGRET OF SPUING
 
 The decorations for this book were 
 drawn by Mr. Artus Van Briggle of the 
 Rookwood Potter}', several of them 
 from Tanagra Statuettes. The vases, 
 made at the Pottery, are after designs 
 by the author. 
 
 1711131
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 MOONLIGHT PAGE 
 
 I. Elizabeth ... 9 
 
 II. The Idol ... 33 
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 I. The Undertone . . 69 
 
 II. The Shrine ... 89 
 
 III. The Apology . . 99 
 
 DAWN 
 
 I. Fires . . . . 117 
 
 II. Hope . . 135 
 
 III. The Broken Reed . 147 
 
 IV. The Ring ... 155 
 
 V. The Vision . . . 169 
 
 VI. The Clay . . .181 
 
 VII. Life .... 191 
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 I. The Bucket Shop . 197 
 
 II. Her Creed . . . 223 
 
 III. The Prodigal Son . 233 
 
 IV. Regret . . . 243
 
 "Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body 
 rather than the soul, and who is inconstant because 
 he is a lover of the inconstant ; and therefore 
 when the bloom of youth which he was desiring 
 is over he takes wings and flies away, in spite 
 of all his words and promises ; whereas the love 
 of the noble mind, which is in union with the un- 
 changeable, is everlasting." 
 
 * * * * 
 
 " Love is only birth in beauty whether of body 
 or soul." SYMPOSIUM.
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 I. ELIZABETH 
 
 A HOT, enervating day in later May had 
 closed as I sat by a window of a house in 
 the interior. In our latitude the warm, 
 soft, dewless hours, till long past midnight, 
 are spent in lightless rooms, on piazzas, 
 9
 
 RGRE7^ OF SPRING 
 
 in street walks, or under the stars ; given to 
 gossip, thoughtful talk, or silence broken 
 by the sound of fluttering fans, laughter, 
 and voices murmuring in the dark. 
 
 The daffodil tints of the higher sky 
 were changing to the red of guinea gold 
 as I looked across the room. There, oppo- 
 site me, at a window similar to mine, sat an 
 erect, handsome woman, no longer young. 
 A strong sense of the beauty in her face, 
 flushing as it faded towards its golden 
 twilight, allured, entranced me. I was en- 
 ticed anew by a spiritual vivacity, dimmed 
 by the haze of years, which yet shone over 
 the lines of age and pain. She was still 
 vigorous in her pose, and her mind was 
 youthful, as I well knew. The marks and 
 color of her years were not falsely hidden, 
 or disguised by art, rather accentuated and 
 pushed forward, as if to serve the part of a 
 
 screen. 
 
 10
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 A refined and delicate expression, more 
 beautiful in some ways than the lovely 
 flush of youth, came and went among the 
 wrinkles about her eyes and across her 
 brow. It seemed to glide away into a 
 mass of wavy gray hair, like an inner 
 voice which sought an utterance. 
 
 The rigid parting of the hair, carefully 
 smoothed by a long-gone convention, 
 showed her reserve and reticence. The 
 lawn fichu over her shoulders and a plain 
 black silk dress gave her the air of a Puri- 
 tan. A sense of masterful restraint was 
 relieved by the gayety and brilliancy of 
 her brown eyes, that were still bright. 
 She seemed in manner and dress and ways 
 to assume age as a mask, yet the actual years 
 were there. She suggested, rather than 
 the matron, the nun, ignorant of the pith 
 and toil of life. You felt that in her com- 
 pany there would be delight and respect.
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 But one blinks the lackings of a woman, 
 one takes the impression her manners give, 
 and the feeling her tones impart : exasper- 
 ated by a pretense of girlishness ; charmed 
 by culture, sympathy, and womanliness, 
 and even coquetry, for that has no age and 
 always lends a flavor. 
 
 Her ways and movements were high 
 bred, her tone exclusive. Her manner 
 plain and direct, although sweet; and her 
 refusal to allow intrusion or to seek confi- 
 dence, gained for her a place apart from 
 the world and from me. 
 
 I, a grizzled old bachelor, upon whom 
 generations of maidens had sharpened their 
 arts, and still flattered by that ever-chang- 
 ing "prime of life," looked at this wo- 
 man, as I had done for years, with a 
 bowed head and a deep faith. The saf- 
 fron light meanwhile streamed through her 
 window, shedding a veil, as it were, which
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 hid her the more from my sight and 
 reach. 
 
 The house capped a hill in the suburbs ; 
 the back lot we overlooked was a forgot- 
 ten, half-wild bit of old orchard. It was a 
 garden of the past, carpeted with blue- 
 bottles, jonquils, dandelions. Each tree 
 or shrub, lilac, wistaria, snowball, precious 
 as it was from its rarity, was more precious 
 from the tone of age. The fruit trees 
 were relics like ourselves, that once a year 
 put on the blush of maidenhood, to deck 
 gray trunks and hide black scars, but 
 whose withered fruit no one would care 
 to pluck. 
 
 Spring had come suddenly, like the arc- 
 tic spring, when apple laps peach with its 
 bloom, almost in a day. 
 
 From close beside us, an irregular cres- 
 cent of pear trees circled down the hillside, 
 below our window to the left ; a vanguard 
 13
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 of apples farther down to the right. A 
 sturdy bartlett pear tree leaned almost 
 against us, and with its outer arms clasped 
 a jargonelle, not so strong or high. 
 
 They seemed an old couple on the 
 downward, rainless side of life. Farther 
 and farther on, others shone, each a dis- 
 tinct massive figure in the shade, until 
 their lines blurred in a whitish cloud 
 billows of blooms on which we seemed to 
 float. In full blossom all the sunny day, 
 the flowers had been turned to a faint 
 golden tint, which made their tone more 
 sympathetic, and less cold than the dead 
 white more human. 
 
 The joy of youth, the desire once again 
 to live, to cry in praise of beauty alone 
 the fire of all things born seemed to come 
 from throats of this myriad of flowers, in- 
 audible, yet strong as the light of love in 
 the eyes that greet. 
 
 14
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 Soon, a full yellow moon, radiant and 
 languorous, slowly rising through the 
 smoky, dusty air, faded the rose tints of 
 the sky, and changed the atmosphere of 
 feeling. Later it shone from a steel-blue 
 heaven, on these blossom-draped figures, so 
 warm in tone that their color became like 
 old ivory, and the limbs and branches age- 
 black carvings and traceries. 
 
 Faint mist wreaths incense of the festi- 
 val rose and floated in gossamer-like folds 
 about the trunks of the trees, and, at times, 
 above their forms, adding, by their mo- 
 tion, a feeling of life and rhythm. The 
 flowers' perfume seemed wafted to me like 
 music on these waves, and after a time to 
 grow poignant as the pathos of " Che 
 Faro," to have a meaning of sad regret 
 a voice of imagined spirits. 
 
 All fear, all pain over lost opportunity, 
 or lack of appreciation, were like a far-off 
 15
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 sea, that only murmured a discontent. 
 My dead loves, joys of the past, seemed 
 to live, to thrill my soul. It was but 
 a gnarled, grim, worn-out trunk, trying 
 anew to put forth blossoms. 
 
 My companion, under the same intoxi- 
 cating influence, vainly tried to fight its 
 sway with ideas on the philosophy of liv- 
 ing, words to amuse the man, which I did 
 not heed, nor even hear ; until she, too, 
 was swept away. But with the womanish 
 instinct for her prison house of convention- 
 ality, she again broke the silence : 
 
 " Beauty," she said, as if repeating her 
 creed, " the worship of beauty moves the 
 world. It is the essence of all good. 
 Without this thirst there would have been 
 no Egypt, no Greece, no Italy, no France 
 nothing but Africa ; " and she sighed, as 
 if all that was worth living for, had been 
 
 blotted out. 
 
 16
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 11 You crush religion under foot like a 
 beetle," I replied with some heat. " You 
 forget how religion has routed savagery 
 from the world." 
 
 " Yes, it has taught us to put on clothes 
 to mask the animal a little." 
 
 " No ! Through the mind and heart, 
 religion has lifted man." 
 
 "James, what a Puritan you are; how 
 blind to the core of religion;" and she 
 laughed quietly to appease my wrath. 
 " Spiritual beauty, the heart of man must 
 know to live, and there he worships until 
 the slime of the serpent destroys the 
 beauty. Dogma to degeneracy is the 
 course Jupiter or Buddha." 
 
 Parrot chatter of two old people, sit- 
 ting in the gloom of day and life, 
 thinking that experience might teach hap- 
 piness. 
 
 " And love ? " I asked, more to myself 
 17
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 than of her wandering in feeling and 
 thought to that garden of paradise. 
 
 She made no reply, but even in the light 
 of the night I saw her large eyes glow and 
 seemingly give out a gleam of fire, a signal 
 that she too could follow on the same voy- 
 age of memory. The shadows cloaked our 
 bodies, and in the dark sea, present ties, 
 pains, ills and age seemed to sink, and our 
 minds and hearts were stirred to youth. 
 
 I said : " Sometimes I think vanity 
 greater than religion or love, as if vanity 
 caused love /t does almost all else." 
 
 " Hunger and love keep and create mere 
 life. You can remain a brute, but love 
 will lift you to see loveliness, to be sweet, 
 and there's your happiness," she replied, 
 answering in the quick tones of conviction 
 irritating. 
 
 " But you, unmarried of course you 
 
 could not deeply know of love." 
 
 18
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 It was a rude speech, cruel in many ways, 
 yet not meant so. For what woman con- 
 fesses, even i n her prayers, that she does not 
 know the height and depth of love ? They 
 always love ; if not the real, then the ideal. 
 
 " Ah ! " came from her with the round 
 volume of an organ tone, and a flavor of 
 coquetry, yet low and far off, touched by 
 irony, and as if the spirits without spoke 
 through her voice. There was no reproach, 
 but more of pity, when she said : " That 
 is always your material, half view. You, 
 who seem to me to have murdered the bet- 
 ter part of love, and always to see it from 
 the man side." 
 
 " Shall I join the college women who 
 aim at a neuter sex? " 
 
 A young woman's laugh of innocence, 
 pleasure, and banter, which blew away all 
 sense of the years of her past life, rippled 
 from her. 
 
 19
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " Ah ! " I answered, wheeling from the 
 warm south wind which came through the 
 window, and the beauty of the blossoms, as 
 an arrow of feeling she had sent ran 
 through me. I sat upright. " Was spring 
 indeed come again?" I thought. 
 
 " Elizabeth," I asked with a smile, 
 " were you blonde or brunette? " ready to 
 make peace or far more. But the power 
 of youth in this sword-thrust was weak ; 
 the very question showed the shaky wrist 
 the long-forgotten practice at the fence; 
 the feeling had lost its strength. 
 
 In her dignified fascinating presence you 
 would not have thought of her figure, nor 
 felt the lack of curve and swell, where color 
 had shone or charm enthralled; whether 
 she had been light or dark. Somehow her 
 character and expression she was still a wo- 
 man lifted her above these facts. Often I 
 had wondered over the why and wherefore.
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 " Black red and black, like a black- 
 heart cherry, ' Good enough to eat,' he 
 used to say ; ' ' and she softly laughed 
 again, as if it were to him she was speak- 
 ing. 
 
 " You are lovely. Old and young fairly 
 worship you. Who was he?" 
 
 " Forget," she said gravely; " let it be 
 hidden in your memory by those flowers, 
 that are so white, so like a death sheet." 
 
 I felt myself blush as if I had intruded 
 where she knelt. Jxmg and intimately as 
 I had known her, yet never before had I 
 dared to approach her inner life so nearly. 
 It was not idle curiosity nor even sympathy 
 that now drove me on ; but the search for 
 truth and for the secret of her content. 
 
 " Trust me," I said, softly. 
 
 The quiver of blossoms and the silvery 
 mist seemed a veil shutting off ordinary 
 
 affairs and conventions. If ever a heart 
 21
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 could open to a friend's, now must that 
 door unclose. 
 
 " It is nothing," she replied more 
 sternly, raising her mental mask, which 
 had partly fallen, " a mere speck or trifle 
 in the mass of life; not even strange." 
 
 " Confess. It is due me. What was 
 your shipwreck? What has buoyed you so 
 sweetly through a hard life?" I asked, as 
 a priest might of a penitent. 
 
 "Wait " 
 
 She gazed steadily into the pale, sapphire 
 night. I studied her high-bred profile, 
 sharply edged by the reflected light; finely 
 cut, not by heredity or accident of har- 
 mony alone, but by her own will and soul. 
 
 "You were not born in the West, I 
 know." 
 
 At this, she began quietly to talk. 
 " You remember Rockfield, that bleak 
 town on the bleak hills of Massachusetts,
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 where hearts harden into sympathy with 
 the stony soil, and pleasures of the senses, 
 from the sterile environment, become sins? 
 I was born in that atmosphere." 
 
 That was the foundation stone she wanted 
 well laid, for she waited there for a time. 
 
 Then she went on : "If there was no 
 taste there or culture, there was hard work 
 and hard thinking, which are rare grind- 
 stones for the will and character. You, 
 who grew up in this semi-tropical Ohio 
 valley, have been too softened by your nur- 
 ture, and suffer for it now, and have suf- 
 fered all your life. The other is a hard 
 taskmaster, but the fruit, when it ripens, 
 is noble in kind and quality. Our corn is 
 sweeter than yours ; our apples have a flavor 
 of which you are ignorant. Yet for a wo- 
 man, the climate and life are often bitter, 
 acting like frost on the more delicate ten- 
 drils of her nature." 
 
 23
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " Yes, I remember the sweetness and 
 delicacy of those pearly gray tones of the 
 stone fences and piles of rocks : the quiet 
 restraint of the pastures and hills. They 
 are far finer than the monotony of Holland. 
 They contain more touches of local color. 
 Then the greenish-black broad stroke, for 
 contrast, of the street of elms in the valley 
 below, with a bit of white steeple shooting 
 out. The air and light were tonics." 
 
 " You look at the dress of everything. 
 You see it in color, as if it were to be 
 painted. The soul escapes your Southern 
 eyes. Such an outlook to you is as grate- 
 ful as ice in summer. You forget the lack 
 of life." 
 
 "Self-devotion?" 
 
 "Truth!" 
 
 " And your people, were they of the 
 class in whom self -martyrdom mounts to 
 
 selfishness?" I asked. 
 24
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 " Ah ! It was the cruel complete truth 
 always before all else with them." 
 
 "Were they rich or poor?" Unless 
 led, she would never quit speculation, and 
 tell her story. 
 
 " That was no question, there," she re- 
 plied, rather sharply. " Wealth was not a 
 social line. Whether one was orthodox or 
 Unitarian was the black line. My parents 
 were strictly orthodox and had the old- 
 school doctor." 
 
 "So," I said, " that accounts for your 
 dignity and reserve." The jesting tone 
 which covered the truth did not ruffle her. 
 
 " They were well-to-do as things went, 
 yet they were bound hand and foot by the 
 hard bonds of daily life. Spots of color 
 come back to me now, where they must 
 have put the stain of their life blood. 
 Duty was their master and ideal. My 
 mother seemed clothed in austerity as with 
 25
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 a nun's garment, and her life stares at me 
 with an expression of granite. Yet behind 
 the house she had a bit of special garden 
 what a flame and fire of poppies I see it ! 
 Not an inch unfilled. An orgy of color ! " 
 
 Again she halted in the toilsome road : 
 her doubtful steps an inheritance from her 
 mother. " Why it all was, I have often 
 sought," she went on, speaking as much to 
 herself as to me : " whether the fault which 
 broke the chain came from them." 
 
 " And your father? " I asked. 
 
 " My father," she replied in a brisker 
 tone, " was a stalwart, high-headed, dark 
 man, tender of others. New England the- 
 ology planted a thorn in his heart. He, 
 too, lifted his eyes like a monk to imagi- 
 nary beauty beyond the grave. It was 
 simply the surroundings which covered his 
 nature with a black pall." 
 
 " You are like your father in looks and 
 26
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 temperament. I feel him speak in the 
 sympathy you show." 
 
 " A violet to a pansy," and she laughed 
 scornfully. The sound of her voice seemed 
 to give relief to a long-pent pain and 
 pride. " He was a beautiful man. I 
 promised to be fine looking was a little 
 until ' A pause came in her words, and 
 she seemed to be gazing at some youthful, 
 handsome lover with a rapture that had 
 grown in her mind through the years, to 
 whom no test of life or time had come 
 to tarnish the color of his cheek or dim his 
 eyes. 
 
 The far-off bassoon-like notes of the 
 night one felt to be an echo to her passion- 
 ate tones, and after a while softened the 
 pangs of her heart, for she went on as if 
 that chapter in her life was closed, and the 
 visions before her now were more pleasing. 
 
 " George was handsome," she said in- 
 
 2?
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 tensely ; " he was a blond. He looked as 
 you imagine a Norseman, bold and daring, 
 ready to fight any dragon. It was his 
 race, not his nature. You won't care to 
 know his last name? I have never spoken 
 it in all these long weary years." 
 
 There might have been tears on her 
 cheeks ; I could not see. They moistened 
 and vibrated through her voice, without 
 breaking it. " His was the next house to 
 ours. We grew up together; were school- 
 mates, friends, then lovers. We shared 
 the various passions of youth, from wild 
 flowers to Emerson. I talked and he list- 
 ened. Must I tell you all? Must you 
 know the details, so that hereafter you will 
 never again look down on me in that doubt- 
 ful, compassionate way, and ask ' Love* 
 too?' full of sorrow that I have never 
 known what love is? " 
 
 Then she proudly raised her head away 
 28
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 from the pear-tree blossoms, as if she no 
 longer needed their cloak of sympathy. 
 The gentle lady, who had always shown a 
 peculiar deference, delicacy, and grace in 
 her quiet, subdued life, became queenly in 
 pose and dignity. 
 
 " George, I know, would never have 
 loved me had I not been comely," she 
 said, wandering again to fields of ama- 
 ranth. " Long before that time he was a 
 god to me sunshine, air, life itself. I 
 watched always but to catch a glimpse of 
 him when he left his house a sweet joy. 
 All my waking hours were full of thoughts 
 of him, as if it were the breath of my body : 
 his heart, not mine, beating in me. I 
 must have made him love me. Now I can 
 see it. His love was only a reflection from 
 the great fire which burned in my soul. 
 The fault may be there ; he is not guilty." 
 
 " There is no guilt or fault in love," I 
 29
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 said. "True, like all great passions, it 
 may go mad at times, and the penalty of 
 broken social laws may make a canker in 
 the heart." 
 
 "Never, James; it is never love that 
 goes mad ! " A glow of purity dyed her 
 face. 
 
 " Love is separate and single our 
 own," I went on. "Whether the image 
 we adore be clay or steel, it matters not, 
 if we only see the passion and not the 
 object." 
 
 " Yes, he loved me as the snow warms 
 the earth with its clean, cold mantle : 
 while I burned towards him like the sun of 
 the tropics. The snow melted away, 
 though hidden by gray ashes the coals of 
 fire are still alive." 
 
 She leaned back in her deep chair, half 
 reclining, and with upturned face full of 
 a rapturous repose. Now the core and 
 30
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 course of her story had been told, the facts 
 were of poor consequence and might be of 
 any type. They were of no moment to 
 her : to me, as sweet and indefinite as scent 
 and savor of the pear blossoms. 
 
 " You leave the mystery deeper than 
 ever," I said rather harshly. 
 
 She sat up, holding the arms of the 
 chair, and sharply looked at me, with an 
 attitude of defiance : then sank back and 
 laughed pleasantly, and I knew the game 
 was won.
 
 II. THE IDOL 
 
 "THE truth was," she 
 said calmly, " George's 
 people were fair- haired 
 folks, of a different type 
 and character from ours, 
 distinct almost as white 
 and black. They 
 were regarded as 
 aliens in our remote, 
 primitive, English- 
 settled town. They 
 were careless in their ways and habits, 
 thoughtless of the many severities of pride 
 and the hardships which we suffered. They 
 neither believed in the Trinity, nor re- 
 turned borrowed things ; would receive as 
 freely and willingly as they gave. Gay- 
 33
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 hearted and laughter-loving, life was to 
 them a pastime and not a penance. The 
 traits of a roving race, which generations 
 had not worn away, were still in their 
 kind-hearted, sympathetic natures. I tell 
 you all this, that you may try to under- 
 stand, and not judge with the hard justice 
 of men. But you will never see his side, 
 never have a sense of his freedom and ease 
 of living, nor of his charm. My parents 
 were displeased by my devotion to him, 
 and spoke scornfully of his lack of quali- 
 ties they held to be supreme. For all that, 
 he was what they called ' likely,' and as 
 ' well-to-do ' as we were. The training 
 and discipline I had ever with me, my self- 
 reliance and independence, caused me to 
 care but little for what they thought or 
 said. I loved him, that was enough. Yes, 
 they too felt this law and power. He was 
 a giant almost in size. You will smile, 
 34
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 maybe, when I tell you that this wavy- 
 haired, blue-eyed, sweet-smiling monster 
 used to pick me up unawares, holding me 
 as a child in his arms, and kiss me, before 
 my force of will or words could reach him, 
 and make him respect my dignity." She 
 was half ashamed, yet, the barrier now 
 down, still proud to have me know the 
 manner and look of the man who had loved 
 her. 
 
 " He seems to have been a well-favored, 
 fine-looking man," I said, as one would 
 speak of a horse. " Had he any mind to 
 match yours? Was there in him any emo- 
 tional sense above the eating and drinking 
 phase of life? For indeed I cannot see 
 you or imagine you inflamed by a love 
 which was not largely spiritual." 
 
 " Oh, you are at fault, James. He 
 could learn when he chose, or when I 
 willed he should. He was a dreamless 
 35
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 haunter of the woods, a fisherman, a man 
 of the past, primeval, out of his period 
 yet a master man. His mind was good, 
 without the will power to keep step to our 
 shrill fifes." 
 
 " I see : you blazed the track in study. 
 He was like a child to you." 
 
 " Yes. He was never out of my mind 
 nor off my heart. My pride was in him, 
 not in myself." 
 
 " After school, how was it? " 
 
 "Well," and she hesitated"! sent 
 him to college. It was I that urged him 
 and insisted he must go. He would have 
 been content to live on, happy as we were. 
 There comes in my responsibility for all 
 the future. It need not have been. There 
 was but little ready money. I begged of 
 his friends even my father helped." 
 
 " And you more than all. You, I do 
 not doubt, worked and slaved for him ; you 
 36
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 pleaded with the old folks, flattered them 
 into pride over George, to make the sacri- 
 fice for his sake. You need not say it I 
 know what you must have done." 
 
