The RIALTO Series. Vol. i, No. 25. May, 1890. Monthly. Subscription $8.00 a year. 
 Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office, Chicago, 111., Feb. 16, 1889. 
 
 Fabian Dimitry. 
 
 BY 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 FAW(!ETT. 
 
 RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY 
 
 EDGAR FAWCETT, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE EVIL THAT MEN Do," "OLIVIA DELAPLAINE,"ETC. 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: 
 RAND, MCNALLY & COMPANY. PUBLISHERS. 
 
 1890.
 
 COPYRIGHT 1890, BY RAND, MCNALLY & Co., CHICAGO.
 
 TO LILIAN WHITING, 
 IN APPRECIATION OF HER NOBLE AND WOMANLY 
 
 INTELLECT, HER LOFTY IDEALS, 
 AND HER VALUED ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 New York, January, 1890. 
 
 2061739
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 1. 
 
 Who has not seen the multicolored lights 
 of the Alhambra flame in Leicester Square 
 from the gloom of a London evening? Almost 
 every third American whom one meets, it 
 might now be answered, in these days when 
 the awful sweep of ocean from New York to 
 Liverpool has become like the trivial terrors 
 of a swollen brook. Still, by early November, 
 there are few transatlantic theatre-goers 
 remaining in "the gray metropolis of the 
 North." Either they have all sped home 
 again across those heaving marine leagues 
 which they contemn so magnificently, or they 
 have drifted to the south of Europe in 
 search of that clement thermometer which 
 they rarely find above the toe of the Italian 
 boot. 
 
 (5)
 
 6 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Ray Eninger, though an American, had 
 not migrated from London at all, much as 
 he detested tawny fogs and vacillant rain- 
 spirts. He had found himself in the region 
 of Piccadilly at about nine o'clock, and had 
 half made up his mind to seek a book and 
 a hearth-blaze at his easeful Jermyn Street 
 lodgings. But great vapors that had hid 
 the sun all day had now rolled frqm a sky 
 full of soft yet keen stars, whose silver peace 
 mocked the turbulence below them. Eninger 
 had passed the glare of the Criterion and the 
 Pavilion with a sense of gaining some sort of 
 real repose both for eye and ear a little 
 further on. But though Leicester Square 
 was in a way quieter, with its lines of drowsy 
 cabs and its heavy central masses of shadow, 
 the two huge luminiferous theatres which 
 presently rose before him were but aggressive 
 repetitions of the structures he had already 
 left behind him. The Empire he had always 
 thought peculiarly and British! y vulgar. The 
 Alhambra he had not visited in several years, 
 and a caprice to do so here assailed him 
 with such an unforeseen suddenness that he
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 7 
 
 indolently yielded to it. He had no sooner 
 strolled past its radiant portals, however, than 
 he became the prey of a bored feeling. ' ' Eng- 
 land is a man's country," somebody had 
 said to him not long ago, and he had never 
 more clearly seen the truth of this bold 
 phrase than just here and now. The women 
 present were presumably not all of a lax 
 trend. Some were, as a glance at them told 
 you while you observed them strolling unes- 
 corted through the arabesqued and sumpt- 
 uous lobbies; but others had not their brassy 
 stamp, and might, for all one knew, be 
 seated beside their true lords with whom 
 they had come hither from chaste homes in 
 Brompton or Chelsea. And , yet the men 
 ungallantly clouded the air with smoke, or 
 drank from little shelf-like stands in front 
 of them the potions of clubs and taverns. 
 It was a splendid, even a patrician interior. 
 Its immensity invited the roving eye, which 
 lit on nothing tawdry, on much that was 
 artistic. The ballet then in course of prog- 
 ress might have shamed our own Niblo's 
 Garden at its finest. It seemed as if the
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 
 
 stage could hold no more of spectacular and 
 processional pomp, whereupon new lanes of 
 light would burn among its amazons and bac- 
 chantes as new phalanxes of bright-clad 
 shapes came marching from viewless lairs. 
 The entire scale of the entertainment was 
 so fine and distinguished, in spite of its 
 commonness as mere drama, that Eninger 
 asked himself why drink and tobacco should 
 be permitted thus to flout and cheapen its 
 handsome smartness. He had bought a 
 stall but did not choose to take it. He kept 
 wandering hither and thither, with half a 
 mind to drop in rumination on one of the 
 velvet lounges and half a mind to wander 
 forth again below the inconstant London 
 stars. People passed and repassed him, but 
 he scarcely noted their faces, irritated with 
 himself for having let his feet stroll where 
 all men and women must of necessity be 
 strangers. He was a man marked among 
 his friends for an excessive nicety and fas- 
 tidiousness. He had been called, both in 
 New York and London, a snob, yet unjustly 
 when all was said. The Alhambra now
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 9 
 
 emphasized for him a rawness of life from 
 which he shrank and had always shrunk. 
 Possessed of a fairly generous income, hav- 
 ing chosen the career of a physician from 
 desire rather than need, being endowed with 
 a tall, trim shape and a visage blond, deli- 
 cate though virile, equipped with a charm of 
 tactful mien and talk not usual among men 
 of even the older races, he had shone a kind 
 of social star in circles where he had not 
 sought to push entrance yet whose reigning 
 powers had welcomed him on terms of pecu- 
 liar flattery and acclaim. Not long ago, at 
 one of the great English country-houses, 
 he had committed what now remorsefully 
 pierced him as an act of dismal folly. A 
 certain Lady Beatrice Brashleigh, daughter of 
 an earl and niece of a duke, had won him, 
 with the blue of her big eyes and the music 
 of her suave voice, into an avowal of passion. 
 Lady Beatrice did not, by any riieans, fix a 
 vacant stare on the presumptuous American 
 or endeavor to slay him with her noble birth. 
 She simply burst into tears and murmured 
 something about papa objecting; and soon
 
 10 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Eninger had found out that papa did seri- 
 ously object. His transatlantic origin was not 
 a chief drawback to the match, for the earl 
 was by no means a rich peer and Lady Beat- 
 rice had a bevy of sisters. But for an Amer- 
 ican suitor Eninger*could not make meaning 
 enough settlements. Such a marriage as that, 
 declared his lordship, must have a heavy 
 golden reason for being. In the case of En- 
 inger it was golden, but not sufficiently heavy. 
 He left Brashleigh House one misty Sep- 
 tember morning, and fancied that as he cast 
 an upward look at its ivied stonework he 
 caught one vague glimpse of a maiden' s pale 
 and tear-stained face. But the vision did not 
 haunt him long. What haunted him much 
 longer was the cut, the sting that had been 
 dealt his pride. He had, after all, been in 
 love with Lady Beatrice more through 
 imagination than heart. He had liked that 
 historic perfume which hovered about her 
 surroundings with so much of the delightful 
 tenacity of tradition. Still, he now recalled 
 his past acquaintance with her rather in the 
 liii'lit of an escape than a sorrow.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 11 
 
 " I shouldn't have known what to do with 
 her after I'd got her/' he had mused. 
 " Sooner or later I mean hard work as a 
 physician, and New York shall no doubt be 
 the scene of my labors. How absurd it 
 would have looked over there, that ' Dr. and 
 Lady Beatrice Eninger!' And yet she might 
 have clung to her title always, for she was 
 proud of it though ever so fond of me." 
 
 For some time, this evening, Eninger sat 
 on one of the velvet lounges and watched, at 
 either of the large buffets which his vision 
 was able to command, that extraordinary 
 capacity of the English theatre-goer for pour- 
 ing down fiery fluids. The first impression 
 of respectful novelty which even the average 
 Londoner can produce in his kinsman over- 
 sea had long ago lost its force with Eninger. 
 He was used to all the different "types," of 
 whichever sex, and extremely fatigued 
 with most of them. "How peculiarly and 
 specially vulgar," he caught himself think- 
 ing, " a vulgar London crowd is able to ap- 
 pear!" . . and then, in a flash of discovery, 
 he saw the man who of all others living he
 
 12 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 would have held too refined and fastidious 
 to pass the lintels of a place like this. 
 
 " Why, Fabian!" he exclaimed, and 
 sprang up from his seat, seizing the arm of 
 the stroller. Then, as a smile of recognition 
 answered him, he went on with vehemence: 
 " What on earth brings you here?" 
 
 " Do you mean to England, my dear 
 Ray?' 1 replied the other, with a voice 
 exquisitely soft and yet somehow not of the 
 quality one would call womanish. He had, 
 however, limpid brown eyes which many a 
 woman might have envied him, and round 
 his pure-cut, beardless lips lingered the 
 double spell of sweetness and intellectuality. 
 
 Eninger slipped a hand within his friend's 
 arm. " Oh, I meant," he said, " this great, 
 smart, beastly place. Come and sit down 
 for a minute." He turned to look after his 
 former seat but perceived that it was occu- 
 pied. He soon glimpsed a distant table, 
 however, and drew his friend toward it with 
 an insistent warmth which bore odd contrast 
 to his former languor. The table was small, 
 and as they sat down beside it he resumed
 
 FABIAN DIMfTRY. 13 
 
 merrily: "Let's drink something. Every- 
 body is drinking something, I observe. And 
 a cigarette you'll like these, I think; 
 they're a trifle rare. So the ballet hired 
 you? Well, it is good, what I've seen of it. 
 Why under heavens didn't I know you were 
 in London, Fabian? Have you been here a 
 long time?" 
 
 ' ' Nearly a year. ' ' 
 
 " Nearly a year!" echoed Eninger. " Fan- 
 cy!" he pursued, unconscious, no doubt, 
 of the anglicism. "This town is such a 
 monstrous maze, isn't it? Twin brothers 
 could live here for an age within the 
 throw of a stone from one another, and 
 yet never meet." 
 
 " Quite true," acceded Fabian. 
 
 ' ' And the last time we met was about two 
 years ago at one of those semi-literary even- 
 ing pow-wows which they give so badly in 
 New York." 
 
 " Yes; I remember." 
 
 Eninger glanced at him sharply. "My 
 dear Fabian," he said, " you're not like your 
 old self."
 
 14 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Fabian smiled, and his face, beautiful and 
 poetic without a smile, drew, when thus 
 illumined, a soft, pleased cry from his com- 
 panion. 
 
 "Ah, that's more like you!" exclaimed 
 Eninger. Then, as the smile faded, he went 
 on: ''You once had such glorious spirits. 
 What's tamed them or who?" 
 
 "Who?" repeated Fabian, while he 
 drooped the brown eyes, dark-lashed and 
 lucid, that burned from his oval face. 
 
 "Does my interrogative pronoun bore 
 you?" said Eninger; and he lifted to his 
 lips the glass which a waiter had just filled 
 for him. " I do hope you haven't forgotten, 
 dear boy, what tremendous chums we once 
 were at Harvard." 
 
 " Indeed I haven't, Ray!" 
 
 They looked at one another in silence for a 
 little spare. "You're going to account for 
 yourself," announced Eninger, terminating 
 the odd pause. "You're going to tell me 
 something." 
 
 "Well, perhaps." 
 
 "We ought to have written one another,
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 15 
 
 Fabian. It's been a horrid shame that we've 
 drifted out of our nice fraternal habit of cor- 
 respondence. Probably the fault was mine 
 but no matter whose it was. If we had 
 exchanged letters through all these months 
 I might well, I might have given you an 
 appreciable plot for one of your plays. Or 
 have you renounced the making of plays 
 altogether?" 
 
 Fabian slowly shook his head, with what 
 struck Eninger as a subtle melancholy in the 
 motion. "]N"o, Ray, not quite; I suppose I 
 shall always go on groping a little along that 
 line. It's all I ever could do, you know." 
 
 "But for the present you've neglected 
 your talent?" 
 
 "Yes . . And so you've been living 
 through a drama that you think my poor 
 languid muse would care for?" 
 
 Eninger gave a curt, ambiguous nod. 
 "I'm not just sure of that," he returned. 
 "My drama is of the Robertsonian school 
 plenty of small talk, a little satire, and 
 enough comedy to hide the real tragedy of 
 tears behind it. I've no doubt you'd think
 
 16 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 it very flat and stale. But unless I'm wholly 
 wrong, Fabian, my opinion of yours would 
 be ever so different." 
 
 Fabian sat staring for some time at the 
 glass whose contents he had scarcely tasted. 
 At last he gave a slight start which made his 
 slender and supple frame actively vibrate. 
 "Let's get out into the streets," he said, 
 rising. ' ' We can talk better there. You 
 evidently think I've been having an infernal 
 sort of experience, Ray. Does my face tell 
 you so?" 
 
 "By no means," replied Eninger, now ris- 
 ing also. " But it hints to me that you're a 
 sadder man than when I knew you last." 
 
 "Yes and in some ways a wiser one," 
 muttered Fabian, below his breath, while 
 they quitted the noisy, smoky, brilliant 
 theatre. 
 
 "Which way shall we gof he added, 
 after they had gained the refreshing dusk 
 and coolness of Leicester Square. 
 
 "Whatever way you please," Eninger 
 answered, and soon he forgot all thought of 
 locality, his friend spoke to him so fluently,
 
 FABIAX DIMITEY. 17 
 
 so feverishly, and yet with such a potent 
 charm. 
 
 "We're here, almost at her very door," 
 Fabian finally said, after they had pushed 
 their way through a narrow street into a 
 square whose drowsy old trees were mur- 
 murous below a late-risen fragment of moon. 
 " Ah, Ray, think of the dramas that a fellow 
 like me could find hidden away among these 
 grim, ancient houses! How still they all are 
 if s the reticence of death, yet of recollec- 
 tion, too! Yonder' s the house where sJie lives. 
 Seven or eight generations of them have 
 lived and died in it. They're poor, now, as 
 I told you. They wouldn't be spending 
 their days in even so fascinatingly pictur- 
 esque a spot as this Lincoln 1 s Irin Square if 
 poverty hadn't held them here." 
 
 " And yet," said Eninger, feeling the need 
 of some sort of speech, "you tell me that 
 you met her with her father summer before 
 last off in the Engadine." 
 
 "Oh, yes. The old Colonel's bronchitis 
 had got devilish during the raw spring. 
 They scraped up enough money to take the
 
 18 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 trip. You see, there are only two of them, 
 father and daughter; the} r can graze starva- 
 tion without tumbling into it. Still, there's 
 a big mortgage on that little house, and some 
 day the very worst may happen. It's hard, 
 Ray, they're as good blood as any in Eng- 
 land, but the last of an impoverished line. 
 I doubt if half the grandees (some with 
 titles bought ten years ago) are even aware 
 they exist." 
 
 Eninger stared into his friend's face, which 
 the glamour of moonlight seemed now to 
 invest with a new repose, patience and 
 spirituality. "Alicia Delamere," he said; 
 "it's a lovely name, certainly. And you say 
 that she Here he broke short off. 
 "For God's sake, Fabian." he quickly went 
 on, "why don't you marry her and make an 
 end of it?" 
 
 The sculptural lips of Fabian tightened 
 together a little. "I've told you why." he 
 said. 
 
 Those words had for his hearer a horrible 
 pathos and solemnity. "But she loves 
 you," he began, "and
 
 FABIAN' DIMITKY. 19 
 
 "I think she loves me yes, I feel inwardly 
 certain of it," struck in Fabian. 
 
 "And you love her?" 
 
 "Devotedly." 
 
 "Then cast that scruple of yours to the 
 winds!" exclaimed Eninger. 
 
 "Would you, in my placed" queried 
 Fabian, grasping his arm. 
 
 " Would I?" he repeated, staggered by the 
 question, as applied to himself. "But I've 
 never seen her I don't love her." 
 
 " If you did love her," persisted Fabian, 
 with eyes unrelenting, and with hand that 
 did not in the least relax. 
 
 "But I've never loved in that way," w 
 returned Eninger, with an evasive air that 
 was perhaps more apparent because he strove 
 to hide it. 
 
 "Ah, " said Fabian, dropping his arm, yet 
 slipping an arm of his own round Eninger s 
 neck ; "I see that you would have just my 
 torturing hesitancy, were you situated as I." 
 
 Together the two friends quitted the moon- 
 lit square, which was for one of them clad 
 evermore in a new spell of gloom and wist-
 
 20 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 fulness. Its gray memorials of how men 
 fade and inanimate things remain, had 
 always for Eninger been pregnant with sug- 
 gestion; but now, at this mysterious moment, 
 not far from midnight, and under this eerie 
 moon of a London autumn, the whole quarter 
 (for reasons that chiefly concerned his com- 
 panion's late discourse) appeared haunted 
 by the influence of some grisly curse.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 21 
 
 II. 
 
 Nor did Eninger by any means rid him- 
 self of that sensation when he paid, with 
 Fabian, a visit to the Delameres on the fol- 
 lowing day. The small house in Lincoln's 
 Inn Square was no less shabby within than 
 grimy without, but Alicia Delamere lighted 
 its dinginess as a buttercup lights a dingle. 
 She had hair almost as golden as that flower, 
 and so white a throat that it made the ardent 
 yet velvety blue of her eyes burn all the 
 more deliciously keen. Her figure, however, 
 as Eninger soon told himself, was by no 
 means a perfection of moulding, although 
 lissome and graceful, while her deportment 
 betokened neither the air de race nor the 
 simple equipments of ordinary tact and finish. 
 Watching her with the cold eye of criticism, 
 he pronounced her manners almost piteously 
 deficient. She had pretty hands, but was 
 forever moving them about, like an embar-
 
 22 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 rassed child; she would smile naturally one 
 minute and artificially the next; her post- 
 ures, whether she sat or stood, were one 
 perpetual bashful unrest. And yet it soon 
 began to dawn upon Eninger that she was 
 irresistibly charming. It was not that he 
 grew to approve her, but rather that he took 
 a secret pleasure in watching her defects. 
 She was not at all like an English girl, nor 
 yet like an American : she had far too little 
 gravity for the first and far too much reserve 
 for the last. Eninger got rapidly to be fond 
 of watching her; she made him think of a 
 briar-rose in a breeze, of a little ruffled 
 brook between fringes of cresses. Her wild- 
 ing sort of demureness refreshed him after 
 the correct repose of Lady Beatrice. Then, 
 too, there was a pathos in her shyness. For 
 had not Fabian told him that her mother had 
 died when the dug was at her baby lip, and 
 did not this gaunt, sour old spectre of a 
 father look as though he could no more rear 
 a delicate young daughter than stand on his 
 bullet-shaped, grizzled head? 
 
 It struck the new-comer as the head of a
 
 FABIAX DIMITKY. 23 
 
 possibly stupid man, and he soon learned 
 that he had rightly judged it. But Colonel 
 Delamere was not simply stupid. He at 
 once fixed a fishy, viscous eye on Eninger, 
 and paid him all the court that his ab- 
 surdly stiff deportment permitted him to 
 proffer. He was a man who in earlier life 
 had been very arrogant, and after the fashion 
 of arrogance that we sometimes may see full- 
 blown in the military Englishman. He had 
 never known just how to bend his back, even 
 when the iron goad of penury smote it 
 though indeed there had been a good deal of 
 bending with him, as many knew. But 
 after Eninger had become, during the next 
 fortnight or so, a confirmed visitor at his dis- 
 mal old domicile, he showed signs of soci- 
 ality, rare with him as imprudence in a 
 weasel. 
 
 Meanwhile, on one or two occasions, Fa- 
 bian was surprised at finding his friend in the 
 company of either Alicia or her father. His 
 surprise quickly wore off, however; for ha<J 
 he not made a kind of tacit agreement with 
 Enin2;er that the latter should observe the
 
 24 FABIAX DIMITRY. 
 
 almost unique dolor of his own situation' 
 Not that Fabian looked for any help from 
 his Mend's future counsels. Alas! he had 
 more than once meditated, how could there 
 be any earthly help away from the fulfill- 
 ment of. what he held inexorable duty? The 
 path was all too frightfully plain; Ray En- 
 inger could make it neither more nor less so! 
 
 One evening he dropped into the latter' s 
 Jermyn Street apartments, with a rueful 
 white on his cheeks and a glassy feverish- 
 ness in his splendid brown eyes. "Did you 
 not tell me, a day or two ago, Ray," he 
 presently asked, "that you would soon sail 
 for New York?" 
 
 Eninger slightly started. "I I don't 
 remem ' ' he began, and then gave a sudden 
 acquiescent nod. "Oh, yes;" he proceeded, 
 " I believe I did say so carelessly, that is." 
 
 Fabian, whose eyes had sought the floor, 
 looked swiftly up at him. "Oh," he said, 
 "then you didn't mean it?" His friend 
 made no answer, and he went on: "I'm 
 sorry." 
 
 " Sorry?" repeated Enin.uvr.
 
 FABIAX DMITRY. 25 
 
 " Yes; I wanted to sail with von. I thought 
 of the Bolivia next Saturday." 
 
 * So soon as that!" faltered Eninger. He 
 had turned pale, but hoped that the ruddy 
 fire-shine, near which he sat in slippers and 
 dressing-sacque, would guard his altered 
 hue. 
 
 "Why do you call it soonf murmured 
 Fabian. * I supposed," he added, sombrely, 
 "that after all I have told you it would 
 strike you as late/' 
 
 Eninger watched the crackling tire. "This 
 is decisive, then,*' he said. "You're going 
 to give hemp?" 
 
 " Ah, Ray,"' cried his companion, " haven't 
 you been sure all along that I meant to do 
 sor 
 
 "No. I thought "' and there Eninger 
 
 paused, still watching the fire. 
 
 Fabian rose and took a seat at the side of 
 his friend. He was tranquil, and yet he 
 seemed somehow inwardly to tremble. 
 
 " Ray," he began, * 4 1 have looked for the 
 last time into the face of these bitter facts. 
 There is no avoiding their moral meaning to
 
 26 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 a man fashioned like myself. If I married 
 Alicia Delamere, I would be perpetuating a 
 curse/' 
 
 Here Eninger made a gesture which his 
 observer may wrongly have -read, for Fabian, 
 even while he noted it, stoutly pursued: 
 
 " Yes, a curse! You know that, Ray 
 you must know it, and feel it as I. We're 
 neither of us believers, as the trick of the 
 phrase goes. We' re not religionists ; we don' t 
 do right with a sense of pay to come after 
 the grave' s got us into its dark maw. But 
 even if death end all for the individual we 
 accept the claim life exacts while it lasts. 
 Here is this Delamere race you know the 
 stain on it; I told you. None of their own 
 making, but a stain I can reproduce and 
 brand my children with if I will. Her father 
 is the only one of five brothers that was 
 spared. All the rest were unsound in some 
 mental way. He has an uncle who's living 
 still, an idiot, in one of the county asylums. 
 His own father cut his throat, off in Devon- 
 shire, one night, after fifty delirious fits and 
 a kind of three years' raininess that made
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 27 
 
 people think lie would' draw his last breath 
 sane. Yet worse than this, lier three broth- 
 ers and one but a mere lad of twelve all 
 perished in tragic manners from the same 
 hideous ill . . . I' ve told you this before 
 yes, your silence seems to answer me that 
 I've told it before. But" (and here Fabian 
 leaned close to his hearer, with a hand on 
 the back of his chair) ''you've something 
 now in your silence that wasn't there then. 
 I can read it, though I don't understand it. 
 Ray, my friend, you can't mean that you 
 advise me you, always so finely furnished 
 with the hate of weak and small acts not to 
 recoil from this piece of terrible egotism." 
 
 Affection and reproach were blended in 
 Fabian's voice. As Eninger turned and met 
 his eyes, the result was an electric conscience- 
 thrill. 
 
 "You say that I hate weak and small 
 acts," he said. "But I can't call this one 
 of either. It's only human. Good God! 
 we're not to be bred, we men and women 
 with minds and souls, as though we were 
 race- horses!"
 
 28 FABIAN DIM ITHY. 
 
 ''But we're to think of our unborn chil- 
 dren, Ray! I've always said that no man 
 had the right to marry a woman with the 
 seeds of an incurable hereditary malady in 
 her blood. We call murder a crime. In 
 begetting the heirs of murderous ills we are 
 ourselves worse than assassins. The selfish- 
 ness of it all is supreme; we may be laying 
 desolate a score of lives merely to please our 
 own. The bigot, the pietist, the shallow 
 conservative may have his excuse for such a 
 coarse. Men like you and me, Ray men 
 who have stamped all superstition underfoot 
 and accepted science as the one help and 
 hope of humanity we have none!" 
 
 Eninger got up from his chair and stood with 
 his back to the fire and with hands clasped be- 
 hind him. His purplish silken dressing- 
 sacque gave to him a new air of patrician 
 daintiness and nicety. There are men who 
 can not draw on a pair of gloves without 
 implying some peculiar refinement by the 
 process. Eninger was one of these. You had 
 but to watch a little while before you became 
 a ware that his tastes and temperament were
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 29 
 
 porcelain beside the common earthenware of 
 others. Yet although he clearly bespoke 
 the clilettant, he never deserved the name of 
 prig or poseur. Certain crudities in his fel- 
 low-men shocked him past speech, and rather 
 than dwell under the ban of particular social 
 conditions he would have courted death. 
 Shame or disgrace of any sort would have 
 been like barbed and poisoned darts to him. 
 His standing before the world, the point of 
 view that people had of him, the whiteness 
 and brightness with which his good-name 
 shone before their eyes, he held surpassingly 
 dear. As dear, too, was immunity from the 
 prying public gaze. He had talent enough 
 to have written something if he had tried; 
 but the idea of having the newspapers direct 
 upon his work- their calcium glare was 
 fraught for him with an especial disrelish. 
 Of all human creatures he was one least 
 fitted for what we call the battle of life. It 
 was not simply that the hard knocks he 
 must get there would give him pain, but 
 that they dealt him unhealing, immedicable 
 wounds. And vet he \vas a man who had
 
 30 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 delighted, notwithstanding all this over- 
 refinement and sensitiveness, in confronting 
 many of those austere nineteenth-century 
 truths which have sent romance whimpering 
 and shivering from her ancient coignes and 
 bournes. 
 
 In this respect he was mentally akin to his 
 friend, Fabian Dimitry, as we have but 
 recently heard the latter say. But Fabian's 
 organism was of far stouter and manfuller 
 make. On leaving college he had found 
 himself, like Eninger, lifted above the needs 
 of money-getting, though with an income 
 which extravagance might easily have melt- 
 ed. The idea of sending some new red blood 
 into the shrivelled veins of our dramatic lit- 
 erature had thralled and fascinated .him. 
 Going abroad, he had studied the stage in 
 several great European cities, and at last had 
 drifted to London deep in the spell of Miss 
 Delamere's attractions. His resolute artistic 
 purpose had remained firm enough until the 
 dawn of a most bewildering trouble. But 
 even now you had only to mark the clear, 
 strong lines of his classic face to see that he
 
 FABIAN DIMITBY. 31 
 
 was one whom sorrow might martyrize but 
 never unman. There was no daintiness nor 
 over-sensitiveness here. A fine serenity of 
 spirit controlled this nature, a patient dig- 
 nity upbore it, and a lucid liberalism senti- 
 nelled, so to speak, its approaches. 
 
 " You speak of excuses," Eninger slowly 
 said. ' ' To my thinking there could be only 
 one that was powerful enough Alicia Dela- 
 mere herself." 
 
 Fabian gave a start, and then his lips mel- 
 lowed into a warm smile " You think her 
 so lovely!" he exclaimed. 
 
 Eninger was glancing down at his own del- 
 icate white hands, with their filbert nails 
 like glossy little pink shells and their single 
 ring, an almost priceless cameo which he 
 had picked up somewhere in Italy as a really 
 wondrous trouvaille. He had often lightly 
 said, until he chanced upon this gem, that 
 he would as soon wear a ring through his 
 nose as one upon his finger. 
 
 "I think her a very beautiful creature," 
 he now answered. Then he looked up in a 
 keen, alert way at his friend. " About these
 
 32 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 stories of madness being so rampant in the 
 family . . May they not have been exag- 
 gerated?" 
 
 "No," said Fabian, with a sort of unwill- 
 ing firmness. " I have made quite sure. 
 The complete record has reached me through 
 sources there was no distrusting. Some 
 other time I'll tell you more. There are 
 ghastly details about those dead Delameres 
 which to-night, Heaven help me, I've no 
 stomach for." 
 
 "And the old Colonel?" asked Eninger, 
 in an absent, brooding voice. ' ' Has he 
 volunteered no confidences?" 
 
 "None. Poor old fellow, I imagine he 
 thinks Alicia has told me nothing.' ' 
 
 " Then his daughter knows and is willing 
 to talk of it all?" 
 
 " She knows,, but refers to it only with the 
 greatest reluctance. I mean," added Fabian, 
 " when /bring up the subject. With you 
 with any ordinary acquaintance she would 
 be apt, I think, to decline all discussion of it. ' ' 
 
 "Ah," said Eninger dryly, perhaps not 
 knowing that he spoke.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 33 
 
 Those words "ordinary acquaintance" 
 jarred upon him. When he thought of the 
 sudden yet novel emotions roused in him by 
 Alicia it seemed as if his acquaintance with 
 her had already become very extraordinary 
 indeed. Fabian now went on to say that he 
 had found the old Colonel rather difficult to 
 get along with . ' ' The truth is, ' ' he declared, 
 with abrupt frankness, "I pity but don't at 
 all admire him. He's not worthy to be the 
 father of so dear a girl. His poverty stirs 
 my compassion, but his lack of dignity 
 wakes my disgust. Perhaps dignity's too 
 mild a word, and I ought to call it conscience. 
 The old sinner borrows of every man who 
 will lend him, Ray, and with no more idea 
 of returning the money than if it had been 
 left him as a legacy. He's the horror of his 
 club and the despair of his poor child. 
 Your turn will come soon, if you make many 
 more visits to Lincoln's Inn Square. Still, 
 for all I know, it may have come already?" 
 
 "It hasn't," said Eninger. He afterward 
 thought, with an inward shudder, of Alicia's 
 position. A father like that, besides an
 
 34 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 ancestry so forlornly besmirched! How 
 tyrannous were the whims and freaks of 
 destiny! What a mercy if some man were 
 to fling her a stont little plank of matrimony 
 amid these tossing waters of dismay and 
 threat! 
 
 After what Fabian had told him about the 
 Colonel, he was prepared to be asked for at 
 least five pounds the next time he and Alicia's 
 father were alone together. But on this 
 occasion (one which arrived much sooner 
 than he had expected) no such request left 
 the grim old soldier's lips. On the contrary 
 a good many rather grumbling remarks left 
 them with respect to the absent Fabian. 
 
 " Between ourselves, now, my dear Mr. 
 Eninger," said the Colonel, in his stiff, grace- 
 less way, "it strikes me that Dimitry is a 
 devil of a self-assuming person. By Jove, 
 he talks of the drama of this country as 
 though it were all worthless rubbish, right 
 from Shakespeare down." 
 
 " Oh, I think he draws the line at Shakes- 
 peare," smiled Eninger, who loathed most 
 of the current English play- writing as cor-
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 35 
 
 dially as his friend did, and knew well how 
 Fabian loved the divine William. 
 
 "No," maintained the Colonel, crossing 
 his thin legs obstinately, "I'm deuced if he 
 draws the line anywhere. And what has he 
 himself done, I'd like to know, in the dra- 
 matic line? Plays in manuscript mean noth- 
 ing till they' re produced. You' 11 grant that!" 
 continued the Colonel, as if he had suddenly 
 turned up some shining jewel of wisdom 
 with the plowshare of everyday discourse. 
 
 But he had several more ill-natured things 
 to say of Fabian, as Eninger soon discovered. 
 None of his back-biting was more serious 
 than that of a spleenful old man who fumes 
 with a grudge. When he began to draw 
 between Eninger and his friend, however, a 
 comparison highly nattering to the former, 
 then light broke upon the Colonel' s listener. 
 ' ' He' s ambling gently toward a requested loan 
 of five pounds," thought Eninger, and he 
 thought also of Alicia who was oil on some 
 shopping expedition (Heaven only knew if it 
 were not to haggle with some cheap butcher 
 about the cutlet's for that evening's dinner,
 
 36 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 poor girl!) and told himself that just another 
 sight of those morning-colored eyes and that 
 field-daisy sort of face would be worth twice, 
 even thrice, the sum. 
 
 But he had entirely misinterpreted the 
 sly old Colonel. No attempt was made to 
 borrow a farthing. In awkward, infelici- 
 tous fashion he was told that he possessed 
 points of marked superiority over Fabian 
 and that this opinion was one which Alicia 
 also held. Eninger felt his heart throb 
 as he heard those tidings. It never occur- 
 red to him that he was perchance a matri- 
 monial bait at which were now being given 
 two or three discreet preliminary nibbles. 
 Alicia soon appeared, and the Colonel won 
 his gratitude by rather promptly leaving. 
 How her eyes lit the room! How her rest- 
 ive, nervous manner made one long to lull 
 and pacify her as one might stroke the 
 fur of a kitten! It must be that she was 
 forever worrying about their household 
 debts and her father's reckless borrowings 
 and the horrid no-thoroughfare prospect of 
 their future.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 37 
 
 As they now sat together near a window 
 that gave upon the square and watched the 
 dismantled trees quiver in a rainy wind 
 beneath low-stooping leaden skies, Eninger 
 had a sense of quiet delight he had never 
 known before. Presently the rain ceased 
 and the sun tried to struggle out from the 
 monstrous masses of rolling vapor that 
 whitened and glistened with his fitful rays. 
 If nowhere in the world there are gloomier 
 heavens than over London, nowhere, too, are 
 there more gloriously mutable and poetic 
 ones, and never an autumn passes but the 
 miraculous canvases of Turner are hundreds 
 of times reduplicated in those azure fields 
 whence he first drew their splendors. 
 
 Eninger scarcely knew what he and Alicia 
 talked about that afternoon. The most 
 trifling matters, no doubt, and yet every 
 fresh word seemed to make him feel more 
 intimately at home in her presence. She 
 was so much easier to talk with than most 
 of the English girls whom he had met. 
 They would sit sedately with hands crossed 
 in their laps and expect not to amuse but
 
 38 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 to be amused. With Alicia it was not thus; 
 she thought of pretty, diverting little things 
 to say; she was cleverer, more buoyant, less 
 restrained and self-effaced than multitudes 
 of her English sisters. Eninger at length 
 tried to learn something of her real feelings 
 toward Fabian. 
 
 "You've known him a good while now, 
 have you not?" he said. 
 
 "Yes; rather." She drooped her eyes. 
 "But he doesn't come to us as often as he 
 once did. I can't think why." Here she 
 raised her eyes again. " Can you?" 
 
 " No; unless it's because he is busy think- 
 ing out his dramas." 
 
 She clasped her hands together and leaned 
 eagerly forward, while he saw a keener pink 
 float up into her cheek. "Oh, are they 
 not strong and fine, those dramas!" she 
 exclaimed. " He has read me two, ' Rosa- 
 mond' and 'Married Women.' How dif- 
 ferent they are from the trash one sees when 
 one goes to the play here in London. What 
 warm humanity is in them, yet what sting- 
 ing satire. And how they take hold of
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 the mind and set you thinking. He will be 
 very great, some day; don't you think he 
 will?" 
 
 "I think he ought to be," answered 
 Eninger, not knowing that the reply came 
 in a changed and almost husky voice. For 
 that afternoon at least, the pleasure of his 
 tete-a-tete had been spoiled.
 
 40 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 III. 
 
 Another fortnight passed, and London was 
 nearly always wrapped in funereal hazes, 
 But sometimes, when the fog was at its 
 densest, wild yellow light would tinge it 
 until all the air looked so elfin you might 
 have said the end of the world was immi- 
 nent. It had now become plain to Eninger 
 that he would not sail for America that year. 
 He might go to Paris or even further, but lie 
 would never put the sea between Alicia 
 Delamere and himself until certain that 
 Fabian's resolve not to marry her was irre- 
 vocably clinched. 
 
