30,,
 
 THE WOMAN 
 WHO STOOD BETWEEN 
 
 BY 
 
 MINNIE GILMORE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "A SON OF ESAU," "PIPES FROM PRAIRIE-LAND," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 LOVELL, CORYELL & COMPANY 
 
 43> 45 AND 47 EAST TENTH STREET
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, 
 
 BY 
 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 
 
 [All rights reserved}
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 I. 
 
 I WILL begin by confessing the truth, / 
 did it. 
 
 Messrs. Kane, Joyce, and Mulford, my 
 lawyers ; Mr. D wight, of the Daily Lu- 
 minary Mr. Ward, of the Evening Eye. 
 
 Two, three more chairs, if you please. 
 Thank you. 
 
 The condemned cell has its privileges, you 
 see, like the condemned man. You flinch, 
 gentlemen. Face to face with the con- 
 demned, you realize that yon, who justify 
 the law of capital punishment, are his con- 
 demners. I, in. my youth and strength, I, 
 
 2061824
 
 8 TIIK \YOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 your brother-freeman, am to be gagged and 
 bound by brute force, dragged to my death 
 like 'a beast, condemned by the jury that 
 represents you, murdered by the coward- 
 blow of the law you uphold ! 
 
 There are thoughts burning my brain, 
 there are words scorching my lips, white-hot 
 flames from the yawning hell called the 
 grave. Let them pass ! / did it ! and 
 " An eye for an eye ! " "A tooth for a 
 tooth ! " cries the Old Law, deafening Chris- 
 tian ears to the " Vengeance is Mine " of 
 
 O 
 
 the New. 
 
 Another visitor ? Ah, you, Father ! The 
 Catholic chaplain, gentlemen ; may God 
 bless him ! 
 
 Now I will tell my story. But I must 
 begin at the beginning, and tell it in my 
 own way.
 
 II. 
 
 I AM thirty years old. My name is Von 
 Vost. My father was of German birth ; my 
 mother an Irishwoman and a Catholic. I 
 loved my father best. There was that sym- 
 pathy between us which coexists, I think, 
 with striking physical resemblance. He 
 was strong and fair, like his father before 
 him. Both had eyes like the blue Rhem- 
 wasser, and hair like the sun on the Bicber- 
 ich vinelands. I, as you see, am of slightly 
 darker type, owing to my Celtic mother. 
 She had the Irish-gray eyes that go with 
 black hair and lashes, " stars set in midnight 
 skies," my father called them. Her cheeks 
 and lips had the flush of Killarney's rose 
 upon them. In her way, she was as hand-
 
 10 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 some as my father in his ; otherwise he had 
 never loved her. For generations the Vost 
 women have been famous for their beauty. 
 " As beautiful as a Von Vosfs wife " is 
 still a proverb in the Bieberich district of 
 the Vaterland. 
 
 My mother was my father's second wife. 
 His first wife died no matter how. She 
 was beautiful and light. She betrayed my 
 father. One morning she was found face- 
 downward in the rushes where the Rhine- 
 waves lap the Bieberich vinelands, her 
 beautiful hair unbound, her beautiful white 
 breast bare, her hand still clutched on the 
 hilt of the dagger sheathed in her pulseless 
 heart. She had slain herself in an hour of 
 emotional delirium, the wise world said. So 
 let it be. 
 
 But thereafter, for my father, the Vater- 
 land was haunted. In every place, at every
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 11 
 
 turn, her dead face confronted him. Every 
 familiar scene became a thing of dread and 
 horror. At last he fled, meeting my mother 
 on the passage out. She was simple, health- 
 ful, innocent ; magnetically attractive, I 
 think, to my father's shattered nerves and 
 morbid mind. Truth shone in her clear 
 eyes, purity blushed on her lips. Soon, 
 love glowed in her warm heart. When the 
 time was ripe, he told her enough of his 
 story to make her pity him ; not, unhappily 
 for her, enough to make her fear and flee 
 him. In Castle Garden, on the day they 
 reached shore, they were married. 
 
 " For richer, for poorer," " for better, for 
 worse," read the marriage-service. 
 
 " For poorer," " for worse," it proved for 
 both. It is a mistake for a man to hamper 
 himself with a wife at the outset of his ca- 
 reer, as my father learned to his cost.
 
 12 T1IK HVAl/.LY \Y1IO *T<JOD BETWKKX. 
 
 " There are women for all men, but wives 
 only for the rich, 11 he said, afterward ; and 
 many a poor man echoes him. 
 
 Marriage without love is hell, and Pov- 
 erty is Love's murderer ; no merciful assas- 
 sin, swift and sure ; but a slow, cruel, tor- 
 turing strangler-in-the-dark, within whose 
 skeleton-clutch Love curses love, and dies ! 
 
 My mother loved to the end, like a wom- 
 an ; but my father you are all men ; you 
 will understand. Poverty makes saints of a 
 
 ti 
 
 few men, devils of the many. He was of 
 the many ; and the socialistic taint in the 
 Vost blood, that had impoverished it genera- 
 tion by generation in the Monarchy, still 
 impoverished it in the Republic. 
 
 The Republic ? Faugh ! Under the 
 humble name the crown of Gold, the throne 
 of Power, the monarch of Monopoly, mas- 
 querade like kings in the cloaks of peasants.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 13 
 
 Freedom ! Fraternity ! Equality ! Hell 
 laughs at the lying Avords, and heaven 
 abominates them. Under the stars and 
 stripes, as under the crown and sceptre, it is 
 the great against the small, the strong 
 against the weak, the high against the low- 
 ly, the rich against the poor ! 
 
 " You are my slave ! " cries Wealth to 
 Poverty. " Serve, in silence ! " 
 
 God help the slave, in service or rebel- 
 lion ! The slave who serves is suffered to 
 exist not to live, as a man, mind ; but to 
 exist, physically, with other brute-beasts of 
 burden. The slave who rebels is lashed for 
 life to the whipping-post. Upon the hope 
 of the young, the despair of the old, the 
 naked heart of the man, the soft white 
 breast of the woman, the knout falls alike. 
 Its open wounds, its unhealed scars, you may 
 see in every slum and tenement and brothel.
 
 14 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 " Drink is the cause ! " cry the moralists. 
 
 They lie. Drink is the effect. Where 
 Rum is the gate through which the poor 
 pass to hell, Despair is the road that has 
 led to it.
 
 III. 
 
 As I have said, I loved my father. In his 
 way, he loved me. I was of his flesh, his 
 blood the Vost blood. He knew the hell- 
 flame that was in it, and gloated as he 
 kindled it. Over his meerschaum and bier, 
 week after week, month after month, year 
 after year, he whispered, not as my mother 
 supposed, the folk-tales of the Vaterland, 
 but tales of violence, of rapine, of blood- 
 shed ; tales whose memory peopled my 
 nights with hideous phantoms, haunted my 
 dreams with the shrieks of the dying, and 
 the staring eyes of the dead. Only my 
 mother's prayers, whispered over my head 
 as a lullaby is crooned over a cradle, could 
 soothe me.
 
 16 THE WOMAX WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 Those woman- prayers how restfully they 
 contrasted with the oaths of the drinking, 
 desperate men crowding our poor room from 
 dusk to daybreak, rousing me from my 
 childish sleep with their bloody threats 
 against the rich and great ! My father, 
 when he had drunk too deeply, would 
 snatch me from the bed, and tearing the 
 rosary from my weeping mother's hand, bid 
 me kiss its crucifix, and swear thereon this 
 terrible threefold oath : 
 
 1. To hate with an undying hatred, re- 
 lentless as fate, strong as death, fierce as hell, 
 the proud, the rich, and tlie mighty ! 
 
 2. To consecrate my body, my mind, my 
 heart, my life, my death, to the cause of the 
 humble, tJie poor, the powerless I 
 
 3. To spiU the blood, to its last red drop, 
 oftlie man, woman, or child who should stand 
 between me and the triumph of my cause.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 17 
 
 Over and over a^ain, in the "wee sma' 
 
 O ' 
 
 hours," by the light of the kerosene-lamp, in 
 the close room reeking with the fumes of 
 rum and tobacco, I took the oath ; while the 
 men cheered, and my mother wept, and 
 prayed heaven not to hear me. 
 
 " Hate loses causes ; Love wins them ! " 
 she sobbed. " He shall spill no blood, my 
 white-handed, white-souled boy. You are 
 demons, not men, to ask it." 
 
 But the words and tears of a woman 
 what are they ? Like her prayers, things 
 for men to jeer at. 
 
 Does even God heed them ?
 
 IV. 
 
 MY father died as he had lived. My 
 mother and I watched by his death -bed 
 through the long, chill night, into the dismal 
 daybreak. His boon companions, the com- 
 panions of his pipe and beer, had deserted 
 him. Only one remained, stretched like a 
 dog by the fire, sunk in a drunken stupor. 
 
 My father would 'have no priest, no min- 
 ister. When my mother, in the name of 
 God, implored him, his dying curse was his 
 answer. He turned from her, and beckoned 
 me. Under the pillow his nerveless hand 
 was fumbling. It drew forth a dagger. 
 Well I knew the story of the slender pointed 
 dirk in its shabby sheath ! As I touched its 
 hilt, I shuddered. It felt like the chill dead
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 19 
 
 liand of the fair, false woman whose blood- 
 stained breast had been washed for the 
 grave by the waves of the blue Rhine-water. 
 As he pressed it into my hand, he repeated 
 the threefold oath. His life-breath passed 
 his lips with it. 
 
 " Swear it ! " he panted " ' to hate the 
 rich ! to live for the humble ! to spill the 
 Uood ' " 
 
 As he sank back, the death-rattle sound- 
 ing in his throat, the light that failed in 
 his glaring eyes seemed to name anew in 
 mine. All that, hitherto, I had accepted 
 blindly, in childish submission to circum- 
 stances, I now looked upon with mature, 
 suddenly rebellious eyes. The narrow street 
 beneath, with its sunken cobble-stones, its 
 stagnant puddles, its malodorous heaps of 
 garbage; the opposite tenement, with pitch- 
 ers and pails littering its window-sills, its
 
 20 Tim WOMAN wuo STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 myriad clothes-lines hung with ugly gar- 
 ments, its bare-armed women and unkempt 
 children with faces flattened against the 
 panes; our own little room, with its single 
 small-paned window through which the sun- 
 less morning glared like a pallid ghost, the 
 bare floor, the plaster \valls, the scant, rude 
 furniture ; the drunkard in his brutish sleep; 
 my mother's shabby gown, whose rolled-up 
 sleeves revealed her once handsome arms 
 and hands, now coarse and mottled from toil 
 and exposure ; my own gaunt frame grow- 
 ing in all directions out of my ill-shaped 
 clothes, my clumsy copper - toed boots, my 
 hands, dingy and purple with the chill in my 
 blood, and of the brawny, coarse-veined, 
 square -fingered mould that branded me the 
 son of the toiler ; above all, the face of the 
 man on his death-bed, the strong, fair Teu- 
 ton face lined now with the marks of evil
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 21 
 
 passions, surly and gross, swollen and pur- 
 ple still from recent debauch, in spite of the 
 pallor of death, the rigor of dissolution al- 
 ready setting their fatal seal upon it in all, 
 Poverty in its nude hideousness, burst upon 
 me Poverty that means not the fault, nor 
 even the misfortune, of the poor; but the 
 wrong of the monopolist, the yoke of the op- 
 pressor, the blight, the curse, the damnation 
 of the oppressed ! 
 
 Over my sickened soul surged a wave of 
 passionate pity for the dying man before me. 
 And the world held hosts of just such pite- 
 ous victims my father was but one ! 
 
 My mother's rosary, placed there by her 
 pious hands, lay upon his breast. Impul- 
 sively, I caught it up. The oath so often 
 sealed by my childish kiss upon it, leaped 
 once more to my lips. 
 
 The brown beads jingled against one an-
 
 22 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 other. The sound roused my father from 
 his death - lethargy called him back from 
 the brink of the dark valley where all go, 
 none return. With the sudden strength of 
 ebbing life's last moment, his pale lips spoke. 
 
 " Swear ! " he gasped, in a hollow voice 
 that the grave already muffled " swear ' to 
 spill the Hood of man, woman ' ' 
 
 " I swear it ! " I cried ; but he did not 
 hear me. 
 
 On that last word " woman" his lips 
 shut over. He fell back, dead.
 
 V. 
 
 I HAD gone to my father's death -bed a 
 boy. I left it a man. My mother, with 
 love's acuteness, saw the change ; but wheth- 
 er it boded good or ill, even her love could 
 not divine. She took her doubt to her 
 priest on the Sunday following my father's 
 burial. 
 
 The priest was a good old man, with kind 
 eyes and a gentle voice. I listened respect- 
 fully when at her request he came to talk to 
 me ; but I answered not a word. My si- 
 lence puzzled him. More than once I caught 
 his keen eyes scrutinizing me from under 
 their shaggy brows. 
 
 " What the boy needs is education," he 
 said to my mother, at parting ; " education
 
 24 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD 11 KT \YEKN. 
 
 for soul, as well as brain. Send him to our 
 parochial school for a few years. God will 
 not let you starve, meanwhile." 
 
 " We shall not starve," she said, proudly. 
 
 She was capable, industrious, and thrifty, 
 and had learned fine needle-work in an Irish 
 convent such needle-work as cloistered ves- 
 tals do, whose white hearts stitch with their 
 threads the altar linens. The latter years 
 of my father's life had been one long ca- 
 rouse. The sale of her delicate handiwork 
 had alone kept the roof over our heads, the 
 wolf from our door. 
 
 " We shall not starve," she repeated. 
 " He shall go to your school, my Father." 
 
 Then I spoke. I can hear my boyish 
 voice now, strong yet tremulous, defiant 
 yet timid ; the voice in which the keys of 
 childhood and manhood both jarred and 
 blended.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 25 
 
 " I shall not go to your school," I said. 
 " I will have State education, or none. You 
 educate the poor exclusively. You teach 
 the creed of one church. The State edu- 
 cates poor and rich alike, and teaches the 
 American creed of universal brotherhood. 
 I will beo-in even as I shall end on com- 
 
 <D 
 
 mon ground, on equal footing, with my gen- 
 eration." 
 
 " My son," said the old priest, gently, 
 " there is no common ground, no equal foot- 
 ing, save before God alone." 
 
 Were his words true or false ? My brain 
 is whirling. I do not know.
 
 VI. 
 