 "I did. Before he was through, and 
 when his needs became more urgent, I took 
 in tailor's sewing to aid him. No, I do 
 not blush. As I live, nothing, looking 
 back, seems more delicious than the work 
 I did for George. I gave myself, body 
 and soul. What could make me happier ? 
 Over the needle, my love grew into chan- 
 nels it has never left; grew so deep, its 
 wells have never ceased to give the waters 
 of life. Think of it. A worship of beauty 
 and an unselfish love. Whoever takes these 
 into her heart is blest, as with the dews of 
 the desert." 
 
 The shadows had moved, and she was 
 more clearly in the light. She looked far 
 younger and more beautiful, as she sat 
 37
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 erect with her hands clasped. The night 
 wind rustled the tender leaves ; now she 
 half reclined again, full of thought rather 
 than her emotion. 
 
 "While I worked," she went on, " I stud- 
 ied so as to keep pace with him ; to be his 
 equal in mind, if not in body. The crutch 
 I had been I did not know, or the constant 
 incentive. So eager was my pursuit of an 
 ideal that even a tinge of estrangement, 
 which I felt, did not check my madness. 
 His worry over his examination, his 
 ' stand,' which kept falling, was cause 
 enough." 
 
 " Did he know that you made some of 
 the money he spent ? If he did, you need 
 say no more." 
 
 "No, no," she cried, "don't mis- 
 judge ! Be just. If he had known, and I 
 had told him the truth to take it from me 
 was the deepest favor he was manly and 
 38
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 noble enough to have done so. He was no 
 Turk, no counterfeit cavalier. It was a 
 lethargy of the brain, a visionary straying 
 after strange ' isms,' not any meanness." 
 
 " But that should have made no differ- 
 ence in his love for you. You were con- 
 stant," I said, slightingly. 
 
 "It was my fault. I loved him too 
 much. I was drunk with love's red wine," 
 she replied. 
 
 " How old was he ? Boy or man ? " 
 
 " Twenty-two in years : thirty in many 
 ways. I can see him now, home for his 
 first spring vacation, his yellow, hatless 
 head above the row of green-tinted lilacs 
 which hedged the path to our door porch. 
 The smell or sight of lilacs always brings 
 him back to me, fresh and sparkling like 
 the waters of a brook. The ecstasy of 
 those moments of his approach was always 
 intense, yet full of hope and joy, until I 
 39
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 could look into the depths of those blue 
 eyes and feel the flush of his fair cheek. 
 This time there was trouble, and doubt in 
 his look. I exclaimed, when I saw this 
 shadow : ' George, what is it, dear ? Tell 
 me. It cannot be more than I can over- 
 come.' 
 
 " ' 'Beth,' he said, with despondency 
 in his voice and manner, ' I have gone 
 wrong.' 
 
 " A nervous chill gripped my heart. 
 A sudden pang or blow-like wound in my 
 side made me seem to turn into a stone 
 image, changed by fear or death. It must 
 have been some far instinct in my soul 
 which was aroused. Strange that even then 
 I gave his word ' wrong' its basest mean- 
 ing. I seized his arm, as life came swell- 
 ing back to me, and looked through his 
 eyes to the depth of his very being. I 
 
 seemed then to be able to search his soul, 
 40
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 so great was my love and unity with him. 
 His expression and lines of face were still 
 like a babe's in beauty. I instantly felt 
 he was pure and true. ' Out with it, 
 George. ' And I smiled, glad that it was 
 only some chance or accident, and no 
 canker-worm in his nature. 
 
 " ' Elizabeth,' he said sadly, ' the pro- 
 fessor has told me I cannot pass. My 
 whole four years have been wasted. I have 
 done nothing, nothing.' 
 
 " ' Nonsense, George. Tell me that you 
 love me. Love me, and I will bear you 
 through.' " 
 
 " And you carried him through ? " I in- 
 terrupted. 
 
 "No: it was too late. I tried, but 
 failed. He who had started a leader in 
 the race had ended last. It was bitter to 
 me; like a long fever: to him, a simple 
 ailment."
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " A young man with the incentive of 
 love cannot be without ambition. He 
 must do his work for her sake : and, at 
 that time, the tasks there were trifling. 
 Any dullard ought to have taken a fair 
 rank with ease. Either you failed to 
 gauge his mind or he was not in love. 
 Perhaps the cause lay at the feet of ' Quail,' 
 at the door of rum, or on the table with 
 cards. The case is not worth a smile, 
 much less laughter. Armies, hosts of 
 youngsters, by their ceaseless feet, have 
 worn a canyon down that untoward way." 
 
 She drew back in her chair, looked 
 sternly at me for a moment, and replied : 
 " You fail to grasp the base fact, the 
 temperament of the man. You, who are 
 so active and nervous, so eager to push 
 through what is before you, taking up an 
 affair before you see it as a whole or half 
 know its bearing, cannot understand. 
 42
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 George cared for nature, for human crea- 
 tures, never for the immoral sports of men. 
 The studies given him, the duties of prayers 
 or recitation, were of no importance in his 
 sight. Other things absorbed his time and 
 mind. He simply strayed away on some 
 jaunt or pastime to the woods or the sea. 
 He was unmindful of that which a nar- 
 row, petty nature feels is everything, in a 
 bellstroke or a mark of good behavior. It 
 was only neglect, not wickedness, which 
 ' broke ' him. He lost interest he lost 
 heart. All the high hopes were gone. 
 His inner life grew like a wild flower, 
 soon over, while to me thought and mind 
 were only opening. So George came back 
 to me, handsome still and with the same 
 willing, sweet temper : although the esteem 
 of those about us, which was so essential 
 in my eyes, all vanished into silence." 
 " Lassitude, complicated with nightly 
 43
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 exercises at ' The Woodcock,' were the 
 canker-worms on ' stands ' in old Yale. 
 Your Buddha seems to have calmly sat 
 waiting the inevitable," I said, sarcastic- 
 ally. 
 
 " If my faith was undimmed, James, you 
 can have no reason to carp. There was a 
 time when I felt, had he run wild, I should 
 have been glad. It was not his failure, it 
 was mine. There was no moral wrong, 
 merely simple unfitness, inability. He 
 was as charming and willing as ever." 
 
 " Blind devotion, the sainthood of wo- 
 man," I muttered. 
 
 " That was not the end," she went on, 
 sorrowfully. " I tried again to lift him 
 into ambition. I sent him to New York 
 and buoyed him up to study law. For a 
 time it was as much as I could do to keep 
 him there. Then a new tone came to him. 
 The atmosphere of the place, or what you 
 44
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 will, seemed to float him away, as an in- 
 coming tide a stranded boat." 
 
 "His vanity, very likely; the admira- 
 tion he may have excited was stronger 
 than love or ambition." 
 
 " He was worthy of it. His beauty and 
 sweetness and manly carriage were beyond 
 words," she said, tensely drawn in his 
 defense. " A Lohengrin ! " 
 
 " Beauty no talisman save to a wo- 
 man. ' ' 
 
 " But, James, he was so thoughtful and 
 kindly in manner," she said, pleadingly. 
 
 "Character?" 
 
 " Character. He had the power to 
 charm a bird, much more a woman or man. ' ' 
 
 " Success shows." 
 
 " You forget, in your bookish ways, the 
 strength of the will of the body, and can 
 only see a force of the mind. In your 
 eyes Samson had no will." 
 45
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " The ' Gates of Gaza ' did not save 
 him. He was shorn by a woman." 
 
 " Condemn me, not George. I broke 
 the spell," she replied, with pain in her 
 voice. 
 
 " He was a hero. The feminine in- 
 stinct will have it so," I said scornfully. 
 
 She moved uneasily, drew up her screen 
 of manner, and said in a forced natural 
 tone : " See how much of the radiance has 
 gone from the blossoms; a gray, misty 
 smoke drifts over them. They lose the 
 joyous, youthful expression and seem to 
 take on the commonplace, to have an air 
 of regret." Then in a lighter way : "You, 
 James? What was the last one's name? 
 Some chit to whom you feigned to teach 
 the lore of love? " 
 
 " Too old at woman's arts, Elizabeth. 
 I am not to be diverted." 
 
 Her secrets, like yellowed, faded love- 
 46
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 letters, locked away in a chest, the clasps 
 and bolts rusty with years, were hard to 
 open. Flattery, cajolery, entreaty, scorn, 
 had alike been unfit keys : threats, force 
 must be used, so I said bitterly : 
 
 "Your ideality ruined you. New Eng- 
 land cobweb theories a world of mind 
 without bones or blood, striving to live as 
 saints or gods, sent him forth a gladiator, 
 ' Ave, Caesar, salutamus,' his cry." 
 
 " If not a victor, then the shades ! " she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 Her voice was deep and earnest, though 
 not loud. Every muscle seemed tense 
 when, sitting upright in her chair, she 
 pressed her hand on the window-sill, as 
 if she had reversed the thumb for death. 
 Meanwhile her eyes, glaring at me, spoke 
 of her strong feeling and bitter opposition 
 to any compromise. 
 
 I looked out of my window ; the petals 
 47
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 had begun to fall ; white glints, tear-like, 
 they silently dropped into the dark ; their 
 day was gone. Faint treble cries of chil- 
 dren at play were heard from the far 
 streets ; rapid wheels of the rich rattled on 
 the road below; the muffled surge of the 
 cathedral's vesper bell welled up, per- 
 meated the air. 
 
 Presently she said, in her old, half-sar- 
 castic way ; " The old paradox again : wo- 
 man rules the world, yet always wrong." 
 
 And I, quick to answer : " The wrong 
 lies in the course they would have us steer, 
 sinking love in the still waters of affec- 
 tion and friendship." 
 
 "The struggle of mire against green 
 pastures." 
 
 " As you will. It is useless to argue." 
 
 " Hear, then, and be you the just judge, ' ' 
 she said solemnly. 
 
 I bowed my head before her serious, en- 
 48
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 treating manner, knowing that what she 
 would now say she had never spoken be- 
 fore. The altar where she had prostrated 
 her heart had no litany of tears and com- 
 plaints. I knew from her life. 
 
 " Leave the Viking, graded to a gladia- 
 tor, in his arena, and go back to that cin- 
 der-heap in the rocky hills, its deadly 
 barren life, his old people, my parents, 
 the silent scorn. Walled and barred in 
 that prison, I never lost my faith in him, 
 nor my love. I waited season after sea- 
 son, and he did not come back. It seemed 
 always that the scent of the lilacs would 
 call him home. I lost grasp of him. He 
 faded away like a summer cloud." 
 
 " Did he not write ? " 
 
 " Of course, for a long time ; but noth- 
 ing deceives like letters. Words are idle 
 for truth. It is the manner and tone that 
 speak. Finally that failed." 
 49
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " And no one told you ! " 
 
 " How could I ask or listen?" she re- 
 plied petulantly. "James, after three 
 years of patience I sent for him." She 
 spoke slowly and in a lowered voice, as if 
 confessing a grave sin. 
 
 "He was lost ?" 
 
 " No. He came. I had bidden and 
 he obeyed. But what a caricature of my 
 noble, ideal man, whose heart I trusted, 
 whose nature was so pure and sweet ! I 
 thought he might have walked unspotted 
 in the wilds of Africa or among the sav- 
 ages of Paris." 
 
 " The ' tramp ' in him had overmastered 
 his training. No doubt, he had sought 
 Nirvana in a freedom from convention. 
 Had he grown coated with the mud of the 
 gutter ? ' ' 
 
 " Oh, worse," she exclaimed, " a thou- 
 sand times worse. He was dressed like a 
 50
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 lord : a duke returning to the peasants of 
 his village, could have had no different 
 aspect. The gray-lichened clapboards of 
 the ruined old house seemed to cry out 
 against him and his magnificence. What 
 did I care for dress ? Though he were 
 clothed in purple or in rags, it would have 
 been the same to me. But all honesty, 
 truth, and decency were gone from his face. 
 He was debased in his soul. I knew it the 
 moment my eyes met his. If he had been 
 prosperous, become rich, and in so doing 
 had lost his love for me, I loved him so 
 deeply that my heart would have said ' yes ' 
 to his going. 
 
 " If he had said, ' I love another,' I 
 could have borne it, even though the pang 
 were like death. Anything but dis- 
 honor." 
 
 "Ah, true!" I interrupted, excited as 
 I was by the intensity of her expression. 
 51
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " Saints ! you New Englanders would all 
 be : Saints of the Middle Ages, who only 
 know one sin. Your church, your lives 
 will pardon every sin in the decalogue but 
 that one. You have magnified the teach- 
 ings of an early doctrine, and bowed down 
 before it, untii you are its slaves." 
 
 She rose from her chair indignantly, and 
 proudly stood before me ; her arm out- 
 stretched as if denouncing a culprit. She 
 seemed, from the fire of her action and 
 mood, to be an Abbess, a vestal priestess, 
 an emblem or statue of purity. All the 
 heredity of her Puritan race was at bay, 
 fierce to answer the charge. She made no 
 outcry of denial, nor did she speak in a 
 loud voice, though she was touched to the 
 quick; her tones deepened and strength- 
 ened by the pathos of her arraignment. 
 
 " My life should be an answer to this 
 slander. How can you have such thoughts, 
 52
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 remembering your mother? Civilization ! 
 religion means that restraint. Once that 
 barrier falls, the train of evil, dishonesty, 
 dishonor, selfishness all that makes life 
 debased, unworthy troops through the 
 breach. The subject is without my pale, 
 beneath my knowledge or interest. To 
 you, the physical side of woman's nature is 
 the most charming and precious. You 
 always talk of it and discuss it. Your 
 noisy women do not know the depths of 
 emotion we feel. They are but the foam 
 on the waves, which attracts the eye and 
 strikes the ear with its turbulent boom." 
 Her strong conviction of the truth came 
 rather in the sharply cut intonation and 
 clear articulation, as if it was something 
 holy and sacred. Her intensity quickly 
 died down, her heart and brain were again 
 controlled by her memory of the past. 
 The philosophy of life became to her a 
 53
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 waste of words, insight of that lifted grave- 
 stone. She paused, hunting in her mind 
 for the thread she had dropped ; and wear- 
 ily sat down. I did not dare to answer. 
 She spoke again. 
 
 " I knew when George was coming home, 
 when he must come, if at all. Your type 
 of woman has no sense of the storm in my 
 being then. For awhile hope dazzled me, 
 and I gave up my imagination to its deli- 
 cious thrall ; then despair gripped me as 
 with the jaws of a lion. And as the hour 
 grew nearer and nearer, the suspense 
 seemed worse than the most dread cer- 
 tainty, so that I longed for the trial to be 
 over; more, it seemed, than I had hun- 
 gered for the love I so feared was lost. 
 Oh ! I was beside myself with passion, and 
 knew not what I did. 
 
 " Only few of the words and events re- 
 main burned in my heart. I heard his step 
 54
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 on the board walk, and as the stroke of his 
 footfalls grew louder, they the more surely 
 knelled my doom. I knew instantly, as I 
 know now, that he was changed to me and 
 to himself. He gave the old call we had 
 used to each other as children, and as 
 lovers ' Way Oh ' which was once so 
 full of expression. It told to each the 
 only thing worth knowing. Now his cry 
 was false only a memory not a living 
 fire. At last he came before me, and at 
 the sight of me seemed to be given a new 
 life, for he hurried forward to the porch 
 where I had so often awaited him. Then 
 it was I saw his eyes, and knew his heart 
 was gone from me. Ah ! no, not gone. 
 He did love me. He still loves me." 
 
 She leaned back in her large chair, rest- 
 ing her head on its back. The opening 
 and shutting of her fingers alone told of 
 her feelings. There were no tears, no out- 
 55
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 cries, yet none the less was her emotion in- 
 tense, as she realized the past. She saw 
 her lover in youth and purity, before a 
 change had come in his spiritual life. 
 Like a mother who never forgets her dead 
 child, she, a woman, did not cease to 
 mourn her lost love. 
 
 " A man may be false for a moment," 
 she went on, speaking slowly, to regain 
 self-control. It was as if she was drawing 
 a curtain over the pure, early period of her 
 devotion : or waiting until the memory 
 was gone from her mind, lest she sully it 
 with that which followed. " I am not too 
 prudish or too childish, not too ignorant 
 of the nature of men, but that I know one 
 fault does not kill. But there was a taint 
 in the tones of his voice. A lack of sin- 
 cerity would not have hurt me so deeply, 
 but this was more. I cannot explain it 
 
 a leprosy of the soul. I was so unpre- 
 56
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 pared for this mystery, at which 1 shud- 
 dered ; something in his whole being I 
 could not understand." 
 
 Then she stood, and walked to and fro 
 in the room ; suddenly turning to me, she 
 spoke appealingly and in defense of her- 
 self, as well as in anger against her lover. 
 
 " Before I could speak or raise my hand, 
 dazed as I was, he had clasped me round 
 the waist and drawn me violently to his 
 breast. His arms seemed like serpents 
 about my body, and the flame in him a 
 noxious fire, which filled me with loathing. 
 It was not me he sought. He tried to kiss 
 me, but before his lips touched me, I had 
 writhed from his arms ! ' Oh, George,' I 
 cried out to him terrified, as I was, ard 
 in despair ' My love ! Dear heart ! 
 What is this madness ?' vainly pleading 
 to the image of a dead nobleness. 
 
 " ' Why, Elizabeth, what's the matter 
 57
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 with you ? ' He spoke so abruptly, so 
 roughly, I scarcely knew him. His voice 
 was full of a new meaning that filled me 
 with fear, as if he were a brute and not 
 human. The manly quality, the earnest 
 innocent spirit that used to lift me as by a 
 wind of gentleness and love, was utterly 
 gone. He was a strange, coarse man hid- 
 ing behind the form which was so dear to 
 me, and from whom my being revolted. 
 Yet my heart protested and covered me 
 with reproach. His presence, the sight of 
 him awakened in my being a feeling of 
 devotion so strong as to drown all else. 
 Then I looked at him with the deepest ap- 
 peal of my nature ; words would not come 
 to my lips, so completely was I given up 
 to that look of love. 
 
 " He moved his hand back and forth 
 over his forehead, as if to drive away a 
 pain that was gathering there. ' What 
 58
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 makes you blush so, and why do you so 
 rudely push me off ? ' he asked, as if I was 
 denying him a right. 
 
 " ' You have no such right. Memory of 
 the purity of our love should defend me ! ' 
 I protested, stepping further back from 
 him. 
 
 " ' Defend you ' ? He took a long breath, 
 and raised his head so as to look into my 
 face and eyes, as if to overawe me. 
 
 " ' Do you come here to confess ? Do 
 you wish to lay down the evil burden of 
 your heart ? ' I demanded. 
 
 " ' I have only waited for you to call 
 me. I am here, ' he answered sullenly. 
 
 " It was springtime then as now, and 
 everything seemed willing and eager to 
 cast the old skin of the past, to break into 
 a new life, forgetting the frost of the win- 
 ter, my heart more than all nature. Once 
 the words had passed my lips, my eyes met 
 59
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 his, and in that prolonged gaze into each 
 other's soul passed the answer, the en- 
 treaty, the refusal, and then I knew all. 
 
 " A cherry tree, smothered in a snow- 
 white cloud, was the background of the 
 picture I saw ; it forced the ruddy color of 
 his cheeks, the tawny mane of his head, 
 the blue of his eyes into vivid relief. This 
 outer semblance, so dear to me, pulled at my 
 heart, prayed for a hearing in his defense, 
 and seemed to cry for mercy. While I 
 stared at him, the joy of his presence 
 thrilled through me like breathing another 
 air, so intoxicating was its power. A word 
 from him, a change in the expression about 
 his mouth, anything pure and of the past, 
 would have carried me to his arms. My 
 heart would have seized a victory from my 
 soul at any cost. 
 
 " He who had been fondled, loved, mas- 
 tered, now, mastiff-like, showed his teeth : 
 60
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 ' You have always domineered over me, 
 ruled me,' he said, as if repeating a speech 
 prepared long before, without impulse or 
 feeling from the present; 'always forced 
 me where I did not wish to go. All you 
 told me to do, I have done, and everything 
 failed. Now that I have made some suc- 
 cess, and have come back to pay you for 
 your care, to keep my promise, you turn 
 away and are angry with me.' 
 
 "'Pay me'? I dwelt long in saying 
 these words, they meant so much. ' Love 
 me, George, you mean. There is no other 
 pay in the world worth a farthing.' 
 
 " ' Yes, pay you, if there is any question 
 of money ' 
 
 " My sudden gesture, the palm of my 
 hand raised before his face, stopped him. 
 
 " A woman's divine instinct guided my 
 heart and bridled my wrath. ' George,' I 
 
 said, ' the past is too dear to me ; leave it 
 61
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 unsullied; leave me my self-respect. 
 Leave me the sweet memory I have of you. 
 Go back at once that no one may see you 
 that no one may speak ill of you.' 
 
 " ' Of course I love you,' he said, as if 
 it was drawn from him, yet in a softer way. 
 than he had spoken ; ' but not in your 
 bookish, conventional way.' 
 
 " ' Oh, George ! ' I exclaimed ; ' there 
 is only one way in love. It is never pay, 
 only give, and rejoice in the privilege of 
 giving; but honor and truth must be 
 there.' And then my throat seemed to 
 close, and my head to fill with fire. In 
 wild anger I said : ' Go to whomsoever 
 you have sold yourself. Pay her the price, 
 not me.' 
 
 " Whether it was my passion, or whether 
 the cruel blow, which broke his reserve, I 
 do not know. The lash still scars my con- 
 science and makes me groan in contrition, 
 62
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 if it did not reach his, and awaken his 
 soul. 
 
 " He threw himself on the porch and 
 buried his face in his arms, while I brooded 
 over him, waiting for one word to tell that 
 he loved me, that all this change was only 
 on the surface. It never came. He raised 
 himself and leaned against the porch post, 
 and gazed at the stone fence and the gray, 
 cold field beyond, making his choice. 
 
 " ' Forgive yourself as I forgive you,' I 
 murmured to him. But he no longer 
 heeded me. He did not turn towards me, 
 or utter a word. Then suddenly he arose 
 and ran down between the lilacs. Gone 
 into the ocean of bitterness ! " 
 
 Her voice broke into soft sobbing, and 
 she bowed her head, leaning on the win- 
 dow-sill, where an aureole of pear-blossoms 
 crowned her, and she seemed buried in 
 the past. 
 
 63
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 Then I spoke to her, filled with the keen- 
 est sympathy, and knowledge that through 
 it all she loved the man and had been true 
 to him. " The night comes always and cov- 
 ers the world hides our pain. Our wounds 
 must heal, and so much remains. Antares, 
 the Scorpion's ruby eye, always burns." 
 
 A long time passed in silence, except for 
 the querulous cry of a cat-bird scolding his 
 mate, as I waited the end of the prayer she 
 said for a lost soul. 
 
 " Is he dead ? " I hesitatingly asked. 
 
 She sat up, apparently at rest, serene 
 once more, her armor of reserve donned 
 and buckled fast. 
 