 She loved Fabian. He had made himself 
 sure of that, and had suffered pangs in fully 
 ;i wakening from the effects of the Colonel's 
 welcome falsehood. He had recognized the 
 iv;il -i mult >ur of his friend's intended sacrifice. 
 But perhaps because his entire nature was 
 built on pediments feebler than Fabian's he
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 41 
 
 had doubted if that sacrifice would ever be 
 made. 
 
 One evening changed all this. Fabian en- 
 tered his rooms, paler than usual and clearly 
 agitated. He gave Eninger no greeting, but 
 planted himself not far from the door which 
 he had just closed, while he curtly said : 
 
 "I have lately been treated almost with 
 open insult by Colonel Delamere." 
 
 Eninger, who was in full evening dress, and 
 had been about to start in a cab for the com- 
 fortable little club, not far from Piccadilly 
 where he often dined, looked placid and polite 
 defiance as he answered : 
 
 "Really, one would suppose from your 
 manner, that you had been treated with open 
 insult by me." 
 
 Fabian tossed his head and smiled bitterly. 
 
 "If you call treachery insult, yes," he 
 responded. 
 
 "Treachery?" repeated Eninger, squaring 
 himself. "Come, now." 
 
 "The Colonel isn't always a trustworthy 
 man," were Fabian's next words, "but in 
 this case I think he has proved himself one."
 
 42 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 ' ' This case? W hat case?' ' 
 
 "You've made it plain to him that you 
 wish to marry liis daughter." 
 
 Eninger turned rather pale, and locked his 
 hands behind him. 
 
 "Did the Colonel say that to you?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes. Do you deny that he told the truth?" 
 
 Fabian stood before his friend, inexorable' 
 as an accusing judge. Eninger scanned his 
 tranquil face for an instant and then threw 
 up both hands, half turning away. 
 
 "Good God, man," he muttered, "haven't 
 you seen that I care for the girl? Because 
 you reject her yourself must you keep 
 everybody else from trying to get her?' ' 
 
 After so speaking, Eninger held his counte- 
 nance averted. It seemed to him that an 
 immensely long period elapsed before Fabian 
 again spoke. 
 
 "I think only this," at length came the 
 words he waited for. " If you did not seethe 
 crime of such a marriage as I saw it, you 
 might have used decent candor in telling 
 me so."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 43 
 
 Eninger clinched his hands and replied, 
 with quivering lips. 
 
 "Fabian," he exclaimed, "I accepted 
 your prior claim. You renounced that claim 
 you told me so. But if this be not true, 
 I retire again in your favor . . . Stop! 
 you're about to question my moral sense in 
 wishing to marry Alicia. That you have no 
 right to do. If you will say to me now, at 
 this moment, that you will take the girl, I 
 promise you I'll withdraw from ever trying 
 to become her husband. If you refuse to 
 adopt that course, I shall hold free the field 
 of my own endeavor. Can you, honestly, 
 call this treachery? Before you accuse me 
 again, weigh well your words. You've 
 always prided yourself on justice. Prove 
 now that you've not dealt in mere vaunts." 
 
 Fabian' s brow was a cloud of storm as he 
 stepped a little nearer to the speaker. 
 
 "Justice!" he exclaimed, with a passion- 
 ate sorrow in his tones. "Can you dare to 
 use the word? I've told you everything. 
 You know what such a marriage may 
 mean!"
 
 44 FABIAN DTMITRY. 
 
 Eninger slowly inclined his head. 
 
 "There are such things as childless mar- 
 riages," he answered coldly. 
 
 Fabian stared at him in silence. If his 
 look had been purely one of scorn, its object 
 might have flung back hot resentment. But 
 it was both more and less than this. It 
 brimmed with an arraignment that seemed 
 to search and scorch the inmost soul of the 
 man who guiltily met it. 
 
 4 'As you will, Ray Eninger," he at last 
 said. "We will speak no more of either 
 treachery or justice. I shall leave England 
 in two days' time; that I promise you. The 
 field of endeavor, as you've termed it, is 
 quite clear. There is my answer. What 
 your own conscience and honor may say to 
 you in the coming years I shall not presume 
 to question." 
 
 He turned, after thus speaking, and opened 
 the door near which he stood. As he passed 
 from the room, Eninger was on the point of 
 uttering some angry retort; but swiftly a 
 great exultation replaced his ireful impulse. 
 He sank into a chair, covering his face. The
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 45 
 
 thought of what might now occur, dizzied 
 him and made his blood bound. 
 
 Calmer moments brought him suffering. 
 He perceived how he must have soiled him- 
 self in the sight of the friend whose respect 
 he had treasured; for after all he was of too 
 high-strung and delicate a fibre not to feel 
 in full degree the shame of his own disloy- 
 alty. But a certain reparation might be 
 made in the future. He began to build hopes 
 on such a contingency, and to picture Fa- 
 bian as a guest in his New York home. 
 Why should this, not sooner or later come 
 about? Far stranger things had happened, 
 and there were elements, qualities in Fa- 
 bian which seemed all the more stimulant and 
 tonic to him now that months of separa- 
 tion had again given place to companionship. 
 As for Alicia's love, why should it not 
 change its current, so that when she once 
 more met the man who had set throbbing 
 her maiden pulses he would seem to her only 
 a vague image beside the dominant one of 
 him whose name she now bore? And as for 
 Alicia herself, surely to become his wife
 
 46 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 must prove, should she ever accept such a 
 fate, more of blessing than curse. He would 
 guard her as the lid guards its eye. If insan- 
 ity lurked like an ambushed bravo in her 
 brain* he would keep the foe at bay with all 
 the spells his medical craft could conjure. 
 His vigilance should be sleepless and his 
 most potent spur toward the deepening and 
 broadening of scientific research should 
 spring from eager interest in herself. If the 
 world ever knew him for a famous physician 
 it would be chiefly through her precious 
 though unconscious aid. 
 
 He trembled, all this while, with dread of 
 Alicia's discountenance. That he should win 
 her, too, merely as the 'suitor with the well- 
 lined purse, was wholly repellent. She had 
 known Fabian first, and even his desertion 
 could not be expected instantly to turn 
 the tide of her sentiment. Eninger was 
 .ihvady schooling himself not to care very 
 much if the girl should become his with a 
 pronounced preference for Fabian; but he 
 lint.-d to think that she might perhaps marry 
 him with no more human motive than one
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 47 
 
 of cold-blooded expediency. The old Col- 
 onel was of course his ally, and yet he feared 
 lest Alicia's father might either ruin the 
 cause by bungling, or else goad his child into 
 a role of self-immolating hypocrisy. After 
 some reflection Eninger concluded that there 
 was only one course to take he would avoid 
 the Colonel altogether, and go straight to 
 Alicia with his passion and his promises. 
 
 He did so, a few days later, and the expe- 
 rience bred for him nothing but anguish. 
 Alicia answered him with tone and mien that 
 there could be no mistaking. 
 
 " I'm grateful to you," she said, in her flut- 
 tered and breaking voice. "I I did not 
 think you believed Well, no matter, 
 though, Mr. Eninger. The the fault may 
 have been altogether mine." 
 
 " The fault?" he queried. 
 
 "I mean that perhaps I I led you to 
 think I cared for you in that way. And 
 if I did, it was very blamable in me 
 very!" 
 
 "No," he returned; "I don't accuse you 
 of any coquetry; and the blame is all on my
 
 48 FABIAN DIMITRY. . 
 
 side. I should have remembered that Dimi- 
 try " 
 
 "Ah, don't mention his name!' ' she cried, 
 bursting into tears. 
 
 "You loved him, then? You mean that I 
 could not replace him in your heart?" 
 
 "My heart!" she exclaimed, with a sud- 
 den plaintiveness that touched him past 
 words. "My heart is broken!" And so 
 speaking she slipped from the room in a 
 tumult of tears. 
 
 Eninger spent the rest of the day in dull 
 despair. But that evening, just after he had 
 returned home from a dinner of which it 
 seemed mockery for him even to pretend to 
 partake, he was surprised by the appear- 
 ance of Colonel Delamere. 
 
 The Colonel, with his gauntness, and his 
 supercilious carnage of the head, and his 
 buckram demeanor, was at no time a pleas- 
 ant vision; and yet a delicious little shaft of 
 encouragement seemed to pierce Eninger on 
 now beholding him. Was it not possible 
 that the wine of hope might be borne him 
 -v. 11 by so graceless a cup-bearer?
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 49 
 
 Hope the Colonel did bring, but not of a 
 sort which his host greatly relished. "My 
 good Eninger, ' ' the father of Alicia was soon 
 saying, in his thin, chill voice, and with 
 one bloodless hand stroking a spectral 
 wisp of white whisker, "you have quite 
 misunderstood my poor, dear girl, I assure 
 you." 
 
 "You're mistaken, I think, Colonel. By 
 the way, let me offer you a cigar." 
 
 "Thanks, thanks, very much," replied 
 the Colonel, who doubtless had every desire 
 to be gracious, though his nose continued 
 in the air and his lips retained their pursed, 
 imperious look. " Really, you Americans 
 do manage to procure such superb brands. 
 Now, my dear Eninger, I must maintain 
 that you've read Alicia wrong wholly 
 wrong." 
 
 "You have been talking with her, I sup- 
 pose, Colonel?" 
 
 "Yes; but not persuasively, not a 
 coercingly; pray don't imagine it. She's 
 irritated, stung, at the way in which Dim- 
 itry darted across the ocean. But, compared
 
 60 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 to yourself, my dear man, she holds him as 
 a fellow of very trifling note." 
 
 "Then she's wrong," muttered Eninger, 
 and he meant the words from his inmost soul. 
 
 "Ah, don't run yourself down," admon- 
 ished the Colonel. "It's such a vile world, 
 my boy, that even so thoroughly good a 
 chap as yourself will have plenty of hard 
 things said of him by other lips than his 
 own! . . . But bless me, you've thrice 
 Dimitry's force and distinction. Depend 
 upon it, Alicia will confess as much to you, 
 also, if you'll only be patient and make 
 allowances for a girl's whims and freaks." 
 
 " I'd be patient enough, sir," said Eninger, 
 with sad austerity, "if I thought she would 
 tell me in the end that she felt a little genu- 
 ine love for me." 
 
 " A little?" echoed the Colonel, with hilar- 
 ity about as successful as though it had 
 been attempted by a skull; " why, bless me, 
 Eninger, she's got a tremendous amount, 
 though it happens to be stored away some- 
 where behind her nonsensical shyness. Trust 
 me. now; I'm telling you plain truth."
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 51 
 
 But Eninger did not at all trust the Col- 
 onel. He had begun clearly to see of what 
 foxiness this broken-down old idler had 
 made him the object. The Colonel had lately 
 met at his club a certain New York man who 
 had known the Eningers, root and branch, 
 for forty years, and could have told Ray's 
 income to within a dime. Doubtless he 
 had told it, and these recent profuse civil- 
 ities were the result. The young physician 
 squarely faced what he was convinced to be 
 the truth. It was horrible to think of Alicia 
 having steeled herself into an acceptance of 
 his suit. It was almost as horrible as to 
 lose her outright. 
 
 And yet had she not told him that her heart 
 was broken? . . . He lay awake half that 
 night, wondering what he should say to her 
 if his feet strayed into Lincoln's Inn Square 
 the next morning. Till ten minutes after 
 breakfast-time he kept telling himself it was 
 best not to go at all, but a quarter of an hour 
 later he was quitting Bond Street for Oxford 
 Street, and moving thence in an easterly 
 course through the weirdest of amber fogs
 
 52 . FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 The old square looked, as he reached it, 
 like some misty and somnolent borderland 
 between dream and reality. But when he 
 had got inside the little Delamere house, and 
 had found Alicia beside a fire in the small 
 sitting-room and somehow appearing almost 
 as if she had been expecting him, then every 
 hint of illusion thoroughly vanished. 
 
 "I've come," he said, as he took her cold 
 hand in his, "to ask after that broken 
 heart." -He smiled, though very sympathet- 
 ically, as she withdrew her hand. "Do you 
 know," he softly went on, "that I've been 
 wondering whether I could not, if you gave 
 it me, somehow find a way of joining the 
 pieces together and making them look as 
 though they had never been separated never 
 in the world?" 
 
 He did not mean a word that he said, and 
 the spirit within him was very heavy as he 
 thus spoke. He had indeed come to her 
 hiiting his own weakness for having come at 
 all. He expected soon to go away, and to 
 go with an inward curse at his stupidity, to 
 1:0 with a vow that he would take the
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 53 
 
 cast-off leavings of no man on earth. 
 But Alicia smiled sweetly although sadly, 
 and he saw some kind of gleam in the smile 
 that made him drop into a chair at her side. 
 And then she told him, with a voice trem- 
 bling less and less till at last it grew quite 
 firm, that perhaps she had been foolish and 
 willful yesterday, and that if he forgave her 
 it would put his generosity to test. He took 
 her hand, at this, and she let him keep it. 
 "Do you mean," he" asked, off his guard and 
 covertly thrilling, "that you really can care 
 for me as as I want you to care?" 
 
 Of course this was imbecility, but he did 
 not feel it then; and before any reaction had 
 had time to set in with him self-mockingly, 
 she had told him that she cared for him a great 
 deal, though doubtless not half so well -as 
 he deserved. She made her confession with 
 an arch loveliness that blinded him to its 
 probable falsity. What could he do? He 
 adored her, and it was so easy to take her 
 in his arms and swear that she should never 
 know an unhappy moment as his wife, if 
 devotion could save her from one. After
 
 f>4 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 that hour a seed of confidence was sown 
 within Eninger, quick to burst and grow. He 
 forgot to repine at the prepossession wrought 
 in his sweetheart by Dimitry; he remembered 
 only that there was a force of usurpature 
 in his own passion which sooner or later 
 would rule unchecked. 
 
 It is but fair to record at once that he did 
 not miscalculate. In a few weeks Alicia and 
 he were quietly married. They soon after- 
 ward sailed for New York, and the Colonel 
 accompanied them. Not that Eninger by 
 any means preferred this arrangement. The 
 Colonel appeared strongly to do so, however, 
 and declared that life without his dear child 
 would be desolation. This struck Alicia's 
 husband as probably most true, since the 
 poor girl had for six or seven years past 
 borne the worst brunt of their poverty, and 
 without her tact, thrift and pluck it might 
 have been a case of sink, not swim. The 
 Colonel gave no signs of grief at parting 
 from his native land, and after he had reach- 
 ed New York was housed much more com- 
 fortably in the pretty Forty-Second Street
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 55 
 
 dwelling rented by Eninger than he had 
 ever dreamed of being in the draughty old 
 tenement on Lincoln's Inn Square. But 
 forthwith he broke into cynicisms and in- 
 vectives that had America for their one 
 pitiless object. He seemed to see as wide a 
 difference between the customs of London 
 and New York as if he had been trans- 
 planted from the river Thames to the Yang- 
 tse-kiang. Everything here was vulgar, 
 crude, odious. Even the incessant glare of 
 sunlight hurt his eyes. He declared the 
 icing of sherry barbarism and the wearing 
 of overshoes idiocy. He said that it gave 
 him neuralgia to sit in one of our "tram- 
 cars," the people about him spoke through 
 their noses so aggravatingly. He affirmed 
 that our newspapers nauseated him, and the 
 filth of our streets likewise. He spoke of 
 "dear old England" and "this infernal 
 country " with a lack of restraint that made 
 Eninger recall how many of his kindred 
 had lost mental balance, and wonder if a 
 loose brain-screw might not account for his 
 sudden fanatical bias.
 
 56 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "You're so patient with father," said 
 Alicia to him one day. " I thank you for it 
 with all my heart!" 
 
 " Oh, I'm in hopes his nonsense will wear 
 off, ' ' answered Eninger. ' ' Besides, it' s easy 
 enough to bear almost anything from your 
 father!" 
 
 He stooped and kissed her on the throat, 
 and saw her blue eyes moisten as he did so. 
 "Ah, Ray, you're too good to me!" she 
 broke forth. 
 
 He took both her hands, holding them 
 and staring down at her with a subtle 
 hunger in his eyes. "No one could be 
 that, darling. You deserve all that human 
 kindness could devise for you. Unfortu- 
 nately, in my case, that isn't much. But if 
 the little I can do is only a help toward your 
 happiness, I shall feel vastly encouraged." 
 
 " A help toward my happiness!" came her 
 little flute-like cry. "Oh, Ray, what are 
 you saying? Don't you know that I'm 
 happy already?" 
 
 "Perfectly?" he asked, with his eyes still 
 fixed on her face. He turned a little paler
 
 FABIA1ST DIMITRY. 57 
 
 as lie put this question to her, though it is 
 doubtful if she saw him do so. 
 
 "Perfectly!" she answered, while a sort 
 of confessional flash leapt from her eyes, and 
 her lips remained parted as though she 
 were on the verge of saying more. 
 
 He drew back from her a little, still clasp- 
 ing both her hands. " Do women forget so 
 soon?" he said. "Do broken hearts mend 
 so quickly?" 
 
 She reddened, and her eyelids drooped. ' ' It 
 isn't every woman who finds a consoler like 
 you!'' she answered. 
 
 "And I Jiave consoled you? Absolutely?" 
 
 "Absolutely!" she replied, and once more 
 her gaze met his. He knew then that she 
 had ceased to feel a shadow of regard for 
 Fabian Dimitry, even though he had not 
 been wholly certain of this until now. They 
 were alone together, and he caught her to 
 his breast with a stifled sob of joy. 
 
 "What a victory I have won," he said, as 
 he looked down into her smiling and blush- 
 ing face. 
 
 "You deserved it," she said.
 
 58 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 The words went through him like a knife. 
 He thought of Fabian Dimitry, who had 
 loved this woman devoutly as himself, and 
 yet had gone away from her with that calm 
 sublimity of self-renunciation which braves 
 being misunderstood, unjustly scorned. 
 
 "No," he said, in a slow and changed 
 voice, while he took his arms from about 
 Alicia' s neck ; " I did not deserve my victory. ' '
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 He watched her health from week to week 
 almost from day to day with f urtive but 
 eager interest. There were times when it 
 seemed to him that she had all the hardihood 
 of some strong rose-tree which may put 
 forth, if you please, faint-tinted blooms yet 
 rears them on sturdy stems. Again he would 
 be troubled by what struck him as an accent- 
 uation of her old restless manner. She 
 would sometimes vaguely assert of the 
 atmosphere on our side of the ocean that "it 
 made her feel so different," and once, after a 
 statement of this kind, Eninger said to her, 
 in a voice that quite hid solicitude: 
 
 ' ' You think the air here doesn't agree with 
 you, Alicia. Come, now, confess." 
 
 He went to the arm-chair into which she 
 had thrown herself, and sat down, bendingly, 
 caressingly, at her elbow. It was dusk, and 
 they were waiting dinner for the Colonel,
 
 60 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 who had condescended to walk out that after- 
 noon in the detested New York thoroughfares, 
 and who had not yet chosen to return. 
 
 "Oh, I shouldn't say thatf" answered the 
 young wife, shaking her head with some 
 negative vehemence, " I've no doubt it agrees 
 with me capitally. Only, it well, it makes 
 me feel so so different." 
 
 " That is what you always end by saying." 
 He took one of her hands in both his own, 
 and then let one of his middle lingers glide 
 along the artery at her wrist till it rested on 
 a certain spot there. " How ' different ' does 
 it make you feel? Try and explain to me." 
 
 She gave a slight laugh. ' " I don't know 
 that I can, Ray, really! Well, I seem some- 
 how to be living faster than I did in Eng- 
 land. I don't take the same pleasure in rest; 
 I rarely want it; and yet I'm sometimes 
 rather tired, too more tired, I think, than I 
 used to be there." 
 
 ' ' You' re nervous, ' ' Eninger said. ' ' This 
 is a nervous climate," he added; "notori- 
 ously so." 
 
 " But I'm not ill," protested Alicia. "I'm
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 61 
 
 the exact reverse except for that occasional 
 tired feeling. Often I've the sensation of 
 being too healthful!" 
 
 "Yes, I know,'' said Eninger, with his 
 face graver, perhaps, than he was aware of. 
 
 "Stop feeling my pulse as if I were an 
 invalid!" she cried, with a pretty mock- 
 petulance. She snatched her hand away 
 from his hold and threw it round his neck, 
 kissing him with tender abandonment. "I'm 
 so far from being an invalid, Ray! My new 
 life here has refreshed and fortified me so! 
 
 Only ' ' And she broke off, with another 
 
 laugh, clinging to him and peering into 
 his eyes, her blond brows embarrassedly 
 clouded. 
 
 "Only what?" he asked, mystified not a 
 little. 
 
 " You'll think it so absurd." 
 
 "Never mind if I do. I've thought you 
 absurd before. All women are, now and 
 then. Tell me." 
 
 "Do you know," she hesitatingly began, 
 "I I have such a sense, at times, of ex- 
 travagance. "
 
 02 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 " Extravagance!" 
 
 " Great! Of course you recollect how much 
 cheaper nearly everything is in London than 
 it is here." 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 ".Well, I suppose it's the change the 
 freedom from that iron necessity of being 
 compelled to keep watch on every penny, 
 mixed with a sort of unconquerable surprise 
 at the higher prices on all sides of me." 
 
 "And this gives you the idea that you're 
 extravagant, Alicia?" 
 
 "Yes . . Oh, the feeling is so hard to 
 describe!" She closed her eyes for a moment, 
 and pantomimically waved both hands before 
 her face. " It's as though I must be wrong 
 as though I couldn't be so well off in the 
 world as you've made me! You know what 
 a struggle those last three years in London 
 were, Ray! They begot in me the instinct of 
 saving all I could, and of longing to get 
 more more! And now that I've all I want, the 
 old self-preservative impulse of the genteel 
 pauper still remains." Her face was lit with 
 smiles as she ended, but somehow a shadow
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 63 
 
 of apprehension crossed the mind of her 
 hearer. 
 
 "I love her so dearly," he thought, "that 
 I am not capable of being her physician. If 
 she is ever ill positively ill I should dis- 
 trust every drug that I prescribed for 
 her." 
 
 But aloud he said: "My dear wife, your 
 odd fancies do not surprise me. I might 
 talk gravely about them and say that certain 
 mental functions had been disturbed by those 
 horrid latter years of your London life. But 
 I won't, for 
 
 She lightly interrupted him, just then. 
 " Don't!" she exclaimed, in her soft English 
 voice that had such inalienable charm for 
 him. She was facing the open doorway and 
 his back was turned toward it. "Here is 
 father," she went swiftly on, " and while lie 
 is near Well, Ray, you understand." 
 
 Ray indeed understood that any incau- 
 tious word against London life, whatever 
 its form of depreciation or innuendo, would 
 have taxed in drastic way the Colonel's 
 gloomiest funds of sarcasm. On this par-
 
 64 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 ticular evening, through the dinner that was 
 now promptly served, he showed himself in 
 a mood of especial bitterness. 
 
 "I hope you enjoyed your walk, father," 
 said Alicia. " It was such a bright, crisp 
 afternoon." 
 
 "Bright crisp," muttered the Colonel, as 
 he wiped a stain of soup from his mous- 
 tache far better soup than he had for a 
 long time touched in Lincoln's Inn Square. 
 "Say staring and piercing. That's about 
 what your Fifth Avenue was while I 
 tried to walk it. The pavements were full 
 of little clots of snow that was each one 
 a peril and snare. I suppose the only 
 thing that kept me from breaking my legs 
 was that beastly pair of rubbers with corru- 
 gated soles." 
 
 "Don't revile them, then, Colonel, if you 
 think they saved you," said Eninger. He had 
 drilled himself into one changeless tolerance 
 of the Colonel's morbid assaults. 
 
 " You must have seen a lot of pretty girls 
 with nice rosy cheeks, father," said Alicia, 
 "in such nipping weather as this." Her
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 65 
 
 words had the aim of dissipating irony, but 
 they only fed it afresh. 
 
 " Pretty girls!" he grumbled. "Yes; I 
 saw a bevy of 'em just now four or five, all 
 slipping along together like hoidens, and 
 pushing each other with the maddest screams. 
 I've no doubt they were the sorts of American 
 girls who call themselves ladies. They were 
 very handsomely dressed, in their silks and 
 furs." 
 
 "Perhaps they were only very young 
 girls," said Alicia. 
 
 "They were old enough to do indecent 
 things, however." 
 
 "Indecent? Really?" observed Eninger. 
 " Such as what, pray?" 
 
 "Wave their handkerchiefs to men across 
 the street men whom they evidently didn't 
 know from Adam," growled the Colonel. 
 
 "Oh, they couldn't have been ladies, 
 then!" exclaimed Alicia, with an uneasy 
 look at her husband. 
 
 Eninger smiled, with a little impatient toss 
 of the head. "They may have been well- 
 reared girls enough."
 
 66 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "Well-reared!" cried the Colonel. "Oh, 
 bless ray soul! Come, now!" 
 
 "You forget," pursued Eninger, "that 
 the American girl may do innocently what 
 the English girl would only do. immorally." 
 
 "I don't understand," bristled the Colonel; 
 "I don't understand at all!" 
 
 " Of course you don't," said his son-in-law, 
 coolly. "It would be rather surprising if 
 you did. You know nothing of my country, 
 though to hear you professionally abuse it 
 one would suppose your slanders were based 
 on some sort of real information." 
 
 Here Alicia cast him a beseeching look, 
 and he paused, regretful that he had even 
 said thus much. But from that hour the 
 Colonel (who had reason to value his clem- 
 ency) was more tactful in treating interna- 
 tional points. 
 
 Perhaps there soon appeared causes of a 
 social kind why the gruff old creature should 
 ivgjird Americans more blandly. Eninger 
 hud kindred and friends in town who at once 
 joined forces, as it were, about Alicia and 
 made for her a "circle." She swiftly be-
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 67 
 
 came popular, as all agreeable Englishwomen 
 do in New York. Her sweet face and even 
 sweeter voice were themes of loving rapture 
 among damsels whose younger sisters might 
 have been those very madcap culprits de- 
 nounced by the Colonel. Eninger laughingly 
 said to her one day that he only wished he 
 had made as great a professional as matri- 
 monial success. Invitations of all sorts were 
 handed in at their modish little oaken door- 
 way. Alicia was bewildered at meeting so 
 many people in so pell-mell a rush. "I 
 make mistakes in their names," came her 
 comic wail; "I blunder about them absurdly. 
 The women don't mind it, but the men are 
 so sensitive." She was all the more win- 
 some and especially to the men because 
 of these bewilderments. Her complete free- 
 dom from affectation gave the dilemmas in 
 which she was plunged an enchanting 
 naturalness. She was so frank, and yet so 
 would-be courteous, that no one dreamed of 
 feeling affronted. And yet one afternoon, 
 at somebody's tea, when she addressed Mrs. 
 Wynkoop Westerveldt as Mrs. Tomlinson,
 
 68 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 certain followers of the former lady thought 
 that she would never pardon so irreverent a 
 mistake. For between Mrs. Westerveldt 
 and Mrs. Tomlinson stretched a wide gulf 
 one which no acquaintanceship had ever 
 bridged, and which was firmly guarded by 
 snobbery from undergoing any such process. 
 Mrs. Tomlinson was a clear-brained, warm- 
 hearted woman, who supported a large fam- 
 ily by her pen, and yet found time to see a 
 little of society in a Paris bonnet and a pair 
 of chic gloves, paid for out of her own earn- 
 ings. Mrs. Westerveldt was a woman who 
 had in all her life scarcely even lifted a 
 finger for herself and never had done so for 
 anyone else. But one woman was merely 
 tolerated among the gay throngs that a 
 healthy, gregarious impulse made her now 
 and then seek. The other, rich, calm and 
 somewhat disdainful, was almost courted 
 like a queen. 
 
 Mrs. Westerveldt did not, however, show 
 Alicia the slightest pique. She was, indeed, 
 rather more polite after than before the 
 commission of Mrs. Eninger' s error.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 69 
 
 "You and I should know one another 
 quite well," she said very sweetly. "I am 
 an old friend of your husband's. Ask him 
 about Gertrude Ten Eyck; he will tell you 
 that we used to have many a dance together 
 at the old Delmonico Assemblies in Four- 
 teenth Street." 
 
 She smiled brightly as she said this, and 
 it occurred to Alicia that she had a face of 
 marble, with ice for its smile. She was un- 
 doubtedly beautiful, but did not her beauty 
 repel rather than allure? So at least it 
 seemed to her present observer, who had yet 
 no idea of the immense condescension which 
 she had now seen fit to bestow. 
 
 Later this fact became plain. The words 
 of Mrs. Westerveldt had been delivered in a 
 crowded drawing-room on Fifth Avenue, 
 and near her stood several ladies and gen- 
 tlemen who had the air of seeking her notice. 
 But she did not bestow any upon them. She 
 watched Alicia rather closely with a pair of 
 languid gray eyes, and soon proceeded to 
 say a number of civil things that were ex- 
 pressed with a neat, terse ease of phrase.
 
 70 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Not long afterward, a babbling little man of 
 whose name poor Alicia was totally uncon- 
 scious but whom she recalled having met 
 on the previous day, told her that Mrs. 
 Westerveldt was a great personage in New 
 York and that people fought for the honor 
 of darkening her doorways. 
 
 Eninger loathed kettledrums, and had 
 begged off from going to this one. But when 
 his wife mentioned to him that she had met 
 Mrs. Westerveldt his face brightened nota- 
 bly, and he at once said: "Gertrude Wes- 
 terveldt? Dear, dear of course we were 
 great chums, once. She married a million- 
 aire twice her age, who died a little while 
 after the wedding." 
 
 " She looked as if she might do any cold- 
 blooded thing like that," said Alicia. 
 
 " But she used to be very handsome." 
 
 " She still is," conceded his wife. 
 
 Eninger might have said more, but he pre- 
 ferred to keep silent. In the whirl of mer- 
 riment that now caught the town, he pres- 
 ently came face to face with Mrs. Wester- 
 veldt. They shook hands with one another
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 71 
 
 and talked trifles. Music was floating 
 through a great screen of glossy leaves just 
 behind them, and the large hall in which 
 they stood was dim by contrast with the 
 stately drawing-rooms beyond. Through 
 the doorway of one of these they could see 
 Alicia, stationed in a blaze of light, talking 
 blithely to a little crowd of men, with smiles 
 on her sunny English face. Two or three 
 male adherents were standing near Mrs. 
 Westerveldt, and one of them held her fan. 
 It was always like that with her. Wher- 
 ever she moved there were gallants wfro 
 bowed their homage. Sometimes she gave 
 them freezing responses; just now she was 
 quite ignoring them. Her gray eyes, indif- 
 ferent and yet subtle, had lifted themselves 
 to Eninger's face and dwelt there intently. 
 
 " Your wife is charming," she presently 
 said, in her measured voice. 
 
 "Do you find her so? I'm very glad to 
 learn it." 
 
 " I didn't know you preferred that type." 
 
 "You mean such a blond?" 
 
 "Yes."
 
 72 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 He gave a slight shrug of the shoulders. 
 " How can one ever be sure, in these matters, 
 until the time comes?' ' 
 
 " You' re right. One can't be. But you must 
 take good care of her, now you've got her." 
 
 He started a little. "Oh," he said, " she 
 can take care of herself." 
 
 " Don't be so very certain. Those English 
 women are not like us." 
 
 He smiled as he watched her, so serene, 
 with her chiseled, ivory face, her diamonds 
 and her dignity. 
 
 "Not cold, like American w^omen, you 
 mean?" He felt so certain of Alicia that it 
 merely diverted Mm to make this retort. 
 Besides, he knew that it hid a challenge. 
 
 "Are we American women so cold?" she 
 asked. 
 
 One of her retainers, at this point, dipped 
 forward with the mechanic affability of his 
 kind. " Your fan," he said, and extended 
 it to her. 
 
 "Thanks," she returned, taking the fan 
 and looking at him, but not seeming to see 
 him.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 73 
 
 "That is hardly apropos" she went on 
 to Eninger, paying no more attention to the 
 gentleman just addressed. "You've called 
 me cold, and here I'm supplied with this." 
 She unfurled it softly, and its wedge of rose- 
 tinted satin showed a little monogram of 
 diamonds at one corner. The gentleman 
 who had returned it did not depart. He 
 had evidently made his act a reason for re- 
 maining longer in her train and getting a 
 gracious word from her as the result of his 
 devotion. Bat she extended him no notice 
 whatever. 
 
 Eninger now leaned nearer to her and 
 said, in a voice and with a way that had 
 made him liked and courted before his mar- 
 riage, when he had gone a great deal among 
 the fashionables of his native town: 
 
 "Perhaps the fan was returned to you 
 with a sarcastic intent." 
 
 "How?" she questioned, somewhat quickly, 
 for her. 
 
 " To wake the little real spark, concealed 
 deep down." 
 
 " So very deep downf she questioned,
 
 74 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 with the pupils of her gray eyes momenta- 
 rily wed to the pupils of his. " Do you then 
 really think me you! a woman like that?" 
 With the dulcet wails and tremolos of the 
 music aiding her, she contrived to make her 
 voice sound scarcely louder than a whisper 
 to him. 
 
 "Ah," he said, stirred by old memories 
 and swayed by the flare and prattle of the 
 hour, " I think you (why should I not think 
 you, please?) a woman without an emotion." 
 
 He saw her furtively bite her lip. He had 
 said the one thing that the world had always 
 said of her as Gertrude Ten Eyck and that 
 it now averred still more stoutly since she 
 had become Mrs. Wynkoop Westerveldt. It 
 occurred to him, however, that perhaps he 
 had done her a somewhat uncivil turn by 
 his candor, even though it had borne a dainty 
 sting of not unflattering flirtation. But, 
 as if in sudden antithesis to the unemo- 
 tional woman he had just called her, there 
 appeared at his side a woman of strongly 
 opposite type. 
 
 She was leaning on the arm of a gentleman
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 75 
 
 much taller than herself, and it would not 
 have been hard for her to find an escort of 
 this eclipsing stature. She was fair of tress 
 and tinting, and over-plump for her age, 
 which visibly verged on forty. She was 
 dressed with an undue youthfulness; they 
 had jocosely alleged of her for several years 
 that she flatly refused to be presented at 
 the Court of St. James because baby-waists 
 and sleeve-loops were impracticable in such 
 a surrounding. On her fat neck sparkled a 
 string of phenomenal rubies, and her fleshf ul 
 arms were banded with circlets of like gems 
 almost as precious. She gave Mrs. Wester- 
 veldt a short, intimate nod, seemingly tak- 
 ing for granted that it was returned, and 
 while drooping her small body toward Enin- 
 ger, broke out in a shrill, amical, falsetto 
 voice: 
 
 " Your wife is just too perfect! We're all 
 crazy about her. She's a tearing success!'' 
 Meanwhile the little lady had given his 
 hand a vigorous shake; and then, with the 
 effect of being dragged off by her compan- 
 ion an effect for which he was no doubt
 
 76 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 blameless, as her see-saw and almost tum- 
 bling walk soon evinced she passed into a 
 living thicket of guests, grouped one or two 
 yards beyond. 
 
 Eninger turned toward Mrs. Westerveldt. 
 "There's your old aversion," he murmured. 
 
 "Don't call her old," came the reply, 
 while there seemed scarcely a motion from 
 the clean-cut lips that gave it. " She'd par- 
 don anything except being called old." 
 
 He laughed. "It's so odd," he said. "In 
 the other days you detested her so, and here 
 I come back to New York and find you 
 meeting her as you used and detesting her 
 as you used, precisely the same." 
 
 " How can you say that?" said Mrs. Wes- 
 terveldt, faintly smiling. "People only 
 detest when they feel. But you've just told 
 me that I'm a woman without an emotion." 
 
 He laughed again. "Oh, hate isn't an 
 emotion," he said; " it's a manifestation." 
 
 "Of what?" she answered chillingly, with 
 a reaching forth of her arm to one of her 
 attendants, who proffered his own with an 
 obsequious duck of the figure, as though
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 77 
 
 thrilled by such a favor. "Of bad breed- 
 ing, or merely dullness?" 
 