 MY mother wept, but she let me have my 
 way. I was a good son to her, in spite of 
 the tears I caused her. If I did not go to 
 her church, neither did I go to the bar- room ; 
 if I earned neither the bread I ate, nor the 
 clothes I wore, neither did I squander one pen- 
 ny of her hard earnings upon folly or pleas- 
 ure. Day and night, night and day, I pored 
 over books, books, books impelled by lust 
 not for knowledge, but for the power knowl- 
 edge alone gives. The contest to which my 
 arms were consecrated was a mental con- 
 test, not a physical one, though fools and 
 knaves swear otherwise. By nature I was 
 well equipped for my mission, with a quick 
 mind, an eloquent tongue, an impressive
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 27 
 
 presence. One can afford to speak with- 
 out false modesty on the brink of his open 
 grave. 
 
 With education, my equipment was com- 
 plete. Not with the education of books, 
 however, though these included the works 
 of Rousseau, Fichte, Bakunin, St. Simon, 
 Carlyle, Fourier, Mill, Spencer, Comte, 
 Marx, Tolstoi, up to our own Henry George. 
 These were but the beginning. My intelli- 
 gence told me that I must know men, wom- 
 en, the world, life, before I could hope to 
 reform them. 
 
 I studied these in the palaces, and in the 
 prisons; in the theatres, and in the hospi- 
 tals ; in the factories, and in club-windows ; 
 on the boulevards, and in the gin-shops. I 
 trod the highwaj^s of the rich, and the by- 
 ways of the poor ; followed the saint to the 
 shrine, and the sinner to the slums ; watched
 
 28 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 the belle as she swept to her carriage, and 
 dogged the slave -girl from the sweater's 
 shop to the dance-hall, and to the midnight- 
 hell to which the dance hall leads. I 
 studied the young blood sipping his w r ines, 
 and the tramp as he drained stale beer with 
 his bloated mouth to the kesf. I studied the 
 
 O 
 
 work of the politician, and the play of his 
 silent partner, the financier. I studied the 
 dowager at her dinner, and the work-woman 
 as she starved that her child mi^ht eat. I 
 
 o 
 
 studied the heiress in her box at the opera, 
 and her sister outside on the pavement the 
 girl of the street. On land, on sea, in the 
 Old World's Kingdoms, in the New World's 
 Republic, I stood at Poverty's cradle, toiled 
 with Labor, caught the crumbs of the feast 
 of Capital, followed Wealth to its splendid 
 tomb. Just how I did it, no matter. The 
 end is the question, not the means. When
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 29 
 
 the education of Life supplemented the 
 education of books, I was ripe for my mis- 
 sion. 
 
 In the meantime my mother died.
 
 VII. 
 
 I REGRETTED her, after a fashion. There 
 is something about a woman, I think, which 
 a man misses when she is gone, though he 
 may have been scarcely sensible of her 
 presence. Her little brown rosary was 
 buried with her. I felt a pang as the coffin- 
 lid shut upon it. Somehow it seemed as- 
 sociated not only with my past, but with my 
 future ; since all that was to come after was 
 but the consequence of the oath, sealed by 
 my kiss on its crucifix which had gone be- 
 fore. But of my oath I did not need the 
 crucifix to remind me. Of the lesson of 
 hate, my father had taught me the begin- 
 ning. Of Life the world, men and women 
 I learned it to its end.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 31 
 
 Again and again, in the impatience of 
 youth, I had resolved to enter upon my 
 social mission, but a mystic something had 
 held me back. As I turned from the grave 
 in which my mother was laid to sleep, I was 
 suddenly conscious that the restraining in- 
 fluence was removed. I felt myself not only 
 freed, but pushed forward. I pressed on 
 blindly, knowing neither why, nor whither. 
 Suddenly I found myself at the door of the 
 house in which my father had died.
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE neighborhood, as was but natural, 
 was changed changed, which seems less 
 credible, for the worse. The street was 
 dirtier, the tenements shabbier, the dayliglit 
 paler. Between the roofs of the adjacent 
 avenue sped the Elevated. The shops about 
 were of a lower grade ; the rum-shops in- 
 creased in number. The steps upon which I 
 had played in my boyhood were notched 
 and broken. The remnant of a door-plate I 
 remembered, dangled by one rusty nail. 
 
 I rang the bell. A dark-eyed girl an- 
 swered it. The garret was empty, she told 
 me, in answer to my question. I told her I 
 would take it, before I asked her the price. 
 My mother had amassed me a snug little sum
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 33 
 
 by her savings. My heart felt warm, where 
 the bank-notes lay. I had drawn them that 
 morning. The girl smiled as I followed her, 
 and looked back at me, her dark eyes flash- 
 ing with sudden brightness over her stooped 
 shoulders. She was young, and nature is 
 nature. I was a new interest, because a new 
 possibility, in her narrow life. 
 
 Her mother lay in the hall, in a drunken 
 sleep. She had a large coarse face, framed 
 in dishevelled hair. A shapeless wrapper of 
 striped blue calico covered her. Over her 
 heaving bust her hands were folded strong, 
 hard hands, purple with stagnant blood. My 
 voice roused her, and her hands unfolded. 
 Through a rent in her wrapper one gross 
 nude breast was exposed. The girl flushed 
 scarlet, and stooping, deftly pinned the rent. 
 The woman's bleared eyes opened. With a 
 muttered oath she lifted her hand, and struck
 
 34 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 the girl across the face. It was a brutal 
 blow. I could fancy the sting and burn of 
 it, but the girl said nothing, neither did I. I 
 handed the woman a roll of dollars, which 
 she clutched greedily, and went up-stairs. I 
 heard the girl's voice, pained yet patient, ex- 
 plaining as I ascended. 
 
 As I entered the room in which my father 
 had died, I felt his unseen presence in it. 
 The room seemed smaller than in my youth, 
 the walls closer, the ceiling lower. I threw 
 up the window, and turned to the bed. It 
 was soiled and disordered, evidently un- 
 touched since the previous lodger had left it. 
 I looked at it long and intently, till I had 
 rid myself of the fancy that my father, 
 ghastly in death, still lay upon it. 
 
 The hearth upon which the drunken 
 watcher had slept was littered witli rags and 
 paper. I missed my mother's stove and
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 35 
 
 dresser, the many womanly knick-knacks with 
 which she had made even that poor room a 
 home. A wash-stand, teetering on three 
 legs under the weight of a cracked bowl and 
 broken-nosed pitcher ; a square table, and a 
 few cheap chairs, furnished the room. 
 
 I drew a chair to the window and bowed 
 my head on its sill. My childhood, my boy- 
 hood, my mother's face, were before me. Al- 
 most for the first time in my life, a soft chord 
 vibrated within me. In that room whose 
 walls had echoed with my unholy oath of 
 hate, where my father had died with threats 
 of bloodshed reeking on his lips, a long-for- 
 gotten word of my mother's recurred to me : 
 " Hate loses causes : Love ivins them ! " 
 
 Why did the gentle words haunt me ? 
 Premonitory of what was to follow, they 
 issued like warning wraiths love - loosened 
 from death-locked mother-lips.
 
 IX. 
 
 I WAS roused from my reverie by the rustle 
 of the girl's dress behind me. She had en- 
 tered without knocking, clean sheeting on her 
 arm. On her cheek was the blood-red scar 
 of her mother's blow. I looked her over 
 from head to foot, as I had never before 
 looked at a woman not as a man looks at 
 the one fair woman he loves ; but as I fancy 
 my father had looked at my mother, the 
 fresh-skinned Irish girl with the pure, true 
 heart, as his haunted eyes shuddered from 
 the phantom-face staring at him from the 
 dank Rhine-rushes. Her brown eyes were 
 like a dog's patient and faithful. Her red 
 mouth drooped at the corners. It seemed to 
 accent the pathos of the blood-red scar.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 37 
 
 She was not short, though her head, as we 
 stood together, had barely reached my shoul- 
 der ; but neither was she though she looked 
 as if she should have been tall. She was 
 like a young tree stunted. Her figure was 
 neither slender nor plump, but her move- 
 ments were lithe, in spite of a halt in her gait 
 which impeded them. My eyes followed 
 her. I think she was not handsome I 
 am not sure. I know only that she touched 
 me. As she passed within reach I pulled 
 her to me and kissed her. Her drooping 
 mouth curled upward. The blood-red scar 
 burned redder, but I think it no longer hurt 
 her. She told me, in answer to my question, 
 that her name was Nan. 
 
 That night I slept the deep, dreamless, 
 unbroken sleep of a child. As I passed down 
 the stairs in the morning, Nan came hastening 
 out of the lower room, smiling at me expect-
 
 33 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 antly. I brushed by her without a word. 
 The impulse of the day before had been a 
 weakness. With a new day, my strength 
 had returned. I knew then that the day was 
 to be, even as 1 know now that it was, a fate- 
 ful one. When I had had my simple break- 
 fast of German bread and coffee, I hesitated 
 for a moment in the doorway of the little 
 shop, and then turned up the street toward 
 the bustling avenue. The mystic force was 
 again impelling me, why or whither, I knew 
 not. I knew only that I must obey it. 
 
 From the steeple of the church where my 
 mother had knelt each night and morning, 
 eight slow strokes sounded, as I started on 
 my walk. As I returned, the eight slow 
 strokes resounded. Twenty-four hours had 
 elapsed between them hours in which I had 
 tramped the city the rich city, the poor 
 city my footsteps grinding, grinding, grind-
 
 THE WOtfAlT WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 39 
 
 ing like iron wheels through my brain. 
 When they ceased, at last, the work of the 
 wheels was done. The seething impressions, 
 thoughts, sentiments, which were the aggre- 
 gate random mental accumulation of } 7 ears, 
 had been moulded into definite shape. The 
 goal toward which the mystic force had im- 
 pelled me was now in sight. 
 
 Under the tenement was a small stationer's 
 shop. Like one in a dream, I entered it, and 
 snatching up a ream of legal-cap paper, 
 pushed it toward the clerk. 
 
 " Pens," I demanded, unconsciously point- 
 ing to a case of gold pens set in the show- 
 case. 
 
 " Gold ? " he asked, doubtfully. 
 
 " Hell-fire, no ! " I cried. " Keep your 
 gold for the rich. The poor man's pen is of 
 steel like his sword." 
 
 He looked at me with fear in his eyes.
 
 40 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 " Ink ? " lie asked, tremulously, holding a 
 bottle toward me. 
 
 " Yes, red ink," I cried" blood-red ! " 
 
 His hands trembled as he made my change. 
 He was an old man, and alone. Evidently 
 he thought me a murderous maniac. As I 
 shut the door behind me, he sprang over the 
 counter, and locked it. I passed Nan on the 
 stairs ; she cried out as she saw me. I un- 
 derstood why, as I glanced into the cracked 
 glass hung over the teetering wash-stand. 
 My face was white and rigid ghastly as the 
 face of the dead. 
 
 But the eyes ah ! the eyes were living !
 
 X. 
 
 FOR three days and nights, as I know now, 
 I wrote without a pause, conscious of nothing 
 save that the mystic force impelled me to 
 write on. I was dimly conscious of a loaf of 
 bread, a jug of milk or beer, placed beside 
 me of a lamp set before me as the days 
 darkened, which I pushed away with impa- 
 tient hand, as the sun of redawning morning 
 put its pallid flame to shame. Thus went 
 the days and nights. 
 
 As the fourth day dawned, rny pen fell 
 from my hand. Its work was finished. It 
 was the key that had unlocked all that had 
 been pent within me for years and years. 
 The seething waters of my soul, dammed
 
 42 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 over-long, had forced their dyke at last ; 
 bursting forth in mighty billows which I 
 had only to record as they flashed by. 
 Wealth was the leviathan that lurked be- 
 neath them ; Poverty the prey that drifted, 
 shrieking, to its fate. 
 
 All, in relation to vital social questions, 
 that I had accumulated by experience, obser- 
 vation, study, hearsay all that I had assim- 
 ilated by long and profound thought ; all 
 that I had felt, hoped, feared, loved, hated- 
 all my pity for the oppressed, my scorn for 
 the oppressors all my scathing wrath 
 against Capital the wronger, all my fierce 
 desire to right Labor the wronged were 
 inscribed in blood red characters before 
 me. Without pause, doubt, error, erasure, I 
 had written. Tongue could not have spoken, 
 even as pen had not flown fast enough, to 
 keep pace with the inspiration that impelled
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 43 
 
 it. I had not been the author, but only the 
 transcriber of the burning words before me. 
 As I have said, my work was finished. My 
 pen dropped from my hand. 
 
 I awoke to consciousness of Nan's face, 
 womanly -tender, bending over me. 
 
 "I thought you was dead," she said. 
 " You're only starvin'. See ? " 
 
 She pointed to the table. Milk and 
 bread and beer stood there untouched, side 
 by side with the smoked lamp. For three 
 days and nights I had not eaten, drunk, or 
 slept. I seized the stale loaf, and gnawed it 
 greedily. She caught up the pitcher, and 
 disappeared, returning with it filled with 
 foaming beer. I drank the generous draught 
 to the last drop. Then I fell back, and to 
 sleep, simultaneously. When I awoke it 
 was twenty-two hours later, eight in the 
 morning, by the church clock.
 
 44 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 I rose, and caught up the manuscript, 
 piled as I had left it, on the little table. 
 Unwashed, unshaved, with my garments 
 creased and rumpled by my long sleep in 
 them, I dashed from the obscure street into 
 one of the great thoroughfares. Block after 
 block I walked past the double file of prom- 
 enaders, well - groomed men on their way 
 down to Wall Street; tailor-made women on 
 their constitutional morning walk ; middle- 
 class folk of both sexes, going humbly, al- 
 most apologetically, their unobtrusive way ; 
 belated working-men and women bound for 
 store and workshop ; poor girls and boys 
 hurrying to yards and factories, while their 
 richer brothers and sisters sauntered to 
 school and college ; past trucks and cars and 
 carriages on one side, past glittering shops, 
 great and small, iipon the other, on on on 
 till the sign of a famous publishing-house
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 45 
 
 caught my eyes. Without hesitation I 
 opened the door, and stepped in. 
 
 A dapper young clerk addressed me be- 
 fore I had shut the door behind me. 
 
 " What is it you wish ? " his lips said, but 
 I did not hear them. 
 
 He was looking me over doubtfully, and 
 the language of his eyes was what I heard. 
 
 " We have nothing for you," they were 
 saying, mutely. Though the scornful words 
 were unspoken, I heard them hissing behind 
 his lips. 
 