 " I do not know," she said, calmly. 
 " He may be living." Then with more 
 earnestness and sadness : " George, who is 
 mine, is alive in my heart and never leaves 
 me. He will die when I do. The other 
 
 he with a surname he is among the count- 
 64
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 less hordes of earth herds of dull animals 
 who eat, sleep, and gossip while the beauty 
 of the earth, the joy thereof, the loveliness 
 of clouds and mountains, the pageantry 
 of sunsets pass before their eyes and they 
 know them not." 
 
 " The communion with nature strange 
 ly ministers to heart-wounds, and by the 
 magic of motherhood dries the tears caused 
 by the ever-breaking cords of life ; breathes 
 into us the passion of renewal of Spring." 
 
 " Yes, I found salvation and peace in 
 the worship of beauty." 
 
 " And the church, then? " I asked. 
 
 " No," she replied. " Heaven and hell 
 separated us ; the church had no consola- 
 tion for me. Its ethereal future of endless 
 bliss, apart from those we love and hope 
 for in Eternity, is a crude, savage reminis- 
 cence. I found to be with him, I must 
 live in the present." 
 65
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " There is no refuge for a heart broken 
 by an ignoble love, save in memory." 
 
 " Ah but one must worship, one must 
 adore something when exalted by love. 
 This breath of life I felt was in the beauty 
 of all nature, and there I sought relief. 
 It became my creed, lifting me from the 
 slough into which I had sunk, until I re- 
 gained my self-esteem. Under the influ- 
 ence of this religion of beauty not only was 
 my soul fed by the perfume and color of 
 flowers, the rapture of clouds, the ecstasy 
 of mountains, but a balm was laid upon 
 my aching heart and I became a new crea- 
 ture, as one to whom had been given a new 
 birth." 
 
 " True, there is a mystical food for the 
 soul in the beautiful, which art expresses 
 and nature teaches, full of solace and re- 
 newal. This higher faith you sought and 
 
 found." 
 
 66
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 "Yes; unled, untaught, the revelation 
 came to me : once more I was ravished by 
 the scarlet flame of the poppies; I lifted 
 my eyes again to the tearful blue tones of 
 the hills. Joy and peace came to my heart 
 and soul, for I had entered now into the 
 inheritance which nothing more could 
 destroy. The love for George had taught 
 me the divinity of beauty, without which I 
 should never have known the miracle that 
 lifts a wounded soul. My eyes were opened 
 by love ; my heart came to understand and 
 can never forget. It was worth the pain." 
 
 67
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 I. THE UNDERTONE 
 
 AFTER Elizabeth had slipped away, the 
 hum and love-cries from the myriads of 
 lower creatures, which filled the darkness 
 
 with their passion for life and being, came 
 6 9
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 as a protest to my ears. " Asceticism 
 grows to be a vice," I thought, " at which 
 nature rebels, and which it finally punishes. 
 Buddhist, dervish, hermit, or Shaker, to 
 whom self-denial is the root of happiness, 
 follow the path of failure which nations 
 and races have trod. The lack of human 
 love makes ash-heaps of their beliefs." 
 
 Elizabeth had gone this thorny way as a 
 refuge. To her the white cowl of purity 
 and the black robe of death were merely 
 masks with which she covered her heart ; 
 while the true image she worshipped was 
 George. That love alone had softened and 
 sweetened her life. The force and truth of 
 her story needed no argument to excite sym- 
 pathy, her manner and unselfish tone were 
 answer enough ; but how far beyond the 
 bounds of charity had she drawn the line, 
 which instinct and experience insist must 
 
 be rigidly laid down ? That was a question. 
 70
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 If love had no bans or bars, merely a butter- 
 fly life, our worship of women as partners 
 in a divine sacrament would perish, and 
 the world would lose its choicest charm, 
 its only satisfaction. 
 
 Ignorance cast no veil of mystery before 
 my eyes over the dark side of existence, 
 gilding its emptiness with a false glamour ; 
 nor was the vast difference between man 
 and woman's view of their sex relations 
 unknown to me, where one side sees a 
 casualty and the other discerns a crime. 
 Rather I felt the pagan in me rise and beg 
 for leniency. 
 
 There was no plea in my heart for the 
 guilt of the love-passion, no savage animal 
 instinct, seeking, manlike, to turn the pen- 
 alty from this coward George. His fault 
 had not been a spasm of nature, palliated 
 by innocence ; nor could the oblivion of 
 love excuse it. His was the burden, to
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 bear as fate meets it, without appeal. My 
 sense of justice rose against Elizabeth's 
 sacrifice. 
 
 She had given her life as an expiation for 
 his sin of the body. In her eyes, a lesion 
 of the flesh had irreparably poisoned his 
 whole nature, and yet she remained true to 
 him. The fault was not worth the price 
 she had paid. Her love should have died 
 if her soul so abhorred his deed a deed 
 that carried its own pall and one that 
 should have freed her heart and sunk him 
 in oblivion. 
 
 My softness came for mercy where, if 
 memory bore any fruit, the punishment 
 was to live. For her to grieve all her 
 days, as if a hero had fallen, seemed a 
 hideous mockery. 
 
 Again the pagan feeling in me asked for 
 more freedom, to spurn the trammels which 
 
 bind our portion of the world in matters of 
 
 72
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 love, that exalt a mere passing phase in life 
 to an equivalent of death. The soul is our 
 immortal part; and not the body, which 
 grows and fades, is strong or ill, incon- 
 stant always, and quickly or slowly moves 
 to decay and extinction. A love which 
 is lit and flames to white heat in the nobler, 
 ever-living part of our nature, this true 
 love, is immortal, while the passion of the 
 passing body is mortal. That they should 
 be held and judged as one and equal, no 
 matter how commingled, as they are ; that 
 no distinction be made, no separation of 
 penalties, no higher or lower plane drawn, 
 is a tyranny of words and impressions. 
 Life would have more beauty, more real 
 virtue and continence by a rebellion against 
 the short-lived love-passion of the body, 
 the instinct of life. 
 
 The slow boom of that far-away bell, so 
 in accord with the shimmering, bloodless 
 73
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 moonlight, a while before had thrilled 
 through my heart. Then it sang of the uni- 
 son of love, of love's beauty and fruition. 
 It was the music of love sounding through 
 my intensely pleading soul and nerves. 
 
 This new stroke hung long like a great 
 wave, as if dreading to tell its message. 
 The tone sounded stern and sad. I shiv- 
 ered, hearing as I did a peal of fate. The 
 higher notes of the chord seemed a cry of 
 regret. As thy fled laden with all that 
 was dear to me, they moaned farewell. 
 
 For years my love for Elizabeth had been 
 the passion of my soul, a fierce though 
 smouldering fire. The avowal of her love 
 for George, ideal, mystical as it was, yet 
 none the less true to its very core, came as 
 a knell to all my desires. Nothing I now 
 could do would be of any avail. 
 
 "She still loves him," was the outcry 
 in my heart. " She has loved him through 
 74
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 these years, notwithstanding his past. 
 My state is without hope." 
 
 These are merely words, and only used 
 to express the pain I suffered. As yet, I 
 failed to realize, scarcely to define in my 
 mind, the full meaning of her story its 
 meaning to us both. 
 
 Indeed, the impulse of thought went on, 
 and with it a cruel force in my heart. 
 Two voices within my nature seemed to 
 speak ; heard, then and through the future, 
 above all which passed before or around 
 me. The one, as it were in my brain 
 moved by the old current, still continued 
 in its speculation, while the meaning in 
 the bell-stroke had caused my heart almost 
 to stop beating. 
 
 "If," I thought, " this madness of the 
 senses were defined in language, expres- 
 sion, and convention; if its path were 
 marked out and it were set apart from the 
 75
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 love of the soul ; if it were ruled by more 
 mercy and knowledge, then all spiritual, 
 higher, nobler love might soar." 
 
 I had been forced to love her intensely, 
 wholly, against my struggles and fears. In 
 ignorance of her past and with a constantly 
 growing hope to win her, I had been driven 
 on. I was conscious of a nobleness and 
 depth of nature, beyond her outward seem- 
 ing, which I felt must be, would be, 
 gained in the end. 
 
 The quiet I showed when she began her 
 story, the ease and yet the restraint I held 
 as it went on, came from a self-confidence 
 which now had fled. Her heart had been 
 laid bare, and its loyalty, its fealty to a 
 lost love had been told. The barrier over 
 which I had so often tried to force my way 
 was down. Where there had been mystery 
 and enticement, there were daylight and 
 
 despair. 
 
 76
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 "What is this fate," my heart cried, 
 "which this history foreshadows? Is it 
 death ? ' ' Both mind and heart seemed to 
 be striving to draw a veil over her story. 
 
 The mode of thought as well as the man- 
 ner men put on like a mask when the im- 
 personal woman is with them, had dropped 
 from me. I spoke to myself as if talking 
 with another man in a more abrupt style 
 and without details. The thoughts crowded 
 on, while in my heart the shadow grew. 
 
 My mind did not cease to coin its vain 
 aphorisms on love, and seemed scarcely to 
 heed or know there was a vast sea of feel- 
 ing below, which was rising to a storm. I 
 was clearly aware of the stream of ideas ; 
 the heart, I only felt from a swelling rush 
 of blood through my veins. 
 
 " I love Elizabeth as if she were a god- 
 dess unknowing and untouched by the pas- 
 sion of a day," my heart cried. 
 77
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 The moon had gone from the sky, leav- 
 ing a faint pallor reflected from the fading 
 blossoms. They had become corpse-like 
 in color, as if the poetry of an hour 
 had died. Shadows drew over the trees, 
 and blackness came beneath them. They 
 ceased to inspire or move or charm me. 
 They shone no longer with the beauty and 
 the sweetness which came from the dear 
 woman. She too had gone below my hori- 
 zon, and in her place there was left only 
 growing shadows and darkness. 
 
 Elizabeth had solaced herself in a pride 
 of devotion. A faith so pure, so uncon- 
 quered as hers had proved, was the admira- 
 tion of her circle. Murmurs of applause 
 sounded always about her feet as the rolling 
 of waves on the sea-shore, in praise of her 
 constancy to her love-passion, constancy 
 to an ideal which in reality lacked all that 
 makes a man distinct from a brute. No 
 78
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 one knew her actual story, but each one 
 painted the mystery for himself in his own 
 colors. 
 
 " Who was this man of whom I had been 
 unconscious, of whom I had never heard 
 before ? ' ' my heart asked. 
 
 Of course she had loved. It was her 
 right and the purpose for which God gave 
 her life to soften the miseries of earth to 
 man, to bind his wounds, to make him, 
 through love, see beauty and feel joy : to 
 renew his soul and her own also. A heart 
 untouched by the instincts of self, un- 
 moved to middle age by the incessant cur- 
 rents of love, would have been a barren waste 
 to me. Youth may seek unkissed lips, but 
 age would clasp in its embrace a mind and 
 soul that has burned with an undying fire. 
 
 " What kind of a soul had that been 
 which now stood holding as it were the 
 point of a sword against my heart ? " 
 79
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " Love is all, the end, the aim, the hap- 
 piness, the object of human endeavor. 
 Men slave, women endure that they may 
 say, ' I love you.' Soul and body are given 
 to hear one supreme being say, ' I love 
 you.' ' 
 
 Suddenly, driven by a new impulse of 
 feeling, I stood up in defiance before the 
 black night, which glowered beyond the 
 walls. My teeth were hard set and the 
 muscles of my face ached from a strained, 
 anger-like emotion. A rebellion was sway- 
 ing upwards in me. 
 
 My soul rebelled at this constancy to a 
 false ideal. George was of the earth, and 
 in the earth she should have let him lie. 
 I felt the expiation of her life for his 
 bodily impurity to be a sin. Had this 
 love been only a passion, born of the body 
 alone, moved as that is by fresh, natural 
 
 impulses, Elizabeth's soul would never 
 
 80
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 have worn a hair shirt in adoration of 
 that sainted, large-limbed, anemic blond. 
 The loyalty of body which she held so 
 priceless, above all worthy things which 
 had been hers even those I now held 
 out to her with imploring hands was a 
 fetish. 
 
 " My conscience is clear on that score. 
 No passing fancy of a few days or years 
 has left a pang of remorse in me." 
 
 I had never dared to play the hypocrite 
 to her, nor had I pretended a singleness of 
 bodily love throughout my days. These 
 phases of life passed by me, leaving no re- 
 morse. They did not haunt my memory, 
 as ghosts. No faith had been broken, no 
 obligation existed. But my soul, once 
 welded to another soul, was never by my 
 will or my desire beaten asunder. I was a 
 man, but I was also a creature of spirit and 
 mind. 
 
 81
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " No man wins a noble woman, who has 
 not the heart and mind and knowledge of 
 the art of love. He must be fitted by am- 
 bition, culture thought. Yea ! by ad- 
 versity even, in order to love divinely. 
 That sensualist George could have had no 
 conception of the meaning, the glory, the 
 splendor of love that mounts from the soul 
 and is winged by the mind. He must 
 have been utterly unworthy. His affection 
 or gratitude it was nothing more than 
 that had ceased with his benefits. He 
 had never loved Elizabeth. She had 
 bound herself by the fetters of her church, 
 her generation, her race, not by his love." 
 
 As I sat where Elizabeth had left me, it 
 may have been hours, I saw the stars come 
 out, and their flashes seemed to push needles 
 of pain into my being. The smell of the 
 city's smoke and its impure breath mingled 
 
 with the stale, dead foliage. I heard no 
 82
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 longer the bee-like hum of active life from 
 below, but memory sang over and over 
 again a mournful strain of some forsaken 
 love. 
 
 Fate, at least, had not struck me this 
 time in a rough or an unseemly manner. 
 The blow it had dealt was deadened as 
 with a soft garment. I did not complain 
 or cry out in denial. I had met with cour- 
 age the death of too many things dear and 
 precious to me. My career had left me 
 that consolation. 
 
 " Yet, it has been of no weight against 
 this unnatural defense set up by Elizabeth 
 this monstrous fidelity to a beast." 
 
 The knowledge of true love-making, and 
 faith in love, has its art, an art to be ac- 
 quired only by hard and yet sweet trials. 
 The experience I had come by through 
 rugged paths and through paths strewn as 
 with apple-blossoms, was ripe in me. Love 
 83
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 and its inevitable laws I had learned in 
 disaster and in failure. 
 
 That ecstasy of love which instantly 
 sweeps the body over all obstacles, is bril- 
 liant, joyous, and God-given, but it is only 
 a flash of light. It inevitably goes out in 
 a shorter or longer time. Three or four 
 years is its allotted span, although it may 
 have a longer life, as man, who rarely lives 
 to a century. Deny it if you will. It is 
 the law of nature, that places no restraints 
 and only seeks a wide diversion to secure 
 succession unlasting is the decree. Worry 
 and pain and falsity are born of the social 
 laws which make fidelity of the body the 
 highest in love, above devotion of the 
 heart, above the loyalty of the soul. 
 
 If love of the body fails, there is the 
 end. No one would endure such a failure 
 or palliate the offense. But to place it 
 
 beyond or on the level with all the higher 
 
 8 4
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 and nobler parts of man, or the beauty and 
 charm of woman, was folly. 
 
 The loves of youth, wakened by propin- 
 quity or by some subtle force of sympathy, 
 bloom like wild flowers and are often as 
 short-lived. This is not the grand passion 
 between souls which is not born of a glance. 
 Youth cannot understand the unselfish, 
 eager, intense, pure passion of romantic 
 love. 
 
 A woman, not a girl, no matter her age, 
 must be refined by self-discipline, swelling 
 with her strength of maturity, reserved, 
 with a mind and heart drilled to know the 
 nobility of life, before she can feel the 
 depth and all-giving power of true love. 
 Children, vain women, thoughtless men 
 cannot conceive and suffer the passion of 
 soul-love, the offspring of the immortal 
 within us. 
 
 But the love of the spirit when it lives 
 85
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 alone, unmated by the love of the body, 
 exists in constant danger of oblivion. The 
 impetuous, inconsiderate, relentless frailty 
 of the body physical love often rises in 
 madness and overwhelms the spiritual love. 
 Although this fierce instinct, which at times 
 knows no law or restraint, may cover the 
 spirit, bury it as with the ashes of a vol- 
 cano, the love of the soul is never de- 
 stroyed. No man is impeccable, no woman 
 immoble, no one can escape the attack or 
 be free from this madness. Any exalted 
 love by a touch, by a look may be carried 
 away with the love-passion. James or 
 Elizabeth, or both, it matters not the 
 training or temperament, nature may as- 
 sert itself. 
 
 " I never loved the blond heroine of 
 fiction, nor of life. Her yellow hair and 
 white eyelashes were bloodless, loveless to 
 
 me. Falsely, no doubt from prejudice, 
 86
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 she seems to be an image, full of vanity, 
 half-souled, and forgetful of the truth. I 
 hate a blond man as a lover. It is not 
 hate I feel for George, it is contempt." 
 
 Without answer to or notice of this out- 
 cry, my mind went on in its track. And 
 yet with all the wealth of feeling, the un- 
 selfish devotion I had learned as the price 
 to be given for love, with all the passion of 
 sobered manhood, all my vaunted culture, 
 my heart had fallen " Ah, it was acci- 
 dent " had pitched headlong into the 
 abyss. 
 
 I was hereafter to be apart and kin only 
 to the shades, wrapped not in the golden 
 robes of love, but hidden in the black 
 shadow which seemed to come up from the 
 ground, like a mephitic spirit, and to try 
 to drag me into its embrace,
 
 II. THE SHRINE 
 
 As long as Jacob served 
 for Leah, so long had I 
 with a constantly growing 
 love looked vainly into 
 those truthful dark eyes 
 deep as the heart of a dam- 
 ask rose. In that time I 
 had passed from friendship 
 and interest, through inti- 
 macy, to affection and love, 
 while Elizabeth seemed to 
 show to me only the feeling of a friend, 
 of one whose sympathies were all mine. 
 She had no other men for friends, no 
 special work, no clubs, those crutches 
 that women now use. Aside from my 
 society, she took scarcely any pleasure.
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 Our going together, thinking almost as 
 one, was like the intercourse of loving 
 brother and sister. 
 
 Her charm was so strong that I had not 
 dared to tell her I loved her. She seemed 
 a most delicate vase that the slightest blow 
 or breath would shatter. She was always 
 guarded by some inner spirit I feared to 
 disturb. Her character and will, her self- 
 reserve, were a wall of protection to her 
 heart, although her mind and affection 
 were open as sunlight. 
 
 Our friendship began at once from our 
 literary taste and sympathy. On that im- 
 personal ground, or in the thought about 
 religion or the daily trifles of interest, we 
 were like man and wife. Our age and the 
 years of our growth in friendship had left 
 few fields we would not enter in our talks. 
 
 I loved her after a time until that passion 
 
 was all there was to me in life. I gradu- 
 90
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 ally gave up everything in which she was 
 not a part. I loved her for her beautiful 
 expression, the stately way she moved, her 
 grace, her noble view of life, and her dis- 
 dain for the trivialities which control 
 women. I adored her for a fineness of 
 mind rare among her sex, for a breadth 
 and singleness of sympathy, a charm as if 
 she were a creature Greek-like in her mind 
 and soul full of beauty. In her repose 
 and feeling, she seemed like a Tanagra 
 figurine. 
 
 " She likes me, is my intense devoted 
 friend; beyond that " 
 
 The moment the tones of my voice sug- 
 gested love, or when I laid my hand on 
 her, she, feeling the thrill from my over- 
 charged spirit, became cold. It was as if 
 she went into a church and shut the door 
 in my face. The more she retreated the 
 more my desire grew to have her love me. 
 91
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 I could not fathom her life or its mean- 
 ing, try as I might ; I could not understand 
 her actions, so kind and sympathetic, so 
 wholly free up to a halting point, and be- 
 yond that a blank. Nor could my instincts 
 reach a foothold or find her heart. It was 
 a mystery to me. Yet it was a sweet and 
 binding one, with all its thorns and pains 
 and fears, constantly luring me on and on. 
 
 Long since, an ordinary woman under my 
 attacks would have shown the cloven foot 
 of deceit or a hollow behind her mask. 
 She could not have deceived me, nor have 
 held me, as a lover, more and more certain 
 of the nobility of her soul, had she been 
 a mere womanish sham or a creature of 
 mind without a heart. 
 
 " Ah, my soul, she does love me. If she 
 did not love me she would not daily feed 
 my heart with the invisible nectar of love, 
 
 the currents of feeling, of sympathy, of 
 92
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 selfishness, of delight in my presence. I 
 never could have peace, never could have 
 been faithful through the seven long years 
 unless she had loved me." 
 
 I had often left her in the period of my 
 pursuit and tried to forget her, only to re- 
 turn more deeply fond of her and loving. 
 She never seemed to change, nor could I 
 ever pass within to enjoy her whole heart. 
 Yet I must love her and I must seek the 
 truth of her reticence. There was no other 
 way possible to me. 
 
 " It was not her fault that she had not 
 said, ' I love you. I am yours.' There 
 is some impassable chasm between us she 
 is unable to pass. She would have done 
 so if I had but cleared away the mist which 
 blinds her." 
 
 No supposition failed to go through my 
 mind in the dreary days and nights. Even 
 there dwelt in my thoughts the fear that 
 93
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 she had had a " past," innocently though 
 none the less to her irreparable. When I 
 carefully probed her heart for such a 
 chronic trouble it proved utterly untrue. 
 She laughed at me in her strength. That 
 she was married and wished to conceal a 
 misfortune, disgraceful by her lack of 
 judgment, was just as untrue. My faith in 
 her grew, my love for her deepened in 
 these many trials of her honesty. 
 
 " Her loyalty, her truth, her fidelity of 
 conscience had bound her to the stake of a 
 martyr. She loves something, an ideal, a 
 memory which holds her from me." 
 
 The mind and its vain striving after an 
 analysis or solution fought in me for the 
 side of friendship, while my heart must 
 have had hope and knowledge of her feel- 
 ings from some undefmable source. 
 
 She must have known the doubts I had, 
 the distrust I felt, for I did not try to con- 
 94
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 ceal them. But she did not resent my 
 suspicions, seemingly confident, serene in 
 her conscience. She tried my temper by 
 this power to stand quiet through it all. 
 She was firm, she was unmoved. I proved 
 her in every way to my heart's complete 
 satisfaction. The defeat was mine, not 
 hers. 
 
 " She cannot live without me. Her 
 story cannot change her heart, nor drown 
 mine. It is all a fiction in her mind, a 
 filmy thing that will fade away now she 
 has unburdened her soul." 
 
 When alone, without her influence, it 
 seemed the simple, easy way to overcome 
 her would be to speak directly and insist 
 on her telling me all fighting a battle on 
 paper. Meeting her bright personality, 
 her force, and her reserve, I was disarmed. 
 
 I ceased to hope even to know why she 
 did not tell me, or what her secret was, why 
 95
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 she did not give me her whole heart. I 
 ceased to try by indefinite hints or ques- 
 tions or from any attempts to go beyond 
 the line she so coldly, firmly drew against 
 my advance. 
 