 Before he could reply she had moved 
 away, and while the possible sarcasm in her 
 placid words appealed to him, he asked him- 
 self if he had dealt her an offense. But her 
 displeasure or the reverse of it seemed a 
 minor affair now. In the time not long 
 ago, when she was a reigning maiden belle, 
 he had cared to keep in her good books. 
 But now all that was changed. Besides, 
 had they not often smiled together over her 
 antipathy for this rowdy little Mrs. Atter- 
 bury, who a moment before had swept past 
 them? It was the glacial Gertrude herself, 
 not he, who had given Adela Atterbury that 
 name of "rowdy." The two women had 
 always been to him amusing antipodes. Miss 
 Ten Eyck, with her patrician reserves and 
 her frosty Jiauteur s,had no doubt addressed 
 rather potently his own cult for the select, 
 the choice, the uncommon in all dealings 
 with life. Mrs. Atterbury had always 
 been to him a sort of unholy bacchanal 
 spectacle a maenad in a baby-waist, and
 
 78 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 without as much as one idealizing grape- 
 leaf. She was older by four or five years 
 than Gertrude Ten Eyck, and although 
 the new young social autocrat met her every- 
 where, she was even then married to her 
 present lord, Lewson Atterbury, or " Lewsy," 
 as almost everybody called him. 
 
 "That woman is my horror," Miss Ten 
 Eyck had once said to Eninger. ' ' The great 
 trouble is that I can't cut her. If only I 
 could, it would be quite different. But she 
 was Adela Ostrander, and for a Ten Eyck to 
 cut an Ostrander would be ridiculous. And 
 yet, as it is, she makes my flesh creep. She 
 has no more sense of her position than if 
 it were an old shawl. She drags it after her 
 through the highways and hedges. Why, 
 almost any reputable person who pleases can 
 actually know her. She's not the faintest 
 sense of what it means to keep oneself rare. 
 How can society deal with such people? 
 They're like traitors inside the gates of a 
 city when they've been born, as in Adela' s 
 case, within gentility's limits. But the bit- 
 terest thing of all is that one must go to her
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 79 
 
 Wednesdays. Oil, the rabble at those Wed- 
 nesdays! One meets there the most impos- 
 sible persons. The dreadful little woman 
 has what she calls literary tastes. I suppose 
 she has. But as if democracy couldn't 
 get along without thrusting itself into our 
 good old families! Its field is certainly 
 huge enough in other directions. All her set 
 ever asked of her was to marry a gentle- 
 man and behave like a lady. That covers a 
 good deal of ground, I grant; but birth has 
 its exactions, and she's a living defiance 
 of them all." 
 
 Those odious Wednesdays yet continued, 
 however, and it was not long before Eninger 
 and Alicia went to one of them. Mrs. Atter- 
 bury had had a fair fortune when she mar- 
 ried, and her husband, though himself in 
 Wall Street, had been the son of a rich silk- 
 importer. Their added incomes enabled them 
 to entertain finely in a home of smart present- 
 ments. Eninger had found that society had 
 changed markedly since his brief relative 
 absence. But he was unprepared to meet so 
 many strange faces, even in the drawing-
 
 80 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 rooms of Mrs. Atterbury. Among the faces 
 that were not strange he was keenly startled 
 to discover that of Fabian Dimitry. 
 
 Fabian looked paler and somewhat thinner 
 than when last seen in London. His brow 
 and eyes appeared to have gained, for this 
 reason, in the way of intellectual beauty and 
 power. Eninger and he did not once exchange 
 glances; this may or may not have been 
 chance, but afterward Alicia's husband felt 
 inclined to think that Fabian had observed 
 without seeming to observe him. How had 
 it been with his wife? He took occasion to 
 question her while they were being driven 
 home in the carriage. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I saw him," returned Alicia 
 composedly. "How handsome he looked, 
 did he not?" 
 
 A sudden little stab of jealousy pierced her 
 hearer. " You thought so, then?" he replied, 
 with almost harsh directness. 
 
 ' ' Of course I did, ' ' she affirmed. ' ' He is 
 handsome. Don't you agree with me, Ray?" 
 
 "Well yes," he acquiesced. And the 
 carriage rattled clamorously onward, as
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 81 
 
 vehicles are apt to do over the stern-stoned 
 thoroughfares of New York. 
 
 "It's odd," Alicia presently said, her 
 suave English voice breaking in with melodi- 
 ous effect upon the strident rumble of the 
 wheels, "it's odd, Ray, how much we can 
 outlive in a little while!" 
 
 " And you've outlived ?" he began, not 
 
 ending his sentence, but letting a sudden 
 clasp of his hand upon her own end it in- 
 stead. "Oh, Alicia, dearest," he soon went 
 on, " you can truthfully tell me that there's 
 no afterthought no lingering sentiment 
 no P 
 
 "Hush, Ray," she shot in, with speed and 
 yet very solemnly. " I was a girl, then; I'm 
 a woman, now, and you've made me one. I 
 think it' s not a matter for us to talk of at 
 much length. Only, love, I've this to say: 
 Not merely can I look at Fabian Dimitry 
 now without a tremor of the old feeling, but 
 I caught myself watching him to-night (he 
 never seemed to know if I was there at all, 
 by the by) with actual wonderment that I 
 should ever have cared for him as I did.
 
 82 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Yes, Ray, wonderment is the word that, 
 simply." 
 
 As she paused he saw by the flash of a 
 lamp through the window that tears were 
 glistening in her eyes, and that the glance 
 which burned from them was passionately 
 wistful. In another moment he had leaned 
 down and seized her in his arms. 
 
 * ' My own my treasure ! You are all mine, 
 now! I've won you completely, at last!" 
 
 " You'd won me weeks, months ago," she 
 answered. 
 
 "And there's not a gleam left, not the 
 dimmest, of that old feeling for Mmf" 
 
 ' ' No, no! not the dimmest. It' s quite gone. 
 It's all been swallowed up in my deep, 
 absorbing love for you." 
 
 He had ceased from his fervid caress, but 
 he still held both her hands in the darkness. 
 One of them was gloveless, and that he lifted 
 to his lips, letting it rest there while he 
 touched it with short, soft kisses. And after 
 a little while he said, in a voice that surprised 
 IUT because it was so grave, with no trace of 
 joy in it whatever:
 
 FABIAN DIMITEY. 83 
 
 ' ' I think he saw us both quite plainly to- 
 night. Perhaps he waited for me to give him 
 some sign or for you." 
 
 "Forme, Ray!" she exclaimed. 
 
 " You're still angry with him, then?" 
 
 ' ' No not angry ; I can 1 1 be any longer . . 
 And yet " 
 
 " You don't forgive him." 
 
 " I I haven't thought about it lately." 
 
 " You believed that he treated you in a 
 really dreadful way.' ' 
 
 "Ah, yes, " she murmured, drooping her 
 head in the dusk. "But why speak of it 
 now?" 
 
 " Because," he said, "I'm certain that you 
 wronged him." 
 
 "Wronged him?" she flashed out, old 
 memories of pain and revolt seeming to 
 waken in her. ' ' How can you say such a 
 thing? You can't be aware 
 
 " F m aware that he loved you very 
 dearly," was the interruption, " and that he 
 gave you up." 
 
 He saw her form erect itself to the utmost 
 where she sat beside him, and could fancy
 
 84 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 that he glimpsed an indignant sparkle in her 
 eyes as well. 
 
 "Pray, for what reason," she slowly asked, 
 " did he give me up, as you call it?" 
 
 Eninger now inly cursed his own folly. 
 Why had he thus let a conscience-twinge 
 betray him into so indiscreet an admission 
 regarding Fabian? If Alicia had never sus- 
 pected the real truth, why should it be his 
 office to enlighten her? 
 
 "Perhaps the renunciation was made on 
 my account," he said. 
 
 "No," denied Alicia, with ringing tones. 
 ' ' Men don' t do those things for one another. ' ' 
 She caught her husband's arm with sudden 
 and tense grasp. " I understand," sped her 
 next words. 
 
 "Ray, it was because of that taint in our 
 blood." 
 
 He remained silent. 
 
 "Ray." 
 
 "Well?" he returned. 
 
 "It was because of that. Answer me! 
 Am I not right?" 
 
 "Perhaps."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 85 
 
 She sank back in the carriage. "I was 
 very stupid I should have seen," he heard 
 her mutter. ' ' There was never the least mean- 
 ness about him and he was the sort of man 
 who could have held his hand in the flames 
 and burned it off if some noble cause made 
 that needful." 
 
 These were by no means loud sentences, 
 but Eninger heard every word of them. He 
 folded his arms, there in the gloom, and sat 
 silently gnawing his lip. Who could say 
 what revulsion in Alicia this new knowledge 
 might produce? Suppose it undid the work 
 of months and left her once more in love with 
 him whom she had learned to despise as a 
 mere coarse trickster? A result no less 
 grotesque than calamitous and yet what 
 wizard had ever yet been found keen enough 
 to predicate concerning a woman' s heart?
 
 86 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 V. 
 
 It was quite true that Fabian had seen 
 both Alicia and Eninger. In a crowded room 
 one can very often see without appearing to 
 look. 
 
 At first Fabian feared that he would be 
 obliged to quit the entertainment altogether, 
 for the image of Alicia set his heart leaping 
 and his ears humming in a way that made 
 him dread some sort of piteous public col- 
 lapse. But soon calmness brought its prized 
 relief. He then wondered, with a clearing 
 brain, what idiocy he might not have been 
 saying to the lady in whose company he had 
 stood. But among our dra, wing-rooms, as he 
 might have recollected, a brain may often go 
 wool-gathering without any decided chance 
 of having itself seriously missed. 
 
 His passion for Alicia was just as warm 
 and vital as it had ever been, and the wound 
 dealt him by his own act of self -sacrifice had
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 87 
 
 suffered cruel re-opening through this recent 
 meeting with her. He had not wanted to 
 appear at Mrs. Atterbury's reception, but 
 that lady had put forth quaint and voluble 
 entreaties which finally made him yield. 
 
 He had always disliked society, and had 
 shunned it in a way rare with one whose 
 name and place there are excellent as were 
 his own, and whose purse is the stanch if not 
 corpulent abettor of both. Society, he was 
 wont to say, undermined sincerity in the 
 sincerest people, and its effect upon his 
 friend, Mrs. Atterbury, was deplorable to 
 him in the extreme. Still, he would not 
 have Adela change her nature. She was full 
 of refreshment to him just as she existed. 
 He had never even remotely dreamed of being 
 in love with her, and the feeling that she 
 woke in him could safely have been called 
 good-fellowship. There was that in Adela 
 Atterbury which made him freely pardon 
 her vulgarity ; but he would never have found 
 enough in Gertrude Westerveldt, on the other 
 hand, to have pardoned that lady her refine- 
 ments. The latter, whom he had met, was
 
 88 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 merely an odious snob to him; but in Mrs. 
 Atterbury, with all her loudness and eccen- 
 tricity, he recognized the worth of a true- 
 souled woman. It amazed him that she could 
 endure some of the people on whom she 
 smiled. Not a few of those who would have 
 been called the most desirable struck him as 
 the shabbiest in either mind or manners. 
 "I don't understand you," she had said to 
 him one day. "You're a democrat, you 
 despise caste; and yet you mix with this 
 quality a dislike of your fellow-beings." 
 
 " You're wrong," he had answered. "I'm 
 not afraid of solitude, and I greatly prefer it 
 to the company of people who jar upon me." 
 
 But she would always have it that he 
 shunned his kind. There were moments 
 when she seemed to him so prancing and 
 skittish a figure that he could not help wish- 
 ing she would shun hers instead of thus 
 gracelessly courting it. The way she clad 
 herself, and the intoxicated style in which 
 she pursued pleasures that to one of her 
 mind and age should have appeared wholly 
 trivial, often pierced him with repugnance.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 89 
 
 If he had felt a grain of sexual sentiment 
 mingle with his regard for her he might have 
 reproached or even hotly quarreled with her 
 on this account. As it was, he not only tol- 
 erated, but tried quite to overlook her faults 
 of manner and taste, while letting the rays 
 of her exceptional intellect meet his admir- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 Her life had often struck him as a tumult 
 of anomalies, incongruities. Without appar- 
 ent time for anything, she accomplished 
 marvels. She patronized literary entertain- 
 ments and amateur theatricals; she was 
 ubiquitous at afternoon teas; she never 
 missed a new play unless to miss it were 
 discretion; she was never absent from her 
 box at the opera on the Wagner evenings, 
 and bowed before that mighty musician 
 with no blind homage but a keenly clear- 
 sighted one; she read all the best books and 
 a few that were good neither as art nor 
 ethics; her charities were not only profuse 
 but personal, and for her jaunty, buxom, 
 ill-dressed little shape to pass from hospital 
 to drawing-room was an occurrence of great
 
 90 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 frequency. She possessed the qualities of a 
 brilliant, social leader, but it is doubtful if 
 she could ever have become, even in some 
 city less juvenile and provincial than New 
 York, any except the peculiar power she had 
 here made herself. A chief must not be too 
 approachable; she was extremely so. He 
 must not forget dignity; she remembered it 
 about as much as might a fire-fly. He must 
 not show himself too voluble; as someone 
 cruelly said of her, she had a tongue with a 
 biceps in it. And lastly, a chief must have 
 a little clan of retainers and adherents, not 
 averse to occasional bowings and hand-kiss- 
 ings; her associates were all on the most inti- 
 mate terms with her, and thought no more 
 about the making of deferential salaams to 
 her than if she had been the wife of a city 
 alderman. 
 
 Since Fabian's return from England, her 
 warm sympathy with him as a writer of 
 plays had strengthened their previous friend- 
 ship. 
 
 "You can do it if anybody can," she 
 assmvd him. kk I guess there isn't a man in
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 91 
 
 this country who's got it in him as you 
 have. Last night we had a box at Wai- 
 lack's. A lovely company, but such a 
 rubbishy play, my dear boy! The motive 
 was tame and mean and stale; the charac- 
 ters were all weakly drawn, and not one of 
 them developed through the dramatic and 
 logical action of events. It wasn't art; it 
 was cheap trick. It wasn't life; it was a 
 tawdry lithograph of life, in a frame of such 
 beauty and taste that you almost fancied 
 you were looking at something poetic and 
 fine. . . . Winnie Amsterdam kept gab- 
 bling to me all the time. He's such an ass, 
 you know; but even he was better than the 
 play." 
 
 Fabian, though well accustomed to her 
 leaps from sense, and sometimes eloquence, 
 into slangy trivialities, now coolly answered: 
 
 " It is so strange to me that a woman of 
 your brains can put up with these fellows 
 whom you yourself denounce as simple- 
 tons." 
 
 "Oh, Lord, we'd have a sweet time, we 
 women," she exclaimed, "if we only allowed
 
 92 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 clever men to talk to us. We can't afford 
 to take our pick. We've either got to poke 
 off at home or else we've got to cast our 
 nets for all kinds of fish. But, gracious 
 me! I don't want to complain. I have a 
 good enough time; I go in for a good time, 
 and I have it. By the bye, when I got home 
 from the theatre, last night, I pitched right 
 into that book of poems you'd lent me a 
 week ago. I was awfully ashamed of myself 
 that I hadn't had a speck of time to look at 
 it before. We were right here in this very 
 room, Lewsy and I. He wouldn't go up to 
 bed he can be such a mule! It was after 
 twelve; we'd been blown off at Delmonico's 
 by Jimmy Vanderveer. Lewsy fell asleep 
 on that lounge, and snored horribly. I told 
 him this morning it wasn't only the cham- 
 pagne; he'd had a few cocktails in the after- 
 noon, though he swore he hadn't. But then 
 you never can trust Lewsy about cocktails; 
 lit- /.s such a liar when he tipples. But he 
 can't fool me; I always spot him always" 
 
 ' ' And the poems?' ' asked Fabian. ' ' Did 
 you care for them?"
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 93 
 
 At once he was presented with a new Mrs. 
 Atterbury or rather, not one new to himself, 
 for he had observed and been charmed by 
 her in this same vein many times before. 
 
 "Care for them? Why, the man has a 
 striking gift. He can turn a lyric like Heine. 
 He has the same sense of saying a thing as 
 if it must have been said that way, and not 
 as if he'd dragged his brains to find the 
 strongest way out of several others in which 
 it miglit have been said. There' s so much 
 in that inevitableness of phrase and of intel- 
 lectual process. You recognize it when you 
 meet it. You can' t explain it, but the truth, 
 the justice, the nicety, the felicity, the sin- 
 cerity, all strike you. This young poet 
 ought to live. I mean, of course, if he pre- 
 serves his ideal with the proper artistic con- 
 science. What he still lacks, I should 
 say, is a secure instinct of selection. He 
 doesn't always grasp just the right chute 
 de phrase, and he doesn't always either 
 choose or grasp his subject as he might. 
 But there's a subtle native music in him 
 that delights. I felt it, in spite of Lewsy's
 
 94 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 heavy snores, which were certainly not 
 musical." 
 
 "Your criticism is truth itself," said 
 Fabian. He looked at her and marveled 
 at her queer, repelling, fascinating many- 
 sidedness. 
 
 He had no friend who was so near to 
 him in judgment and penetration of his 
 own work. Eninger, he had often mused 
 of late, might have told him things that even 
 this curious and notable woman might not 
 have hit upon. Still, Eninger and he were 
 forever parted. He said as much to Mrs. 
 Atterbury after the reception at which he 
 had seen Alicia and her husband. 
 
 It was the day following that reception, 
 and the hour was between five and six o'clock. 
 His hostess had chosen to be at home to him 
 alone, and considering her countless poten- 
 tial engagements, Fabian could not help 
 holding this concession of privacy as one 
 that teemed with compliment. It had never 
 occurred to him it never could occur to 
 him in any ordinary course of experience 
 that she might possess the least tender occult
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 95 
 
 reason for such a gracious act. She was a 
 woman whose oddities had always been cele- 
 brated for pausing at the ranker kind of 
 scandals. It had been this about her deport- 
 ment; it had been that about her attire; it 
 had been the other thing about her compan- 
 ionships and patronages. But about her 
 fixed fidelity to the man whose name she 
 bore there had never been heard even a 
 doubtful whisper. 
 
 Mrs. Atterbury's was a basement-house, 
 and the reception-room in which she and 
 Fabian were now seated looked from two 
 heavily-draped windows immediately forth 
 on the street. It would be hard to plan a 
 room of richer and yet more harmonious 
 tintings, or one whose embellishments (all 
 choice and costly) were disposed with a nicer 
 art. The contrast between this irreproach- 
 able room and the absurdly youthful and 
 tasteless garb of his friend, as she sat loung- 
 ingly near him with her small, plump body 
 half buried in cushions and her small, 
 plump feet placed cross-wise on a tufted stool, 
 struck Fabian as at once sad and comic,
 
 96 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 " So you hated my Wednesday, you hor- 
 rid thing," she had been saying to him, in 
 affirmation rather than query. "Yes; you 
 needn't deny it. Toward the last you looked 
 not merely bored out of your boots, but 
 agonized. What was the reason of it? Was 
 it fatigue or disgust?" 
 
 "Neither," said Fabian; and then, with an 
 impulse to confide in her, he told not only of 
 his agitation at lately seeing Alicia, but of 
 his former engagement and its gloomf ul end. 
 His auditor gave him the most rapt attention 
 till he had finished. Then she said, with a 
 breaking voice and humid eyes: 
 
 "You gave her up on on that account! 
 And you loved her!" 
 
 " I loved her," said Fabian. 
 
 "It was saintly of you! There " and 
 
 she reached out one of her fat little hands. 
 "Just give it a shake that's right. I 
 oughtn't to have called it saintly heroic 
 was the word. No wonder you know how to 
 write good plays. You've got a nature so 
 high that you can see from it right straight 
 down into other people's."
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 97 
 
 "I did merely what I could not help 
 doing," he returned. 
 
 " Oh, precisely. And so did Ray Eninger 
 do merely what lie couldn't help doing. But 
 look at the difference. Well, you're crazy 
 about her still, I suppose?" 
 
 "I'm still in love with her." 
 
 "Ever so much?" 
 
 He smiled. " Yes; ever so much." 
 
 There was silence, during which Mrs. 
 Atterbury stared at a picture on the opposite 
 wall. Suddenly she said, with a quick turn 
 of the head toward where he sat: 
 
 "Come to Egypt with Lewsy and me this 
 winter. If you'll say yes I'll start inside 
 of a week." 
 
 "You woman of quicksilver!" he said. 
 " Will you never tire of darting about?" 
 
 "That's no answer," she scoffed, not by 
 any means playfully. "Come with us. 
 Make up your mind, and come." 
 
 " Your husband in Egypt! He'd jump off 
 the highest pyramid he could find, from 
 sheer ennui." 
 
 "No he wouldn't. Lewsy' s too fond of
 
 98 FABIAN DIMITBY. 
 
 himself and all his belongings ever to commit 
 suicide." 
 
 "I've settled down to work, you know, in 
 dead earnest. Travel and industry are sworn 
 foes." 
 
 "Nonsense," she retorted, biting her lip, 
 while her face clouded. " You'll just stay 
 here and eat your heart out." 
 
 "Not at all," he said. "I'll stay here 
 and try to get a manager and a theatre for 
 one of my plays." 
 
 She gave a nod or two of ironic assent. 
 "Oh, of course! And not make another 
 effort, I suppose, to see her even once again!" 
 
 "No." And the little word could not have 
 sounded firmer if his lips had been of bronze 
 and had spoken in some sort of metallic lan- 
 guage. 
 
 " That's hardly human," said his listener, 
 " though Heaven knows you've given proof 
 of being almost superhuman. You can't 
 but realize that she must still care for you 
 provided she ever cared." 
 
 "Oh," he replied, "I dare say she de- 
 spises me. Eninger, you know, may have
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 99 
 
 told her nothing as to my real motive in 
 giving her up. And I well, well, I some 
 how could not tell her. I left her to suspect. 
 Perhaps she did not, and if she did not, then, 
 as I have said, she despises me." 
 
 He spoke these words with much quietude, 
 but with that unconscious hint of inward 
 funds of power that eludes all definition or 
 portrayal. Adela Atterbury, as she watched 
 him, thought how simply yet loftily great 
 he had shown himself. " Ah," she now ex- 
 claimed, "it's a shame that any woman 
 should be so deceived. She ought to know 
 the truth. It's not common justice to your- 
 self that you should let her stay in ignorance 
 of it. If she's half the true woman her 
 face indicates, she'd not only pardon you, 
 but " 
 
 "Love me all the better, perhaps you 
 mean!" And as Fabian thus made interrup- 
 tion he spoke with a far more bitter accent 
 than any which he often used. "Ah, no; 
 she's a wife now, and pray Heaven she may 
 be a happy one. I go out into the world so 
 little that the chances are slender of my ever
 
 100 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 meeting her again. Still, I shall always 
 like to know that fate has been good to her; 
 I shall like to watch from a distance the way 
 in which it shapes her future." 
 
 "I see!" exclaimed Mrs. Atterbury, push- 
 ing away her footstool and giving one of 
 her silken pillows a subversive toss. " You 
 will like to be a martyr for the rest of your 
 days. Ah, talk of virtue being its own 
 reward, and of the joys reaped from self- 
 abnegation! For a completely jolly life 
 commend me to the man who serves self, 
 not to him who slays it." 
 
 "I don't claim to be a slayer of self, 
 nor even its disciplinarian," said Fabian, 
 while the repose of his manner contrasted 
 oddly with the fret of hers. "But if both 
 were true I should expect greater happiness, 
 all told. For say what we will, that deli- 
 cate, yet splendid moral hardihood which 
 renounces every pleasure tainted with evil 
 is more sensitive both to joy and pain 
 than the weakness from which temptation 
 seldom gets a rebuff. The vine that climbs 
 high has tendrils which the tap of one's
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 101 
 
 finger-nail could wound, yet which almost 
 might win vantage from a wall of polished 
 marble." 
 
 "Ah, save that sort of diamond-dust to 
 sprinkle over your plays," replied Mrs. 
 Atterbury, with a little skeptic laugh. "It's 
 brilliant, and even the gallery might like it 
 if used with due economy." 
 
 "Don't try to be cynical, my friend," 
 said Fabian; "it's the one intellectual effort 
 to which you're clearly unequal." 
 
 Her face softened, and she looked at him 
 with a steadfast glow in her honest hazel eyes. 
 
 "I'd show you how kind I could be if/ 
 were only that fate you j ust spoke of. Oh, but 
 the fates were three, were they not? Well, 
 I'd choose to be the one with the shears. 
 I'd use them to cut off Ray Eninger in the 
 nower of life, and make your Alicia a bewil- 
 dering young widow." 
 
 " As far as I'm concerned, you'd be throw- 
 ing away your time," said Fabian, with a 
 smile that just hovered, and no more, at the 
 edges of his placid lips. 
 
 "What!" she burst forth, her sympathetic
 
 102 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 gaze changing to one of suspicious poign- 
 ancy. "Do you really mean that you never 
 have moments of the least regret for acting 
 as you did?" 
 
 "I would do it over again if it were to 
 do," -he answered. Then a light seemed to 
 break on his noble and gentle face as he 
 added: " Do you know what I often long to 
 hear concerning her?" 
 
 "What?" asked the lady, a little tartly, 
 and as if out of patience. 
 
 "That she's very happily married to her 
 husband and has quite fallen in love, with 
 him." 
 
 Feeling thus, Fabian might have been 
 gratified by an interview which took place 
 between Eninger and his wife that very even- 
 ing. Until then the husband had felt as if 
 a heavy seal of silence had been laid upon 
 his lips. For over twelve hours he scarcely 
 <'xHi;iu<rp<l a word with Alicia. To glance 
 at her was to see how assertive were the 
 thoughts that engrossed her. Their dinner 
 \v:i.s horrible to him. 
 
 They were alone, the Colonel being ill
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 103 
 
 upstairs with a cold. As soon as the serv- 
 ant had. disappeared, Eninger resolved in des- 
 peration that some sort of stop should be 
 put to the terms on which he and his wife 
 at present stood. For himself, he' had a 
 sense of grimmest foreboding. He felt as if 
 Alicia might at any moment say to him that 
 she could no longer love him in the least 
 that her love had flown back like a humming- 
 bird to Fabian Dimitry. In such case what 
 should he do? She had become the air he 
 breathed, his sky overhead, his earth under- 
 foot. If she failed him now, he would feel 
 as though he had but to stumble across 
 whatever blood-smeared threshold the finger 
 of suicide should point out. 
 
 When they were alone together he slowly 
 rose from his place at the small round table 
 and went toward her. 
 
 "Alicia," he began, hating the sound of 
 his own voice because it seemed to him so 
 timid, " I've an idea that you are very angry 
 with me." 
 
 " Angry?" she said, and started. " Why 
 pray?"
 
 104 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 He sank into another chair at her side. 
 " Oh, because I told you a certain thing and 
 told it at so late an hour." 
 
 She appeared lingeringly to waken from a 
 dream, and searched his face in a half -dazed 
 way. Then she put out her hand and let it 
 rest on Eninger's arm. The touch of her soft 
 fingers, though merely the faintest of press- 
 ures, gave him a thrill like those known in 
 the days of their betrothal. 
 
 " I have been very thoughtless, Ray," she 
 murmured. "Not not that I'd forgotten 
 you how could that be possible? But what 
 you told me of him ah! how greatly he 
 must have suffered! I see his character in a 
 new sublime light." 
 
 Eninger gnawed his lip. "And this has 
 kept you so abstracted, so strangely absent- 
 ininded?" he asked. "You were thinking 
 all the while of Fabian Dimitry. You were 
 remembering that you had lost him, perhaps 
 forever, and that I stood here in his place MS 
 his poor and unworthy substitute." 
 
 " You! no, Ray, no!" She sprang to her 
 feet, and while he still remained seated she
 
 FABIAN DIMITBY. 105 
 
 put both arms about his neck with an air of 
 infinite fondness. "You have your own 
 place, always, as my husband. I don't 
 regret having lost him, as you phrase it. 
 And it is not because of him that I have been 
 plunged all day in meditation, melancholy, 
 what you will. Ah, no, Ray, it's because of 
 all that his act reminds me of!" 
 
 She palpably shivered, and her eyes dilated 
 as if with sudden piercing terror. She clung 
 to him, now, like a frightened child. " Oh, 
 Ray!" she cried, "this curse, this doom! It 
 has never seemed so possible, so near, so 
 threatening, as now! If lie felt that way, 
 what danger there must have been, and still 
 must be! The ' sins of the parents' ah, how 
 frightful a meaning lies hid in those words 
 of Scripture!" 
 
 "Alicia!" cried Eninger. He rose and 
 gathered her to his breast. "Oh, my wor- 
 shiped! Who cares for those venomous 
 words now? Only bigots and dreamers. 
 There is no danger. You are always with me, 
 and I watch you I watch you. Your father 
 hasn't been stricken. You've many chances
 
 106 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 of release, of exemption. Kiss me on the lips, 
 my wife again again! It's perfect to feel 
 that you still love me!" 
 
 " Still-love you, Ray? I " 
 
 " Never mind. I feel it, now; I shall never 
 doubt it after this never, never!" 
 
 He meant the words, from his soul. While 
 he clasped her in his arms he had a sense of 
 relief that shot its bounds into ecstasy. But 
 abruptly, and before he could feel quite 
 assured of the truth, he discovered that she 
 was quivering with agitation. Soon her sobs 
 rang out, in the pathos of their incoherency. 
 She had buried her head stoopingly between 
 his arm and breast; but on a sudden he felt 
 her form relax, and then swiftly he knew 
 that she had swooned in his embrace.
 
 FABIAN DIMITBY. 107 
 
 VI. 
 
 She was ill for several days, though not in 
 the least serious way. He insisted, as her 
 physician, that she should lie in bed, and 
 now and then he somewhat sternly opposed 
 her desires to be up and moving about. The 
 Colonel, incessantly watchful of her and but 
 half recovered from his late assault of bron- 
 chitis, had harsh things to say of her illness. 
 
 "It's this beastly climate," he averred; 
 " nothing else has done it, nothing else under 
 heavens. They call it dry. Quite so. It 
 dries up the human tissues. My throat's 
 never before been what it is now. It's been 
 bad, I admit, but it's never been Oh, by 
 Jove, there's a tang in the wind here that we 
 poor invalids have got to grovel to! I suppose 
 the natives don't feel it as we do. They don't 
 ah use their throats quite so much. I 
 mean, to talk through, you understand. They 
 use their noses. Yes, their noses. I was
 
 108 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 never so knocked up at 'ome as here never, 
 bad as I've been time and again in the old 
 country." 
 
 Eninger scarcely heard the Colonel's audi- 
 ble musings. He was thinking at first of 
 Alicia, and then, just as he began to feel cer- 
 tain that her low pulse and dubious tempera- 
 ture had yielded to treatment, a sharp crash 
 of hurt beset him. 
 
 The failure of the great banking-house, 
 Auchester and Tyng, made him tremble with 
 regard to certain bonds and deposits. They 
 meant, for the most part, his pith and kernel 
 of income. He rushed " down town " in dis- 
 array, and found himself but one of a wild- 
 eyed throng besieging doors that had aired 
 for years above their lintels almost the solid 
 credit of the Bank of England itself. Noth- 
 ing could be done; all to do was to wait, and 
 to wait was to do nothing, naturally, except 
 to palpitate. Alicia quickly caught the con- 
 tagion of his alarm, much to his regret. 
 Eninger had wild thoughts, as he watched 
 lu-r anxious face, regarding immediate settle- 
 ments upon her that would lift her from
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 109 
 
 depths of his own insolvency into secure if 
 modest competence. They had already issued 
 cards for a large tea, and a day before this 
 event he found his wife tremulous, agitated. 
 
 "My dear Alicia," he said, "the enter- 
 tainment is all right It doesn't trench 
 deeply on our purse; it's a trifle, and pray 
 only think of it as one." 
 
 "I can't, I can't," faltered Alicia. "It 
 seems as if we were doing a most reckless 
 thing, Ray. It seems as if we were flying in 
 the very face of poverty." 
 
 He gave her certain details of his financial 
 reservations and expectancies. They were 
 not large, but he made them sound larger 
 than they were, just for the purpose of com- 
 forting her. Still, they did not comfort, and 
 when the day of the tea came she was un- 
 strung, haggard, by no means herself. 
 
 Mrs. Westerveldt and Mrs. Atterbury met 
 in Eninger's drawing-rooms, as they met in 
 so many others. The festivity was really 
 charming, with no trace of the gloom that 
 had fallen over the fortunes of its givers. 
 
 "Your wife doesn't seem well," Mrs.
 
 112 FABIAN DIMITBY. 
 
 Auchester and Tyng gave him a new chance 
 for gibe and slur. "Bless me, I wouldn't 
 have thought it possible, ' ' he declared. ' 'But 
 then there's a kind of American dishonesty 
 that's like your prairies or your blizzards. 
 It beats the world for size and strength." 
 
 The uncertainty of his position made it 
 harder for Eninger to bear. There still 
 remained a most irritant doubt as to just 
 how much had been left. Meanwhile Alicia' s 
 health gave him other cause for anxiety. 
 There were moments when, he told himself, 
 with a cold pang at the heart, that she was 
 falling under the same dread ban which had 
 been so often visited upon her race. Then he 
 would laugh at his own fears and call them 
 reckless borrowing of trouble. A wander- 
 ing eye, a touch of pallor, an air of lan- 
 guorwere these of necessity the signs and 
 symptoms that waited on madness? Besides, 
 had not her father escaped, and why should 
 not she escape as well? Plainly, these losses 
 had been a shock to her. In her sleep he 
 had heard her murmur words that were like 
 a moaning protest against the potential
 
 FABIAN DIMITBY. 113 
 
 scourges of poverty. Then, too, he would 
 notice her reluctance to spend the smallest 
 amount of money for what was sometimes 
 the most needed purchase. And yet he had 
 long ago become certain that her nature was 
 not in the least mercenary. This frugality, 
 this pinching economy, distressed him, and 
 he one day begged of her that she would 
 strive to be her old self again. To his annoy- 
 ance her answer was a burst of tears, fol- 
 lowed by a sort of hysteric embrace. 
 
 "I I want so very much to act more 
 bravely and sensibly, Ray," she quivered. 
 "But it's the hardest thing, I find, to get 
 that one haunting thought out of my brain: 
 perhaps we may not have enough left to 
 shield us against starvation." 
 
 "Starvation!" he echoed. "Oh, Alicia, 
 calm all fears of that sort." 
 
 "I wish I could," she answered, with the 
 big tears glistening on her cheeks and hang- 
 ing from her lashes. "But oh, we were so 
 near it once, father and I so near it, so hate- 
 fully near it once!" 
 
 "Alicia!" cried Eninger, "there is no
 
 112 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Auchester and Tyng gave him a new chance 
 for gibe and slur. "Bless me, I wouldn't 
 have thought it possible, ' ' he declared. ' 'But 
 then there's a kind of American dishonesty 
 that's like your prairies or your blizzards. 
 It beats the world for size and strength." 
 
 The uncertainty of his position made it 
 harder for Eninger to bear. There still 
 remained a most irritant doubt as to just 
 how much had been left. Meanwhile Alicia' s 
 health gave him other cause for anxiety. 
 There were moments when, he told himself, 
 with a cold pang at the heart, that she was 
 falling under the same dread ban which had 
 been so often visited upon her race. Then he 
 would laugh at his own fears and call them 
 reckless borrowing of trouble. A wander- 
 ing eye, a touch of pallor, an air of lan- 
 guorwere these of necessity the signs and 
 symptoms that waited on madness? Besides, 
 had not her father escaped, and why should 
 not she escape as well? Plainly, these losses 
 had been a shock to her. In her sleep he 
 had heard her murmur words that were like 
 a moaning protest against the potential
 
 FABIAN DIMITBY. 113 
 
 scourges of poverty. Then, too, he would 
 notice her reluctance to spend the smallest 
 amount of money for what was sometimes 
 the most needed purchase. And yet he had 
 long ago become certain that her nature was 
 not in the least mercenary. This frugality, 
 this pinching economy, distressed him, and 
 he one day begged of her that she would 
 strive to be her old self again. To his annoy- 
 ance her answer was a burst of tears, fol- 
 lowed by a sort of hysteric embrace. 
 
