THE GREATER INCLINATION 
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
THE GREATER INCLINATION 
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDITH WHARTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 1914 
 
MOFFITT - UGL 
 
 THE GREATER INCLINATION 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER s SONS 
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER 8 SONS 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 THE GREATER INCLINATION 
 
 LiSRAI 
 The Muse s Tragedy . . ..... \ r , 
 
 II 
 A Journey .......... 27 
 
 III 
 
 The Pelican ...... 49 
 
 IV 
 
 Souls Belated ........ 83 
 
 A Coward 
 
 VI 
 
 The Twilight of the God ....... 159 
 
 VII 
 
 A Cup of Cold Water ........ 183 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Portrait .... 
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 255 
 
THE GREATER INCLINATION 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 DANYERS afterwards liked to fancy that he 
 had recognized Mrs. Anerton at once; but 
 that, of course, was absurd, since he had 
 seen no portrait of her she affected a strict anonymity, 
 refusing even her photograph to the most privileged 
 and from Mrs. Memorall, whom he revered and cul 
 tivated as her friend, he had extracted but the one im 
 pressionist phrase: "Oh, well, she s like one of those 
 old prints where the lines have the value of color." 
 
 He was almost certain, at all events, that he had been 
 thinking of Mrs. Anerton as he sat over his breakfast 
 in the empty hotel restaurant, and that, looking up on 
 the approach of the lady who seated herself at the table 
 near the window, he had said to himself, " That might be 
 she." 
 
 Ever since his Harvard days he was still young 
 enough to think of them as immensely remote Dan- 
 yers had dreamed of Mrs. Anerton, the Silvia of Vin 
 cent Rendle s immortal sonnet-cycle, the Mrs. A. of the 
 Life and Letters. Her name was enshrined in some of 
 the noblest English verse of the nineteenth century 
 and of all past or future centuries, as Danyers, from the 
 stand-point of a maturer judgment, still believed. The 
 first reading of certain poems of the Antinous, the 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 Pia Tolomei, the Sonnets to Silvia, had been epochs in 
 Danyers s growth, and the verse seemed to gain in mel 
 lowness, in amplitude, in meaning as one brought to its 
 interpretation more experience of life, a finer emotional 
 sense. Where, in his boyhood, he had felt only the per 
 fect, the almost austere beauty of form, the subtle in 
 terplay of vowel-sounds, the rush and fulness of lyric 
 emotion, he now thrilled to the close-packed signifi 
 cance of each line, the allusiveness of each word his 
 imagination lured hither and thither on fresh trails of 
 thought, and perpetually spurred by the sense that, be 
 yond what he had already discovered, more marvellous 
 regions lay waiting to be explored. Danyers had writ 
 ten, at college, the prize essay on Rendle s poetry 
 (it chanced to be the moment of the great man s 
 death); he had fashioned the fugitive verse of his own 
 storm-and-stress period on the forms which Rendle had 
 first given to English metre; and when two years later 
 the Life and Letters appeared, and the Silvia of the 
 sonnets took substance as Mrs. A., he had included in 
 his worship of Rendle the woman who had inspired not 
 only such divine verse but such playful, tender, incom 
 parable prose. 
 
 Danyers never forgot the day when Mrs. Memorall 
 
 happened to mention that she knew Mrs. Anerton. He 
 
 had known Mrs. Memorall for a year or more, and had 
 
 somewhat contemptuously classified her as the kind of 
 
 [2] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 woman who runs cheap excursions to celebrities; when 
 one afternoon she remarked, as she put a second lump 
 of sugar in his tea: 
 
 "Is it right this time? You re almost as particular 
 as Mary Anerton." 
 
 "Mary Anerton?" 
 
 "Yes, I never can remember how she likes her tea. 
 Either it s lemon with sugar, or lemon without sugar, 
 or cream without either, and whichever it is must be 
 put into the cup before the tea is poured in; and if 
 one hasn t remembered, one must begin all over 
 again. I suppose it was Vincent Rendle s way of tak 
 ing his tea and has become a sacred rite." 
 
 "Do you know Mrs. Anerton?" cried Danyers, dis 
 turbed by this careless familiarity with the habits of 
 his divinity. 
 
 " And did I once see Shelley plain? Mercy, yes! 
 She and I were at school together she s an Ameri 
 can, you know. We were at a pension near Tours for 
 nearly a year; then she went back to New York, 
 and I didn t see her again till after her marriage. 
 She and Anerton spent a winter in Rome while my 
 husband was attached to our Legation there, and 
 she used to be with us a great deal." Mrs. Memorall 
 smiled reminiscently. "It was the winter." 
 
 "The winter they first met ?" 
 
 "Precisely but unluckily I left Rome just before 
 
 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 the meeting took place. Wasn t it too bad? I might 
 have been in the Life and Letters. You know he 
 mentions that stupid Madame Vodki, at whose house 
 he first saw her." 
 
 "And did you see much of her after that?" 
 
 "Not during Rendle s life. You know she has lived 
 in Europe almost entirely, and though I used to see 
 her off and on when I went abroad, she was always 
 so engrossed, so preoccupied, that one felt one wasn t 
 wanted. The fact is, she cared only about his friends 
 she separated herself gradually from all her own 
 people. Now, of course, it s different; she s desper 
 ately lonely; she s taken to writing to me now and 
 then; and last year, when she heard I was going 
 abroad, she asked me to meet her in Venice, and I 
 spent a week with her there." 
 
 "And Rendle?" 
 
 Mrs. Memorall smiled and shook her head. "Oh, I 
 never was allowed a peep at him; none of her old 
 friends met him, except by accident. Ill-natured peo 
 ple say that was the reason she kept him so long. If 
 one happened in while he was there, he was hustled 
 into Anerton s study, and the husband mounted 
 guard till the inopportune visitor had departed. An- 
 erton, you know, was really much more ridiculous 
 about it than his wife. Mary was too clever to lose 
 her head, or at least to show she d lost it but 
 
 [*] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 Anerton couldn t conceal his pride in the conquest 
 I ve seen Mary shiver when he spoke of Rendle as 
 our poet. Rendle always had to have a certain seat at 
 the dinner-table, away from the draught and not too 
 near the fire, and a box of cigars that no one else 
 was allowed to touch, and a writing-table of his own 
 in Mary s sitting-room and Anerton was always tell 
 ing one of the great man s idiosyncrasies: how he 
 never would cut the ends of his cigars, though An 
 erton himself had given him a gold cutter set with 
 a star-sapphire, and how untidy his writing-table was, 
 and how the house-maid had orders always to bring 
 the waste-paper basket to her mistress before empty 
 ing it, lest some immortal verse should be thrown 
 into the dust-bin." 
 
 "The Anertons never separated, did they?" 
 
 "Separated? Bless you, no. He never would have 
 left Rendle ! And besides, he was very fond of his 
 wife." 
 
 "And she?" 
 
 "Oh, she saw he was the kind of man who was 
 fated to make himself ridiculous, and she never in 
 terfered with his natural tendencies." 
 
 From Mrs. Memorall, Danyers further learned that 
 
 Mrs. Anerton, whose husband had died some years 
 
 before her poet, now divided her life between Rome, 
 
 where she had a small apartment, and England, where 
 
 [5] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 she occasionally went to stay with those of her friends 
 who had been Rendle s. She had been engaged, for 
 some time after his death, in editing some juvenilia 
 which he had bequeathed to her care; but that task 
 being accomplished, she had been left without defi 
 nite occupation, and Mrs. Memorall, on the occasion 
 of their last meeting, had found her listless and out 
 of spirits. 
 
 "She misses him too much her life is too empty. 
 I told her so I told her she ought to marry." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "Why not, pray? She s a young woman still what 
 many people would call young," Mrs. Memorall inter 
 jected, with a parenthetic glance at the mirror. "Why 
 not accept the inevitable and begin over again? All 
 the King s horses and all the King s men won t bring 
 Rendle to life and besides, she didn t marry him 
 when she had the chance." 
 
 Danyers winced slightly at this rude fingering of 
 his idol. Was it possible that Mrs. Memorall did not 
 see what an anti-climax such a marriage would have 
 been? Fancy Rendle "making an honest woman" of 
 Silvia; for so society would have viewed it! How such 
 a reparation would have vulgarized their past it 
 would have been like "restoring" a masterpiece; and 
 how exquisite must have been the perceptions of the 
 woman who, in defiance of appearances, and perhaps of 
 [6] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 her own secret inclination, chose to go down to pos 
 terity as Silvia rather than as Mrs. Vincent Rendle! 
 
 Mrs. Memorall, from this day forth, acquired an 
 interest in Danyers s eyes. She was like a volume of 
 unindexed and discursive memoirs, through which he 
 patiently plodded in the hope of finding embedded 
 amid layers of dusty twaddle some precious allusion 
 to the subject of his thought. When, some months 
 later, he brought out his first slim volume, in which 
 the remodelled college essay on Rendle figured 
 among a dozen somewhat overstudied "apprecia 
 tions," he offered a copy to Mrs. Memorall; who 
 surprised him, the next time they met, with the an 
 nouncement that she had sent the book to Mrs. An- 
 erton. 
 
 Mrs. Anerton in due time wrote to thank her 
 friend. Danyers was privileged to read the few lines 
 in which, in terms that suggested the habit of "ac 
 knowledging" similar tributes, she spoke of the au 
 thor s " feeling and insight," and was "so glad of the 
 opportunity," etc. He went away disappointed, with 
 out clearly knowing what else he had expected. 
 
 The following spring, when he went abroad, Mrs. 
 Memorall oifered him letters to everybody, from the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury to Louise Michel. She did 
 not include Mrs. Anerton, however, and Danyers 
 knew, from a previous conversation, that Silvia ob- 
 
 [7] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 jected to people who " brought letters." He knew 
 also that she travelled during the summer, and was 
 unlikely to return to Rome before the term of his 
 holiday should be reached, and the hope of meeting 
 her was not included among his anticipations. 
 
 The lady whose entrance broke upon his solitary 
 repast in the restaurant of the Hotel Villa d Este 
 had seated herself in such a way that her profile 
 was detached against the window; and thus viewed, 
 her domed forehead, small arched nose, and fastidi 
 ous lip suggested a silhouette of Marie Antoinette. 
 In the lady s dress and movements in the very 
 turn of her wrist as she poured out her coffee 
 Danyers thought he detected the same fastidious 
 ness, the same air of tacitly excluding the obvious 
 and unexceptional. Here was a woman who had been 
 much bored and keenly interested. The waiter brought 
 her a Secolo, and as she bent above it Danyers noticed 
 that the hair rolled back from her forehead was turn 
 ing gray; but her figure was straight and slender, and 
 she had the invaluable gift of a girlish back. 
 
 The rush of Anglo-Saxon travel had not set to 
 ward the lakes, and with the exception of an Italian 
 family or two, and a hump-backed youth with an 
 abbe, Danyers and the lady had the marble halls of 
 the Villa d Este to themselves. 
 
 When he returned from his morning ramble among 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 the hills he saw her sitting at one of the little tables 
 at the edge of the lake. She was writing, and a heap 
 of books and newspapers lay on the table at her side. 
 That evening they met again in the garden. He had 
 strolled out to smoke a last cigarette before dinner, 
 and under the black vaulting of ilexes, near the steps 
 leading down to the boat-landing, he found her lean 
 ing on the parapet above the lake. At the sound of 
 his approach she turned and looked at him. She had 
 thrown a black lace scarf over her head, and in this 
 sombre setting her face seemed thin and unhappy. 
 He remembered afterwards that her eyes, as they 
 met his, expressed not so much sorrow as profound 
 discontent. 
 
 To his surprise she stepped toward him with a 
 detaining gesture. 
 
 "Mr. Lewis Danyers, I believe?" 
 
 He bowed. 
 
 "I am Mrs. Anerton. I saw your name on the vis 
 itors list and wished to thank you for an essay on 
 Mr. Rendle s poetry or rather to tell you how much 
 I appreciated it. The book was sent to me last winter 
 by Mrs. Memorall." 
 
 She spoke in even melancholy tones, as though 
 the habit of perfunctory utterance had robbed her 
 voice of more spontaneous accents; but her smile 
 was charming. 
 
 [9] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 They sat down on a stone bench under the ilexes, 
 and she told him how much pleasure his essay had 
 given her. She thought it the best in the book she 
 was sure he had put more of himself into it than 
 into any other; was she not right in conjecturing that 
 he had been very deeply influenced by Mr. Rendle s 
 poetry? Pour comprendre il faut aimer, and it seemed to 
 her that, in some ways, he had penetrated the poet s 
 inner meaning more completely than any other critic. 
 There were certain problems, of course, that he had 
 left untouched; certain aspects of that many-sided 
 mind that he had perhaps failed to seize 
 
 "But then you are young," she concluded gently, 
 "and one could not wish you, as yet, the experience 
 that a fuller understanding would imply." 
 
 II 
 
 SHE stayed a month at Villa d Este, and Danyers 
 was with her daily. She showed an unaffected 
 pleasure in his society; a pleasure so obviously founded 
 on their common veneration of Rendle, that the young 
 man could enjoy it without fear of fatuity. At first he 
 was merely one more grain of frankincense on the altar 
 of her insatiable divinity; but gradually a more per 
 sonal note crept into their intercourse. If she still liked 
 him only because he appreciated Rendle, she at least 
 [10] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 perceptibly distinguished him from the herd of Rendle s 
 appreciators. 
 
 Her attitude toward the great man s memory struck 
 Danyers as perfect. She neither proclaimed nor dis 
 avowed her identity. She was frankly Silvia to those 
 who knew and cared; but there was no trace of the 
 Egeria in her pose. She spoke often of Rendle s books, 
 but seldom of himself; there was no posthumous conju 
 gality, no use of the possessive tense, in her abounding 
 reminiscences. Of the master s intellectual life, of his 
 habits of thought and work, she never wearied of talk 
 ing. She knew the history of each poem ; by what scene 
 or episode each image had been evoked; how many 
 times the words in a certain line had been transposed; 
 how long a certain adjective had been sought, and what 
 had at last suggested it; she could even explain that 
 one impenetrable line, the torment of critics, the joy 
 of detractors, the last line of The Old Odysseus. 
 
 Danyers felt that in talking of these things she was 
 no mere echo of Rendle s thought. If her identity had 
 appeared to be merged in his it was because they 
 thought alike, not because he had thought for her. Pos 
 terity is apt to regard the women w r hom poets have 
 sung as chance pegs on which they hung their gar 
 lands; but Mrs. Anerton s mind was like some fertile 
 garden wherein, inevitably, Rendle s imagination had 
 rooted itself and flowered. Danyers began to see how 
 
 [11] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 many threads of his complex mental tissue the poet 
 had owed to the blending of her temperament with 
 his; in a certain sense Silvia had herself created the 
 Sonnets to Silvia. 
 
 To be the custodian of Rendle s inner self, the door, 
 as it were, to the sanctuary, had at first seemed to 
 Danyers so comprehensive a privilege that he had the 
 sense, as his friendship with Mrs. Anerton advanced, 
 of forcing his way into a life already crowded. What 
 room was there, among such towering memories, for 
 so small an actuality as his ? Quite suddenly, after this, 
 he discovered that Mrs. Memorall knew better: his 
 fortunate friend was bored as well as lonely. 
 
 "You have had more than any other woman!" he 
 had exclaimed to her one day; and her smile flashed a 
 derisive light on his blunder. Fool that he was, not to 
 have seen that she had not had enough! That she 
 was young still do years count? tender, human, a 
 woman ; that the living have need of the living. 
 
 After that, when they climbed the alleys of the 
 hanging park, resting in one of the little ruined tem 
 ples, or watching, through a ripple of foliage, the re 
 mote blue flash of the lake, they did not always talk 
 of Rendle or of literature. She encouraged Danyers to 
 speak of himself; to confide his ambitions to her; she 
 asked him the questions which are the wise woman s 
 substitute for advice. 
 
 [12] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 "You must write/ she said, administering the most 
 exquisite flattery that human lips could give. 
 
 Of course he meant to write why not to do some 
 thing great in his turn? His best, at least; with the 
 resolve, at the outset, that his best should be the best. 
 Nothing less seemed possible with that mandate in 
 his ears. How she had divined him; lifted and disen 
 tangled his groping ambitions; laid the awakening 
 touch on his spirit with her creative Let there be light! 
 
 It was his last day with her, and he was feeling very 
 hopeless and happy. 
 
 "You ought to write a book about him" she went 
 on gently. 
 
 Danyers started; he was beginning to dislike Ren- 
 die s way of walking in unannounced. 
 
 "You ought to do it," she insisted. "A complete in 
 terpretation a summing-up of his style, his purpose, 
 his theory of life and art. No one else could do it as 
 well." 
 
 He sat looking at her perplexedly. Suddenly dared 
 he guess? 
 
 "I couldn t do it without you," he faltered. 
 
 "I could help you I would help you, of course." 
 
 They sat silent, both looking at the lake. 
 
 It was agreed, when they parted, that he should 
 rejoin her six weeks later in Venice. There they were 
 to talk about the book. 
 
 [ "1 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 III 
 
 Lago d lseo, August 14th. 
 
 WHEN I said good-by to you yesterday I prom 
 ised to come back to Venice in a week: I was 
 to give you your answer then. I was not honest in 
 saying that; I didn t mean to go back to Venice or to 
 see you again. I was running away from you and 
 I mean to keep on running ! If you won t, / must. 
 Somebody must save you from marrying a disappointed 
 woman of well, you say years don t count, and why 
 should they, after all, since you are not to marry me ? 
 
 That is what I dare not go back to say. You are 
 not to marry me. We have had our month together in 
 Venice (such a good month, was it not?) and now 
 you are to go home and write a book any book 
 but the one we didn t talk of! and I am to stay 
 here, attitudinizing among my memories like a sort 
 of female Tithonus. The dreariness of this enforced 
 immortality ! 
 
 But you shall know the truth. I care for you, or 
 at least for your love, enough to owe you that. 
 
 You thought it was because Vincent Rendle had 
 loved me that there was so little hope for you. I 
 had had what I wanted to the full; wasn t that 
 what you said? It is just when a man begins to 
 think he understands a woman that he may be sure 
 [14] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 he doesn t! It is because Vincent Rendle didn t love me 
 that there is no hope for you. I never had what I 
 wanted, and never, never, never will I stoop to want 
 ing anything else. 
 
 Do you begin to understand ? It was all a sham then, 
 you say ? No, it was all real as far as it went. You are 
 young you haven t learned, as you will later, the 
 thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes 
 one s way through the labyrinth of human nature; but 
 didn t it strike you, sometimes, that I never told you 
 any foolish little anecdotes about him ? His trick, for 
 instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round 
 between his thumb and forefinger while he talked ; his 
 mania for saving the backs of notes ; his greediness 
 for wild strawberries, the little pungent Alpine ones ; 
 his childish delight in acrobats and jugglers; his way 
 of always calling me you dear you, every letter be 
 gan I never told you a word of all that, did I ? Do 
 you suppose I could have helped telling you, if he had 
 loved me ? These little things would have been mine, 
 then, a part of my life of our life they would have 
 slipped out in spite of me (it s only your unhappy 
 woman who is always reticent and dignified). But there 
 never was any "our life ;" it was always "our lives" to 
 the end. . . . 
 
 If you knew what a relief it is to tell some one at 
 last, you would bear with me, you would let me hurt 
 [15] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 you ! I shall never be quite so lonely again, now that 
 some one knows. 
 
 Let me begin at the beginning. When I first met 
 Vincent Rendle I was not twenty-five. That was twenty 
 years ago. From that time until his death, five years 
 ago, we were fast friends. He gave me fifteen years, 
 perhaps the best fifteen years, of his life. The world, 
 as you know, thinks that his greatest poems were writ 
 ten during those years ; I am supposed to have "in 
 spired" them, and in a sense I did. From the first, the 
 intellectual sympathy between us was almost complete ; 
 my mind must have been to him (I fancy) like some 
 perfectly tuned instrument on which he was never 
 tired of playing. Some one told me of his once saying 
 of me that I "always understood ;" it is the only praise 
 I ever heard of his giving me. I don t even know if he 
 thought me pretty, though I hardly think my appear 
 ance could have been disagreeable to him, for he hated 
 to be with ugly people. At all events he fell into the 
 way of spending more and more of his time with me. 
 He liked our house; our ways suited him. He was 
 nervous, irritable ; people bored him and yet he dis 
 liked solitude. He took sanctuary with us. When we 
 travelled he went with us ; in the winter he took rooms 
 near us in Rome. In England or on the continent he 
 was always with us for a good part of the year. In small 
 ways I was able to help him in his work ; he grew de- 
 [16] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 pendent on me. When we were apart he wrote to me 
 continually he liked to have me share in all he was 
 doing or thinking ; he was impatient for my criticism of 
 every new book that interested him ; I was a part of 
 his intellectual life. The pity of it was that I wanted 
 to be something more. I was a young woman and I 
 was in love with him not because he was Vincent 
 Rendle, but just because he was himself! 
 
 People began to talk, of course I was Vincent Ren- 
 die s Mrs. Anerton; when the Sonnets to Silvia appeared, 
 it was whispered that I was Silvia. Wherever he went, 
 I was invited; people made up to me in the hope of 
 getting to know him; when I was in London my door 
 bell never stopped ringing. Elderly peeresses, aspiring 
 hostesses, love-sick girls and struggling authors over 
 whelmed me with their assiduities. I hugged my suc 
 cess, for I knew what it meant they thought that 
 Rendle was in love with me ! Do you know, at times, 
 they almost made me think so too ? Oh, there was no 
 phase of folly I didn t go through. You can t imagine 
 the excuses a woman will invent for a man s not telling 
 her that he loves her pitiable arguments that she 
 would see through at a glance if any other woman used 
 them! But all the while, deep down, I knew he had 
 never cared. I should have known it if he had made 
 love to me every day of his life. I could never guess 
 whether he knew what people said about us he 
 [17] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 listened so little to what people said ; and cared still 
 less, when he heard. He was always quite honest and 
 straightforward with me; he treated me as one man 
 treats another; and yet at times I felt he must see 
 that with me it was different. If he did see, he made 
 no sign. Perhaps he never noticed I am sure he never 
 meant to be cruel. He had never made love to me ; it 
 was no fault of his if I wanted more than he could give 
 me. The Sonnets to Silvia, you say ? But what are they ? 
 A cosmic philosophy, not a love-poem; addressed to 
 Woman, not to a woman ! 
 