 This evening, with its mystical influence, 
 had come to me, as to her, without plan, 
 unexpectedly. But I was master enough of 
 myself when she began to talk not to divert 
 her by the intrusion of any suggestions 
 showing my love's imperiousness. 
 
 There were no friends of her youth who 
 had told me her early story from which 
 clue I could have pictured her character or 
 solved the mystery. Often I had wondered 
 how many men she had loved and of what 
 type they were. This disaster at the start, 
 this rock just at the outgoing of her voy- 
 age, had never entered my mind. Her 
 early past she had always insistently shut 
 
 away whenever I approached it. Yet I 
 96
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 had wondered, and now unwittingly I had 
 bared the story of her heart to my own 
 undoing. 
 
 " Now I know. I understand. The 
 mystery is solved." 
 
 The pain through these years of battle, 
 as she felt in her being the struggle of the 
 past against the present, must have been 
 beyond the strength of a man to bear. 
 Her pleasure, her devotion, her mind and 
 soul were bound up in me. Yes my heart 
 felt that supreme satisfaction. Yet her 
 duty, her loyalty, forced her to worship a 
 brazen image. The passion and love bred 
 in her heart were poured out before this 
 base shrine. I was sorry, sorry for the 
 ascetic spirit that led her through such a 
 way. 
 
 " It must have been the breath of the 
 beautiful night, the love symbols on the 
 pear trees, which were more than she could 
 97
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 bear, that forced her to confess as a final 
 defense." 
 
 Again I heard the bell " umm " through 
 the leaves, unalterable, inevitable. Noth- 
 ing now can ever change her; no more 
 could a devout nun be called back to com- 
 mon ways. She has, as it were, said to 
 me, " I have loved another man I have 
 loved. I am no longer fit to love again." 
 
 A curse on a training which makes such 
 martyrs ; that uses the thorns and whips 
 of duty and pride to kill the taste for 
 beauty in nature, the independence of 
 love ; that shuts the teeth and bears all 
 ills for the sake of a false idea." 
 
 98
 
 III. THE APOLOGY 
 
 A PAIN as if from gaunt hunger be- 
 came almost unbearable, while my 
 actual heart was unconscious of the 
 distress. Then I remembered ; 
 there came back to me like a 
 tornado, black, unmerciful, not 
 to be escaped, the days when 
 this bitter, despicable fiend had had me in 
 its clutches. I was jealous. 
 
 Love speaks through the energies of the 
 body first and always. Instinct, desire 
 from the life-force, awakens is love in its 
 first form ; then those fibers and passions of 
 the soul and mind follow in its wake. Yet 
 it is all one passion. Reason as we will 
 and must from the moulds of ideas into 
 which we are forced by our race, deny it 
 99
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 with a fierce chastity or celibacy, scorn, de- 
 grade it, this truth yet abides in all nature. 
 
 Jealousy is the outcry of the wronged 
 bodily spirit of love, a madness born of 
 suspicion and distrust, a proof of the love- 
 passion. Like colors mixed on a palette, 
 red love dyed with blue hate makes purple 
 jealousy. 
 
 " Purple is an offense to my sense of 
 beauty of color, as a false note in the blare 
 of a trumpet. I am moved with pleasure 
 at the sight of a vermilion pomegranate 
 blossom, and shut my eyes against the pur- 
 ple clematis. Elizabeth's vaunted fidelity 
 is but a violet constancy, where her love 
 is tinged with the hate she feels for 
 George." 
 
 Love is a rope of many strands, one of 
 which, the core as it were, issues like the 
 web of a spider from the body. 
 
 " This George was large, majestic in
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 body, striking in color," I felt, as my 
 life's history began to pass before me. 
 
 I am a small man, spare by self-re- 
 straint. There is no feature of beauty in 
 my face to attract any one. Yet I am not 
 commonplace. I scarcely know myself 
 how I look. I have no vanity of person. 
 Once a sweetheart said, " Anyway, you al- 
 ways look like a man of culture," and she 
 laughed a gay sound as if my looks were of 
 no moment. 
 
 " Does she not know," cried my heart, 
 " can she not feel and realize that it is the 
 little men who are the intense, devoted 
 lovers ? ' ' 
 
 The large bodies of big men, I thought 
 my mind still forcing itself trying to hold 
 sway seem to exhaust their love and spir- 
 itual force in the support of their frames. 
 They care only for their own ease and their 
 own bodily comfort. Their vanity must
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 be fed by those on whom they confer such 
 nobility of form. Yet many of them are 
 sweet-tempered, affectionate, the loveliest 
 of the earth. 
 
 To me there are no such love letters 
 printed as those Napoleon wrote to Joseph- 
 ine. 
 
 " If I had been made of flesh instead of 
 spirit, if my step had been that of an ox, 
 if only a smile of physical content had 
 shone from my face instead of the lines of 
 struggle and defeat, wrinkles heart-made, 
 then she, my 'Beth, soul of my soul would 
 she not have changed her altar, her relig- 
 ion ? But she loved him and not me. 
 Men and women love beautiful creatures. 
 Those who have no loveliness must brave 
 their fate with courage." 
 
 I was well-born, which means in this 
 land that one has forbears of culture and 
 refinement, and means that one may know
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 whom one likes, without the necessity of 
 strife for social position. It is for this 
 that women long and plot and sacrifice. 
 Their vanity and ambition push them, as 
 other qualities drive men in their sphere. 
 A place in society is woman's success ; it 
 counts highest in the score of her life. 
 
 Elizabeth knew I was a gentleman by 
 birth and breeding, which must have been 
 a heavy stone in the scales whenever she 
 weighed my love and devotion against the 
 past and George. 
 
 "Short as I am, I would strike quicker 
 and more fearlessly than that whelp. But 
 the bodily power in his great frame which 
 moved her is not in me." 
 
 From nothing, I made what was to me 
 a fortune, in a business which kept me 
 penned as if in a prison, which kept me 
 sad for others and sore as a defeated gen- 
 eral. I felt once and again the rewards of 
 103
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 success on the waves of prosperity, the 
 pride of having won where all men fight. 
 There was no lasting pleasure in the gain, 
 nor was I better by a hair for the waste of 
 strength and being. 
 
 Then I was ruined by a defaulter. Like 
 a flash his image comes back to me. He 
 too, in truth, was a beautiful blond, a 
 rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed young man. His 
 voice was soft, and his ways full of con- 
 fidence, almost fascinating. Every one 
 loved him for his kindness of manner, for 
 his willing service, and his keen mind. A 
 saint or a gambler would have trusted him. 
 Yet, in honesty, it was a dark-haired woman 
 who devoured him in his youth. 
 
 A divine generosity of friends floated me 
 from the sands : my heart to-day is full of 
 gratitude, though it is twenty years since 
 the blessing touched me. Ten years of 
 
 that time it took to rise once more, when 
 104
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 a tidal wave in finance swept me down and 
 on to the worst bankruptcy. It was clear 
 I could not make money, and, scorning for- 
 tune and ceasing to try, I found ease. I 
 gave up the wish and hope to be rich and 
 then I fairly prospered. Elizabeth did not 
 care for the things wealth brings ; riches 
 never enticed her. 
 
 " If George has grown rich, he would 
 not now be sunk unknown in the vast ocean 
 of people. If he has met success, his vil- 
 lage would brag of it or envy him. She 
 would have told me of it. She would have 
 told me anything she knew to his credit." 
 
 Then, too, my temperament is artistic. 
 I became a business man by fatality. A 
 mixture of the trend of being almost cer- 
 tain to cause failure. A man must marry 
 his trade to win. Mine was not even a 
 mistress. 
 
 George, on the other hand, whose bare 
 105
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 touch of youth had left an indelible stamp 
 of love, was beyond and far from me in 
 that race of love, which after all is the 
 capping stone of money strife. 
 
 I ached at the thought ; I scorned her, I 
 despised her in my agony. 
 
 Fame or notoriety is the flame most 
 women, moth-like, eagerly seek in men. 
 These are the mass of unsatisfied women, 
 victims of the social laws they themselves 
 enact and enforce. The few, the noble 
 natures burn in brighter fires, although 
 many die of starved hearts. Some day the 
 evolution of marriage will free them from 
 the chains of the barbarian, and they will 
 have choice and rule in love. Then will 
 men be as pure and true as women are a 
 husband will be ruled by the same fear of 
 loss that a wife now is. 
 
 My family obligations were many and 
 
 widespread. I felt at times as if I were 
 106
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 the small apex of an inverted pyramid. 
 The weight sometimes was hard to bear, 
 but the sense of power it gave was a pleas- 
 ure. The help by sympathy and counsel 
 brought more than a recompense. Of 
 friends, true and royal, no man had more 
 or better. But my taste and delight was 
 in the society of intellectual women. 
 Cards, nor wine, nor adventure, nor sport 
 men's fields of amusements had any 
 attraction for me. Though my years were 
 many, I was still good for a long tramp or 
 for a night of tobacco and talk. 
 
 And my pride and vanity show in this 
 roster of virtues, while my hot and critical 
 temper and sarcastic speech are not set 
 down. 
 
 " Perhaps George was fascinating? It 
 may be he had the indefinable, all power- 
 ful gift of charm for the other sex. Then 
 
 all the virtues in other men go for naught 
 107
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 against this attraction, this piper of Hame- 
 lin quality. Women will blush and follow 
 to any end at a glance or beck, or are even 
 moved at denial by such a power. Charm 
 is before beauty." 
 
 This thought gave me some consolation, 
 and I gained strength to light my pipe, to 
 begin the long, weary, rough hill that I 
 must climb or die. The gloomy hell at 
 the bottom was familiar to me. 
 
 I had no charm. Luck of fortune was 
 not mine. Only struggle and failure. 
 
 " Oh, dear heart," I cried within me, 
 " why did you not tell me long ago, tell 
 me when you felt my heart shone anew in 
 the fire of those glowing eyes? I could 
 have borne my pain then. I could have 
 sorrowed with you over your desolation. 
 I would have been a consolation to you, 
 satisfied in myself, and not have been in 
 
 the agony of despair." 
 108
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 The mystery which hid George from my 
 senses and instincts seemed now like a 
 shifting cloud, but to force my imagina- 
 tion. I could plainly see him standing 
 there, outside of the window, half in pro- 
 file. I could see his very shoes, and the 
 waves of his long yellow hair, the half-cyn- 
 ical, satisfied smile. He was a great fig- 
 ure, a splendid creature. I gazed at him 
 long, he smiling, as he would have done, 
 over my head. 
 
 " In a fight of love," spoke my heart, 
 " there is no hope for me against such 
 a man as this. I may rage and reason, it 
 is without avail." My being seemed to 
 break in tears of sorrow for myself. 
 
 From short clothes to gray hairs, sweet- 
 hearts had been my pleasure. As I grew 
 older, that I might love purely, sweetly, 
 some woman of beauty and soul was the 
 
 utmost craving in me my happiness. Per- 
 109
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 haps it is not wise to expect human fidelity 
 through the worries of days and the changes 
 in thought. Maybe it is not in the nature 
 or destiny of woman that she should keep 
 faith where there is no bond. Men are 
 faithless physically; women, in their 
 hearts. Thus are we made to the glory of 
 those who are monks, and the pride of 
 those women who worship an ideal and not 
 an actual man. 
 
 It was a vain, heart-breaking pursuit, 
 which led me to feel in the beginning of 
 love that eternity was too short, and then, 
 suddenly, life or days too long. She always 
 left me : not angry, not pointing a finger 
 at some unpleasant fault of manners, 
 of temper, or of thought. She grew 
 tired. 
 
 Youthful love may have blossoms as nu- 
 merous as a rose tree ; loves of the soul 
 are few and rare. If the sympathy is
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 entire, no break ever comes. The gods 
 smile, and those two look eternal love into 
 each other's eyes. They cast a halo of 
 love about them which radiates far. That 
 had never been my fate. 
 
 Such histories no fine-natured man 
 reveals, nor should they carry belief if 
 told. As Landor says : " These are the 
 two things in the world utterly unpardon- 
 able to say and to forget by whom we 
 have been beloved." Let the end justify 
 me in the case of Elizabeth. 
 
 Satiety is the bane of love, which sounds 
 like a mere formal commonplace sentence 
 until, deserted, you seek the cause of love's 
 ending. When the fire had sunk from a 
 blaze to an ember I searched through the 
 ashes, and that I found to be the reason of 
 my failure. There were other reasons, no 
 doubt, faults and lesions in me ; yet it 
 seemed, after all, that I hunted the game
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 too fiercely, that I demanded too much. 
 It was my fault. I never blamed the wo- 
 man I loved. I grieved and grew to feel 
 that the power to hold her was not mine. 
 
 Whether it was some inherent moral 
 disease, whether the lack of a fine point 
 to my mental spear, or whether my love 
 drowned her personality, her freedom 
 caged her, as it were I do not know. 
 Whatever the worm which girdled my tree, 
 the leaves nevertheless died and fell, and 
 the stark bare limbs and trunk stood until 
 decay slowly brought them to the ground. 
 
 These few noble logs rest now on the 
 earth in beds of spring flowers or crisp 
 autumn leaves. I often lie beside them in 
 an ecstasy of memory; or on them, as it 
 were, I sit alone to hear the cardinal -bird 
 whistle a love call to his mate. Some rare 
 times in the deep woods I may hear, afar, 
 Pan vainly pipe in sorrow for his love.
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 No self-distrust, no perception of the 
 germ of blight, no experience ever taught 
 me to beware when love began to grow, 
 nor was it self-indulgence which swept me 
 into a new trial. After the wound had 
 partly healed, my craving to love came 
 again, changed in form and aim, yet 
 strong and not to be denied. It ruled 
 me, and I was at the mercy or even at the 
 beck of any sympathetic soul. I was for 
 hire, to give my means and heart for love. 
 
 Only age with its falling tide of vitality 
 gradually stopped the imperative need. 
 The lesson I had learned in business I 
 should have seen was the same in love. 
 But I did not and could not see. 
 
 My hot blood, my blind love, was so ab- 
 sorbing as at times to make me lose self- 
 control. The result was none the less bit- 
 ter. It taxes one's pride too deeply even 
 to think of these disasters, and you cry out 
 113
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 in mortification of spirit when they come 
 back to your soul. 
 
 Years ago an editor wrote, when he re- 
 turned to me a story I had sent him : " I 
 am afraid you are an amateur." 
 
 " Yes I am an amateur in art, in busi- 
 ness, in life, an amateur in love." 
 
 It seemed that when, after long patience 
 and arduous work, and strife to rise among 
 men, to be beloved by a woman ; when my 
 fingers just curled over the ridge of success, 
 and I saw the fields beyond decked with 
 asphodel, saw the far opal-tinted hills of 
 Eden, then my grasp slipped and I fell 
 back to the very depths. 
 
 " Ah, Elizabeth, if you had then clasped 
 my hands, I should have stood on the 
 heights of literature, of love. You were 
 my inspiration, my life." 
 
 The pains as of hunger gnawed in me. My 
 
 cheeks burned. I was in the heat and 
 114
 
 DARKNESS 
 
 fever of jealousy. Through the sleepless 
 night, when the persistent brain ground 
 over and over the same chaff, thought be- 
 came a loathing in its iteration. 
 
 " Why deny immortality to the love-born 
 spirit when one can so hopelessly stare at 
 eternity through an endless night? There 
 is no end."
 
 DAWN 
 
 I. FIRES 
 
 WHEN Eliza- 
 beth came to 
 live at the 
 home of my 
 married sister, 
 her friend, with 
 whom I also 
 lived, I was, I 
 suppose, what 
 the world called 
 a selfish old 
 bachelor. A 
 novel was the 
 best anodyne I 
 knew for the 
 pain I felt over 
 my lack of rep- 
 utation and of
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 appreciation; that remedy I took day and 
 night. 
 
 She may have told my sister of her for- 
 mer life, of how her means, some $5,000, 
 had been gained. To me she was as reti- 
 cent as an owl who screeches only in the 
 night when he thinks no one will hear him 
 New England egotism. 
 
 After she came to know me, and found 
 that I was in a financial business, she 
 brought this money, evidently her whole 
 fortune, to me with greatest trust and fear- 
 lessness. It had not in its probable hard 
 earning and acquisition made tentacles 
 about her heart. She only cared for it as a 
 means to live. For some new reason, a 
 brighter life or one broadened by associa- 
 tion with me, she wished a larger income. 
 There probably were other ways in which 
 she earned money, though she never spoke 
 
 of them, and these may have failed her. 
 118
 
 DAWN 
 
 With the faith of a child she trusted me 
 with all her means, telling me to venture it 
 in speculation, to risk its loss or increase 
 it largely. 
 
 " Take no fear in your wallet," she jest- 
 ingly said, when she had overcome my 
 doubts and denials; "fear frightens for- 
 tune; 'plunge,' is that what you call it? 
 Take the first good inspiration and follow it 
 with courage. A woman plays ! She loses 
 all or gains all." 
 
 I liked her spirit, and doubtless was 
 moved by her trust and confidence in me. 
 Her character and temper became clearer 
 and of interest. At least she had an in- 
 stinct of some kind, for I, who had often 
 tried to win in this uncertain field and had 
 lost, was quickly lucky for her. We began 
 the building-up process, which, during a 
 great rise in securities, made for her all 
 
 she asked. No temptations led her to try 
 119
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 again to speculate or to increase her gains. 
 She played, she won, and was done. 
 " Now invest it as securely as possible," 
 she said, " for speculation is as full of pit- 
 falls as marriage." 
 
 The growth of this little fortune wakened 
 me from the sad and silent state I had been 
 in. It brought us nearer together by its 
 continual growth, which we watched as 
 parents a child. We were happy over that 
 imaginative bubble of money, talked night 
 after night how and what should be done. 
 My heart asks : " Could it have been her 
 deliberate plan to risk her fortune to save 
 me from myself ? ' ' 
 
 Before her coming, my unhappiness had 
 been deep. I was not cross-grained or un- 
 kind, but the abilities I felt were mine, 
 the desire to create things of beauty, and 
 my certain failure at the very end, had sad- 
 dened me. 
 
 1 20
 
 DAWN 
 
 She was sun and spring to my nature. 
 The old sturdy trunk felt the sap of vigor 
 run once more from the new vitality. It 
 clothed its branches in blossoms of talk, of 
 willingness to seek things of interest. Her 
 charm and cheerfulness stirred my heart in 
 delight. I admired her at first, and as years 
 went by grew to adore her. 
 
 Perhaps her ability and willingness to 
 listen intelligently to pure thought, her 
 rare memory and keen literary judgment, 
 better far than mine, were the cords which 
 first bound me. She would hear me for 
 hours and not seem wearied. I found in 
 her not only a companion, but a new part 
 of myself. 
 
 Yet the contrast of our lives on all ques- 
 tions love or marriage or conventions 
 was evident. We had gone different roads, 
 and neither could change the goal. I felt 
 that with her the balance of my days would
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 be full of ease and peace and interest. I 
 felt the sum of all I had vainly heaped, 
 of so much value to some one, was hers. 
 My soul, my mind, everything that had 
 been mine, she had rightly won. My soul 
 was hers and ever must be. 
 
 And now, with the perversity of the past, 
 the mud in the bottom of my nature was 
 stirred by jealousy. I was eager to show her 
 how she had wounded me. The feeling 
 from the night was to strike her heart, a 
 pride to make her feel what she had lost, 
 to abase her. 
 
 The next morning, when she came down, 
 I was sitting in the same chair by the win- 
 dow, as if to suggest I had not left it during 
 the night. In my mouth I held a short 
 pipe, sign of storm, different from the ease- 
 ful long stem I smoked when in the flow of 
 laughter and joy. I held a newspaper be- 
 fore my face.
 
 DAWN 
 
 " Hillo," she cried, in her usual happy 
 manner. The voice was low and musical, 
 thrilling by its waves of emotion. Indeed 
 it was as beautiful in its way as a " La 
 France." In its round tone a golden 
 thread of vital quality shone, typical of 
 her nature. It thrilled me. 
 
 " Good morning," I replied roughly. 
 
 " Your fires are lighted early. Are you 
 cold-hearted this bright morning?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " One must have some solace. You 
 stamp out all other fires," I growled. 
 
 "So you would use your heel to" 
 she said rather haughtily, although there 
 was a faint raillery in her tone. 
 
 " No," I broke in, " not on you." 
 
 Then I saw I had not yet looked into 
 her eyes that she had changed the formal 
 dress she usually wore. Was it the fichu 
 
 she had discarded alone, or was her hair 
 123
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 done in a new fashion? She seemed 
 younger, as if she had laid down a burden. 
 
 " Well, then, put out both your fires," 
 she replied with a laugh, coming forward 
 with outstretched hand. 
 
 " One fire in me will never die, though 
 you have tried to smother it." 
 
 " You should be happy even in the smoke 
 and smother." 
 
 " Meaning," I asked, " that I should give 
 up my love for friendship and be satisfied ? " 
 
 I had taken her hand which she had 
 given me in the ordinary morning's salute. 
 It was the ceremony of the day between us, 
 the equivalent of what would have been a 
 kiss from one born in our warmer c)imate. 
 Perhaps it meant more to her, was of far 
 more value if I had but known. 
 
 Here, as in all my story, I confess to ig- 
 norance of women's meanings and the 
 
 desires of women. I only wish to make 
 124
 
 DAWN 
 
 women happy, although a strong emotion 
 in me always blurs my sight and defeats 
 my aim. 
 
 " Meaning that morning is not night. 
 To be serious, then, is to smoke before 
 breakfast," she said. 
 
 "Will the night have hope, if I wait? " 
 1 asked. "You know I love you. You 
 must feel my heart is sick with jealousy." 
 
 She did not draw away her hand, nor, I 
 felt, did she take her eyes from me. 
 
 " No ! James ! dear one of this world. 
 It is broad day always between you and me. 
 I love you, but others hold me too." 
 
 ' ' What are the dead of years to us ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " Sacred," she said firmly. 
 
 " And you would burn my heart as a 
 sacrifice," I replied with heat. 
 
 " Ah, James," she said, regretfully yet 
 earnestly, " this is not a melodrama." 
 125
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " For me, it is a tragedy." 
 
 " We are not children," she went on. 
 " Do not rave. Your reason must see I am 
 right." 
 
 " But you do not know what love is, how 
 intensely it drives me." 
 
 She sighed, and I looked at her noble, 
 refined beauty, at the fire of the soul which 
 glowed in her eyes. The lines of her face, 
 the cuts and wounds of life, had fallen 
 straight and were sad, so sad, in their 
 expression. 
 
 I thought of the sacrifice this woman 
 had made for duty and love, of the sweet- 
 ness that through years she had given to 
 my days. Yet that some one else should 
 harbor in her heart was gall to me. 
 