 "I I want so very much to act more 
 bravely and sensibly, Ray," she quivered. 
 "But it's the hardest thing, I find, to get 
 that one haunting thought out of my brain: 
 perhaps we may not have enough left to 
 shield us against starvation." 
 
 "Starvation!" he echoed. "Oh, Alicia, 
 calm all fears of that sort." 
 
 "I wish I could," she answered, with the 
 big tears glistening on her cheeks and hang- 
 ing from her lashes. "But oh, we were so 
 near it once, father and I so near it, so hate- 
 fully near it once!" 
 
 "Alicia!" cried Eninger, "there is no
 
 114 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 danger like that now. Force the fear from 
 your mind. We may find it best to go into 
 the country and live, but surely that will 
 be a long way from the beggary you've 
 brooded over." 
 
 On the evening of the Westerveldt dinner 
 she came down-stairs to meet her husband 
 in a gown that became her charmingly. But 
 after he had surveyed her costume for a 
 minute or so, Eninger said: 
 
 " My dear, you have forgotten something." 
 
 "What?" she asked. 
 
 "Your diamonds." 
 
 "Oh, I thought I wouldn't wear them, 
 Ray." The color mounted into her face and 
 then died out again. 
 
 "Not wear them!" he said. "But they're 
 really very fine. That brooch of my moth- 
 er's " 
 
 " Yes, I know, Ray; it's exquisite. They're 
 all exquisite. But I must tell you that I 
 I've a horror of losing them." 
 
 "Losing them!" 
 
 " Yes. We we need all we have now, Ray, 
 and well, I won't try and explain my queer
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 115 
 
 feeling; it's better, no doubt, that I should 
 not. But you' 11 understand, I'm sure, and 
 and humor me." 
 
 She was looking at him with restless eyes 
 and a troubled smile, as he took one of her 
 hands in each of his own. "No, Alicia," he 
 returned, gently enough, but with an excess- 
 ive latent firmness; "I will not humor you 
 to-night, for I think it would be doing you 
 an unkindly act. These nervous caprices 
 are perilous things, my dear, unless we learn 
 to master them. You must go upstairs again 
 (forgive me if I speak in tones of command) 
 and put on those diamonds." 
 
 "But, Ray," she began, "I- 
 
 "No, my dear; there must not be any 
 refusal. Go." He kissed heron the forehead 
 and released her hands. 
 
 She stared at him with an odd fixity for an 
 instant, and then quietly quitted the room. 
 Eninger flung himself into a chair after she 
 had gone, with a long, heavy sigh. 
 
 What did it mean? Such a fancy as that! 
 She, the daughter of a long line of gentlefolk, 
 to be afraid of wearing a few diamonds
 
 116 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 because there was a chance of her losing 
 them! 
 
 The young husband sat for some little time 
 with bowed head and a sense of fatal despond- 
 ency. He had had so much to torment him, of 
 late and yet what was the loss of every dol- 
 lar he owned compared with any calamity to 
 her! Just such queer freaks and whims as 
 these meant in some cases the subtle ap- 
 proaches of mental malady; his knowledge of 
 the human brain and nervous system assured 
 him of this fact, and yet he could not be the 
 physician he was and not realize that hundreds 
 of people lived on for years with " fads " and 
 hallucinations of a far more serious kind, 
 dying at last in the full possession of so- 
 termed sanity. 
 
 Alicia's entering step roused him, and he 
 sprang up, to see her with that delicate, yet 
 brilliant, change in her apparel which was 
 precisely what he had felt that it lacked. 
 
 "You look a hundredfold better!" he 
 cried. " That aigrette in your golden hair, 
 my darling, is like the morning-star over 
 Maud's garden,
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 117 
 
 ' Beginning to melt in the light that she loves 
 On a bed of daffodil sky.'" 
 
 He laughed aloud at his own rhapsody, 
 although the laugh had no really mirthful 
 ring. Alicia was nearly speechless until they 
 reached the Westerveldts' . There Eninger 
 almost lost sight of her for at least three 
 hours. He sat next to Mrs. Westerveldt 
 while the palates of about twelve assembled 
 guests were being tempted and tickled. This 
 was done, as everybody agreed, with striking 
 success. He had never seen his hostess more 
 suave and yet more statue-like. She made 
 him think of snow with a rose-colored light 
 upon it. On her other hand sat the duke, a 
 little dark man who looked like a Hebrew 
 jockey. She was by no means over-civil to 
 his grace, as Eninger could not help remark- 
 ing. He forgot her coldness, her stony am- 
 bition, her pagan views of life, as he sipped 
 the perfect wines of her feast and watched 
 her fair, patrician profile. 
 
 Suppose he had married this jvoman, 
 after all. Perhaps he might have done 
 it; she had married Wynkoop Westerveldt
 
 118 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 with a dash of wild desperation in the 
 deed which very few people were aware 
 of, but of which they said that he, Ray 
 Eninger, alone held the real secret. As 
 Gertrude Ten Eyck she had had a large 
 fortune. And in Tier veins ran no blood 
 tainted by madness. She might have borne 
 him healthful and beautiful children. As it 
 was, he must stay childless, with a wife who 
 struck a chill through him if she but passed 
 a restless night. 
 
 Thoughts like these were grossly selfish, 
 and Eninger loved his wife too dearly to in- 
 dulge them in any meaning mood. But he 
 had felt wearied and forlorn on coming 
 hither, and now there was a certain sort of 
 exhilarant balm in the words and ways of 
 Gertrude Westerveldt. Her own prosperity, 
 :ind a thought of his financial downfall, had 
 possibly combined to bring forth in him that 
 worldliness which so many of us hide at the 
 mystic bases of our being. 
 
 "If it were a matter of any moment to 
 you," he said, at length, "I should tell you 
 that your dinner is faultless."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 119 
 
 " Does that mean you enjoy it?" she re- 
 plied. " For your doing so must be a mat- 
 ter of moment." 
 
 "Ah, you're graciousness itself." 
 
 "And it's all learned by rote," she said, 
 between little mellow ripples of laughter. 
 "It's wholly mechanical, without a single 
 spontaneous touch." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 " No? But you should. You know me so 
 well." 
 
 "Not half so well as I should like to." 
 He took quite a deep draught of some ice- 
 cold brut champagne as he spoke. Just over 
 the rim of his glass, as it were, he saw the 
 silvery gray of her eyes gazing at him, no 
 keener than would have been two mist- veiled 
 autumn stars. 
 
 " But you must know me very well," she 
 insisted, " or you would never have passed 
 judgment upon me in the grand way that 
 you did pass." 
 
 " I?" he murmured. 
 
 "Oh, yes. Burnish your memory a little, 
 tt happened only the other day. You said
 
 120 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 it in perfectly cold blood, too. Can't you 
 remember it?" 
 
 "Oh, you mean " he began, a trifle 
 stammeringly. 
 
 "That I was a woman without an emo- 
 tion," she broke in, her smooth and vibrant 
 voice seeming somehow guiltless of any 
 interruption at all. But instantly the voice 
 changed, and she spoke with a new kind of 
 softness one with which rebuke was deli- 
 'cately mingled, like the first faint coolness of 
 the dying season with summer's native mild- 
 ness. "Of all persons you are the last who 
 should tell me that." 
 
 " Perhaps I meant," he said, " that you'd 
 outlived your emotions." 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " Because you're such a great lady, now. 
 Not that you didn' t always promise to be 
 whenever you should marry." 
 
 " That is so queer to me," she answered; 
 "for people to imagine, I mean, that one 
 has ossified merely because one chooses a 
 gregarious life." 
 
 " You call it gregarious?"
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 121 
 
 "Why not? I only go where I choose to 
 go, but I see lots of people. I only wish they 
 all pleased me." 
 
 "But it isn't easy to please you." 
 "I thought once that you found it easy." 
 He smiled the fleeting, familiar smile that 
 long ago had secretly charmed her. ' ' Oh, but 
 I never was quite sure, you know!" he said. 
 "Quite sure?" 
 
 " Whether I pleased you or not." 
 She shook her head ever so slightly, and 
 in her eyes he fancied he could see tiny rays 
 that told him he was incorrigible, he was 
 at his ancient tricks. 
 
 ' ' Sometimes, ' ' she said, ' ' I think you speak 
 as if you wanted to ape the hollow fadeurs 
 of men who are greatly your inferiors." 
 She lowered her tones a little, though there 
 was no need of this, for the wines were 
 bidding the folk babble all about them, 
 and harps and violins were making melo- 
 dious a distant ambuscade of orange-trees. 
 "Were you not quite sure if you pleased me 
 or no," she continued, " on a certain August 
 night at Sharon?' '
 
 122 TABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "I recollect how you threw away a ring 
 that I gave you," he replied. "It rolled 
 off along the road, and although the stone 
 sparkled in the bright moonlight, I never 
 afterward found it. I think it must have 
 fallen into that ditch. I wonder if it's there 
 yet." 
 
 "If I thought so," she said, "I believe 
 Fd go there and try to lish it out. I be- 
 haved so badly. But you might have 
 seen 
 
 " Seen what?" he murmured, as she paused, 
 and bent his head down so that a stray wisp 
 of her hair touched his temple. 
 
 "My jealousy," she said. The two words 
 were very low; he could just make them out 
 and no more. 
 
 "Oh, of that girl?" he returned, and felt 
 his heart beat oddly, perhaps from pure sur- 
 prise at the audacity which this last little 
 undertone had sheathed. "Upon my word, 
 I forget who she was." 
 
 " But / haven't forgotten." 
 
 He sighed, and as he did so it seemed to 
 him that the sigh was a wholly sincere one.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 123 
 
 "I should have known this before," he 
 murmured. "That you really cared, I 
 mean." 
 
 "Yes? Well, let us talk of something 
 else." 
 
 But she immediately afterward turned to 
 the duke, and during the next ten minutes 
 or so Eninger found himself dealing in the 
 merest thistledown of thought and speech 
 with the lady on his other side. 
 
 "The duke thinks our climate so delight- 
 ful," his hostess presently said to him, how- 
 ever. "Do you suppose that is only polite- 
 
 "Why shouldn't it be more? Our sun- 
 shine, you know, is a revelation to the Eng- 
 lish." 
 
 ' ' But our icy blasts what must they be? 
 Alas! I know what they are to myself. If 
 I stay here many more winters I shall die of 
 neuralgia." 
 
 "So you've that trouble?" 
 
 "Frightfully, at times. Why won't you 
 doctors invent something for us martyrs?" 
 
 "We're always doing so; we're always
 
 124 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 trying it. But each martyr requires a special 
 course of treatment." 
 
 She looked him full in the eyes again, and 
 on her lips lay a smile of exquisite sweetness 
 which seemed flinging lovely challenge to all 
 that the world had ever said about her being 
 cold of heart. 
 
 "Very well, then," she answered, "won't 
 you give me a special course of treatment?" 
 
 "I never mix business with pleasure," 
 he laughed. "Still, to do you any service 
 would be so great a pleasure that I'll waive 
 professional etiquette for this once." 
 
 "And come to me on let us say Wednes- 
 day morning at twelve?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Bringing with you lots of scientific 
 knowledge?" 
 
 "All that I possess." 
 
 "It will seem so strange to have you 
 feeling my pulse!" 
 
 "It may prove rather agitating to myself." 
 
 "Physicians must be above such follies." 
 
 " Unfortunately we can't help being men." 
 
 That evening, as they rode home together,
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 125 
 
 Eninger noticed a sharp change in the man- 
 ner of his wife. Her reticence and gravity 
 were gone, and a lively buoyancy filled 
 their place. She had liked the dinner, but 
 still more the guests gathered to partake 
 of it. The Colonel met them as they arrived 
 home, and to her father she was unwontedly 
 garrulous. 
 
 "Never abuse American society again!" 
 she playfully commanded. 
 
 " I never have abused it," said the Colonel, 
 telling a falsehood for the sake of making an 
 epigram "I've only said that it didn't 
 exist." 
 
 "Ah," cried Alicia, "if you'd seen those 
 charming drawing-rooms! And then the 
 appointments in the dressing-rooms upstairs. 
 They were " She paused, and to her hus- 
 band's ears the break-oif in her voice was so 
 abrupt a one that he looked at her with sur- 
 prised inquiry. She hurried along at once, 
 however, with new sentences on subjects new 
 although similar. " The entertainment was 
 altogether perfect, father; I'm sure you'd 
 have said so. If there's any duchess in
 
 126 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 England more distinguee than Mrs. Wes- 
 terveldt, I should greatly like to see her." 
 
 "Oh, I've met dowdy duchesses in my 
 time," grumbled the Colonel. "They're 
 most of 'em only poor country-folk, you 
 know, that don't come up to London except 
 for two or three months a year. It isn' t as 
 if they lived in their brown-stone fronts on 
 the Avenoo" (he purposely made his pro- 
 nunciation barbaric) " and were great guns 
 in the mighty but select multitude of the 
 Four Hundred." 
 
 A little later, after Alicia had gone to her 
 dressing-room, Eninger passed into it from 
 his own apartment. The door was slightly 
 ajar and in spite of his usual secure though 
 never obtrusive punctilio he had so recently 
 seen his wife that he now forgot to knock. 
 She was seated in front of her dressing-table 
 as he entered, and her eyes were fixed on 
 something in her lap. The instant that she 
 heard Eninger' s footstep she looked up with 
 a startled air, and then he had a sense that 
 she was concealing something either within 
 her pocket or the folds of her dress. But
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 127 
 
 her act was one of extreme speed; all was 
 over, so to speak, in a second. 
 
 He crossed the threshold with a sudden 
 conviction that she had just fleetly hidden 
 a letter. But whose? What secret could 
 she possibly have from him? Then, like a 
 flash, pride intervened. 
 
 ' ' I will ask her nothing, ' ' he thought. ' ' I 
 am not even sure that it was a letter. Still, 
 never mind; I will ask her nothing. A wife 
 who deals in petty mysteries is always tire, 
 some, but a husband who plays the petty 
 spy upon them is tactless and dull." 
 
 Aloud he said, in the most careless of 
 tones: " I merely came in to tell you that I 
 shall sit with a book down in the office for a 
 little while yet. It still is rather early 
 hardly more than eleven." 
 
 "Oh, very well," she answered, and he 
 could not help marking, by the nearer view he 
 had gained of her, that her color had sensibly 
 lessened. He paused for a moment at 
 another door from that by which he had 
 entered, and glanced across his shoulder as if 
 he were waiting for some fresh word from her.
 
 128 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 But she did not speak, nor did she appear 
 to know that he had thus paused. And 
 presently he passed from the room, going 
 down into his office among the medical folios 
 and phials of his profession.
 
 FABIAN DIMITEY. 129 
 
 VII. 
 
 The office was pretty and comfortable, 
 with a fire of soft coal sparkling in the grate. 
 Eninger now recalled that a few minutes ago 
 the servant had told him of a gentleman 
 who had called earlier in the evening but 
 who had left no name, stating that he might 
 perhaps pay a later visit. Eninger wondered 
 a little who the anonymous person might be. 
 Patients were not so frequent with him that 
 he could hold their coming and going in 
 light esteem. Heaven knew, he had begun 
 to need and long for their aid. 
 
 It hurt him cruelly to think of leaving his 
 present home for quarters more limited and 
 less prosperous. The slight practice he had 
 already gained would thus be unsettled and 
 perhaps wholly destroyed. Borrowing he 
 had always detested, and like most men to 
 whom the arts and uses of business are 
 unknown, he had only a slender acquaint-
 
 130 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 anceship among those who are of the lending 
 habit. Ready money was what he wanted 
 and might go on wanting for a year to come; 
 but seeking it from the ordinary club associ- 
 ate, who had seen him purely in his social 
 relations toward life, was an ordeal from 
 which he almost shudderingly recoiled. 
 
 On the other hand he was quite without 
 friends of a more intimate sort. He had had 
 but two since reaching manhood. One was 
 Fabian Dimitry and one was a cousin, almost 
 exactly of his own age, who had died and 
 left him grief-stricken for the loss of a 
 mutual love that time would eventually have 
 paled and withered. Both his parents had 
 survived only long enough to be dubious 
 memories of childhood, and all the rest of 
 his kindred were comparatively remote. 
 
 For a little while he allowed himself to 
 dwell on the chances of some sort of assist- 
 ance from Gertrude Westerveldt. Yet no, 
 he at last concluded. But for a certain gleam 
 of unexpected tenderness which had broken 
 upon him from her cold personality like the 
 polar light from a northern firmament, he
 
 FABIA1ST DIMITRY. 131 
 
 might have found himself capable of making 
 known to her his deplored straits. Now 
 such an appeal, however, had become impos- 
 sible. He could no more think of voicing 
 it than of doing any wildly impracticable 
 thing, such, for example, as applying to 
 Fabian Dimitry himself. 
 
 He let this last thought float through his 
 mind on a little breeze, as it were, of sarcas- 
 tic humor. There was no one in all the world 
 to whom he would not have been less desir- 
 ous of applying than the man whose name 
 had just occurred to him. It chanced that 
 he sat before 'his desk, at this moment, with 
 head ruminatively bowed, Avhile one hand 
 drummed a little unconscious tattoo on the 
 lustrous mahogany. No doubt it suddenly 
 struck him that to brood like this was futile, 
 and he rose with the intent of bringing forth 
 a volume from among his medical folios. 
 
 Directly opposite him, at the threshold of 
 the near doorway, stood the figure of a man. 
 Eninger at once gave a terrible start, for the 
 total unexpectedness touched him with that 
 wild dismay wrought in us by an accredited
 
 132 FABIAN DIMITBY. 
 
 ghost. But Fabian, advancing a few steps, 
 quickly proved that he was by no means 
 incorporeal. 
 
 "Your servant let me enter like this,-' 
 came his quiet and well-remembered voice. 
 "I hope you will not blame her for not 
 announcing me; the fault was really all 
 mine." 
 
 Eninger made no answer. He was think- 
 ing that he must have grown very pale, and 
 that Fabian looked as tranquil as if he had 
 just dropped in for the most ordinary of 
 visits. 
 
 "May I shut the door?" presently came 
 the new-comer's next words. He lifted his 
 arm, half turning, and with a flavor of inter- 
 rogation in the gesture. 
 
 "Yes if you wish," replied Eninger, 
 finding a voice. And then, after the door 
 had been shut and they two were alone 
 together, he added in as natural tones as he 
 could command: 
 
 " Pray be seated as well." 
 
 He saw Fabian sink easily into a seat and 
 was about to do so likewise. But he gave
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 133 
 
 another glance at that serene face, maniy and 
 yet in a way feminine, with its lines of lip 
 and chin like the best that we see in sculpture 
 and with its fearless, thoughtful eyes aglow 
 beneath a brow of splendid breadth another 
 glance at that once dear and still familiar 
 face, which had none of the romantic beauty 
 of a mere sentimental hero, but beamed with 
 spiritual and intellectual force as clearly as 
 an alabaster globe might beam with the 
 lamplight burning at its heart. Intuitively 
 it darted through Eninger's mind why this 
 man had come to him. 
 
 "Fabian!" he exclaimed, going several 
 steps closer to where the new-comer was 
 seated. Before he could do more than lift 
 his hand, Fabian had both lifted and extended 
 his. 
 
 Eninger seized it. Then, still holding it, 
 he slowly rose, and the two men looked full 
 into one another's eyes. What Eninger read, 
 or seemed to read, dizzied him, and soon he 
 had almost staggered backward. But in an 
 instant Fabian was again at his side. 
 
 " You're not well, Ray. I can understand
 
 134 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 it. You ve had a hard shock. I came here 
 to tell you that things need not be so diffi- 
 cult with you as they perhaps look. You 
 see, I knew of your weighty investments 
 with that firm and then, of course, there is 
 always gossip, in such cases, that one can't 
 be deaf to even if he would." 
 
 By this time Eninger had got to be quite 
 calm again, though he was still excessively 
 pale. 
 
 "Fabian," he now said, and without a 
 tremor, "you've come I felt sure of it a 
 minute ago! with some sort of idea that you 
 can do me service." 
 
 " Yes," was the answer. " I've come hav- 
 ing that hope." 
 
 " Hope?" Eninger echoed, with what might 
 be called the irony of pure consternation. 
 "You, of all men living, were the last from 
 whom I expected an act like this!" 
 
 Fabian gave a slow nod, as if he had fore- 
 seen some such response. "We should not 
 lightly break old ties," he said. "For my- 
 self, I can not; they are not only too strong, 
 but too sacred."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 135 
 
 "And yet you had great reason to blame 
 me," faltered Eninger. 
 
 ' ' Well, I have reason now to pity you 
 and to help you (if I can), which is surely 
 far better. I think that the something which 
 it lies in my power to oifer you, Ray, will 
 prove helpful." 
 
 "Fabian! Fabian!" exclaimed the other; 
 and he dropped into a chair, his head bowed 
 and one hand slowly moving just above it, 
 for an instant, with palm turned outward. 
 
 "It's this, Ray," went on Fabian. He 
 seated himself at Eninger' s side and spoke 
 almost into the ear of the latter, whose head 
 still preserved its bending posture. ' ' You 
 remember my old cousin, Mrs. Van Schaick, 
 who lived down there in Second Avenue as 
 plainly as a nun, and who had a million, 
 everybody thought, which she would cer- 
 tainly leave to charity? Well, she died a 
 week ago, and like so many other people, 
 showed herself to have been reputed far 
 richer than she was. Instead of a million, 
 she left about a quarter of one, and only 
 half of that to charities. To me fell twenty-
 
 136 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 thousand dollars; it seemed to fall from the 
 skies. 1' ve not the remotest need of it. You 
 know how small my wants are. It's at your 
 command or less than that sum, if you 
 prefer. Auchester and Tyng will pay up every 
 dollar, they say, sooner or later. This you've 
 no doubt heard, but of course the news can't 
 repair your immediate losses. A loan like 
 the one I'll gladly make you, can. Will you 
 accept it? Mind you, there's no gift sug- 
 gested; you'll merely become my debtor for 
 a certain time." 
 
 Fabian paused. The man whom he ad- 
 dressed remained quite motionless, with his 
 head still drooped. Then Fabian spoke 
 again, and this time there had crept into his 
 voice a new note, at once winsome and virile. 
 
 "I'd have written you, Ray, but I feared 
 you might think that savored of ... pat- 
 ronage condescension, even. I thought: it 
 would be easier to speak than write. But I 
 somehow find I was wrong. There's a sort 
 of fog of self-righteousness about my roming 
 here that I can't talk away. It it gets into 
 my voice and almost smothers my words."
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 137 
 
 "Oil, Fabian!" once more cried Ray, lift- 
 ing- his head. The light flashed on his tears; 
 they were few yet large, and at this moment 
 he was not ashamed of them. " That ' fog of 
 self-righteousness' is so like you! Nobody 
 but a being of your magnificent honesty 
 would ever have dreamed of using it against 
 himself!" And with the tears yet shining in 
 his eyes, Eninger gave vent to a great laugh 
 and flung both arms round the neck of his 
 'guest. He had for years loved Fabian as a 
 friend. From that moment the man became 
 as a brother to him, and withal, as a brother 
 superior in every mental grace. His affec- 
 tion had always been blended with esteem; 
 it was now in a way delicately but clearly 
 haloed by reverence.
 
 138 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 That night was an almost sleepless one for 
 Eninger. The stars had dropped golden into 
 his lap and saved him from those detested 
 changes fate was menacing. He could now 
 live on in comfort at his little Forty- Second 
 Street home, and use every honorable effort 
 to win the wealth that comes with profes- 
 sional fame. Why should he not reap wheat 
 at the end in place of tares? Other men with 
 arms no sturdier than his own had not toiled 
 vainly in the same huge humanitarian Held. 
 He would try; the odds were not against 
 success. Meanwhile, this priceless Fabian 
 had come to him, and the hateful debt which 
 he had dreaded to contract in strangers' 
 quarters would be a kind of glistening ele- 
 ment in the cement of their repaired friend- 
 ship. 
 
 And Alicia? In the morning, at the break- 
 fast-table, when he felt sure that they were
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 139 
 
 quite alone together, he quietly told his wife 
 nearly everything. The Colonel always 
 breakfasted in his own room, and rarely 
 appeared until after twelve o' clock. But it 
 was the Colonel who gave Eninger a chance 
 of plunging into his subject, since Alicia's 
 father was usually in the habit, nowadays, 
 of dropping into the office between eleven and 
 twelve, if his son-in-law happened to be there, 
 and imbibing brandy and water under cir- 
 cumstances which he would no doubt have 
 considered social. They were not at all 
 times social to Ray, who wanted his medical 
 books and didn't specially want any brandy. 
 But apropos of the Colonel not having dis- 
 turbed him on the previous evening (he 
 might have put it in the form of the Colonel 
 not having mildly shrieked American deprav- 
 ity to him in the stead of English impecca- 
 bility), the husband of Alicia found a cue to 
 this effect: 
 
 "No, your father didn't drop in last night, 
 but someone else did someone else whom 
 you know whom you know very well, my 
 darling."
 
 140 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 " Someone else!" repeated Alicia, looking 
 soft query with her sweet, ruminative eyes. 
 "And whom I know? Pray tell me!" 
 
 "I will," said Eninger, rising. He took 
 a chair at her side and spoke for a long time. 
 He had forgotten the little occurrence of her 
 quick, concealing movement on the previous 
 night or, at least, if he had not forgotten 
 it, far weightier interests had driven it from 
 his mind, and he was now rapt in the note 
 and survey of these. He spoke amply, and 
 also with detail and exactitude. 
 
 At last, when he had ended, Alicia rose, 
 fluttered, visibly trembling. "He is to 
 come here again!" she said. "And to see 
 me?" 
 
 " He has not asked it he has indeed asked 
 we that I should prevent such meeting," said 
 Eninger, also rising. "But I have begged 
 him to see you." 
 
 "To see me, Ray?" 
 
 " Yes. Do you not wish the meeting?" 
 
 She clasped his hands in both her own, 
 with her fair face brightening. 
 
 "Oh, why not? I I should love to see
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 141 
 
 him again after what he has done for you! 
 Can't you feel this no\v, dear husband?" 
 
 "Now?" he questioned, with a covert smile, 
 " why now?" 
 
 She tossed her head as if a flower were 
 tossing in the sun, and he watched the tender 
 assieging color as it filmed yet did not dye 
 her virginal face. 
 
 " Oh," she exclaimed, "after all I've told 
 you! You remember? The sentiment I had 
 for him it's gone quite gone." 
 
 He put his arms about her and kissed her, 
 while he said: "Am I not certain of it, 
 dearest? You shall see him soon. No matter 
 about his sentiment. I dare say it may not 
 be gone. But I trust him so utterly. How 
 can I help trusting a man like that?" 
 
 Within the next fortnight an event occurred 
 in Eninger s household which he would have 
 been amazed to learn of if any fairy had 
 prophesied it. Fabian Dimitry went to live at 
 the home of his old friend. 
 
 " Good heavens, man, how did it happen?"
 
 142 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 asked Mrs. Atterbury of Fabian, in a frenzy 
 of amazement. 
 
 "I scarcely know, myself," lie answered. 
 "It seems now as if I must have dreamed it." 
 
 '''Her idea, no doubt," said the little lady 
 dryly. 
 
 "She was very good to think of it. I 
 refused again and again, but 
 
 " She persuaded you over, at last. I see. 
 But my dear fellow, the whole thing is pre- 
 posterous. If you put it in one of your 
 plays people would laugh at you. And pray, 
 are you getting along comfortably in Forty- 
 Second Street?" 
 
 He smiled at the quaint sarcasm in her 
 voice and look. "Very," he returned. 
 "And why not? With her the old romance 
 is completely dead and the new romance has 
 begun." 
 
 " Hm are you quite sure of that?" 
 
 " I am absolutely certain." 
 
 "That sounds convincing. And about 
 yourself. In what stage of development or 
 decay is your romance?" 
 
 Fabian closed his eyes for an instant, like
 
 i 
 FABIAN DIMITBY. 143 
 
 one who muses. " I try to forget that I was 
 ever engaged to Alicia Eninger." 
 
 "Ah," laughed Mrs. Atterbury, softly but 
 a little cruelly, " you try to forget? And do 
 you succeed?" 
 
 " I hope so. It often seems to me that I 
 do. They are very happy together, and I 
 watch their happiness. I have not a near 
 relation in the world; for years Ray Eninger 
 was closer to me than any kinsman left alive. 
 It is a great pleasure to see his face and hear 
 his voice again. We have long and enjoya- 
 ble talks. Alicia will sometimes merely 
 listen, and sometimes she will break into the 
 converse in either a playful or serious vein. 
 I think the old Colonel is our one discordant 
 spirit." 
 
 "A horrid old creature," said Mrs. Atter- 
 bury; "he looks like a death's-head, and has 
 glassy eyes, and a voice like the ghost's in 
 Hamlet. I've caught a glimpse of him. 
 But he's evidently a man of the world. He 
 sees how monstrous is the present situation. 
 Or am I wrong in so stating? 1 ' 
 
 " 'Monstrous' has indeed a violent sound,"
 
 144 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 said Fabian, with that steady eye and calm 
 voice by which great and pure natures are 
 enabled to visit rebuke upon triflers too 
 rashly seeking it. "I don't know if you are 
 wrong, however, as to the Colonel's motive 
 for ill-humor. But then this country has 
 made him acrid from the first. Nothing 
 could happen here that would wholly please 
 him." 
 
 It was on the verge of Mrs. Atterbury's 
 lips to exclaim, "Hardly anything could 
 happen here that ouglit more to ^'splease 
 him;" but Fabian, by the very dignity of his 
 gentleness, often blunted even her audacities. 
 And besides, as she would sometimes almost 
 passionately tell herself, she was very dearly 
 fond of him, and next to "Lewsy" there 
 was no man for whom she had ever got so to 
 care. Considering that there were a great 
 many men and women in the world for whom 
 her large, warm, hospitable nature cared 
 extremely, this attitude flavored of rather 
 pungent compliment. 
 
 She was not always confidential with her 
 husband. Now and then it was doubted
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 145 
 
 among her friends as to whether she placed 
 "Lewsy" quite so high in her affections as 
 she professed. The gentleman was a woe 
 and an alarm to some people; to many 
 others he was a fellow of great companiona- 
 bility and charm. Mrs. Atterbury chose 
 now to tell him of Fabian's recent action, 
 with a few graphic words that put the whole 
 case in lucid colors. Lewson Atterbury 
 threw himself back in his chair and roared 
 with mirth when the full idea had become 
 clear to him. He was as plump as his wife, 
 with a blond mustache too large for his head, 
 and with a head too small for his corpulent 
 and rather comic body. 
 
 "That's you that's just you, to dare go 
 for him, Ad, because he' d got himself into 
 such a mess. Nobody but you would have 
 had the cheek to tackle a man when he'd 
 behaved like such a simpleton." 
 
 Mrs. Atterbury tossed her head impa- 
 tiently. "I didn't tackle him, Lewsy, as 
 you term it, and I didn't say anything about 
 his being a simpleton." 
 
 Her husband thrust both hands into his
 
 146 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 pockets and lowered his head, slowly shak- 
 ing it sideways. He never replied to his 
 wife when she openly snubbed him. He 
 had always thought Fabian Diraitry a 
 "crank;" he thought everybody a "crank" 
 who was not entirely commonplace, like 
 himself. And yet, in certain ways, he was 
 not at all commonplace. He stood forth 
 strikingly in one respect, at least: all his 
 geese were swans, and all his personal sur- 
 roundings perfection. 
 
 "Cook?" he would say, if the question of 
 home cookery was proposed. ' ' I don' t be- 
 lieve there's a woman in New York that can 
 beat ours." And then he would nnn;ii' 
 wondrous exploits on the part of this culi- 
 nary Catharine the Great. With his butler, 
 his office-clerks, even his porters, it was the 
 same. Until discharged they were all non- 
 pareils of worth and wit. Somebody had 
 said, not long ago, that there was mercy for 
 his friends in the fact of his being childless, 
 as the virtue and intellect of any child bom 
 from him would have been trumpeted with 
 agonizing zeal. But as it was, Mrs. Atter-
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 147 
 
 bury filled the place of that unbegotten off- 
 spring. There were men who had their rea- 
 sons not to treat Lewsy uncivilly, yet who 
 turned chilly and felt an inward trembling 
 when he began with ' ' My wif e. ' ' His fund of 
 anecdotes concerning her was fathomless. 
 From her powers of repartee to her benign 
 charities, he had stories to tell of all the 
 shining attributes that made her unique. 
 
 "It is so charming to hear him sound 
 her praises," this or that wife would 
 say, always taking care to say it with a 
 touch of plaintiveness if her husband chanced 
 to be within ear-shot. 
 
 But Mrs. Westerveldt, who hated her 
 cousin Atterbury as we know, and who 
 thought Lewsy but a degree or so above one 
 of her footmen, smiled skepticism at these 
 eulogies. " He merely says nice things of 
 his wife," she asserted, "because Adela is 
 married to him. That's the only reason. If 
 Adela died and he were to many another 
 woman, then she would begin beaming with 
 excellences, just the same." 
 
 Fabian had been quite right in calling
 
 148 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Colonel Delamere the discordant spirit of 
 Eninger's new household. The Colonel 
 might have shaken hands with Mrs. Atter- 
 bury and her Lewsy on the entire abomina- 
 tion of Fabian being permitted to enter his 
 son-in-law's home. He was ignorant of the 
 help which Eninger's old friend had brought, 
 or perhaps his disgust might not have been 
 so acute. But as it was, "Why, bless my 
 soul," he said to Alicia, "are there any such 
 things in this horrid country as propriety and 
 deportment? Is the marriage tie respected at 
 all? I've heard that divorces grow on trees 
 here. Do you suppose, you foolish girl, 
 that you're not sticking your head right into 
 the lion's jaws? Besides, what did this fel- 
 low do? Didn't he jilt you like a scamp? 
 Good God are these American morals? It 
 will never do; nothing but deviltry can come 
 of it ... American deviltry," finished the 
 Colonel, "which has got a particular flavor 
 and odor of its own." 
 
 To which highly sane and sage remarks 
 Alicia answered by putting her hand on her 
 fathers arm and saying to him, with a good
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 149 
 
 deal more decision than most English daugh- 
 ters employ toward their parents, or than 
 she herself had been wont to employ toward 
 hers in former times: 
 
 " Father, you hurt and grieve me by words 
 like these. I love my husband very loyally 
 and dearly; I don't think there can be much 
 danger of the sort you mean to a woman 
 who feels like that. Then, as for Fabian 
 Dinritry, I've nothing to forgive. He never 
 jilted me; there's a complete understanding 
 between us 
 
 " Oh, there is?" shot in the Colonel, with 
 a vicious flash in the roll of his worldly old 
 eyeballs. 
 
 "Yes, father, and we want to be very 
 happy here. I hope you will aid and not try 
 to thwart us in our wish. There there are 
 times when / am not happy," pursued Alicia, 
 with altered voice and a sudden trembling 
 of the lips. "I can't just explain. I sup- 
 pose it's a nervous illness of some kind. I 
 often feel as if but no matter. Only, I 
 beg you will not stand in the way of our 
 having a tranquil home. Peace, quiet,
 
 150 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 nothing to jar and fret one! Oh, that is so 
 sweet! And perhaps it will make me better 
 give me a release from certain foolish fan- 
 cies and broodings that I want so much to be 
 rid of!" 
 
 Her last words were almost a sob. The 
 Colonel stared at her for a moment, and as 
 he perceived how swiftly her manner had 
 changed from composure to disarray, it is 
 possible that unwelcome reminders and 
 impressions may secretly have startled him. 
 