 " I wish to publish a book, at once," I 
 heard myself saying. " I have the manu- 
 script with me." 
 
 He laughed a low, taunting, scornful 
 laugh, and once more looked me over, from 
 head to foot. That was his answer. 
 
 At the same instant I saw him dodge, 
 and spring back out of my reach. I did
 
 46 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 not know that I had lifted my hand, until 
 it canie down with a crash upon the show- 
 case. 
 
 As I was turning away, a tall, handsome 
 man of the aristocrat- type, entered the store 
 and greeted me courteously. Then he 
 turned to the clerk. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " he asked. 
 
 I went forward to meet him, instinctively 
 attracted to him. He was a gentleman, of 
 the born kind. His sensitive face was fair 
 and delicate, and exquisitely refined in feat- 
 ure. In his eyes was a glorified look, as if 
 they had seen heaven. I learned, afterward, 
 that their divine radiance was the light of 
 a great love. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " he repeated. 
 
 " A poor devil of an author, of the de- 
 lirium-tremens type," I heard the clerk 
 whisper, in aside.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 47 
 
 The man did not smile. He only looked 
 at me with his radiant eyes. 
 
 " I wish to publish a book. I have the 
 manuscript with me," I repeated, helplessly. 
 
 He took the manuscript in his soft, white, 
 gentle hands. 
 
 " If you will leave this with me," he said, 
 " our readers shall judge of its merits. We 
 are over - supplied with manuscripts, just 
 now, however. Can you give us a month ? " 
 
 " A month ? " I repeated, incredulously. 
 
 He looked at me compassionately at me; 
 not, as his clerk's hard eyes had looked, 
 over me. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, involuntarily. Then, 
 with a sudden kindly smile, " we will make 
 the month a week." 
 
 That week of waiting ! I could never 
 have endured it 
 
 Save for Nan !
 
 XL 
 
 As I re-entered the publishing-house, a 
 week later, the dapper clerk greeted me 
 with a respectful bow. 
 
 " I was told to show you upstairs," he said. 
 
 I followed him into the elevator, out of it 
 again, through aisles enclosed in solid walls 
 of books, toward a room in the rear of the 
 building. On the threshold the clerk 
 paused, knocking at the half-open door. 
 
 " Come in," said a voice I recognized. 
 
 The clerk stood back respectfully. I en- 
 tered the room. The owner of the famil- 
 iar voice stepped forward with outstretched 
 hand. 
 
 Mr. ? " he inquired. 
 
 " Von Vost," I responded.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 49 
 
 " A good name, a noble name," exclaimed 
 an old man seated at a table in the centre 
 of the room. " And there's something in 
 a name, Shakespeare notwithstanding. I'd 
 avow it to his ghost. And a propos, let me 
 be the first to congratulate you not only on 
 your name, but upon your work. It is orig- 
 inal, striking, stupendous a work of genius, 
 my boy, a work of genius." * 
 
 " Mr. Castleman, our senior member fa- 
 miliarly known as the Enthusiast," explained 
 my friend, with a smile. " Our general au- 
 tocrat, Mr. Grifton, otherwise known as the 
 Cynic. Last and least, myself distin- 
 guished, in the firm, as the Happy Medium ; 
 but known elsewhere by the family name of 
 -Harold." 
 
 " When will my book be published ? " I 
 asked, curtly. Their easy persiflage embar- 
 rassed me. I felt ill at ease, out of place, at
 
 50 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD JiKTWKKN. 
 
 a disadvantage. I resented the logical infer- 
 ence that the advantage was on their side. 
 
 " The proverbial impatience of youthful 
 authors," groaned the Cynic. " Not so fast, 
 young man. There are several questions to 
 be discussed before the matter of publication 
 can be considered at all." 
 
 "It is a work of genius," repeated the 
 senior member, with a thump on the table. 
 " After the reports of our readers, I sat up 
 all night to read it. You'd freeze the fires 
 of Dante's * Inferno,' Grifton, with that con- 
 foundedly cold, cnutious, critical manner of 
 yours. Why not speak out, and confess to 
 the lad that you're big D'd glad to publish 
 his book ? If you're not, I am, by the Im- 
 mortals ! " 
 
 " I believe," said Grifton, appealing to 
 Harold, " that I am the business manager I " 
 
 "Business be hanged ! " cried the Enthu-
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 51 
 
 siast. "/"with significant emphasis "/ 
 have a brain which comprehends, a soul 
 which sympathizes with, a heart which beats 
 in unison with, genius." 
 
 Harold rose with a smile Harold, my 
 friend. Even then, when I had seen him 
 only twice, had felt the cordial pressure of 
 his hand but once, the first man, the last 
 man, I have called my friend. 
 
 " My dear Enthusiast," he said, " I move 
 that you and I desert the field, and leave it 
 to the Cynic, and genius." 
 
 " Not for Dickens ! " responded the ad- 
 dressed, with emphasis, " until I have drunk 
 confusion to the one and success to the other, 
 in old port I brought with me to-day, in 
 honor of this occasion ! " 
 
 I felt no elation at the tribute ; the blood 
 did not quicken in my veins ; my heart 
 throbbed no whit faster.
 
 52 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 " I am glad that my book pleases you," I 
 said, " inasmuch as its publication is thus 
 insured. Otherwise your praises are noth- 
 ing to me. My ambition is not a personal 
 one I I " 
 
 The words of passionate allegiance to my 
 cause which I had fain uttered, faltered on 
 my lips. The fumes of the rare old wine 
 in my nostrils, its flavor in my mouth, 
 its glow in my veins the costly glass in my 
 hand, so fragile that a breath might break 
 it the luxurious room with its inlaid floor, 
 its dusky rugs, its languorous chairs, its 
 handsome decorations above all, the prox- 
 imity not as superiors, but as equals, of 
 these cultured, courteous gentlemen, gave me 
 my first insight into the charm, the fascina- 
 tion, the sensuous spell, the temptation, of 
 wealth and all that the golden term implies. 
 
 Did I swerve, for one brief instant, from
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 53 
 
 the path that I had sworn to tread ? Did I 
 falter, in the moment of temptation, in my 
 allegiance to my cause ? 
 
 If I did, my weakness w r as short-lived. 
 Even in that instant, all the wrong, the in- 
 justice, the hopeless struggle, the bitter mis- 
 ery of poverty, flashed before me. As the 
 events of a lifetime are recalled in the 
 drowning man's last moment of conscious- 
 ness, so every horrible phase of poverty that 
 I had ever seen or heard of, flashed simul- 
 taneously, yet clearly, before my mental 
 eyes. 
 
 With an oath, I hurled down the glass 
 whose siren-draught, in that moment of 
 madness, had tempted me to treachery. It 
 shattered into a thousand pieces, which 
 gleamed like chips of diamonds on the floor. 
 The wine trickled in a glowing stream to 
 one of the costly rugs, and settled in a pool
 
 54 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 beside it, ruddy and warm with the life- 
 blood of the poor whose bruised feet tread 
 the wine-press that the sated lips of the rich 
 may drink and drain. I met with defiant 
 eyes the eyes of the men before me. The 
 cold surprise of the Cynic, the simple con- 
 sternation of the Enthusiast not even the 
 tender pity in Harold's shining eyes, hushed 
 my wild \vords. 
 
 " I hate you," I hissed behind clenched 
 teeth. " I hate your rich old wine, your 
 delicate glasses, your sensuous surroundings. 
 I hate everything that they, even as I hate 
 everyone that you, represent. If you have 
 read my book, you know what I am. If you 
 do not know, I will tell you. I am one sworn 
 by the death of Christ and the death of 
 Christ's creature, to hunt you down, to track 
 you to your gilded palaces, to overthrow 
 your thrones, to tear away your crowns, to
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 55 
 
 make a mock of your vaunted power to hurl 
 you down, down, down, to hunger and cold 
 and nakedness ! to brand your wives as the 
 slaves of the poor who have been their ser- 
 vants, to force your daughters into the arms 
 of the men whom the hems of their dain- 
 ty garments now scorn to brush. Revenge 
 first, Reform after ! And as I have sworn, 
 so the great masses I represent habe sworn 
 with me. I am one, they are millions ! Be 
 warned ! be warned ! Tfie masses against 
 the classes ! this is our war-cry. Our arms 
 are rapine and murder ! Our flag, the black 
 flag of death ! " 
 
 As I dashed from the room and groped 
 blindly through the book-shadowed aisles be- 
 yond it, the Enthusiast's voice floated to me. 
 
 " I told you he was a genius," he cried, tri- 
 umphantly, " but," with gentle regret, " that 
 prime old port "
 
 56 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BET W KEN. 
 
 " If genius is indeed insanity, I admit the 
 genius," responded the Cynic. " He's mad- 
 der than a March hare." 
 
 " Delirium tremens ! Didn't I say so ? ' 
 chuckled the eaves-dropping clerk. 
 
 Only one voice was silent. He alone said 
 no word against me Harold, my friend ! 
 my friend !
 
 XII. 
 
 came in upon me as I was packing 
 my last poor possession into my shabby 
 satchel, some hours later. When she saw 
 what I was doing, she drew a quick, sharp, 
 sobbing breath, and pressed her hand to her 
 breast. 
 
 "You're goin' away " she gasped, "goin' 
 away ? " 
 
 I stared at her stupidly. For a moment I 
 had forgotten that she had a claim upon me. 
 In that moment her mother appeared in the 
 doorway. 
 
 " Goin' away ? " she repeated. " Not till 
 I've had a word wi' my fine gentleman. 
 
 / O 
 
 IVe been drunk, onct, or twict, but not 
 blind drunk. Put that in yer pipe, an'
 
 58 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 smoke it. Wot about my girl, I say? Wot 
 about my girl ? " 
 
 " Mother ! " cried Nan, and hid her face 
 in her hands. 
 
 From the street below sounded the rattle 
 of wheels, the snap of whips, the cries of a 
 passing vender. On the stairs a child 
 screamed lustily. In the adjoining room a 
 drunkard was beating his wife. The thud 
 of the blows reached us, and her stifled sobs 
 and entreaties. Yet, though my ear heard 
 all, I was conscious only of one soft sound, 
 the sound of Nan's true heart, beating. 
 
 " Will you come with me ?" I asked her. 
 
 I did not wait for her answer. Her radi- 
 ant face foretold it. She followed me, dog- 
 like, as, without a word, I strode from the 
 squalid room. 
 
 Her mother's voice followed us. 
 
 "Make him marry yer, Nan," she cried.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 59 
 
 " No traipsin' back ter me wi' his brat at 
 yer breast. Make him marry yer." 
 
 "Do you wish me to marry you?" I 
 asked, as we walked from the door. 
 
 " I I'd like ter have it ter say as I'm an 
 honest woman," she faltered. " If if " 
 
 I understood the womanly yearning, the 
 yearning of potential motherhood, that the 
 faltering words failed to express. 
 
 " You shall be an honest woman," I said. 
 " I will get the license, and we will be 
 married to-day." 
 
 " To-day ? " she echoed. 
 
 She scowled down at her poor gown ; then 
 tore off her hat, and twirled it about on her 
 hand childishly, walking bareheaded by my 
 side. 
 
 " I hain't got no weddin' dress, nor no 
 cake, nor nor nuthin ! " she objected. 
 " When I marry, I want to be married sty-
 
 60 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 lish, like Mamie Murphy married Joe Cas- 
 sidy. They was married to church, an' had 
 cake an' whiskey, an' dancin' all night ; an' 
 she had four dresses an' a store-trimmed hat. 
 I I hain't got nuthin'." 
 
 We were approaching a large shop, I 
 pressed a roll of bills into her hand. 
 
 " Buy all that you need, here," I said. 
 " In the meantime, I will go for the license. 
 I shall be back with it within an hour." 
 
 God knows that I meant to keep my 
 promise ! Yet I failed it poor Nan, poor 
 Nan!
 
 XIII. 
 
 MY impulse to flee from the city, the 
 temptation of whose wealth I had not been 
 strong enough to resist, had been a passion- 
 ate one. Now that my blood was cool, I 
 asked myself where I I and Nan were 
 going ? My heart turned to the country 
 God's garden, whose flowers bloom alike for 
 rich and poor. In the still green fields, the 
 pure fresh air, the soothing hush and restful 
 isolation, my storm-tossed soul would regain 
 calm and peace. I would have no more of 
 men - built cities. It is the chill of the 
 marble palace, the shadow of the brown- 
 stone mansion, that falls upon the poor 
 man's hovel with blight of death. In the 
 country the sun is bright and warm alike on
 
 62 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 manse and cottage. Tolstoi is right. To 
 guide the plough, to plant the ground, to 
 foster the seed, to reap the harvest this is 
 the work for men. Leave the town pursuits 
 to the gentlemen. The exotic flourishes in 
 the hot-house, where the field-bloom fades 
 and dies. 
 
 As for my book, I was content. So help 
 me God I had had no thought of personal 
 gain, either of gold or fame, in writing it ! 
 I had written what I had to write, I had in- 
 sured its publication. My duty was done. 
 Moreover, I knew that the book would be 
 well cared for. I had left it in Harold's 
 hands. 
 
 Walking down toward City Hall for my 
 marriage license, I noticed a dense crowd 
 gathering in one of the down-town squares. 
 
 " What's up ? " I asked a fellow-bystander. 
 
 "The dander of the masses, evidently," he
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 63 
 
 replied. "I'm here to report the speeches- 
 yonder fellows pointing to an armed police- 
 squad filing toward the square " to retort 
 them, with clubs and pistols. Better keep 
 out of the row." 
 
 He was a fresh-faced, blue-eyed young fel- 
 low, of compact, powerful physique. His 
 cap was pushed well back on his head, and 
 I could no't but notice his splendid forehead, 
 high, full and broad, and smooth and white 
 as a girl's. It was framed in a curly tangle 
 of golden hair. His ready, boyish smile was 
 irresistible. My first impression of him, 
 which proved a correct one, was that he 
 carried life, like his cap, jauntily. 
 
 " I like rows," I said to him. 
 
 " So do I," he laughed. " I live by them. 
 The bigger the row the bigger my salary. 
 I expect to be rolling in wealth to-mor- 
 
 row."
 
 64 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 "Does literary work pay ? " I asked him, 
 with sudden interest. 
 
 " No," Le answered, with a mischievous 
 twinkle in his blue eyes, " but newspaper- 
 work does the only work, by the way, of 
 which as much may be said, if we are to 
 take the word of these strikers. What do 
 you think of their case ? " 
 
 11 1 I don't know anything about it," I 
 stammered, shamefacedly. I could not ex- 
 plain to him why for the last fortnight I 
 had lived in a world apart. 
 