 But then, the letters? Ah, the letters! Well, I ll 
 make a clean breast of it. You have noticed the breaks 
 in the letters here and there, just as they seem to be on 
 the point of growing a little warmer? The critics, you 
 may remember, praised the editor for his commendable 
 delicacy and good taste (so rare in these days !) in omit 
 ting from the correspondence all personal allusions, all 
 those details intimes which should be kept sacred from 
 the public gaze. They referred, of course, to the as 
 terisks in the letters to Mrs. A. Those letters I myself 
 prepared for publication; that is to say, I copied them 
 out for the editor, and eveiy now and then I put in a 
 line of asterisks to make it appear that something had 
 been left out. You understand? The asterisks were a 
 sham there was nothing to leave out. 
 
 No one but a woman could understand what I went 
 
 [18] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 through during those years the moments of revolt, 
 when I felt I must break away from it all, fling the 
 truth in his face and never see him again; the in 
 evitable reaction, when not to see him seemed the one 
 unendurable thing, and I trembled lest a look or word 
 of mine should disturb the poise of our friendship; the 
 silly days when I hugged the delusion that he must 
 love me, since everybody thought he did; the long pe 
 riods of numbness, when I didn t seem to care whether 
 he loved me or not. Between these wretched days 
 came others when our intellectual accord was so per 
 fect that I forgot everything else in the joy of feeling 
 myself lifted up on the wings of his thought. Some 
 times, then, the heavens seemed to be opened. . . . 
 
 All this time he was so dear a friend! He had the 
 genius of friendship, and he spent it all on me. Yes, 
 you were right when you said that I have had more 
 than any other woman. // faut de I adresse pour aimer, 
 Pascal says; and I was so quiet, so cheerful, so frankly 
 affectionate with him, that in all those years I am al 
 most sure I never bored him. Could I have hoped as 
 much if he had loved me ? 
 
 You mustn t think of him, though, as having been 
 
 tied to my skirts. He came and went as he pleased, 
 
 and so did his fancies. There was a girl once (I am 
 
 telling you everything), a lovely being who called his 
 
 [19] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 poetry "deep" and gave him Lucile on his birthday. 
 He followed her to Switzerland one summer, and all 
 the time that he was dangling after her (a little too 
 conspicuously, I always thought, for a Great Man), he 
 was writing to me about his theory of vowel-combina 
 tions or was it his experiments in English hexameter? 
 The letters were dated from the very places where I 
 knew they went and sat by waterfalls together and he 
 thought out adjectives for her hair. He talked to me 
 about it quite frankly afterwards. She was perfectly 
 beautiful and it had been a pure delight to watch her; 
 but she would talk, and her mind, he said, was "all 
 elbows." And yet, the next year, when her marriage 
 was announced, he went away alone, quite suddenly 
 . . . and it was just afterwards that he published 
 Loves Viaticum. Men are queer! 
 
 After my husband died I am putting things 
 crudely, you see I had a return of hope. It was be 
 cause he loved me, I argued, that he had never spoken ; 
 because he had always hoped some day to make me his 
 wife; because he wanted to spare me the "reproach." 
 Rubbish! I knew well enough, in my heart of hearts, 
 that my one chance lay in the force of habit. He had 
 grown used to me ; he was no longer young ; he dreaded 
 new people and new ways ; il avail pris son pli. Would 
 it not be easier to marry me ? 
 
 I don t believe he ever thought of it. He wrote me 
 [20] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 what people call "a beautiful letter;" he was kind, 
 considerate, decently commiserating; then, after a few 
 weeks, he slipped into his old way of coming in every 
 afternoon, and our interminable talks began again just 
 where they had left off. I heard later that people thought 
 I had shown "such good taste" in not marrying him. 
 
 So we jogged on for five years longer. Perhaps they 
 were the best years, for I had given up hoping. Then 
 he died. 
 
 After his death this is curious there came to me 
 a kind of mirage of love. All the books and articles 
 written about him, all the reviews of the "Life," were 
 full of discreet allusions to Silvia. I became again the 
 Mrs. Anerton of the glorious days. Sentimental girls 
 and dear lads like you turned pink when somebody 
 whispered, "that was Silvia you were talking to." Idiots 
 begged for my autograph publishers urged me to 
 write my reminiscences of him critics consulted me 
 about the reading of doubtful lines. And I knew that, 
 to all these people, I was the woman Vincent Rendle 
 had loved. 
 
 After a while that fire went out too and I was left 
 alone with my past. Alone quite alone; for he had 
 never really been with me. The intellectual union 
 counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, 
 but never hand in hand, and there were no little 
 things to remember him by. 
 
 [21] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I 
 crawled into myself as into a snow-hut. I hated my 
 solitude and yet dreaded any one who disturbed it. 
 That phase, of course, passed like the others. I took 
 up life again, and began to read the papers and con 
 sider the cut of my gowns. But there was one ques 
 tion that I could not be rid of, that haunted me 
 night and day. Why had he never loved me ? Why 
 had I been so much to him, and no more? Was I so 
 ugly, so essentially unlovable, that though a man 
 might cherish me as his mind s comrade, he could 
 not care for me as a woman? I can t tell you how 
 that question tortured me. It became an obsession. 
 
 My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to 
 find out what some other man thought of me. Don t 
 be too hard on me ! Listen first consider. When I 
 first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who 
 had married early and led the quietest kind of life; I 
 had had no "experiences." From the hour of our first 
 meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any 
 other man, and never noticed whether any other man 
 looked at me. When he died, five years ago, I knew the 
 extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was it too 
 late to find out ? Should I never know why ? 
 
 Forgive me forgive me. You are so young; it will 
 be an episode, a mere "document," to you so soon! 
 And, besides, it wasn t as deliberate, as cold-blooded 
 [22] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn t 
 plan it, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more 
 complex than any rendering of it can be. I liked you 
 from the first I was drawn to you (you must have 
 seen that) I wanted you to like me; it was not a 
 mere psychological experiment. And yet in a sense it 
 was that, too I must be honest. I had to have an 
 answer to that question; it was a ghost that had to be 
 laid. 
 
 At first I was afraid oh, so much afraid that you 
 cared for me only because I was Silvia, that you loved 
 me because you thought Rendle had loved me. I be 
 gan to think there was no escaping my destiny. 
 
 How happy I was when I discovered that you were 
 growing jealous of my past ; that you actually hated 
 Rendle ! My heart beat like a girl s when you told me 
 you meant to follow me to Venice. 
 
 After our parting at Villa d Este my old doubts re 
 asserted themselves. What did I know of your feeling 
 for me, after all? Were you capable of analyzing it 
 yourself? Was it not likely to be two-thirds vanity and 
 curiosity, and one-third literary sentimentality? You 
 might easily fancy that you cared for Mary Anerton 
 when you were really in love with Silvia the heart 
 is such a hypocrite ! Or you might be more calculating 
 than I had supposed. Perhaps it was you who had been 
 flattering my vanity in the hope (the pardonable hope !) 
 [23] 
 
THE MUSE S TRAGEDY 
 
 of turning me, after a decent interval, into a pretty 
 little essay with a margin. 
 
 When you arrived in Venice and we met again do 
 you remember the music on the lagoon, that evening, 
 from my balcony? I was so afraid you would begin 
 to talk about the book the book, you remember, was 
 your ostensible reason for coming. You never spoke 
 of it, and I soon saw your one fear was / might do 
 so might remind you of your object in being with 
 me. Then I knew you cared for me ! yes, at that mo 
 ment really cared ! We never mentioned the book once, 
 did we, during that month in Venice ? 
 
 I have read my letter over ; and now I wish that I 
 had said this to you instead of writing it. I could have 
 felt my way then, watching your face and seeing if you 
 understood. But, no, I could not go back to Venice ; 
 and I could not tell you (though I tried) while we 
 were there together. I couldn t spoil that month my 
 one month. It was so good, for once in my life, to get 
 away from literature .... 
 
 You will be angry with me at first but, alas ! not 
 for long. W 7 hat I have done would have been cruel if I 
 had been a younger woman ; as it is, the experiment 
 will hurt no one but myself. And it will hurt me hor 
 ribly (as much as, in your first anger, you may perhaps 
 wish), because it has shown me, for the first time, all 
 that I have missed .... 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 A she lay in her berth, staring at the shadows 
 overhead, the rush of the wheels was in her 
 brain, driving her deeper and deeper into cir 
 cles of wakeful lucidity. The sleeping-car had sunk into 
 its night-silence. Through the wet window-pane she 
 watched the sudden lights, the long stretches of 
 hurrying blackness. Now and then she turned her 
 head and looked through the opening in the hang 
 ings at her husband s curtains across the aisle . . . 
 
 She wondered restlessly if he wanted anything and 
 if she could hear him if he called. His voice had 
 grown very weak within the last months and it irri 
 tated him when she did not hear. This irritability, 
 this increasing childish petulance seemed to give ex 
 pression to their imperceptible estrangement. Like 
 two faces looking at one another through a sheet of 
 glass they were close together, almost touching, but 
 they could not hear or feel each other: the conduc 
 tivity between them was broken. She, at least, had 
 this sense of separation, and she fancied sometimes 
 that she saw it reflected in the look with which he 
 supplemented his failing words. Doubtless the fault 
 was hers.. She was too impenetrably healthy to be 
 touched by the irrelevancies of disease. Her self-re- 
 [27] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 proachful tenderness was tinged with the sense of his 
 irrationality: she had a vague feeling that there was a 
 purpose in his helpless tyrannies. The suddenness of 
 the change had found her so unprepared. A year ago 
 their pulses had beat to one robust measure; both had 
 the same prodigal confidence in an exhaustless future. 
 Now their energies no longer kept step: hers still 
 bounded ahead of life, preempting unclaimed regions 
 of hope and activity, while his lagged behind, vainly 
 struggling to overtake her. 
 
 When they married, she had such arrears of living 
 to make up: her days had been as bare as the white 
 washed school-room where she forced innutritious facts 
 upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in on 
 the slumber of circumstance, widening the present till 
 it became the encloser of remotest chances. But im 
 perceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge 
 against her: she was never to be allowed to spread her 
 wings. 
 
 At first the doctors had said that six weeks of mild 
 air would set him right; but when he came back this 
 assurance was explained as having of course included 
 a winter in a dry climate. They gave up their pretty 
 house, storing the wedding presents and new furniture, 
 and went to Colorado. She had hated it there from the 
 first. Nobody knew her or cared about her; there was 
 no one to wonder at the good match she had made, 
 [28] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 or to envy her the new dresses and the visiting-cards 
 which were still a surprise to her. And he kept grow 
 ing worse. She felt herself beset with difficulties too 
 evasive to be fought by so direct a temperament. She 
 still loved him, of course; but he was gradually, unde- 
 finably ceasing to be himself. The man she had married 
 had been strong, active, gently masterful : the male 
 whose pleasure it is clear a way through the mate 
 rial obstructions of life ; but now it was she who was 
 the protector, he who must be shielded from importu 
 nities and given his drops or his beef-juice though the 
 skies were falling. The routine of the sick-room be 
 wildered her; this punctual administering of medicine 
 seemed as idle as some uncomprehended religious 
 mummery. 
 
 There were moments, indeed, when warm gushes of 
 pity swept away her instinctive resentment of his con 
 dition, when she still found his old self in his eyes as 
 they groped for each other through the dense medium 
 of his weakness. But these moments had grown rare. 
 Sometimes he frightened her : his sunken expressionless 
 face seemed that of a stranger ; his voice was weak and 
 hoarse ; his thin-lipped smile a mere muscular contrac 
 tion. Her hand avoided his damp soft skin, which had 
 lost the familiar roughness of health: she caught her 
 self furtively watching him as she might have watched 
 a strange animal. It frightened her to feel that this 
 [29] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 was the man she loved; there were hours when to tell 
 him what she suffered seemed the one escape from her 
 fears. But in general she judged herself more leniently, 
 reflecting that she had perhaps been too long alone 
 with him, and that she would feel differently when 
 they were at home again, surrounded by her robust 
 and buoyant family. How she had rejoiced when the 
 doctors at last gave their consent to his going home! 
 She knew, of course, what the decision meant; they 
 both knew. It meant that he was to die ; but they 
 dressed the truth in hopeful euphuisms, and at times, 
 in the joy of preparation, she really forgot the purpose 
 of their journey, and slipped into an eager allusion to 
 next year s plans. 
 
 At last the day of leaving came. She had a dreadful 
 fear that they would never get away ; that somehow at 
 the last moment he would fail her; that the doctors 
 held one of their accustomed treacheries in reserve ; 
 but nothing happened. They drove to the station, he 
 was installed in a seat with a rug over his knees and a 
 cushion at his back, and she hung out of the window 
 waving unregretful farewells to the acquaintances she 
 had really never liked till then. 
 
 The first twenty-four hours had passed off well. He 
 
 revived a little and it amused him to look out of the 
 
 window and to observe the humours of the car. The 
 
 second day he began to grow weary and to chafe under 
 
 [SO] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 the dispassionate stare of the freckled child with the 
 lump of chewing-gum. She had to explain to the child s 
 mother that her husband was too ill to be disturbed : a 
 statement received by that lady with a resentment visi 
 bly supported by the maternal sentiment of the whole 
 car .... 
 
 That night he slept badly and the next morning his 
 temperature frightened her: she was sure he was grow 
 ing worse. The day passed slowly, punctuated by the 
 small irritations of travel. Watching his tired face, she 
 traced in its contractions every rattle and jolt of the 
 train, till her own body vibrated with sympathetic 
 fatigue. She felt the others observing him too, and 
 hovered restlessly between him and the line of inter 
 rogative eyes. The freckled child hung about him like 
 a fly; offers of candy and picture-books failed to dis 
 lodge her: she twisted one leg around the other and 
 watched him imperturbably. The porter, as he passed, 
 lingered with vague proffers of help, probably inspired 
 by philanthropic passengers swelling with the sense 
 that "something ought to be done ;" and one nervous 
 man in a skull-cap was audibly concerned as to the 
 possible effect on his wife s health. 
 
 The hours dragged on in a dreary inoccupation. 
 
 Towards dusk she sat down beside him and he laid 
 
 his hand on hers. The touch startled her. He seemed 
 
 to be calling her from far off. She looked at him 
 
 [31] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 helplessly and his smile went through her like a phy 
 sical pang. 
 
 "Are you very tired?" she asked. 
 
 "No, not very." 
 
 "We ll be there soon now." 
 
 "Yes, very soon." 
 
 "This time to-morrow " 
 
 He nodded and they sat silent. When she had put 
 him to bed and crawled into her own berth she tried to 
 cheer herself with the thought that in less than twenty- 
 four hours they would be in New York. Her people 
 would all be at the station to meet her she pictured 
 their round unanxious faces pressing through the crowd. 
 She only hoped they would not tell him too loudly 
 that he was looking splendidly and would be all right 
 in no time : the subtler sympathies developed by long 
 contact with suffering were making her aware of a cer 
 tain coarseness of texture in the family sensibilities. 
 
 Suddenly she thought she heard him call. She parted 
 the curtains and listened. No, it was only a man snor 
 ing at the other end of the car. His snores had a greasy 
 sound, as though they passed through tallow. She lay 
 down and tried to sleep . . . Had she not heard him 
 move ? She started up trembling . . . The silence 
 frightened her more than any sound. He might not 
 be able to make her hear he might be calling her 
 now . . . What made her think of such things ? It 
 [ 32 ]. 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 was merely the familiar tendency of an over-tired 
 mind to fasten itself on the most intolerable chance 
 within the range of its forebodings . . . Putting her 
 head out, she listened; but she could not distinguish 
 his breathing from that of the other pairs of lungs 
 about her. She longed to get up and look at him, but 
 she knew the impulse was a mere vent for her rest 
 lessness, and the fear of disturbing him restrained her. 
 . . . The regular movement of his curtain reassured 
 her, she knew not why ; she remembered that he had 
 wished her a cheerful good-night ; and the sheer inabil 
 ity to endure her fears a moment longer made her 
 put them from her with an effort of her whole sound 
 tired body. She turned on her side and slept. 
 
 She sat up stiffly, staring out at the dawn. The train 
 was rushing through a region of bare hillocks huddled 
 against a lifeless sky. It looked like the first day of 
 creation. The air of the car was close, and she pushed 
 up her window to let in the keen wind. Then she 
 looked at her watch: it was seven o clock, and soon the 
 people about her would be stirring. She slipped into 
 her clothes, smoothed her dishevelled hair and crept to 
 the dressing-room. When she had washed her face and 
 adjusted her dress she felt more hopeful. It was always 
 a struggle for her not to be cheerful in the morning. 
 Her cheeks burned deliciously under the coarse towel 
 and the wet hair about her temples broke into strong 
 [33 1 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 upward tendrils. Every inch of her was full of life and 
 elasticity. And in ten hours they would be at home ! 
 
 She stepped to her husband s berth : it was time for 
 him to take his early glass of milk. The window-shade 
 was down, and in the dusk of the curtained enclosure 
 she could just see that he lay sideways, with his face 
 away from her. She leaned over him and drew up the 
 shade. As she did so she touched one of his hands. It 
 felt cold . . . 
 
 She bent closer, laying her hand on his arm and 
 calling him by name. He did not move. She spoke 
 again more loudly; she grasped his shoulder and gently 
 shook it. He lay motionless. She caught hold of his 
 hand again: it slipped from her limply, like a dead 
 thing. A dead thing? ... Her breath caught. She 
 must see his face. She leaned forward, and hurriedly, 
 shrinkingly, with a sickening reluctance of the flesh, 
 laid her hands on his shoulders and turned him over. 
 His head fell back ; his face looked small and smooth ; 
 he gazed at her with steady eyes. 
 
 She remained motionless for a long time, holding 
 him thus ; and they looked at each other. Suddenly she 
 shrank back : the longing to scream, to call out, to fly 
 from him, had almost overpowered her. But a strong 
 hand arrested her. Good God ! If it were known that 
 he was dead they would be put off the train at the next 
 station 
 
 [34] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 In a terrifying flash of remembrance there arose be 
 fore her a scene she had once witnessed in travelling, 
 when a husband and wife, whose child had died in the 
 train, had been thrust out at some chance station. She 
 saw them standing on the platform with the child s 
 body between them ; she had never forgotten the 
 dazed look with which they followed the receding 
 train. And this was what would happen to her. Within 
 the next hour she might find herself on the platform 
 of some strange station, alone with her husband s body. 
 . . . Anything but that ! It was too horrible She 
 quivered like a creature at bay. 
 
 As she cowered there, she felt the train moving more 
 slowly. It was coming then they were approaching a 
 station ! She saw again the husband and wife standing 
 on the lonely platform ; and with a violent gesture she 
 drew down the shade to hide her husband s face. 
 
 Feeling dizzy, she sank down on the edge of the 
 berth, keeping away from his outstretched body, and 
 pulling the curtains close, so that he and she were shut 
 into a kind of sepulchral twilight. She tried to think. 
 At all costs she must conceal the fact that he was dead. 
 But how ? Her mind refused to act : she could not plan, 
 combine. She could think of no way but to sit there, 
 clutching the curtains, all day long . . . 
 
 She heard the porter making up her bed; people 
 were beginning to move about the car; the dressing- 
 [35] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 room door was being opened and shut. She tried to 
 rouse herself. At length with a supreme effort she 
 rose to her feet, stepping into the aisle of the car 
 and drawing the curtains tight behind her. She no 
 ticed that they still parted slightly with the motion 
 of the car, and finding a pin in her dress she fast 
 ened them together. Now she was safe. She looked 
 round and saw the porter. She fancied he was watch 
 ing her. 
 
 "Ain t he awake yet?" he enquired. 
 
 "No/ she faltered. 
 
 "I got his milk all ready when he wants it. You 
 know you told me to have it for him by seven." 
 
 She nodded silently and crept into her seat. 
 
 At half-past eight the train reached Buffalo. By 
 this time the other passengers were dressed and the 
 berths had been folded back for the day. The por 
 ter, moving to and fro under his burden of sheets 
 and pillows, glanced at her as he passed. At length 
 he said: "Ain t he going to get up? You know 
 we re ordered to make up the berths as early as 
 we can." 
 
 She turned cold with fear. They were just enter 
 ing the station. 
 
 " Oh, not yet," she stammered. " Not till he s had 
 his milk. Won t you get it, please ? " 
 
 "All right. Soon as we start again." 
 [36] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 When the train moved on he reappeared with the 
 milk. She took it from him and sat vaguely looking 
 at it : her brain moved slowly from one idea to an 
 other, as though they were stepping-stones set far 
 apart across a whirling flood. At length she became 
 aware that the porter still hovered expectantly. 
 
 ee Will I give it to him ? " he suggested. 
 
 "Oh, no/ she cried, rising. "He he s asleep yet, 
 [ think " 
 
 She waited till the porter had passed on ; then 
 she unpinned the curtains and slipped behind them. 
 In the semi-obscurity her husband s face stared up 
 at her like a marble mask with agate eyes. The eyes 
 were dreadful. She put out her hand and drew down 
 the lids. Then she remembered the glass of milk in 
 her other hand : what was she to do with it ? She 
 thought of raising the window and throwing it out; 
 but to do so she would have to lean across his body 
 and bring her face close to his. She decided to drink 
 the milk. 
 
 She returned to her seat with the empty glass 
 and after a while the porter came back to get it. 
 
 "When 11 I fold up his bed?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, not now not yet ; he s ill he s very ill. 
 Can t you let him stay as he is ? The doctor wants 
 him to lie down as much as possible." 
 