 " How handsome you are," I ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 Her face lighted up and she smiled 
 
 sweetly. " At least, James, you know the 
 126
 
 DAWN 
 
 art of love-making, the way to a woman's 
 heart ; none of us are ever too old to hear 
 that. So be the lover you have been." 
 
 " If you would be my wife, that sun 
 should always shine," and I, too, smiled. 
 
 With this she clasped my forearm with 
 her two hands, saying : " That love in all 
 its bearings we have talked of a thousand 
 times. As we are, we have been happy. 
 You would break the charm. Let us go on 
 as we have gone." 
 
 "The world ?" 
 
 " What are conventions to us so that our 
 consciences are clear? We do not or shall 
 not contaminate it," she laughed. 
 
 " For a Puritan you are the worst " I 
 replied. 
 
 " You, too, pose in a new position. You 
 who say such unutterable things and would 
 overturn morals, and who trample on the 
 
 chiefest virtue, yet are a Trappist in deed." 
 127
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 Then in her gayety she strode far be- 
 yond her wont, her day, her convention, 
 when, with her hand on my cheek, she 
 turned my head towards her and kissed 
 my lips. 
 
 This action was all so sudden, so unlike 
 her whose cheek my lips had never touched, 
 who had seemed almost a statue in her 
 rigidity, that I stood in amaze. When my 
 arms sprang to clasp her she was gone 
 from my reach. She had taken a quick 
 agile step aside, so that I must turn farther 
 even to see her. There was no flurry, no 
 apparent memory of her act or its serious 
 meaning to me, in her smiling face. I 
 gazed at her with an ardor I had never be- 
 fore felt. Laughing at me, she gayly said : 
 " There ! that takes the thorn of jealousy 
 out of your heart and heals the wound. 
 Growl now that you missed your chance to 
 
 return the salute. ' ' 
 
 128
 
 DAWN 
 
 " One more trial," I begged, going 
 towards her. 
 
 "No, sir; that must last you for the 
 balance of your life," she said, her old air 
 of Puritan seriousness beginning to come 
 back. " Perhaps it may teach you that 
 women have hearts and are loyal and grate- 
 ful as well as men." 
 
 " But, 'Beth, if you love me" I 
 started to plead. 
 
 " What 1 did was a single fact against 
 your years of fiction and imagination," she 
 hurriedly half declaimed. " Marriage, you 
 have often held, should last for four or five 
 years, then be broken at will. Hundreds 
 of times you have told me men and women 
 could love, be pure and happy, without the 
 ' I pronounce you man and wife ' of any 
 justice of the peace. Practise what you 
 preach. ' ' 
 
 " Man and wife we must be, feeling as I 
 129
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 do, and in the atmosphere in which we 
 live," I exclaimed. 
 
 She replied in equal heat, almost anger: 
 " Understand, I am still a woman. That 
 relation is the highest, sweetest, and truest 
 on earth. Once married, bodies are for- 
 ever joined. Marriage is the arcana of the 
 future. Our love does not reach or trench 
 on marriage." 
 
 " Boska," which pet name I often called 
 her, meaning the charmer, "I will not 
 argue; my heart is sore thirsty for you." 
 
 She looked in my eyes steadily, earn- 
 estly. Softened and almost tender in her 
 tones, she replied: "James, I adore you. 
 Tell all your world, I do not care. But I 
 will not marry you." 
 
 " If you love me, how can you deny 
 me? " I asked with passion. 
 
 "Ah, my dear friend, you know you 
 
 know I love you. Why ask more of me? 
 130
 
 DAWN 
 
 By this mating you would break down the 
 invisible barrier which lies between such 
 different natures as ours. You would take 
 away, satisfy that eagerness to deserve, to 
 gain the esteem of the other which is so 
 much to us and which only youth compen- 
 sates. You would kill the love we feel for 
 each other. Our feeling is of the mind 
 and soul, infinitely apart from that other 
 ' love-passion,' as you scorn it." 
 
 The tremor in her voice warned me she 
 was strained to the last point. I knew 
 well if she broke then and left me, her 
 character was such that there never would 
 be sight of her again, that she would fly 
 from me. " Forgive me," I said. "The 
 thought that you were not wholly mine 
 has bred in me a madness. The disease 
 I have always railed against has seized 
 me." 
 
 " Marriage was not your impulse and
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 desire until I told you my history," she 
 said sternly. "Some other lion roared; 
 then his mane bristles and he roars and 
 beats the earth with his tail," she said, 
 half jestingly. 
 
 "It has been anything but a roar with 
 me ; rather groans." 
 
 Now she came to me, taking my pipe 
 from my hand and placing it on the man- 
 tel. Then, in her old reserved manner, 
 with dignity said : " No more of this. Here 
 you *re to live and amuse me. Here am I 
 to care for you and listen to you. There 
 shall be no change. That is the law and 
 this is the end this is the result of trust- 
 ing a man too much," and she smiled at 
 me. 
 
 "Is there to be no hope? " I asked sub- 
 missively. 
 
 " Hope ! Oh, mountains of it, if you 
 
 like," she gayly replied. 
 132
 
 DAWN 
 
 "You will ?" 
 
 " Come ; the aroma of the coffee calls in 
 the same way, but louder than your desire 
 how is it that you put it? ' imperative 
 instinct.' " 
 
 133
 
 II. HOPE 
 
 THE aloe blooms rarely : com- 
 mon opinion has it, once in a cen- 
 tury. All other times its straight- 
 laced, upright, conventional leaves 
 are full of vigor and regularity. It 
 seems incapable of flowers or color. 
 Sharp points warn off demonstra- 
 tions of love. When the tall flower- 
 stalk is ladened, a pyramid of 
 beauty, its great capability and heart 
 are known. Then the short period of blos- 
 som gone, the cold, green, unchangeable 
 nature closes over the break in the plant's 
 life. Elizabeth bloomed only at the end 
 of seven years. Her flower of gayety and 
 frankness ended with its birth. Her seren- 
 ity, her manner, her words, gave no fur- 
 ther sign of the bloom of her heart.
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 The pear blossoms which had served as a 
 mirror to the moonlight, and which I felt 
 were typical of my struggle to live again, 
 were more fruitful than the aloe. They 
 strove to mature, and as the summer came 
 on showed over the trees green balls be- 
 tween the leaves. Her avowal, her kiss, 
 seemed to be rare flowers of beauty that 
 were for the eye alone and not the heart. 
 
 " She must have loved that man," I felt. 
 " She told me she threw her arms around 
 his neck and passionately kissed him. 
 What a beautiful woman she must have 
 been in her glory? She is his. She still 
 longs " 
 
 The summer climate of the Ohio Valley 
 is semi-tropical, although the dwellers 
 there do not own to it. In this broad cen- 
 tral belt the lusty corn from its rapid 
 
 growth rustles in the hot nights like the 
 136
 
 DAWN 
 
 crisp crackle of the sea. The clay soil 
 opens in inch-wide mouths clamorous for 
 rain. The meadows are scorched brown; 
 the hillsides are bare, showing the raw 
 yellow earth through the dusty weeds or 
 bushes. 
 
 You feel on the edge of the cactus coun- 
 try, where passions dominate reason and the 
 rights of the body control. The ascetic, 
 active habit, the vigor of mind, wages a 
 constant battle with languor and desire. 
 The daily midnight of ninety degrees 
 often leads to strange vagaries of the imagi- 
 nation, breeding ill temper and suspicion. 
 There are no punkahs, no siestas, no patios 
 in this northern-peopled country to flatter 
 one into a fancied ease, or palliate the suf- 
 fering from the heat. The will often acts 
 as if unbridled, and the heart often aches as 
 if it wandered in a parched desert of jeal- 
 ousy where there is no shelter or escape.
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 "If," I thought, "a letter should be 
 sent to Rockfield asking who this George 
 was, and what had become of him, it would 
 start a fire of gossip like a lighted brush 
 heap. The smoke at least would drift 
 back to Elizabeth." 
 
 Under this heat of the summer days 
 vegetable refuse festers, and miasma 
 breeds : the human body and its nerves 
 are strained almost to a breaking point; 
 the mind chews any cud of wrong. This 
 oxidization of the flesh and spirit, as it 
 were, is a latent fire which, if it grow into 
 a flame, madness follows. 
 
 On the surface I had never before been 
 so amusing and interesting to Elizabeth, I 
 knew from her blithe tone and the sparkle 
 of her eyes. I took a lesson from her 
 self-control, she called it; to me it 
 was hypocrisy. But necessity forced me, 
 desire impelled me, in order to keep fast 
 138
 
 DAWN 
 
 hold of her as well as to conceal the feel- 
 ing stirring within me. She on the other 
 hand seemed to have forgotten the episode, 
 and to have put the story she had told for- 
 ever away. Her manner towards me was 
 more affectionate, freer, in fact, as if now I 
 must understand her heart, abide by its 
 laws, and ask nothing more than she gave. 
 While I loved her more deeply, she felt it 
 seemed but friendship and affection, not 
 love. 
 
 No art that I could use, no sacrifice I 
 made, nothing stirred her to thrill again 
 with passion or yield a hair's breadth. I 
 could make no inroad or gap in the steel 
 armor of her reserve. 
 
 Yet, for the most part, it was pleasant 
 and full of delight between us, hope giving 
 me buoyancy. Then, in waves of depres- 
 sion, in which I suffered much, I would be 
 more silent and less in sympathy with her.
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 She grieved, seemingly for me, not for her- 
 self. Yet I loved her through all my 
 moods always. 
 
 I did not blame her reserve or feel that 
 she was wrong. There was nothing small 
 or ignoble in the character of Elizabeth, 
 nor was she given to the coquetries of 
 ordinary women. She never put on " war 
 paint" to divert my mind or attract me 
 from something nearly touching her; tears 
 to her were folly; anything but the truth 
 was idle. In fact her habit, from her jus- 
 tice and an imperious spirit, was to tell 
 hard, bald truths without hesitation, when a 
 kindlier, shiftier nature would have glossed 
 the pill. 
 
 Still her nature was joyous and given to 
 laughter mirth, not humor. She diffused 
 brightness and happiness like a perfume 
 from a lovely flower, or, rather, it was like 
 
 the pinkish blush of sunrise over snow- 
 140
 
 DAWN 
 
 covered hillsides. Her instinct and mind 
 grasped the full meaning of common 
 troubles, and she saw beyond the clouds 
 to the blue. She knew me better than I 
 knew myself my moods and my trend of 
 thought. 
 
 Perhaps she felt, rather than defined, the 
 change wrought in me, partly by her kiss 
 and partly by her story. The sudden rise 
 of a passion of youth and the tide of jeal- 
 ousy which had swept me from our old 
 moorings, she saw, no doubt, as I did not. 
 To her this was unnatural and unpleasant, 
 therefore she had warned me as delicately 
 and deeply as she could. 
 
 Her kindness to me and care of my 
 mental wants did not cease ; rather she 
 tried to help me conquer myself. When 
 she took my hand at times she held it, 
 or she stroked my hair, or laughingly 
 
 pinched my cheek great familiarities for 
 141
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 her, though nothing for me who desired 
 all. 
 
 Sitting on the arm of my chair with her 
 hand on my shoulder, her face a glory to 
 me, I lifted my lips towards her. "Kiss 
 me," I begged. 
 
 Her mood, her desire to do so, I felt in 
 the moisture of her eyes, the glow on her 
 cheeks, and the intense expression. She 
 did not struggle against my arm that was 
 around her waist, drawing her to me. I 
 knew she wanted to come to me, but 
 could not. Her head slowly moved back 
 and forth, saying, " No." 
 
 "If I am not loyal," she said sadly, 
 " how could you expect loyalty? " Then 
 smiling, as if her heart were on her lips, 
 " That desire, you have told me, has no 
 length of life. It will die, and you will 
 
 be happy again." 
 
 142
 
 DAWN 
 
 " Sin just once and see how sweet it is." 
 
 " That too, you said, was only the affair 
 of a moment and no real matter in our 
 lives. It is the first step which counts, my 
 friend. You do not tempt me. I am only 
 sorry for you." 
 
 Yet she did not move away or take her- 
 self from my arm, as was her wont. I 
 could feel her heart strongly beat against 
 my side, and her smile of toleration did 
 not deceive me, close as was her face to 
 mine, steadily looking at me. She thought 
 she was merely consoling me, while I felt 
 sure that unknowingly her nature was drink- 
 ing of the same cup. 
 
 I kissed her. It was only a touch on 
 her lips, an attempt, before she was out of 
 my arm, regions away from me. " It was 
 a return of your salute," I cried, fearing 
 an outbreak of anger, and I laughed aloud. 
 
 She could not resist that, and laughed 
 i43
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 too. But the evil had been done, and 
 thereafter she was as silent and wary as a 
 doe. I could no longer approach her with 
 the old ease, nor did she try to fathom or 
 soften my distress. Her anger did not 
 come out in a rebuke of manner or words, 
 but seemed to grow in herself as she pon- 
 dered the scene and felt its meaning to 
 herself. She held aloof from me with a 
 careful guard of any outward touch or sign 
 of our feeling helping our weakness as 
 she felt it to be. 
 
 This led to a comparative separation 
 between us and to her seeking the society 
 of my sister, leaving me alone, as she 
 wished to be. 
 
 A prosaic period, a calm came to our 
 intercourse, as the summer hurried on with 
 burning feet. Ghosts of beauty long dead 
 did not appear in the mist-whirls of the 
 night. The dry leaves rattled in the puffs
 
 DAWN 
 
 of wind, insect-stung fruit dropped at sud- 
 den intervals from the boughs of the pear 
 trees. Vulgar sparrows cheeped in the 
 branches. Stale, odious realism stripped 
 everything of value and quality. 
 
 "Where was this George?" became a 
 mania with me. "What had become of 
 him? What place did he fill? Was he 
 alive? Was he dead, or worse?" became 
 constant questions in my mind. 
 
 I dare not tell her of my efforts, nor ask 
 her for details which would have led me in 
 the search for him. I could not find him, 
 or any trace of him, by the secret means I 
 used, and I began to feel that he had passed 
 out of existence in our world, or that he 
 was dead. If I could prove that he no 
 longer lived, there was a hope that Eliza- 
 beth would feel that at least she was 
 divorced from this ideal of her youth. 
 The hope of finding him or of proving 
 i45
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 his death buoyed me through this dark 
 period. 
 
 Her sweetness, at times, as if against 
 her will, led me to hope. I felt she would 
 forget. Indeed, flashes of feeling showed 
 she loved me, as I would have her, although 
 this may have been my imagination. Then 
 she would grow cross a sign of recovery 
 to health. 
 
 " Why don't you talk as you used to 
 about men and women ? What has become 
 of your new laws for the regeneration of the 
 earth? " she asked. 
 
 "Theory is not practice. I find that 
 sinners must first be converted," smiling 
 at her. 
 
 " I'm a hard-shell Baptist. Immersion 
 has done its perfect work," she laughed. 
 
 " Oh, you may yet be saved by fire." 
 
 " Perhaps if you make it hot enough." 
 146
 
 III. THE BROKEN REED 
 
 A SMALL dragon's-blood 
 vase, the work of the Rook- 
 wood Pottery, stood on the 
 table in the center of the room 
 back of where we usually sat at 
 the two windows. The lamp, 
 lighted in the cooler nights of 
 autumn, made the vase glow like a scarlet 
 poppy in the sun. The hereditary love of 
 color in Elizabeth was always moved in 
 ecstasy over this vase. As far as her bars 
 of restraint let her, she would quietly, but 
 full of feeling, say it was beautiful for 
 itself, not from association or age. 
 
 In her heart she longed for a bit of the 
 original ware and idealized it in compari- 
 son with that I had given her. She had
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 never seen a true piece of the ancient make, 
 nor was my temper or judgment willing to 
 P'lease her. The past had to her a poetry 
 the present could not excite. She felt 
 about George as if he were the Chinese, 
 and about me as if I were the Rookwood. 
 The one she had was dwarfed by the one 
 she imagined to be the more beautiful. 
 
 "It may be," I thought, " that he was 
 a perfect genuine piece from nature's kiln. 
 It is possible the glow, the exquisite tint 
 of red, the soft texture which makes one 
 wish to smooth it as you do the fur of a 
 cat, the quality refined and moving as in a 
 poem, which marks the rare dragon's-blood 
 vase, was his quality among men." 
 
 " He is a counterfeit in form and glaze. 
 The Rookwood vase at least makes no pre- 
 tense to be other than a real, a beautiful 
 piece. It is no copy of the Chinese, 
 
 though a rival," I felt. 
 148
 
 DAWN 
 
 The color of our vase pleased me as a 
 flower would, and moved me in a like way. 
 It seemed to express the emotion of youth- 
 ful love. Its tone and meaning came to 
 be a symbol of the suddenly born and ab- 
 sorbing passion of the body, though not as 
 fleeting. We called it " The Sweetheart," 
 as if it were a love token. 
 
 I had taken it from the cabinet and put 
 it on the table in hope that the light might 
 bring out its beauty, and that it might 
 speak to her of love. Her poetical in- 
 stinct was deep, and she knew as if I had 
 told her, in words or songs or the harmo- 
 nies of an orchestra, the meaning of that 
 symbol and why it shone. It failed to 
 move her, to soften her heart : though I 
 often caught her gazing at its brilliancy and 
 no doubt thinking of what she might lose. 
 
 I took it away after a few nights, out of 
 
 its mockery. This was my first backward 
 149
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 step, or rather halt, in my long seeking of 
 her. When she saw it was gone, she 
 eagerly asked, "Where's the Sweetheart? 
 Who has moved our key-note?" looking 
 intently at me as if to fathom my meaning. 
 
 " I have always told you," I replied, 
 " nothing is too beautiful not to grow tire- 
 some. Most of us only learn the value of a 
 thing after its death." 
 
 " But I believe in a constant resurrection 
 in this life." 
 
 "As good fish ?" 
 
 " You grow commonplace, James ; I do 
 not understand you." 
 
 " No," I answered. " My eyes begin 
 to see and my ears to hear. ' ' 
 
 Not heeding this, or, at least, not showing 
 that she did, she went to the case and 
 brought back the vase. "There!" she 
 said; " I decree it shall stand here as a 
 
 peace-keeper." 
 
 150
 
 DAWN 
 
 " Take it back, please," I said, in a low, 
 quiet tone, though doubtless it was to her 
 ears hard and firm. " Put it where I wish 
 it." 
 
 She stared at me, half started to leave 
 the room, moved her hand towards the vase 
 and drew it away again. 
 
 " Do you mean ? " she asked. 
 
 "Yes," I nodded, looking squarely in 
 her eyes. The battle of our wills was 
 fought in a look, without a word, and was 
 soon over. She quietly replaced the vase 
 where she had found it. Her cheeks and 
 throat were red as they might have been 
 when she blushed in her youth. 
 
 "Sit down," I said. "Let me tell 
 you of an incident which happened to me 
 to-day. You remember, for I've often 
 talked over the ' ifs and ands,' the fruits, 
 the deeds of the blond beauty who prac- 
 tically ruined my business life? "
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " I remember ' she answered quietly, 
 
 and sat down. 
 
 " Well, he came to see me to-day." 
 "You could still punish him? " 
 "Yes, I have saved the evidence." 
 "You had him arrested, surely. You 
 
 struck him for his base ingratitude?" she 
 
 excitedly asked. 
 
 " I did not. There was no good to him 
 
 or to me in such a course." 
 
 "But you have always talked of your 
 
 Indian revenge and never forgetting an 
 
 injury. This was deep enough for any man 
 
 to remember." 
 
 " Only to blows at the heart, only when 
 
 the pride of love, then I turn and never 
 
 go back or forget. 
 
 "He was not an object of pity," I 
 
 went on. "The tramp or ' broken reed ' 
 
 you would expect was not in evidence. 
 
 He seemed prosperous and happy, though 
 152
 
 DAWN 
 
 his eyes and lips showed he came in sor- 
 row and penitence. There was no talk of 
 restitution. What would the money do to 
 bring back the lost years or the tears or the 
 broken pride? " 
 
 " Did you tell him of how many lives he 
 had brought almost to poverty, of your sac- 
 rifices since then? Oh, James ! " she cried. 
 
 " Yes. I told him all. Then I forgave 
 him. It seemed the manly thing to do. 
 But, 'Beth, I could not shake the hand he 
 put out to me. That was above my cour- 
 age." 
 
 She only looked at me steadily, though 
 I felt she might have said something. It 
 was no matter, for I had merely acted on 
 impulse. 
 
 The next evening she wore her fichu 
 about her neck and shoulders, evidently to 
 advise me there was sympathy for a troubled 
 heart. It was her widow's weeds. 
 i53
 
 IV. THE RING 
 
 IN the hands of most 
 novel writers the whip is the chief 
 weapon used to drive women back 
 the fold of love, as it is 
 the current belief 
 among men. These 
 authors who have 
 acutely studied hu- 
 man nature, until 
 they have made a 
 science without poetry or charm, seemingly 
 follow tradition in a rut ; they draw the 
 characters of women in certain phases or 
 aberrations of love as governed by neglect 
 or scorn, or, on the lower plane of life, by 
 blows moral and physical. This may be 
 true of ordinary women, and men as well, 
 155
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 whom fear or ungratified desire rules, as it 
 does animals, yet who from their monotony 
 should seldom be the models of fiction. 
 
 I should as soon have thought of striking 
 a lion as morally to strike Elizabeth, or to 
 hope to win her by rudeness, or to try to 
 make her yield by a surly absence. She was 
 my equal, for the most part, both in mind 
 and heart, and in some ways far my better. I 
 smiled to myself at the thought of treating 
 her with indifference, or of showing her a 
 lack of esteem and respect. If I had gone 
 away from her, thinking she would ache at 
 the gap, I should have received my due 
 reward in her contempt. Her mind was 
 clear to analyze motives, and she read 
 character by an instinct I had not. A pre- 
 tended absence would not have aided me. 
 
 Then, too, in that case, it would have 
 taken more bravery and manliness to go 
 than to stay. Even had I imagined the 
 156
 
 DAWN 
 
 means would have gained the end, I could 
 not have descended to use them. Love 
 sharpened my wits to hunt for a weak link, 
 but it was not there. 
 
 In connection with our wide and rapid 
 reading, this question of a man's beat- 
 ing a woman into love for him had been 
 suggested and fully talked over. It was 
 a boyish pique, or it was brutish. She 
 knew too well that I loved, ever to be 
 changed in feeling by my going off in 
 anger. A withdrawal of my love, a ceasing 
 of constant attentions, a sinking of my 
 esteem for her she would feel, but not 
 anger or insult or purposeful neglect. 
 
 " I had rather have style than be a Chris- 
 tian," I observed, moved by that quality 
 in a book I was reading. 
 