 " Jerusalem ! " he exclaimed. " Then you 
 don't know anything about me either. If 
 you'd read the papers, you'd have seen my 
 mark on the ' Labor versus Capital ' page, 
 every day for the last week. I'm Frank 
 Noble not half a bad name, is it ? This is 
 the eighth day of the greatest labor strike 
 on American record. The Union is backing
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 65 
 
 it. That's one of the Union officers now, 
 speechifying. I can't catch a word, but I'll 
 fill a column with what he ought to be say- 
 ing, if he isn't. Read to-morrow's ' Herald ' 
 but no, you don't read the papers, do 
 you?" 
 
 "I do," I cried. "Every man reads them, 
 who has eyes, and a brain behind them. 
 But for the last fortnight I have read, seen, 
 heard nothing. I I " 
 
 I interrupted myself with a start of keen 
 surprise. The charm of the frank blue eyes, 
 of the sunny boyish smile, had all but be- 
 trayed me into confiding in him. He 
 noticed my embarrassment, and delicately 
 changed the subject. I think he entertained 
 a sudden suspicion that my newspaperless 
 fortnight had been passed in jail. 
 
 " Poor devils ! " he exclaimed, indicating 
 the mass of unwashed, unshaved, shabbily-
 
 66 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 clad, desperate -faced men crowding and jost- 
 ling each other in front of the platform, 
 " I am sony for them, and hope they may 
 get their rights. As to their wrongs, I 
 wonder if some of them are not of their own 
 making ? I've racketed about the world 
 with eyes wide open, for thirteen years ran 
 away with a circus when I was eleven, and 
 haven't turned the quarter - century corner 
 yet, and I've never yet seen a case of real 
 destitution that the big D of Drink wasn't 
 at the bottom of it. If these Union orators 
 would turn their socialistic harangues into 
 temperance lectures, I believe that the first 
 step toward the Anti-Poverty millennium 
 would be scaled." 
 
 " You are right, and wrong ! " I answered.- 
 " Temperance would indeed be a blow under 
 which Poverty would stagger, but so would 
 the 'poor. Only the legs of the poor fail
 
 THE WOMAX WHO STOOD BET WE EX. 67 
 
 them in drunkenness ; their hearts and souls 
 would fail in sobriety ! The poor drink, 
 and forget ; they drink, and dream ; they 
 drink, and hope ; they drink, and exult ! 
 When you wrest the glass from their lips, 
 you wrest from their lives, with it, all that 
 makes the difference between a man's life 
 and brute-existence. And the poor man's 
 life is a brute existence. Curses upon the 
 creators of it ! " 
 
 u You mean the rich ? " 
 
 " I mean the rich. " 
 
 " Then you are really a socialist ? I took 
 you for an outsider. What are your name 
 and trade or profession, is it ? You look 
 like a toiler, and talk like a dreamer. 
 You'll write up splendidly." 
 
 He whipped out his book and pencil. I 
 watched him proudly, defiantly, as he jotted 
 down uiy answer.
 
 68 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 "I am Otho Wolfgang von Vost, Anar- 
 chist ! " I said. " In a month or two, you, 
 your newspapers, will have heard more of 
 
 me." 
 
 As with eager interest he pressed me for 
 an explanation of my mysterious words, a 
 sullen roar from the crowd interrupted us. 
 Toward the platform from which half a 
 dozen excited speakers were now shouting 
 anarchical threats, the armed police were 
 forcing their way. As the captain of the 
 squad mounted the stand, one of the 
 speakers drew and cocked a revolver. 
 
 The deed, I believe, was one of mere 
 bravado, but it acted upon the crowd like 
 flame upon dry wood. There were oaths, 
 and threats, and screams of rage, and a 
 general drawing of knives and pistols. In a 
 second, the police had opened fire. To do 
 them justice, they shot in the air, but the
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 69 
 
 effect was as deadly as if they had aimed at 
 hearts. The maddened mob retaliated. 
 There was a babel of shrieks and curses, a 
 hissing shower of bullets then, as it seemed 
 to me, a surge of the whole dense crowd 
 upon me. I threw out my arms, and cried 
 that I was stifling, strangling. A sting in 
 uiy left breast, a choking gurgle in my 
 throat, silenced me. A death-like faintness 
 swept like a chill wave over me. I felt my- 
 self sinking down, down, into a yawning 
 
 fathomless pit of darkness- 
 
 I knew no more,
 
 XIV. 
 
 A PERIOD of hell ensued. 
 
 When I woke from my swoon, the pit was 
 dark no longer, it was burning, blazing, 
 blinding a vortex of seething fire. I strove 
 to cry out and struggle, as the red flames 
 wreathed and lapped me, but from my 
 scorched lips no sound issued, and weights of 
 red-hot iron bound my limbs. Demon-faces 
 leered at me, framed in fire ; demon- voices 
 mocked me from the hissing flames. With 
 one mighty wrench, awful as the death- 
 wrench of soul from body, I broke from my 
 fiery gyves, and dashed out out out 
 
 O God ! the death-like cold, the grave- 
 like darkness ! less awful the flames and 
 glare of the fiery pit.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 71 
 
 Then once more the helpless sinking into 
 the dark depths of unconsciousness. And 
 thus, over and over, again and again. 
 
 When I awoke from my delirium, I found 
 myself in the ward of a hospital, with rows 
 of white pallets facing me, and bounding me 
 on either side. Between every two beds was 
 a large window. The curtains were raised, 
 and the sunlight flickered on the white 
 counterpanes, and over the clean wood-floor. 
 The doctors, three in number, one old and 
 two young ones, were making their rounds. 
 A white-capped nurse accompanied them. 
 
 The faces upon the pillows were of all 
 types, young and old, fair and ugly, good 
 and bad. refined and brutal. Two especially 
 attracted my attention. They were sharp 
 contrasts. One was the face of a youth re- 
 turning to life from the shadow of death; 
 one the face of an old man, upon which the
 
 72 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 awful shadow was deepening. I saw it on 
 his damp forehead, on his pinched gray feat- 
 ures, in his staring, glassy eyes. Even as I 
 looked, the death-rattle sounded in his throat. 
 He gurgled, gasped, and passed away ; with- 
 out a word, without a sign, without the 
 touch or glance or voice of a human fellow- 
 creature to hid him God-speed on Death's 
 unknown way. The doctors crossed to his 
 bedside, felt his pulse, and turned away. 
 The nurse drew a screen around his bed. 
 The face of the young man I have mentioned 
 blanched and quivered. He had a heart 
 the curse of youth and innocence ! There 
 was a tear on my own cheek, but my eyes 
 were weak only, not pitiful. Poverty turns 
 the heart to stone and the soul to flesh ! 
 
 The doctors reached me, and the nurse. 
 The men-nurses stood in a group outside the 
 door, discussing with the warden the case of
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 73 
 
 one of the ward, whose complaints against 
 the hospital had reached the newspapers. 
 The white-capped nurse brushed the hair 
 away from my forehead, with gentle hand. 
 I noticed her touch, because I had dreaded 
 it. 1 had seen a man across the aisle flinch, 
 heard him cry out, under it. But then it had 
 not been gentle. He was old, and ugly. 
 
 I drifted into a deep, sweet, natural sleep, 
 the sleep of utter exhaustion. I awoke in a 
 private room in the hospital, with Harold's 
 tender face bending over me. The tears 
 welled from my eyes as I recognized him. 
 He took my hand in a strong, close clasp. 
 
 " Thank God, old fellow ! " I heard him 
 murmur. 
 
 I turned my face to the wall, and wept in 
 silence. The reverent words had touched 
 me. God is Who ? Thank Him for what ? 
 my doubting soul questioned. Yet in those
 
 74 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETY.'EEN'. 
 
 silent tears, I think that both my faith and 
 my thanksgiving were offered, for the first 
 time, to the Most High. 
 
 " Do not try to talk," Harold said, as I at- 
 tempted to speak. " I will tell you every- 
 thing, if you are quiet ; but nurse, here, says 
 that I must go, if I excite you. And above 
 all other wilful women, we all know that 
 nurses must have their way." 
 
 I looked up with a smile that died in a 
 shudder. The ward nurse had followed me 
 to my room. I remembered the old man op- 
 posite, and his cry of pain under her untender 
 hands. Her caressing smile could not make 
 me forget it. I turned my face from her. 
 
 " Go away ! " I said ; and even that slight 
 effort made me faint. 
 
 As in a dream, I heard Harold's courteous 
 apologies, and her fretful expostulations. 
 When the door had opened and shut behind
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 75 
 
 her, I reopened rny eyes with a smile. Har- 
 old understood. 
 
 " You do not like her ? " he asked. " You 
 shall have a man-nurse." 
 
 I pressed his hand, and mustered all my 
 strength for a further effort. 
 
 " Tell me," I began ; then my weak Voice 
 failed. But his fine intuition needed no 
 spoken question. He bathed my brow, and 
 forced a teaspoonful of brandy between my 
 chill lips. As I revived, he spoke. 
 
 '" You were shot at the mass-meeting," he 
 said. " The ball lodged too near your heart 
 for the doctors to probe for it. When you 
 recover your strength, it will not matter, but 
 at present any effort might give it a push in 
 a fatal direction. Therefore you must be 
 quite passive for some days yet. You were 
 brought to the hospital with a dozen other 
 wounded, but identified, later, by a bright
 
 76 TUB WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 young journalist, through whom I discov- 
 ered your whereabouts. He has visited you 
 every day since your accident, and has been 
 writing you up, as he calls it, with a pen 
 steeped in youthful enthusiasm. You are 
 now a famous author, you know. Your ac- 
 cident dates, you will be surprised to hear, 
 nearly* nine weeks back. Your long high 
 fever was followed by an alarming stupor of 
 exhaustion, but the doctors' permission to 
 remove you from the ward was a tacit as- 
 surance of your recovery. All you need 
 now is patience. Happy hopes should 
 speed your convalescence. The life that lies 
 before you is a far brighter and more beauti- 
 ful one than the life that lies behind. Your 
 work is a success, social, literary, and finan- 
 cial. I tell you this, in the belief that 
 pleasant news is only healthfully exciting. 
 When you left us so unceremoniously upon
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 77 
 
 the occasion of your call at the office, I took 
 your book into my own hands, rushing its 
 publication, as the strikes made such a work 
 upon the labor-question opportune. The re- 
 sult has more than fulfilled my highest 
 hopes. I think you will find, upon investi- 
 gation, that we have done justly, even gen- 
 erously, by you. Now shut your eyes, and 
 go to sleep. To-morrow I will tell you 
 more. Lie still ! Don't try to speak ! My 
 God, man, you will kill yourself ! Lie 
 back ! I say ! Lie back ! " 
 
 He had spoken two words which were 
 branded in torturing fire before my eyes, 
 upon my brain, within my heart. All that 
 he had said before them, all that he had said 
 after them, was as nothing. I knew neither 
 that my life was in danger, nor that I was a 
 famous author. I knew only that I had 
 been lying there, a powerless, insensate log,
 
 78 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 for nine long weeks. Nine weeks of days, 
 nine weeks of nights and Nan, poor, lov- 
 ing, trusting, forsaken Nan 
 
 " Nan ! " I screamed, wildly. 
 
 " Hush ! " he cried. " A woman named 
 Xaii ? I will find her for you." 
 
 I strove to speak. Suddenly I choked 
 and gurgled. A gush of something warm 
 and red welled from my lips. 
 
 Then a terrible agony convulsed me. An 
 iron hand clutched my racked heart, crush- 
 ing it, rending it. 
 
 *' Nan ! Nan ! " I heard a wild voice cry- 
 ing. 
 
 A wave of death-like pain and faintness 
 engulfed me. As it bore me downward, 
 submerging me in its chill, dark depths, I 
 heard the voice still crying 
 
 " Nan ! Nan ! Nan ! "
 
 XV. 
 
 DEEP down into the valley of Death I 
 went, then. It was only by a miracle that I 
 regained the heights of life and health, they 
 told me later. 
 
 " A miracle of youth and strength," said 
 the doctor. 
 
 " A miracle of God," said the priest. 
 
 Then I wondered which was right. Now 
 I know that both were wrong. It was a 
 miracle of the devil. 
 
 A month later, I was out of the hospital ; 
 wasted and pale, weaker constitutionally, for 
 my accident, since warned that any violent 
 emotion might cause my death ; yet feeling 
 almost my old self, physically. 
 
 Physically, yes ; but mentally my God !
 
 80 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 No damned soul in hell suffered more dia- 
 bolical torments than I, through the long, 
 weary, restless days and nights of convales- 
 cence, while my weakness withheld me from 
 beginning my search for Nan. It was not 
 that I loved the girl with the love with which 
 a man loves one woman, and one only, in his 
 life. It was but what words can I use, to 
 make you understand me ? She was not to 
 me simply Nan the girl, the woman ; but 
 rather the human feminine embodiment of 
 the piteous cause to which my life was con- 
 secrated. She was Poverty, she was Weak- 
 ness, she was Want, she was Ignorance, she 
 was Helplessness, she was Slavery : she was, 
 in short, the incarnate Sacrifice, Martyr, Vic- 
 tim of evil social conditions, the living holo- 
 caust of shameful social forces, to whose de- 
 struction my life was sworn ! 
 
 And to her, thus, as I regarded her, I, her
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 81 
 
 sworn upholder, defender, avenger, had done 
 the cruellest of wrongs smitten her lower 
 than wealth or power or pride or oppression 
 had ever smitten her. These, at least, had 
 left her innocent. I had betrayed her, soul 
 and flesh, to sin. 
 
 Well I knew it, knowing her, knowing her 
 life her irrevocable past, her inevitable fut- 
 ure ! Harold and Frank and I talked it 
 over and over, day after day, as I tossed 
 restlessly to and fro on my hospital bed. 
 Harold, in his gentle, generous way, hoped 
 for the best, and was confident, until a per- 
 sonal search proved otherwise, that she had 
 returned to her home and mother. But 
 Frank, wiser in his youthful generation than 
 Harold in his, agreed with me that the be- 
 trayed, deserted girl, comely with the come- 
 liness born of youth and animal health and 
 vigor, would not escape temptation, to which,
 
 82 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 in her despair, her shame, her helplessness, 
 and the recklessness of her untutored passion- 
 ate nature, she would succumb perforce, if, 
 as Frank suggested, she had not already 
 sought refuge in the river. But this sugges- 
 tion I could not entertain. I could have 
 found it in my heart to wish that it might be 
 so ; but in my soul, I knew it was not. Nan 
 lived still. Something told me this. But 
 where ? and O God ! how ? 
 