 "It's this infernal climate that's making 
 you nervous," he presently grumbled. ' 'You 
 were never a bit so at home. Everybody is 
 bristling with nerves over here, though. I 
 wish Ray would take the wreck of what 
 those banker-thieves have left him and sail 
 back to the dear old country. We could 
 live in good style then on half what it costs 
 us to live now." And as the Colonel spoke 
 that last sentence he leaned airily backward, 
 lifting his eyeglasses and giving his bony 
 shoulders a faint, patrician shrug. You 
 would have said that he had just been 
 referring to moneys of his own which a
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 151 
 
 foolish son-in-law had chosen quite rashly 
 to expend. 
 
 Notwithstanding his hostile pose, how- 
 ever, the domestic peace which Alicia had 
 mentioned as so desirable appeared now to 
 reign undisturbed. Just before coming to 
 dwell under Eninger's roof, Fabian had dis- 
 cerned a glimmering chance as regarded the 
 production of a play at a prominent New 
 York theatre. D uring several evenings, when 
 no engagement claimed Alicia and her hus- 
 band, he read them this play, and read it 
 with striking force and point. They were 
 both fascinated by its fine literary style and 
 its rare dramatic value. It had not a line 
 that verged either upon melodrama or farce. 
 It was piercingly true to nature, and though 
 at times full of that gloom which clothes 
 pregnant human problems, intervals of glow- 
 ing comedy here and there brightened it, like 
 patches of sun on a shadowed lawn. 
 
 "The play," said Eninger, after fully 
 hearing it, " is a work of excessive power. I 
 know of nothing modern and in English that 
 may compare with it. But would it lure our
 
 152 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 usual theatre-goers? Indeed, might not its 
 firm and harmonious art possibly repel 
 them?" 
 
 "Ah, no, no!" exclaimed Alicia, whom 
 the work had fascinated. "A play like that 
 would create its own audiences." 
 
 "You may be right," said her husband. 
 He turned to Fabian. " And there is really 
 a hope that the Academic Theatre will bring 
 it out?" 
 
 "The manager wishes to talk with me 
 to-morrow," replied Fabian. " I am assured 
 by an agent of his that he greatly admires 
 my drama, But it is by no means formally 
 accepted." 
 
 The Academic had been for some years 
 past a highly successful theatre. It seldom 
 produced native plays, however, which is 
 but another way for stating that it was a 
 New York theatre of prominence. What it 
 did produce was staged with great skill and 
 taste, besides being performed by a company 
 of talented and supple artists. The mana- 
 ger, Mr. Lascelles, was a man of noted sagac- 
 ity in business, with a little nimble frame
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 153 
 
 and eyes like small black brilliants. But it 
 had been said of him that he knew really 
 nothing about the artistic or practical value 
 of a play, and that without his counsellor, 
 Mr. Belsize, he would never have raised the 
 Academic to its present renown. 
 
 Mr. Belsize must have heard these tales, 
 but he chose discreetly to ignore them. He 
 was a man much larger of build than his 
 employer, and one who could not appear 
 uncovered without an aspect of almost spec- 
 tacular picturesqueness. His eyes were dark 
 and radiant, but were made more so by a 
 curly crop of snow-white hair. Prematurely 
 blanched, these locks crowned his somewhat 
 ruddy complexion with an effect that brought 
 to mind pictures of old French courtiers. 
 But such illusion, if perpetually being cre- 
 ated, was perpetually being destroyed as 
 well; for an immense ink-black moustache 
 curved along either of his cheeks and 
 wrought sensational contrast with the hair 
 above it. Mr. Belsize' s nationality had 
 somehow never transpired. When asked it, 
 he was inclined to give evasive responses,
 
 154 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 and his repute for all sorts of diplomatic 
 speech had long been securely founded. He 
 spoke French glibly, but not well enough to 
 have been born a Frenchman, and his Eng- 
 lish had a frequent cockney ring; but over 
 every tone and phrase that he used there 
 hovered (at least to Fabian's thinking) the 
 light spell of an etherealized "brogue." If 
 it were true that he was au fond an Irish- 
 man, then not a little of his adroit and facile 
 cleverness could be thus explained. Certain 
 critics affirmed that he had mutilated Dumas 
 and massacred even poor flamboyant Sardou 
 in his adaptations of these authors for the 
 Academic. But on the other hand he was 
 not without adherents who praised his quick . 
 perception of just what the New York public 
 needed and his complete efficiency in the 
 service of Mr. Lascelles. 
 
 It was the latter gentleman who first 
 received Fabian at the theatre on the morn- 
 ing of his visit there. The desk at which 
 Mr. Lascelles sat was rather plenteously 
 littered with play-bills and rolls of paper 
 which might have been rejected plays; but
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 155 
 
 for the most part there was hardly any real 
 difference between this private managerial 
 office and a like sanctum of merchant or 
 broker. The wiry little man with the acute 
 eyes offered a chair to Fabian, took a chair 
 himself, and then looked studiously at one 
 of his own boot-toes while he said: 
 
 ' ' I liked your play very much, Mr. Dim- 
 itry. You must excuse my keeping it so 
 long, but that can't be avoided at the Aca- 
 demic. We receive so many plays so many 
 hundreds, I might say thousands every 
 year." 
 
 ' Really as many as that?" said Fabian, in 
 his frank, serious way. " You must then 
 employ quite a corps of readers." 
 
 This would not have been called by the 
 foes of Mr. Lascelles at all a happy remark. 
 He had too often been accused of keeping 
 native, unperformed plays a twelvemonth 
 and then returning them with the admission 
 that pressure of business had made their 
 perusal "as yet" impossible. 
 
 "A large corps of readers?" he replied, with 
 a flurry in his mien that he quickly con-
 
 156 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 trolled. ' ' Oh, that' s not necessary. You see, 
 so many of them are hopelessly bad. Most 
 of them need but to be glanced at on account 
 of this extreme badness." 
 
 Fabian nodded, but inwardly doubted. He 
 could not bring himself to believe that out of 
 multitudinous manuscripts yearly received 
 from a body of people as intelligent in count- 
 less respects as were his fellow-countrymen, 
 most of the offerings had so slight merit that 
 merely a critical glance could decide their 
 claims. He said nothing, however, and Mr. 
 Lascelles quite soon continued, with a caress- 
 ing slide of one slender hand over one slim 
 knee: 
 
 "Besides, you know, Mr. Belsize is .the 
 judge in whom I place most trust. Your 
 play happened to drift under his observation. 
 He likes it." Here for the first time Mr. 
 Lascelles looked Fabian straight in the eyes. 
 "He likes it very much indeed." 
 
 "I'm glad to hear that," said Fabian, with 
 heartiness but not a trace of exultation. 
 Indeed, he was to this manager, as he would 
 have been to most others in the same town,
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 157 
 
 a novel sort of dramatist. He was not in any 
 process of half-genteel starvation, and a 
 serene loyalty to art, rather than any fever- 
 ish worriment about future bread, formed the 
 motive of his present dealings. 
 
 Doubtless Mr. Lascelles had already 
 grasped and weighed this fact. ' ' Mr. Bel- 
 size thinks, however," he proceeded, "that 
 your play, fine as it is, requires certain alter- 
 ations before it can be accepted by the 
 Academic." 
 
 Fabian appeared to meditate for a mo- 
 ment. He had been a very close student all 
 his life of the best dramatic standards in the 
 best of modern dramatic schools. Many of 
 the great French masterpieces of this century 
 he had seen played in Paris again and again. 
 Every line of the work under discussion he 
 had brooded over with the love a sculptor 
 feels for the marble he reverently chisels. 
 Each character he had thought out with care 
 and colored with a logic and probability bor- 
 rowed from nature itself. The word ' ' alter- 
 ations" jarred upon him with a cruel cru- 
 dity. He had never known a throb of vanity
 
 158 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 in his life, but he now questioned of him- 
 self : " What can be altered in any part of 
 my play without hurting the whole? Is it 
 possible that after my months of steadfast 
 heed some new eye may sweep itself over the 
 task and find flaws there which I failed to 
 note?" 
 
 Aloud he said to Mr. Lascelles : "I don't 
 think I quite understand you. Will you 
 kindly explain these proposed alterations?" 
 
 ' ' I dare say Mr. Belsize can do so better 
 than I," returned Mr. Lascelles, as if there 
 were some doubt on this latter subject. 
 There was indeed no doubt whatever, since 
 the manager had but power to look at a play 
 through one purely commercial lens. For 
 him what was good or great was what the 
 public paid down its money at the Academic 
 box-office liberally to see. And in touching 
 an electric bell and summoning his able famil- 
 iar, Mr. Belsize, he gave signs of at least a 
 temporary- retirement in that gentleman's 
 favor. 
 
 Mr. Belsize soon appeared and shook 
 hands with Fabian, whom he had met rather
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 159 
 
 briefly a few days before. Mr. Lascelles 
 now quitted his chair with an agile little 
 spring, and told Fabian that he would leave 
 him with the new-comer. "I'm sure," he 
 added, ' ' that you and he will reach a prompt 
 understanding." And then Mr. Lascelles 
 vanished through a side door, no doubt being 
 very far from yet even dreaming that an 
 American playwright would not leap at the 
 chance of having his work produced in almost 
 any shape whatever, provided it actually got 
 itself before the footlights. 
 
 Mr. Belsize had a more romantic and 
 theatric look than when Fabian had last seen 
 him, for the contrast between his colorless 
 hair and raven moustache was accentuated 
 by a fly-away bow of scarlet silk at his 
 throat. "I am charmed with your play!" 
 he exclaimed, and passed one hand through 
 his white curls. " It shouldn't be touched; 
 it should go on precisely as you have written 
 it. You' ve composed a masterpiece, a classic. 
 Surely, my dear sir, you're a student I 
 don't say an imitator, but a student, mind 
 of Emile Augier in France."
 
 160 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 " I've tried to study all that is best in the 
 French dramatic writing of the time," replied 
 Fabian. "I suppose Augier is not to be 
 escapec\ when one does that." 
 
 Mr. Belsize threw up both hands as if in 
 lamentation. "Escaped! Ah, you should 
 see how they escape him here. I don't 
 believe you've an idea of how he shoots over 
 people's heads. Dumas is very much the 
 same. Sardou, no. But why? Because he's 
 very often full of clap-trap; he uses red-fire 
 where a true artist would use sunlight, star- 
 light, moonlight. Now I want you to let 
 me put a little red-fire into your play. I see 
 precisely the places where it can be intro- 
 duced." And then Mr. Belsize went into 
 details. 
 
 Fabian listened with an occasional mild 
 shiver. The speaker was very glib, and at 
 times almost eloquent. He soon revealed 
 that this " red-fire," which he had talked of 
 with such careless contempt, was dearer to 
 him (art or no art) than the light of sun, 
 moon or star. In his proposals that this or 
 that scene should be ruthlessly vulgarized,
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 161 
 
 he betrayed, by the very earnestness with 
 which his suggested changes were expressed, 
 a warm if secret sympathy with the changes 
 themselves. Fabian, with his native flair 
 for honesty, soon perceived this. He soon 
 felt that the whole man somehow rang 
 wrong. Perhaps he had once really had an 
 artistic sense, which the sad state of the 
 modern theatre and the incessant require- 
 ments of popular attractions had now par- 
 tially smothered. But no man, his listener 
 felt convinced, could coldly announce him- 
 self capable of such assassinating and devas- 
 tating work as this, unless his ideal had 
 either been sham from the first or had been 
 tumbled into the mud by an acquired van- 
 dalism. 
 
 "There," at last affirmed Mr. Belsize, 
 "that about hits off, in general outline, 
 what the Academic would like to make of 
 your play. After all, the idee mere of the 
 thing would remain thoroughly yours. 
 What we want to do is to ice the plum-cake 
 to draw the big crowds. We've got to do 
 that. Merely dramatic effects don't take
 
 162 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 the dollars out of their pockets. The fine 
 scenes in the 'Fils de Qiboyer'' or the 
 'Gendre de Monsieur Poirier' go for noth- 
 ing here . . . Now see," and Mr. Belsize 
 leaned forward, with his voice growing con- 
 fidentially guttural ; " I' ve got a perfect idea 
 of just what can be done with your play. 
 I'll make it a go a big go. You couldn't, 
 for you're not up in the show-business. 
 And here it's either the show-business or it's 
 flat failure. People in this country hate lit- 
 erature on the stage as they hate a cat walk- 
 ing across it. They laugh at the cat, it's 
 true; but they laugh at literature as well, 
 only with less charity. They're tired with 
 the tremendous push and hurry of their 
 daily life. They want to be waked up to 
 be nipped." And with a large, white, well- 
 tended, muscular hand he gently seized a 
 segment of Fabian's trousers between thumb 
 and forefinger, just at the region of the 
 knee. 
 
 Fabian broke into a laugh. " I certainly 
 should not care to do the nipping you 
 speak of, Mr. Belsize," he said. And then
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 163 
 
 a certain artist-born thought a thought con- 
 nected with the desire to observe human 
 nature wherever and whenever found made 
 him add, in his usual graceful, reflective way: 
 "But if you should undertake in my manu- 
 script the collaborative role you have indi- 
 cated, would not you wish (I do not refer at 
 all to my own feelings, pray observe) that 
 your name should appear as joint author 
 with myself?" 
 
 Mr. Belsize sank backward and raised both 
 hands, agitating them with an air of extreme 
 deprecation. " Oh, my dear Mr. Dimitry," 
 he exclaimed, " I wouldn't for the world have 
 you dream of so foolish a thing. I?" and he 
 tapped his broad chest until the volatile- 
 looking scarlet neck-tie vibrated. "I am 
 simply a mere play-patcher nothing else. 
 I know what bells and gew-gaws are liked 
 by that big baby called the public. A col- 
 labor ateur with you absurd! My offices 
 would in no sense make me worthy of it." 
 Here he gave a sudden start, and touched his 
 forehead as though a new idea had just 
 broken upon him. "But in a pecuniary
 
 164 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 sense ah, that is different. I should ask 
 (and I am sure you would be generous 
 enough to give) a er consideration out 
 of the royalties paid over to you by Mr. Las- 
 celles ... let us say one thousand dollars. 
 From your royalties you would each day de- 
 duct ten dollars, let us also say, until the 
 sum just named was reached." At this 
 point he shrugged his shoulders and rolled 
 his eyes toward the ceiling. The effect was 
 operatic, and he looked for an instant as if 
 he might be some Italian tenor in the melo- 
 dious throes of ' 'Spirito gentile. " "I would 
 willingly do my share of the work," he con- 
 tinued, "for no return whatever. But one 
 must dine. Mr. Lascelles gives me my 
 salary, of course, but you know the enor- 
 mous expenses of New York life." 
 
 "They are certainly great," said Fabian, 
 who was amused. He had yet to learn how 
 the stage in this country is infested with 
 corm orants like Belsize; how almost every 
 successful foreign play produced here is bat- 
 tled over by rival claimants, each pricked 
 with the spur of greed, and how the work of
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 165 
 
 an American author, if once, in the idiom of 
 the day, it "catches on," is nearly certain of 
 being denounced as a plagiarism and even 
 contested in the courts by some pickpocket 
 idler. 
 
 "I am afraid, however," Fabian con- 
 tinued, "that the mere production of my 
 play, with certain scenes and pages of dia- 
 logue preserved while others were either 
 reconstructed or quite left out, would not in 
 any real degree satisfy me. I should prefer, 
 indeed, to have the whole four acts of it fail 
 as I wrote them than succeed as you or any- 
 one else might cleverly regarnish them. 
 And perhaps your mutilations might be tact 
 or acumen itself. Still, they would not be 
 my creations, the fruit of my reveries re- 
 garding certain theories, problems, doubts, 
 beliefs." 
 
 "I see," said Mr. Belsize, with a crest- 
 fallen manner. "But we can't bring the 
 play out as it is; we don't dare. And you, 
 Mr. Dimitry excuse my telling you so, but 
 you're beating the sea with sticks. It's no 
 use treating American theatre-goers as if they
 
 166 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 were very far above fools. They never have 
 been, they probably never will be, .and the 
 times when I feel that truth most keenly are 
 when I've just made a real hit with some 
 fixed-up foreign play at the Academic. With 
 all your skill in epigram, your lightness of 
 literary touch and your knack at rounding 
 off and emphasizing character, you should 
 write a novel, for if you did so it would give 
 you a blaze of renown." 
 
 "Is a blaze of renown so desirable?" said 
 Fabian, and he laughed, and while he 
 laughed Mr. Belsize recoiled politely, staring 
 at him a little, as though he were an animal 
 product not promptly to be classified. "I 
 don't want renown at all," proceeded Fabian, 
 most amiably and with utter candor. "I'd 
 like my play to have it, though, if the world 
 were willing." 
 
 "But you don't realize what the world 
 is," cried his companion, with a touch of 
 quaint entreaty. "The world, as regards 
 the American theatre, is an ass. It can never 
 grasp you; it can never feel you; you might 
 go on writing those beautiful plays for it
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 167 
 
 through an eternity and it would pay you 
 back nothing but unconcern. Good heavens! 
 how does the New York populace go to the 
 theatre? For the purpose of being charmed 
 as if by a charming book? No. They hurry 
 there excited, nervous, to be more excited 
 and to be made more nervous. If it's drama 
 of even the good sort they want to quit the 
 theatre thrilled and harrowed. If it's comedy 
 of even the good sort they want to quit the 
 theatre tickled into a semi -hysteria. A fig, to 
 them, for your nuances and your delicat- 
 esses! They crop them up as a cow does a 
 daisy." 
 
 "Oh, very well," replied Fabian, who was 
 now a little weary. "You speak of my 
 writing novels. I've no cult for that kind 
 of attempt. Besides, it seems to me that 
 novels are flooding us. Everybody is making 
 them, and the wonder is that so many make 
 them as well as they do. If our age isn't 
 ready for this kind of effort I present, all the 
 worse that I should have tried to tax its 
 unripe developments. . . I don't see, Mr. 
 Belsize, that there's anything more to be said.
 
 168 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 I'm not obstinate; I'm only convinced. 
 Kindly return me my manuscript, and I will 
 promise you and Mr. Lascelles to trouble 
 you both with no further scrolls of the same 
 impossible outlay." 
 
 Fabian left the Academic with his play in 
 his pocket, but by no means as hundreds of 
 poor authors have done when convinced 
 of managerial repulse. Starvation did not 
 stare him in the face, . but a fact almost as 
 dreary did thus envisage him. He under- 
 stood the utter hopelessness of trying. The 
 achievement of true dramatic fame seemed 
 visibly to lift and spread above him like the 
 dome of a monstrous cavern. He had no sense 
 of being crushed; his ambition was not 
 founded on vanity, as so often happens with 
 men of his aim and make, in whom cynic 
 revolt speaks like the voix du sang of a breed 
 fed on fare of caste and place. 
 
 "I suppose I shall always go on writing 
 plays," he said to himself, as he walked 
 homeward through the fitful gloom and 
 gleam of an April afternoon. "But such as 
 they are, they will not be worthy of the
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 169 
 
 Academic and of Mr. Belsize's wanton ma- 
 nipulations Heaven forbid!" 
 
 He wondered, while thus musing, that no 
 despondency laid its touch on his spirits. 
 But soon the explanation grew sweetly yet 
 inexorably clear. He was going home to 
 recount his defeat. And to whom? To Alicia!
 
 170 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 IX. 
 
 She was radiant with, sympathy, and 
 Eninger as well. Fabian laughed at them 
 both for their vivid expressions of regret. 
 
 " I should hate," he said, " to see my play 
 emblazoned and filigreed into popularity. I 
 suppose every artist is at root an egotist, but 
 that does not of necessity make him a 
 mountebank. And after all, it matters very 
 little. I don't claim any great philosophic 
 sapience, but it has long ago seemed to me 
 that the sole unmercenary joy a man gets 
 from pen, brush or chisel is in simply wield- 
 ing either with patience and love. Human 
 applause, delicious though some ears find it, 
 never yet fully satisfied. It is always either 
 too loud, or not loud enough. No wonder that 
 wisdom often prefers the compromise of 
 silence." 
 
 "It's pleasant to feel that you are proof 
 against disappointment," said Alicia; and a
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 171 
 
 soft thrill passed through Fabian as she 
 spoke the words. The realization of her 
 sympathy was so exquisite to him that he 
 would have braved severe disappointment 
 for just the purpose of hearing a few such 
 humane sentences from her lips. For he 
 still loved her with inalienable passion, and 
 there were times when the fever and tumult 
 wrought in him by living as near her as he 
 did, were a harsh challenge to endurance. 
 Then again he would feel throes of the hap- 
 piest gratitude for being thus vouchsafed an 
 existence so entirely shorn of all former 
 tedium, so freighted with pleasure that still 
 deserved no other name, although its quality 
 was both hectic and aggravating, and pain 
 lay like a coiled worm at its core. 
 
 Eninger now devoted himself with great 
 push and warmth to his profession, using 
 what means of advancement were given him 
 by the name he bore in this the city of his 
 birth. Through the early weeks of spring 
 he began to detect signs of increasing thrift. 
 Several rich and important patients put 
 themselves in his hands, half through luck
 
 172 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 and half because they had been friends of 
 his parents, or of kindred more remote. He 
 was glad, for this reason, that Fabian chose 
 to accompany his wife in his own stead on 
 little social pilgrimages which would sadly 
 have tyrannized over his needed time. His 
 faith in his wife's love for him had now 
 become absolute. As regarded his thoughts 
 about Fabian's feelings toward Alicia, these 
 might have been named a nullity. He 
 looked upon Fabian through spectacles ide- 
 ally roseate. Even allowing that his friend 
 still loved Alicia, how could there be a 
 shadow of danger for her in the compan- 
 ionship of so splendidly self-controlled and 
 moral a being? She was doubly guarded, in 
 the first place by her wifely allegiance, and in 
 the second by Fabian's almost saintly honor. 
 Eninger, let it here be said, was wholly 
 right in his estimates. We know how sen- 
 sitive was his nature to all shades of emo- 
 tion, impression and conviction. He had 
 not erred now; he knew what he was doing, 
 or rather what he quietly waived the per- 
 formance of. But a certain extraneous force
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 173 
 
 presently strove to thrust sly stabs within 
 the creases of his rather tough panoply. 
 
 He visited Mrs. Westerveldt morning after 
 morning. He soon discovered that her neu- 
 ralgia was merely a dainty myth and that 
 she wanted his society or at least had 
 chosen to seem as if she wanted it far more 
 than any of his curative drugs. He had 
 repeated twinges of conscience during these 
 interviews, for the woman, in her perfect 
 grace and her marble loveliness, fascinated 
 him as he scarcely dared admit to himself. 
 Through quite an interval she refrained from 
 showing him any knowledge that Fabian, 
 his wife's old lover, had become a resident 
 in his home. Then, a little later, she con- 
 trived to make it appear as if he himself 
 had informed her of this occurrence. 
 
 She always received him in gowns that 
 were marvels of quiet taste. Her dwelling 
 was modesty and luxury interblent in cap- 
 tivating comminglement. She said to him 
 one morning, when the talk drifted upon 
 charm in women and their modes of creat- 
 ing it:
 
 174 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 u I can't think why it is that so many 
 tellers of stories like to associate their femi- 
 nine pets with ' a delicate perfume peculiar 
 to herself,' or 'an odor of that undefined 
 sort which clung to every fold of her gar- 
 ments,' or trash like that, of which we are 
 forced to read pages and pages. The truth 
 is, no woman who has the really cultured 
 sense can endure that kind of atmospheric 
 self-advertising. Show me one who is at- 
 tended forever and a day by a ' soft, cling- 
 ing perfume ' which only she possesses, and 
 I will both deny the originality of her bottle 
 of scent and explain to you that she is a 
 person of sleeping if not active vulgarities. 
 A woman who is healthful and cleanly of 
 life should always have the good -sense to 
 content herself with a drop or two of 
 pure English cologne on her handkerchief. 
 Essences are an infamy; they should only 
 belong to the women who are not on my 
 list of conversational topics." 
 
 He would watch her as she sat beside him, 
 with her white, taper hands and her edu- 
 cated smile. It seemed to him that she was
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 175 
 
 the sort of woman to set nearly any man's 
 heart beating wildly, and yet somehow she 
 quite failed of this effect as regarded himself. 
 Perhaps it might have been wholly other- 
 wise but for the tender domination of Alicia's 
 influence. At the same time Gertrude West- 
 erveldt charmed him. Only, her sway could 
 never pass beyond certain bounds. He won- 
 dered if she were beginning to detect this, 
 for it had occurred to him that she was bent 
 on some sort of conquest on receiving some 
 sort of distinct surrender. 
 
 ' ' What a blissful little family-group you 
 must make," she said, after he had been 
 adroitly lured, one morning, into a description 
 of the life they led in Forty-Second Street, 
 now that Fabian had gone there. ' ' You send 
 shudders of envy through my poor solitary 
 soul." 
 
 "No state of human affairs could be very 
 blissful," replied Eninger, "with that old 
 Diogenes of a Colonel Delamere constantly 
 at his growls." 
 
 " He must be trying. And your wife can 
 
 not repress him?" 
 12
 
 176 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "I sometimes think a ball-and-cliain 
 couldn't." 
 
 "But after all, he is only a slight trial. 
 You've so much else to be thankful for." 
 
 "Ah, now you're sneering." 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " Yes. You think this new arrangement 
 a most extraordinary one." 
 
 She gracefully lifted both hands for a 
 moment, and then dropped them. "But I 
 don't sneer at extraordinary things. On the 
 contrary, I sometimes delight in them." 
 
 " Oh, convention is a powerful god in your 
 theogony," he said. "Don't assert that it 
 isn't," 
 
 "I like what is called good form," she 
 returned; "I like it in everything." 
 
 "And you don't consider it good form for 
 Fabian Dimitry to have come to live with 
 us?" 
 
 "Bless me, how you take a person up," 
 she smiled. "Did I even suggest anything 
 so rude? And surely it's altogether a ques- 
 tion of how your wife stands the wear and 
 tear."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 177 
 
 "The wear and tear?" he echoed. And 
 then, leaning back a little in his chair, he 
 looked at her doubtfully, as though uncertain 
 whether she were satiric or merely sportive. 
 "In the name of common-sense," he went 
 on, seriously and with even a tinge of pique, 
 "you can't mean that I'm not sure of just 
 the way in which my wife regards her past?" 
 
 "Common-sense has very little to do with 
 matters of emotion," she said. "Don't 
 appeal to it, for as a patron of sentiment it's 
 a hollower god than the convention you ac- 
 cuse me of adoring." 
 
 He bit his lip; she irritated while she 
 diverted him. 
 
 "It's no matter of emotion with Alicia," 
 he asserted, somewhat crisply; "Fabian is 
 her friend and mine. There everything 
 begins and ends." 
 
 He watched the coming of her cold little 
 skeptical smile. He was prepared to see it 
 dawn, chill and slight, at the tips of her lips. 
 But when it came it vexed him, nevertheless. 
 
 " He was once her lover," she said, almost 
 under her breath, and looking down while
 
 178 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 she lightly brushed some speck from the lap 
 of her frock. 
 
 "I was once yours," he responded, with a 
 daring born of his covert exasperation. 
 
 She lifted her eyes to his, and her smile 
 grew bright, even ample, for her. "I 
 haven't gone to live in Forty- Second 
 Street," she murmured, with a sarcasm that 
 seemed wrapped in soft veils of mirth. " I 
 wonder how your Alicia would feel if I did 
 go. Would she be uncomfortable? Ah, 
 there would not exist for her any earthly 
 reason. We were never engaged; we never 
 plighted vows to each other. Besides, she 
 has no doubt the same immense faith in you 
 that you repose in her." 
 
 "A faith you reproach me for entertain- 
 ing." 
 
 " Have I said that?" 
 
 "I shouldn't like to think that you dis- 
 liked my wife." 
 
 "Disliked her? What conclusive leaps 
 you take! She's a very enviable woman." 
 
 " Thanks. But that isn't saying that you 
 like her."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 179 
 
 "I admire her. I've not yet had the 
 chance to become fond of her. a ?narc7ie, 
 however . . . we're getting to be better 
 friends all the while. In the meantime I've 
 reached one fixed belief about her." 
 
 "And that is?" 
 
 " She's a particularly clever woman. She 
 has much more tact and shrewdness than I 
 at first gave her credit for." 
 
 These latter tones of Mrs. Westerveldt' s 
 were more than innocently non-committal in 
 their quiet ring. Eninger now rose and 
 glanced at his watch, like the delayed physi- 
 cian he really was. Having taken his leave, 
 shortly afterward, he began to feel, as he 
 walked through the sunshine of a day rarely 
 suave for New York in early March, that a 
 little drop of poisonous alarm and discomfort 
 had stolen into his being. But to meet 
 Fabian once more and answer his honest 
 gaze, brought stings of self -rebuke. He so 
 utterly trusted his friend that this thought 
 came to him: If Fabian himself believed 
 there was any arriere pensee of a dangerous 
 kind in Alicia he would never have con-
 
 180 FABIAN DIMTTKY. 
 
 sented to take his recent step. Looking once 
 more into Alicia's eyes produced a like sense 
 of compunction. He almost found himself 
 regretting that Mrs. Westerveldt had gra- 
 ciously agreed to come and dine at his house 
 on the following day. 
 
 But the dinner proved as pleasant as it 
 was informal. The Colonel's bronchitis, 
 breaking out in a sudden severe attack and 
 keeping him upstairs aflame with anathemas 
 against the hateful American mutability of 
 the climate, produced an -absence that only 
 hypocrisy could have mourned. Mrs. West- 
 erveldt appeared to lay aside her statelier 
 reserve as though it were an opera-cloak that 
 she had let slip from her neat-modelled 
 shoulders. These shoulders were darkly 
 beclouded with the same black lace that 
 filmed itself over the sable silk of her gown, 
 and she wore no jewels except three or four 
 tiny clusters of diamonds glittering from the 
 region of throat and l>osom. She chose to 
 show how charmingly animated and affable 
 she could be at a small dinner like the pres- 
 ent one, and after she had left the dining-
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 181 
 
 room with her hostess, Eninger and Fabian 
 discussed her quite admiringly over their 
 cigarettes. 
 
 Entering the drawing-room, they found 
 that neither Alicia nor her guest awaited 
 them there. Both ladies, as it happened, 
 were at this moment upstairs in Alicia's 
 dressing-room. They had seated themselves 
 beside one another on an inviting divan, near 
 a fire that 'sparkled cheerily in the shaded 
 light. For some little time they talked 
 together, and during these moments Mrs. 
 Westerveldt seemed clothed for her observer 
 in a wholly new mantle of fascination. She 
 had been delightful at dinner; up here she 
 became attractive in a fresh and even more 
 feminine way. She questioned Alicia about 
 her transatlantic life and yet with not the 
 least touch of what could seem undue curi- 
 osity. Was she putting forth, for some 
 reason, her full powers of enchantment? If 
 indeed there was any effort of this nature it 
 now passed wholly unperceived. 
 
 "How is it," she at length said, "that 
 you Englishwomen so often have such lovely
 
 182 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 coloring? You must forgive me for being so 
 personal, but there's a rose, just now, on 
 either of your cheeks that seldom enough 
 grows in our Western gardens. 1 ' 
 
 Each rose turned a little redder, and Alicia 
 laughed with a fluttered tone as she answered: 
 " I'm a bit nervous this evening, somehow. 
 I suppose that has made me look flushed." 
 
 Mrs. Westerveldt took her hand, caressing 
 it with both her own. "I thought nobody 
 was ever nervous in your country," she said. 
 "I had supposed that we Americans monop- 
 olized nerves completely. Your hand is 
 really quite hot. I hope you're never a 
 victim, by the way, to my own horrid foe, 
 neuralgia?" 
 
 " No," said Alicia. With a sudden gesture 
 that seemed half unconscious, she drew away 
 the hand that her companion held, and lifted 
 it an instant toward the back of her head. 
 "But I have strange darting pains there" 
 she said, "though only at times." 
 
 "And you tell your husband about them? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "And pray why not? "
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 183 
 
 "Oil, I hate to worry him. He's had 
 annoyances enough, as it is, of late. We've 
 both had." 
 
 ' ' Ah, these may account for your pains. 
 But I thought you were very happy. You 
 have seemed very happy, always, though I 
 admit that you do sometimes have a slightly 
 worried look. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I am happy deeply so, as far as con- 
 cerns 7^/m." 
 
 "Him? Your husband, of course?" 
 
 "Who else?" 
 
 " Then there are other causes for your dis- 
 content? But I'll annul that question; I'll 
 consider it unspoken; it sounds fatally 
 familiar." 
 
 "Don't think it so," Alicia gently ex- 
 claimed. "Yes, there are other causes. It's 
 almost a borrowing of trouble, however, for 
 me to speak of them. Perhaps I should dis- 
 miss them altogether. Ray tells me I should 
 but never mind." She broke off here, 
 'with what seemed to her auditor an odd 
 abruptness. Quickly afterward she rose. 
 " Shall we go down-stairs again? " she asked.
 
 184 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "By all means, if you wish." 
 
 "Perhaps the gentlemen have ended their 
 smoking." 
 
 " Yes; their tobacco is a dreadful tyranny, 
 isn't it?" murmured Mrs. Westerveldt, as 
 she moved toward the dressing-glass. "May 
 I look at myself here for an instant? " 
 
 "Oh, by all means," Alicia answered. 
 And just then her guest saw her stoop and 
 pick up something, which flashed like an 
 electric spark before she hid or seemed to 
 hide it. This was witnessed in the mirror by 
 Mrs. Westerveldt, and for a brief space not 
 remarked as an act of the slightest import. 
 But presently she was assailed by a sense of 
 loss, glancing downward at the dark laces 
 which clad her breast. 
 
 " Ah, too bad! " she said. 
 
 Alicia glided up to her. "What is too 
 bad* ' ' came her question. 
 
 " One of my little diamond stars must h'ave 
 dropped from my gown. I remember that 
 the pin was slightly disjointed; my maid 1 
 told me so this evening. Could I have lost 
 it here?"
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 185 
 
 "Here?" replied Alicia. Mrs. Wester- 
 veldt turned and faced her as she thus spoke. 
 Those roses on her cheeks had suddenly 
 vanished. 
 
 "I'm very sorry," she went on, and began 
 to search the carpet with drooped head. 
 Mrs. Westerveldt stood and watched her 
 while she did so. Presently the two searched 
 together. ' ' Shall I call a servant?' ' soon 
 continued Alicia. "Or perhaps I'd better 
 turn up all the lights." 
 
 "Thanks," replied Mrs. Westerveldt: "I 
 mean, you may make it brighter if you will 
 kindly do so. That is all. ' ' 
 
 Alicia went to the gas-fixtures and quickly 
 filled the room with a much keener radiance. 
 Then, under this new aid, the search recom- 
 menced. But meanwhile Mrs. Westerveldt' s 
 eyes had slipped certain covert glances toward 
 the face of her hostess. Alicia's paleness 
 appeared sharply unusual, and once or 
 twice her step had almost the effect of a 
 stagger. 
 
 "Oh, very well," Mrs. Westerveldt sud- 
 denly said, ceasing to scan the floor. "I
 
 186 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 should not be surprised if I had made some 
 mistake." 
 
 " Some mistake?" faltered Alicia, meeting 
 the gaze directed on her and then averting 
 her eyes. 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. Eninger," came the answer, 
 very softly and courteously uttered. "It's 
 no doubt all my own stupidity. I dare say 
 my maid did not give me the little star, after 
 all. I'm so forgetful about these trifling 
 matters. If I'm wrong, however, and you 
 should come across it in dining-room, draw- 
 ing-room, hall, or anywhere, please have the 
 goodness but I needn't ask that, need I?" 
 And she smiled quite brilliantly upon Alicia, 
 adding: "Now, pray do not bore yourself 
 with thinking about this trifle for another 
 moment . . . Let us go down and join the 
 gentlemen, as you suggested." 
 
 "But I will order the servants " began 
 Alicia. 
 