 He scratched his head. "Well, if he s really sick 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 He took the empty glass and walked away, ex 
 plaining to the passengers that the party behind 
 the curtains was too sick to get up just yet. 
 
 She found herself the centre of sympathetic eyes. 
 A motherly woman with an intimate smile sat down 
 beside her. 
 
 " I m real sorry to hear your husband s sick. I ve 
 had a remarkable amount of sickness in my family 
 and maybe I could assist you. Can I take a look at 
 him ? " 
 
 "Oh, no no, please! He mustn t be disturbed." 
 
 The lady accepted the rebuff indulgently. 
 
 "Well, it s just as you say, of course, but you don t 
 look to me as if you d had much experience in sick 
 ness and I d have been glad to assist you. What do you 
 generally do when your husband s taken this way?" 
 
 "I I let him sleep." 
 
 " Too much sleep ain t any too healthful either. 
 
 Don t you give him any medicine ? " 
 
 Y yes." 
 
 te Don t you wake him to take it ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " When does he take the next dose ? " 
 
 "Not for two hours 
 
 The lady looked disappointed. " Well, if I was you 
 I d try giving it oftener. That s what I do with my 
 folks. 
 
 [38] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 After that many faces seemed to press upon her. 
 The passengers were on their way to the dining-car, 
 and she was conscious that as they passed down the 
 aisle they glanced curiously at the closed curtains. 
 One lantern-jawed man with prominent eyes stood 
 still and tried to shoot his projecting glance through 
 the division between the folds. The freckled child, 
 returning from breakfast, waylaid the passers with a 
 buttery clutch, saying in a loud whisper, " He s 
 sick ; " and once the conductor came by, asking for 
 tickets. She shrank into her corner and looked out 
 of the window at the flying trees and houses, mean 
 ingless hieroglyphs of an endlessly unrolled papyrus. 
 
 Now and then the train stopped, and the new 
 comers on entering the car stared in turn at the 
 closed curtains. More and more people seemed to pass 
 their faces began to blend fantastically with the im 
 ages surging in her brain . . . 
 
 Later in the day a fat man detached himself from 
 the mist of faces. He had a creased stomach and soft 
 pale lips. As he pressed himself into the seat facing 
 her she noticed that he was dressed in black broad 
 cloth, with a soiled white tie. 
 
 " Husband s pretty bad this morning, is he ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Dear, dear ! Now that s terribly distressing, ain t 
 it?" An apostolic smile revealed his gold-filled teeth. 
 
 [.89] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 e< Of course you know there s no sech thing as sick 
 ness. Ain t that a lovely thought ? Death itself is but a 
 deloosion of our grosser senses. On y lay yourself open 
 to the influx of the sperrit, submit yourself passively to 
 the action of the divine force, and disease and dissolu 
 tion will cease to exist for you. If you could indooce 
 your husband to read this little pamphlet 
 
 The faces about her again grew indistinct. She had 
 a vague recollection of hearing the motherly lady and 
 the parent of the freckled child ardently disputing the 
 relative advantages of trying several medicines at once, 
 or of taking each in turn ; the motherly lady maintain 
 ing that the competitive system saved time ; the other 
 objecting that you couldn t tell which remedy had ef 
 fected the cure ; their voices went on and on, like bell- 
 buoys droning through a fog . . . The porter came 
 up now and then with questions that she did not un 
 derstand, but that somehow she must have answered 
 since he went away again without repeating them ; 
 every two hours the motherly lady reminded her that 
 her husband ought to have his drops ; people left the 
 car and others replaced them . . . 
 
 Her head was spinning and she tried to steady her 
 self by clutching at her thoughts as they swept by, but 
 they slipped away from her like bushes on the side 
 of a sheer precipice down which she seemed to be 
 falling. Suddenly her mind grew clear again and she 
 [40] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 found herself vividly picturing what would happen 
 when the train reached New York. She shuddered as 
 it occurred to her that he would be quite cold and 
 that some one might perceive he had been dead since 
 morning. 
 
 She thought hurriedly: "If they see I am not sur 
 prised they will suspect something. They will ask ques 
 tions, and if I tell them the truth they won t believe 
 me no one would believe me ! It will be terrible "- 
 and she kept repeating to herself: "I must pretend I 
 don t know. I must pretend I don t know. When they 
 open the curtains I must go up to him quite naturally 
 and then I must scream." . . . She had an idea that 
 the scream would be very hard to do. 
 
 Gradually new thoughts crowded upon her, vivid and 
 urgent : she tried to separate and restrain them, but 
 they beset her clamorously, like her school-children at 
 the end of a hot day, when she was too tired to silence 
 them. Her head grew confused, and she felt a sick fear 
 of forgetting her part, of betraying herself by some un 
 guarded word or look. 
 
 "I must pretend I don t know," she went on mur 
 muring. The words had lost their significance, but she 
 repeated them mechanically, as though they had been 
 a magic formula, until suddenly she heard herself say 
 ing : " I can t remember, I can t remember ! " 
 
 Her voice sounded very loud, and she looked about 
 
 ] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 her in terror; but no one seemed to notice that she 
 had spoken. 
 
 As she glanced down the car her eye caught the 
 curtains of her husband s berth, and she began to ex 
 amine the monotonous arabesques woven through their 
 heavy folds. The pattern was intricate and difficult to 
 trace ; she gazed fixedly at the curtains and as she did 
 so the thick stuff grew transparent and through it she 
 saw her husband s face his dead face. She struggled 
 to avert her look, but her eyes refused to move and her 
 head seemed to be held in a vice. At last, with an effort 
 that left her weak and shaking, she turned away; but 
 it was of no use ; close in front of her, small and smooth, 
 was her husband s face. It seemed to be suspended in 
 the air between her and the false braids of the woman 
 who sat in front of her. With an uncontrollable gesture 
 she stretched out her hand to push the face away, and 
 suddenly she felt the touch of his smooth skin. She 
 repressed a cry and half started from her seat. The 
 woman with the false braids looked around, and feeling 
 that she must justify her movement in some way she 
 rose and lifted her travelling-bag from the opposite 
 seat. She unlocked the bag and looked into it; but the 
 first object her hand met was a small flask of her hus 
 band s, thrust there at the last moment, in the haste of 
 departure. She locked the bag and closed her eyes . . . 
 his face was there again, hanging between her eye-balls 
 [42] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 and lids like a waxen mask against a red curtain . . . 
 
 She roused herself with a shiver. Had she fainted or 
 slept ? Hours seemed to have elapsed ; but it was still 
 broad day, and the people about her were sitting in 
 the same attitudes as before. 
 
 A sudden sense of hunger made her aware that she 
 had eaten nothing since morning. The thought of food 
 filled her with disgust, but she dreaded a return of 
 faintness, and remembering that she had some biscuits 
 in her bag she took one out and ate it. The dry crumbs 
 choked her, and she hastily swallowed a little brandy 
 from her husband s flask. The burning sensation in her 
 throat acted as a counter-irritant, momentarily reliev 
 ing the dull ache of her nerves. Then she felt a gently- 
 stealing warmth, as though a soft air fanned her, and 
 the swarming fears relaxed their clutch, receding 
 through the stillness that enclosed her, a stillness 
 soothing as the spacious quietude of a summer day. 
 She slept. 
 
 Through her sleep she felt the impetuous rush of the 
 train. It seemed to be life itself that was sweeping her 
 ori with headlong inexorable force sweeping her into 
 darkness and terror, and the awe of unknown days.- 
 Now all at once everything was still not a sound, not 
 a pulsation . . . She was dead in her turn, and lay 
 beside him with smooth upstaring face. How quiet it 
 was! and yet she heard feet coming, the feet of the 
 [43] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 men who were to carry them away . . . She could 
 feel too she felt a sudden prolonged vibration, a 
 series of hard shocks, and then another plunge into 
 darkness : the darkness of death this time a black 
 whirlwind on which they were both spinning like 
 leaves, in wild uncoiling spirals, with millions and 
 millions of the dead . . . 
 
 She sprang up in terror. Her sleep must have lasted 
 a long time, for the winter day had paled and the lights 
 had been lit. The car was in confusion, and as she re 
 gained her self-possession she saw that the passengers 
 were gathering up their wraps and bags. The woman 
 with the false braids had brought from the dressing- 
 room a sickly ivy-plant in a bottle, and the Christian 
 Scientist was reversing his cuffs. The porter passed 
 down the aisle with his impartial brush. An impersonal 
 figure with a gold-banded cap asked for her husband s 
 ticket. A voice shouted "Baig-gage express!" and she 
 heard the clicking of metal as the passengers handed 
 over their checks. 
 
 Presently her window was blocked by an expanse of 
 sooty wall, and the train passed into the Harlem tunnel. 
 The journey was over ; in a few minutes she would see 
 her family pushing their joyous way through the throng 
 at the station. Her heart dilated. The worst terror was 
 past . . . 
 
 [44] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 "We d better get him up now, hadn t we?" asked 
 the porter, touching her arm. 
 
 He had her husband s hat in his hand and was medi 
 tatively revolving it under his brush. 
 
 She looked at the hat and tried to speak ; but sud 
 denly the car grew dark. She flung up her arms, strug 
 gling to catch at something, and fell face downward, 
 striking her head against the dead man s berth. 
 
 [45] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 SHE was very pretty when I first knew her, 
 with the sweet straight nose and short upper 
 lip of the cameo-brooch divinity, humanized 
 by a dimple that flowered in her cheek whenever 
 anything was said possessing the outward attributes 
 of humor without its intrinsic quality. For the dear 
 lady was providentially deficient in humor: the least 
 hint of the real thing clouded her lovely eye like the 
 hovering shadow of an algebraic problem. 
 
 I don t think nature had meant her to be "intel 
 lectual ; " but what can a poor thing do, whose hus 
 band has died of drink when her baby is hardly six 
 months old, and who finds her coral necklace and 
 her grandfather s edition of the British Dramatists 
 inadequate to the demands of the creditors? 
 
 Her mother, the celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt, had 
 written a poem in blank verse on "The Fall of Man;" 
 one of her aunts was dean of a girls college ; another 
 had translated Euripides with such a family, the poor 
 child s fate was sealed in advance. The only way of pay 
 ing her husband s debts and keeping the baby clothed 
 was to be intellectual ; and, after some hesitation as to 
 the form her mental activity was to take, it was unani 
 mously decided that she was to give lectures. 
 [49] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 They began by being drawing-room lectures. The 
 first time I saw her she was standing by the piano, 
 against a flippant background of Dresden china and 
 photographs, telling a roomful of women preoccu 
 pied with their spring bonnets all she thought she 
 knew about Greek art. The ladies assembled to hear 
 her had given me to understand that she was "do 
 ing it for the baby," and this fact, together with 
 the shortness of her upper lip and the bewildering 
 co-operation of her dimple, disposed me to listen 
 leniently to her dissertation. Happily, at that time 
 Greek art was still, if I may use the phrase, easily 
 handled: it was as simple as walking down a mu 
 seum-gallery lined with pleasant familiar Venuses and 
 Apollos. All the later complications the archaic and 
 archaistic conundrums ; the influences of Assyria and 
 Asia Minor; the conflicting attributions and the 
 wrangles of the erudite still slumbered in the 
 bosom of the future "scientific critic." Greek art in 
 those days began with Phidias and ended with the 
 Apollo Belvedere ; and a child could travel from one 
 to the other without danger of losing his way. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot had two fatal gifts : a capacious but 
 inaccurate memory, and an extraordinary fluency of 
 speech. There was nothing she did not remember 
 wrongly ; but her halting facts were swathed in so 
 many layers of rhetoric that their infirmities were 
 [50] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 imperceptible to her friendly critics. Besides, she 
 had been taught Greek by the aunt who had trans 
 lated Euripides ; and the mere sound of the a/f and 
 oig that she now and then not unskilfully let slip 
 (correcting herself, of course, with a start, and indul 
 gently mistranslating the phrase), struck awe to the 
 hearts of ladies whose only " accomplishment " was 
 French if you didn t speak too quickly. 
 
 I had then but a momentary glimpse of Mrs. 
 Amyot, but a few months later I came upon her 
 again in the New England university town where 
 the celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt lived on the sum 
 mit of a local Parnassus, with lesser muses and col 
 lege professors respectfully grouped on the lower 
 ledges of the sacred declivity. Mrs. Amyot, who, 
 after her husband s death, had returned to the ma 
 ternal roof (even during her father s lifetime the 
 roof had been distinctively maternal), Mrs. Amyot, 
 thanks to her upper lip, her dimple and her Greek, 
 Was already esconced in a snug hollow of the Par 
 nassian slope. 
 
 After the lecture was over it happened that I 
 walked home with Mrs. Amyot. From the incensed 
 glances of two or three learned gentlemen who were 
 hovering on the door-step when we emerged, I inferred 
 that Mrs. Amyot, at that period, did not often walk 
 home alone ; but I doubt whether any of my discom- 
 [51] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 fited rivals, whatever his claims to favor, was ever 
 treated to so ravishing a mixture of shyness and self- 
 abandonment, of sham erudition and real teeth and 
 hair, as it was my privilege to enjoy. Even at the open 
 ing of her public career Mrs. Amyot had a tender eye 
 for strangers, as possible links with successive centres 
 of culture to which in due course the torch of Greek 
 art might be handed on. 
 
 She began by telling me that she had never been so 
 frightened in her life. She knew, of course, how dread 
 fully learned I was, and when, just as she was going to 
 begin, her hostess had whispered to her that I was in 
 the room, she had felt ready to sink through the floor. 
 Then (with a flying dimple) she had remembered Em 
 erson s line wasn t it Emerson s? that beauty is its 
 own excuse for seeing, and that had made her feel a 
 little more confident, since she was sure that no one 
 saw beauty more vividly than she as a child she used 
 to sit for hours gazing at an Etruscan vase on the book 
 case in the library, while her sisters played with their 
 dolls and if seeing beauty was the only excuse one 
 needed for talking about it, why, she was sure I would 
 make allowances and not be too critical and sarcastic, 
 especially if, as she thought probable, I had heard of 
 her having lost her poor husband, and how she had to 
 do it for the baby. 
 
 Being abundantly assured of my svmpathy on these 
 [52] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 points, she went on to say that she had always wanted 
 so much to consult me about her lectures. Of course, 
 one subject wasn t enough (this view of the limitations 
 of Greek art as a "subject" gave me a startling idea of 
 the rate at which a successful lecturer might exhaust 
 the universe) ; she must find others ; she had not ven 
 tured on any as yet, but she had thought of Tennyson 
 didn t I love Tennyson ? She worshipped him so that 
 she was sure she could help others to understand him ; 
 or what did I think of a "course" on Raphael or Mi 
 chelangelo or on the heroines of Shakespeare ? There 
 were some fine steel-engravings of Raphael s Madonnas 
 and of the Sistine ceiling in her mother s library, and 
 she had seen Miss Cushman in several Shakespearian 
 roles, so that on these subjects also she felt qualified to 
 speak with authority. 
 
 When we reached her mother s door she begged me 
 to come in and talk the matter over ; she wanted me to 
 see the baby she felt as though I should understand 
 her better if I saw the baby and the dimple flashed 
 through a tear. 
 
 The fear of encountering the author of "The Fall of 
 Man," combined with the opportune recollection of a 
 dinner engagement, made me evade this appeal with 
 the promise of returning on the morrow. On the mor 
 row, I left too early to redeem my promise; and for 
 several years afterwards I saw no more of Mrs. Amyot. 
 [53] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 My calling at that time took me at irregular intervals 
 from one to another of our larger cities, and as Mrs. 
 Amyot was also peripatetic it was inevitable that sooner 
 or later we should cross each other s path. It was there 
 fore without surprise that, one snowy afternoon in Bos 
 ton, I learned from the lady with whom I chanced to 
 be lunching that, as soon as the meal was over, I was 
 to be taken to hear Mrs. Amyot lecture. 
 
 "On Greek art ?" I suggested. 
 
 "Oh, you ve heard her then? No, this is one of the 
 series called Homes and Haunts of the Poets. Last 
 week we had Wordsworth and the Lake Poets, to-day 
 we are to have Goethe and Weimar. She is a wonderful 
 creature all the women of her family are geniuses. 
 You know, of course, that her mother was Irene Astarte 
 Pratt, who wrote a poem on The Fall of Man ; N. P. 
 Willis called her the female Milton of America. One of 
 Mrs. Amyot s aunts has translated Eurip " 
 
 "And is she as pretty as ever?" I irrelevantly inter 
 posed. 
 
 My hostess looked shocked. "She is excessively mod 
 est and retiring. She says it is actual suffering for her 
 to speak in public. You know she only does it for the 
 baby." 
 
 Punctually at the hour appointed, we took our seats 
 in a lecture-hall full of strenuous females in ulsters. 
 Mrs. Amyot was evidently a favorite with these aus- 
 [54] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 tere sisters, for every corner was crowded, and as we 
 entered a pale usher with an educated mispronuncia 
 tion was setting forth to several dejected applicants 
 the impossibility of supplying them with seats. 
 
 Our own were happily so near the front that when 
 the curtains at the back of the platform parted, and 
 Mrs. Amyot appeared, I was at once able to establish a 
 comparison between the lady placidly dimpling to the 
 applause of her public and the shrinking drawing-room 
 orator of my earlier recollections. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot was as pretty as ever, and there was the 
 same curious discrepancy between the freshness of her 
 aspect and the staleness of her theme, but something 
 was gone of the blushing unsteadiness with which she 
 had fired her first random shots at Greek art. It was 
 not that the shots were less uncertain, but that she 
 now had an air of assuming that, for her purpose, the 
 bull s-eye was everywhere, so that there was no need 
 to be flustered in taking aim. This assurance had so 
 facilitated the flow of her eloquence that she seemed to 
 be performing a trick analogous to that of the conjuror 
 who pulls hundreds of yards of white paper out of his 
 mouth. From a large assortment of stock adjectives she 
 chose, with unerring deftness and rapidity, the one that 
 taste and discrimination would most surely have re 
 jected, fitting out her subject with a whole wardrobe 
 of slop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. To the 
 [55] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 invaluable knack of not disturbing the association of 
 ideas in her audience, she added the gift of what may 
 be called a confidential manner so that her fluent 
 generalizations about Goethe and his place in literature 
 (the lecture was, of course, manufactured out of Lewes s 
 book) had the flavor of personal experience, of views 
 sympathetically exchanged with her audience on the 
 best way of knitting children s socks, or of putting up 
 preserves for the winter. It was, I am sure, to this per 
 sonal accent the moral equivalent of her dimple 
 that Mrs. Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrational 
 success. It was her art of transposing second-hand ideas 
 into first-hand emotions that so endeared her to her 
 feminine listeners. 
 
 To any one not in search of "documents" Mrs. Am- 
 yot s success was hardly of a kind to make her more 
 interesting, and my curiosity flagged with the growing 
 conviction that the "suffering" entailed on her by pub 
 lic speaking was at most a retrospective pang. I was 
 sure that she had reached the point of measuring and 
 enjoying her effects, of deliberately manipulating her 
 public ; and there must indeed have been a certain 
 exhilaration in attaining results so considerable by 
 means involving so little conscious effort. Mrs. Amyot s 
 art was simply an extension of coquetry : she flirted 
 with her audience. 
 
 In this mood of enlightened skepticism I responded 
 [56] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 but languidly to my hostess s suggestion that I should 
 go with her that evening to see Mrs. Amyot. The aunt 
 who had translated Euripides was at home on Saturday 
 evenings, and one met "thoughtful" people there, my 
 hostess explained : it was one of the intellectual centres 
 of Boston. My mood remained distinctly resentful of 
 any connection between Mrs. Amyot and intellectu 
 ality, and I declined to go; but the next day I met 
 Mrs. Amyot in the street. 
 
 She stopped me reproachfully. She had heard I was 
 in Boston ; why had I not come last night ? She had 
 been told that I was at her lecture, and it had fright 
 ened her yes, really, almost as much as years ago in 
 Hillbridge. She never could get over that stupid shy 
 ness, and the whole business was as distasteful to her 
 as ever ; but what could she do ? There was the baby 
 he was a big boy now, and boys were so expensive ! 
 But did I really think she had improved the least 
 little bit? And why wouldn t I come home with her 
 now, and see the boy, and tell her frankly what I had 
 thought of the lecture ? She had plenty of flattery 
 people were so kind, and every one knew that she did 
 it for the baby but what she felt the need of was 
 criticism, severe, discriminating criticism like mine 
 oh, she knew that I was dreadfully discriminating ! 
 
 I went home with her and saw the boy. In the early 
 heat of her Tennyson-worship Mrs. Amyot had christ- 
 [57] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 ened him Lancelot, and he looked it. Perhaps, how 
 ever, it was his black velvet dress and the exasperating 
 length of his yellow curls, together with the fact of his 
 having been taught to recite Browning to visitors, that 
 raised to fever-heat the itching of my palms in his 
 Infant-Samuel-like presence. I have since had reason 
 to think that he would have preferred to be called 
 Billy, and to hunt cats with the other boys in the 
 block : his curls and his poetry were simply another 
 outlet for Mrs. Amyot s irrepressible coquetry. 
 
 But if Lancelot was not genuine, his mother s 
 love for him was. It justified everything the lec 
 tures mere for the baby, after all. I had not been 
 ten minutes in the room before I was pledged to 
 help Mrs. Amyot carry out her triumphant fraud. If 
 she wanted to lecture on Plato she should Plato 
 must take his chance like the rest of us ! There was 
 no use, of course, in being "discriminating." I pre 
 served sufficient reason to avoid that pitfall, but I 
 suggested "subjects" and made lists of books for 
 her with a fatuity that became more obvious as 
 time attenuated the remembrance of her smile ; I 
 even remember thinking that some men might have 
 cut the knot by marrying her, but I handed over 
 Plato as a hostage and escaped by the afternoon 
 train. 
 