 I need not say that I had never been a re- 
 ligious man. I had not been even a moral 
 one, as the conventional cant of morals goes. 
 Nevertheless, as a matter of taste, perhaps, 
 since not of morals, my personal life had 
 been a clean one. I had lived life passion- 
 ately ; but it is the most narrow, the most 
 gross, the most degrading of mistakes, to hold 
 that passion is necessarily of the flesh, and 
 that all men are slaves to it. Passion is the
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 83 
 
 strongest sentiment, emotion, desire call it 
 what you will humanity knows, yes ! but 
 the passion of the senses is its lowest and 
 weakest, and because its lowest and weakest, 
 its commonest phase. The passion of the 
 heart, the passion of the mind, the passion 
 of the soul, are strongest, even as they 
 are highest. What is Religion, but the pas- 
 sion of the human for the divine \ What is 
 Philanthrophy, but passion for humanity ? 
 What is Patriotism, but passion for country ? 
 What is Martyrdom, but passion for self-sac- 
 rifice ? What is Heroism, but the passion for 
 risk, strife, conquest ? What is Genius, but 
 passion for science and art ? All great men 
 have been men of strong passions passions 
 of soul or mind. Love, the heart passion, is 
 the purest, highest, noblest of all passions. 
 But as for the flesh-passion, simple and singly 
 faugh ! Leave brute instincts to the brute.
 
 84 THE WOJAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN^ 
 
 As I have said, I had lived at once a clean 
 life, and a passionate one. The passion kin- 
 dled in my childhood, which had flamed in 
 my boyhood, been fanned to fire in my man- 
 hood, was the passion inherited from my 
 father and fostered by him the passion for 
 " Liberty ! Equality ! Fraternity ! " The 
 concentrated, commingled forces of soul and 
 mind and heart and body, had all alike been 
 turned in this one direction. This is why I 
 had felt no temptation toward an unclean 
 life. Had I been tempted, I should have 
 yielded, holding, as I have said, no conven- 
 tional tenets as to moral right and wrong. 
 As to love, I did not know it. Nan was the 
 first woman who had ever touched me ; but 
 her touch, I knew, instinctively, \vas only the 
 lightest flick of the wing of love, in its riot, 
 ous infancy. The strong, close fold of love's 
 full-grown pinions I might, or might not,
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 85 
 
 live to know ; but Nail would never wield 
 them. 
 
 In my weakness and recklessness, I re- 
 vealed my whole heart, talking my thoughts 
 out wildly, to the two who listened. I 
 think that Harold understood me, but Frank 
 did not. In his boyish conception, love was 
 love, and indifference, indifference; he real- 
 ized no subtle grades between. In spite of 
 his youthful enthusiasms, he was a realist 
 rather than an idealist ; made such through 
 the daring spirit of adventure which had led 
 him to investigate the shadowed byways of 
 life as well as its shining highways. Knowl- 
 edge of life's darker phases, however, had 
 left no stain on his clean soul. Like my- 
 self, he was a man of clean tastes, rather 
 than of clean morals ; and so-called im- 
 morality in others neither surprised nor re- 
 pelled him. He accepted it simply as a
 
 86 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 common, if unlovely, feature of human ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Therefore, it was without pang of con- 
 science that I entrusted to him the search 
 from which my invalid helplessness debarred 
 me the search for Nan in the sphere where- 
 in, sooner or later, I felt sure we would find 
 her. The girl's face as her mother's taunt, 
 " No traipsin' back to me wi' his brat at yer 
 breast," had followed us, was ever befyre 
 me. Come what would, Nan would never 
 go back to her, a nameless outcast. Death, 
 hell itself, were preferable. 
 
 Frank was, as he said himself, an able 
 " slummer." He was no novice in the r61e, 
 his journalistic career having been more or 
 less characterized by " sensations," as the 
 term has it, in the slum-line; and his search 
 for Nan was as thorough and exhaustive as 
 
 *j 
 
 I myself could have made. That he had
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 87 
 
 never seen her personally, was, of course, a 
 disadvantage ; but I had a cheap tintype of 
 her for which she had sat for me .specially, 
 I believe, poor girl, which would serve to 
 identify her ; and moreover, her trick of gait, 
 not marked enough to amount to a limp, yet 
 too pronounced a peculiarity to escape an 
 eye forewarned, would alone insure his rec- 
 ognition of her, should he cross her path. 
 
 But he failed to cross it, even as I failed, 
 later; though by dawn and noon and mid- 
 night we searched the haunts where the girls 
 of the pavement congregate. We set the 
 officers of the force to hunt her. We set the 
 sleuth-hounds of her own sex and social con- 
 dition on her track. All to no avail. From 
 hall and dive and rum-hole and den and cel- 
 lar, we turned to the sweating-shops, the fac- 
 tories, the tenements. In last forlorn hope, 
 I sought her mother. She was drunk, as 
 
 Cj '
 
 88 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 usual. When I told her the truth, she wept 
 some maudlin tears. Then a delirium of 
 anger took possession of her. 
 
 "It's a lie!" she yelled. "Yer brought 
 her ter shame, an' killed her ter git rid of 
 her. My Nan's dead ! My Nan's murdered ! 
 Nan, Nan, Nan 
 
 Her wild shrieks died in sobs, as I left 
 her, prostrated by grief and liquor. Never- 
 theless, for the first time, I respected her. 
 She believed what she said, and the coarse, 
 bloated, unsexed breast shrined the heart of 
 a woman and mother. 
 
 " If Nan had known as much, she would 
 have come back to her," I thought, miser- 
 ably. 
 
 But she had not known, and she had not 
 gone back. 
 
 I relinquished the vain search.
 
 XVI. 
 
 IT was during the restless days of my con- 
 valescence that Harold, seated by ray bed- 
 side, his gentle hand in mine, told me of his 
 love. It was a great love, deep and strong 
 as his man's heart, yet pure with an angelic 
 purity, tender with a tenderness surpassing 
 woman's. He had never told her of it. She 
 was happy in her peaceful girlish life he 
 would not disturb its dream. He did not 
 tell me her name. She was " her," the one, 
 the only one the world held for him. His 
 voice was low and reverent as he talked of 
 her, like the voice of one in prayer. 
 
 " She is so pure, so shy," he said, " a 
 word, a touch would kill her. I looked at 
 her once, only once, with the lover's eyes,
 
 90 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 and I saw her start and shrink and tremble, 
 while the vestal blood surged to her cheek, 
 
 O 
 
 and her shy eyes filled with startled tears. 
 She knew not why. She is like a white 
 rose, veiling her sweet heart from the zephyr 
 in whose warm breath she feels the presage 
 of the coming, fierce simoom. Sometimes I 
 doubt if I shall ever reach her. How shall 
 my feet steal near her ? And yet she is a 
 woman woman, God's gift to man. Some- 
 time, somehow, she will learn the woman's 
 lesson the lesson of surrender, by sweet 
 Love taught. 
 
 " O, Otho ! to be her teacher ! to see her 
 learn the lesson ! She will come to its pages 
 with wayward eyes, and wilful pouting 
 mouth, as a child goes to its book. Then 
 her eyes will drop, and her soft mouth 
 tremble. She will turn, and flee in fear, but 
 Love's voice will recall her. It will be gen-
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 91 
 
 tie, yet resolute, masterful. She will resist, 
 then pause, then obey ! With burning 
 cheeks fanned by her veiled eyes' lashes, she 
 will return, unseeing that Love's open arms 
 await her. Into them she will go, unheed- 
 ing; and when they close around her she 
 will struggle, and tremble, and yield. The 
 surprise, the fear, the shame of yielding will 
 overwhelm her. She will lie quite passive, 
 faint, bewildered, helpless, in Love's em- 
 brace. But little by little, her woman-heart 
 will kindle. Her calm white breast will 
 glow and quicken ; her soft white arms will 
 cling close, closer ; her sweet red lips will 
 yield responsive kisses. Stay ! Love's holy 
 veil must not be lifted. God's angels fend 
 it with their strong white wings." 
 
 Thus spoke the heart of the man. Then 
 spoke the heart of the gentleman. The 
 voice was a revelation to me. The man has
 
 92 Tin: \VOMAX WHO STOOD 
 
 the brand of the brute upon him ; the gen- 
 tleman, nature's gentleman, I mean, the 
 mark of the god. 
 
 " These women ! these women ! " he cried, 
 " who come to us, at our unworthy bidding, 
 their hearts, like sweet white flowers, in 
 their hands. Our rude hands bruise and 
 rend them. Even our caress hurts. They 
 shrink and wilt beneath its passion, like 
 lilies in fierce sun. They are so fair, so 
 pure, so tender. Love should fold like an- 
 gel-wing around them. Instead it swoops 
 like hawk, on wings of flame. They yield, 
 we claim, so much we hold so little ! Hot 
 lips, to sear with kisses; fierce arms, to 
 crush, caressing ! and after, what ? What 
 for the pure true hearts, what for the faith- 
 ful souls, what for the lives' sweet service ? 
 The title of wife children to the breast 
 for our own pride and pleasure. But what
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 93 
 
 for their sakes ? Nothing ! They are ours ! 
 No longer their own, no longer themselves, 
 even ; but only one with us ! They have no 
 claims, no independent rights. We are 
 Grand Moguls ; they our harem-pets. Soft 
 couches, which we share ; scents, to make 
 them more sweet; jewels to deck their 
 beauty for our eyes ; feasts, whereat they 
 serve all these we give with generous 
 hand ! But let their lonely souls plead 
 guidance on God's way their pure heart- 
 cry, ' Fidelitas I ' challenge ours their fet- 
 tered minds claim freedom ah ! for the 
 bread they hunger we give stones, which 
 hurt the more because hurled with a kiss ! " 
 
 Then back to the personal note, the heart 
 of the man, love hungry, lifting its cry 
 anew. 
 
 "Sweetheart! Wife! Mother! What 
 would life be without her ? Where would
 
 94: THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 be youth's ideals, man's inspiration and re- 
 ward ? The fair young girl, the tender, 
 faithful woman the home, earth's heaven, 
 of which man is the god ! O, Otho, the 
 home, the home ! I yearn for it, I pray for 
 it. I shut my eyes and dream that it is 
 mine. I feel my tired feet hastening as 
 they near it, I see the home-light shining at 
 the window, the home-door set ajar. I see 
 her waiting, smiling on the threshold, I 
 hear her gentle greeting, I feel her kiss of 
 welcome on my lips. I follow her within, 
 to the home-hearthstone. The great chair 
 waits ; she nestles by my side. My racked 
 brow knows her sweet lips' benediction. 
 Her soft palms feel like snow-flakes, light 
 and cool. Mayhap she whispers low a shy. 
 sweet secret. Toward us, God-sent from 
 heaven, a wee angel is on flight. O, little 
 woman, love, wife, home-maker, mother !
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 95 
 
 how long, how long before my dream comes 
 true?" 
 
 Then, with a lover's fond, fatuous recur- 
 rence, back to her ! 
 
 " She is so fair so fair and sweet and 
 tender. As soft clouds dapple heaven, 
 dreams brood within her eyes. She is not 
 gay, not light, but sweetly serious. She 
 prays, and thinks, and builds celestial 
 castles, dreaming them founded on eternal 
 rock. Her sight is fixed on visions ; she is 
 an idealist of realities ! Her visions, like 
 yours, are of human and social millenniums 
 whose like this age will never live to see. 
 You must meet her some day, Otho. You 
 will suit each other, and yet you will not 
 understand her. She hears of sin and evil, 
 and dreams she knows their meaning. You 
 must not take her at her word. She is inno- 
 cence, and she mistakes herself for knowl-
 
 96 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 edge. The mistake is perilous, for her. Of 
 late, a chill fear haunts me lest her dreams 
 be rudely wakened, her innocence blasted by 
 a breath whose flame will kill ! I watch- 
 she does not see me. I wait she does not 
 know. Some day, my love will break its 
 bonds and claim her. O, Otho, my heart 
 trembles ! I feel in premonition, Hope's 
 death, fruitless Love's pain ! " 
 
 A shadow dimmed his love-illumined eyes. 
 His face was suddenly wan with a great sad- 
 ness. I could not reassure him. I shared 
 his premonition. Some intuition told me 
 that he would lose her. 
 
 It did not tell me, or, I call God to wit- 
 ness that I had spared him that his loss 
 would come through me.
 
 XVII. 
 
 As Harold had foretold, I went from the 
 hospital into a changed, if not new, world. 
 I was now a famous man. My name was on 
 all tongues, in every newspaper. I saw my 
 book displayed in the shop-windows, and 
 standing open on the news-stands. Every- 
 where, immense advertisements of it met my 
 eyes. Moreover, through it, I had what 
 seemed to me unlimited wealth at my com- 
 mand. But as yet, my personal life had 
 changed no whit. I was still the obscure 
 dreamer, the social recluse. Yet both great 
 gain and loss had corne to me. Harold and 
 Frank were gained, indeed ; but ah, the loss 
 of Nan ! 
 
 As my vain search ended, there came a
 
 98 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 change, due somewhat to Harold's influence, 
 but more to my own restlessness, I think. I 
 emerged from my hermit's cell, from which 
 both press and public alike called me and 
 surrendered myself to Harold's hands. His 
 first act was to take me to his tailor ; his 
 second, to dine me at his club. When I had 
 once stood a man among gentlemen, on 
 equal social footing, the sequence followed 
 naturally enough. From the club to the 
 home, the public dinner to the private table, 
 was the social evolution of but a day. I 
 was dined, and wined, and feted, day and 
 night. The gentlemen presented me, the 
 ladies received me. I clasped white hands, 
 which once had scorned their alms to me 
 sat side by side with queens I had dared 
 not serve ! The famous author became the 
 social lion. I accepted the role but not 
 without a protest, and caused an occasional
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 99 
 
 panic by indulging in a growl. When 
 Harold felt me chafing in my cage, he let 
 me loose for a few days, and I returned 
 more docile for my freedom. There is a 
 lesson in this confession, for those who care 
 to learn it. 
 