 " Oh, no," amiably broke in Mrs. Wester- 
 veldt." " Pray do nothing of the sort. As 
 I said, it may all have been the fault of my 
 maid, who probably put the jewel back into 
 my box ..."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 187 
 
 They went down-stairs soon afterward, but 
 Mrs. Westerveldt, as they descended, man- 
 aged to make some new arrangement of her 
 small scintillant ornaments, thus rendering 
 the gap caused by the missing one far less 
 noticeable. 
 
 Alicia did not refer to the affair when the 
 drawing-room was reached and Eninger and 
 Fabian had been discovered there. Mrs. 
 Westerveldt furtively waited, yet no refer- 
 ence came. She had already drawn her own 
 conclusions; they soon grew more bitingly 
 distinct. The chill of an actual horror had 
 fallen upon her, but she tried to shake it 
 off. In this her success was only partial; 
 there were intervals when the voices of 
 Fabian and Eninger sounded far away, 
 as if they were calling to her from the next 
 room. Why did not Alicia speak? It was 
 damning, all things considered, that she 
 should not ... At last the hour for her de- 
 parture had come. She rose and went up to 
 Alicia, saying, "I've had a most delightful 
 evening," with lips that seemed to her as if 
 they must be blanched an ashen hue. But
 
 188 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 soon afterward, while giving a quick stare at 
 herself in a long glass, she saw that her 
 face had not altered. She was a woman who 
 believed in being calm; perhaps Eninger 
 would have judged more correctly of her if 
 he could have known that she had had at 
 least one emotion in her life, and that one 
 himself. But surely all other deep feeling 
 had suffered in her a process of massacre, 
 silent yet total. However, such repression 
 and extinction may have been brought about 
 is not by any means as easy for the analyst 
 of the human heart to explain as for the 
 astronomer to tell us how he weighs a world 
 in space. One effort has behind it the lucid 
 laws of mathematics; the other deals with a 
 far more baffling infinity. 
 
 Fabian escorted her into her carriage. 
 She was trembling, as he closed the door 
 with a hollow little clash, from an agitation 
 to which all her past life of serene self -equi- 
 poise proffered no parallel. She threw her- 
 self back on the cushions of the vehicle and 
 with locked teeth groaned aloud. 
 
 " I loved that man, Ray Eninger,'' ran her
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 189 
 
 thoughts, as the wheels below her smote 
 strident on the stony avenue. "I loved 
 him, and I married another man for money 
 because my heart was weary and tortured. 
 Ah! how well I remember- it all after these 
 years! . . . But now I find him the hus- 
 band of a woman like that! A woman he 
 loves, and who dares to pose as one who 
 loves him in return. She! It's monstrous 
 horrible! That turquoise ring I almost dis- 
 charged my maid, Francoise, for stealing on 
 the night she dined with me . . . why, 
 who but she took it, standing there at my 
 dressing-table as she did? I never dreamed 
 of suspecting her then. But to-night to- 
 night! ..." 
 
 The carriage rolled on, with harsh clatters 
 that gradually grew like spoken words to 
 the ear on which they struck. 
 
 Mrs. Wester veldt had remained until now 
 the speechless prey of her own savage mus- 
 ings. But now she straightened her form in 
 the dusk, and with hands instinctively 
 clenched she spoke aloud what rang to her 
 own sense like the translation into clearer
 
 190 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 phrase of those 'discords wrought by the 
 driving vehicle: 
 
 "This Englishwoman he's married is a 
 thief a thief a thief!" 
 
 When the carriage presently stopped at 
 her own door she was so faint and unnerved 
 that her footman had to give her his arm 
 before she could alight and ascend the stoop.
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 191 
 
 "I'm furious about the way the Academic 
 has treated you," said Mrs. Atterbury one 
 afternoon to Fabian, when he had dropped 
 in for the purpose of telling her the news 
 concerning his proffered play. ' ' This Bel- 
 size is a horrid wretch; I've heard of him; 
 he always wants a pot of money for lobbying 
 American plays through the theatre." 
 
 "Oh, Belsize isn't so blamable," replied 
 Fabian, almost gaily. " He's only the inevi- 
 table product of his time." 
 
 " He's an extortionist and a spendthrift," 
 exclaimed the little lady. "Yes, he's both. 
 I know him. I've heard all about him from 
 three or four of my literary friends. He 
 smokes the most expensive cigars; he drinks 
 champagne like water; he's a luxurious 
 Bohemian. And he has Mr. Lascelles under 
 his thumb. There wasn't any earthly reason 
 why he should have dared to propose your 
 giving him that money."
 
 192 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "I would gladly have given it to him," 
 said Fabian. 
 
 "You would, you goose!" cried Mrs. At- 
 terbury. "Then why on earth didn't you?" 
 
 " Because I didn't feel like bribing him to 
 leave the play alone and make believe to 
 Mr. Lascelles that he'd wrought wonders 
 with it." 
 
 " Oh, you do think him a fraud, then?" 
 
 " I dare say that few of us are intentional 
 frauds." 
 
 Mrs. Atterbury pursed her lips and gave 
 her head a cogitative slant. Then a charac- 
 teristic answer came from her, made up of 
 sound sense and flippancy in motley conjunc- 
 tion. 
 
 "I do so detest that exonerating style 
 toward self-evident humbugs. We can par- 
 don an ass if he talks sophistries. But when a 
 clever rogue like this Belsize does it, he needs 
 a knock-down fist, straight from the shoulder. 
 Now, look here : your work has nature's own 
 beauty and power in it; its tints and tones 
 and lights are as true as one of Constable's 
 best landscapes. You've got satire lots;
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 193 
 
 but you've charity to counterbalance it, and 
 make just the proper harmony we mean by 
 that funny little misused word we call art. 
 You've got other qualities oh, confound 
 it all, Tm not to be gammoned with the 
 sly rot of a special pleader like this fellow, 
 Belsize. He had his own axe to grind, and 
 thought you'd help him put a sharp edge on 
 it." 
 
 "And you thought," said Fabian, smiling, 
 "that I should have used that axe to hew 
 my path toward fame and fortune? " 
 
 She looked at him in her genuine, earnest, 
 slightly rowdy way. "Oh, stuff! I don't 
 believe you care a fig for either fame or 
 fortune! You'd keep writing your exquisite 
 plays if you' d been cast on a lonely island 
 and never expected to get off it." Here she 
 made a slight grimace. " But I don't know 
 about the solitude; I'm afraid you'd hate 
 that pretty badly for one reason. Your 
 Egeria couldn't be found in any of those 
 island grottoes, you know; she's a goddess 
 peculiar to Forty-Second Street." 
 
 " And one," he answered, rather sombrely,
 
 194 FABIAN DIMITBY. 
 
 "in whose divinity you seem to repose very 
 little faith." 
 
 "I've not met her at all often, please 
 remember. Personally, I've always thought 
 her fetching to any degree." 
 
 " Who's fetching to any degree?" said a 
 voice in the doorway, and Lewsy Atterbury, 
 home from Wall Street a little earlier than 
 was his wont, lounged into the room. " Show 
 me a woman that's more fetching than my 
 wife, and I'll send her the swellest landau 
 that '11 be seen in the park from now till 
 next July." 
 
 "Good heavens, Lewsy," exclaimed Mrs. 
 Atterbury; " as if she'd accept it unless she 
 were frightfully bad form! " 
 
 "Isn't that a comfortable chair you've 
 got?" proceeded Lewsy, as Fabian rose to 
 shake hands with him. '"Ponmy word, I 
 don't believe there's a chair in this whole 
 town that can quite match it. Just run your 
 hand round among those side cushions see 
 how deep they are; how they sort of sneak 
 into the small of your back and the rear part 
 of your ribs. Eh? Isn't that true? " And then
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 195 
 
 he began a narration about his unique luck 
 in picking up the chair at a wondrously low 
 price. Fabian only half listened. Once he 
 had thought Lewsy a diverting egotist, but 
 of late his vaunts had appeared too steeped 
 in monotony. 
 
 "We were just talking about Mrs. Enin- 
 ger, Lewsy," now said his wife, while Fabian 
 shot toward her a glance of involuntary dis- 
 approval. "She's a fetching woman. If 
 you don't think so you mustn't say it, or 
 you'll run the risk of being torn limb from 
 limb." 
 
 " Mrs. Eninger?" Lewsy seemed to muse. 
 "Oh, yes; she's a beauty a stunning 
 beauty." He turned to Fabian with eyes 
 a-twinkle and visible laughter lurking below 
 his large moustache. " I' 11 bet, though, Dim- 
 itry, that she don' t measure round the waist as 
 little as my Adela does. Now we both know 
 that Adela ^6' a trifle stout for her size; but 
 then " 
 
 " Lewsy, do you want to be throttled, you 
 personal scamp, you?" cried Mrs. Atterbury. 
 
 Fabian felt a light wave of disgust sweep
 
 196 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 through his nerves. He no longer could see 
 the least trace of amusement in this coarse 
 boasting on the part of his friend's husband. 
 Mrs. Atterbury, perhaps discerning his an- 
 noyance, chose to pull a sharp rein upon her 
 frivolities. Abruptly she became decorous, 
 demure, thoughtful. She showed Fabian 
 that side of her individuality which in cer- 
 tain moods he had almost grown to cherish. 
 The change in her seemed quick as if magic 
 had made it. On a sudden, as it were, he 
 heard her saying: 
 
 . :. "Oh, yes; my Wednesdays are a 
 social failure, and the more I see of New 
 York the more I realize the impossibility of 
 & salon. There's a real pathos in the way 
 caste deports itself here. It has none of the 
 self-reliance that belongs to aristocracies 
 oversea. It's afraid of its own respecta- 
 bility; it doesn't dare unbend. Mrs. Amster- 
 dam comes to drawing-rooms and looks all 
 about her with a little provincial simper that 
 I' ve learned to know by heart. She' d love to 
 plunge into things and have a good frank talk 
 with Jones, the journalist, or Tamarini, the
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 197 
 
 tenor. But she' s a mortal inward dread that to 
 do so might hurt her escutcheon of rank orig 
 inally a sign-board over some little shop 
 near the Battery, where her ancestors, only 
 a few generations ago, vended anything at 
 retail, from tobacco to cutlery. . . No, I de- 
 spair of trying ever to make sets mix. Large 
 civilizations do that. London does it very 
 successfully; Paris does it as only Paris can; 
 New York will some day do it, but by that 
 time I suppose they'll be reading our names 
 on the tombstones at Greenwood Cemetery 
 and wondering what a village New York 
 must have looked like when Central Park 
 was considered up town and High Bridge 
 was actually called a suburb." 
 
 Fabian broke into a pleased smile at this; 
 he had, in a way, got his old friend enter- 
 tainingly and suggestively back again. But 
 in a trice Lewsy spoiled everything for him 
 by an affable slap on the thigh and a gleeful 
 exclamation of 
 
 " There, old chap! How's that for a burst 
 of wit and wisdom combined and condensed 
 . . eh? D'you believe Mrs. Eninger could
 
 198 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 beat it? I guess she'd have to get up pretty 
 early in the morning if she wanted to." 
 
 Fabian found a prompt opportunity of 
 taking his leave. Just before he did so he 
 told his hostess that perhaps he might accom- 
 pany Mrs. Eninger to her next Wednesday, 
 but that he thought Mr. Eninger had an en- 
 gagement for that particular evening. After 
 he had gone, Lewsy returned from having 
 seen their guest out at the hall-door, and 
 joined his incomparable Adela, with a long, 
 significant whistle. 
 
 " So, Ad, eh, it's come to this, has it?" he 
 drawled, in a nasal exaggeration doubtless 
 caught from Wall Street. 
 
 "What do you mean, Lewsy?" said his 
 wife, with a kind of absent tartness in her 
 tone. 
 
 "So Dimitry's beginning to drop into 
 Eninger' s shoes, is he?" 
 
 "Hush, please." 
 
 "At present he wears them now and then, 
 just for a flyer. Pretty soon he'll want to 
 wear them altogether. Isn't that about the 
 size of it?"
 
 FABIAN DMITRY. 199 
 
 "Oh, nonsense. Recollect he might have 
 married her once, if he'd felt inclined." 
 
 But even while Mrs. Atterbury thus spoke, 
 the current of her thoughts took a different 
 turn. She had begun to distrust Alicia, and 
 with severer bitterness than she herself 
 knew. The conviction that Ray Eninger's 
 wife was all art and subtlety in her dealings 
 with Fabian had become matter for incessant 
 concern. Yes, Alicia was doubtless as deep 
 as the sea what else did the whole affair 
 look like? She had two men at her beck and 
 call; she was playing a game that some 
 women loved better than to wear a new dress 
 every day in the year. She was one of your 
 seeming-innocent coquettes, who hid the 
 wisdom of a serpent inside the coo of a 
 dove. "It might have been luckier for 
 Fabian Dimitry," Mrs. Atterbury would 
 sometimes muse, "if he'd married her and 
 she'd borne him mad children. Now he's 
 gone back to sit at her feet, and suffer. He 
 won't grant that he's not having a glorious 
 time. Still, I can read, as it were, between 
 the lines of his life."
 
 200 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 All this while Mrs. Atterbury was not 
 really sure if her doubts were justified. She 
 wanted to see more of Alicia, and at her own 
 reception the following night she made a 
 decided point of doing so. Alicia came with 
 Fabian, her beauty and grace attracting 
 instant attention as she entered the room, and 
 causing several gentlemen for whom Mrs. 
 Atterbury' s rather promiscuous Wednesdays 
 meant their sole excursions into the grand 
 monde, promptly to seek introductions. It 
 stung his hostess as she observed how Fabian 
 hovered always in the wake of Alicia. There 
 were at least five or six ladies in the rooms 
 to whom he had been presented, but he 
 either forgot this fact or ignored it. His 
 vassalage was in both cases, however, equally 
 irritating. Mrs. Atterbury watched it and 
 grew almost alarmed at the secret turmoil it 
 stirred in her. But for this effect she had a 
 speedy mental explanation or believed that 
 she had. Women who stand, as she did, on 
 the borderland of passion, are apt to tell 
 themselves that the tropic air they breathe 
 into their nostrils has got its warmth from 
 friendship alone.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 201 
 
 Her rooms were somewhat more crowded 
 to-night than usual. " You see," she said 
 to Alicia, "there's a strong tincture of the 
 Four Hundred here besides my unfashion- 
 able friends. It's Lent, you know, and some 
 of the smart people have nothing better to 
 do than come to m<3." 
 
 But she contrived, nevertheless, to stand 
 for a good while at the elbow of Eninger's 
 wife, and finally, as if with an idea of quite 
 taking the young Englishwoman unto herself, 
 she slipped her arm within Alicia' s and mur- 
 mured something that Fabian failed to over- 
 hear. Bat he followed in the wake of the two 
 ladies as they pushed politely through the 
 throng, and at last paused before a closed 
 door, after having traversed more than one 
 festal room. Then Mrs. Atterbury turned 
 and perceived him, and at once she said, 
 with a hardness in her voice but no incivility: 
 
 " Oh, it's you, is it? I was going to show 
 Mrs. Eninger my Lewsy's collection. You've 
 seen it, I believe." 
 
 "Yes; more than once," replied Fabian, 
 plainly unsuspicious of the truth.
 
 202 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Mrs. Atterbury opened the door and dis- 
 closed an interior much smaller than either 
 of the rooms just crossed. She detested 
 seals, cameos, etc., when viewed purely from 
 the collector's point of view, and so did her 
 husband, who would never have brought 
 together the present cabinetful. It had been 
 bequeathed him by an uncle who had passed 
 many years in the role of the rich American 
 virtuoso living abroad; it was of dark, red- 
 dish wood, exquisitely carved, and it rose 
 against the rich-tinted wall of the little cham- 
 ber dedicated to it, with a delicate antique 
 dignity. 
 
 "If ever a man had a white elephant on 
 his hands," declared Mrs. Atterbury, after 
 she had shut the door beyond which they 
 had all three passed, " it is my poor Lewsy 
 in his possession of this cabinet." She flitted 
 to a corner and reached her short arm ludi- 
 crously down into the interior of a huge 
 Japanese vase. " We keep the key here, in 
 the most reckless way, ' ' she proceeded. " It' s 
 flinging temptation into the teeth of our 
 servants, as I often tell Lewsy. But then
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 203 
 
 we're both so careless about keys and things 
 like that . . . Ah, there it is; I've nearly 
 broken my arm trying to get it." 
 
 At once the cabinet was opened, and many 
 small, beautiful treasures were disclosed. 
 Mrs. Atterbury, in her most flippant mood, 
 began to rattle nonsense about the worth of 
 the superb collection, and her frequent long- 
 ings to spend it as if it were a practicable 
 bank-account. Fabian, who had some knowl- 
 edge of such gems, though slight cult for 
 them when ranged in rows after this museum- 
 like fashion, regarded them now for the third 
 or fourth time with relative indifference. 
 He was perhaps too preoccupied to notice 
 that Mrs. Atterbury secretly bristled with 
 annoyance. She had wanted a private talk 
 with Alicia, a talk of exploit, study, acute 
 observation. His presence had possibly never 
 before been distasteful to her. But it was 
 because of him that she really wished, just 
 then, to have him absent from the wife of his 
 friend. 
 
 Alicia bent over the rarity and riches of 
 the collection with eyes that pleasurably
 
 204 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 glistened. For a little while Mrs. Atterbury 
 spoke in a light, explanatory, brilliant man- 
 ner of this or that jewel, hinting at historic 
 and archaic details which few but her inti- 
 mates might have accredited her with pos- 
 sessing. Then, while Alicia continued her 
 scrutinies, with golden head picturesquely 
 bowed, the lady of the house turned toward 
 Fabian. It so chanced that over the low, 
 plump shoulder of Mrs. Atterbury Fabian 
 could plainly see Alicia's profile, the droop 
 of her graceful arms, the movement or repose 
 of her slender hands. 
 
 "By the way," said his hostess, u lsaw 
 they're advertising a new play as ' in prepara- 
 tion' at the Academic." 
 
 "Yes, I saw," said Fabian. 
 
 "Something from the German, this time, 
 revised and adapted by your friend, Mr. Bel- 
 size." Mrs. Atterbury spoke the name with 
 a mutinous curl of her HpL "Oh, what a 
 race of snobs we Americans are in all matters 
 of art! How afraid we are to come out 
 honestly and cultivate the works of our own 
 countrymen! It's bad enough with our
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 205 
 
 dramatists, but at this hour and in this town 
 we've American painters of genius almost 
 without bread to give their wives and chil- 
 dren. . . What! are you so surprised to hear 
 it?" 
 
 "No no," replied Fabian quickly, "not 
 surprised at all." He had been looking at 
 Alicia, for a few seconds, and it would 
 appear as if something he had seen her do 
 had driven the color from his cheeks in this 
 dismayed style. Mrs. Atterbury stared at 
 him rather bewilderedly, and then turned 
 toward Alicia, who had just quitted the 
 cabinet. 
 
 "Have you finished your inspection?" 
 she asked. "And has it really not bored 
 you?" 
 
 "Oh, one could go on looking all night," 
 was the answer. 
 
 "You may do so if you please," laughed 
 Mrs. Atterbury. "I'll send you in a quart 
 or two of bouillon, and Mr. Dimitry will of 
 course remain and keep you company." 
 
 The intended satire was wholly lost upon 
 Fabian. His eyes were fascinated by the
 
 20(3 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 face of Alicia, and if they did not brim with 
 wild alarm it was because of the self-control 
 he had swiftly exerted. Alicia did not 
 respond to his look. He saw that a slight 
 new flush had come into her cheeks and that 
 her lips were in a faint tremor. Mrs. Atter- 
 bury had meanwhile gone to the cabinet 
 for the purpose of closing and locking it. 
 
 Suddenly she started back. "Why, what 
 is this*" she exclaimed. 
 
 No one spoke. Alicia did not; Fabian 
 could not. Mrs. Atterbury's gaze went from 
 his face to hers. It paused at the latter 
 before transferring itself back to the gap she 
 had just discovered in a certain row of the 
 neat-ranged curios. 
 
 "Have you been playing a little practical 
 joke upon me, Mrs. Eninger?" she asked. 
 
 " I?" faltered Alicia. 
 
 She smiled and put her head dubiously on 
 one side. "Come, now. If you've just 
 done it to frighten me, I'll forgive you." 
 And she held out her hand toward Alicia. 
 
 Fabian found a voice, then. He addressed 
 Alicia. "Mrs. Atterbury thinks, evidently,
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 207 
 
 that you've reason to be forgiven." He tried 
 to speak in careless tones, but wondered 
 whether they really sounded as odd and 
 hollow as his own ears reported them. 
 
 Alicia recoiled a little, with hands clasped 
 together and blue eyes excitedly shining. 
 
 "I I don' t understand, ' ' she said. ' 'What 
 is it that you think I have done?" 
 
 Mrs. Atterbury's expression underwent an 
 instant change. She hurried toward Alicia 
 and laid a hand on each of her shoulders. 
 "Oh, forgive me!" she broke forth. "I 
 thought you might have taken one of the 
 seals, but only in fun, of course. I'm so 
 sorry if I've annoyed you!" She now darted 
 to the cabinet once more. "Ah, what a pity, 
 what a pity!" she cried. "This comes of 
 Lewsy's carelessness and my own. One of 
 the servants must have found out where we 
 put that key. And yet I thought all our 
 servants were such honest creatures. I 
 thought " 
 
 She came to a dead stop, then, and a 
 blank look settled upon her face, like the 
 blur of frost on a window-pane. She 
 
 14
 
 208 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 knitted her brows in a perplexed way and 
 lifted one hand to her forehead. " But I 
 remember!" she at length cried, and pointed 
 toward the spot marked by the absence of 
 the missing gem. "It was there but a few 
 minutes ago," she pursued, "when I first 
 opened the cabinet. Yes yes; I can not 
 be mistaken. It was that amethyst intaglio, 
 with the head of Hermes almost the best 
 thing here. I'm fond of it; I always notice 
 it first, and I'd no sooner opened the cabinet 
 this evening than I ..." 
 
 But here she again paused. "Oh, what 
 am I saying?" she speedily recommenced, 
 but in a voice full of pained entreaty. 
 "Don't think I mean any insult to to 
 either of yourselves. But I saw the ame- 
 thyst, and and how could it have been 
 swept away by a sleeve or anything like 
 that? They're all bedded so firmly in the 
 velvet, and they're set too far back to be 
 displaced by any such accident." 
 
 She was now busied in an eager survey 
 of the collection. Her glance swept and 
 reswept its various files. Then, with a
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 209 
 
 despairing shake of the head, she briefly 
 examined the underlying floor. 
 
 While this went on, Fabian had absorbed 
 himself in Alicia. She had let her form 
 drop into a chair, and sat with gaze riveted 
 on the carpet. It was carpet of a light pearl 
 color, and the whole apartment was so 
 bright-lit that almost any meagre speck 
 could have been discerned there. 
 
 Fabian drew near to her. He felt as if his 
 heart stood still, while he leaned down a 
 little and prepared to murmur a few words 
 in her ear. But just then Mrs. Atterbury 
 discontinued her search and whisked sharply 
 about, facing them both. 
 
 "Oh, if it's gone it's gone," she said, with 
 troublous and petulant accent. Her eyes 
 met Fabian's. "I'm so certain that I saw 
 it just now," she continued. "I 
 
 And at this point Fabian took several steps 
 toward her, with a quiet gesture that had 
 in it the force of veto. 
 
 "I have not contradicted you," he said, 
 "but I must do so now. You state that you 
 are sure you saw no empty place yonder
 
 210 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 that you saw a certain gem where the gap is 
 now. Suppose I tell you that you're quite 
 wrong." 
 
 "Wrong?" repeated Mrs. Atterbury, with 
 a dazed mien. 
 
 * 'Yes, ' ' he proceeded. ' ' 1 'noticed that same 
 empty interval a second or two after you had 
 opened the cabinet." 
 
 Here Alicia lifted her head. 
 
 " You noticed it?" fell from Mrs. Atter- 
 bury. "Why, how strange! But no; no! 
 I'm positive 
 
 "Ah, my dear lady," broke in Fabian, 
 "I am positive as well." He gave a slight 
 laugh, and she to whom he spoke started at 
 it. "I've no wish to act uncivilly you may 
 or may not have taken the initiative there. 
 But I repeat to you that I saw the void 
 place which you declare was filled. Yes, I 
 saw it," he added, more slowly, and with 
 profound apparent meaning. 
 
 Silence followed. In the distance, from 
 behind the closed door, sounded a babble of 
 voices. Then the plaintive wail of a violin 
 pierced these and silenced them.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 211 
 
 "Albertini is beginning," said Mrs. Atter- 
 bury, with flurried vehemence. "And that 
 Lewsy of mine is so apt to botch things when 
 he plays master of ceremonies." At once 
 she relocked the cabinet, slipped its key 
 into her j>ocket, and hastened toward the 
 door. There she remained motionless for a 
 few seconds, and as if absorbed in meditation. 
 " Well," she suddenly burst forth to Fabian, 
 "I suppose you are right. You must be, of 
 course. I showed the collection this morn- 
 ing to a little party of friends, and perhaps 
 I confuse, in spite of myself, then with now. 
 But that doesn' t make the loss any less mys- 
 terious a one, does it? And . . . I I do hope 
 you'll both excuse me if, without intention, 
 I have said the least thing that might have 
 caused you . . . annoyance." 
 
 Fabian watched her look wander to Alicia as 
 she spoke these apologetic words. He knew 
 Adeia Atterbury so well that he could now 
 detect an unfamiliar spark in her eyes and 
 note in her voice a complete lack of the truly 
 repentant ring. 
 
 Alicia had risen, and before Fabian could
 
 212 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 speak she said, in her dulcet voice and with 
 entire repose: 
 
 "How could you have caused us annoy- 
 ance, my dear Mrs. Atterbury? I saw that 
 empty place, too, and we are both so sorry 
 for you. . . Are we not?" and she turned to 
 Fabian. 
 
 "Thanks," Mrs. Atterbury replied. The 
 word was mechanic and cold to the ears of 
 her friend, whatever Alicia's may have found 
 it. "I'll see you again quite soon, I hope," 
 she continued, in a voice of heartier inflec- 
 tion. And then she disappeared, leaving the 
 door ajar. 
 
 Fabian and Alicia were left alone together. 
 He went toward the door and caught hold 
 of its knob. As he reclosed the door, Alicia 
 exclaimed: "Why, what are you doing? 
 Shall we not go out and hear the music?" 
 
 Fabian stared into her face, feeling his 
 lips twitch a little. His hand fell from the 
 knob. He seemed to hear within his brain 
 the rapid and muffled beatings of his own 
 heart. 
 
 "Have you nothing to say to me?" lie 
 asked.
 
 FABIAK DIMITEY. 213 
 
 *'I?" murmured Alicia. She returned his 
 gaze, with surprise and perhaps a little touch 
 of arrogance. Then she slightly lifted her 
 shoulders, and added: " No." 
 
 "In that case," answered Fabian, "I 
 have something which I must say to you" 
 
 " What is it?" she asked. He had drawn 
 quite close to her, and a sparkle was in his 
 eyes that seemed as if wrath had kindled it 
 there.
 
 214 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 XL 
 
 The way in which she faced him almost 
 made Fabian recoil ; she appeared so firmly 
 self-possessed. 
 
 " I wished to tell you " he began. 
 
 ' ' Of what?' ' she inquired, with a high, 
 scornful note in her sweet voice. " Of that 
 woman's ill-breeding? I felt it, and no doubt 
 you did as well. But probably she did not 
 mean real rudeness. Her apology, I suppose, 
 must be taken for what it is worth. . . Let 
 us go into the drawing-rooms and hear the 
 violinist. I am so fond of that sort of music 
 when it is good, and even at this distance 
 his sounds as if it were excellent." 
 
 Fabian gnawed his lip. Twenty differ- 
 ent phrases occurred to him, but he could 
 not put one of them into speech. Presently 
 he said, with a repression of manner that he 
 felt she must observe and weigh, knowing 
 him as well as she did: 
 
 "Very well; I will accompany you. He
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 215 
 
 moved toward the door, she following. On 
 a sudden he reeled, like a man whose brain 
 has been beset by a blood-rush. 
 
 " You're ill!" cried Alicia, springing 
 toward him and laying a hand on his arm. 
 
 "No," he replied. Immediately he had 
 become like his usual self: He opened the 
 door and they went out together. As Alicia 
 crossed the threshold he heard her say: 
 
 "I don't think I'll care to stop much 
 longer. Our carriage was ordered for eleven, 
 wasn' t it?' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "It's nearly that now, is it not?" 
 
 "It's after eleven." 
 
 "Then we'll go in about five minutes, if 
 you don't object. Do you?" 
 
 "Not at all." 
 
 The playing of Signer Albertini was fine, 
 and it lasted (including the rapturous encore 
 which he received) not more than six or 
 seven minutes in all. He was an artist com- 
 pounded of a certain laziness and a certain 
 ambition. The result caused him to measure, 
 at amateur performances, the patience of his
 
 216 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 auditors, and alwaj^s to leave it discreetly 
 within the margin of weariness. As his 
 last strains died away, Alicia turned to 
 Fabian and quietly said: 
 
 "Let us go now. You see, Mrs. Atter- 
 bury is busy in conversation over yonder. 
 Do not let us disturb her with our good- 
 nights. Come." . . . 
 
 They had been several minutes in the car- 
 riage which drove them home, before the 
 silence between them was broken. Then 
 Fabian broke it. 
 
 "You thought Mrs. Atterbury rude?" he 
 began. 
 
 "Yes; horridly . . didn't you?" 
 
 "She missed one of her cameos." 
 
 " True. But you told her " And then 
 
 Alicia ceased to speak. They sat opposite 
 each other, but could not see one another's 
 faces. 
 
 " I told her that she had made a blunder," 
 Fabian said. 
 
 " In so many words yes." 
 
 " Was I right?" While he put this ques- 
 tion he felt every nerve in his body to be
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 217 
 
 tensely strung as the chords of some instru- 
 ment which another turn of the key might 
 shatter into incompetence. 
 
 "Eight?" came Alicia's answer, with a 
 querulous ring. "Why, you said you saw 
 that one of the gems was missing. How 
 could you not have been ' right ' if you told 
 her that?" 
 
 Fabian threw back his head in the obscu- 
 rity and sat thus with close-pressed lips. 
 
 And now there swept through the fibres of 
 his brain just that change which for a man 
 circumstanced like himself was perhaps the 
 inevitable one. He found that extenuation 
 was dipping for him in deep wells, and like 
 a drinker hotly athirst he took the proffered 
 draughts. 
 
 How, after all, if he had been tricked by 
 some mere cheat of eyesight? Good heavens, 
 had he really seen Alicia snatch that ame- 
 thyst from the velvet shelf? Suppose he had 
 been deluded by his own senses. Then how 
 keen the insult, how monstrous the injustice! 
 
 Their carriage stopped; the drive had been 
 but a short one. Fabian opened the door and
 
 218 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 sprang out. As Alicia gave him her hand 
 he perceived that it was trembling terribly. 
 
 "I I am afraid I shall fall," came her 
 voice, feebler than he had ever yet heard it. 
 But even then she made the effort to alight, 
 and in doing so literally fell into his arms. 
 
 He almost bore her up the stoop. It soon 
 was plain that she had nearly lost conscious- 
 ness. Eninger, having heard the carriage 
 stop, met them on the threshold. 
 
 Alicia's fainting state was a sharp shock 
 to him. He seized her from the embrace of 
 Fabian with gestures unconsciously austere. 
 To lay her on a sofa in the near drawing- 
 room was to discover that she had really 
 swooned. 
 
 "What has caused this?" the husband 
 questioned of his friend, with an imperious- 
 ness which doubtless he himself did not 
 realize. 
 
 "I can not say," replied Fabian. " I had 
 no idea she was ill until the carriage stopped 
 until I myself had left it." 
 
 Eninger was too good a physician not 
 quickly to decide that the attack missed
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 219 
 
 being serious. Before there was time to 
 apply any restorative, Alicia unclosed her 
 eyes. She did so with a look of affright, a 
 hysterical scream, and a burst of tears. 
 
 "It is nothing," said Eninger to Fabian. 
 " You had best leave us here together. I'll 
 do what I can to quiet her." 
 
 Speaking thus, he momentarily turned his 
 back upon his wife. Whatever she may now 
 have effected in the way of a. soothing dis- 
 covery, her demeanor swiftly became calm. 
 As Fabian quitted the room, she rose from 
 the sofa. 
 
 "I think I will go up-stairs, Ray," she 
 said. "I'll ring for Margaret to undress 
 me." 
 
 "My darling," he softly cried, wrapping 
 his arms about her; "how did it happen?" 
 
 "I don't know . . it came like a flash." 
 
 "You had not been dancing?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " You were talking there in the carriage 
 with Fabian?" 
 
 "Yes, Ray. . . Let me go up at once,' 
 won' t you please, dear?' ' 
 
 "Of course . . this instant."
 
 220 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 The next morning, as Fabian came down to 
 breakfast, lie found Alicia seated at the 
 coffee-urn with no change for the worse on 
 her fresh -tinted face. The Colonel had just 
 begun a tirade which Eninger heard with his 
 usual saintly patience. It was a propos of 
 a wedding-invitation which had just been 
 courteously sent him by the mother of the 
 prospective bride, a certain Mrs. Van Wag- 
 enen, whom he had met once or twice under 
 his son-in-law's roof. 
 
 "So her daughter's going to marry the 
 Honorable Cecil Verrinder, is she the 
 younger son of Lord Brecknock? Bless my 
 soul, it' s an outrage the way these American 
 girls fly at the throats of our English boys!" 
 
 "It may be the other way," hazarded 
 Eninger carelessly, while buttering a bit of 
 toast. ' ' Miss Eva Van Wagenen is worth one 
 million of money and she's the heiress to 
 another." 
 
 "Ah," said the Colonel, with an unholy 
 sourness on his lean visage. ' ' Quite so, my 
 dear Ray. The Honorable Cecil sells his ped- 
 igree and position. Miss Van ... I never
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 221 
 
 can either recollect or pronounce half your 
 jaw-breaking Knickerbocker names . .. . Miss 
 Van Hodgepodge completes her pretty bar- 
 gain and gets a social grip on the Prince of 
 Wales 1 s coat-tails forever and a day. How 
 nobly American! How magnificently repub- 
 lican! Who dares to call democracy a failure? 
 'Gad, not I; I'm too afraid of having a head 
 put on me by some of these mighty Western 
 patriots. Isn't that the right phrase for one 
 to use, by the way . . . a head put on one?" 
 And the Colonel slipped his little silver egg- 
 spoon into the yellow heart of his already 
 decapitated egg. 
 
 Fabian just then took his seat at the table, 
 and Alicia, with an evident desire to miti- 
 gate the awkward pause (although her voice 
 did not seem to the new-comer by any means 
 her native and authentic one) here suavely 
 observed: 
 
 "Oh, well, father, you'll go and see Miss 
 Van Wagenen internationally married, I 
 hope, notwithstanding your dislike of his 
 bride's cold-blooded creeds." 
 
 "Spare poor Eva," said Eninger, with
 
 222 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 gentle protest. ' ' I knew her in pina- 
 fores. I dare say she's most genuinely in 
 love." 
 
 This gave the Colonel another opportunity 
 of being acrid; but all his three auditors 
 were already resigned to the fact that a ces- 
 sation of his bronchitis predetermined an 
 unpleasant breakfast-table. 
 
 Nobody appeared specially to remark his 
 new outbursts of airy venom. . . Fabian, 
 this morning, was unwontedly speechless, 
 though often he had his fits of silence 
 always of a sort, though, which somehow 
 implied his quenchless amiability. 
 
 Near the door of his. office Eninger turned 
 and saw his wife. "You're truly feeling 
 brighter?" he asked, and with a swift little 
 swerve of the hand his fingers were on her 
 pulse. She waited compliantly, for a few 
 seconds; and then he said: "You've taken 
 that medicine I gave you?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well; remember the time for taking it. 
 You don't forget? No? I wouldn't go out 
 for three or four hours."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 223 
 
 "But you're going out soon, I suppose." 
 And she touched his hair caressingly. 
 