 The next time I saw her was in New York, when 
 [58] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 she had become so fashionable that it was a part of 
 the whole duty of woman to be seen at her lec 
 tures. The lady who suggested that of course I 
 ought to go and hear Mrs. Amyot, was not very 
 clear about anything except that she was perfectly 
 lovely, and had had a horrid husband, and was doing 
 it to support her boy. The subject of the discourse 
 (I think it was on Ruskin) was clearly of minor im 
 portance, not only to my friend, but to the throng of 
 well-dressed and absent-minded ladies who rustled 
 in late, dropped their muffs and pocket-books, and 
 undisguisedly lost themselves in the study of each 
 other s apparel. They received Mrs. Amyot with 
 warmth, but she evidently represented a social obli 
 gation like going to church, rather than any more 
 personal interest ; in fact, I suspect that every one 
 of the ladies would have remained away, had they 
 been sure that none of the others were coming. 
 
 Whether Mrs. Amyot was disheartened by the lack 
 of sympathy between herself and her hearers, or 
 whether the sport of arousing it had become a task, 
 she certainly imparted her platitudes with less con 
 vincing warmth than of old. Her voice had the same 
 confidential inflections, but it was like a voice repro 
 duced by a gramophone : the real woman seemed far 
 away. She had grown stouter without losing her 
 dewy freshness, and her smart gown might have 
 [59] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 been taken to show either the potentialities of a 
 settled income, or a politic concession to the taste 
 of her hearers. As I listened I reproached myself for 
 ever having suspected her of self-deception in saying 
 that she took no pleasure in her work. I was sure 
 now that she did it only for Lancelot, and judging 
 from the size of her audience and the price of the 
 tickets I concluded that Lancelot must be receiving 
 a liberal education. 
 
 I was living in New York that winter, and in the 
 rotation of dinners I found myself one evening at 
 Mrs. Amyot s side. The dimple came out at my 
 greeting as punctually as a cuckoo in a Swiss clock, 
 and I detected the same automatic quality in the 
 tone in which she made her usual pretty demand 
 for advice. She was like a musical-box charged with 
 popular airs. They succeeded one another with 
 breathless rapidity, but there was a moment after 
 each when the cylinders scraped and whizzed. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot, as I found when I called on her, was 
 living in a sunny flat, with a sitting-room full of flow 
 ers and a tea-table that had the air of expecting 
 visitors. She owned that she had been ridiculously 
 successful. It was delightful, of course, on Lancelot s 
 account. Lancelot had been sent to the best school 
 in the country, and if things went well and people 
 didn t tire of his silly mother he was to go to Har- 
 [60] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 vard afterwards. During the next two or three years 
 Mrs. Amyot kept her flat in New York, and radiated 
 art and literature upon the suburbs. I saw her now 
 and then, always stouter, better dressed, more suc 
 cessful and more automatic : she had become a lec- 
 turing-machine. 
 
 I went abroad for a year or two and when I came 
 back she had disappeared. I asked several people 
 about her, but life had closed over her. She had 
 been last heard of as lecturing still lecturing but 
 no one seemed to know when or where. 
 
 It was in Boston that I found her at last, forlornly 
 swaying to the oscillations of an overhead strap in a 
 crowded trolley-car. Her face had so changed that I 
 lost myself in a startled reckoning of the time that 
 had elapsed since our parting. She spoke to me shyly, 
 as though aware of my hurried calculation, and con 
 scious that in five years she ought not to have altered 
 so much as to upset my notion of time. Then she 
 seemed to set it down to her dress, for she nervously 
 gathered her cloak over a gown that asked only to 
 be concealed, and shrank into a seat behind the line 
 of prehensile bipeds blocking the aisle of the car. 
 
 It was perhaps because she so obviously avoided me 
 that I felt for the first time that I might be of use to 
 her; and when she left the car I made no excuse for 
 following her. 
 
 [61 ] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 She said nothing of needing advice and did not ask 
 me to walk home with her, concealing, as we talked, 
 her transparent preoccupations under the guise of a 
 sudden interest in all I had been doing since she had 
 last seen me. Of what concerned her, I learned only 
 that Lancelot was well and that for the present she 
 was not lecturing she was tired and her doctor had 
 ordered her to rest. On the doorstep of a shabby house 
 she paused and held out her hand. She had been so 
 glad to see me and perhaps if I were in Boston again 
 the tired dimple, as it were, bowed me out and closed 
 the door on the conclusion of the phrase. 
 
 Two or three weeks later, at my club in New York, 
 I found a letter from her. In it she owned that she was 
 troubled, that of late she had been unsuccessful, and 
 that, if I chanced to be coming back to Boston, and 
 could spare her a little of that invaluable advice which 
 . A few days later the advice was at her disposal. 
 She told me frankly what had happened. Her public 
 had grown tired of her. She had seen it coming on for 
 some time, and was shrewd enough in detecting the 
 causes. She had more rivals than formerly younger 
 women, she admitted, with a smile that could still 
 afford to be generous and then her audiences had 
 grown more critical and consequently more exacting. 
 Lecturing as she understood it used to be simple 
 enough. You chose your topic Raphael, Shakespeare, 
 [62] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 Gothic Architecture, or some such big familiar "sub 
 ject" and read up about it for a week or so at the 
 Athenaeum or the Astor Library, and then told your 
 audience what you had read. Now, it appeared, that 
 simple process was no longer adequate. People had 
 tired of familiar "subjects" ; it was the fashion to be 
 interested in things that one hadn t always known 
 about natural selection, animal magnetism, sociology 
 and comparative folk-lore ; while, in literature, the 
 demand had become equally difficult to meet, since 
 Matthew Arnold had introduced the habit of study 
 ing the "influence" of one author on another. She 
 had tried lecturing on influences, and had done very 
 well as long as the public was satisfied with the tra 
 cing of such obvious influences as that of Turner on 
 Ruskin, of Schiller on Goethe, of Shakespeare on 
 English literature ; but such investigations had soon 
 lost all charm for her too-sophisticated audiences, who 
 now demanded either that the influence or the influ 
 enced should be quite unknown, or that there should 
 be no perceptible connection between the two. The 
 zest of the performance lay in the measure of inge 
 nuity with which the lecturer established a relation 
 between two people who had probably never heard 
 of each other, much less read each other s works. A 
 pretty Miss Williams with red hair had, for instance, 
 been lecturing with great success on the influence of 
 [63] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 the Rosicrucians upon the poetry of Keats, while some 
 body else had given a " course " on the influence of 
 St. Thomas Aquinas upon Professor Huxley. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot, warmed by my participation in her 
 distress,, went on to say that the growing demand for 
 evolution was what most troubled her. Her grandfather 
 had been a pillar of the Presbyterian ministry, and the 
 idea of her lecturing on Darwin or Herbert Spencer 
 was deeply shocking to her mother and aunts. In one 
 sense the family had staked its literary as well as its 
 spiritual hopes on the literal inspiration of Genesis : 
 what became of " The Fall of Man " in the light of 
 modern exegesis? 
 
 The upshot of it was that she had ceased to lecture 
 because she could no longer sell tickets enough to pay 
 for the hire of a lecture-hall ; and as for the managers, 
 they wouldn t look at her. She had tried her luck all 
 through the Eastern States and as far south as Wash 
 ington ; but it was of no use, and unless she could get 
 hold of some new subjects or, better still, of some 
 new audiences she must simply go out of the busi 
 ness. That would mean the failure of all she had 
 worked for, since Lancelot would have to leave Har 
 vard. She paused, and wept some of the unbecoming 
 tears that spring from real grief. Lancelot, it appeared, 
 was to be a genius. He had passed his opening exami 
 nations brilliantly ; he had " literary gifts"; he had writ- 
 [64] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 ten beautiful poetry, much of which his mother had 
 copied out, in reverentially slanting characters, in a vel 
 vet-bound volume which she drew from a locked drawer. 
 
 Lancelot s verse struck me as nothing more alarming 
 than growing-pains ; but it was not to learn this that 
 she had summoned me. What she wanted was to be as 
 sured that he was worth working for, an assurance 
 which I managed to convey by the simple stratagem 
 of remarking that the poems reminded me of Swin 
 burne and so they did, as well as of Browning, 
 Tennyson, Rossetti, and all the other poets who sup 
 ply young authors with original inspirations. 
 
 This point being established, it remained to be de 
 cided by what means his mother was, in the French 
 phrase, to pay herself the luxury of a poet. It was clear 
 that this indulgence could be bought only with coun 
 terfeit coin, and that the one way of helping Mrs. 
 Amyot was to become a party to the circulation of 
 such currency. My fetish of intellectual integrity went 
 down like a ninepin before the appeal of a woman no 
 longer yourg and distinctly foolish, but full of those 
 dear contradictions and irrelevancies that will always 
 make flesh and blood prevail against a syllogism. When 
 I took leave of Mrs. Amyot I had promised her a dozen 
 letters to Western universities and had half pledged 
 myself to sketch out a lecture on the reconciliation of 
 science and religion. 
 
 [65] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 In the West she achieved a success which for a year 
 or more embittered my perusal of the morning papers. 
 The fascination that lures the murderer back to the 
 scene of his crime drew my eye to every paragraph cel 
 ebrating Mrs. Amyot s last brilliant lecture on the 
 influence of something upon somebody ; and her own 
 letters she overwhelmed me with them spared me 
 no detail of the entertainment given in her honor by 
 the Palimpsest Club of Omaha or of her reception at 
 the University of Leadville. The college professors 
 were especially kind: she assured me that she had 
 never before met with such discriminating sympathy. 
 I winced at the adjective, which cast a sudden light 
 on the vast machinery of fraud that I had set in mo 
 tion. All over my native land, men of hitherto unblem 
 ished integrity were conniving with me in urging their 
 friends to go and hear Mrs. Amyot lecture on the re 
 conciliation of science and religion ! My only hope was 
 that, somewhere among the number of my accomplices, 
 Mrs. Amyot might find one who would marry her in 
 the defense of his convictions. 
 
 None, apparently, resorted to such heroic measures ; 
 for about two years later I was startled by the an 
 nouncement that Mrs. Amyot was lecturing in Tren 
 ton, New Jersey, on modern theosophy in the light of 
 the Vedas. The following week she was at Newark, 
 discussing Schopenhauer in the light of recent psychol- 
 [66] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 ogy. The week after that I was on the deck of an 
 ocean steamer, reconsidering my share in Mrs. Amyot s 
 triumphs with the impartiality with which one views 
 an episode that is being left behind at the rate of 
 twenty knots an hour. After all, I had been helping a 
 mother to educate her son. 
 
 The next ten years of my life were spent in Europe, 
 and when I came home the recollection of Mrs. Amyot 
 had become as inoffensive as one of those pathetic 
 ghosts who are said to strive in vain to make them 
 selves visible to the living. I did not even notice the 
 fact that I no longer heard her spoken of; she had 
 dropped like a dead leaf from the bough of memory. 
 
 A year or two after my return I was condemned to 
 one of the worst punishments a worker can undergo 
 an enforced holiday. The doctors who pronounced the 
 inhuman sentence decreed that it should be worked 
 out in the South, and for a whole winter I carried my 
 cough, my thermometer and my idleness from one 
 fashionable orange-grove to another. In the vast and 
 melancholy sea of my disoccupation I clutched like a 
 drowning man at any human driftwood within reach. I 
 took a critical and depreciatory interest in the coughs, 
 the thermometers and the idleness of my fellow-suf 
 ferers ; but to the healthy, the occupied, the transient 
 I clung with undiscriminating enthusiasm. 
 
 In no other way can I explain, as I look back on it, 
 [67] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 the importance I attached to the leisurely confidences 
 of a new arrival with a brown beard who, tilted back 
 at my side on a hotel veranda hung with roses, im 
 parted to me one afternoon the simple annals of his 
 past. There was nothing in the tale to kindle the most 
 inflammable imagination, and though the man had a 
 pleasant frank face and a voice differing agreeably 
 from the shrill inflections of our fellow-lodgers, it is 
 probable that under different conditions his discursive 
 history of successful business ventures in a Western 
 city would have affected me somewhat in the manner 
 of a lullaby. 
 
 Even at the time I was not sure I liked his agree 
 able voice : it had a self-importance out of keeping 
 with the humdrum nature of his story, as though a 
 breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should 
 hare fancied itself inflating a banner. But this criticism 
 may have been a mere mark of my own fastidiousness, 
 for the man seemed a simple fellow, satisfied with his 
 middling fortunes, and already (he was not much past 
 thirty) deep-sunk in conjugal content. 
 
 He had just started on an anecdote connected with 
 the cutting of his eldest boy s teeth, when a lady I 
 knew, returning from her late drive, paused before us 
 for a moment in the twilight, with the smile which is 
 the feminine equivalent of beads to savages. 
 
 "Won t you take a ticket?" she said sweetly. 
 [68] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 Of course I would take a ticket but for what? I 
 ventured to inquire. 
 
 "Oh, that s so good of you for the lecture this 
 evening. You needn t go, you know; we re none of us 
 going ; most of us have been through it already at 
 Aiken and at Saint Augustine and at Palm Beach. I ve 
 given away my tickets to some new people who ve just 
 come from the North, and some of us are going to send 
 our maids, just to fill up the room." 
 
 "And may I ask to whom you are going to pay this 
 delicate attention?" 
 
 "Oh, I thought you knew to poor Mrs. Amyot. 
 She s been lecturing all over the South this winter; 
 she s simply haunted me ever since I left New York - 
 and we had six weeks of her at Bar Harbor last sum 
 mer ! One has to take tickets, you know, because she s 
 a widow and does it for her son to pay for his educa 
 tion. She s so plucky and nice about it, and talks about 
 him in such a touching unaffected way, that everybody 
 is sorry for her, and we all simply ruin ourselves in 
 tickets. I do hope that boy s nearly educated!" 
 
 " Mrs. Amyot ? Mrs. Amyot ? " I repeated. " Is she 
 still educating her son ? " 
 
 " Oh, do you know about her ? Has she been at it 
 long ? There s some comfort in that, for I suppose 
 when the boy s provided for the poor thing will be 
 able to take a rest and give us one!" 
 69] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 She laughed and held out her hand. 
 
 " Here s your ticket. Did you say tickets two ? Oh, 
 thanks. Of course you needn t go." 
 
 "But I mean to go. Mrs. Amyot is an old friend of 
 mine." 
 
 " Do you really ? That s awfully good of you. Per 
 haps I 11 go too if I can persuade Charlie and the 
 others to come. And I wonder" in a well-directed 
 aside " if your friend ? " 
 
 I telegraphed her under cover of the dusk that my 
 friend was of too recent standing to be drawn into her 
 charitable toils, and she masked her mistake under a 
 rattle of friendly adjurations not to be late, and to 
 be sure to keep a seat for her, as she had quite made 
 up her mind to go even if Charlie and the others 
 would n t. 
 
 The flutter of her skirts subsided in the distance, 
 and my neighbor, who had half turned away to light 
 a cigar, made no effort to reopen the conversation. At 
 length, fearing he might have overheard the allusion 
 to himself, I ventured to ask if he were going to the 
 lecture that evening. 
 
 "Much obliged I have a ticket," he said abruptly. 
 
 This struck me as in such bad taste that I made no 
 answer ; and it was he who spoke next. 
 
 "Did I understand you to say that you were an 
 old friend of Mrs. Amyot s ? " 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 "I think I may claim to be, if it is the same Mrs. 
 Amyot I had the pleasure of knowing many years ago. 
 My Mrs. Amyot used to lecture too 
 
 " To pay for her son s education ? " 
 
 " I believe so." 
 
 "Well see you later." 
 
 He got up and walked into the house. 
 
 In the hotel drawing-room that evening there was 
 but a meagre sprinkling of guests, among whom I saw 
 my brown-bearded friend sitting alone on a sofa, with 
 his head against the wall. It could not have been curi 
 osity to see Mrs. Amyot that had impelled him to 
 attend the performance, for it would have been im 
 possible for him, without changing his place, to com 
 mand the improvised platform at the end of the room. 
 When I looked at him he seemed lost in contemplation 
 of the chandelier. 
 
 The lady from whom I had bought my tickets flut 
 tered in late, unattended by Charlie and the others, 
 and assuring me that she would scream if we had the 
 lecture on Ibsen she had heard it three times al 
 ready that winter. A glance at the programme reas 
 sured her: it informed us (in the lecturer s own slanting 
 hand) that Mrs. Amyot was to lecture on the Cosmog 
 ony. 
 
 After a long pause, during which the small audience 
 coughed and moved its chairs and showed signs of re- 
 [.71], 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 gretting that it had come, the door opened, and Mrs. 
 Amyot stepped upon the platform. Ah, poor lady ! 
 
 Some one said " Hush ! ", the coughing and chair- 
 shifting subsided, and she began. 
 
 It was like looking at one s self early in the morning 
 in a cracked mirror. I had no idea I had grown so old. 
 As for Lancelot, he must have a beard. A beard ? The 
 word struck me, and without knowing why I glanced 
 across the room at my bearded friend on the sofa. 
 Oddly enough he was looking at me, with a half-de 
 fiant, half-sullen expression ; and as our glances crossed, 
 and his fell, the conviction came to me that he was 
 Lancelot. 
 
 I don t remember a word of the lecture ; and yet 
 there were enough of them to have filled a good-sized 
 dictionary. The stream of Mrs. Amyot s eloquence had 
 become a flood : one had the despairing sense that she 
 had sprung a leak, and that until the plumber came 
 there was nothing to be done about it. 
 
 The plumber came at length, in the shape of a clock 
 striking ten ; my companion, with a sigh of relief, 
 drifted away in search of Charlie and the others ; 
 the audience scattered with the precipitation of peo 
 ple who had discharged a duty ; and, without surprise, 
 I found the brown-bearded stranger at my elbow. 
 
 We stood alone in the bare-floored room, under the 
 flaring chandelier. 
 
 [72] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 " I think you told me this afternoon that you were 
 an old friend of Mrs. Amy of s ? " he began awkwardly. 
 
 I assented. 
 
 " Will you come in and see her ? " 
 
 "Now? I shall be very glad to, if" 
 
 "She s ready ; she s expecting you," he interposed. 
 
 He offered no further explanation, and I followed 
 him in silence. He led me down the long corridor, and 
 pushed open the door of a sitting-room. 
 
 " Mother," he said, closing the door after we had 
 entered, " here s the gentleman who says he used to 
 know you." 
 
 Mrs. Amyot, who sat in an easy-chair stirring a cup 
 of bouillon, looked up with a start. She had evidently 
 not seen me in the audience, and her son s description 
 had failed to convey my identity. I saw a frightened 
 look in her eyes ; then, like a frost flower on a window- 
 pane, the dimple expanded on her wrinkled cheek, and 
 she held out her hand. 
 
 " I m so glad," she said, " so glad ! " 
 
 She turned to her son, who stood watching us. " You 
 must have told Lancelot all about me you ve known 
 me so long ! " 
 
 "I haven t had time to talk to your son since I 
 knew he was your son," I explained. 
 
 Her brow cleared. "Then you haven t had time to 
 say anything very dreadful ? " she said with a laugh. 
 [73] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 "It is he who has been saying dreadful things," I 
 returned, trying to fall in with her tone. 
 
 I saw my mistake. " What things ? " she faltered. 
 
 " Making me feel how old I am by telling me about 
 his children." 
 
 " My grandchildren ! " she exclaimed with a blush. 
 
 " Well, if you choose to put it so." 
 
 She laughed again, vaguely, and was silent. I hesi 
 tated a moment and then put out my hand. 
 
 "I see you are tired. I shouldn t have ventured to 
 come in at this hour if your son " 
 
 The son stepped between us. "Yes, I asked him to 
 come," he said to his mother, in his clear self-asser 
 tive voice. "I haven t told him anything yet; but 
 you ve got to now. That s what I brought him 
 for." 
 
 His mother straightened herself, but I saw her eye 
 waver. 
 
 " Lancelot "she began. 
 
 "Mr. Amyot," I said, turning to the young man, "if 
 your mother will let me come back to-morrow, I shall 
 be very glad 
 
 He struck his hand hard against the table on which 
 he was leaning. 
 
 " No, sir ! It won t take long, but it s got to be said 
 now." 
 
 He moved nearer to his mother, and I saw his lip 
 [74] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 twitch under his beard. After all, he was younger and 
 less sure of himself than I had fancied. 
 
 " See here, mother," he went on, " there s some 
 thing here that s got to be cleared up, and as you 
 say this gentleman is an old friend of yours it had 
 better be cleared up in his presence. Maybe he can 
 help explain it and if he can t, it s got to be ex 
 plained to him." 
 
 Mrs. Amyot s lips moved, but she made no sound. 
 She glanced at me helplessly and sat down. My early 
 inclination to thrash Lancelot was beginning to reassert 
 itself. I took up my hat and moved toward the door. 
 
 " Mrs. Amyot is under no obligation to explain any 
 thing whatever to me," I said curtly. 
 
 " Well ! She s under an obligation to me, then 
 to explain something in your presence." He turned 
 to her again. "Do you know what the people in this 
 hotel are saying ? Do you know what he thinks what 
 they all think ? That you re doing this lecturing to 
 support me to pay for my education! They say you 
 go round telling them so. That s what they buy the 
 tickets for they do it out of charity. Ask him if it 
 is n t what they say ask him if they were n t joking 
 about it on the piazza before dinner. The others think 
 I m a little boy, but he s known you for years, and 
 he must have known how old I was. He must have 
 known it wasn t to pay for my education!" 
 [75] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 He stood before her with his hands clenched, the 
 veins beating in his temples. She had grown very 
 pale, and her cheeks looked hollow. When she spoke 
 her voice had an odd click in it. 
 
 " If if these ladies and gentlemen have been com 
 ing to my lectures out of charity, I see nothing to be 
 ashamed of in that " she faltered. 
 
 " If they ve been coming out of charity to me," he 
 retorted, "don t you see you ve been making me a 
 party to a fraud? Isn t there any shame in that?" 
 His forehead reddened. "Mother! Can t you see the 
 shame of letting people think I was ad beat, who 
 sponged on you for my keep? Let alone making us 
 both the laughing-stock of every place you go to ! " 
 
 " I never did that, Lancelot ! " 
 
 "Did what?" 
 