 I think my character is a complex one. 
 Impulsive at times, even to the verge of 
 folly, as even so much of my narration has 
 already shown, I was, at other times, the 
 slowest, the least impetuous, the most apa- 
 thetic of men. For example, my book. 
 Day after day, for unproductive years, I 
 had unconsciously accumulated, assimilated, 
 the impressions, thoughts, and passions re- 
 corded on its pages, later, with pen of white- 
 hot flame. So with me now. I took my 
 part in the social farce like any other player. 
 Nevertheless, the day would come when, the 
 mask cast off, I would stand forth no longer
 
 100 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 the showman's puppet, but the human man, 
 with burning heart and soul. I knew it. I 
 think Harold knew it. He watched me 
 closely ; sometimes, I fancied, nervously. 
 But his fear was neither for himself nor 
 others, but only for myself. His sensitive- 
 ness was so exquisite, his sympathy so 
 tender, his manly love so true, that he 
 shrunk in personal pain when, by chance or 
 accident, he exposed me to sights and sounds 
 that, knowing me as he did, he knew must 
 stab to my soul's core. But born and bred 
 to the gold and purple even he could not 
 conceive the death -like pang of Poverty's 
 heart, brought, for the first time, face to 
 face with Wealth, Pomp, Power. It is the 
 stab under which the demons writhe, gazing 
 from hell at heaven. It is not Envy ; it is 
 not even Desire. It is simply Knowledge. 
 I cannot express the impression my initia-
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 101 
 
 tion into the beautiful world of pleasure 
 made upon me. " Everything has two 
 sides," says the old saw ; and I, who had 
 hated wealth, pride, power, looking at them 
 from the outside, now viewed them from 
 within. Did I hate them still? Yes, a 
 thousand times yes the more bitterly be- 
 cause, perforce, at the same time I loved 
 them ! 
 
 Aye, I stand confessed a traitor. I 
 yielded to their spell, succumbed to their 
 lure, drained thirstily, exultantly, of the 
 siren -cup I should have spurned and shat- 
 tered. 
 
 " Life is real ; life is earnest,'' sings the 
 poet ; but he sings of the toiling world with- 
 out the world of pleasure, not of the dwell- 
 ers within its golden gates. To these life is 
 not real, not earnest ; not life at all, as great 
 souls, high minds, warm hearts, live it. The
 
 102 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 children of pleasure live the life of the flesh 
 alone, the highest life of the flesh not gross, 
 not coarse, not always sensual, even ; but 
 from cradle to grave, from conception to dis- 
 solution, ideally, exquisitely sensuous. If 
 the soul, the mind, the heart are starved, the 
 flesh, the senses, are satiated. Beauty for 
 the eyes, music for the ears, sweets for the 
 taste, fragrance for the smell, softness and 
 
 o 
 
 warmth, and every sensuous joy the flesh can 
 know for the feeling. O God ! O God ! 
 and the horrible sights, the dreadful sounds, 
 the sickening stenches, the hunger and thirst, 
 the cold and nakedness, the manifold agonies 
 of the human world about them ! 
 
 In the world of pleasure the women one 
 and all are beautiful, with a beauty in- 
 dependent of nature's rarest dower. If nat- 
 ural beauty exist, its germ is developed to 
 seed, its seed to bud, its bud to flower ; if it
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 103 
 
 exist not, it is substituted by a trick of ex- 
 pression which transforms the plain face like 
 a lustrous veil -an art of grace, a charm of 
 manner, a fascination of speech, a brilliancy 
 of accomplishment, a lure of toilette, a foil 
 of environment, which arrest and hold one 
 spell-bound with the power of beauty itself. 
 Beautiful women, what do you make of 
 your men ? Not saints, not heroes, not -even 
 poets, as true poets go ! Not faithful hus- 
 bands, not noble fathers, not filial sons. No, 
 but lovers ! always lovers, lovers ! As wine 
 is to the blood, so love is to the flesh. It 
 warms, and thrills, and quickens. Without 
 wine, where were the wit of the feast ? 
 Without love, where the after-pleasure ? 
 Where is the harm ? There is no sin in soft 
 looks, fond words, caressing touches ? No, 
 not of the eye, or lip, or hand, perhaps but 
 what of the soul behind them ? Look deep
 
 104 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 within, as God's eyes look, and see your sin, 
 O whited sepulchres ! 
 
 I will be just and honest. In the world 
 of pleasure are Virtue and Justice, Gener- 
 osity, Charity, Pity, Unselfishness, Heroism, 
 Sacrifice. There is Temperance in men ; 
 there is Purity in women. There are Duty, 
 Honor, Truth, and faithful Love. But these 
 are the exceptions, not the rule. I say it 
 boldly. God's temples lift His cross at the 
 Hill-corners. Man's mansions lift a hundred 
 crowns, between !
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE revulsion of feeling I experienced upon 
 my introduction into the world of the rich 
 and great, after ray life-long sojourn with the 
 poor and suffering, explains, I think, the tor- 
 por and apathy that followed. I was dazed, 
 mentally and spiritually. Like a ship adrift 
 on unknown waters, I had to take my bearings 
 a slower process humanly than nautically. 
 
 After all, the soul and mind fight against 
 heavy odds in this human life : their foe, the 
 flesh, is mighty. I, whose soul well knew 
 the monopoly of wealth, whose bitter fruit is 
 the ever-deepening degradation, soul and 
 body, of the poor to be the sin that cries to 
 God Himself for vengeance ; I, whose mental 
 eyes, piercing the illusions, the pretences, the
 
 106 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 deceptions of fashionable life, saw beneath the 
 beautiful velvet skinned fruit, the worm that 
 gnaws its core ; even I I say, found mind 
 and spirit tempted, trammelled, enslaved by 
 the flesh whose rapturous potentialities were 
 a perilous revelation to me. I lounged on 
 soft couches, and in cushioned carriages : I 
 tasted of sybarite dishes, drank deep of price- 
 less vintages ; dreamed sensuous dreams, in- 
 haling the scented smoke of Orient weeds. I 
 revelled in sweet music, in the low, trained 
 voices of ladies; while my eyes feasted on 
 the beauty of their nude white throats and 
 arms. I turned from the tinted lamps, and 
 found the street lamps lurid ; I stepped from 
 the mansion's velvets, and felt the street 
 stones hard. All this, as I have said, in apa- 
 thetic unrealization, almost unconsciousness. 
 I awoke with a start. What roused me ? 
 A young, fair, worn an -face !
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 107 
 
 The feast had been a sumptuous one. I 
 had eaten from silver plate, and drunk from 
 priceless crystal. Through banks of odorous 
 flowers we passed to the salon. The tinted 
 lights were lowered. Languorous lounges 
 waited. Ladies, with lash -veiled eyes, 
 smiled welcome. Behind the lashes smoul- 
 dered the flame of siren-fires. The ladies 
 were only women, after all. Their glowing 
 lips, their fragrant breaths, their caressing 
 voices mingled with the glow of the wine, 
 the scent of the flowers, the subdued amor- 
 ous whisper of unseen violins. I shut my 
 eyes, shuddering softly with sensuous bliss 
 and pleasure, as one yields to the spell and 
 rapture of a passionate love-dream. 
 
 When, impelled by some resistless force, 
 I opened my eyes, the scene was changed, 
 transformed. I asked myself if I had slept, 
 if I dreamed still ?
 
 108 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 The lowered lights were brilliant; the 
 music was no longer amorous, but only wist- 
 ful, tender ; the languid women sat erect and 
 stately on their cushions ; the men, one and 
 all, had leaped to reverent feet; while up 
 the room came floating like a vision, a girl 
 whose white robes trailed like angel- wings. 
 
 I heard a quick, deep breath beside me, 
 and turning, looked on Harold. The angel - 
 wings had brushed him as they passed. A 
 gleam of their white radiance still lingered 
 on his face. A flame flashed from his eyes 
 fixed on her ! a white flame, burning purely 
 from his pure white soul. The flame of 
 love ! A blind man would have recognized 
 it. So help me God, I did not recognize it, 
 then ! Blinded I was, to all save that fair 
 vision, as eyes fixed on the sunlight are 
 blinded to the stars ! 
 
 She was fair and tall and slender. Her
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 109 
 
 hair was of pale gold, like a veiled sunbeam. 
 "Her eyes were blue, gray-shadowed ; her lips 
 not red, but pink. Her smile, like her eyes, 
 was shadowed with sweet graveness. Her face 
 was like a lily, its white stained by no blush. 
 
 She seemed the rhythm of motion as she 
 passed me. She did not walk she swayed 
 on her white wings. Their rustle, soft and 
 silken, encompassed her. Her mien was like 
 a sweet, proud, gracious queen's. 
 
 I stood spell-bound, and watched as she 
 was greeted ; heard her voice, saw her smile, 
 as in a dream. I wakened as her soft hand 
 sought mine, clasped it. I dreamed again 
 awoke. We were alone. 
 
 The dance had opened in the adjacent 
 ball-room. Couples smiled on us, circling by 
 the doors. I caught a glimpse of Harold- 
 smiled, forgot him ; forgot all save that she 
 was speaking to me she !
 
 110 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 These were her words : 
 
 " You were a great man when you wrote 
 your book. You are, you will be what ? 
 I watched you from afar, with lifted eyes, 
 while your path soared above me. Now, it 
 has sunk to my low level. Therefore I 
 speak. The poor had a champion, the 
 powerless a protector, the wronged a de- 
 fender and avenger. Where is he ? What 
 will they do without him ? Wealth and 
 Power have taken all else from them. Shall 
 they be left not even him ? 
 
 "He eats off gold, and drinks from jewelled 
 goblets, while the poor man drains the death- 
 draught of the rum-shop's poison, and the 
 child sucks dry its starving mother's breast. 
 He rolls by in sumptuous carriages, while the 
 wheels grind the helpless cripple, and the 
 blooded steeds trample the aged under their 
 cruel feet. He dreams on soft down-pillows
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. Ill 
 
 while the homeless faint on the street stones, 
 and the sick toss and shriek with anguish 
 on their death-beds of rags and straw. He 
 walks in fine attire, while the daughters of 
 the poor go naked ; shameless, because 
 shame-steeped from pauper-cradle to Mag- 
 dalen-grave. He whiffs rare weeds, and 
 plays with ivory billiards, while opium-den 
 and gamiug - table ring with the suicide's 
 shrieks ! He basks in the smiles of fail- 
 women, while the shop-girl is lured to her 
 ruin, and the girl of the street leaps, curs- 
 ing, into the river's grave. He drains his 
 cup of pleasure. Its lees what are they? 
 A death-bed prefiguring hell's worst tor- 
 ments flaming with God's just vengeance, 
 haunted by demon-spectres, ringing with the 
 everlasting curses of lost souls he might have 
 saved ! " 
 
 Her voice was as the voice of my own
 
 112 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEK\. 
 
 soul as the voice of my father, as the voice 
 of the poor, whose cause I had betrayed. I 
 leaped to iny feet and shrieked. As the 
 dancers rushed in from the ball-room. I burst 
 into burning words. I know not what I 
 said, but I saw the women pale and shiver. 
 The men Harold sought to hush me. As 
 well seek to hush the demons shrieking at 
 
 O 
 
 hell's red mouth. 
 
 Then the passion passed, and a gentler 
 spell was on me. My voice grew pleading, 
 tender. I heard myself, as one unseen and 
 distant, repeating my mother's words : 
 
 " Hate loses causes ; Love wins them ! " 
 
 " Love wins them ! " I repeated. 
 
 And then I heard a single word re-echo- 
 ing, " Love ! Love ! Love ! "
 
 XIX. 
 
 I DO not know whence the idea first came 
 to me perhaps my mother's spirit hovered, 
 whispering, near but as I spoke those 
 woman- words of hers, a sudden fierce desire 
 to test their truth overwhelmed me. Often 
 as they had recurred to me, their full 
 significance had never before dawned on 
 me. Now, like a lightning flash, it burst 
 upon me, irradiating all that had before 
 been dark. Love was the solution of the 
 unsolved social problem. Love the answer 
 to the unanswered social question ! In love 
 alone is the triumph of the socialist's nigh- 
 lost cause ! 
 
 I looked at the men the gentlemen 
 about me.
 
 114 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 " Love," I cried, " and wed in honorable 
 marriage the daughters of the poor ! " 
 
 I looked at the fair proud ladies. 
 
 "Love," I pleaded, "not. the gentlemen, 
 but the men of the world the toilers. Into 
 their toil-stained palms put your white 
 hands lay your fair heads on their rugged 
 bosoms let their strong rough arms close 
 round you like knights' steel shields. Be 
 their sweethearts first, and their wives after. 
 Bring forth their strong - limbed children. 
 Be mothers to a new, heroic race ! The 
 human race is degenerating, for the lack of 
 a new graft on it. The sap of the old stock 
 dwindles, and ebbs to lees and dregs. Mix 
 the crimson blood of the workman with the 
 white breast-milk of the lady, and look to 
 the veins these blend in for virile life and 
 strength. Should the masses wake to their 
 need, they will pounce like wolves on the
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 115 
 
 classes, draining the blood of the gentlemen, 
 feasting in brutish fury on the ladies' white 
 breasts and limbs. Already wolf-teeth are 
 gnashing. While time is yours, use it wise- 
 ly. Turn the wolves into lambs by caresses, 
 
 fair woman-arms and hands-! " 
 
 I said far more, but what, I know not. 
 My passion, like a great wave, engulfed me. 
 When I re-rose to the surface of conscious- 
 ness, I was sounding the personal note. 
 
 " The time," I was saying, " for words and 
 preaching is over : the time for deed and 
 practice come. But a man cannot start the 
 ball, singly ; a woman must nerve his hand. 
 
 1 stand forth, I, the son of a toiler, and chal- 
 lenge you rich fair ladies challenge you 
 hand and heart. If there be one noble wom- 
 an among you, let her come forth here, 
 now, before you all and place her hand in 
 mine. A man alone, I lose my cause. Man
 
 116 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 and woman, we shall win it. It is the cause 
 of Christ, the cause of the human, the cause 
 of the poor and oppressed, of the suffering 
 and the sinning. Who shall be the woman 
 to espouse and win it ? Who ? Who ? " 
 
 In the tense silence, I heard a tremulous 
 breath beside me, then a rustle as of soft 
 wings opening. Then slowly, shyly, yet 
 resolutely, a white hand fluttered into mine. 
 
 " I will be the woman," a sweet voice quiv- 
 ered. "/ will be the woman." 
 
 " Mary ! " I heard them shudder. " Mary ! " 
 
 " Mary ! " cried Harold. 
 
 He staggered toward her, then turned 
 away with a moan, as the stag moans, reel- 
 ing, sinking, with the death-dart in its heart. 
 