 "Yes. . . But I'll see you at lunch- 
 eon." 
 
 She suddenly looked about her, as if to 
 make sure that the hall in which they stood 
 was quite empty. Then she kissed him on the 
 lips. Eninger did not like the kiss, deeply 
 as he adored his wife. Her lips felt too 
 feverish. . . 
 
 Going alone, a little later, into his office, 
 he was soon joined by Fabian. 
 
 "Do you think she is unwell?" asked 
 the latter, standing at his friend's side while 
 Eninger sat before his desk. 
 
 "No. . . no," replied Alicia's husband. 
 But he rose with a vague show of anxiety the 
 next instant. Abruptly he grasped Fabian's 
 hand. 
 
 "My dear boy!" he said . . and then 
 he paused. 
 
 "Well?" responded Fabian. 
 
 Eninger laughed in a dashed way. 
 
 "I was a little brusque with you last 
 night, was I not? I mean, when she fainted 
 
 15
 
 224 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 like that. Did you notice it? Forgive me 
 if you did." 
 
 " Oh, readily, Kay. It was nothing. I I 
 was worried about her." 
 
 "You're not worried now?" 
 
 " No . . yes." 
 
 " Yes?" 
 
 U I don't see why her pulse nutters so. 
 Her heart is as sound as a dollar. . . Well, 
 we doctors are the most empirical lot; what 
 do wie really know? Are you going for a 
 walk? I shall go for a professional one in a 
 few minutes. ..." 
 
 The first stopping-place Eninger made was 
 at Mrs. Westerveldt' s. He had not seen 
 her since the evening of the dinner in his 
 own house, when she had appeared as the 
 single guest. He knew that she had expected 
 him quite a while ago. She received him 
 with one of her smiles, vague, characteristic; 
 he had not yet just made up his mind which 
 one it was when she had motioned him into 
 a seat and sank with feather-like pliancy 
 into another. 
 
 They talked for a while about her health,
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 225 
 
 until the subject became to Eninger ludi- 
 crous, and he forbore queries. He said a 
 few things (rather aimless things, as he 
 believed them) and then his patient some- 
 what pointedly inquired: 
 
 "And so your wife has been ill? That is 
 too bad. And she got her trouble at the 
 Atterburys'? Well, there's no vast matter 
 for surprise." 
 
 "How you hate your stout little kins- 
 woman." 
 
 She took no notice of this observation. 
 " It was after driving home in the carriage 
 with Mr. Dimitry? How unfortunate!" 
 
 "Unfortunate;!" Eninger repeated. 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes. I mean, that it should have hap- 
 pened there." He understood her smile, 
 now, and disliked it; he had seen it before. 
 "And your Fabian . . your dear friend . . 
 he was the soul of devotion, naturally." 
 
 Eninger ground his teeth, and the anger 
 flew redly to his cheeks. He tried to be 
 tranquil, with some answer murderously 
 ironic, and failed. 
 
 "I thought you disliked my wife," he
 
 226 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 said, ' ' and now I perceive that you wish to 
 cast insult on her." 
 
 Those few ireful words had a knell in them 
 for the woman who listened. They told her 
 how this man loved his wife how cold he 
 was to her, .Gertrude Westerveldt, and how 
 he must so remain, as regarded all future 
 powers of passion. They struck on her 
 strange soul with the force of a tenfold slur. 
 She at once spoke. 
 
 "I've cast no insult upon her," she said. 
 " I should not know how to do so if I tried. 
 What would be insult to a woman like that?' ' 
 She rose, the next instant. "Come, now," 
 she said, "tell me how it happened that you 
 ever married such a creature?" 
 
 Her words appalled Eninger. He sprang 
 erect, with clenched hands. "How dare 
 you?" he exclaimed. 
 
 ' * I dare do much, ' ' came the answer, ' ' when 
 I see a man of your mind and strength so 
 duped and fooled." 
 
 "Ah," he cried, "you are hideously cruel. 
 This is the merest vulgar hate, spite, bru- 
 tality. I will not listen to another word
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 227 
 
 from you. I should despise myself if I 
 did." 
 
 She had almost lost her head she who had 
 kept it so coolly thus far throughout her 
 lifetime. His loyalty was like a venomed 
 barb to her. The thought seemed trebly 
 odious that he should taunt her with this 
 loyalty when its object was so despicable. 
 For since a certain evening there had been 
 nothing too bad that she could mentally call 
 Alicia. She had made up her mind that 
 Eninger's wife was the incarnation of all 
 human grossness. This conclusion was in 
 part due to her jealousy and in part to her 
 late experience. "A thief, a thief," kept 
 now ringing through her brain, as it had 
 rung for many a past hour. ' ' A thief for 
 him, for Fabian Dimitry, her old lover, 
 whom she has got into the home of her 
 husband," rang there also, with haunting 
 and horrible cadence. She had meant to tell 
 Eninger just what she believed as certainty 
 regarding his wife. But now his sudden 
 declaration of departure stirred her with a 
 harsh dismay.
 
 228 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Her lips felt dry and hard as she sought 
 to use them. Eninger was at the threshold 
 of her room when she exclaimed: 
 
 " You speak of despising yourseflf. De- 
 spise lier!" 
 
 Eninger raised his hand and shook it 
 toward the speaker with an expression of 
 blended indignation and pain. Then he 
 passed from the room. 
 
 Gertrude Westerveldt drooped her head 
 and brooded, with the sense of a poignard 
 fleshed and rusting in her bosom. 
 
 "How he loves that wretch!" she thought. 
 ' 'And I did not tell him. I meant to tell him, 
 but I did not. . . She is a thief, but why? 
 Can it be for Mmf Dimitry has always 
 had money, and that legacy just left him 
 adds to it. . . Ah, well, she wants her 
 gains for herself. A woman who would do 
 the thing I saw her do what vile purpose 
 may not sway her?" 
 
 Alone, sitting there in her home of wealth 
 and ease, this proud creature whom no one 
 had ever seen shed a tear, now bent her head 
 with an instinctive desire to hide the scalding
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 229 
 
 drops that burnt her cheeks while they fell. 
 But the tears had scarcely gushed from a 
 human source. Themheat had in it the sav- 
 agery of defeated passion. 
 
 Fabian went out into the streets almost 
 immediately after breakfast. The day was 
 chill but not inclement. He wandered up 
 town and down town^ He was bitterly ill 
 at ease. Passing the Academic, he saw that 
 a fresh bill was announced for that evening. 
 Surprised at first, he remembered that he had 
 seen in some newspaper the statement that a 
 new play would be produced at this theatre 
 an adaptation from the French by Mr. 
 Belsize owing to the failure of a previous 
 production. He bought an orchestra-seat at 
 the box-office of the Academic and resolved 
 that he would not go back to Forty-Second 
 Street until bed-time. He went to see an 
 artist who was a friend of his, and sat for 
 two hours in a studio where several un- 
 sold and unsalable masterpieces gleamed as 
 rebukes to American taste and patriotism. 
 The artist was a genius, but neither explosive
 
 230 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 nor misanthropic. He painted sturdily and 
 did not jar his nerves by shrieks against his 
 land and time. Fabian left him with a sense 
 that there were many other spirits in the 
 world as sorely lashed by fate as himself. 
 It was not a new realization, but it somehow 
 came to him, just now, fraught with a novel 
 comfort. 
 
 After that he lunched frugally somewhere, 
 with a languid appetite, and took another 
 long walk, which ended at the door of Mrs. 
 Atterbury. 
 
 She received him in bonnet and street- 
 dress. ' ' I had feared you were going abroad 
 this pleasant day, or had already gone," he 
 said, while she gave him her hand. 
 
 " No; I'm still at home, as you see. That 
 is, I'm at home to you. There's hardly 
 anyone else whom I would have seen just 
 now." 
 
 "That's both frank and genial." 
 
 "I'm afraid I don't want it to be genial." 
 
 " You're in a bad humor?" 
 
 "Horribly." 
 
 "I suppose it has a definite cause," said
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 231 
 
 Fabian, slapping one knee with the limp 
 fingers of his glove and keeping his look 
 lowered while he did so. 
 
 Mrs. Atterbury's eyes were meanwhile 
 fixed intently on his face. "Can't you 
 guess the cause?" she said, and her voice 
 was vibrant as if with hidden feeling. 
 
 "The loss of that precious intaglio?" 
 These words Fabian spoke almost below his 
 breath, while still not lifting his look. 
 
 "Yes and no," she answered, and her 
 words now seemed to wear edges like a 
 knife's and to cut the air of the room. "The 
 mere loss of the seal was one thing; how its 
 loss occurred was another." 
 
 Fabian did lift his look, then. "You 
 haven't solved the mystery?" he asked. 
 
 "No if it is one." 
 
 "Your answer is puzzling. Either there 
 is a mystery or there is not." 
 
 She replied to him in tones more meas- 
 ured. "The statement you made, if made 
 truthfully, of course creates a very dense 
 mystery indeed." 
 
 He fired, at this, as she had perhaps
 
 232 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 expected him to do. " So you suspect me of 
 falsehood?" he demanded. Then, as she 
 offered no response, he continued: "I doubt 
 if there's a servant in your house who 
 doesn't know just where the key of that 
 cabinet is kept." 
 
 A smile, that seemed to him full of irony, 
 flitted over her face. " Oh, good heavens!" 
 she broke out, with what some people would 
 have called her most vulgar manner but 
 which was to him . simply her most sincere 
 one, "you're a fine dramatist,, as I've told 
 you many a time, but you're a very bad 
 actor. I see it now; I wasn't ever sure of it 
 before, because I've only known you when 
 you were yourself." 
 
 He kept silent for a few seconds, with one 
 foot making rapid little motions and both 
 hands nervously pulling at the heavy fringe 
 of a table-cloth close beside him. "Do you 
 know," he presently began, "that you're 
 accusing me of . .of hypocrisy?' ' (His eyes 
 avoided hers, and his speech grew more 
 hesitant as he went on.) "Bo you realize 
 that you're you're placing me in . . well, 
 in a position that . . that is quite horrible?' '
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 233 
 
 "I don't place you in ft. You place your- 
 self in it." 
 
 "How? how?" he swiftly questioned, and 
 caught up the gloves which he had thrown 
 aside, almost seeming to tear them between 
 his working fingers. "Don't you think I 
 told you the truth last night when I said . . 
 what . . I sakli" 
 
 "No. You've hit the nail on the head 
 precisely. I don't think you did tell the 
 truth. I think you tried to 
 
 She paused there, and a long, steadfast 
 glance was exchanged between them. 
 
 Fabian put up one hand warningly; he had 
 grown pale to the lips. "Be careful," he 
 said. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders and tossed 
 her head. " My servants didn't know where 
 that key was; I'll swear they didn't. . . I've 
 been brooding over this whole matter. I 
 can't help feeling as I do. . . Ah, do you 
 know wliy?" she went on, with a wrath that 
 drew down the lines of her mouth and 
 clouded her brows. "The reason is this: 
 reflection has convinced me that I did see
 
 234 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 the amethyst there when I first opened 
 that cabinet. I'm fond of that one stone, 
 and somehow my eyes always light on it 
 first when I show the collection. I've really 
 loved it; only the other day I asked Lewsy 
 to let me wear it for a pendant on my dia- 
 mond necklace. / saw it, do you under- 
 stand." She leaned to ward 'him fiercely, 
 and smote the table with one plump, clenched 
 hand. "If there's a man on God's earth, 
 Fabian Dimitry, whose word I'd believe 
 through thick and thin, that man is you. 
 But even such a man as you will lie for a 
 woman he's gone mad about." 
 
 Fabian rose; he was trembling. "You 
 believe I lied last night?" he asked. 
 
 "To shield her yes." 
 
 "To . . shield her . . from what?" 
 
 "The charge of theft." And then Mrs. 
 Atterbury rose too. 
 
 "You must be mad," he said, his tones 
 husky and forced. " Theft? What conceiv- 
 able motive could that lovely and refined 
 creature have had in taking the stone?" 
 
 "Never mind her motive!" shot from his
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 235 
 
 hearer. "Still, she's grown poor, lately or 
 her husband has. It' s frightful to say such 
 words as these. I've never breathed a syl- 
 lable of what I'm now saying. I've kept 
 the least hint of it from Lewsy. I expected, 
 you here to-day. Listen: this bonnet and 
 walking-suit are both a sham. I'd lots of 
 things to do, but I dare say I'd have staid in 
 till dark, because when you come to me after- 
 noon is usually your time. You did come, 
 and you came to try and throw new dust in 
 my eyes. Yes . . it's just that. You saw 
 Tier take the amethyst. Oh, you'll deny it. 
 I'm prepared to hear you deny it. You 
 worship her, though you gave her up over 
 there in London. Now you're at her feet. 
 Mind, I don't breathe a ghost of a charge 
 against your honor. That I know to be 
 stainless unstainable. But you're so much 
 her slave that with all your truth and nobil- 
 ity you'd go straight into the jaws of hell if 
 she called you there." 
 
 Dead silence now ensued between the 
 speakers. Fabian's face was like marble. 
 He walked toward the door, stopping within 
 a slight distance of it.
 
 236 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "You are outrageous," lie said, very col- 
 lectedly. "I did not lie to you. I spoke 
 the absolute truth. Alicia Eninger is the 
 wife of my dearest friend. You heap infamy 
 upon her, and expect me to endure such ter- 
 rible charges. I've heard them calmly. If 
 you were a man, I'd call you to account for 
 them. You're a woman, and so I shall try 
 to pity you." 
 
 He felt dizzy after he had got from the 
 house into the street. He had never dreamed 
 it possible that he could be called upon to 
 defend Alicia in this fashion, whatever idea 
 he might have had that inherited madness 
 in her would take quaint and repugnant 
 forms. But his recent defense now seemed 
 to him clad with justice. Why not? He 
 had never seen her really commit this act, 
 nor had Mrs. Atterbury, either. He had 
 lied to blunt the suspicions formed and cher- 
 ished against her, and in all his life he could 
 not remember having ever deliberately lied 
 until now. But conscience did not smite 
 him. He felt a deep resentment toward the 
 woman he had just left, and an impulse to
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 237 
 
 go up among the house-tops and cry from 
 them ' ' She is innocent, she is taintlessly 
 innocent."
 
 238 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 XII. 
 
 He did not return home, that evening, 
 until he had sat out the new play at the 
 Academic, dining beforehand in the restau- 
 rant of a hotel not far away. The theatre 
 seldom wearied him, even though the play 
 was fatally dull. But now, for almost the 
 only time in his experience, he found it hard 
 to fix attention upon characters and plot. 
 Then, during the second act, he felt himself 
 really attrape. The performance was very 
 disciplined and intelligent. Besides, he be- 
 gan to recognize the play as something he 
 had once seen in Paris. Then, a little later, 
 however, he became confused on this point. 
 Had he really seen the play, after all? And 
 at last the truth broke upon him: Belsize had 
 been pottering and fussing with it. The 
 "immorality" had been carefully carved 
 out and something substituted in the result- 
 ant void. The something struck him as
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 239 
 
 horribly inharmonious with the original 
 play. It produced an effect of general twist 
 and distortion which made him wonder how 
 the public could deal in such copious plaudits 
 and fail to see that they were bestowed upon 
 material which was altogether the merest 
 harlequinade of life. He now recollected a 
 strong situation in the fourth and final 
 act, and when the curtain had fallen upon 
 the third he wondered what hocus-pocus of 
 "adaptation" Belsize had used with respect 
 to that particular scene. Surely if pre- 
 vious passages had been deemed offensive, 
 this must have proved still more so. But in 
 the French work, however, it had seemed 
 vitally consequential. Even to-night the 
 " way out" looked hardly practicable unless 
 it were used. Would it be used? 
 
 The curtain rose on the fourth act, and 
 Fabian soon perceived that it had not been 
 used. And gradually he began to see that a 
 " way out" had been discovered which bore 
 no relation to the real author's treatment. 
 And yet this pulling of lines, this manipula- 
 tion of events, what were they portending? 
 
 10
 
 240 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Suddenly the full truth dawned on Fabian. 
 Belsize had taken from his own play its one 
 most potent and dramatic incident. There 
 it was, boldly, insolently stolen. There 
 could not be the slightest doubt. It was 
 clever enough, as such knavery goes, but it 
 stared at him from behind the footlights 
 with the cool bravado of an unblushing 
 forgery. The text was not his, and yet 
 many drifts both of thought and phrase, 
 wore birth-marks that only guile could have 
 disputed. 
 
 The scene "went" with a tremendous 
 elan. Its glittering little segment had been 
 slipped adroitly into the general mosaic and 
 shone thence as if the lustre had been bor- 
 rowed from no unrighteous aid. Fabian felt 
 the shock of disgust which honesty never 
 escapes when it wakes to the fact of its own 
 audacious betrayal. "And this sort of 
 thing," he mused, as he quitted the theatre, 
 "is what meets the conscientious maker of 
 American plays when he seeks decent recog- 
 nition. Persons like this unscrupulous mid- 
 dleman, Belsize, are those with whom we
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 241 
 
 run the chance of such hideous treach- 
 eries." 
 
 If his mind had been less weighted by 
 another and sterner trouble he might have 
 sought Belsize at once and taxed him with 
 the cheap, oily fraud so lately compassed. 
 But as it was, he went home. The house 
 was very still and dark when he entered it. He 
 sat for some time brooding in his room before 
 came the desire for rest. And then, as he 
 began to undress, it occurred to him, abruptly 
 and even humorously, that he had been losing 
 all remembrance of Belsize' s low deed. A 
 little while ago it would have been so differ- 
 ent with him! He would then have thought 
 of bearing his wrong to Eninger and Alicia, 
 and of receiving upon it their discussion, 
 their counsel, their sympathetic indignation. 
 
 But during the next few days he found 
 himself ill-at-ease in their company. Alicia 
 had fits of headache which prevented her from 
 always appearing at meals. Eninger was 
 unhabitually tacit and reserved, making his 
 friend wonder at the cause of such moods in 
 him, while feeling confident that he could
 
 242 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 not have been assailed by any semblance of 
 his own secret worriment. 
 
 Little as Fabian realized it, Eninger was 
 tormenting himself with the question: " Can 
 this man possibly merit the suspicion that 
 Gertrude Westerveldt has dared to foster?" 
 His frame of mind was not a jealous one. 
 Its uneasiness came more from a perverse 
 visitation of doubt against which his better 
 sense fought resolutely, as some intellect on 
 the verge of dementia might oppose halluci- 
 nations known to be born of bodiless imps 
 and jack-o'-lanterns. 
 
 No; he would believe nothing so cruel of 
 one whose honor he had every reason to hold 
 speckless and crystal. More than this: 
 Fabian Dimitry had become an individualism 
 best expressed to him in terms of spirit 
 rather than flesh. Such nobility was a law 
 unto itself, and one no less lovely than cogent. 
 Repeatedly he was on the verge of grasping 
 Fabian's hand and saying to him: " I knew 
 you for years as the perfection of probity; 
 I have known you for a few weeks past as 
 the ideal of generosity; therefore it delights
 
 FABIAN- DIMITEY. v 243 
 
 me to choose you as my chief confidant in 
 this matter which relates to reckless asper- 
 sions against yourself." 
 
 He did not say these words, or words at 
 all like them; and yet one evening, after 
 having been reticent through a dinner from 
 which Alicia was absent because indisposed, 
 and during which her father had erected 
 porcupine-quills with an especial fretf ulness, 
 he paused in the hall beside his friend and 
 asked him if he would care to smoke for a 
 little while in the adjacent "office." Thither 
 they repaired, and seated themselves side by 
 side. But the mutual constraint was keenly 
 though indefinitely felt until at last Enin- 
 ger, with sudden frankness, broke forth: 
 
 "Fabian, what do you think can ail Alicia? 
 She's horribly depressed." 
 
 "Depressed?" Fabian softly echoed, try- 
 ing not to look as if this irrelevance had 
 caused him the least inward start. 
 
 " Her trouble defies me," continued Enin- 
 ger. " It appears to be mental . . and yet I 
 can't think it serious. You know" (he 
 turned and looked his companion full in the
 
 244 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 eyes) " . . you surely know why any faint 
 sign of that in her should cause me sharpest 
 dread." 
 
 "I know," Fabian replied. Those two 
 brief little words had a pregnancy and pun- 
 gency that fifty more could not have aug- 
 mented. 
 
 "The action of her heart is irregular," 
 Eninger went on, making a smoke-ring and 
 then bisecting it with a slant cut of his cigar. 
 "I'm sure there's no organic malady, how- 
 ever; it's purely functional. If I could once 
 make up my mind that the root of the diffi- 
 culty lay there . . but I can't, as yet." 
 
 "Why don't you take her away?" asked 
 Fabian. 
 
 " You mean to Europe?" 
 
 " Yes. To Switzerland, or better, the Aus- 
 trian Alps. Somewhere, at least, let us say, 
 where the air is pure and bracing and she 
 can have those two mighty means of help, 
 utter change and utter rest. It might work 
 marvels." 
 
 Eninger made a desperate kind of move- 
 ment. "Is she really ill enough for that?"
 
 FABIAU DIMITRY. 245 
 
 he exclaimed. " Fabian! tell me just how 
 ill you think she is! I confess that I've 
 failed to find out. Perhaps your layman's 
 eyes are keener than my professional ones." 
 
 Eninger had now risen from his chair; he 
 stood beside that of Fabian, with one hand 
 resting on the shoulder of his friend. 
 
 "I have noticed a change," came the 
 awaited answer, though it was not at all 
 swift in coming. " But this change has not 
 struck me as a marked one. A little delay 
 ought to work no harm." 
 
 "You mean," queried Eninger, "a watch- 
 ing for new symptoms?' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And as to calling in another physician?" 
 
 " If I had the least doubt I would do so." 
 
 "And yet you counsel delay." 
 
 "Ah," said Fabian, with depths of earnest- 
 ness in his liquid and shining look, " do not, 
 my friend, misunderstand me. There are 
 genuine fears of danger and there are false 
 ones. Try to discover the true foundation 
 of yours whether it be rock or sand." 
 
 "It is so hard," muttered Eninger, "to 
 judge fairly where we love fondly."
 
 246 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "Or where we hate foolishly," said 
 Fabian, as if to himself, and no doubt think- 
 ing of Mrs. Atterbury. 
 
 "How is that?" asked Eninger, with a 
 little start. And then his thoughts drifted 
 to Gertrude Westerveldt. * ' Right, indeed, ' ' 
 he added, in another moment. 
 
 The anxiety felt for Alicia by her husband 
 became to Fabian a source of increasing 
 torment during the next few hours. His 
 love had been held in leash by duty, forti- 
 tude, moral strength, until now. But now it 
 broke bonds and flooded his soul with mis- 
 ery. She was ill and he could not be close 
 beside her, to comfort her. Eninger, whom 
 she loved whom he was certain that she 
 loved stood near her, of course. It was not, 
 to his high soul, a question of whom she pre- 
 ferred; it was a burning and piercing question 
 as to the capacity of this or that human soul 
 who could help her the more. All sorts of 
 ways in which men and women love have 
 been dissected and examined; this age we 
 live in teems with such disclosures. But
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 247 
 
 there is a self-abnegating way, a way as 
 divine as earthly intelligence can conceive 
 of what is divine, which analysis, vivisec- 
 tion, realism has not yet presumed to touch. 
 These methods recoil from such expression, 
 afraid of it as an untruth, a mere midsum- 
 mer madness jarring our mortal brain and 
 nerves. But many a modern annalist recoils 
 before a passion which through meagre 
 knowledge of life he conceives impossible. 
 That kind of a passion was Fabian Dimitry's. 
 He saw how self-annihilatingly he loved 
 Alicia. His past course had seemed to make 
 this plain; his present summons (as if from 
 heights on heights of infinite command and 
 exhortation) made it plainer still. He was 
 without all religious faith; like thousands 
 of other nineteenth-century thinkers, he was 
 deist, pantheist, agnostic, atheist, all blended 
 into one. From a certain point of view he 
 did not know what he believed; from another 
 point of view he knew too fatally well how 
 much, how apprehensively much, he disbe- 
 lieved. But the meaning of social mo- 
 rality was clear to him. He had shown it in
 
 248 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 renouncing Alicia. The pulses of his heart 
 every sturdy stroke beat still toward an 
 attainment of this one single goal: to repress 
 carnal ardor and stay the unflinching sentinel 
 of his own down-trodden desires. We never 
 conquer an earthly longing, we humans, but 
 something rises from it, spiritual in signifi- 
 cance as the odor that floods air when some 
 brute hoof smites a bed of violets. Fabian 
 had, if you please, this recompense of sacri- 
 fice. He did not call it spiritual; he called 
 it by no name except one which the ghost- 
 worshipers and pietists of the world would 
 have sneered at as material. Chastity and 
 sublimity of love engendered it, and this 
 truth he recognized, realized. But he was 
 capable of facing what so few emotional 
 spirits have ever had the mental equipoise 
 to confront: the loftier lore of existence 
 needs no ritual or hymnal for its confirma- 
 tion, being rooted in the evolution of dust 
 toward divinity, of grossness toward great- 
 ness. He did not seek a supernatural reason 
 Avhy he would be willing to die for the woman 
 he loved. The natural reason, shorn of fancy-
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 249 
 
 bred sentiment, sufficed him. He loved just as 
 purely and deeply while admitting the ances- 
 try of the ape. He plunged into no shadowy 
 conduits of tradition to verify his present 
 fealty. It was there, and it had sprung from 
 the monstrous push and sweep of things, like 
 the delicate skeleton of a forest-leaf, like the 
 huge anatomy of the mastodon. His passion 
 had the actuality of the green in grass, the 
 authenticity of the redness in roses, the 
 beauty of the pomp in dawns, the power of 
 the horror in lightning. He accepted it, 
 wishing but not seeking to explain its ori- 
 gin. He had conquered much in the terri- 
 tory of his love; self-command had swept 
 away this thicket, had forded that river. 
 But an uninvaded tract remained. It defied 
 him. Residual, it was also inviolate. Was 
 it not holy, was it not clad with a soft, yet 
 splendid sanctity as well? Still worshiping 
 the woman he had loved first, last and abso- 
 lutely, he longed to guard her, aid her, save 
 her, give mind, blood, bone, thew, nerve 
 sacrificially in her behalf. 
 The next day, as it chanced, was the one
 
 250 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 which fate and society had conspired to 
 sanctify as that of the Verrinder-Van Wag- 
 enen wedding. Fabian breakfasted late, 
 and consequently alone. He soon discovered 
 that Eninger had several patients who sought 
 consultation with him in his office and that 
 Alicia was closeted upstairs. Fabian's night 
 had been almost a sleepless one, but he now 
 breasted a raw, rainy day and went "down 
 town" to meet certain financial calls there. 
 Returning at about four o'clock in the after- 
 noon, disconcerted and a little unstrung by 
 the sordidness and clamor of Wall Street, 
 he chanced to meet Alicia in the lower hall. 
 She was gayly and prettily dressed, as if for 
 some afternoon festivity. She had a slightly 
 tired look about the eyes, but her face 
 betrayed no signs of ill-health. 
 
 "Have you forgotten your engagement?" 
 she asked, giving him her hand. 
 
 " You've the advantage of me, I confess," 
 he returned, coloring a little. 
 
 ' ' Don' t you remember that we were to go 
 to Miss Van Wagenen's wedding in one 
 another's company?"
 
 FABIAN DIMITEY. 251 
 
 "Is it really to-day? I'd quite forgotten 
 about it." 
 
 But he had only a few changes of toilet to 
 make, and Alicia promptly agreed that she 
 would wait for him. The distance they had 
 to walk was but one or two streets. It had 
 grown less inclement, and a powdery snow- 
 fall had given place to flying purplish clouds 
 and winds that seemed to battle with one 
 another like contending spirits. "I'm glad 
 you feel strong enough to go," Fabian 
 said, as they walked along with heads 
 bowed a little before the hardihood of the 
 blasts. 
 
 "Thanks," she replied. "I'm better this 
 afternoon. I feel really quite strong." 
 
 "Then you were weak yesterday?" 
 
 ' ' Horridly. I had moments when it seemed 
 as if I could scarcely move. I didn't tell 
 Ray. That is, when he asked me how I felt, 
 I didn't tell him just how forlorn my sensa- 
 tions were." 
 
 " Was that right?" returned Fabian. 
 " Should you, not have told him? Remem- 
 ber, he is your physician besides being ..."
 
 252 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "My husband?" she supplied, as he 
 paused. 
 
 "Oh, of course. But I . . well, I meant, 
 just then, that he is more." 
 
 "More?" 
 
 "The man you've grown to love above all 
 others." 
 
 She was silent for a moment. And then 
 she broke out, gently but with fervor: 
 
 "Don't say 'grown to love' above all 
 others. He's my first and only love. All 
 else now seems phantom-like. I thought 
 we had a full talk on that subject, and that 
 you understood." 
 
 He did not immediately answer. But after 
 a slight while he said: "Yes; you are right. 
 I should have remembered. Pardon me. Not 
 that I've ever forgotten that talk in which 
 you told me of your consent to have me come 
 and live under the same roof with you . . " 
 
 "And with Ray," she amended, compos- 
 edly. 
 
 "And with Ray," he conceded. "Not, 
 indeed, that I ever can forget it, though I 
 should live a thousand years."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 253 
 
 " Do you mean that it was . . painful?" 
 
 "Painful?" lie repeated. . . And then he 
 said no more, since they had reached the 
 portals of the spacious Tan Wagenen resi- 
 dence, where footmen were sentinelled both 
 outside and beneath a striped awning and 
 carriages waited in smart, glossy cohorts. 
 
 The drawing-rooms were jammed, and all 
 the town was there. Young Mrs. Verrinder 
 looked radiant and riant in her pearls and 
 point-lace, beside the Honorable Cecil, her 
 newly-created husband. For a time Alicia 
 and Fabian became separated. Then, near 
 one of the doorways, they met again, and 
 he said to her carelessly: 
 
 " You're not going just yet, are you?" 
 
 "No," she replied. "Mr. Tan Nostrand 
 asked me to go upstairs and look at the 
 presents. But an old lady begged him to 
 get her an ice, and we've been torn asunder 
 in consequence." 
 
 "Won't you come up with me, then?" said 
 Fabian; and soon they were ascending the 
 staircase together. 
 
 It was a sumptuous array of bridal gifts.
 
 254 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 The room in which it had been spread forth 
 was densely thronged. Pressing and jostling 
 were inevitable. Alicia was unusually quiet as 
 her gaze fell on the various costly and charm- 
 ing objects. Fabian kept as near to her as 
 possible, though sometimes they were parted. 
 During an incident of the latter sort and 
 while three or four people had managed to 
 elbow and wedge their forms between Alicia 
 and himself, a sudden harsh and poignant 
 thought entered Fabian's head. 
 
 It made him bite his lip and use little 
 ceremony in rejoining her. And then he 
 observed that she had grown very pale. 
 "It may be the heat of the rooms," he 
 thought. " I won't ask her if she is ill; that 
 might only cause her to feel worse." 
 
 Aloud he said to her: " Had we not bet- 
 ter quit this close roomf ' 
 
 " Do you find it unpleasant?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes. Do you?" 
 
 "A little. . . " She turned to a man who 
 had just slipped up to her side and spoken 
 several low words. He had a smooth face 
 and a gentlemanlike air. You could not
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 255 
 
 have told him from the guests, but he was 
 not a guest. He had been posted here to 
 guard all this opulence, and he did not 
 always mingle, by any means, with the rich 
 and sleek. He was a fish that often swam 
 in other waters than those of elegance and 
 caste. 
 
 "I know nothing of the matter," Fabian 
 heard Alicia say, as if with annoyance, to 
 this person. "Did I not tell you so before?" 
 
 "Of what matter?" came Fabian's invol- 
 untary question. Just then he perceived 
 Mrs. Westerveldt and Mrs. Atterbury stand- 
 ing together near by, as though in amical 
 converse an event fit to shake to their roots 
 the especial cliques of which either lady was a 
 member. They had ceased to talk, and were 
 watching Mrs. Eninger and the man who 
 had just inaudibly conferred with her. Mrs. 
 Atterbury was also watching Fabian, whose 
 face betrayed not a little anxiety. In re- 
 sponse to his inquiry Alicia said, with a trem- 
 bling voice and oddly excited manner: 
 
 ' ' Never mind. Come down-stairs. Please 
 come directly." 
 
 17 *
 
 256 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Fabian felt rooted to the floor. She forced 
 her way out of the room. The man who had 
 spoken to her did not follow her, but his 
 eyes met Fabian's with a look of mingled 
 perplexity and disgust. 
 
 At least so Fabian read the look. In 
 another instant he saw that Mrs. Atterbury 
 was beckoning to him. He made an effort 
 and joined her, bowing to Mrs. Westerveldt 
 and herself with one inclusive salute. If he 
 had been less perturbed he would have won- 
 dered at her daring to signal to him like this 
 after their recent stormy parting. 
 
 The man who had addressed Alicia now 
 followed him. 
 
 "Excuse me, sir," this person said, "but 
 will you please tell me the name of the lady 
 you just spoke with?" 
 
 Fabian did not reply. A few seconds 
 passed, and then with her hardest and clear- 
 est tones Mrs. Westerveldt volunteered to 
 say: 
 
 " The lady's name is Mrs. Eninger." 
 
 "Eninger," repeated the man. "Thank 
 you." And he glided away.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 257 
 
 It seemed to Fabian as if the heart in his 
 breast had turned to a lump of ice.
 
 258 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 This meeting of Gertrude Westerveldt and 
 Adela Atterbury, the two arch -foes, had just 
 now a unique force of significance. It was 
 one of a series that continued from year to 
 year; these two ladies, each furtively detest- 
 ing and disapproving the other, always made 
 a point of exchanging verbal courtesies once 
 a season. The rest of the time it was a 
 punctilious exchange of pasteboard and an 
 arctic- antarctic avoidance. 
 
 Fabian looked Mrs. Westerveldt full in 
 the eyes after she had spoken Alicia' s name. 
 "Do you know who that gentleman is?" he 
 inquired. He was still uncertain regarding 
 the custodian of the Van Wagenen golconda, 
 and so used "gentleman" as the word in 
 best probable taste. 
 
 " "Yes," said Mrs. Westerveldt, whom he 
 had merely bowed to for years and had 
 always gauged as frigid and small in spirit,
 
 FABIAN DIMITEY. 259 
 
 with perhaps that intuition born of a spirit 
 warm and spacious. " Yes, Mr. Dimitry, I 
 do know him. I happened to learn just 
 now, while I was glancing over the presents. 
 You told, me, didn't you?" and she looked 
 across her shoulder at one of her inseparable 
 male allies, a man with a huge nosegay of 
 gardenias in the lapel of his frock-coat. 
 
 The adherent smiled and nodded. " You 
 mean the detective," he said. "I'm almost 
 sure he's one. Anyway, Jack Laight assured 
 me he was, and Jack is a great collector of 
 gossip." 
 
 Mrs. Westerveldt seemed to absorb herself 
 in watching Fabian. "I've just been speak- 
 ing to your friend, Mrs. Atterbury," she 
 said, "on the subject of your friend, Mrs. 
 Eninger." 
 
 "Ah," returned Fabian, feeling that his 
 cheeks must be like paper. " And did you 
 hear" (he met Adela Atterbury' s eyes, now) 
 "what savage things one excellent woman 
 is sometimes capable of saying about 
 another?" 
 
 "By no means," began Mrs. Westerveldt,
 
 260 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 with her neatest suavity. "The truth is, 
 we . . " 
 
 But Fabian heard no more. People broke 
 past him, going toward the rich-laden board, 
 and he felt pierced by the sudden sense that 
 to stay longer in this crowded room might 
 make him say or do some mad thing. His 
 ears rang, his brain spun, as he gained the 
 head of the staircase. 
 