 " Well, you write in a most unchristian 
 style," she said, with a laugh, and then 
 earnestly : " But I love the way you write. 
 157
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 It goes deep, fits the subject and has the 
 thrill. If you had used the simplest grind- 
 stone when you began 
 
 " Always the might have been, the cart 
 before the horse," I said. " The impulse 
 now moves in me to go back to my old love 
 and once more try to write, just as a drunk- 
 ard goes back." 
 
 She turned quickly towards me, looked 
 inquiringly, and without referring to my 
 last remark, said: "You have character, 
 which they say is style." 
 
 " Yes, I have character, but not beauty, 
 either of style or body. You have beauty 
 of eyes and feature and form." 
 
 " Nonsense," and she blushed as she 
 went on : " Nothing is so decadent as cack- 
 ling compliments." 
 
 " I think you are I never I tell the 
 truth just as I feel it. You always seemed 
 to be pained to be told you are beautiful. 
 158
 
 DAWN 
 
 You must have been superb in your youth. 
 I know you were taught not to speak of 
 such things, and that to hear them was a 
 sin. Puritan ! demure Puritan that you 
 are ! Nevertheless it is true, you are beau- 
 tiful. It matters little to me, you know." 
 
 " Nor to any one," she replied with some 
 asperity. " Such fulsome conceit about 
 one's looks is unpleasant. It is the pride 
 which leads to a fall. James, how can you 
 say such things ! " and she hid her face in 
 her handkerchief. 
 
 "It is true," -I said again. " You are 
 a noble-looking, beautiful woman. Your 
 profile is as fine as a Greek intaglio. Old 
 as you are, the curves of your body are 
 subtle and entrancing, and the maiden- 
 like innocence and softness of your face 
 hides your years." 
 
 With her head in her hands she leaned 
 on the sill of the window, and I knew the
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 rare tears were dimming her eyes. " Stop ! 
 oh, stop!" she begged in a wavering 
 voice. 
 
 " Why should I not speak of that all 
 men see and have seen through your life? 
 None of them have dared to break through 
 your ghostly, aristocratic, monastic reserve. 
 I speak in calmness and without a bit of 
 selfishness in me. You deny me, too. You 
 do not care for those simple joys or pure 
 pleasures of the sight. Your love of beauty 
 is cant or formulas. Wear your habit of 
 widowhood. I merely say what I think. 
 You are Hellenic in mind as well as in 
 body ; I cannot conceive why you scoff at 
 and reject the truth." 
 
 Instinctively I knew that she felt that 
 what I said was true to me. Yes, and that 
 she herself knew she was beautiful. Her 
 beauty, if not in its perfection to-day, 
 
 yet no doubt she felt that it was like 
 1 60
 
 DAWN 
 
 a defaced statue of Hellas which still 
 breathed out a soul. 
 
 In her idealism she had tried to burn to a 
 husk the realism of the body, had slimed it 
 with a base sense of wrong. The beauty 
 of form, the loveliness of color, the divine 
 air of the body which shone from her and 
 about her as from a goddess all this she 
 denied as she would have done the Devil. 
 
 Still she was a woman. Through her 
 nun's hood and cloak, through her false, 
 misty aspirations, the blood of her nature 
 throbbed in her veins, driving her to shel 
 ter, to cover from me from herself. 
 
 Perhaps no man ever before had voiced 
 to her craving, starving ears this story of 
 her great beauty. The eyes of men may 
 have spoken. Their waves of pause or 
 turning after her when they met her : their 
 suggestions of deference and interest : their 
 
 excited and colored words must have told 
 161
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 her she was admired or women may even 
 have said so. Men never said plainly to 
 her, " You are beautiful." 
 
 " George could not have praised her for 
 her great beauty. He had not learned the 
 tongue. It was not the part he played. 
 Perhaps she only came late to her heritage." 
 
 She no longer protested at my praise, 
 nor did she reply when she had gained 
 mastery of her emotions. She treated me 
 with silence, and seemed in a maze. 
 
 " Let me see your hand," I said. At 
 which, after some mental hesitation, she 
 held it out, palm down and at arm's length. 
 
 " Deny, if you dare, that it is expressive 
 and lovely in shape. It is fine," I said, 
 with force, going over to her. 
 
 She critically looked at her hand, as if 
 it was a new thing in her eyes, and spoke 
 regretfully : " For the work it has done, it 
 
 has held its shape well." 
 162
 
 DAWN 
 
 I took it in my hand, pulling the long, 
 taper fingers apart, turning it over, as calm 
 in my manner as if judging a purchase at 
 a stall. 
 
 " You seem to have worn no rings. 
 Have you no such treasures? Do you not 
 care for them? " 
 
 She smiled without mirth : " No one 
 ever thought I cared. Yet I am passion- 
 ately fond of jewels. They seem to have 
 an actual life, though different from ours. 
 Night and day they speak always true, 
 bright friends." 
 
 " I imagined, to go without them was a 
 part of the discipline you practise." 
 
 " You grow hard in your satire. To me 
 they should be the gifts of love and friend- 
 ship, and not bought by one's self for their 
 value or for vanity. There was no hidden 
 reason," she replied. 
 
 " When I was young I had a fancy for 
 163
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 stones. There is a lot of them I have 
 locked away. Some of them I inherited. 
 You remember how many trinkets Sister 
 has? My share is buried in the Safety 
 Vault." 
 
 "Yes. You should have given them to 
 her." 
 
 " No. They were kept for my possible 
 wife, and so bequeathed a fading hope. 
 There are other jewels, though ; I care but 
 little for them of late years. Look at this 
 one," handing her a ring which I took 
 from my pocket. 
 
 "Oh, how fine," she exclaimed, like a 
 delighted child. "What rare lustre. 
 They are of the first water. ' ' 
 
 The stones were two "Blue River" 
 brilliants setting off a ruby. I had rubbed 
 and scratched the setting to make it look 
 old and worn. It had been carefully se- 
 lected and bought for her. 
 164
 
 DAWN 
 
 She tried the ring, saying, " Why, it fits 
 me," then quickly took it off. 
 
 " Elizabeth, the new proverb is, more 
 blessed to receive than give," I said, 
 smiling and indifferent in my way, to 
 aid her to do what I knew her heart de- 
 sired, her senses craved, but her education 
 forbade. 
 
 " I cannot, James. Such a beautiful 
 and rare ring. I have in all my life re- 
 fused," she replied, tremblingly. 
 
 "You will to please me! Keep that 
 ring," I said, soberly, and as if there were 
 no further question. 
 
 "I will if you feel so," she replied, 
 closing her hand over it. I drew back the 
 fingers and took it from her, and started to 
 put it on her finger. She snatched her 
 hand away. " Not that way, dear. It 
 has too deep a meaning," she exclaimed. 
 
 " Put it on your own way. Some day, 
 165
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 'Beth, some day it will be a treasure to you. 
 When, I know not. Some day you will 
 idly turn and turn it on your finger, and the 
 door of your conscience will open in a 
 flash. Then you will see as I would have 
 you see to-day, and your heart will ache to 
 recall the past. Oh, I do not mean to be 
 sentimental. It is only the logic of it all 
 the sure sense you will some day know 
 and feel what you have lost." 
 
 She smiled, held out her hand, and said : 
 " I thank you. It will always be a joy to 
 me, as you have always been, my dear 
 friend. I do not fear. I shall not lose 
 that." 
 
 Then, though it was yet early in the even- 
 ing, and though my tongue was unloosed 
 for a time from its clamp of reserve, and 
 though there was now much promise of a 
 better feeling, of at least more mirth, she 
 
 did not stay, but said "Goodnight," linger- 
 166
 
 DAWN 
 
 ingly, as a child might when bedtime had 
 come all too soon. I thought after she 
 had gone that she wished to retire to her 
 cell to gloat over the diamonds, or to heal 
 the wounds of my words, or to store bolts 
 of wrath against me. 
 
 Some expiation, evidently, troubled her 
 soul, to be seen later in the farther tilt 
 aside of her head and the honey tone of 
 her voice. She was bright and sweet and 
 more glowing, yet her fence of restraint 
 had been raised higher than it had stood 
 before. 
 
 " Sins of the body and pride must be 
 paid like other moral debts. To me she 
 holds a glassy air which merely reflects my 
 outer self." 
 
 A mist or haze came between us, no 
 
 doubt, because my fire began to go down. 
 
 It was more smoky. I, too, had pride. 
 
 When she suggested a Wagner concert, I 
 
 167
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 said, "We have often heard the selections. 
 Unless you care very much 
 
 "Oh, no; just as you like," she replied. 
 
 " You know, you once thought that Nor- 
 dau was right in declaring Wagner to be a 
 degenerate. You remember how his music 
 caused evil thoughts in you envy, anger, 
 ill-nature, rebellion, and disgust sensual, 
 you called it." 
 
 " But you think it more religious than 
 a mass more soul-inspiring. You have 
 taught me how thoughtful his music is, how 
 noble and beautiful." 
 
 "His themes are the primitive, pure 
 emotions of man, untainted by church or by 
 convention. To-night he sings of love. I 
 had better not go, for fear I kneel in my 
 heart in tears." 
 
 "As you will," she replied, leaving me 
 with a haughty toss of the head. " I only 
 
 thought to please you. I am indifferent." 
 168
 
 V. THE VISION 
 
 VITALITY and repose are 
 the qualities which inspire 
 me in all art creations. 
 These vital evidences of 
 nobility and of beauty 
 are also the attributes in 
 woman which thrill me. 
 Vivacity is charm- 
 ing, grace alluring, 
 and sweetness en- 
 trancing, but they 
 live only for a 
 moment. The 
 intense deeper 
 spirit of life beams always from the step, 
 the tongue, the eye. It is an overflowing 
 
 fountain from the heart, brain, and body 
 169
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 which divinely outpours its gift. And re- 
 pose seems born of a knowledge of this 
 abundance of power, giving restfulness and 
 confidence of extreme ability. 
 
 It was this vitality in pose and walk, 
 the cheeriness and the laugh of Elizabeth, 
 which pleased me. Though at all times 
 she hid her real nature from the world, the 
 vigor and lightness of her thought and 
 movement seemed to me a perpetual youth. 
 The feeling she stirred in me was akin to 
 that which springs from the beauty and 
 strength of the " Wingless Victory." 
 
 Her hand, when tightly held, sent at 
 times through my arm, even to the shoul- 
 der, a tingling current of which she was 
 unconscious. Her voice had lost none 
 of its fullness, or clearness of outline, or 
 sympathy. Age had not withered its fine 
 timbre. 
 
 Her mind leaped to a meaning or 
 170
 
 DAWN 
 
 thought, skipped the needless details. Life 
 in her company was a hundred times longer 
 than with one to whom it was always a 
 weary constant explanation as to which 
 was North. 
 
 An all-capable, unused, restrained power, 
 such as Paderewski imparts when he plays, 
 seemed to radiate from her figure in motion 
 or at rest, though any self-conscious effort 
 was absent. Her tone, unflurried, restful, 
 carried the same impressions of her beauty. 
 She seemed to be able to mother the world 
 on her bosom. 
 
 This superabundance of life she cloaked 
 from every one, even herself, by a restrained 
 manner and a pretence of age. Only the 
 eyes of love could see beyond and within; 
 see, too, her acts of self-denial the yoke 
 she wore. 
 
 Her whole being and life, her beauty 
 
 and worth, my mind told over again and 
 171
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 again, pleading with my heart not to give 
 her up, but without effect. My reserve 
 became deeper. I went steadily on, laps- 
 ing into the old, worn-out field in which I 
 dwelt when she came. 
 
 Meanwhile I yielded my outer manner 
 in response to her sallies or touches of feel- 
 ing. She was happy over the jewels : she 
 would have heard again, " You are beauti- 
 ful." My pride, however, was in rebel- 
 lion. I was jealous ; besides, I felt hope- 
 less. The old manner or sympathy I could 
 not affect, nor could I conceal my feelings 
 except by a quiet, kindly indifference, a 
 quitting of all temptation. 
 
 Within me the threads of our past life 
 seemed to be swung round and round, 
 cocoon-weaving: my heart to be hiding 
 away a precious seed; a period of happi- 
 ness passing to the stage of memory. 
 
 With all her freedom and will to speak 
 172
 
 DAWN 
 
 the hard truth, she was very sensitive to 
 any fault-finding. Her years of struggle 
 to walk exactly on the line of duty gave 
 her a sense of perfection. She was hurt at 
 any " You did wrong " which I might say 
 to her. 
 
 Perhaps she felt my reserve, missed my 
 old way of watching her every want, and 
 speaking through my eyes, and she re- 
 belled at the lack. Or she may have been 
 angry at what I had said, or her own mood 
 may have caused the air of restraint. Her 
 reticence gave me no signs of what she 
 thought or felt, nor did I have the courage 
 to try to analyze her feeling. It would 
 not matter. 
 
 What she often said in jest about my 
 ways had now become serious. Her view 
 of me had changed from white to black. 
 " You are smoking too much, my friend," 
 she remarked one evening. The air, as it 
 173
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 always seemed to do, had carried the smoke 
 of my pipe towards her, like incense 
 burned before a graven image. The carnal 
 heart or body was to her a hyena. She 
 waged a blind war against it in others, not 
 only by example but by expressing the 
 truth " tract distributing," as it were. 
 
 Did I tell her, as I often had done, of the 
 uses and pleasures of tobacco, she would 
 smile and retort : " Are you not just as 
 well without it? Are you not better for 
 ruling your appetite? " 
 
 " No," I replied with indignation. 
 " There is some subtle nerve food in to- 
 bacco science has not yet discovered. 
 Why, its almost universal use is, in a way, 
 your one argument for the immortality of 
 the soul," and I puffed the clouds in 
 proof of my belief. 
 
 " You need not lose your temper. That 
 is a proof you deceive yourself," she
 
 DAWN 
 
 said, moving away from that sublimation 
 of thought and feeling the smoke of a 
 pipe. 
 
 Her critical sense of my acts of this 
 customary one chiefly only darted at me 
 like sparks of electricity when her bat- 
 teries of opposition were charged. At 
 other times she rather drew into the mist 
 as if to breathe my atmosphere. There 
 was no fault found then with that " petty 
 vice " by which I " lowered my higher 
 nature. ' ' 
 
 " At least you will confess that smoking 
 employs the body, giving free play to the 
 mind ? " I asked. 
 
 " I see that it deadens the will-power, 
 makes men willing to pass in silence the 
 evils in the world. The Greeks did not 
 smoke, and yet they were, you say, the 
 highest type of intelligence and beauty." 
 
 "Ah," I exclaimed, "their bodies were 
 i75
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 free. Their instincts did not make them 
 mad. They were not forced to narcotize 
 their desires. Freedom killed, utterly 
 brushed aside what you imprison and, by 
 denial, breed into the sin of the world. 
 Banish sex, Elizabeth, before you prohibit 
 tobacco." I spoke loudly, aroused by a 
 self-denial that would reach every appetite 
 of the body. 
 
 " The Turks who wall in their odalisques, 
 who mask their iniquity by prisons and 
 silence, or the Indians whose squaws feed 
 and clothe the men, thus keeping them in 
 prideful idleness, are your smokers. They, 
 then, are the models of human creatures 
 whom you would have us follow," she said 
 coolly, but full of indignation at my 
 thought and tone. 
 
 My impression was, as she started to her 
 feet, that her impulse would lead her to 
 
 leave the room. I did not doubt the shock 
 176
 
 DAWN 
 
 to her modesty of the bald statement I had 
 made, and my manner, which showed how 
 strongly I felt, had moved her to fly. But 
 her courage and her senses held her back 
 until anger and desire to conquer me turned 
 her will. 
 
 Again she came to my side, and quietly, 
 without a word, took the pipe from my 
 mouth and placed it on the rack. I looked 
 to see her throw it into the blaze of the 
 soft-coal fire. 
 
 At that I smiled, and watched the grace- 
 ful pose she took, the dignity, the force 
 and power, the glow of her cheeks and the 
 flash of her eyes. Indeed she was a royal 
 vision when moved by anger or delight to 
 forget herself. She walked back to her 
 chair as if nothing had occurred, although 
 her head was held stiff and her step was 
 decided. 
 
 This encounter, in olden days, and 
 177
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 among men, might have been a duel to the 
 end. There was hidden in our words about 
 a simple habit the clash of the two prin- 
 ciples of living, Greek and Puritan. 
 
 "You always look at the outside, the 
 objective in nature or creature. Women 
 are but curves and color in your eyes," she 
 said with scorn. 
 
 "Oh, yes," I eagerly replied, naturally 
 lighting a cigar. I had forgotten the start 
 of our dispute, and was ready to discourse 
 on the physical beauty of women. "The 
 fountain of inspiration in all art and the 
 most beautiful thing in nature is the body 
 of a woman. ' ' 
 
 "Let us drop the subject hereafter, 
 please," she said haughtily, trying to stop 
 the flow of my ideas. 
 
 " Art is the only mistress who always 
 smiles. Her arms are ever open to give 
 
 sympathy, to hide and heal our wounds," 
 
 178
 
 DAWN 
 
 I said in an injured tone, and clinging in 
 my speech to the style of discourse still 
 wetting my tongue. 
 
 "But art has no body, no senses," she 
 quickly replied. 
 
 " It has them all glorified. A beauti- 
 ful statue is not cold stone to any one who 
 will hear and feel. It is the fruit of love, 
 of thought, of race, of life, and has a burn- 
 ing heart to pierce," I said in heat. 
 
 " You wish it were flesh and blood. 
 You would like to destroy the form, devour 
 it from your sensual desire," she replied 
 intensely. 
 
 " Even the Virgin, as painted by the old 
 masters, is but a beautiful woman," I 
 went on. " The artists felt " 
 
 "You would drag down religion, too, 
 and debase it with your materialistic views. 
 Spare me ! " she said icily, and for a mo- 
 ment she stood imperiously gazing at me. 
 179
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 ' ' That is worse than the Turks, ' ' sne ex- 
 claimed, and left the room. 
 
 " Those monstrous, well-bred men, the 
 Turks," I called out, using Mr. Thack- 
 eray's phrase as a stone to hurl after her. 
 
 The heat in my heart blazed like the coal 
 fire at my feet. Her repulse of my love, 
 for the expressions and ideas we had used 
 were symbols of our real feeling, made me 
 sad and sorry. I felt more deeply that my 
 only safety lay in retreat. 
 
 "Wine was born of the same heat or 
 force as that coal which flames in its freely 
 consuming passion. The coal and wine 
 are children of the sun," I thought. " And 
 wine for its joy and comfort, its hilarity 
 and sympathy has been likened to love. 
 But the coal flame seems more like Eliza- 
 beth's nature. It is intoxication for me 
 to burn to a cinder in her fire." 
 
 1 80
 
 VI. THE CLAY 
 
 THE antidote of any in- 
 toxication is a new food kept 
 always at hand and ready 
 when the outcry begins. To 
 find such an one for my pas- 
 sion was now my aim. 
 
 Speculation in money 
 passed through my mind 
 in its search for relief, for 
 some outlet to my wounded 
 pride. " Thorough self-control and skepti- 
 cism are the main strength at the Bourse," 
 says De Goncourt, defining " the certain 
 imperious decision characteristic of the 
 man who makes money." Yet I felt sure 
 it was the best nerve cure in the round of 
 distraction. But the cost might be too 
 
 great. Elizabeth once said of me with a 
 181
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 laugh, "You are too sanguine to be a 
 speculator. You believe even in the im- 
 agination of your own poetic brain." 
 
 Then I thought of my art, modelling in 
 clay, which would engage my soul and 
 heart. In the nobleness of form for which 
 I had so passionate a feeling, the sweetness 
 of line, and balance, and proportion, I 
 could work out my disappointment. It 
 would fill my days and tire me to sleep 
 at nights. This I took up. 
 
 The plastic clay, so like silk to the 
 touch, so obedient, so willing to tell a 
 feeling, or imagination, seemed to soothe 
 the pain in my heart. Hours and hours I 
 labored to reduce into expressive form the 
 violent emotion within me. Yet when the 
 bust or statue or hastily designed group, or 
 even the shape of a vase, grew to a state to 
 stand alone, and I came without myself to 
 
 see the effect, I only sighed. 
 
 182
 
 DAWN 
 
 For always, in each thing I made, the 
 beauty, the grace, the passion, the vitality of 
 Elizabeth spoke. Her flavor or sentiment, 
 like a sweet perfume, was felt by the senses 
 in every angle and in every curve. She 
 had become part of my soul and spirit, and 
 she seemed to guide my fingers in all I 
 modelled. The tone or key of the seimper- 
 fect, perishable, ephemeral songs in clay 
 was regret, courage at death, inconsolable 
 sadness. 
 
 Of course, thought was busy when I 
 copied the model, the design as well as 
 the motive was constantly before my 
 mind's eye. The hands were active and 
 my frame earnestly moving. Yet while 
 the clay was shaped and the artistic qual- 
 ity forced into the piece, my other mind 
 and my heart fought as if in a struggle for 
 life. 
 
 Below my active perceptions in the vast 
 183
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 subconsciousness of the under brain, emo- 
 tions grappled with the spirit of pride or 
 ideas of duty. The old contest of soul 
 and senses went fiercely on, while I felt 
 myself a mere spectator and coolly watched 
 the battle vary, as it did day after day. At 
 the start of the fight the emotion seemed 
 to get the better, but, later, thought gained 
 until it conquered. 
 
 The victory once won for reserve, for 
 manhood, and pride, and for her peace, I 
 found a self-control and a strength to seek 
 diversion in other things. I began school- 
 ing myself by going over step by step the 
 long episode and noting my failures, for 
 they were mine and not hers. Whenever 
 there rose into view, from under the deep 
 sea of being, a critical thought of Eliza- 
 beth's actions or feelings, I drove it down 
 by my will-power. In that strange other 
 
 part of the brain, where all that we see or 
 184
 
 DAWN 
 
 know seems to sink and then come forth 
 anew controlling our actions and desires 
 as if by fate, it seemed her character 
 and motives were clearly measured. In- 
 deed, what she really thought and felt, 
 which was so much a mystery to me, some- 
 thing below in my brain seemed fully to 
 understand. I felt if I did but listen I 
 could hear it all. But I would not. 
 
 The truthfulness of her nature I trusted ; 
 her impulses or caprices it was not my 
 right to question. I gave her the freedom 
 I took myself, nor would I plead for love. 
 For years my case had been before her and 
 had been put in eveiy light. I had no 
 more to say. She must judge, must de- 
 cide of her own free will, and this I knew 
 clearly she would do, unmoved by pity or 
 by passion. 
 
 I saw from her rallying me in jest that 
 she thought my sullen storm would pass. 
 185
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 Then she fretted somewhat. She became 
 imperious and rather resentful for a time, 
 and finally there came over her a new 
 manner pleasant, glassy, without sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 Urged by vanity and artistic enthusiasm, 
 I brought home a little clay figure of a 
 woman. In it I had tried to express the 
 madness of a beautiful creature from over- 
 praise and adoration of her beauty the 
 wild abandon and splendor of pride. 
 