 As he turned, I caught sight of his face 
 the beautiful, tender, wistful face, strong, 
 yet gentle stern, yet sweet. His noble 
 brow was dewed as with death agony ; his
 
 TUE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 117 
 
 luminous eyes shadowed with untold pain. 
 His lips were clinched brave, mute things 
 racked with anguish ; his face was wan, as 
 with the chill of death. 
 
 But its pain, its sorrow, its bitter grief 
 were nothing. The horror on it that was 
 the look that scorched me. It will haunt me 
 in life it will haunt me in death, it will 
 haunt nie in my grave.
 
 XX. 
 
 THE days that followed sped by on wings 
 of fire not the fire of love, belie ve it or not, 
 as you will ; but the fire of remorse, the fire 
 of self-scorn, the fire of renewed passionate 
 allegiance to the cause I had well-nigh failed 
 a fire fed by the woman-hand that had 
 re-kindled the flickering flame. 
 
 I had known her to be, by love's right, 
 Harold's, since that look of awful horror had 
 dawned upon his face. I had seen the same 
 look, once before, on the face of a captive 
 plainsman, whose pure young sweetheart was 
 " staked out " by the Indians before his 
 shuddering eyes. He died mad. Had Har- 
 old done the same ? We never saw him 
 she or I. Without a word or sign, he had
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 119 
 
 disappeared. Mad or sane, I knew that he 
 had been dealt his death-hurt. Perhaps, as a 
 wounded animal seeks its lair, he had crept 
 off alone to die. 
 
 By my open grave, I swear it I did not 
 betray him, my friend, through love ! Had 
 she been to me but the mere woman, I would 
 have surrendered her, however great the 
 pain. But she was far more than the woman 
 to me she was the hope, the salvation, the 
 triumph of the cause I had sworn to serve. 
 She was fair and sweet and luring ; yet 
 knowing her loved by Harold, I would have 
 left her to him, I swear it, had another of her 
 social class stood forth to take her place ! 
 But of all those fair fine ladies, not one but 
 had crouched and shuddered from my out- 
 stretched hand. She alone had stepped for- 
 ward to take it ; she alone had responded to 
 my appeal.
 
 120 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 " / will be the woman ! " 
 
 
 
 O, shy soft words ! O, strong, grand 
 words ! O, noble, heroic, sacrificial, God-in- 
 spired words ! " / will le the woman ! " 
 not the woman for the man, but the woman 
 for mankind mankind that means not toil- 
 ing men alone, but worn and weary women, 
 and starving children ! 
 
 In behalf of these, I could not let her go ! 
 In fancy I saw them thronging, day and 
 night, about her ; sweat-soaked laborers clam- 
 oring for their hire; wasted women with 
 skeleton-hands outstretched ; old-faced chil- 
 dren stunted by starvation and toil, clinging 
 with bleeding hands, crying with starving 
 lips, to her ! She was their hope and not 
 theirs alone, but the hope of the countless 
 generations of toilers who should follow 
 them. I was not mad enough to dream that
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 121 
 
 she, the hope, was likewise its fulfilment 
 that our marriage consummated, the social 
 millennium would ensue. The full flower 
 blooms not from the seed, but from the bud ; 
 but the bud is the fruit of the seed, the seed 
 the fruit of the germ ; and to be the germ of 
 a royal flower, is it not indeed to be, though 
 indirectly, the royal flower itself ? 
 
 I gazed into the future, and saw the count- 
 less couples who would follow in our steps: 
 brawny men and dainty ladies gentlemen 
 refined, like Harold, with girls like Nan, 
 their brides. Of these should come forth a 
 mixed race, virile, healthful ; born free and 
 equal, Titan-brained, as limbed. And these 
 should look back and call her, their mother, 
 "blessed" as we call her, who bore man's 
 first hope Christ ! 
 
 They named her well, who made her too, a 
 Mary. She was a virgin, white and cold as
 
 122 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 snow. She knew no thought either of love 
 
 O 
 
 or lover. Her imawakened heart was with 
 the sick and poor. Day after day we trod 
 the slums together. She saw the suffering, 
 blinded to the sin. Her calm gaze met the 
 leer of vice, and shamed it; she called the 
 Magdalen sister, and hushed vile curses with 
 pure prayers. She saw in each man, Christ; 
 in each woman, Mary. In the little chil- 
 dren I think that she saw both. In scenes 
 of hell she saw the road to heaven ; and 
 where she lingered, heaven, indeed, came 
 near. 
 
 Our wedding-day approached. I wished 
 the deed done, and she acquiesced. I think, 
 albeit, she scarcely realized it, her thoughts 
 being all for others, that in the meantime she 
 was far from happy. She was an orphan, 
 and of age, therefore quite independent; 
 nevertheless her whilom guardians, with
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 123 
 
 whom she lived, did all in human power, as 
 did all her aristocratic friends, to prevent 
 our marriage. She went on with her prep- 
 arations, apparently heedless of their taunts 
 and reproaches ; yet the sting of them 
 rankled in her girlish heart, I think, as her 
 wedding-day approached. Her face grew 
 paler, her clear eyes shadowed, troubled. I 
 think she felt a pathetic maidenly longing, 
 in that transition-period of her life, for wom- 
 anly sympathy, tenderness, love. 
 
 More than once it struck me too, that she 
 missed some one friend's presence. Fre- 
 quently, I caught a wistful look in her eyes 
 as they scanned her crowded drawing-room, 
 a stilled sigh in her voice as she bade her 
 guests good-night. Well I knew in my heart, 
 that the friend she missed was Harold. She 
 never mentioned his name to me. " It was by 
 her silence that I knew.
 
 124: THE U'OJ/.iJV 117/0 STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 Our wedding was to be a grand one. 
 Evening after evening she planned it, turn- 
 ing the pages of " Aurora Leigh." She 
 looked child-soft and gentle, sitting so ; and 
 yet she had the most heroic courage the 
 courage of her convictions. Her friends had 
 begged her, if she would disgrace them by 
 this marriage, at least to marry privately. I 
 think it was in loyalty to me, as well as in 
 public espousal of our cause, that she deter- 
 mined upon a grand church-wedding. 
 
 "The things we do, 
 We do ; we'll wear no mask, as if we blushed," 
 
 she said.
 
 XXL 
 
 Two months from the night upon which I 
 had first met her, I ascended the steps of her 
 house, for the last time as a guest. The 
 next day I would enter with her, its mas- 
 ter. To-night her lover, to-morrow her hus- 
 band ! It was the eve of our wedding-day. 
 
 As I waited to be admitted, it seemed as 
 if, for the first time, I realized all that the 
 impending change implied. A sudden blur 
 and dizziness seemed to come upon me. I 
 walked toward the little reception-room in 
 which, when alone, she had been in the habit 
 of receiving me, as one walks in a dream. 
 To-morrow my wife ! and up to that night 
 I say it truthfully I had scarcely touched 
 her hand.
 
 126 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 She entered the room, slowly, almost 
 timidly. She was very pale; there were 
 traces of tears on her face ; her lips were 
 tremulous, her unsmiling eyes shyly lowered. 
 For days I had noticed a look of increasing 
 fear in them. Now that the white lids 
 veiled them, I recognized, with a pang of 
 tender pity, the intuitive, uncomprehended 
 fear of her startled virgin heart. 
 
 All to which I had hitherto been blind 
 and deaf and insensible, burst upon me like 
 a lightning-flash. I was no longer the social 
 reformer, but the man ; no longer the im- 
 personal tool and instrument, but the living, 
 passionate lover. For the first and last time 
 in my life, my blood asserted itself the blood 
 traced back to savage chiefs who, finding a 
 maiden fair, had seized and borne her, heed- 
 less of shrieks and struggles, to their huts in 
 the Riesengebirge, haunt of the savage Van-
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 127 
 
 dal tribes. A thrill half bliss, half pain, 
 quivered through me ; a heat, as of sudden 
 flame, compassed me. The surge of fevered 
 blood rang in my ears. I leaped to my feet 
 and looked at her only looked at her ! 
 
 As her drooped eyes, lifting, met my look, 
 she stopped short in her approach, and with 
 a shuddering cry, shrank back ; but she was 
 too late, too late ! My passionate arms were 
 around her. My passionate kisses rained 
 upon her brow, cheek, throat ; then fell, in 
 burning shower, on her lips. Against my 
 breast I felt her shy heart beating. She re- 
 sisted, cried out, struggled;, then was sud- 
 denly still. My impulse spent, I turned her 
 face from my breast, and looked at her. 
 She was white, chill, rigid. She had fainted 
 in my arms. 
 
 I laid her on the lounge, and bent, gloat- 
 ing, over her. In her youth, her purity, her
 
 128 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 pride, her dainty beauty, mine, mine, till 
 mine ! By a terrible oath whose hellish 
 menace roused her, I swore that no other 
 man, no gentleman, should ever take her 
 from me ! The oath was born of the pre- 
 monition that in spite of her promise, in spite 
 of my kisses, in spite of the oath itself, I 
 had lost her ! that though to-night was our 
 wedding-eve, the morrow would never dawn 
 whose dusk should see her my wife. 
 
 As she revived, I stepped out of her sight. 
 Her eyes opened ; she looked about her, con- 
 fused and questioning. Then she remem- 
 bered. With a startled moan she hid her 
 face in her hands. Between the tense white 
 fingers I saw the scorching surge from throat 
 to brow of modest vestal blood. 
 
 When she discovered my presence she rose 
 from the lounge, and took a step toward me. 
 The vestal blood had ebbed again ; her face
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 129 
 
 was white as marble no longer the face of 
 a dreamful, shrinking girl, but the face of a 
 woman, tense for battle to the death. 
 
 " Forgive me," she said, " O, forgive me, 
 but I cannot marry you ! When I gave my 
 reckless promise, I did not realize or under- 
 stand. It seemed to me a great thing, a 
 grand thing, to step out before that gilded 
 throng, and yield myself up, like a live-offer- 
 ing to the altar, in the name of the poor and 
 <1< >\vn-trodden. What the yielding up meant, 
 not to the impersonal sacrifice, but to the liv- 
 ing personal woman, I did not then conceive. 
 But for the last fortnight terrible thoughts 
 
 o o 
 
 have haunted me thoughts whose full sig- 
 nificance burst upon me when, a moment ago, 
 you held me in your arms. I shuddered in 
 them. Forgive me, but I I sickened in them. 
 
 o * 
 
 O, Otho, I have wronged you sorely, cruelly; 
 yet I beg you, I pray you to have pity on
 
 130 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 me ! I will dedicate my life to the service 
 of your cause I will strive for it day and 
 night ; I will be your friend, your co-worker, 
 your servant, your slave ! But I cannot be 
 your wife, Otlio I cannot be your wife ! " 
 
 She was wringing her white hands, and 
 sobbing nervously, fearlessly. The shame 
 and anguish on her face would have softened 
 the heart of a gentleman. It hardened mine. 
 
 " I have your promise," I cried, " your 
 public promise. In honor, in common jus- 
 tice, it binds you to me. I hold you to it. 
 I refuse to release you. You shall marry 
 me to-morrdw ! " 
 
 " I cannot be your wife ! " she repeated. 
 
 The devil possessed me. 
 
 " You cannot be my wife ? " I hissed. 
 " Then why does my hand know the clasp of 
 your hand, why have my arms held you, win- 
 has my breast felt the beating of your heart
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 131 
 
 against it why, even now, do iny kisses 
 burn your face and throat and lips ? You 
 cannot be my wife ? Then why have I been 
 your lover ? Are you not the pure white 
 thing you look ? Are you only a whited 
 sepulchre ? You are beautiful. You were 
 born for love. Out of all the world of men 
 you have chosen your lover you must abide 
 by your choice. Between you and any other 
 honest love stand my kisses, even as I stand 
 between you and any other man. I tell you 
 that you are mine ! mine ! By right of love, 
 as well as by right of promise, I claim you 
 for my wife ! " 
 
 " I cannot be your wife ! " she answered. 
 " If you loved me you would not wish it 
 against my will. My promise was a mistake, 
 Otho. I did not understand, or realize, what 
 it meant. I have been a dreamer, always a 
 dreamer ! and my dreams have been not like
 
 132 TJIK WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 the dreams of other girls, of love and lovers; 
 but dreams like yours, abstract, impersonal- 
 dreams of human progress, of social revolu- 
 tion and reform. When I read your book it 
 thrilled, like a grand chord, through me. 
 My soul, my brain, responded. I mistook 
 them for my heart. When I saw you, met 
 you, pleaded with you not to forget your mis- 
 sion when your sleeping soul awoke like a 
 lion, and I saw the royal thing I had aroused 
 when your grand appeal, god-voiced, rang 
 divinely, and you waited vainly for one 
 woman to respond I, dreaming still of 
 ideals, not realities, stepped forth and gave 
 the promise I know now I cannot keep." 
 
 " Why can you not keep it ? " I demanded. 
 
 " Because I do not love you," she fal- 
 tered. 
 
 " You lie ! " I cried. " You fail your 
 promise, not because you do not love me
 
 THE WOMAN WUO STOOD BETWEEN. 133 
 
 your promised husband, O, fair false wom- 
 an ! but because you love another." 
 
 Her burning blush was her answer. 
 
 " Harold ! " I hissed, " Harold ! " 
 
 " Spare me ! " she sobbed. 
 
 A fierce exultation was in my heart. I 
 saw that she thought her love in vain. 
 
 "He is gone," I jeered, pitilessly. "Love 
 did not keep him with you. If in farewell 
 he left one single love-word for you, I will 
 yield you to his arms." 
 
 She hid her face in her hands. Through 
 her fingers her tears trickled. 
 
 " Not one ! '' she moaned. " Not one ! " 
 
 " And you have no pride no girlish 
 modesty, no womanly self - respect ? You 
 avow your love for a man who does not love 
 you \ O, shame ! shame ! shame ! " 
 
 Her answer was the woman's answer pa- 
 tient, faithful, self -forgetful.
 
 134 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 il I love him," she sobbed. " I love him ! " 
 
 A fiend of malice possessed me. I caught 
 her in my fierce arms, laughing as she shud- 
 dered in them triumphing in her cruel tor- 
 ture, as I spoke on. 
 