 Where was Alicia? Reaching the lower 
 hall, he stood still for a moment, eager to 
 find her, yet hopeless what method of search 
 to adopt. Then, suddenly but very quietly, 
 a hand touched his shoulder. He recognized 
 a smooth-shaven, decorous face; he had so 
 lately seen it upstairs. 
 
 "Mrs. Eninger has left the house if you are 
 looking for her," said the same voice which 
 he had heard so short a while ago. 
 
 Hardly knowing what he answered, Fabian 
 returned: "You are sure? You followed her 
 down-stairs?" 
 
 The babble here in this hall was so great, 
 and the music played so voluminously, near 
 at hand, that mighty state-secrets could have
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 261 
 
 been talked of between these two men with- 
 out even a dim chance of anyone over-hear- 
 ing. 
 
 "Yes," replied the man. "I saw that 
 lady leave the house. And I've just whis- 
 pered a word about her to Mrs. Van Wage- 
 nen." 
 
 ' ' Yes? What did you say?' ' 
 
 "I told the lady of the house what I 
 suspected." 
 
 "Suspected?" shot back Fabian, catching 
 at the word. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well . . what did you suspect?" 
 
 The man lowered his eyelids for an instant. 
 That "sir" had told Fabian his place and 
 capacity in a trice. 
 
 " I have my duty to do," came the reply. 
 "I'm needed upstairs now; I can't wait." 
 
 "Yerywell. Goon." 
 
 "I . . thought the lady's dress might 
 have caught in it, and that it was swept off 
 the table. I asked her, but she gave me 
 only a queer, half -angry kind of answer." 
 
 " ' It,' you say? What was ' it ' 2"
 
 262 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "A small, silver paper-cutter, with some 
 initials in diamonds. Small, as I say, but 
 very valuable." 
 
 Fabian drew a long, deep breath. "What 
 did you see?" he queried, with one ransack- 
 ing glance of desperation that swept the 
 man's placid face and then dropped away 
 from it. 
 
 Again the eyelids were lowered for a sec- 
 ond, and then lifted. " I saw nothing. But 
 the lady took up the paper-cutter that I 
 did see. Then something turned my atten- 
 tion elsewhere, and when I looked again it 
 was gone. It had a filigreed handle little 
 gold flowers that stuck out from the solid part 
 with stems and leaves, you understand. 
 That's why I thought it might have got 
 fastened to her frock or sleeves, or some- 
 thing like that." 
 
 Fabian tried to smile as if in contempt- 
 uous disbelief. " It may be on the floor 
 now," he said. 
 
 "No, sir. I searched; I searched like a 
 ferret." 
 
 "How long did your search take?"
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 263 
 
 " Oh, I've got sharp eyes," said the man, 
 with a bluff ring of annoyance in his voice 
 one that sounded as though he would never 
 bend his full-bloomed Americanism again 
 to the utterance of another "sir." 
 
 "And you found nothing?" came Fabian's 
 next words. 
 
 "No nothing." 
 
 "And you tliink . . ?" But Fabian 
 paused, there. "Excuse me," he broke 
 off; "you've seen Mrs. Van Wagenen?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And told her what?' ' 
 
 "What I suspect." 
 
 " You gave her a . . a certain name?" 
 
 " I gave her Mrs. Eninger's name." 
 
 " Ah," exclaimed Fabian, with a low voice 
 and yet with one that seemed to himself as 
 if it rang from his heart's bleeding core, 
 "tell me what proof what real proof, did 
 you give Mrs. Van Wagenen in return for 
 your fancies your silly, insolent, black- 
 guardly fancies?" He was taller than his 
 companion, and for an instant glared down 
 upon him with scathing rebuke.
 
 264 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 His anger roused anger in the man lie 
 addressed. * ' Proof ?' ' came the retort, " T ve 
 told Mrs. Yan Wagenen what I think. / 
 don' t care. I' m only here to see what you big 
 folks do. You were close at her side. Per- 
 haps you took it. I couldn't swear. You 
 may have. I didn't ask your name. I'm 
 new in this kind o' business. I've seen fel- 
 lows fine-looking as you, that were . . " 
 
 Fabian's ire was quite lulled. He broke 
 away from the speaker. Luckily there was 
 a little side-room, down here in this main 
 hall, where he had left coat and hat. He 
 procured both as quickly as he could. All 
 the while he felt as if a hand were clutch- 
 ing his arm, a voice were hissing in his ear. 
 
 He got out into the spring twilight. The 
 strip of heaven above the housetops was 
 dim and yet cloudless; it seemed to wait for 
 the first cold, silver advent of the stars 
 "The stars," flashed through his mind in a 
 vagrancy of musing, " that shine with equal 
 scorn over town and prairie, telling us noth- 
 ing . . nothing!" 
 
 Half way in the direction of his home, he
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 265 
 
 paused. Was that man following him? No 
 . . he squared himself and looked to the 
 right, the left, and searchingly down the 
 line of street he had just pursued. 
 
 " You were close at Tier side. PerJiaps you 
 took it." 
 
 The man had said that. Those words kept 
 ringing in his ears. He walked onward, and 
 found himself brooding in a strange, new 
 way. 
 
 "PerJiaps you took it" 
 
 He could not escape those few piercing 
 words. They haunted him as he ascended 
 the stoop of his home and let himself in with 
 his latch-key. 
 
 A servant chanced to be in the rear part 
 of the hall. " Has Mrs. Eninger returned?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "Yes, sir," came the answer; "she got 
 back a few minutes ago." 
 
 " Is she upstairs?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Say that I would like to see her here- 
 in the drawing-room, at once. Stay, please." 
 
 "Well, sir?"
 
 266 FABIAN DIMITEY. 
 
 " Is Mr. Eninger at home?" 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " All right. Carry my order." 
 
 Fabian went into the pretty drawing-room, 
 full of etchings and tapestries that he had 
 helped to dispose. That task had been so 
 pleasant during recent days. Great changes 
 had been wrought here since he had come to 
 live with them. They used to laugh at him 
 and call him "the aesthete." Alicia would 
 slip in, with her smile, her voice, her white, 
 graceful, restless hands. . . And now! . . 
 He bowed his head. He had no tears to 
 weep or so it seemed to him unless they 
 were drops of blood. 
 
 Presently the servant came back and said 
 that Mrs. Eninger was not very w T ell and 
 would see him upstairs in her dressing-room. 
 
 " Very well," he replied, " I will go up." 
 
 He felt much stronger and firmer as he 
 crossed the threshold of the room where 
 Alicia sat. He shut the door behind him. 
 
 " You were close at Tier side. Perhaps you 
 took it." 
 
 How those words kept knelling themselves 
 through his brain!
 
 FABIAN DIMITBY. 267 
 
 Alicia was seated in an arm-chair, with her 
 bonnet off and her street-mantle unbuttoned. 
 
 Fabian took a seat at her side. "You 
 came straight home," he said, watching her 
 in her pallor and f orlornness. 
 
 " Yes, I came straight home." 
 
 " They know what you did there," he con- 
 tinued. "They are talking of it. You have 
 been found out." 
 
 She rose from the chair and clasped both 
 hands together. Then she suddenly sank at 
 Fabian's feet. 
 
 "Oh, my God!" she murmured. "What 
 will become of me?" 
 
 He stooped and raised her quivering form. 
 " There, sit down again," he said, "and tell 
 me everything." 
 
 "Everything?" she gasped, looking at him 
 with the dazed stare of a child who has been 
 caught in some odious act. 
 
 "Yes. You know what I mean. Begin 
 at the beginning and don't omit a detail. 
 Won't you consent to this?" 
 
 She did not at once reply, but soon her 
 voice faltered " yes." She had clasped her
 
 268 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 hands again; her head was bent, and as she 
 continued to speak he observed that it swayed 
 slightly from side to side. The voice that 
 she used w T as her own inalienably lovely one. 
 How sad to hear its familiar music enfold 
 the confession that now came from her! 
 
 "I first had the desire in London, a year 
 or two before we were married. It came 
 upon me at a shop in Bond Street; the things 
 were all of ivory and very nice; it was near 
 Christmas. I was horrified at myself and 
 spent several hours in tears, thinking over 
 my narrow escape. For the impulse had 
 been almost ungovernable. If another re- 
 turned to me, what should I do hereafter? 
 It was not that I did not loathe the thought 
 of being a thief, or that I craved the mere 
 possession of things which did not belong to 
 me. It was wholly different from all that. 
 . . I can't explain it; I've tortured myself 
 trying to explain it, but I've never succeeded. 
 I've prayed, for hours at a time, to be deliv- 
 ered from the temptation, the curse, the 
 malady. With tears streaming down my 
 cheeks I've prayed! But God has never
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 269 
 
 heard me. I wanted to tell Ray after I first 
 lost control. It was not till I'd married him 
 and come here. It was one evening at a 
 supper given after a theatre-party by Mrs. 
 Gansevoort. You recall it, don't you? You 
 were there. I was left alone for a few minutes 
 near a little table loaded with pretty things. 
 I . . I took you said you wanted me not 
 to omit a detail," she broke off, and lifted 
 to him the humid blue of her glittering 
 eyes. 
 
 " Not one not one," he answered. 
 
 Then she went on. He heard it all. It 
 was sickening, yet it tore his heart with pity 
 for her. 
 
 At last he said, while she sat before him 
 choked and shuddering: 
 
 "You've told everything, have you not? 
 There's nothing more?" 
 
 "Nothing," she sobbed. Her confession 
 had terribly racked her. His vast compas- 
 sion made him almost reel as he now rose. 
 He had the yearning to seize her in his arms 
 and comfort her for the anguish that he was 
 certain she felt the anguish born of a hor-
 
 270 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 rible conscious madness, inflicted on her by 
 the fierce hand of heredity, reaching from 
 her dead ancestors' graves. 
 
 But he spoke very quietly while standing 
 beside her. "Will you get me everything 
 you have taken everything, mind? Will 
 you put all into a package and leave them 
 in my room as soon as you can? Will you 
 do this? Do you understand me perfectly?" 
 
 " Yes," she said, looking up at him again 
 in her despair. 
 
 He knotted his hands, that he might keep 
 from rushing toward her and putting them 
 about her neck. He had loved her so pro- 
 foundly he loved her so profoundly still! 
 Had she not once been his idol, his sweet- 
 heart, his delight? And from then till now 
 had his love ever lessened or faded? Was it 
 not because of this very madness in her 
 (possible then, tangible and fearful now!) 
 that he had renounced her, given her up for 
 another to woo and win? 
 
 Again he spoke with calmness. "You 
 must try and compose yourself. It still 
 wants nearly an hour of dinner-time. When
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 271 
 
 Ray returns I hope you will meet him with- 
 out agitation. And remember about the 
 package. I will do all I can for you. Every- 
 thing may not be lost yet. You have been 
 ill very ill, and neither Ray nor I suspected. 
 But there is still hope." 
 
 "Hope?" she murmured. 
 
 "Yes. Things might be worse for you 
 than they are. And in a little while you 
 will be cared for as you should have been 
 cared for if we had only guessed sooner." 
 
 Still once more she swept his face with her 
 dolorous eyes. ' 'Oh, God bless you!" she said. 
 " You call it an illness, but many people will 
 not allow that it is. I shall be steeped in 
 disgrace, even if I'm not dragged to prison. 
 And Ray poor Ray! It will be so horrible 
 for him! But then you say everything may 
 not be lost yet? What do you mean by that? 
 What do you mean by saying there is still 
 hope, and that things might be worse for me 
 than they are?" 
 
 He went closer to her and let his hand fall 
 on her arm. "I mean to do my very best, 
 Alicia," he said. She started a little at hear- 
 
 18
 
 272 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 ing him pronounce her name; she had not 
 heard it from his lips since the old days 
 when they were betrothed lovers. He caught 
 one of her hands and pressed it to his lips 
 passionately, twice, thrice. Then a flush 
 mantled his face, as though of sharp shame. 
 He turned away and hurried toward the 
 door. " Remember your promise," he said, 
 just before passing from the room. 
 
 She did not see the great melancholy in 
 his look as these words left him. 
 
 He soon went out of doors into the windy 
 spring twilight, and presently a cab was 
 taking him to the house of Mrs. Atterbury. 
 
 She had just dismissed her carriage and 
 was entering her own doorway, when he 
 alighted from his vehicle. By a glance 
 across her shoulder she recognized him. 
 
 "I thought you would probably come," 
 she said, low of voice, as they stood in the 
 hall together. And then she added: " Even 
 though you did leave me in so savage a mood 
 when we last met." 
 
 He made no reply, but followed her into 
 the reception-room just off the hall, where
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 273 
 
 two or three lamps had been lighted, big, 
 rich-lmed stars in the partial dusk. 
 
 They seated themselves. She loosened her 
 bonnet-strings and tossed her bonnet on a 
 near chair. Just as she did so he began to 
 speak. 
 
 "Call my mood savage, if you please. 
 Yours had surely been . . accusative. But I 
 came to ask you 
 
 "About Tier" struck in his hearer, not 
 harshly, yet in a way that lacked all native 
 warmth. " I was prepared for that." And 
 then, with a suddenly hardening face, she 
 proceeded in the manner that he had often 
 known her to employ when most earnest 
 the manner that some people termed rowdy, 
 as it has been recorded: "On my word of 
 honor I'm sorry I told you that you lied to 
 save her. But good heavens, hasn't to-day 
 proved it?" 
 
 "Proved it?" he said, pale to the lips, as 
 she looked at him. ' ' Did the Van Wagenen 
 policeman prove it? No; he did not. He 
 told me, in so many words, that he could 
 not."
 
 274 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Mrs. Atterbury' s eyes flashed. ' ' He didn' t 
 search her, if you mean that, you . . you 
 madman!" 
 
 He laughed, and at once exclaimed : ' ' Mad- 
 man? Oh, yes, you're no doubt right. I 
 dare say I am a madman." 
 
 "Why, what else can you be," came her 
 swift, defiant answer, "when you presume 
 to tell me that she didn' t show this evening 
 every sign of guilt? He went to Mrs. Van 
 Wagenen, that man; he let her know just 
 what had happened. I saw her afterward; 
 so did Mrs. Westerveldt. She was furious. 
 You'll hear from her to-morrow, I suppose. 
 Not you, of course, but your people your 
 family the household you've been wise and 
 sane enough to make yourself a part of. 
 Look here, now, Fabian Dimitry, I don't 
 mean one grain of malice. But oTt, how 
 you've been fooled by that woman! Ger- 
 trude Westerveldt is sick with disgust at 
 her. It was funny it almost made me laugh 
 right out, serious as I felt to think of Ger- 
 trude and me ever putting our heads together 
 and actually agreeing on any one earthly sub-
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 275 
 
 ject. But gracious goodness, man, I found 
 Gertrude had missed a turquoise ring off her 
 dressing-table one night when your paragon 
 had dined at her house and had afterward 
 stood close to the very spot where the ring 
 was laid. But bless you, this wasn't all. 
 Gertrude dropped on the floor, at another 
 time, a little spray of diamonds when she 
 was upstairs with my lady Eninger after a 
 dinner at her own home in Forty -Second 
 Street. And this cousin of mine (whom I 
 don't like, as I'm sure you know, but whom 
 I've never caught in a falsehood as long as 
 we've gone on mutually hating one another) 
 declares that she had reason to feel almost 
 certain her jewel was impudently pocketed 
 there before her very eyes." 
 
 "Reason to feel almost certain?" said 
 Fabian. " The ' almost ' has been discreetly 
 used by Mrs. Westerveldt. It is the same, 
 no doubt, as your 'almost certain,' on 
 another occasion, when you opened that cab- 
 inet of curios." 
 
 "Ah," cried Mrs. Atterbuiy, springing to 
 her feet, " this is preposterous!"
 
 276 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 "I think it so, too," returned Fabian, 
 slowly rising. 
 
 She spoke in a half -strangled voice. " Do 
 you mean still to claim that the woman's 
 innocent? Do you mean to stick up for her 
 innocence now, when we three (Mrs. Van 
 Wagenen, Gertrude and I) are all prepared 
 to bring charges against her?" 
 
 He inclined his head as if in sarcastic 
 assent. " So you've decided to do that?" 
 
 "Yes we have! The whole thing is a 
 glaring outrage, and should be suppressed, 
 punished." 
 
 " You've taken your course, then?" 
 
 "Mrs. Van Wagenen has. You'll hear 
 from her quite soon, and she has been given 
 full authority to use our names." 
 
 "I see," said Fabian; "it's gone thart 
 far." 
 
 " Yes," retorted the little lady, trembling 
 with wrath. " It has gone that far, and we 
 mean it shall go further." 
 
 " Ah, you mean this, do you?" . . Some- 
 thing in his intonation made her look at him 
 with surprise breaking through her anger.
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 277 
 
 "Have you considered certain points of 
 this case?" he went on, with a voice bell- 
 like, vibrant, and yet oddly opposite to his 
 wonted tones. " Have you recollected that 
 Mrs. Westerveldt discharged her maid for 
 stealing the turquoise ring you have men- 
 tioned? I chance to know that this is true, 
 for the maid brought suit against her former 
 mistress, and I saw a notice of the expected 
 legal proceedings in a newspaper of eight or 
 ten days ago. Now the maid may be guilty 
 or the reverse: that remains to be shown. But 
 Mrs. Westerveldt, in accusing her, has made 
 it plain that she thinks the maid guilty. 
 'Oh, very well,' you may say, 'but there 
 were other things taken besides the tur- 
 quoise ring, and there were other times of 
 alleged theft on the part of her we think the 
 thief.' Very good. Count over those times; 
 consider them. You' 11 find they all have one 
 point in common." 
 
 "One point in common. I don't under- 
 stand. Do you mean that they were all 
 brazen acts?" 
 
 * ' I mean this : that whenever you suspected
 
 278 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Alicia Eninger / was somewhere near her. . . 
 Ah, now I perceive that you do under- 
 stand." 
 
 He walked toward the hall in another 
 minute, and looked at her across his shoulder. 
 He gave her, as it were, a smile of farewell; 
 but the smile teemed with a terrible mock- 
 ery and despair. 
 
 "\t can't be true," she broke out, "that 
 you're willing No! no!" And she hurried 
 after him through the portiere whose folds 
 were still agitated from his exit. 
 
 But he had already caught up his hat from 
 a table in the hall, and now he seized the knob 
 of the front door. 
 
 "Fabian!" she exclaimed, at this point. 
 
 "Well?" he returned, pausing and looking 
 at her. 
 
 " Will you throw your honor to the dogs 
 just to save that worthless creature?" 
 
 " She is innocent," he said, his voice not 
 raised in the least, yet his mien simply impe- 
 rial through its challenging denial. " These 
 charges have been brought against the wrong 
 person."
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 279 
 
 " And the right one is . . ?" 
 
 "Myself." 
 
 He at once opened the door and disap- 
 peared. Mrs. Atterbury went back into the 
 reception-room and for some little time she 
 sat quite still, except that now and then she 
 visibly shuddered. 
 
 If he had sworn to her a hundred times 
 what he had just stated, and sworn it each 
 time with some new and very sacred oath, 
 she would not have believed him. Of course 
 it was untrue. . And the madness of him, to 
 take that awful burden on his shoulders! 
 Had not this wily woman already cost him 
 enough pain? That she should drag him now 
 into self-ruin was monstrous, incredible. 
 
 The tears stole to Adela Atterbury' s eyes, 
 and by and by her sobs followed. She sat 
 there and wept in the soft lustre of the 
 lamps. At the same time a cold fear was 
 slipping about her heart, like some chill tide 
 that creeps round a stranded shell. 
 
 Whatever Fabian Dimitry had resolved on 
 he would carry out. She knew him well 
 enough to be certain that if he had clearly
 
 280 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 determined to damn himself in the eyes of 
 the world he would take care that this dam- 
 nation should be accomplished after no 
 bungling fashion. 
 
 Her hardy nature for once recoiled before 
 the threatened purpose of another, and 
 recoiled in a paralysis of dismay. What 
 expedient of preventive could she light on? 
 Would to-morrow bring any? No; for the 
 man's insensate devotion would prove not 
 less strong than the passion that inspired it. 
 
 "If Lewsy should come in and find me 
 here like this," she thought, "and if I 
 should tell him who's forced these tears from 
 me, wouldn't he for once in our married life 
 be downright jealous?" 
 
 Oddly enough, and yet as many a woman 
 will do under like mental siege, she let this 
 wholly foreign idea of "Lewsy" drift through 
 her preoccupied brain. 
 
 But she was doubtless quite wrong. Lewsy 
 would not have dreamed of being jealous. 
 He would probably have confided to some 
 Wall Street friend, as they lunched at the 
 Beaver Street Delmonico's next day, that
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 281 
 
 "My wife, by Jove, has got one of the 
 biggest and most sympathetic hearts in 
 America!" 
 
 He would have vaunted her heart, poor 
 Lewsy, as he vaunted everything she pos- 
 sessed, from the trim of her wit to the cut of 
 her finger-nail. Happy the husband who 
 believes that he holds the lounging-room in 
 that mystic domicile, his wife's affection, 
 and who has not yet convinced himself that 
 this haunt of ease is but a deftly-uphol- 
 stered ante-chamber!
 
 282 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " I thought you were Ray," said the Col- 
 onel to Fabian, as the latter passed toward 
 his own room along an upper hall. " Bless 
 me, what is keeping dinner from being 
 served? 1 ' 
 
 "Are you hungry?" said Fabian, passing 
 the speaker and scarcely knowing what reply 
 he gave. 
 
 "Am I hungry!" gruffly exploded the Col- 
 onel. " What an American sort of answer!" 
 He stood with eye-glasses poised in one hand, 
 gazing after the friend of his son-in-law. 
 
 "But it only confirms my already fixed 
 creed for the people of this queer land din- 
 ner has no sanctity, none whatever! They 
 do not dine; they feed often with haphazard 
 haste and seldom with either punctuality or 
 dignity." 
 
 Fabian failed to hear these last withering 
 words. He entered his own room, and at
 
 FABIAN DIMITKY. 283 
 
 once his eye lit on an expected package. 
 Locking himself against intrusion, he opened 
 it. The contents, having been eagerly sur- 
 veyed, stung and racked him. Alicia had 
 kept her word. The turquoise ring was 
 here, and this he trod into an almost shape- 
 less mass as soon as he had found it. Then 
 he opened the window and flung down into 
 the street the tiny golden wreck thus wrought. 
 Scarcely had he done so, when Eninger 
 knocked at his door. u Fabian," soon came 
 the anxious question, " can you tell me what 
 has made Alicia so forlorn? 1 ' As he spoke 
 thus, Eninger crossed the threshold, with 
 head somewhat bowed and hands locked 
 behind him. "I returned home a little 
 while ago," he went on, " and was amazed at 
 meeting her. She is very feeble in strength, 
 and hysterical in behavior. Has anything 
 occurred this afternoon at the Van Wagen- 
 ens' which could possibly have unnerved her 
 like this?" 
 
 Fabian seemed lost in thought. Then his 
 reverie gave place to a sudden ardor. ' ' Oh, 
 my poor Ray," he said, "a great deal has
 
 284 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 happened that you know nothing of 
 nothing! Would to heaven I could shirk 
 the telling of it! . . There, sit down pray 
 sit down and hear. me. I must say certain 
 things. You've never dreamed of what I 
 must explain to you. Ray, believe me, it 
 will hit you hard. It will be all the worse to 
 a sensitive and fastidious fellow like you. 
 Ray! you will prove a man, won't you, 
 while I tell it?" 
 
 He had pushed Eninger into a chair, and 
 now stood over him with a hand on each of 
 his shoulders. Eninger, grown very pale, 
 simply nodded and said: 
 
 "Well. . . It concerns Tier, of course." 
 
 "Yes." . . And then, for what may have 
 been ten full minutes, Fabian spoke. Once 
 or twice the auditor closed his eyes and 
 palpably trembled. At these times Fabian 
 would seize his hand, briefly but forcibly 
 pressing it. 
 
 Then, at last, there was dead silence. 
 Fabian waited to be answered. Eninger 
 looked like a man to whom the utterance of 
 even one word would be crucial. Still, he 
 presently replied:
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 285 
 
 "How ghastly it all sounds! . . Ah, my 
 friend, you are avenged for the way I 
 behaved to you in London!" 
 
 "Hush, Kay. It is ghastly, but there's 
 this about it you can pardon her." 
 
 "Pardon her?" 
 
 " The curse of an inherited madness? Why 
 not? It has been kleptomania; it might have 
 been one of a hundred cerebral ills. And 
 Ray, consider this: you know, now, what it 
 is, and can fight it." 
 
 "Fight it?" 
 
 " To the death. Take her away for a year 
 at least. Watch her with one absorbing 
 aim. Set yourself a task in the crystal air 
 of some quiet mountain retreat, and vow 
 that love shall tear victory from science. 
 Send the Colonel back to England; do not 
 permit yourself a single emotion that does 
 not relate to her cure. In the end you will 
 conquer; she will be restored to you, her sane 
 and lovely self." 
 
 " Restored to me!" Eninger broke out, in 
 bitterness. "And how? Disgraced before the 
 world branded by a stigma ineffaceable!"
 
 286 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 ' ' Not so, Ray. I . . I have thought of a 
 certain method by which all that may be 
 avoided." 
 
 " What can you mean? Avoided? Why, 
 haven't you already told me that this horror 
 is being babbled about?' ' 
 
 " Suspicions have sprung up; they can be 
 refuted. I've a plan, Ray, and 1 want to 
 act it out. To-night I shall be busy think- 
 ing it over. To-morrow you and I will talk 
 of it, definitely, in detail. Meanwhile, do 
 all that you can for her; watch her with 
 your best professional caution; but don't 
 show her the faintest sign, as yet, that 
 you've heard these unhappy truths about 
 her." 
 
 "Your plan is but a dream, I'm sure," 
 said Eninger, whose face already looked 
 ravaged by agony. "I thank you for the 
 great-heartedness that has prompted you to 
 imagine it, but 
 
 "No, Ray; imagination is not all of it, I 
 promise you! Trust me till to-morrow!" . . 
 
 But Eninger' s thoughts were of Gertrude 
 Westerveldt and the scornful hints he had
 
 FAI3IAX DIM1TKY. 287 
 
 heard from her in their last interview. He 
 read the real meaning of those hints now, 
 but in this new guise they made him discern 
 how implacable a cruelty that woman might 
 be prepared to reveal. 
 
 "Trust me till to-morrow," nevertheless 
 rang comfortingly in his ears as he passed 
 from Fabian's room to rejoin his wife. Ah, 
 why should he not strive to trust so peerless a 
 friend as this man had already proved him- 
 self? Where was there such wisdom blended 
 with such benignancy? Did he ever counsel 
 at random, and was there not a constant 
 sweet premeditation in all his deeds, as 
 though even a spirit so capable of sacrifice 
 knew how to temper its generosity with a 
 telling leaven of prudence? 
 
 Fabian, left alone, went to his writing-desk 
 and seated himself before it. A servant soon 
 came to tell him that dinner waited, but he 
 shrank from food as though in this case it 
 meant to sit at meat with the Borgias. 
 Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Eninger, the servant 
 told him, had yet appeared in the dining- 
 room; but the Colonel had appeared there 
 and had begun to dine.
 
 288 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 A grim picture of this personage thrust 
 itself into Fabian's fancy. "How savage 
 and gaunt the old fellow must look," it 
 floated through his mind, "seated down 
 there sipping his soup in ' ancient, solitary 
 reign' ! If one really had the heart to break 
 bread with him, what an uncanny fellow- 
 feaster would he seem!" 
 
 For a good while after the servant had 
 gone from him, Fabian sat musing over 
 certain letters which he desired to write. 
 Addressed to several different persons, these 
 letters must all be in the form of guilty con- 
 fessions and be also the premonitions of a 
 determined flight. They would not be sent 
 until he had made arrangements of another 
 and a financial sort. Ray should receive a 
 certain share of his property; the rest he 
 would take with him into Brazil. His 
 departure would shine balefully as an admis- 
 sion of personal shame. Each article stolen 
 by Alicia he would return to its rightful 
 possessor, with the statement that he had 
 been the thief of it, not she. At first he 
 might not be credited. But afterward . .
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 289 
 
 Somehow his broodings, while he sat and 
 gave them sway, had caught the trick of 
 pausing just there. 
 
 Would people, even eventually, believe 
 him;! Would they not say . . 2 Ah, how 
 this " plan" to which he had lately referred 
 with such confidence in the hearing of Enin- 
 ger, now became engirt with chances of fail- 
 ure! He had not seen them until to-night, 
 when they slipped their cold little pleas and 
 protests into his consciousness. That re- 
 solved flight of his might accomplish nothing 
 for her. It might be named the mere flimsy 
 scheme of a love-sick worshiper. 
 
 But . . was there any other way? 
 
 He rose, pushing aside some sheets of note- 
 paper on whose blankness he had not yet 
 left a single line. The desire beset him to 
 think while walking in the open air. He 
 passed down-stairs, finding the two halls 
 which he traversed quite vacant and still. 
 
 Once out in the street, he discovered that 
 all harsh weather-signs had fled and that 
 the town was canopied by one of those mild 
 yet limpid nights which bring the infinite
 
 290 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 nearer to man He walked slowly along, 
 letting his eyes again and again roam the 
 star-studded slopes of heaven. Creation, 
 how monstrous it was! we, its products yet 
 its puny minions, how piteously we compared 
 with it! And yet the whole terrible scheme 
 of the universe might be, and doubtless was, 
 a mere sightless, mute, self-moving force. 
 It had created Jupiter and Canopus one of 
 a million giant planets, one of a million 
 giant suns. But from its mystic funds had 
 also sprung a power, an efflorescence, grander 
 though subtler than these. Love had been 
 born thence human love, with all its base 
 leases and costs, with all its high restraints 
 and rewards. Did not he who loves unself- 
 ishly fling in the teeth of death a divine 
 challenge* No matter if he perished eter- 
 nally when the last breath left his lips. In 
 the future making of men his example 
 should lind its inevitable place. Like the 
 breaking of a huge wave far out at sea, it 
 would shape ripples that must mingle with 
 the tides of distant coasts. 
 
 To sacrifice one's self wholly for a pure
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 291 
 
 love< Was it so hard, after all, that the 
 world should laud it as so lofty? . . This 
 Hying in hypocritic cowardice of guilt to 
 Brazil, to Heaven knew where . . how could 
 such course actually end but with the entail 
 of sluggish, dragging misery? And then the 
 possible meagreness of the proffered help! 
 How that result would degrade, belittle, 
 minimize the whole deed! Dying to save 
 one we love were an act that might set 
 the bounds for its own dignity. Merely 
 lying from the same motive would be to 
 build defences round loopholes tempting the 
 ingress of ridicule! 
 
 . . . When Fabian went back to his home, 
 that night, the hour was a little past eleven, 
 and the house no less dark than quiet. He 
 went down to the door of Eningers office on 
 the basement-floor. Vacancy and gloom 
 here; he had expected feared, indeed to 
 find his friend seated in this familiar room. 
 With the aid of his own match-box he lit a 
 jet of gas. The rays appeared to focus them- 
 selves on a uniform row of phials that filled 
 one special shelf. Only such a little time
 
 292 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 ago lie and Eninger had had a certain toxo- 
 logic talk, and then . . . But no matter; 
 there was what he wished; its dark little 
 labelled cube gleamed as harmless as if 
 brimming with juices brewed from violets. 
 ... He presently turned off the gas and 
 went upstairs. In the dimness, while paus- 
 ing at a particular door, he heard the sound 
 of voices. Hating to listen, he nevertheless 
 did so now. " For this once in my life,'' he 
 said to himself, sworn foe as he had always 
 been of every act which the least taint of 
 meanness could soil. 
 
 "I have not once dreamed of blaming 
 you," he heard Eninger say. '-I blame 
 only myself, for not having surmised how 
 ill you really were. . . You speak of Fa- 
 bian; he has some strange conviction that he 
 can arrest the scandal. Had anyone but 
 himself told me of such a purpose I would 
 simply have felt its entire hopelessness. 
 But he, so trustworthy and so capable . . 
 perhaps he may have found a way, after 
 all." 
 
 Fabian moved toward his own room . ' ' You
 
 FABIAN DIMITRY. 293 
 
 are right," lie said to himself, in a soft whis- 
 per; "I have found a way." 
 
 For several hours he wrote letters. Each 
 was a confession of personal guilt and yet a 
 declaration as well that an unconquerable 
 insanity had caused him to behave as he had 
 done. He mentioned the suspicions formed 
 against Alicia as hideous injustice, and stated 
 that more than once he had tried to make it 
 seem as if she were the real culprit. 
 
 These letters were terribly ingenious, and 
 to each he attached a small packet contain- 
 ing one or more of the stolen objects. Every 
 letter, too, contained the assertion that when 
 its pages were read by the eyes for which 
 they were intended he should have ceased 
 to live. 
 
 All was now performed except one final 
 task his letter to Ray Eninger. This he 
 took a long time to write, and filled with the 
 burning eloquence of entreaty. He implored 
 Eninger to let the true reason of his deed 
 remain, forever wrapped in secrecy. He 
 assured him that no reluctance went with it 
 that it seemed to him then, at that mid-
 
 294 FABIAN DIMITKY. 
 
 night hour, like a beautiful and luminous 
 pathway which tempted him to follow it 
 toward some holy but unimagined goal. 
 
 "There may be, at the first," he wrote, 
 "a faint flurry of skepticism. But after a 
 while the whole world will feel certain I 
 have taken my own life with a most explain- 
 able motive. . . Adela Atterbury will have 
 her burst of indignant denial, her sense of 
 outraged credulity. But with her, as with 
 Mrs. Westerveldt, there will come in time 
 an acceptance of the general verdict. Be it 
 your i>art never to divulge the truth, and to 
 destroy these lines within the hour of read- 
 ing them. 
 
 "And now farewell, my friend. Long 
 years of happiness and health to you and 
 to her. You know we never believed in 
 'visions,' you and I. And yet I seem to 
 be visited, at this moment, by a vision of 
 your perfect future joy. Feeling oneself 
 on the threshold of death, as I feel myself 
 now, one has the impression of mighty dra- 
 peries being grasped by some great dusky 
 hand and lifted upon new yet awful tracts
 
 FABIAX DIMITRY. 295 
 
 of shadow. How often have we spoken of 
 death together! You recall that I always 
 told you I had no fear to push my keel out 
 into the icy silence of those waters \ Well, 
 the hour of embarkation and of mysterious 
 voyage has begun with me. and I still have 
 no fear none, not the vaguest qualm. But 
 I am haunted by an irresistible and unfore- 
 seen hope. Some might call it a prescience; 
 I have always been wary of those wide- 
 sweeping words. But the chief element of 
 my hope is a longing that I may see your 
 perfect contentment and hers from some 
 unguessed bourne of spiritual vantage. . . 
 My will, as I wrote pages back, was made 
 weeks ago in your favor. There will be no 
 contention of it, since I am quite kinless in 
 so far as I know, and the claim of any 
 remote relative would rightly be judged 
 absurd. Besides, I think, not even such a 
 claimant as that could arise. Strangely 
 enough, I seem to find myself the last sur- 
 vivor of two races. With me both lines 
 melt into extinction. Non omnis mortar, let 
 me add. Will not you say ' amen ' to that?
 
 296 FABIAN DIMITRY. 
 
 Perhaps not now; but some future day shall 
 teach you to speak the words without sor- 
 row, and with moderation, not overplus, of 
 thanks. . . 
 
 ''After all, there are some superstitions 
 that do us good. Cherish this one: that in 
 dying I take away her curse. It is pretty, 
 is it not? Cling to it if you can." . . . " 
 
 In the morning when they knocked at his 
 door there came the silence that made them 
 knock louder, and at length the silence that 
 sanctioned rude entrance. 
 
 He lay as if he slept. But his extreme 
 pallor sublimated the beauty of his brow 
 and temples, and clad his pure-carven lips 
 with some delicate mingling of sadness and 
 peace which was like a tangible echo of the 
 word "death." 
 
 THE END.
 
 A 000 030 434 5