 She flouted it, saying, " It is a drunken 
 Bacchante, nothing more." 
 
 " Yes, drunken with the glory of self." 
 
 " No, with wickedness. Then it is faulty 
 in drawing, and has no beauty that I can 
 feel. It displeases me, offends my taste." 
 
 "You see only what is in yourself," I 
 replied scornfully. For her words were 
 bitter to me, and she knew it. I was 
 
 aware that she had but little expert knowl- 
 186
 
 DAWN 
 
 edge, and that she spoke rather from a wish 
 to hurt me. 
 
 " You are always arrogant in art mat- 
 ters," she said, "as if there was no appeal 
 from your judgment. You talk as if one 
 should know and feel only as you do, with- 
 out a question of an opposite taste." 
 
 "As you are in matters of love," I re- 
 plied, striking down the clay figure into 
 dirt. Whereat she gasped, and stood look- 
 ing at me with shut lips, in reproach. 
 
 With a forced laugh I swept up the bits 
 of half-dry earth. " It was only like a 
 sentiment which goes with the wine." She 
 did not reply, nor did she notice me during 
 that evening. 
 
 The break between us widened until all 
 interested talk or association ceased. We 
 went our separate ways. How it was with 
 her, I do not know ; with me there was a 
 
 set purpose to turn my back and await the 
 
 187
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 time when friendship might cover the grave 
 of love. 
 
 In one of her more outspeaking moods 
 Elizabeth had said: "It is not praise I 
 wish but sympathy, or, as you put it, appre- 
 ciation. The fact is, in the ' East ' they 
 are either afraid to be natural or they are 
 stupid, and so say nothing. The faintest 
 praise seems to them to be sinful. Do 
 what you may, whether it be to pray well 
 in meeting or to play finely, or even to give 
 yourself in charity, no one says a word. 
 Ah ! one dies in such a dry atmosphere." 
 
 It had been my wont to praise her when 
 she looked well-dressed or made a bit of 
 tasteful embroidery, or when she gave a 
 sound, thoughtful criticism of a book. The 
 impulse to do so came to me without 
 thought or purpose. Whatever she did I 
 liked. 
 
 As a great artist once said, when I 
 
 188
 
 DAWN 
 
 quietly told him his painting seemed ex- 
 pressive and true : " Oh, give it to me 
 strong, if you feel that way. How do you 
 expect an artist to breathe without the air 
 of praise. It is all he works for or ex- 
 pects from the public." 
 
 So I think Elizabeth missed this sym- 
 pathy, and the intelligent, quick apprecia- 
 tion of her thoughts and taste. Several 
 times, when the dulness between us grew too 
 heavy to bear, she began to say something, 
 but I merely answered "yes" or "no," 
 and she would become silent immediately. 
 
 With me, it was not a sullen temper 
 which bridled my tongue. If I was to be 
 without constant misery I felt I dare not 
 be drawn into the old footing of intimacy. 
 I had tried her way into a cut de sac, and 
 must turn back. Possibly, too, there was a 
 struggle of will as to who should master. 
 
 Whatever she missed, or thought, or felt, 
 189
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 I do not know. I could not spy on her 
 moods or actions, nor watch her ways, nor 
 could I any longer listen to the intuitive 
 voice of instinct. My impressions of 
 her now were only general and indistinct. 
 At last her manner lost its affectation, 
 and became frank and honest, though re- 
 served, like her true and noble self. 
 
 "Yes. She adores me but she does 
 not love me." 
 
 190
 
 VII. LIFE 
 
 WET snow had fall- 
 en and clung to the 
 branches of the old 
 pear trees. The cold 
 seemed greater within 
 
 me than without. A dim moonlight shone 
 on the white tufts and patches which hung 
 to the dead leaves, giving a faint effect of 
 blossoms and awakening in me a memory 
 of the spring, yet without its beauty or 
 tenderness. 
 
 I was alone. Elizabeth had not come 
 down, nor had I seen her for two days. I 
 had fitted my mind to the old pursuits and 
 long-forgotten aids to life, though my heart 
 did not cease to ache nor my pride to 
 
 rebel. Still there was no poignant regret, 
 191
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 no breathless, sleep-killing pain, which I 
 felt so acutely at first. 
 
 The fire was cheerful and the lamp 
 bright, though the hopeless state of my 
 feelings and the mournful sense of the 
 snow gave the tone to the room. 
 
 I was sitting alone, reading. I heard a 
 step behind me and knew it was she, as I 
 knew every motion of her eyelid, whether 
 it might express joy, love, or pain. She 
 stood for a time, but I said nothing, nor did 
 I turn. Even when I felt her breath on my 
 ear, I did not move. She said steadily, as 
 if she had often repeated the sentence, she 
 whispered : " If I only knew he was dead." 
 
 I held up my hand above my head, which 
 she clasped tightly. I closely held hers^ 
 a pledge, a vow of devotion and love. I 
 drew down her hand and kissed it again 
 and again. She left the room as she had 
 
 come. I did not see her. 
 192
 
 DAWN 
 
 After she had gone I did not move, but 
 sat as quiet in my feelings as often comes 
 when death strikes, unable, not caring to 
 realize what had taken place. I seemed, 
 in a while, to hear a voice saying, " She is 
 mine her heart is mine." Then an out- 
 burst of feeling welled up in my heart; 
 the sense I felt was like that of a cool 
 storm after a long hot spell, when man and 
 nature drop in a bodily ecstasy, a wild 
 wind, freedom after long imprisonment. 
 Laughter and tears and joy seemed to riot 
 in me. 
 
 .My hair, gray and black, like the ashes 
 and coal before me, meant years of living ; 
 the furrows on my face were the marks of 
 discipline and many struggles; not that 
 the fire in me had gone out. I smiled at 
 the feeling in my heart, the vital throb of 
 my pulse, even the blush on my cheeks. 
 Though the delight and freshness in me
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 was like that of a child, there was no sense 
 of shame or fear or wrong, no need of 
 tolerance for my age. I was saner far 
 than those who might jeer and scoff from 
 their ignorance or false ideas of love. 
 
 The secret of keeping young if not 
 wholly so in the body or the face, still in 
 the source or spring of life was mine. 
 If the heart and the soul be filled, gush- 
 ing with the one prime reason for existence 
 with love, then time counts little and 
 you will live long beyond the allotted 
 span. This mystery, this talisman, which 
 the world seeks and has always sought, lies 
 open and revealed in all nature ; to love is 
 to live, to cease to love is to die. 
 
 I felt as I imagined Pope Julius must 
 have done after his election to the Ponti- 
 ficate, when he threw aside his crutches 
 and spat to the ceiling. I leaped to my 
 feet strong, vigorous, healthful, ready 
 194
 
 DAWN 
 
 and able to meet any fatigue or hardship 
 to serve the woman who had for me this 
 fountain of life, this power of renewal, 
 this new birth. 
 
 Age, too, may at times have its passion 
 of love, but it is not the cruel, fleeting love- 
 passion of youth, than which there is noth- 
 ing on earth so full of tears. The social 
 laws of love, monkish-born, which domi- 
 nate our life are the cause of the death-grip 
 in our hearts, the pessimism we feel. They 
 are not Christian nor pagan, but devilish. 
 
 How owlish the laughs and jeers at a 
 love of older people sounded in my ears. 
 How untrue and destroying in my sight to 
 one of the sweetest things in life, the love 
 of experience. It does exist, but hides its 
 head and covers its face from the boorish, 
 ignorant pointing of fingers. It is far 
 deeper, truer, more unselfish, finer than the 
 passion of youth. 
 
 195
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 The orbit in which Elizabeth and I cir- 
 cled would, I knew, be lined with such 
 jesting ironical smiles, smiles which would 
 make me hate the base minds that prompted 
 them. Yet I was proud and rejoiced in 
 my pride, not at a Sabine capture of a 
 woman, not at the winning of an Aspasia, 
 as a young man might, but at the self-sur- 
 render for eterni ty of a noble soul and all its 
 habitation to a higher capacity and power. 
 
 I sat for hours and thought out my 
 course. Without further word with her I 
 would seek George or proofs of his death. 
 " If I find him if then she wishes him, my 
 love will do all to make her happy. But 
 if " 
 
 196
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 I. THE BUCKET SHOP 
 
 THE flames of the coal no longer passion- 
 ately danced and flared : even the embers 
 of fire were dead. The gray ashes at the 
 
 ends of black lumps in the grate a few 
 197
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 hours ago would have been full of grief to 
 me, symbols of a dead love. My body 
 was not cold; I did not shiver in loneli- 
 ness and feel as if the grave was but a few 
 steps beyond. 
 
 I sat warmed by hope and joy, think- 
 ing of the future. The past seemed to 
 have flown like a summer storm, and 
 everything glistened and shone as if loaded 
 with jewels. Self-esteem, pride, appreci- 
 ation, love, swelled in my heart and made 
 my inner vision clear. I knew Elizabeth's 
 heart and mind once more as if her wishes 
 were written on a scroll. My only desire 
 was to step with tact and decision as she 
 guided. 
 
 That very night I made ready to leave 
 early in the morning to seek George. I 
 did not change my outward manner, or 
 give my sister a hint of why I went. I 
 
 was as discreet as Elizabeth would have 
 198
 
 DAr 'LIGHT 
 
 been herself. She did not come down, 
 although the news of my going had no 
 doubt been told her, nor did I see or hear 
 from her. 
 
 The search was long, hard, and almost 
 hopeless. I began where Elizabeth had 
 said he had entered active life in law, 
 though not at the top, but among " shy- 
 sters. ' ' George could never have had any 
 good repute and not have flaunted it before 
 his old friends. He must have sunk in the 
 depths, to the dregs of beggars, or perhaps 
 thieves. But there was no trace of him to 
 be found. 
 
 If she had known how I held him, or what 
 hate for him there was in my heart, lead- 
 ing me to class him with the lowest of 
 men, living with the worst of women, her 
 esteem for me would have fallen. I felt 
 how she waited now without a sign to any 
 
 one of her interest in my search, trusting 
 199
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 me, though she must have had, must still 
 have, a tempest in her soul. 
 
 Love is an arrogant master and will have 
 no subterfuges. There is no love without 
 the body as well as the soul. Theorize 
 and talk as we may, when affection or de- 
 votion becomes love, then passion, the 
 controller, must sway us all. Here was I 
 hunting in the slums of a city, offended by 
 foulness, made hard and stern by crime at 
 every step, for the sake and by the force of 
 the new life of love within me. And there 
 was she at home, ready to lay down her 
 morals of a lifetime, the discipline and 
 loyalty of years, for a love surging through 
 her veins. That was the truth, and that is 
 the inevitable. 
 
 " Ah, no ; it is false," my soul cries in re- 
 bellion ; "that is not even a half-truth. The 
 fire may have been lighted by the motive 
 of the body, but it burns with the flame of
 
 DAT LIGHT 
 
 a higher part. An impulse of desire urged 
 me, forced me, yet it is the deepest unsel- 
 fishness, the truest devotion of the heart 
 which leads me on. The craving of the 
 body alone could never have borne me 
 through the weariness and disgust of such 
 a search. It would rather have called me 
 back, telling me of far easier ways." 
 
 The rosy clouds of the imagination and 
 of hope blinded me. It was that which 
 shrouded my mind to all this change and 
 this new impulse. I worked to prove the 
 death of this man or to make a failure of 
 finding any trace of him, sure of my re- 
 ward. The proof I felt I had in my hands. 
 I, half-hearted now, only wandered about 
 to satisfy my conscience. 
 
 At last I strayed into a modern betting 
 place, called a "bucket shop." To say I 
 strayed into such a place is to use a cloak 
 of hypocrisy. I went in to see the "fig-
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 ures " and learn how the market was going, 
 and not to seek George. This kind of an 
 office, or place for pseudo-speculation, was 
 familiar to me, who had often taken a 
 " flyer " to my sorrow and loss. 
 
 The art of money-making is not to be 
 learned or acquired, it is only born in a 
 man, as I had found out by bitter experi- 
 ence a truth few understand. The game 
 of love, the mere appetite the outcry of 
 the unborn a primary instinct in us all 
 varies in its fortune as the game of 
 money which all pursue. Success is the 
 end of money-getting like that of true 
 love, only the test of long trial can prove 
 the capacity. Some are loved, and some 
 have the power to love and the many are 
 poor, except in self-confidence. 
 
 " In the pursuit of love am I as impotent 
 as this eager, anxious, jostling, loudly-talk- 
 ing crowd I see before me ?
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 " If I cannot inspire love, at least my 
 heart is deep and loyal. My part is the 
 truer, the higher, the sweeter. I love her 
 even though she fail to love me. Eliza- 
 beth will never grow mad or unfaithful 
 from any impulse. Her heart is bound to 
 me with bonds stronger than steel, which 
 no insanity can break." 
 
 A "bucket shop" is the easiest, most 
 tempting, falsest road in which to try your 
 fortune. The facility it gives unduly to 
 speculate on a basis or margin " from $10 
 up" is ample. No securities "pass," no 
 actual trade is made. They settle "dif- 
 ferences " on the prices made at the New 
 York Stock Exchange, which are reported 
 by a " ticker "on the " tape." 
 
 I watched for a time the stream of life 
 which pours into a " bucket shop," always 
 the same in its blind enthusiasm and pur- 
 suit of an ideal. " The gambler," I felt, 
 203
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 " resembles the ascetic in his devoutness 
 and narrowness." 
 
 Polished oaken screens, frescoed walls, 
 brass grills, gave this large room a glitter 
 of false festivity akin to a" bar" ; the cries 
 of the " Caller " reminded one of an auc- 
 tion, and the rows of chairs before this 
 Shrine of Baal had the sense of a lecture- 
 room. A motley mass of eager or in- 
 different and lazy men were seated in this 
 nervous eddy of life. 
 
 They stood in groups, or streamed to the 
 cashier's window, like bees to and from 
 the hive. There were young men full of 
 the confidence of youth, broken merchants 
 buoyed alone by hope, failed brokers, 
 countrymen, and stock gamblers a dis- 
 tinct type; swell, seedy, and battered old 
 men. Gay and sad; all were silent, self- 
 absorbed, watching the prayer-wheel turn, 
 
 or loud and boisterous when the market 
 204
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 was active ; or, when they had no " deal " 
 on hand, and the market dull, were chatty 
 and full of gossip worshippers of the fickle 
 goddess of fortune. 
 
 " Commodore, your point on ' Sugar ' is 
 a fake ! " sung out a scoffer from the rim 
 of a wheel of men which circled about a 
 hub near where I sat. 
 
 I turned my ear to the monotonous voice 
 of the "Caller" to catch the price of 
 " Sugar," from among the procession of 
 stock figures which endlessly rolled from 
 the mouth of the ticker. The young man 
 insistently, with triumph in his tones, 
 shouted these figures, and another chalked 
 them down on a huge blackboard where 
 all could see. 
 
 " Sugar, 54^53 N. B." the " Caller " 
 yelled. It came like a signal gun. That 
 was evidently a sudden fall in the price 
 
 and indicated a further decline. Many of 
 205
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 the dealers lost their "margins" by the 
 fall. 
 
 The crowd fled apart like a flock of 
 frightened crows; hurrying of feet and a 
 loud murmur passed through the room 
 from this crisis or change in the market. 
 It was clear they had been expecting a rise 
 in "Sugar" and other stocks, and the 
 market had turned downwards. Sympathy 
 with this excitement and tremor of feeling 
 was irresistible. I seemed to quiver and 
 was drawn into it by invisible hands. 
 The cries of the " Caller" were like the 
 howls of a mob leader urging us on. 
 
 A tall, large-framed, hatless old man, 
 who had been the centre of their chaff, was 
 disclosed as the screen of their bodies was 
 taken away. With an oath he tore into 
 bits a " ticket " which he held in his hand. 
 " Just my luck," he muttered. 
 
 Catching my look of wonder, he came 
 206
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 to a seat beside me, and asked in an ex- 
 cited manner, " What do you think of this 
 market ? ' ' 
 
 He had the appearance of an animal 
 that scents its prey a " capper" when he 
 sights a victim. This course and his sud- 
 den address were not unusual or peculiar 
 to him. " Markets " are so much a matter 
 of sentiment and impression that any one's 
 feeling is of weight, and everybody asks 
 and is ready to give an opinion. Specula- 
 tors generally move like a flock of sheep; 
 they convince each other by sympathy and 
 action and little by thought or reason. 
 They are a " crowd " where one has no in- 
 dividuality, only sentiment. 
 
 I moved uneasily, but answered indiffer- 
 ently, "I? Oh, I think nothing it's all 
 Greek to me." 
 
 " I know it like a book, sir," he eagerly 
 
 replied. " My life has been spent over 
 207
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 its vagaries, which no philosophy can 
 fathom. Luck has fought against me ; 
 yet the market is still as attractive and in- 
 teresting as a capricious woman." 
 
 He was a striking, distinguished-look- 
 ing man, although a wreck from dissipa- 
 tion a high liver. A profuse head of 
 hair waved behind his ears to the nape of 
 his neck white and painted with streaks 
 of yellow, beautiful in its tint and fineness 
 as a bit of faded mummy cloth. There 
 was not an atom of black or dark tone in 
 his blond blood, to make his hair gray, or 
 to give him grit in the fight of life. 
 
 He spoke in the confident, enthusiastic, 
 self-centred way of one who, first deceiv- 
 ing himself, ruins those who come within 
 his influence. " Let me buy some ' Sugar ' 
 on joint account? Confidentially, I have 
 a point direct from a clerk of the Sugar 
 
 King. 'It's going to par.'' While he 
 208
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 talked, the. market rattled on. "Sugar 
 50^2," yelled the satellite, as if in derision. 
 
 Scarcely knowing what I did fascinated 
 by some peculiar charm in this man, and 
 an instinct that it was he whom I sought 
 I handed him $50. " Go buy fifty shares 
 of 'Sugar.' It is now 50. Perhaps your 
 luck will turn." 
 
 With the avidity of a gambler, he 
 grabbed the money in his nervous fingers, 
 and hurried to the " Desk," dragging his 
 right leg, partly paralyzed, although he 
 carried himself like a gentleman ; his leo- 
 nine head towering above the crowd as he 
 forced his way through it. He returned 
 almost immediately. I saw that he had 
 been a magnificent man ; was yet superb 
 even in his ruin, like the bastion of a de- 
 cayed castle. 
 
 The confident smile on his face and his 
 
 satisfied manner evidently impressed his 
 209
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 horde of followers. The armies of small 
 speculators always have a general, even 
 under officers, whose views and "deals ' ' they 
 " bank on." It is their fallacy that there 
 is some inside royal road to winning which 
 is known to a few. He evidently was one 
 of these generals, and one for whom they 
 had affection as well as trust, although h e 
 stood above them and seemed to be their 
 despot. 
 
 Scarcely had he come back to me when 
 they began to gather about him and to 
 endeavor to get his ear. 
 
 "Say! what's your point? Is Sugar a 
 sale? What did you do?" they asked in 
 low voices, as if wealth could only be 
 gained in the dark. 
 
 He was nice in his manner to each of 
 them and whispered some advice that all 
 hurried to act upon. Their expressions 
 were kindly as they nodded to him in
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 thanks. They seemed to admire and to 
 be devoted to him. 
 
 Clearly, he was an idealist whom defeat 
 did not dishearten. I heard him say to 
 one of the enquirers, " There is no past in 
 speculation. It's all future. He who looks 
 back is left. Buy it, man, I tell you!" 
 He turned to me, holding out his hand in 
 an enthusiastic way. 
 
 " If we are to do business together we 
 may as well make ourselves known." I 
 handed him my card. He read the name, 
 and replied carelessly, "Ah! Yes. And 
 I am George Cargen." 
 
 " You George Cargen!" I said, ner- 
 vously agitated. "Are you from Rock- 
 field? " I had learned that was the name 
 of the man I sought. 
 
 This was he whom Elizabeth loved. 
 Here was the relic of her idol, her Lohen- 
 grin. His eyes were dim and shifty, face
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 deeply carved with the lines of passion, 
 complexion red and rough ; yet the ves- 
 tiges of a grand physique were there, and 
 the handsome, royal appearance, that in his 
 youth must have inspired the love of any 
 woman, was still suggested. 
 
 I saw he was fluttered, as if struck by 
 my words. " Have a cigar," I said. 
 
 " I never smoke, and seldom drink dur- 
 ing business hours. These petty vices are 
 a man's bane. If he must exceed the 
 bounds of strict puritanism, why " 
 
 " Is this your regular business, dealing 
 in a 'bucket shop'?" I sharply inter- 
 rupted. He did not seem conscious of my 
 close scrutiny, but answered my question 
 candidly enough. 
 
 " I am a broker in the stocks of wiped- 
 out mines and railways. I buy these 
 worthless certificates, sold by executors of 
 estates, for a song, and trade them for cash. ' '
 
 DAT LIGHT 
 
 " What value have they above mere 
 paper?" I asked quizzically. 
 
 "To be frank," he said, throwing back 
 his head and shaking his mane, "men 
 who expect to fail buy them and put them 
 into their account as assets, and for which 
 they pretend they have paid high prices, 
 taking out the money in their place. 
 Oh ! ' ' seeing my look of amazement, 
 "I've no moral responsibility in the 
 transaction. My skirts are clear. I 
 merely sell them." 
 
 "Wall Street" is one of the many 
 Bourses, the modern battle-fields of the 
 world, where, like knights, men seek 
 fame, power, and wealth. The purse to- 
 day is as necessary as was the sword in 
 olden times, and nowhere can nerve, 
 brains, honor so rapidly gain supremacy. 
 But, like all fields of war, its fringe is 
 
 ragged and base, stained by cowards and 
 213
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 hawks, who prey while the eagles fight. 
 And what this man did was the lowest prac- 
 tice of a " vulture." 
 
 There was excitement and roar of loud 
 talking through the room. The market 
 was raging and men raged with it. 
 
 I did not heed though I heard the voice 
 of the " Caller," which struck me as of one 
 beating on a gong. The large man talk- 
 ing to me heard and judged, although his 
 mind was in a new stress. Others were 
 busy buying or selling, not of each other, 
 but of the ministering priest cashier at 
 the " window." The sympathetic current, 
 whichever way it flowed, Cargen, no doubt, 
 felt while he talked, though I did not. 
 Experts hearing the noise from any Ex- 
 change, merely the sound, can tell whether 
 it is a bull or bear market, and a dealer 
 seems to have instincts to catch the drift. 
 
 "Sugar, 50^4 i, ooo at 51," sounded the 
 214
 
 DAT LIGHT 
 
 dolorous note of the chorister of these new 
 rites, held in the purlieus of a true temple. 
 
 The stock was on the "rally" and the 
 rapid change of price caused great activity 
 in the dealings. The rise had doubled the 
 deposit of those who had bought and 
 cleaned out those who had sold. 
 