 " Made you a laughing-stock " 
 
 He stepped close to her and caught her wrist. 
 
 " Will you look me in the face and swear you never 
 told people you were doing this lecturing business to 
 support me ? " 
 
 There was a long silence. He dropped her wrist 
 and she lifted a limp handkerchief to her frightened 
 eyes. "I did do it to support you to educate you" 
 she sobbed. 
 
 "We re not talking about what you did when I 
 was a boy. Everybody who knows me knows I ve 
 [76] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 been a grateful son. Have I ever taken a penny 
 from you since I left college ten years ago ? " 
 
 " I never said you had ! How can you accuse your 
 mother of such wickedness, Lancelot? " 
 
 " Have you never told anybody in this hotel or 
 anywhere else in the last ten years that you were 
 lecturing to support me? Answer me that!" 
 
 "How can you/ she wept, "before a stranger?" 
 
 " Have n t you said such things about me to stran 
 gers ? " he retorted. 
 
 " Lancelot ! " 
 
 "Well answer me, then. Say you haven t, mo 
 ther!" His voice broke unexpectedly and he took 
 her hand with a gentler touch. " I 11 believe any 
 thing you tell me," he said almost humbly. 
 
 She mistook his tone and raised her head with a 
 rash clutch at dignity. 
 
 " I think you d better ask this gentleman to ex 
 cuse you first." 
 
 "No, by God, I won t!" he cried. "This gentle 
 man says he knows all about you and I mean him to 
 know all about me too. I don t mean that he or any 
 body else under this roof shall go on thinking for< 
 another twenty-four hours that a cent of their money 
 has ever gone into my pockets since I was old enough 
 to shift for myself. And he sha n t leave this room 
 till you ve made that clear to him." 
 [77] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 He stepped back as he spoke and put his shoul 
 ders against the door. 
 
 " My dear young gentleman," I said politely, " I 
 shall leave this room exactly when I see fit to do so 
 and that is now. I have already told you that Mrs. 
 Amyot owes me no explanation of her conduct." 
 
 "But I owe you an explanation of mine you and 
 every one who has bought a single one of her lec 
 ture tickets. Do you suppose a man who s been 
 through what I went through while that woman was 
 talking to you in the porch before dinner is going 
 to hold his tongue, and not attempt to justify him 
 self? No decent man is going to sit down under that 
 sort of thing. It s enough to ruin his character. If 
 you re my mother s friend, you owe it to me to hear 
 what I ve got to say." 
 
 He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his 
 forehead. 
 
 " Good God, mother ! " he burst out suddenly, 
 "what did you do it for? Haven t you had every 
 thing you wanted ever since I was able to pay for 
 it? Haven t I paid you back every cent you spent 
 on me when I was in college? Have I ever gone 
 back on you since I was big enough to work ? " He 
 turned to me with a laugh. " I thought she did it to 
 amuse herself and because there was such a de 
 mand for her lectures. Such a demand! That s what 
 [78] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 she always told me. When we asked her to come 
 out and spend this winter with us in Minneapolis, 
 she wrote back that she couldn t because she had 
 engagements all through the south, and her man 
 ager wouldn t let her off. That s the reason why I 
 came all the way on here to see her. We thought 
 she was the most popular lecturer in the United 
 States, my wife and I did! We were awfully proud 
 of it too, I can tell you." He dropped into a chair, 
 still laughing. 
 
 " How can you, Lancelot, how can you ! " His 
 mother, forgetful of my presence, was clinging to 
 him with tentative caresses. " When you did n t need 
 the money any longer I spent it all on the children 
 you know I did." 
 
 "Yes, on lace christening dresses and life-size rock 
 ing-horses with real manes ! The kind of thing chil 
 dren can t do without." 
 
 "Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot I loved them so! How 
 can you believe such falsehoods about me ? " 
 
 " What falsehoods about you ? " 
 
 "That I ever told anybody such dreadful things?" 
 
 He put her back gently, keeping his eyes on hers. 
 "Did you never tell anybody in this house that you 
 were lecturing to support your son ? " 
 
 Her hands dropped from his shoulders and she 
 flashed round on me in sudden anger. 
 [79] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 "I know what I think of people who call them 
 selves friends and who come between a mother and 
 her son ! " 
 
 " Oh, mother, mother ! " he groaned. 
 
 I went up to him and laid my hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "My dear man," I said, "don t you see the use- 
 lessness of prolonging this ? " 
 
 "Yes, I do," he answered abruptly; and before I 
 could forestall his movement he rose and walked 
 out of the room. 
 
 There was a long silence, measured by the lessen 
 ing reverberations of his footsteps down the wooden 
 floor of the corridor. 
 
 When they ceased I approached Mrs. Amyot, who 
 had sunk into her chair. I held out my hand and she 
 took it without a trace of resentment on her ravaged 
 face. 
 
 " I sent his wife a seal-skin jacket at Christmas ! " 
 she said, with the tears running down her cheeks. 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 THEIR railway-carriage had been full when 
 the train left Bologna ; but at the first sta 
 tion beyond Milan their only remaining com 
 panion a courtly person who ate garlic out of a car 
 pet-bag had left his crumb-strewn seat with a bow. 
 
 Lydia s eye regretfully followed the shiny broad 
 cloth of his retreating back till it lost itself in the 
 cloud of touts and cab-drivers hanging about the sta 
 tion ; then she glanced across at Gannett and caught 
 the same regret in his look. They were both sorry to 
 be alone. 
 
 " Par-ten-za !" shouted the guard. The train vibrated 
 to a sudden slamming of doors ; a waiter ran along the 
 platform with a tray of fossilized sandwiches ; a be 
 lated porter flung a bundle of shawls and band-boxes 
 into a third-class carriage ; the guard snapped out a 
 brief Partenza ! which indicated the purely ornamental 
 nature of his first shout ; and the train swung out of 
 the station. 
 
 The direction of the road had changed, and a shaft 
 of sunlight struck across the dusty red velvet seats 
 into Lydia s corner. Gannett did not notice it. He had 
 returned to his Revue de Paris, and she had to rise 
 and lower the shade of the farther window. Against 
 [83] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 the vast horizon of their leisure such incidents stood 
 out sharply. 
 
 Having lowered the shade, Lydia sat down, leaving 
 the length of the carriage between herself and Gan 
 nett. At length he missed her and looked up. 
 
 "I moved out of the sun/ she hastily explained. 
 
 He looked at her curiously : the sun was beating on 
 her through the shade. 
 
 "Very well/ he said pleasantly ; adding, "You don t 
 mind?" as he drew a cigarette-case from his pocket. 
 
 It was a refreshing touch, relieving the tension of 
 her spirit with the suggestion that, after all, if he 
 could smoke ! The relief was only momentary. Her 
 experience of smokers was limited (her husband had 
 disapproved of the use of tobacco) but she knew from 
 hearsay that men sometimes smoked to get away from 
 things ; that a cigar might be the masculine equiva 
 lent of darkened windows and a headache. Gannett, 
 after a puff or two, returned to his review. 
 
 It was just as she had foreseen ; he feared to speak 
 as much as she did. It was one of the misfortunes of 
 their situation that they were never busy enough to 
 necessitate, or even to justify, the postponement of 
 unpleasant discussions. If they avoided a question it 
 was obviously, unconcealably because the question was 
 disagreeable. They had unlimited leisure and an ac 
 cumulation of mental energy to devote to any subject 
 [84] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 that presented itself; new topics were in fact at a 
 premium. Lydia sometimes had premonitions of a fam 
 ine-stricken period when there would be nothing left 
 to talk about, and she had already caught herself dol 
 ing out piecemeal what, in the first prodigality of their 
 confidences, she would have flung to him in a breath. 
 Their silence therefore might simply mean that they 
 had nothing to say ; but it was another disadvantage of 
 their position that it allowed infinite opportunity for the 
 classification of minute differences. Lydia had learned 
 to distinguish between real and factitious silences ; and 
 under Gannett s she now detected a hum of speech 
 to which her own thoughts made breathless answer. 
 
 How could it be otherwise, with that thing between 
 them? She glanced up at the rack overhead. The 
 thing was there, in her dressing-bag, symbolically sus 
 pended over her head and his. He was thinking of it 
 now, just as she was ; they had been thinking of it in 
 unison ever since they had entered the train. While 
 the carriage had held other travellers they had 
 screened her from his thoughts ; but now that he 
 and she were alone she knew exactly what was pass 
 ing through his mind ; she could almost hear him 
 asking himself what he should say to her. . . . 
 
 The thing had come that morning, brought up to her 
 in an innocent-looking envelope with the rest of theii 1 
 [85] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 letters, as they were leaving the hotel at Bologna. As 
 she tore it open, she and Gannett were laughing over 
 some ineptitude of the local guide-book they had 
 been driven, of late, to make the most of such inci 
 dental humors of travel. Even when she had unfolded 
 the document she took it for some unimportant busi 
 ness paper sent abroad for her signature, and her eye 
 travelled inattentively over the curly Wher eases of the 
 preamble until a word arrested her: Divorce. There 
 it stood, an impassable barrier, between her husband ?> 
 name and hers. 
 
 She had been prepared for it, of course, as healthy 
 people are said to be prepared for death, in the sense 
 of knowing it must come without in the least expect 
 ing that it will. She had known from the first that 
 Tillotson meant to divorce her but what did it mat 
 ter ? Nothing mattered, in those first days of supreme 
 deliverance, but the fact that she was free ; and not 
 so much (she had begun to be aware) that freedom 
 had released her from Tillotson as that it had given 
 her to Gannett. This discovery had not been agree 
 able to her self-esteem. She had preferred to think 
 that Tillotson had himself embodied all her reasons 
 for leaving him ; and those he represented had seemed 
 cogent enough to stand in no need of reinforcement. 
 Yet she had not left him till she met Gannett. It was 
 her love for Gannett that had made life with Tillotson 
 [86] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 so poor and incomplete a business. If she had never, 
 from the first, regarded her marriage as a full cancel 
 ling of her claims upon life, she had at least, for a 
 number of years, accepted it as a provisional compen 
 sation, she had made it "do." Existence in the com 
 modious Tillotson mansion in Fifth Avenue with Mrs. 
 Tillotson senior commanding the approaches from the 
 second-story front windows had been reduced to a 
 series of purely automatic acts. The moral atmosphere 
 of the Tillotson interior was as carefully screened and 
 curtained as the house itself: Mrs. Tillotson senior 
 dreaded ideas as much as a draught in her back. 
 Prudent people liked an even temperature; and to 
 do anything unexpected was as foolish as going out 
 in the rain. One of the chief advantages of being rich 
 was that one need not be exposed to unforeseen con 
 tingencies : by the use of ordinary firmness and com 
 mon sense one could make sure of doing exactly the 
 same thing every day at the same hour. These doc 
 trines, reverentially imbibed with his mother s milk, 
 Tillotson (a model son who had never given his par 
 ents an hour s anxiety) complacently expounded to 
 his wife, testifying to his sense of their importance 
 by the regularity with which he wore goloshes on 
 damp days, his punctuality at meals, and his elaborate 
 precautions against burglars and contagious diseases. 
 Lydia, coming from a smaller town, and entering New 
 [87] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 York life through the portals of the Tillotson mansion, 
 had mechanically accepted this point of view as in 
 separable from having a front pew in church and a 
 parterre box at the opera. All the people who came 
 to the house revolved in the same small circle of 
 prejudices. It was the kind of society in which, after 
 dinner, the ladies compared the exorbitant charges of 
 their children s teachers, and agreed that, even with 
 the new duties on French clothes, it was cheaper in 
 the end to get everything from Worth ; while the 
 husbands, over their cigars, lamented municipal cor 
 ruption, and decided that the men to start a reform 
 were those who had no private interests at stake. 
 
 To Lydia this view of life had become a matter of 
 course, just as lumbering about in her mother-in-law s 
 landau had come to seem the only possible means of 
 locomotion, and listening every Sunday to a fashion 
 able Presbyterian divine the inevitable atonement for 
 having thought oneself bored on the other six days 
 of the week. Before she met Gannett her life had 
 seemed merely dull : his coming made it appear like 
 one of those dismal Cruikshank prints in which the 
 people are all ugly and all engaged in occupations 
 that are either vulgar or stupid. 
 
 It was natural that Tillotson should be the chief 
 sufferer from this readjustment of focus. Gannett s 
 nearness had made her husband ridiculous, and a 
 [88] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 part of the ridicule had been reflected on herself. 
 Her tolerance laid her open to a suspicion of obtuse- 
 ness from which she must, at all costs, clear herself 
 in Gannett s eyes. 
 
 She did not understand this until afterwards. At 
 the time she fancied that she had merely reached 
 the limits of endurance. In so large a charter of lib 
 erties as the mere act of leaving Tillotson seemed 
 to confer, the small question of divorce or no divorce 
 did not count. It was when she saw that she had 
 left her husband only to be with Gannett that she 
 perceived the significance of anything affecting their 
 relations. Her husband, in casting her off, had vir 
 tually flung her at Gannett : it was thus that the 
 world viewed it. The measure of alacrity with which 
 Gannett would receive her would be the subject of 
 curious speculation over afternoon-tea tables and in 
 club corners. She knew what would be said she had 
 heard it so often of others ! The recollection bathed 
 her in misery. The men would probably back Gannett 
 to "do the decent thing"; but the ladies eye-brows 
 would emphasize the worthlessness of such enforced 
 fidelity ; and after all, they would be right. She had 
 put herself in a position where Gannett " owed " her 
 something ; where, as a gentleman, he was bound to 
 " stand the damage." The idea of accepting such com 
 pensation had never crossed her mind ; the so-called 
 [89] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 rehabilitation of such a marriage had always seemed 
 to her the only real disgrace. What she dreaded was 
 the necessity of having to explain herself; of having 
 to combat his arguments ; of calculating, in spite of 
 herself, the exact measure of insistence with which 
 he pressed them. She knew not whether she most 
 shrank from his insisting too much or too little. In 
 such a case the nicest sense of proportion might be 
 at fault ; and how easy to fall into the error of taking 
 her resistance for a test of his sincerity! Whichever 
 way she turned, an ironical implication confronted her : 
 she had the exasperated sense of having walked into 
 the trap of some stupid practical joke. 
 
 Beneath all these preoccupations lurked the dread 
 of what he was thinking. Sooner or later, of course, 
 he would have to speak ; but that, in the meantime, 
 he should think, even for a moment, that there was 
 any use in speaking, seemed to her simply unendura 
 ble. Her sensitiveness on this point was aggravated 
 by another fear, as yet barely on the level of con 
 sciousness ; the fear of unwillingly involving Gannett 
 in the trammels of her dependence. To look upon him 
 as the instrument of her liberation ; to resist in herself 
 the least tendency to a wifely taking possession of his 
 future ; had seemed to Lydia the one way of maintain 
 ing the dignity of their relation. Her view had not 
 changed, but she was aware of a growing inability to 
 [90] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 keep her thoughts fixed on the essential point the 
 point of parting with Gannett. It was easy to face as 
 long as she kept it sufficiently far off: but what was 
 this act of mental postponement but a gradual en 
 croachment on his future ? What was needful was 
 the courage to recognize the moment when, by some 
 word or look, their voluntary fellowship should be 
 transformed into a bondage the more wearing that it 
 was based on none of those common obligations which 
 make the most imperfect marriage in some sort a 
 centre of gravity. 
 
 When the porter, at the next station, threw the 
 door open, Lydia drew back, making way for the 
 hoped-for intruder; but none came, and the train 
 took up its leisurely progress through the spring 
 wheat-fields and budding copses. She now began to 
 hope that Gannett would speak before the next 
 station. She watched him furtively, half-disposed to 
 return to the seat opposite his, but there was an 
 artificiality about his absorption that restrained her. 
 She had never before seen him read with so con 
 spicuous an air of warding off interruption. What 
 could he be thinking of? Why should he be afraid 
 to speak ? Or was it her answer that he dreaded ? 
 
 The train paused for the passing of an express, and 
 he put down his book and leaned out of the window. 
 Presently he turned to her with a smile. 
 [91] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 (( There s a jolly old villa out here/ he said. 
 
 His easy tone relieved her., and she smiled back at 
 him as she crossed over to his corner. 
 
 Beyond the embankment, through the opening in 
 a mossy wall, she caught sight of the villa, with its 
 broken balustrades, its stagnant fountains, and the stone 
 satyr closing the perspective of a dusky grass-walk. 
 
 "How should you like to live there?" he asked 
 as the train moved on. 
 
 " There ? " 
 
 " In some such pace, I mean. One might do worse, 
 don t you think so? There must be at least two cen 
 turies of solitude under those yew-trees. Shouldn t 
 you like it?" 
 
 "I I don t know," she faltered. She knew now 
 that he meant to speak. 
 
 He lit another cigarette. "We shall have to live 
 somewhere, you know/ he said as he bent above the 
 match. 
 
 Lydia tried to speak carelessly. " Je nen vois pas la 
 necessite ! Why not live everywhere, as we have been 
 doing ? " 
 
 " But we can t travel forever, can we ? " 
 
 "Oh, forever s a long word," she objected, picking 
 up the review he had thrown aside. 
 
 "For the rest of our lives then," he said, moving 
 nearer. 
 
 [92 J 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 She made a slight gesture which caused his hand 
 to slip from hers. 
 
 " Why should we make plans ? I thought you agreed 
 with me that it s pleasanter to drift." 
 
 He looked at her hesitatingly. "It s been pleasant, 
 certainly ; but I suppose I shall have to get at my work 
 again some day. You know I haven t written a line 
 since all this time/ he hastily emended. 
 
 She flamed with sympathy and self-reproach. "Oh, 
 if you mean that if you want to write of course 
 we must settle down. How stupid of me not to have 
 thought of it sooner! Where shall we go? Where do 
 you think you could work best ? We ought n t to lose 
 any more time." 
 
 He hesitated again. "I had thought of a villa in 
 these parts. It s quiet ; we should n t be bothered. 
 Should you like it ? " 
 
 " Of course I should like it." She paused and looked 
 away. "But I thought I remember your telling me 
 once that your best work had been done in a crowd 
 in big cities. Why should you shut yourself up in a 
 desert?" 
 
 Gannett, for a moment, made no reply. At length 
 he said, avoiding her eye as carefully as she avoided 
 his : " It might be different now ; I can t tell, of course, 
 till I try. A writer ought not to be dependent on his 
 milieu; it s a mistake to humor oneself in that way; 
 [93] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 and I thought that just at first you might prefer to 
 be" 
 
 She faced him. " To be what ? " 
 
 "Well quiet. I mean 
 
 " What do you mean by at first ? " she interrupted. 
 
 He paused again. " I mean after we are married. " 
 
 She thrust up her chin and turned toward the win 
 dow. " Thank you ! " she tossed back at him. 
 
 " Lydia ! " he exclaimed blankly ; and she felt in 
 every fibre of her averted person that he had made 
 the inconceivable, the unpardonable mistake of antici 
 pating her acquiescence. 
 
 The train rattled on and he groped for a third 
 cigarette. Lydia remained silent. 
 
 "I haven t offended you?" he ventured at length, 
 in the tone of a man who feels his way. 
 
 She shook her head with a sigh. "I thought you 
 understood/ she moaned. Their eyes met and she 
 moved back to his side. 
 
 "Do you want to know how not to offend me? By 
 taking it for granted, once for all, that you ve said 
 your say on this odious question and that I ve said 
 mine, and that we stand just where we did this morn 
 ing before that that hateful paper came to spoil 
 everything between us ! " 
 
 "To spoil everything between us> What on earth 
 do you mean? Aren t you glad to be free?" 
 [94] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 " I was free before." 
 
 "Not to marry me/ he suggested. 
 
 " But I don t want to marry you ! " she cried. 
 
 She saw that he turned pale. " I m obtuse, I sup 
 pose/ he said slowly. " I confess I don t see what 
 you re driving at. Are you tired of the whole busi 
 ness ? Or was I simply a an excuse for getting away ? 
 Perhaps you did n t care to travel alone ? Was that 
 it? And now you want to chuck me?" His voice had 
 grown harsh. "You owe me a straight answer, you 
 know ; don t be tender-hearted ! " 
 
 Her eyes swam as she leaned to him. "Don t you 
 see it s because I care because I care so much? Oh, 
 Ralph ! Can t you see how it would humiliate me ? 
 Try to feel it as a woman would ! Don t you see the 
 misery of being made your wife in this way? If I d 
 known you as a girl that would have been a real 
 marriage ! But now this vulgar fraud upon society 
 arid upon a society we despised and laughed at this 
 sneaking back into a position that we ve voluntarily 
 forfeited : don t you see what a cheap compromise it 
 is ? We neither of us believe in the abstract f sacred- 
 ness of marriage ; we both know that no ceremony 
 is needed to consecrate our love for each other ; what 
 object can we have in marrying, except the secret fear 
 of each that the other may escape, or the secret long 
 ing to work our way back gradually oh, very gradu- 
 [95] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 ally into the esteem of the people whose conven 
 tional morality we have always ridiculed and hated? 
 And the very fact that, after a decent interval, these 
 same people would come and dine with us the wo 
 men who talk about the indissolubility of marriage, 
 and who would let me die in a gutter to-day because 
 I am c leading a life of sin doesn t that disgust you 
 more than their turning their backs on us now ? I can 
 stand being cut by them, but I couldn t stand their 
 coming to call and asking what I meant to do about 
 visiting that unfortunate Mrs. So-and-so ! " 
 
 She paused, and Gannett maintained a perplexed 
 silence. 
 
 "You judge things too theoretically," he said at 
 length, slowly. "Life is made up of compromises." 
 
 " The life we ran away from yes ! If we had been 
 willing to accept them" she flushed "we might have 
 gone on meeting each other at Mrs. Tillotson s dinners." 
 
 He smiled slightly. "I didn t know that we ran 
 away to found a new system of ethics. I supposed it 
 was because we loved each other." 
 