 " You are mine," I exulted. " To-night, 
 my sweetheart ; to-morrow my wife ! You 
 will never be his his whom you love, his 
 who loves you ! " 
 
 " You start, you did not know of his love ! 
 You struggle vainly as a white bird in the 
 net. Your lover's arms are around you 
 your lover's to-night, to-morrow your hus- 
 band's! Yes, he loves you. He has loved 
 you for years and years. But he is no com- 
 mon flesh-and-blood man, to claim the woman 
 he loves, because he loves her. He is a gen- 
 tleman who waits on his lady's mood like a 
 slave on his mistress. You were ' happy in 
 your girlhood's dream,' he said. He would
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 135 
 
 not disturb it. He waited, as those dying 
 of thirst wait for water, till you should 
 waken from it. He told his heart to me, be- 
 cause I was his friend. He yearned not only 
 for the sweetheart, but for the wife, the 
 home, the children. ' Sweetheart ! wife ! 
 home maker ! mother ! ' he cried ; * when 
 shall my dream come true ? ' You betrayed 
 him. I did not. I did not ask you to put 
 your hand in mine. But since you chose to 
 put it in mine unasked, I hold it, I keep it. 
 I claim it, do you hear me ? Of you, a small, 
 frail woman, I claim it, I, a man ! Yield, 
 beloved, yield ! You have given your word 
 stand by it. You shall never regret it. 
 I, your lover, have played your master. I, 
 your husband, will be your slave. You may 
 do with me as you will make of me angel 
 or devil. See ! I throw myself at your feet. 
 On my knees I beg your hand. Women
 
 136 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 like you are loyal : your heart, your love 
 will follow it. Only marry me to-inorrow ! 
 To-morrow be ruy wife ! " 
 
 " I cannot be your wife ! " she shuddered. 
 " I would rather die." 
 
 Fateful words, inspired of devils, why did 
 God let her utter them ? "
 
 XXII. 
 
 I MADE my way to my room in a daze of 
 passionate emotion. I loved her and I had 
 lost her. Full well I knew that neither the 
 morrow, nor any after-morrow would ever 
 make her my wife ! Yet before I left her 
 I had extracted her promise to let the farce 
 of bridal preparation go on even to the 
 end. 
 
 " Grant me at least love's whim," I said. 
 " Come to me here, a quarter before the ap- 
 pointed church-hour, in your bridal veil. I 
 will trust to your heart, to your honor, to re- 
 deem your word. If at the last moment 
 you fail me, I will submit, but not until 
 then. I beg you, grant me this favor. It 
 is the least that I may claim."
 
 138 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 "I will grant you it," she said, "but I 
 shall fail you. I cannot be your wife ! " 
 
 She did not repeat that she would rather 
 die than be my wife, but no repetition was 
 necessary. The words, once said, were said 
 for always. They were ringing in my ears 
 as I entered my room. 
 
 The gas was lighted, and a vase of flowers 
 stood before my mirror. The woman who 
 cared for the room had placed them there, in 
 honor of my wedding-eve. Upon my bed 
 lay my wedding-suit, fresh from the hands 
 of a fashionable Fifth Avenue tailor. I 
 passed it by with a single glance, and went 
 to my desk. Touching a spring, I opened a 
 secret drawer, and took from its dark recess 
 my father's dagger. I drew it from its 
 sheath, and passed its keen edge caressingly 
 along my palm. Re-sheathing it, I took 
 the suit from the bed, and slipped the dag-
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 139 
 
 ger into the breast-pocket of my wedding- 
 coat Then, dressed as I was, I flung myself 
 full-length upon my bed, and slept deeply, 
 heavily, until morning. 
 
 The morning of my wedding-day !
 
 XXIII. 
 
 WE were to be married at hio;h noon. 
 
 O 
 
 On the stroke of the half before the noon 
 hour, I entered my carriage and was driven 
 to her home. On the way I passed the 
 church chosen for the ceremony. A line of 
 carriages was already drawing up before it. 
 I caught a confused sight of prancing steeds 
 and showy liveries and gorgeously gowned 
 guests, as I passed. Both streets and side- 
 walks were blocked by a struggling human 
 mass of the " unwashed " type. I saw the 
 policemen draw their clubs as I drove past 
 them. 
 
 The servant who opened the door stared 
 and smiled scornfully, yet indulgently, as he 
 admitted me. Evidently he Avas surprised
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 141 
 
 at my appearance, and attributed it to my 
 ignorance of social proprieties as well as to 
 the proverbial impatience of love. I heard 
 the voices of the bridesmaids in the drawing- 
 room, and knew, by love's unerring instinct, 
 that my darling was among them. Then my 
 heart gave a leap, as a man's familiar voice 
 sounded a low, rich voice, my friend's voice, 
 Harold's ! 
 
 A long hall, a room in itself, separated the 
 apartments. I heard a soft step upon it, the 
 rustle of silken robes along its floor. Then 
 she stood before me, the fair sweet woman I 
 loved who in an hour, or never, would be 
 my wife ! I took an eager step toward 
 her, but she motioned me back, imperious- 
 ly. Pure as a pearl in the white setting of 
 her wedding dress, she awed me. Her veil 
 seemed folded round her, like an angel's 
 wing.
 
 142 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEK.Y. 
 
 " I have kept my promise," she said. " I 
 have gratified your whim. As you desired, 
 you see me in my wedding-dress. Now we 
 must part. As I warned you, I must fail 
 you. I am a coward, traitor, what you will. 
 No hard name is too hard for me. From my 
 heart, I regret my wrong against you. But 
 I cannot be your wife ! " 
 
 Again she" waved me back, but this time I 
 defied her. I caught her two white hands 
 in mine, and drew her, by force, to me. 
 
 " I love you," I panted ; " I love you ! not 
 with the brute passion you fear, and from 
 which you shrink and shudder, but \vith the 
 man's love, pure and strong and tender the 
 love of the reverent lover, of the fond and 
 faithful husband. If I am not a gentleman, 
 you shall make me one. I will do by you 
 as nobly as a king does by his queen. Do 
 not doubt me ! Do not fear me ! Trust
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 143 
 
 me. You shall never regret your trust I 
 swear it ! In love's name, in honor's name, 
 in the name of the human world whose voice 
 of hopeless anguish cries out to you, fulfil 
 your promise, sweetheart. Be my wife ! " 
 
 " I cannot be your wife ! " she sobbed. 
 
 " Listen ! " I cried, " I passed the church 
 as I drove here. The carriage-guests were 
 arriving: ; the foot-guests blocked their 
 
 o * O 
 
 wheels. The policemen, with cruel clubs, 
 beat back the poor and helpless. I saw a 
 white-haired old woman crouch beneath a 
 blow, and heard a poor child sob. You 
 know what our marriage means to such as 
 
 O 
 
 these the rift in their web of wrongs the 
 wedge which, sooner or later, shall over- 
 throw the social structure which is an out- 
 rage to humanity, a shame to democracy, as 
 it now stands. If you fail them, who will 
 be their champion ? No other woman, so
 
 144: THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 help me God ! for if you are false, all 
 women are betrayers ! I will speak no more 
 of love. Love is well, but there is some- 
 thing better duty. Your duty to these 
 fulfil it ! Be my wife ! " 
 
 " I cannot be your wife ! " she moaned. 
 
 " You shall be my wife ! " I hissed. " I 
 say you shall be, you shall be ! " 
 
 The words aroused her high, if gentle, 
 spirit. Her hands were passive in mine she 
 scorned the futile struggle to release them ; 
 but her mute eyes, lifted suddenly, defied me. 
 
 lt I will not be your wife,'' she said, 
 " though you drag me by brute force to the 
 altar. I have done you a cruel wrong I 
 bitterly regret it. But my regret is as vain 
 as is your ungenerous persistence. Nothing 
 can undo the past ; but the past does not 
 control the future. Because I have made 
 one terrible mistake, I will not make a worse
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. H5 
 
 one. I beg, I insist, that this painful inter- 
 view now be ended. My decision is final. 
 I will not be your wife." 
 
 I do not know what betrayed her secret 
 as she spoke the words, whether her uncon- 
 scious emphasis as she said " your " wife, or 
 her sudden blush, or a tell-tale fla.^h in her 
 eyes of Love's shy happiness. I only know 
 that I divined it. Mechanically my hand 
 stole to my breast. The hilt of the dagger 
 met it. As my hand shut on it, I pressed 
 her closer to me. So we stood, for one 
 mute moment. Then I spoke. 
 
 " You will not be my wife," I said, " and 
 yet this is your wedding-day ? " 
 
 She glanced up, surprised and startled at 
 my keen question. I felt her tremble, as 
 she hesitated. Then she decided, I think, 
 that it was my right to hear the truth. 
 
 " Otho ! " she sobbed, "forgive me ! I told
 
 146 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 you that I love him. You told me that he 
 loves me. When I said that he left 
 no word of love behind him, I spoke the 
 truth, but not the whole truth. He had left 
 me, with his address, this single line in mes- 
 sage : ' WJien you need a friend, remember 
 that I live but to serve you ! ' Last night, 
 after you left, I I wrote to him. He came 
 this morning. He told me that you spoke 
 truly that he loves me, that he fled lest 
 his love should betray itself to the affianced 
 wife of his friend. Then I asked him 
 you hear me, Otho? /asked him, begged 
 him, prayed him on my knees, to marry 
 me, in your place, to-day ! then, to take 
 me far away out of sight and sound of 
 the wondering crowd, the mocking laughs, 
 the curious faces! He grants my request 
 only on condition that you, his friend, my 
 affianced husband, second it by your con-
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 147 
 
 sent : not otherwise ! His love is strong, 
 but his honor is stronger. Otho, you are a 
 man ; the strength, the power, is on your 
 side. Be generous, be noble, be chivalrous, 
 be a gentleman ! I love him he loves 
 me. Give us to each other ! Give me my 
 husband ! Give your friend his wife ! " 
 
 My hand shut closer on the dagger-hilt. I 
 felt the sharp blade slipping from its sheath. 
 
 " Sweetheart ! " I pleaded, " I love you. 
 I can yield you to no other lover. You are 
 rny promised wife. The church is crowded 
 with guests, the minister waits. The time is 
 come to fulfil your promise. Be my wife ! " 
 
 " I will never be your wife," she replied, 
 no longer gently, but with cold, proud scorn. 
 " I would rather die ! " 
 
 The next moment I know not how it 
 happened the dagger was buried hilt-deep 
 in her heart.
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE blow was swift and sure. A low 
 rnoan, heard by me alone, was the only sign 
 she gave, as heavily upon my arm she sank 
 back, dying. Then I realized what I had 
 done. With desperate haste, I lowered her 
 to the floor, and, tearing open her bridal- 
 bodice, groped for the wound. The beauti- 
 ful full white breast was still life-warm ; 
 under my passionate hand I felt its soft flesh 
 shudder. As my fingers touched the gaping 
 wound, I caught up the reeking dagger, slit- 
 ting corset and lace and linen with its 
 blood-stained blade. Then, with futile hands, 
 I strove to stanch the flow of virginal life- 
 blood. Red and warm, red and warm, it 
 oozed between the edges of the wound,
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 149 
 
 despite the pressure of my trembling fin- 
 gers. I watched the slow, sure flow with 
 awful fascination. It dyed my finger-tips, 
 mounted slowly toward my palm. Soon, to 
 its wrist, my hand was steeped in blood. 
 My murderer's hand ! As I wrested it from 
 her breast with a shuddering cry of horror, 
 her glazing eyes unclosed. 
 
 " Harold ! " she gasped, " Harold ! " and 
 with one sigh, was dead.
 
 XXV. 
 
 I KNOW not when they came, or who first 
 discovered us. I think it was a woman's 
 shriek that first pierced the lethargy of my 
 death-like trance. I felt myself torn from 
 her, and saw them shudder from me. Sud- 
 denly, between me and her, flashed a man's 
 tall figure. He sunk on his knees and draw- 
 ing the bodice over the fair nude bosom, 
 pressed his lips, with tender reverence, to 
 her chill white brow. 
 
 " Thank God ! " I heard him murmur. 
 "Thank God!" 
 
 As he lifted his face, no trace of the old 
 horror was upon it a chastened life-long 
 sorrow was in its place.
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 151 
 
 To him, as to her, the thought of her in 
 my arms had been so loathsome, that the 
 skeleton arms of Death, in contrast, were 
 welcome, sweet.
 
 XXVI. 
 
 THIS pain in my heart. Brandy, quick ! 
 What if I cheat Justice even yet ? 
 But no ! it passes 
 
 Better ? Oh, yes, better worse luck ! 
 
 More visitors ? But, yes, I had forgotten 
 that all must come to-night, if ever. To- 
 morrow the electric chair and deatli : " ^1 
 life for a life" Just if not merciful hu- 
 man revenge, if not Christian forgiveness ! 
 I make no appeal. 
 
 Frank ! you ? And who behind you ? 
 Harold ? and Nan Nan, with a child on 
 her breast ? My God ! my God ! 
 
 My child ? And Nan true to me ? 
 Worked till her mother found her ? The,
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 153 
 
 mother's unfailing instinct stronger, surer 
 than love's ! 
 
 Father, the marriage - "service. These 
 friends will witness. 
 
 Nan, at last you are an honest woman 
 my wife ! 
 
 God ! this pain in my heart ! The chill, 
 the dark what is it ? Nan, my wife, where 
 are you ? I feel you I cannot see you 
 
 Mem Vaterf Why, father ! So pale, so 
 wan and weeping. Why do you glare so 
 at me ? I kept my word ! I was true 
 to my oath ! "I spilled the blood, to the 
 last red drop of the woman who stood be- 
 tween " 
 
 He shudders, and cries out. He is tor- 
 tured, consumed by the hell-flame of vain re- 
 morse ! He gnashes his teeth on a devil's 
 curse He is gone !
 
 15-i THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 
 
 Poor father ! Poor father ! 
 
 
 So cold so dark 
 
 Air ! Brandy ! I am faint, sick, dying ! 
 Save me ! I am fearful I have sinned ! My 
 hand is stained with innocent blood 
 
 What is he saying, the good old priest ? 
 " The Blood of Christ shall ivash it I " 
 
 Christ, I believe ! My father shrive me ! 
 By the Blood of Christ I shall be made 
 whiter than snow whiter than snow- 
 Harold Frank Nan give me your 
 hands. 
 
 Once more on my brow your benedic- 
 tion, my Father 1 . 
 
 Mother ! And beside her, Mary ! O 
 Mary ! She smiles she says she forgives 
 me she is looking past me, to Harold
 
 THE WOMAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN. 155 
 
 Harold, Mary is beckoning to you. She 
 is whispering " Soon, soon, soon!" 
 
 The . song of angels . . . the light 
 of heaven 
 
 Mother ! Mary ! what are you saying ? 
 " Hate loses causes ; Love wins them ! " 
 Love Love Love
 
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