 Cargen, who was " long " and had made 
 $50 on the money I had given him, left 
 me abruptly for the "window." He ex- 
 claimed on his return, " I've closed our 
 deal and bought a hundred shares. We've 
 struck it rich. Look at the board 
 Sugar, 52. See her sail! It was a scoop." 
 When he realized the profit he had made, 
 he bought twice as much as before with the 
 prospect of doubling the profit " he built 
 a pyramid." 
 
 Though talking with me or listening to 
 others, he heard the "call" and acted, 
 
 neither current checking the other. On 
 215
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 every rise of a point he hurried to the 
 " window " to make his " deal " and back 
 to me, never losing the thread of either 
 course of thought. 
 
 Many of the men rushed to him for ad- 
 vice, like aids to a general in a battle. 
 "Is she top? Is she going higher?" 
 The stock was advancing rapidly. His 
 reply was a confident wave of the hand and 
 a laugh of congratulation at his success in 
 " steering the boys." Vanity over his " I 
 told you so ' ' seemed of more value than 
 the money he was winning. 
 
 And this was the stormy sea on which 
 this old hulk mind and body was trying 
 to keep afloat. Like a pirate, he had no 
 port in view, no refuge, no aim, nothing 
 but what he could seize. 
 
 How he could talk to me as he did and 
 yet show no special sign of interest or ex- 
 citement from his extraordinary gain was a 
 216
 
 DAT LIGHT 
 
 mystery to me. I did not care for the 
 rise in the stock or my share in the pro- 
 fits; something far more vital was in my 
 heart. The "image," the "idol," had 
 become a reality, and the meaning of it, 
 what the result would be, shook my nerves 
 with thrills of pain. George was not dead. 
 
 My heart was seized by a spasm. I 
 seemed to hear a voice of foreboding : 
 " Who knows the vagaries of the body? 
 Who shall tell why or with whom he must 
 mate? Will the rage of her youth, her 
 memory take her from my arms? He has 
 the gift of bodily fascination, though all 
 else is wanting." 
 
 My soul replied with indignation: 
 " What is this passion you fear? It is 
 born by a look and dies in a day. At the 
 sight of this man in his degradation of 
 mind and body, she will instantly turn and 
 
 abhor him. She divinely loves you." 
 217
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 When he had become quiet again, and 
 the stock halting in its great rise, I asked : 
 " How is it that a man of your fine appear- 
 ance and strong mind, a man of culture 
 and attainments, should have reached these 
 sands and dregs of life? " 
 
 He absorbed the flattery with the appe- 
 tite of an aged belle. Tossing himself 
 backward^ and forwards, laughing softly, 
 his hands clasped behind his head, he 
 answered : " You fail, my dear sir, to see 
 the aim and gist of life, to get at its thrill 
 and joy. With me it is the old story of 
 Antony and Cleopatra the first act in the 
 drama of the Prodigal Son. You seem 
 to prefer the part of the swineherd and 
 the husks. Why, man alive ! the written 
 ideals are all wrong; Antony's farewell 
 a mawkish tribute to modern sentiment. 
 Every man, from Cassar to his historian, 
 
 now and then, wonders at and envies what 
 218
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 you ignore. Truth is crushed under the 
 heel of woman. When I graduated at 
 Yale, I thought women were angels. I 
 found them in many cases stern mentors. 
 Down here the veil fell. What could a 
 handsome fellow do but yield to their 
 wiles ? " And he laughed aloud after this 
 mannish speech; then he grew somewhat 
 pale and put his hand on his heart, as if it 
 pained him. 
 
 These were a braggart's words, or a screen 
 or barrier of defence which he threw up 
 against my attack. 
 
 " Perhaps this ' trading,' as you call it," 
 I replied, with a strong force of disapproval 
 of his sentiment and expression, " is also 
 a necessary evil, and its existence bene- 
 ficial to our wives and daughters. Men 
 must gratify their desires, or 'worse trouble' 
 will follow. The argument of looters and 
 
 robbers." 
 
 219
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 "The outcry of plain men and women, 
 of the disappointed and rejected," he said, 
 in jerks, unable at the moment to talk. 
 
 Behind the glad tone of success on a bull 
 market, beneath the expressionless voice 
 of the "Caller," and under the scraping 
 of hurrying, anxious feet, the sharp, in- 
 stantaneous, sticky, metallic click of the 
 " ticker " struck off its unchangeable, fate- 
 ful decrees, the pulse of the financial world. 
 It was a dragon without conscience or re- 
 sponsibility or sympathy, before whose 
 every mood and word, no matter how 
 deadly, all bowed, as before a god. 
 
 "Sugar, 54^2," shouted the mouthpiece 
 of the demon. 
 
 "We are near $1,000 to the good," 
 George said brightly, stimulated to recov- 
 ery from his indisposition. " I congratu- 
 late you." 
 
 " Take it quick ! If the stock declines
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 one point, it will all be lost," I hastily, 
 excitedly cried, carried away by the success 
 of his "plunging." 
 
 " Nonsense. My head was level. I 
 felt it in my bones. It is on the boom. 
 We will have ten thousand dollars soon." 
 
 A fine-looking though haggard old man, 
 with heavy gray beard, grabbed his arm and 
 turned him away from me. 
 
 " Cargen," he asked in a most pleading 
 voice, " protect my deal or lend me $50. 
 For God's sake ! " 
 
 George, at once, felt in his coat pockets, 
 then in his trousers among his keys, as if 
 sure of finding the money somewhere. " I 
 have nothing about me," he replied; then, 
 to me, "He has a family, we must help 
 him. Let me have $50 until our deal is 
 closed; " which I did. This carelessness 
 or lack of thought was simply the nature 
 of the man, and not, as I doubted then, that
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 of a schemer. It was but a sudden glimpse 
 of the sad side of ruin of which the old 
 man was a victim. 
 
 "There is a good rule in life," George 
 said to me, returning to our talk; "take 
 your gains and losses with equanimity, and 
 with grace if you can. From the earliest 
 start in life, blows have been showered 
 upon me until I am callous : women, for- 
 tune, fame, every path has ended in a pit- 
 fall, but I never gave way. At last I see 
 success. ' ' 
 
 " That was not the fault of your early 
 training at Rockfield, George Cargen," I 
 said indignantly. "You sneer at women. 
 You have reason to applaud the devotion 
 of at least one woman." 
 
 "Who be you?" he asked with anger, 
 catching his breath, and seizing my arm. 
 
 "No one you know I am Elizabeth's 
 friend, and will not have her slandered."
 
 II. HER CREED 
 
 AN intense spasm of 
 memory stung him, for 
 he stood and tried 
 vainly to keep his gaze 
 on me. He pushed 
 back the hair from his 
 forehead with both 
 hands, again and 
 again, as if the blood filled his brain to 
 repletion. Then he hurriedly drew me to 
 a sofa at the rear of the room. 
 
 " Do you know her? " he asked. " Do 
 you know the cast-iron fetters of life 
 she would have bound about me ? " He 
 had grown old, gray, colorless, a wreck of 
 a man; yet majestic still as some sea- 
 scarred veteran, some unhelmeted Norse- 
 223
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 man who had followed his fate through 
 years of love and war. " Her ill-luck has 
 pursued me all my days," he half groaned. 
 
 " I was a fine, stalwart man, but she has 
 hung like a stone about my neck. It was 
 all her fault. I loved her; I was her slave. 
 She was not fit for either a wife or a mis- 
 tress." 
 
 " By God, man ! she was above mating 
 with such as you, and is above all your 
 base thoughts of her." 
 
 " She should have been a nurse or a nun. 
 She may be either, for aught I care. Her 
 morals, I have no doubt, are spotless, and 
 I would not hint anything against her 
 character. But she was too much of a 
 prude for me." 
 
 He talked in the manner of his class, and 
 I would not take further offence at his sug- 
 gestions. My feeling was that I must for 
 
 her sake see this matter through to the end 
 224
 
 DAY 'LIGHT 
 
 and appear in it as little as possible. 
 " Elizabeth has the New England idea of 
 virtue and conduct of life. It does not 
 become us men to question her actions or 
 views." 
 
 George did not stop over this, to him, 
 degeneracy of character in her, but went 
 on. "What was the mere peccadillo of 
 youth to my absorbing passion? Why did 
 she cast me off like a soiled coat because I 
 was not the ideal man she had dreamed? 
 Other women were fond of me ; fortune 
 sometimes favored me. Yet her evil spirit 
 has watched every turn I have made, rising 
 like a ghost in my heart. She dropped 
 bitterness into every glass. Faith? I have 
 no faith in anything, except faith in the 
 sense that she pursues me always. A man 
 must obey his nature. Her laws were be- 
 yond endurance. She was a goddess in my 
 
 eyes, and might have lifted me to any 
 225
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 plane; but she only cared for her own 
 ideas and standards. Die? I shall drop 
 dead soon, and thank the hour of my de- 
 liverance." 
 
 "There must have been some deep cause 
 to make her give you up, for you know in 
 your heart, and I know, that she is as true 
 as steel, and clean as fine gold. How did 
 it come about? " 
 
 " Oh, a mere nothing more her imagi- 
 nation. I had gone off with some other 
 woman for a time, I think it was. An 
 affair of the moment. It was nothing else 
 than her infernal sensitiveness." 
 
 " Surely, man, that was cause enough. 
 If there is no faith, and loyalty, and trust, 
 even of the body, then there would be no 
 honor." 
 
 The eager, devouring smack of the de- 
 mon's jaws went on unceasingly, and the 
 
 victims rushed to the slaughter, seemingly 
 226
 
 DATMGHT 
 
 without motive or purpose other than to 
 gain or lose. A subdued roar grew in vol- 
 ume, and the clicks were more rapid and 
 joyful. "A panic in sugar," one cried as 
 he rushed by Cargen. 
 
 "Ah ! you are also under that soft, 
 unbreakable spell she weaves," he said, 
 unheeding the disastrous turn the market 
 had taken, but speaking in an animated 
 tone, as if jealousy had roused him. "A 
 rare ethereal goddess she, who would live 
 on air, and float impersonally among the 
 spheres. We live on the earth, not in 
 heaven, as I have learned." 
 
 " Can't we go to your hoine? " I asked 
 him, seeing that the conversation had been 
 *oo much for him. 
 
 " This is my home. Home is the price 
 a man of pleasure pays for his freedom. 
 She drove me out of all else." 
 
 " Her unselfishness is so great, there 
 227
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 must have been some strong reason for her 
 action," I still insisted. 
 
 " Don't I know keenly now, and have I 
 not always known what she did for me? 
 Have not her fetters of obligation, that 
 became unbearable, always tortured me? 
 Ah ! they have been my ruin." 
 
 "Your life here must have hardened 
 you, so that she knew you had fallen from 
 a high estate," I said with decision. 
 
 "All men are not tempted alike. 
 Women, and even the men, stared at me 
 when I walked the street. A lady of 
 wealth and position helped me. Could 
 any man resist such attention? What do 
 you expect a young man to do when pleas- 
 ure opens a wide door and welcomes him? 
 It was of no moment a passing phase. 
 My soul was true to Elizabeth. Why, man ! 
 she was a tigress on suspicion. Before I 
 could tell her the story, she put her 
 
 223
 
 DAT LIGHT 
 
 own stamp upon it. Had she known what 
 real love is, she would have shut her eyes 
 to a trifling error all men commit. She 
 might have saved me then, might have 
 warded off the disasters which have fallen 
 on me." 
 
 " Would you come home to her now?" 
 I asked him, quietly testing whether there 
 was any truth and higher manhood left 
 among the debris. 
 
 " No. I will never give up the world 
 for a cloister, nor sink myself in the val- 
 ley of repentance and say prayers to a 
 saint." 
 
 He was a victim of his desires, a prey 
 to disease, a martyr to his vanity. The 
 cruel electric light seemed to lay bare his 
 soul, as well as the lines and scars of his 
 countenance. The superstition of a gam- 
 bler, the vices of a roue, and the motives 
 
 of a savage glared from these seams of un- 
 229
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 numbered carousals. Yet the outward re- 
 mains, the cover of his weak nature, were 
 still attractive and striking. " How could 
 I take this wolf into a sheep-fold? " 
 
 "How's the market?" he asked, as if 
 closing the book of memory and turning 
 to his daily life and interest. 
 
 " Sugar, 49/2 ." The fateful cry seemed 
 to strike his ears like a tocsin. 
 
 Long before the decline had reached 
 this "break" strange he had not noted 
 the fall our $1,000 profit and fairy vision 
 of $10,000 had vanished into the fields of 
 imagination whence it had so suddenly 
 sprung. The sound of the "Caller's" 
 voice, the buzz and roar of the room poured 
 through him like an electric shock. The 
 strain had been too great for him to bear. 
 
 He stared fixedly at the white chalk 
 marks on the black, unfathomable "board, " 
 
 looking into the pit of destruction. 
 230
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 " Panic ! Sell short ! " he cried, huskily. 
 "Panic," striving to hold his mastery of 
 himself and the crowd. His voice sud- 
 denly stopped, and he fell to the floor, 
 unconscious, from another " stroke." 
 
 231
 
 III. THE PRODIGAL SON 
 
 OUT of compassion or 
 pity, possibly of envy, or for 
 Elizabeth's sake, I buoyed 
 him back to life, and tried 
 to endue him with some 
 hope of the future. The original 
 warp in the fabric of his nature 
 must have been good and sound, 
 or she could never have loved 
 and been true to him. There 
 might still be left in his charac- 
 ter unrotted strands and fibres strong 
 enough to hold a new woof ; although the 
 old hung in frayed, worn, and basely soiled, 
 colorless threads a mass of rags whose des- 
 tiny was a sewer or the grave. " What's 
 the good?" he had said. "My market 
 233
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 is busted. I've played my game and 
 lost. Let me pay and quit," a spark of 
 honor and right intent flashing from the 
 depths. 
 
 The flame of a candle flaring and sput- 
 tering in its socket, then dying to an ill- 
 smelling coal at the tip of the bit of wick, 
 poorly tells the story of the proud taper 
 newly lighted. Whether it was made of 
 paraffine or tallow is hardly clear, or, at 
 least, of little moment now. Maybe it is 
 the better part to stand as a symbol on an 
 altar, rather than be a " dip " guttered by 
 ill winds; yet in the latter case there are 
 lights as well as shadows. 
 
 George seemed to be sinking and flaring 
 in waves to the end of his life, the body 
 rather than the spirit fighting off death. I 
 had taken charge of him as I would a 
 brother, and had carried the almost inani- 
 mate remains to his room. He was my 
 234
 
 DAr 'LIGHT 
 
 care for humanity's sake; he had no 
 money, no friends and he was precious 
 for the sake of the woman who had loved 
 him. I must do all in my power to bring 
 him to her alive, lest my conscience re- 
 proach me. 
 
 His simple, poor room was neat and 
 clean, evidently by the hands of some 
 woman who worshipped him, as all women 
 did, I could see, from maid to grand- 
 mother, from washerwoman to Elizabeth. 
 There were no signs of culture or taste, or 
 any marks to show his leanings or character, 
 to be found in the room. Pictures or 
 books or " memories " or color or feeling 
 in any shape or form did not seem to in- 
 terest him. There was not even pen and 
 ink with which I could write a message to 
 her. 
 
 As soon as I had settled and cared for 
 him, I telegraphed to Elizabeth, though 
 235
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 not until after much doubt and temptation 
 to spare her until the end. 
 
 I sent, " Found him. He is quite ill." 
 She as laconically answered, "Shall I 
 come ? ' ' 
 
 " As you please," to which there was no 
 reply from her. 
 
 The prison-like, solitary room and the 
 inability to feel more than a natural sym- 
 pathy for a stricken human creature, gave 
 me long hours and days to think and con- 
 jecture over what she would do if he lived, 
 what she would say if he died. A sym- 
 pathetic current with Elizabeth brain 
 waves seemed to tell me her thoughts and 
 her feelings, to keep me in touch with her. 
 It was not necessary to write to her more 
 than the actual details of how I met George 
 by accident; that he had been stricken; 
 that I watched and cared for him with all 
 
 that money could do. t merely and coldly 
 236
 
 DAT LIGHT 
 
 wrote these facts and nothing more. She 
 did not say a word. 
 
 Yet my heart complained that she did 
 not speak to me, thank me, or tell me 
 how she felt settle the mystery. 
 
 When he was somewhat better and out of 
 danger, he grew morose and silent. He 
 obstinately refused to be moved to my 
 home, where he could have care, or to re- 
 lieve me of the nervous duty of looking 
 after him. I was no nurse and did not 
 care even for myself. It was not my nature. 
 Our wills clashed fora time, but I humored 
 him; then took the matter into my own 
 hands and carried him home. 
 
 The snow lay like a cloak of ermine on 
 the old garden, sterile and cold where the 
 pear trees protruded their black, broken, 
 decaying, palsied trunks in mockery of 
 life and spring when I brought George 
 Cargen back to Elizabeth. 
 237
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 As his litter drew near our door, I trem- 
 bled at the effect it might have upon her. 
 I worried at the fear of there being a scene. 
 
 "Is that you, George?" she said in a 
 cheerful voice, and at once took his hand 
 and touched his hair with the points of her 
 fingers. 
 
 "Yes! my old sweetheart," he replied, 
 trying to laugh in answer to her smile. 
 
 I was relieved at the quiet of the meet- 
 ing, and satisfied in my heart with one 
 steady bright look she gave me. I was 
 pleased at her courage and the capacity 
 she at once showed to tend and care for 
 this man. 
 
 He was a helpless, childish hulk, whose 
 memory of the years spent away from her 
 was transient and flickering, as if it had 
 been an episode and his former career with 
 Elizabeth scarcely broken. 
 
 Youth and vigor and lightness and de- 
 238
 
 DAT LIGHT 
 
 votedness seemed born again in her heart 
 and body. From a silent, quiet woman, 
 never intruding, she became busy and lo- 
 quacious ; she made a great ado and a great 
 fuss over the invalid, as if nothing else 
 existed on the earth. She had found her 
 sphere ; she was a nurse, as George had 
 characterized her. 
 
 The self-satisfied, joyful air with which 
 she passed me, or held in the little talks we 
 had, gave the tone of a judgment perfectly 
 contented with itself. What she did was 
 in her eyes wise and pleasing. 
 
 A certain arrogance, a putting of me 
 aside, as if it was her right and I ought to 
 be satisfied, offended me. Between us 
 there had been an equality and a complete 
 sympathy ; now she trod a new path, alone, 
 and seemed delighted. 
 
 Her treatment of me, her feelings towards 
 me, seemed completely altered; although, 
 239
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 knowing the woman as I did, I could not 
 feel the change to be in her heart. Women 
 are such actors, are so moved by surface 
 currents, take so seriously what the next 
 day they do not remember, that her actions 
 did not really hurt me. At times I laughed 
 to myself, thinking her withdrawal from 
 me only one of her usual strange, reserved 
 moods. 
 
 Possibly my dignity and tolerant manner, 
 which naturally would come to a man 
 certainly he would not whine or seek pity 
 like a house dog piqued her. It was her 
 part to come to me, not mine to ask pay. 
 
 Of course, at such a time, there is no field 
 for sentiment, and a thousand excuses were 
 thrust forward to blind me or enable her to 
 escape me. I waited I patiently waited. 
 
 Her creed that men must and could 
 live as pure as women do or be unforgiven 
 
 was hidden under the mantle of charity 
 240
 
 DAYLIGHT 
 
 and pity. But her love of me? What 
 barrier had risen between us? What could 
 it be that kept her so silent. I could not 
 see her alone, no matter how I tried 
 could get no word of her. Yet I waited. 
 
 While the period of uncertainty lasted 
 and I felt all would soon be over with 
 George, I did what she asked and smiled 
 at her. Her happiness was my aim. 
 
 When he grew better and could be about 
 his room, she showed no desire to renew 
 our relations or to give me the touch of 
 sympathy. Her reply was: " Don't! I 
 am busy now," only an excuse. It is not 
 for me to analyze or explain her motives 
 or her will. 
 
 The ability to know what women mean, 
 that makes for peace and happiness. The 
 blind fall in the ditch. 
 
 241
 
 IV. REGRET 
 
 SHE not only welcomed George 
 back with joy, but she took him 
 into her arms as if he were a babe 
 in his purity. Her whole nature 
 was poured out upon him ca- 
 resses, expressions of love ; and, I 
 feared, her soul. This seemed to 
 me the breaking of a long pent 
 dam of feeling which would soon 
 run out. Or it appeared to be 
 the motherly instinct, that would 
 pass when he passed away. I was loyal 
 and did not waver, though sorely tried. 
 
 She used me as if I were a servant or a 
 
 hired nurse. I was hers body and purse 
 
 a slave without her having a thought of me. 
 
 What I had done, where I had gone, 
 
 243
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 was of no interest. My welfare was for- 
 gotten. Bright and cheery, she tried to 
 joke with me in an ordinary way, and 
 talk of commonplace matters seriously, 
 never. 
 
 But later on, as he lived and under her 
 care promised to do for years, a wreck who 
 would need her constant and undivided 
 attention, my mind changed. 
 
 "Must I tell all?" as she once 
 asked. " Must I abase myself still far- 
 ther? " 
 
 She welcomed him back with love and 
 joy me, she forgot. 
 
 Once when I tried to find her soul, she 
 said, almost in anger : "If you had not 
 asked him to make that awful speculation, 
 he would not have been brought to this 
 plight." 
 
 Beside herself, when he seemed about to 
 244
 
 DAY 'LIGHT 
 
 die : " Did you selfishly tempt him to his 
 destruction? " 
 
 If he had died? Then she would have 
 come back to herself to me. 
 
 The passion of love is like the wind 
 which bloweth where it listeth. No man 
 can foretell its going or coming. It is 
 mortal and as light as the thistle-down. 
 
 I was no longer jealous of the kisses and 
 endearments she gave George. Youth 
 went from me forever I was an old man. 
 
 Her soul, her immortal love, was mine, 
 and no power of another, no will of her 
 own could part the immortal union of our 
 hearts. He was her idol, her old relig- 
 ion; he was clothed with the garment of 
 her imagination, which reality would yet 
 tear asunder. 
 
 Perhaps it was not passion which ruled 
 her, but rather a sense of loyalty and duty. 
 245
 
 REGRET OF SPRING 
 
 I do not blame her. I am only sorry. 
 They were gone, and I was alone once 
 more. 
 
 "Nevertheless, recurrence is sure," in 
 all nature and life. We move as the earth 
 does in an orbit large or small in cycles. 
 Elizabeth will, I know, idly turn the ring 
 on her finger, round and round, for months, 
 past the time of the fruitless pear trees 
 blooming how long? 
 
 I know, I am sure, that spiritual love is 
 immortal and that natural love is ephem- 
 eral. Beyond this no man may say. 
 
 /v\ 
 
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