 " Life is complex, of course ; is n t it the very recog 
 nition of that fact that separates us from the people 
 who see it tout d une piece ? If they are right if mar 
 riage is sacred in itself and the individual must always 
 be sacrificed to the family then there can be no real 
 marriage between us, since our our being together is 
 [96] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 a protest against the sacrifice of the individual to the 
 family." She interrupted herself with a laugh. "You ll 
 say now that I m giving you a lecture on sociology ! 
 Of course one acts as one can as one must, perhaps 
 pulled by all sorts of invisible threads ; but at least 
 one need n t pretend, for social advantages, to sub 
 scribe to a creed that ignores the complexity of human 
 motives that classifies people by arbitrary signs, and 
 puts it in everybody s reach to be on Mrs. Tillotson s 
 visiting-list. It may be necessary that the world should 
 be ruled by conventions but if we believed in them, 
 why did we break through them ? And if we don t be 
 lieve in them, is it honest to take advantage of the 
 protection they afford ? " 
 
 Gannett hesitated. " One may believe in them or 
 not ; but as long as they do rule the world it is only 
 by taking advantage of their protection that one can 
 find a modus vivendi" 
 
 " Do outlaws need a modus Vivendi ? " 
 
 He looked at her hopelessly. Nothing is more per 
 plexing to man than the mental process of a woman 
 who reasons her emotions. 
 
 She thought she had scored a point and followed it 
 up passionately. " You do understand, don t you ? You 
 see how the very thought of the thing humiliates me ! 
 We are together to-day because we choose to be 
 don t let us look any farther than that ! " She caught 
 [97] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 his hands. "Promise me you 11 never speak of it again ; 
 promise me you 11 never think of it even/ she implored, 
 with a tearful prodigality of italics. 
 
 Through what followed his protests, his arguments, 
 his final unconvinced submission to her wishes she 
 had a sense of his but half-discerning all that, for 
 her, had made the moment so tumultuous. They had 
 reached that memorable point in every heart-history 
 when, for the first time, the man seems obtuse and 
 the woman irrational. It was the abundance of his 
 intentions that consoled her, on reflection, for what 
 they lacked in quality. After all, it would have been 
 worse, incalculably worse, to have detected any over- 
 readiness to understand her. 
 
 II 
 
 WHEN the train at night-fall brought them to 
 their journey s end at the edge of one of the 
 lakes, Lydia was glad that they were not, as usual, to 
 pass from one solitude to another. Their wanderings 
 during the year had indeed been like the flight of 
 outlaws : through Sicily, Dalmatia, Transylvania and 
 Southern Italy they had persisted in their tacit avoid 
 ance of their kind. Isolation, at first, had deepened 
 the flavor of their happiness, as night intensifies the 
 scent of certain flowers ; but in the new phase on which 
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SOULS BELATED 
 
 they were entering, Lydia s chief wish was that they 
 should be less abnormally exposed to the action of 
 each other s thoughts. 
 
 She shrank, nevertheless, as the brightly-looming 
 bulk of the fashionable Anglo-American hotel on the 
 water s brink began to radiate toward their advancing 
 boat its vivid suggestion of social order, visitors lists, 
 Church services, and the bland inquisition of the table- 
 d hote. The mere fact that in a moment or two she must 
 take her place on the hotel register as Mrs. Gannett 
 seemed to weaken the springs of her resistance. 
 
 They had meant to stay for a night only, on their 
 way to a lofty village among the glaciers of Monte 
 Rosa ; but after the first plunge into publicity, when 
 they entered the dining-room, Lydia felt the relief of 
 being lost in a crowd, of ceasing for a moment to be 
 the centre of Gannett s scrutiny ; and in his face she 
 caught the reflection of her feeling. After dinner, 
 when she went upstairs, he strolled into the smoking- 
 room, and an hour or two later, sitting in the darkness 
 of her window, she heard his voice below and saw him 
 walking up and down the terrace with a companion 
 cigar at his side. When he came up he told her he 
 had been talking to the hotel chaplain a very good 
 sort of fellow. 
 
 "Queer little microcosms, these hotels! Most of 
 these people live here all summer and then migrate 
 [99] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 to Italy or the Riviera. The English are the only 
 people who can lead that kind of life with dignity 
 those soft-voiced old ladies in Shetland shawls some 
 how carry the British Empire under their caps. Civis 
 Romanics sum. It s a curious study there might be 
 some good things to work up here." 
 
 He stood before her with the vivid preoccupied 
 stare of the novelist on the trail of a "subject." With 
 a relief that was half painful she noticed that, for the 
 first time since they had been together, he was hardly 
 aware of her presence. 
 
 " Do you think you could write here ? " 
 
 "Here? I don t know." His stare dropped. "After 
 being out of things so long one s first impressions are 
 bound to be tremendously vivid, you know. I see a 
 dozen threads already that one might follow " 
 
 He broke off with a touch of embarrassment. 
 
 " Then follow them. We 11 stay," she said with sud 
 den decision. 
 
 " Stay here ? " He glanced at her in surprise, and 
 then, walking to the window, looked out upon the 
 dusky slumber of the garden. 
 
 " Why not ? " she said at length, in a tone of veiled 
 irritation. 
 
 "The place is full of old cats in caps who gossip 
 with the chaplain. Shall you like I mean, it would 
 be different if " 
 
 [ 100 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 She flamed up. 
 
 "Do you suppose I care? It s none of their busi 
 ness." 
 
 "Of course not; but you won t get them to think 
 so." 
 
 " They may think what they please." 
 
 He looked at her doubtfully. 
 
 " It s for you to decide." 
 
 "We ll stay/ she repeated. 
 
 Gannett, before they met, had made himself known 
 &g a successful writer of short stories and of a novel 
 which had achieved the distinction of being widely 
 discussed. The reviewers called him "promising," and 
 Lydia now accused herself of having too long inter 
 fered with the fulfilment of his promise. There was 
 a special irony in the fact, since his passionate assur 
 ances that only the stimulus of her companionship 
 could bring out his latent faculty had almost given 
 the dignity of a " vocation " to her course : there had 
 been moments when she had felt unable to assume, 
 before posterity, the responsibility of thwarting his 
 career. And, after all, he had not written a line since 
 they had been together: his first desire to write had 
 come from renewed contact with the world! Was it 
 all a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice 
 work more disastrously than the blundering combina 
 tions of chance ? Or was there a still more humiliating 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of 
 activity so exactly coincided with her own wish to 
 withdraw, for a time, from the range of his observa 
 tion, that she wondered if he too were not seeking 
 sanctuary from intolerable problems. 
 
 " You must begin to-morrow ! " she cried, hiding a 
 tremor under the laugh with which she added, "I 
 wonder if there s any ink in the inkstand ? " 
 
 Whatever else they had at the Hotel Bellosguardo, 
 they had, as Miss Pinsent said, " a certain tone." It 
 was to Lady Susan Condit that they owed this ines 
 timable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pin- 
 sent s opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and 
 the resident chaplain. It was the fact of Lady Susan s 
 annual visit that made the hotel what it was. Miss 
 Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a 
 privilege: "It s so important, my dear, forming as 
 we do a little family, that there should be some one 
 to give the tone; and no one could do it better than 
 Lady Susan an earl s daughter and a person of such 
 determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger now who really 
 ought, you know, when Lady Susan s away abso 
 lutely refuses to assert herself." Miss Pinsent sniffed 
 derisively. "A bishop s niece! my dear, I saw her 
 once actually give in to some South Americans and 
 before us all. She gave up her seat at table to oblige 
 [ 102 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 them such a lack of dignity! Lady Susan spoke to 
 her very plainly about it afterwards." 
 
 Miss Pinsent glanced across the lake and adjusted 
 her auburn front. 
 
 "But of course I don t deny that the stand Lady 
 Susan takes is not always easy to live up to for 
 the rest of us, I mean. Monsieur Grossart, our good 
 proprietor, finds it trying at times, I know he has 
 said as much, privately, to Mrs. Ainger and me. After 
 all, the poor man is not to blame for wanting to fill 
 his hotel, is he ? And Lady Susan is so difficult so 
 very difficult about new people. One might almost 
 say that she disapproves of them beforehand, on prin 
 ciple. And yet she s had warnings she very nearly 
 made a dreadful mistake once with the Duchess of 
 Levens, who dyed her hair and well, swore and 
 smoked. One would have thought that might have 
 been a lesson to Lady Susan." Miss Pinsent resumed 
 her knitting with a sigh. "There are exceptions, of 
 course. She took at once to you and Mr. Gannett it 
 was quite remarkable, really. Oh, I don t mean that 
 either of course not! It was perfectly natural we 
 all thought you so charming and interesting from the 
 first day we knew at once that Mr. Gannett was in 
 tellectual, by the magazines you took in ; but you 
 know what I mean. Lady Susan is so very well, I 
 won t say prejudiced, as Mrs. Ainger does but so 
 [ 108] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 prepared not to like new people, that her taking to 
 you in that way was a surprise to us all, I confess." 
 
 Miss Pinsent sent a significant glance down the long 
 laurustinus alley from the other end of which two 
 people a lady and gentleman were strolling to 
 ward them through the smiling neglect of the garden. 
 
 " In this case, of course, it s very different ; that 
 I m willing to admit. Their looks are against them ; 
 but, as Mrs. Ainger says, one can t exactly tell them 
 so." 
 
 "She s very handsome," Lydia ventured, with her 
 eyes on the lady, who showed, under the dome of a 
 vivid sunshade, the hour-glass figure and superlative 
 coloring of a Christmas chromo. 
 
 "That s the worst of it. She s too handsome." 
 
 "Well, after all, she can t help that." 
 
 " Other people manage to," said Miss Pinsent skep 
 tically. 
 
 "But isn t it rather unfair of Lady Susan con 
 sidering that nothing is known about them?" 
 
 " But, my dear, that s the very thing that s against 
 them. It s infinitely worse than any actual knowledge." 
 
 Lydia mentally agreed that, in the case of Mrs. 
 Linton, it possibly might be. 
 
 "I wonder why they came here?" she mused. 
 
 " That s against them too. It s always a bad sign 
 when loud people come to a quiet place. And they Ve 
 [ 104 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 brought van-loads of boxes her maid told Mrs. 
 Ainger s that they meant to stop indefinitely." 
 
 " And Lady Susan actually turned her back on her 
 in the salon ? " 
 
 " My dear, she said it was for our sakes : that makes 
 it so unanswerable ! But poor Grossart is in a way ! 
 Thes Lintons have taken his most expensive suite, 
 you know the yellow damask drawing-room above 
 the portico and they have champagne with every 
 meal!" 
 
 They were silent as Mr. and Mrs. Linton sauntered 
 by ; the lady with tempestuous brows and challenging 
 chin ; the gentleman, a blond stripling, trailing after 
 her, head downward, like a reluctant child dragged 
 by his nurse. 
 
 "What does your husband think of them, my dear?" 
 Miss Pinsent whispered as they passed out of earshot. 
 
 Lydia stooped to pick a violet in the border. 
 
 "He hasn t told me." 
 
 "Of your speaking to them, I mean. Would he 
 approve of that? I know how very particular nice 
 Americans are. I think your action might make a 
 difference ; it would certainly carry weight with Lady 
 Susan." 
 
 " Dear Miss Pinsent, you flatter me ! " 
 
 Lydia rose and gathered up her book and sun 
 shade. 
 
 [ 105 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "Well, if you re asked for an opinion if Lady 
 Susan asks you for one I think you ought to be pre 
 pared," Miss Pinsent admonished her as she moved 
 away. 
 
 Ill 
 
 T ADY SUSAN held her own. She ignored the Lin- 
 JLy tons, and her little family, as Miss Pinsent phrased 
 it, followed suit. Even Mrs. Ainger agreed that it was 
 obligatory. If Lady Susan owed it to the others not 
 to speak to the Lintons, the others clearly owed it to 
 Lady Susan to back her up. It was generally found 
 expedient, at the Hotel Bellosguardo, to adopt this 
 form of reasoning. 
 
 Whatever effect this combined action may have 
 had upon the Lintons, it did not at least have that of 
 driving them away. Monsieur Grossart, after a few 
 days of suspense, had the satisfaction of seeing them 
 settle down in his yellow damask premier with what 
 looked like a permanent installation of palm-trees 
 and silk sofa-cushions, and a gratifying continuance 
 in the consumption of champagne. Mrs. Linton trailed 
 her Doucet draperies up and down the garden with 
 the same challenging air, while her husband, smoking 
 innumerable cigarettes, dragged himself dejectedly in 
 her wake ; but neither of them, after the first encoun 
 ter with Lady Susan, made any attempt to extend 
 [ 106 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 their acquaintance. They simply ignored their ignorers. 
 As Miss Pinsent resentfully observed, they behaved 
 exactly as though the hotel were empty. 
 
 It was therefore a matter of surprise, as well as of 
 displeasure, to Lydia, to find, on glancing up one day 
 from her seat in the garden, that the shadow which 
 had fallen across her book was that of the enigmatic 
 Mrs. Linton. 
 
 " I want to speak to you," that lady said, in a rich 
 hard voice that seemed the audible expression of her 
 gown and her complexion. 
 
 Lydia started. She certainly did not want to speak 
 to Mrs. Linton. 
 
 " Shall I sit down here ? " the latter continued, fixing 
 her intensely-shaded eyes on Lydia s face, " or are you 
 afraid of being seen with me ?" 
 
 "Afraid?" Lydia colored. "Sit down, please. What 
 is it that you wish to say?" 
 
 Mrs. Linton, with a smile, drew up a garden-chair 
 and crossed one open-work ankle above the other. 
 
 "I want you to tell me what my husband said to 
 your husband last night." 
 Lydia turned pale. 
 
 "My husband to yours?" she faltered, staring at 
 the other. 
 
 "Didn t you know they were closeted together for 
 hours in the smoking-room after you went upstairs? 
 [ 107 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 My man didn t get to bed until nearly two o clock 
 and when he did I couldn t get a word out of him. 
 When he wants to be aggravating I 11 back him 
 against anybody living ! " Her teeth and eyes flashed 
 persuasively upon Lydia. "But you ll tell me what 
 they were talking about, won t you? I know I can 
 trust you you look so awfully kind. And it s for his 
 own good. He s such a precious donkey and I m so 
 afraid he s got into some beastly scrape or other. If 
 he d only trust his own old woman ! But they re al 
 ways writing to him and setting him against me. And 
 I ve got nobody to turn to." She laid her hand on 
 Lydia s with a rattle of bracelets. " You 11 help me, 
 won t you ? " 
 
 Lydia drew back from the smiling fierceness of her 
 brows. 
 
 "I m sorry but I don t think I understand. My 
 husband has said nothing to me of of yours." 
 
 The great black crescents above Mrs. Linton s eye? 
 met angrily. 
 
 "I say is that true?" she demanded. 
 
 Lydia rose from her seat. 
 
 "Oh, look here, I didn t mean that, you know 
 you must n t take one up so ! Can t you see how rat 
 tled I am?" 
 
 Lydia saw that, in fact, her beautiful mouth was 
 quivering beneath softened eyes. 
 [ 108 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "I m beside myself!" the splendid creature wailed, 
 dropping into her seat. 
 
 " I m so sorry/ Lydia repeated, forcing herself to 
 speak kindly ; " but how can I help you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Linton raised her head sharply. 
 
 "By finding out there s a darling!" 
 
 "Finding what out?" 
 
 "What Trevenna told him." 
 
 "Trevenna ?" Lydia echoed in bewilderment. 
 
 Mrs. Linton clapped her hand to her mouth. 
 
 "Oh, Lord there, it s out! What a fool I am! 
 But I supposed of course you knew ; I supposed every 
 body knew." She dried her eyes and bridled. "Didn t 
 you know that he s Lord Trevenna ? I m Mrs. Cope." 
 
 Lydia recognized the names. They had figured in 
 a flamboyant elopement which had thrilled fashionable 
 London some six months earlier. 
 
 "Now you see how it is you understand, don t 
 you ? " Mrs. Cope continued on a note of appeal. " I 
 knew you would that s the reason I came to you. 
 I suppose he felt the same thing about your husband ; 
 he s not spoken to another soul in the place." Her 
 face grew anxious again. " He s awfully sensitive, gen 
 erally he feels our position, he says as if it wasn t 
 my place to feel that ! But when he does get talking 
 there s no knowing what he 11 say. I know he s been 
 brooding over something lately, and I must find out 
 [ 109] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 what it is it s to his interest that I should. I always 
 tell him that I think only of his interest ; if he d only 
 trust me! But he s been so odd lately I can t think 
 what he s plotting. You will help me, dear?" 
 
 Lydia, who had remained standing, looked away 
 uncomfortably. 
 
 "If you mean by finding out what Lord Trevenna 
 has told my husband, I m afraid it s impossible." 
 
 " Why impossible ? " 
 
 "Because I infer that it was told in confidence." 
 
 Mrs. Cope stared incredulously. 
 
 "Well, what of that? Your husband looks such a 
 dear any one can see he s awfully gone on you. 
 What s to prevent your getting it out of him ? " 
 
 Lydia flushed. 
 
 " I m not a spy ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 "A spy a spy? How dare you? " Mrs. Cope flamed 
 out. "Oh, I don t mean that either! Don t be angry 
 with me I m so miserable." She essayed a softer 
 note. "Do you call that spying for one woman to 
 help out another ? I do need help so dreadfully ! I m 
 at my wits end with Trevenna, I am indeed. He s 
 such a boy a mere baby, you know ; he s only two- 
 and-twenty." She dropped her orbed lids. " He s 
 younger than me only fancy ! a few months younger. 
 I tell him he ought to listen to me as if I was his 
 mother ; ought n t he now ? But he won t, he won t ! 
 [ "0] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 All his people are at him, you see oh, I know their 
 little game ! Trying to get him away from me before 
 I can get my divorce that s what they re up to. 
 At first he would n t listen to them ; he used to toss 
 their letters over to me to read ; but now he reads 
 them himself, and answers em too, I fancy ; he s al 
 ways shut up in his room, writing. If I only knew what 
 his plan is I could stop him fast enough he s such 
 a simpleton. But he s dreadfully deep too at times 
 I can t make him out. But I know he s told your 
 husband everything I knew that last night the 
 minute I laid eyes on him. And I must find out you 
 must help me I ve got no one else to turn to!" 
 
 She caught Lydia s fingers in a stormy pressure. 
 
 "Say you ll help me you and your husband." 
 
 Lydia tried to free herself. 
 
 " What you ask is impossible ; you must see that it 
 is. No one could interfere in in the way you ask." 
 
 Mrs. Cope s clutch tightened. 
 
 "You won t, then? You won t?" 
 
 "Certainly not. Let me go, please." 
 
 Mrs. Cope released her with a laugh. 
 
 "Oh, go by all means pray don t let me detain 
 you! Shall you go and tell Lady Susan Condit that 
 there s a pair of us or shall I save you the trouble 
 of enlightening her?" 
 
 Lydia stood still in the middle of the path, seeing 
 
 [in] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 her antagonist through a mist of terror. Mrs. Cope was 
 still laughing. 
 
 " Oh, I m not spiteful by nature, my dear ; but 
 you re a little more than flesh and blood can stand! 
 It s impossible, is it ? Let you go, indeed ! You re too 
 good to be mixed up in my affairs, are you ? Why, you 
 little fool, the first day I laid eyes on you I saw that 
 you and I were both in the same box that s the 
 reason I spoke to you." 
 
 She stepped nearer, her smile dilating on Lydia like 
 a lamp through a fog. 
 
 "You can take your choice, you know; I always 
 play fair. If you 11 tell I 11 promise not to. Now then, 
 which is it to be?" 
 
 Lydia, involuntarily, had begun to move away from 
 the pelting storm of words ; but at this she turned and 
 sat down again. 
 
 " You may go," she said simply. " I shall stay 
 here." 
 
 IV 
 
 SHE stayed there for a long time, in the hypnotized 
 contemplation, not of Mrs. Cope s present, but of 
 her own past. Gannett, early that morning, had gone 
 off on a long walk he had fallen into the habit of 
 taking these mountain-tramps with various fellow- 
 lodgers ; but even had he been within reach she 
 [ "2] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 could not have gone to him just then. She had to 
 deal with herself first. She was surprised to find 
 how, in the last months, she had lost the habit of 
 introspection. Since their coming to the Hotel Bel- 
 losguardo she and Gannett had tacitly avoided them 
 selves and each other. 
 
 She was aroused by the whistle of the three o clock 
 steamboat as it neared the landing just beyond the 
 hotel gates. Three o clock ! Then Gannett would soon 
 be back he had told her to expect him before four. 
 She rose hurriedly, her face averted from the inquisi 
 torial fa9ade of the hotel. She could not see him just 
 yet ; she could not go indoors. She slipped through one 
 of the overgrown garden-alleys and climbed a steep 
 path to the hills. 
 
 It was dark when she opened their sitting-room 
 door. Gannett was sitting on the window-ledge smok 
 ing a cigarette. Cigarettes were now his chief resource : 
 he had not written a line during the two months they 
 had spent at the Hotel Bellosguardo. In that respect, 
 it had turned out not to be the right milieu after all. 
 
 He started up at Lydia s entrance. 
 
 "Where have you been? I was getting anxious." 
 
 She sat down in a chair near the door. 
 
 " Up the mountain," she said wearily. 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 [ US] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 Gannett threw away his cigarette : the sound of her 
 voice made him want to see her face. 
 
 "Shall we have a little light?" he suggested. 
 
 She made no answer and he lifted the globe from 
 the lamp and put a match to the wick. Then he looked 
 at her. 
 
 "Anything wrong? You look done up." 
 
 She sat glancing vaguely about the little sitting- 
 room, dimly lit by the pallid-globed lamp, which left 
 in twilight the outlines of the furniture, of his writing- 
 table heaped with books and papers, of the tea-roses 
 and jasmine drooping on the mantel-piece. How like 
 home it had all grown how like home ! 
 
 "Lydia, what is wrong?" he repeated. 
 
 She moved away from him, feeling for her hat 
 pins and turning to lay her hat and sunshade on the 
 table. 
 
 Suddenly she said: "That woman has been talking 
 to me." 
 
 Gannett stared. 
 
 "That woman? What woman?" 
 
 "Mrs. Linton Mrs. Cope." 
 
 He gave a start of annoyance, still, as she perceived, 
 not grasping the full import of her words. 
 
 "The deuce! She told you?" 
 
 "She told me everything." 
 
 Gannett looked at her anxiously. 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "What impudence! I m so sorry that you should 
 have been exposed to this, dear." 
 
 " Exposed ! " Lydia laughed. 
 
 Gannett s brow clouded and they looked away from 
 each other. 
 
 " Do you know why she told me ? She had the best 
 of reasons. The first time she laid eyes on me she saw 
 that we were both in the same box." 
 
 Lydia ! " 
 
 " So it was natural, of course, that she should turn 
 to me in a difficulty." 
 
 "What difficulty?" 
 
 "It seems she has reason to think that Lord Tre- 
 venna s people are trying to get him away from her 
 before she gets her divorce " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " And she fancied he had been consulting with you 
 last night as to as to the best way of escaping from 
 her." 
 
 Gannett stood up with an angry forehead. 
 
 "Well what concern of yours was all this dirty 
 business ? Why should she go to you ? " 
 
 "Don t you see? It s so simple. I was to wheedle 
 his secret out of you." 
 
 "To oblige that woman?" 
 
 " Yes ; or, if I was unwilling to oblige her, then to 
 protect myself." 
 
 [115] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "To protect yourself? Against whom?" 
 
 " Against her telling every one in the hotel that she 
 and I are in the same box." 
 
 "She threatened that?" 
 
 "She left me the choice of telling it myself or of 
 doing it for me." 
 
 "The beast!" 
 
 There was a long silence. Lydia had seated herself 
 on the sofa, beyond the radius of the lamp, and he 
 leaned against the window. His next question sur 
 prised her. 
 
 "When did this happen? At what time, I mean?" 
 
 She looked at him vaguely. 
 
 " I don t know after luncheon, I think. Yes, I 
 remember ; it must have been at about three o clock." 
 
 He stepped into the middle of the room and as 
 he approached the light she saw that his brow had 
 cleared. 
 
 "Why do you ask?" she said. 
 
 "Because when I came in, at about half-past three, 
 the mail was just being distributed, and Mrs. Cope 
 was waiting as usual to pounce on her letters ; you 
 know she was always watching for the postman. She 
 was standing so close to me that I could n t help see 
 ing a big official-looking envelope that was handed 
 to her. She tore it open, gave one look at the inside, 
 and rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with the di- 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 rector shouting after her that she had left all her other 
 letters behind. I don t believe she ever thought of you 
 again after that paper was put into her hand." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because she was too busy. I was sitting in the 
 window, watching for you, when the five o clock boat 
 left, and who should go on board, bag and baggage, 
 valet and maid, dressing-bags and poodle, but Mrs. 
 Cope and Trevenna. Just an hour and a half to pack 
 up in! And you should have seen her when they 
 started. She was radiant shaking hands with every 
 body waving her handkerchief from the deck dis 
 tributing bows and smiles like* an empress. If ever a 
 woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time 
 that woman did. She 11 be Lady Trevenna within a 
 week, I 11 wager." 
 
 "You think she has her divorce?" 
 
 " I m sure of it. And she must have got it just after 
 her talk with you." 
 
 Lydia was silent. 
 
 At length she said, with a kind of reluctance, " She 
 was horribly angry when she left me. It would n t have 
 taken long to tell Lady Susan Condit." 
 
 "Lady Susan Condit has not been told." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 " Because when I went downstairs half an hour ago 
 I met Lady Susan on the way " 
 [117] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 He stopped, half smiling. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "And she stopped to ask if I thought you would 
 act as patroness to a charity concert she is getting up." 
 
 In spite of themselves they both broke into a laugh. 
 Lydia s ended in sobs and she sank down with her 
 face hidden. Gannett bent over her, seeking her 
 hands. 
 
 "That vile woman I ought to have warned you 
 to keep away from her ; I can t forgive myself ! But he 
 spoke to me in confidence ; and I never dreamed 
 well, it s all over now." 
 
 Lydia lifted her head. 
 
 "Not for me. It s only just beginning." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 She put him gently aside and moved in her turn to 
 the window. Then she went on, with her face turned 
 toward the shimmering blackness of the lake, " You see 
 of course that it might happen again at any moment." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "This this risk of being found out. And we could 
 hardly count again on such a lucky combination of 
 chances, could we?" 
 
 He sat down with a groan. 
 
 Still keeping her face toward the darkness, she 
 said, "I want you to go and tell Lady Susan and 
 the others." 
 
 [118] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 Gannett, who had moved towards her, paused a few 
 feet off. 
 
 " Why do you wish me to do this ? " he said at 
 length, with less surprise in his voice than she had 
 been prepared for. 
 
 " Because I ve behaved basely, abominably, since 
 we came here : letting these people believe we were 
 married lying with every breath I drew 
 
 " Yes, I ve felt that too," Gannett exclaimed with 
 sudden energy. 
 
 The words shook her like a tempest : all her thoughts 
 seemed to fall about her in ruins. 
 
 " You you ve felt so ? " 
 
 "Of course I have." He spoke with low- voiced 
 vehemence. " Do you suppose I like playing the sneak 
 any better than you do? It s damnable." 
 
 He had dropped on the arm of a chair, and they 
 stared at each other like blind people who suddenly 
 see. 
 
 ft But you have liked it here," she faltered. 
 
 "Oh, I ve liked it I ve liked it." He moved im 
 patiently. " Have n t you ? " 
 
 " Yes," she burst out ; " that s the worst of it 
 that s what I can t bear. I fancied it was for your 
 sake that I insisted on staying because you thought 
 you could write here ; and perhaps just at first that 
 really was the reason. But afterwards I wanted to 
 
 ["9] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 stay myself I loved it." She broke into a laugh. 
 "Oh, do you see the full derision of it? These peo 
 ple the very prototypes of the bores you took me 
 away from, with the same fenced-in view of life, the 
 same keep-off-the-grass morality, the same little cau 
 tious virtues and the same little frightened vices 
 well, I ve clung to them, I ve delighted in them, 
 I ve done my best to please them. I ve toadied Lady 
 Susan, I ve gossipped with Miss Pinsent, I ve pre 
 tended to be shocked with Mrs. Ainger. Respecta 
 bility ! It was the one thing in life that I was sure I 
 didn t care about, and it s grown so precious to me 
 that I ve stolen it because I couldn t get it in any 
 other way." 
 
 She moved across the room and returned to his side 
 with another laugh. 
 
 " I who used to fancy myself unconventional ! I must 
 have been born with a card-case in my hand. You 
 should have seen me with that poor woman in the 
 garden. She came to me for help, poor creature, be 
 cause she fancied that, having sinned, as they call 
 it, I might feel some pity for others who had been 
 tempted in the same way. Not I ! She did n t know 
 me. Lady Susan would have been kinder, because 
 Lady Susan wouldn t have been afraid. I hated the 
 woman my one thought was not to be seen with 
 her I could have killed her for guessing my secret. 
 [ 120 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 The one thing that mattered to me at that moment 
 was my standing with Lady Susan ! " 
 
 Gannett did not speak. 
 
 "And you you ve felt it too!" she broke out 
 accusingly. " You ve enjoyed being with these peo 
 ple as much as I have ; you ve let the chaplain talk 
 to you by the hour about The Reign of Law and 
 Professor Drummond. When they asked you to hand 
 the plate in church I was watching you you wanted 
 to accept" 
 
 She stepped close, laying her hand on his arm. 
 
 " Do you know, I begin to see what marriage is 
 for. It s to keep people away from each other. Some 
 times I think that two people who love each other 
 can be saved from madness only by the things that 
 come between them children, duties, visits, bores, re 
 lationsthe things that protect married people from 
 each other. We ve been too close together that has 
 been our sin. We ve seen the nakedness of each 
 other s souls." 
 
 She sank again on the sofa, hiding her face in her 
 hands. 
 
 Gannett stood above her perplexedly : he felt as 
 though she were being swept away by some implaca 
 ble current while he stood helpless on its bank. 
 
 At length he said, "Lydia, don t think me a brute 
 but don t you see yourself that it won t do ? " 
 [121] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "Yes, I see it won t do," she said without raising 
 her head. 
 
 His face cleared. 
 
 " Then we 11 go to-morrow." 
 
 " Go where ? " 
 
 " To Paris ; to be married." 
 
 For a long time she made no answer; then she 
 asked slowly, "Would they have us here if we were 
 married ? " 
 
 " Have us here ? " 
 
 " I mean Lady Susan and the others." 
 
 " Have us here ? Of course they would." 
 
 "Not if they knew at least, not unless they could 
 pretend not to know." 
 
 He made an impatient gesture. 
 
 "We shouldn t come back here, of course; and 
 other people needn t know no one need know." 
 
 She sighed. "Then it s only another form of de 
 ception and a meaner one. Don t you see that ? " 
 
 " I see that we re not accountable to any Lady 
 Susans on earth ! " 
 
 " Then why are you ashamed of what we are doing 
 here ? " 
 
 " Because I m sick of pretending that you re my 
 wife when you re not when you won t be." 
 She looked at him sadly. 
 
 " If I were your wife you d have to go on pretend- 
 [ 122 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 ing. You d have to pretend that I d never been 
 anything else. And our friends would have to pretend 
 that they believed what you pretended." 
 
 Gannett pulled off the sofa-tassel and flung it away. 
 
 "You re impossible/ he groaned. 
 
 " It s not I it s our being together that s impossi 
 ble. I only want you to see that marriage won t help it." 
 
 " What will help it then ? " 
 
 She raised her head. 
 
 " My leaving you." 
 
 "Your leaving me?" He sat motionless, staring at 
 the tassel which lay at the other end of the room. At 
 length some impulse of retaliation for the pain she was 
 inflicting made him say deliberately : 
 
 " And where would you go if you left me ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried. 
 
 He was at her side in an instant. 
 
 "Lydia Lydia you know I didn t mean it; I 
 couldn t mean it! But you ve driven me out of my 
 senses; I don t know what I m saying. Can t you get out 
 of this labyrinth of self-torture? It s destroying us both." 
 
 "That s why I must leave you." 
 
 " How easily you say it ! " He drew her hands down 
 and made her face him. " You re very scrupulous about 
 yourself and others. But have you thought of me? 
 You have no right to leave me unless you ve ceased 
 to care " 
 
 [ 123] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "It s because I care " 
 
 " Then I have a right to be heard. If you love me 
 you can t leave me." 
 
 Her eyes defied him. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 He dropped her hands and rose from her side. 
 
 " Can you ? " he said sadly. 
 
 The hour was late and the lamp nickered and sank. 
 She stood up with a shiver and turned toward the 
 door of her room. 
 
 AT daylight a sound in Lydia s room woke Gannett 
 from a troubled sleep. He sat up and listened. 
 She was moving about softly, as though fearful of 
 disturbing him. He heard her push back one of the 
 creaking shutters ; then there was a moment s silence, 
 which seemed to indicate that she was waiting to see 
 if the noise had roused him. 
 
 Presently she began to move again. She had spent 
 a sleepless night, probably, and was dressing to go 
 down to the garden for a breath of air. Gannett rose 
 also ; but some undefinable instinct made his move 
 ments as cautious as hers. He stole to his window and 
 looked out through the slats of the shutter. 
 
 It had rained in the night and the dawn was gray 
 and lifeless. The cloud-muffled hills across the lake 
 [ 121 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 were reflected in its surface as in a tarnished mirror. 
 In the garden, the birds were beginning to shake the 
 drops from the motionless laurustinus-boughs. 
 
 An immense pity for Lydia filled Gannett s soul. 
 Her seeming intellectual independence had blinded 
 him for a time to the feminine cast of her mind. He 
 had never thought of her as a woman who wept and 
 clung: there was a lucidity in her intuitions that 
 made them appear to be the result of reasoning. Now 
 he saw the cruelty he had committed in detaching 
 her from the normal conditions of life; he felt, too, 
 the insight with which she had hit upon the real 
 cause of their suffering. Their life was "impossible," 
 as she had said and its worst penalty was that it 
 had made any other life impossible for them. Even 
 had his love lessened, he was bound to her now by a 
 hundred ties of pity and self-reproach ; and she, poor 
 child ! must turn back to him as Latude returned to 
 his cell . . . 
 
 A new sound startled him : it was the stealthy clos 
 ing of Lydia s door. He crept to his own and heard 
 her footsteps passing down the corridor. Then he went 
 back to the window and looked out. 
 
 A minute or two later he saw her go down the steps 
 
 of the porch and enter the garden. From his post of 
 
 observation her face was invisible, but something 
 
 about her appearance struck him. She wore a long 
 
 [135] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 travelling cloak and under its folds he detected the 
 outline of a bag or bundle. He drew a deep breath and 
 stood watching her. 
 
 She walked quickly down the laurustinus alley to 
 ward the gate ; there she paused a moment,, glancing 
 about the little shady square. The stone benches under 
 the trees were empty, and she seemed to gather reso 
 lution from the solitude about her, for she crossed 
 the square to the steam-boat landing, and he saw her 
 pause before the ticket-office at the head of the wharf. 
 Now she was buying her ticket. Gannett turned his 
 head a moment to look at the clock : the boat was 
 due in five minutes. He had time to jump into his 
 clothes and overtake her 
 
 He made no attempt to move; an obscure reluc 
 tance restrained him. If any thought emerged from 
 the tumult of his sensations, it was that he must let 
 her go if she wished it. He had spoken last night of 
 his rights : what were they ? At the last issue, he and 
 she were two separate beings, not made one by the 
 miracle of common forbearances, duties, abnegations, 
 but bound together in a noyade of passion that left 
 them resisting yet clinging as they went down. 
 
 After buying her ticket, Lydia had stood for a mo 
 ment looking out across the lake ; then he saw her 
 seat herself on one of the benches near the landing. 
 He and she, at that moment, were both listening for 
 [ 126] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 the same sound : the whistle of the boat as it rounded 
 the nearest promontory. Gannett turned again to 
 glance at the clock: the boat was due now. 
 
 Where would she go ? What would her life be when 
 she had left him ? She had no near relations and few 
 friends. There was money enough . . . but she asked 
 so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. 
 He thought of her as walking bare-footed through a 
 stony waste. No one would understand her no one 
 would pity her and he, who did both, was powerless 
 to come to her aid ... 
 
 He saw that she had risen from the bench and 
 walked toward the edge of the lake. She stood look 
 ing in the direction from which the steamboat was 
 to come ; then she turned to the ticket-office, doubt 
 less to ask the cause of the delay. After that she went 
 back to the bench and sat down with bent head. 
 What was she thinking of? 
 
 The whistle sounded; she started up, and Gannett 
 involuntarily made a movement toward the door. But 
 he turned back and continued to watch her. She stood 
 motionless, her eyes on the trail of smoke that pre 
 ceded the appearance of the boat. Then the little 
 craft rounded the point, a dead-white object on the 
 leaden water : a minute later it was puffing and 
 backing at the wharf. 
 
 The few passengers who were waiting two or 
 [ 127] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 three peasants and a snuffy priest were clustered 
 near the ticket-office. Lydia stood apart under the 
 trees. 
 
 The boat lay alongside now; the gang-plank was 
 run out and the peasants went on board with their 
 baskets of vegetables, followed by the priest. Still 
 Lydia did not move. A bell began to ring querulously ; 
 there was a shriek of steam, and some one must have 
 called to her that she would be late, for she started 
 forward, as though in answer to a summons. She moved 
 waveringly, and at the edge of the wharf she paused. 
 Gannett saw a sailor beckon to her; the bell rang 
 again and she stepped upon the gang-plank. 
 
 Half-way down the short incline to the deck she 
 stopped again; then she turned and ran back to the 
 land. The gang-plank was drawn in, the bell ceased 
 to ring, and the boat backed out into the lake. Lydia, 
 with slow steps, was walking toward the garden . . . 
 
 As she approached the hotel she looked up furtively 
 and Gannett drew back into the room. He sat down 
 beside a table ; a Bradshaw lay at his elbow, and me 
 chanically, without knowing what he did, he began 
 looking out the trains to Paris . . . 
 
 [ 128 J 
 
A COWARD 
 
A COWARD 
 
 " "m If Y daughter Irene/ said Mrs. Carstyle (she 
 I ^L / 1 made it rhyme with tureen), "has had no 
 
 -^ * -A- social advantages ; but if Mr. Carstyle had 
 chosen " she paused significantly and looked at the 
 shabby sofa on the opposite side of the fire-place as 
 though it had been Mr. Carstyle. Vibart was glad that 
 it was not. 
 
 Mrs. Carstyle was one of the women who make re 
 finement vulgar. She invariably spoke of her husband 
 as Mr. Carstyle and, though she had but one daughter, 
 was always careful to designate the young lady by 
 name. At luncheon she had talked a great deal of 
 elevating influences and ideals, and had fluctuated be 
 tween apologies for the overdone mutton and affected 
 surprise that the bewildered maid-servant should have 
 forgotten to serve the coffee and liqueurs as usual. 
 
 Vibart was almost sorry that he had come. Miss Car- 
 style was still beautiful almost as beautiful as when, 
 two days earlier, against the leafy background of a 
 June garden-party, he had seen her for the first time 
 but her mother s expositions and elucidations cheap 
 ened her beauty as sign-posts vulgarize a woodland 
 solitude. Mrs. Carstyle s eye was perpetually plying 
 between her daughter and Vibart, like an empty cab 
 [131} 
 
A COWARD 
 
 in quest of a fare. Miss Carstyle, the young man de 
 cided, was the kind of girl whose surroundings rub off 
 on her; or was it rather that Mrs. Carstyle s idiosyn 
 crasies were of a nature to color every one within 
 reach ? Vibart, looking across the table as this consola 
 tory alternative occurred to him, was sure that they 
 had not colored Mr. Carstyle ; but that, perhaps, was 
 only because they had bleached him instead. Mr. Car- 
 style was quite colorless ; it would have been impossi 
 ble to guess his native tint. His wife s qualities, if they 
 had affected him at all, had acted negatively. He did 
 not apologize for the mutton, and he wandered off 
 after luncheon without pretending to wait for the 
 diurnal coffee and liqueurs ; while the few remarks 
 that he had contributed to the conversation during 
 the meal had not been in the direction of abstract 
 conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague 
 oblique step, and the stoop that suggested the habit 
 of dodging missiles, Vibart, who was still in the age 
 of formulas, found himself wondering what life could 
 be worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself 
 to travelling with his back to the wind ; so that Mrs. 
 Carstyle s allusion to her daughter s lack of advan 
 tages (imparted while Irene searched the house for 
 an undiscoverable cigarette) had an appositeness un 
 intended by the speaker. 
 
 " If Mr. Carstyle had chosen," that lady repeated, 
 [ 132 ] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 "we might have had our city home" (she never used 
 so small a word as town) " and Ireen could have mixed 
 in the society to which I myself was accustomed at 
 her age." Her sigh pointed unmistakably to a past 
 when young men had come to luncheon to see her. 
 
 The sigh led Vibart to look at her, and the look led 
 him to the unwelcome conclusion that Irene "took 
 after " her mother. It was certainly not from the sap 
 less paternal stock that the girl had drawn her warm 
 bloom : Mrs. Carstyle had contributed the high lights 
 to the picture. 
 
 Mrs. Carstyle caught his look and appropriated it 
 with the complacency of a vicarious beauty. She was 
 quite aware of the value of her appearance as guaran 
 teeing Irene s development into a fine woman. 
 
 " But perhaps," she continued, taking up the thread 
 of her explanation, "you have heard of Mr. Carstyle s 
 extraordinary hallucination. Mr. Carstyle knows that I 
 call it so as I tell him, it is the most charitable view 
 to take." 
 
 She looked coldly at the threadbare sofa and indul 
 gently at the young man who filled a corner of it. 
 
 " You may think it odd, Mr. Vibart, that I should 
 take you into my confidence in this way after so short 
 an acquaintance, but somehow I can t help regarding 
 you as a friend already. I believe in those intuitive 
 sympathies, don t you ? They have never misled me 
 
A COWARD 
 
 her lids drooped retrospectively "and besides, I al 
 ways tell Mr. Carstyle that on this point I will have 
 no false pretences. Where truth is concerned I am in 
 exorable, and I consider it my duty to let our friends 
 know that our restricted way of living is due entirely 
 to choice to Mr. Carstyle s choice. When I married 
 Mr. Carstyle it was with the expectation of living in 
 New York and of keeping my carriage ; and there is 
 no reason for our not doing so there is no reason, 
 Mr. Vibart, why my daughter Ireen should have been 
 denied the intellectual advantages of foreign travel. I 
 wish that to be understood. It is owing to her father s 
 deliberate choice that Ireen and I have been impris 
 oned in the narrow limits of Millbrook society. For 
 myself I do not complain. If Mr. Carstyle chooses to 
 place others before his wife it is not for his wife to 
 repine. His course may be noble Quixotic; I do not 
 allow myself to pronounce judgment on it, though oth 
 ers have thought that in sacrificing his own family to 
 strangers he was violating the most sacred obligations 
 of domestic life. This is the opinion of my pastor and 
 of other valued friends ; but, as I have always told 
 them, for myself I make no claims. Where my daugh 
 ter Ireen is concerned it is different 
 
 It was a relief to Vibart when, at this point, Mrs. 
 Carstyle s discharge of her duty was cut short by her 
 daughter s reappearance. Irene had been unable to 
 [184] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 find a cigarette for Mr. Vibart, and her mother, with 
 beaming irrelevance, suggested that in that case she 
 had better show him the garden. 
 
 The Carstyle house stood but a few yards back from 
 the brick-paved Millbrook street, and the garden 
 was a very small place, unless measured, as Mrs. Car- 
 style probably intended that it should be, by the extent 
 of her daughter s charms. These were so considerable 
 that Vibart walked back and forward half a dozen 
 times between the porch and the gate, before he 
 discovered the limitations of the Carstyle domain. It 
 was not till Irene had accused him of being sarcastic 
 and had confided in him that " the girls " were furious 
 with her for letting him talk to her so long at his 
 aunt s garden-party, that he awoke to the exiguity 
 of his surroundings ; and then it was with a touch of 
 irritation that he noticed Mr. Carstyle s inconspicuous 
 profile bent above a newspaper in one of the lower 
 windows. Vibart had an idea that Mr. Carstyle, while 
 ostensibly reading the paper, had kept count of the 
 number of times that his daughter had led her com 
 panion up and down between the syringa-bushes ; and 
 for some undefinable reason he resented Mr. Carstyle s 
 unperturbed observation more than his wife s zealous 
 self-effacement. To a man who is trying to please a 
 pretty girl there are moments when the proximity of 
 an impartial spectator is more disconcerting than the 
 [ 135] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 most obvious connivance ; and something about Mr. 
 Carstyle s expression conveyed his good-humored in 
 difference to Irene s processes. 
 
 When the garden-gate closed behind Vibart he 
 had become aware that his preoccupation with the 
 Carstyles had shifted its centre from the daughter to 
 the father; but he was accustomed to such emotional 
 surprises, and skilled in seizing any compensations 
 they might offer. 
 
 II 
 
 THE Carstyles belonged to the all-the-year-round 
 Millbrook of paper-mills, cable-cars, brick pave 
 ments and church sociables, while Mrs. Vance, the 
 aunt with whom Vibart lived, was an ornament of the 
 summer colony whose big country-houses dotted the 
 surrounding hills. Mrs. Vance had, however, no diffi 
 culty in appeasing the curiosity which Mrs. Carstyle s 
 enigmatic utterances had aroused in the young man. 
 Mrs. Carstyle s relentless veracity vented itself mainly 
 on the " summer people," as they were called : she 
 did not propose that any one within ten miles of Mill- 
 brook should keep a carriage without knowing that 
 she was entitled to keep one too. Mrs. Vance remarked 
 with a sigh that Mrs. Carstyle s annual demand to 
 have her position understood came in as punctually as 
 the taxes and the water-rates. 
 [ 136] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 " My dear, it s simply this : when Andrew Carstyle 
 married her years ago Heaven knows why he did; 
 he s one of the Albany Carstyles, you know, and she 
 was a daughter of old Deacon Ash of South Millbrook 
 well, when he married her he had a tidy little in 
 come, and I suppose the bride expected to set up 
 an establishment in New York and be hand-in-glove 
 with the whole Carstyle clan. But whether he was 
 ashamed of her from the first, or for some other un 
 explained reason, he bought a country-place and set 
 tled down here for life. For a few years they lived 
 comfortably enough, and she had plenty of smart 
 clothes, and drove about in a victoria calling on the 
 summer people. Then, when the beautiful Irene was 
 about ten years old, Mr. Carstyle s only brother died, 
 and it turned out that he had made away with a lot 
 of trust-property. It was a horrid business : over three 
 hundred thousand dollars were gone, and of course 
 most of it had belonged to widows and orphans. As 
 soon as the facts were made known, Andrew Carstyle 
 announced that he would pay back what his brother 
 had stolen. He sold his country-place and his wife s 
 carriage, and they moved to the little house they live 
 in now. Mr. Carstyle s income is probably not as large 
 as his wife would like to have it thought, and though 
 I m told he puts aside a good part of it every year to 
 pay off his brother s obligations, I fancy the debt won t 
 [ 137] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 be discharged for some time to come. To help things 
 along he opened a law office he had studied law in 
 his youth but though he is said to be clever I hear 
 that he has very little to do. People are afraid of him : 
 he s too dry and quiet. Nobody believes in a man who 
 doesn t believe in himself, and Mr. Carstyle always 
 seems to be winking at you through a slit in his 
 professional manner. People don t like it his wife 
 doesn t like it. I believe she would have accepted the 
 sacrifice of the country-place and the carriage if he 
 had struck an attitude and talked about doing his 
 duty. It was his regarding the whole thing as a matter 
 of course that exasperated her. What is the use of 
 doing something difficult in a way that makes it look 
 perfectly easy ? I feel sorry for Mrs. Carstyle. She s 
 lost her house and her carriage, and she hasn t been 
 allowed to be heroic." 
 
 Vibart had listened attentively. 
 
 " I wonderwhat Miss Carstyle thinks of it ?" he mused. 
 
 Mrs. Vance looked at him with a tentative smile. " I 
 wonder what you think of Miss Carstyle ? " she returned, 
 
 His answer reassured her. 
 
 " I think she takes after her mother/ he said. 
 
 "Ah," cried his aunt cheerfully, "then I needn t 
 write to your mother, and I can have Irene at all my 
 parties !" 
 
 Miss Carstyle was an important factor in the re- 
 [ 138] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 stricted social combinations of a Millbrook hostess. A 
 local beauty is always a useful addition to a Saturday- 
 to-Monday house-party, and the beautiful Irene was 
 served up as a perennial novelty to the jaded guests 
 of the summer colony. As Vibart s aunt remarked, she 
 was perfect till she became playful, and she never 
 became playful till the third day. 
 
 Under these conditions, it was natural that Vibart 
 should see a good deal of the young lady, and before 
 he was aware of it he had drifted into the anomalous 
 position of paying court to the daughter in order to 
 ingratiate himself with the father. Miss Carstyle was 
 beautiful, Vibart was young, and the days were long 
 in his aunt s spacious and distinguished house ; but it 
 was really the desire to know something more of Mr. 
 Carstyle that led the young man to partake so often 
 of that gentleman s overdone mutton. Vibart s imagi 
 nation had been touched by the discovery that this 
 little huddled-up man, instead of travelling with the 
 wind, was persistently facing a domestic gale of con 
 siderable velocity. That he should have paid off his 
 brother s debt at one stroke was to the young man a 
 conceivable feat ; but that he should go on methodi 
 cally and uninterruptedly accumulating the needed 
 amount, under the perpetual accusation of Irene s in 
 adequate frocks and Mrs. Carstyle s apologies for the 
 mutton, seemed to Vibart proof of unexampled heroism. 
 [ 139] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 Mr. Carstyle was as inaccessible as the average 
 American parent, and led a life so detached from the 
 preoccupations of his womankind that Vibart had some 
 difficulty in fixing his attention. To Mr. Carstyle, Vibart 
 was simply the inevitable young man who had been 
 hanging about the house ever since Irene had left 
 school ; and Vibart s efforts to differentiate himself 
 from this enamored abstraction were hampered by Mrs. 
 Carstyle s cheerful assumption that he was the young 
 man, and by Irene s frank appropriation of his visits. 
 
 In this extremity he suddenly observed a slight but 
 significant change in the manner of the two ladies. 
 Irene, instead of charging him with being sarcastic 
 and horrid, and declaring herself unable to believe a 
 word he said, began to receive his remarks with the 
 impersonal smile which he had seen her accord to the 
 married men of his aunt s house-parties ; while Mrs. 
 Carstyle, talking over his head to an invisible but evi 
 dently sympathetic and intelligent listener, debated 
 the propriety of Irene s accepting an invitation to 
 spend the month of August at Narragansett. When 
 Vibart, rashly trespassing on the rights of this un 
 seen oracle, remarked that a few weeks at the sea 
 shore would make a delightful change for Miss Car- 
 style, the ladies looked at him and then laughed. 
 
 It was at this point that Vibart, for the first time, 
 found himself observed by Mr. Carstyle. They were 
 [ 140] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 grouped about the debris of a luncheon which had 
 ended precipitously with veal stew (Mrs. Carstyle ex 
 plaining that poor cooks always failed with their sweet 
 dish when there was company) and Mr. Carstyle, his 
 hands thrust in his pockets, his lean baggy-coated 
 shoulders pressed against his chair-back, sat contem 
 plating his guest with a smile of unmistakable ap 
 proval. When Vibart caught his eye the smile van 
 ished, and Mr. Carstyle, dropping his glasses from the 
 bridge of his thin nose, looked out of the window with 
 the expression of a man determined to prove an alibi. 
 But Vibart was sure of the smile : it had established, 
 between his host and himself, a complicity which Mr. 
 Carstyle s attempted evasion served only to confirm. 
 
 On the strength of this incident Vibart, a few days 
 later, called at Mr. Carstyle s office. Ostensibly, the 
 young man had come to ask, on his aunt s behalf, 
 some question on a point at issue between herself 
 and the Millbrook telephone company ; but his pur 
 pose in offering to perform the errand had been the 
 hope of taking up his intercourse with Mr. Carstyle 
 where that gentleman s smile had left it. Vibart was 
 not disappointed. In a dingy office, with a single win 
 dow looking out on a blank wall, he found Mr. Car- 
 style, in an alpaca coat, reading Montaigne. 
 
 It evidently did not occur to him that Vibart had 
 come on business, and the warmth of his welcome gave 
 [141] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 the young man a sense of furnishing the last word in 
 a conjugal argument in which, for once, Mr. Carstyle 
 had come off triumphant. 
 
 The legal question disposed of, Vibart reverted to 
 Montaigne : had Mr. Carstyle seen young So-and-so s 
 volume of essays? There was one on Montaigne that 
 had a decided flavor : the point of view was curious. 
 Vibart was surprised to find that Mr. Carstyle had 
 heard of young So-and-so. Clever young men are 
 given to thinking that their elders have never got 
 beyond Macaulay ; but Mr. Carstyle seemed suffi 
 ciently familiar with recent literature not to take it 
 too seriously. He accepted Vibart s offer of young So- 
 and-so s volume, admitting that his own library was 
 not exactly up-to-date. 
 
 Vibart went away musing. The next day he came 
 back with the volume of essays. It seemed to be tacitly 
 understood that he was to call at the office when he 
 wished to see Mr. Carstyle, whose legal engagements 
 did not seriously interfere with the pursuit of literature. 
 
 For a week or ten days Mrs. Carstyle, in Vibart s 
 presence, continued to take counsel with her unseen 
 adviser on the subject of her daughter s visit to Nar- 
 ragansett. Once or twice Irene dropped her imper 
 sonal smile to tax Vibart with not caring whether she 
 went or not ; and Mrs. Carstyle seized a moment of 
 tete-a-tete to confide in him that the dear child hated 
 [142] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 the idea of leaving, and was going only because her 
 friend Mrs. Higby would not let her off. Of course, if 
 it had not been for Mr. Carstyle s peculiarities they 
 would have had their own seaside home at Newport, 
 probably : Mrs. Carstyle preferred the tone of Newport 
 and Irene would not have been dependent on the 
 charity of her friends ; but as it was, they must be 
 thankful for small mercies, and Mrs. Higby was cer 
 tainly very kind in her way, and had a charming social 
 position for Narragansett. 
 
 These confidences, however, were soon superseded 
 by an exchange, between mother and daughter, of 
 increasingly frequent allusions to the delights of Nar 
 ragansett, the popularity of Mrs. Higby, and the jolli- 
 ness of her house ; with an occasional reference on 
 Mrs. Carstyle s part to the probability of Hewlett 
 Bain s being there as usual hadn t Irene heard from 
 Mrs. Higby that he was to be there ? Upon this note 
 Miss Carstyle at length departed, leaving Vibart to 
 the undisputed enjoyment of her father s company. 
 
 Vibart had at no time a keen taste for the summer 
 joys of Millbrook, and the family obligation which, 
 for several months of the year, kept him at his aunt s 
 side (Mrs. Vance was a childless widow and he 
 filled the onerous post of favorite nephew) gave a 
 sense of compulsion to the light occupations that 
 chequered his leisure. Mrs. Vance, who fancied herself 
 
A COWARD 
 
 lonely when he was away, was too much engaged with 
 notes, telegrams and arriving and departing guests, 
 to do more than breathlessly smile upon his presence, 
 or implore him to take the dullest girl of the party 
 for a drive (and would he go by way of Millbrook, 
 like a dear, and stop at the market to ask why the 
 lobsters had n t come ?) ; and the house itself, and the 
 guests who came and went in it like people rushing 
 through a railway-station, offered no points of repose 
 to his thoughts. Some houses are companions in them 
 selves : the walls, the book-shelves, the very chairs 
 and tables, have the qualities of a sympathetic mind ; 
 but Mrs. Vance s interior was as impersonal as the 
 setting of a classic drama. 
 
 These conditions made Vibart cultivate an assiduous 
 exchange of books between himself and Mr. Carstyle. 
 The young man went down almost daily to the little 
 house in the town, where Mrs. Carstyle, who had now 
 an air of receiving him in curl-papers, and of not al 
 ways immediately distinguishing him from the piano- 
 tuner, made no effort to detain him on his way to her 
 husband s study. 
 
 Ill 
 
 NOW and then, at the close of one of Vibart s 
 visits, Mr. Carstyle put on a mildewed Panama 
 hat and accompanied the young man for a mile or two 
 [ 144] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 on his way home. The road to Mrs. Vance s lay through 
 one of the most amiable suburbs of Millbrook, and 
 Mr. Carstyle, walking with his slow uneager step, his 
 hat pushed back, and his stick dragging behind him, 
 seemed to take a philosophic pleasure in the aspect 
 of the trim lawns and opulent gardens. 
 
 Vibart could never induce his companion to prolong 
 his walk as far as Mrs. Vance s drawing-room ; but one 
 afternoon, when the distant hills lay blue beyond the 
 twilight of overarching elms, the two men strolled 
 on into the country past that lady s hospitable gate 
 posts. 
 
 It was a still day, the road was deserted, and every 
 sound came sharply through the air. Mr. Carstyle 
 was in the midst of a disquisition on Diderot, when 
 he raised his head and stood still. 
 
 "What s that?" he said. "Listen!" 
 
 Vibart listened and heard a distant storm of hoof- 
 beats. A moment later, a buggy drawn by a pair of 
 trotters swung round the turn of the road. It was 
 about thirty yards off, coming toward them at full 
 speed. The man who drove was leaning forward with 
 outstretched arms; beside him sat a girl. 
 
 Suddenly Vibart saw Mr. Carstyle jump into the 
 
 middle of the road, in front of the buggy. He stood 
 
 there immovable, his arms extended, his legs apart, in 
 
 an attitude of indomitable resistance. Almost at the 
 
 [145] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 same moment Vibart realized that the man in the 
 buggy had his horses in hand. 
 
 "They re not running!" Vibart shouted, springing 
 into the road and catching Mr. Carstyle s alpaca sleeve. 
 The older man looked around vaguely: he seemed 
 dazed. 
 
 " Come away, sir, come away ! " cried Vibart, grip 
 ping his arm. The buggy swept past them, and Mr. 
 Carstyle stood in the dust gazing after it. 
 
 At length he drew out his handkerchief and wiped 
 his forehead. He was very pale and Vibart noticed 
 that his hand shook. 
 
 "That was a close call, sir, wasn t it? I suppose 
 you thought they were running." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Carstyle slowly, "I thought they 
 were running." 
 
 " It certainly looked like it for a minute. Let s sit 
 down, shall we ? I feel rather breathless myself." 
 
 Vibart saw that his friend could hardly stand. They 
 seated themselves on a tree-trunk by the roadside, 
 and Mr. Carstyle continued to wipe his forehead in 
 silence. 
 
 At length he turned to Vibart and said abruptly : 
 
 " I made straight for the middle of the road, did n t 
 I ? If there had been a runaway I should have stopped 
 it?" 
 
 Vibart looked at him in surprise. 
 [146] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 " You would have tried to, undoubtedly, unless I d 
 had time to drag you away." 
 
 Mr. Carstyle straightened his narrow shoulders. 
 
 "There was no hesitation, at all events? I I 
 showed no signs of avoiding it ? " 
 
 " I should say not, sir ; it was I who funked it for 
 you." 
 
 Mr. Carstyle was silent : his head had dropped for 
 ward and he looked like an old man. 
 
 "It was just my cursed luck again!" he exclaimed 
 suddenly in a loud voice. 
 
 For a moment Vibart thought that he was wander 
 ing ; but he raised his head and went on speaking in 
 more natural tones. 
 
 " I daresay I appeared ridiculous enough to you 
 just now, eh? Perhaps you saw all along that the 
 horses weren t running? Your eyes are younger than 
 mine ; and then you re not always looking out for 
 runaways, as I am. Do you know that in thirty years 
 I ve never seen a runaway?" 
 
 "You re fortunate," said Vibart, still bewildered. 
 
 " Fortunate ? Good God, man, I ve prayed to see 
 one : not a runaway especially, but any bad accident ; 
 anything that endangered people s lives. There are 
 accidents happening all the time all over the world ; 
 why shouldn t I ever come across one? It s not for 
 want of trying! At one time I used to haunt the 
 [147] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 theatres in the hope of a fire : fires in theatres ar* so 
 apt to be fatal. Well, will you believe it ? I was in *he 
 Brooklyn theatre the night before it burned down ; 
 I left the old Madison Square Garden half an hour 
 before the walls fell in. And it s the same way with 
 street accidents I always miss them; I m always just 
 too late. Last year there was a boy knocked down by 
 a cable-car at our corner ; I got to my gate just as they 
 were carrying him off on a stretcher. And so it goes. If 
 anybody else had been walking along this road, those 
 horses would have been running away. And there was 
 a girl in the buggy, too a mere child ! " 
 
 Mr. Carstyle s head sank again. 
 
 " You re wondering what this means," he began 
 after another pause. " I was a little confused for a 
 moment I must have seemed incoherent." His voice 
 cleared and he made an effort to straighten himself. 
 " Well, I was a damned coward once and I ve been 
 trying to live it down ever since." 
 
 Vibart looked at him incredulously and Mr. Carstyle 
 caught the look with a smile. 
 
 " Why not ? Do I look like a Hercules ? " He held 
 up his loose-skinned hand and shrunken wrist. "Not 
 built for the part, certainly ; but that does n t count, 
 of course. Man s unconquerable soul, and all the rest 
 of it ... well, I was a coward every inch of me, 
 body and soul." 
 
 [148] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 He paused and glanced up and down the road. 
 There was no one in sight. 
 
 "It happened when I was a young chap just out 
 of college. I was travelling round the world with an 
 other youngster of my own age and an older man 
 Charles Meriton who has since made a name for him 
 self. You may have heard of him." 
 
 "Meriton, the archaeologist? The man who discov 
 ered those ruined African cities the other day ? " 
 
 " That s the man. He was a college tutor then, and 
 my father, who had known him since he was a boy, and 
 who had a very high opinion of him, had asked him to 
 make the tour with us. We both my friend Collis and 
 I had an immense admiration for Meriton. He was 
 just the fellow to excite a boy s enthusiasm : cool, 
 quick, imperturbable the kind of man whose hand 
 is always on the hilt of action. His explorations had 
 led him into all sorts of tight places, and he d shown 
 an extraordinary combination of calculating patience 
 and reckless courage. He never talked about his do 
 ings ; we picked them up from various people on our 
 journey. He d been everywhere, he knew everybody, 
 and everybody had something stirring to tell about 
 him. I daresay this account of the man sounds exag 
 gerated ; perhaps it is ; I ve never seen him since ; but 
 at that time he seemed to me a tremendous fellow 
 a kind of scientific Ajax. He was a capital travelling- 
 [ 149 ] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 companion, at any rate : good-tempered, cheerful, easily 
 amused, with none of the been-there-before superiority 
 so irritating to youngsters. He made us feel as though 
 it were all as new to him as to us : he never chilled 
 our enthusiasms or took the bloom off our surprises. 
 There was nobody else whose good opinion I cared as 
 much about : he was the biggest thing in sight. 
 
 "On the way home Collis broke down with diph 
 theria. We were in the Mediterranean, cruising about 
 the Sporades in a felucca. He was taken ill at Chios. 
 The attack came on suddenly and we were afraid to 
 run the risk of taking him back to Athens in the 
 felucca. We established ourselves in the inn at Chios 
 and there the poor fellow lay for weeks. Luckily there 
 was a fairly good doctor on the island and we sent 
 to Athens for a sister to help with the nursing. Poor 
 Collis was desperately bad : the diphtheria was fol 
 lowed by partial paralysis. The doctor assured us that 
 the danger was past ; he would gradually regain the 
 use of his limbs ; but his recovery would be slow. The 
 sister encouraged us too she had seen such cases be 
 fore ; and he certainly did improve a shade each day. 
 Meriton and I had taken turns with the sister in nurs 
 ing him, but after the paralysis had set in there was n t 
 much to do, and there was nothing to prevent Meri- 
 ton s leaving us for a day or two. He had received 
 word from some place on the coast of Asia Minor that 
 [ 150 ] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 a remarkable tomb had been discovered somewhere in 
 the interior ; he had not been willing to take us there, 
 as the journey was not a particularly safe one ; but now 
 that we were tied up at Chios there seemed no reason 
 why he should n t go and take a look at the place. The 
 expedition would not take more than three days ; Col- 
 lis was convalescent ; the doctor and nurse assured us 
 that there was no cause for uneasiness ; and so Meriton 
 started off one evening at sunset. I walked down to the 
 quay with him and saw him rowed off to the felucca. 
 I would have given a good deal to be going with him ; 
 the prospect of danger allured me. 
 
 " You 11 see that Collis is never left alone, won t 
 you ? he shouted back to me as the boat pulled out 
 into the harbor; I remembered I rather resented the 
 suggestion. 
 
 " I walked back to the inn and went to bed : the 
 nurse sat up with Collis at night. The next morning 
 I relieved her at the usual hour. It was a sultry day 
 with a queer coppery-looking sky ; the air was stifling. 
 In the middle of the day the nurse came to take my 
 place while I dined ; when I went back to Collis s 
 room she said she would go out for a breath of air. 
 
 " I sat down by Collis s bed and began to fan him 
 
 with the fan the sister had been using. The heat made 
 
 him uneasy and I turned him over in bed, for he was 
 
 still helpless : the whole of his right side was numb. 
 
 [151] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 Presently he fell asleep and I went to the window 
 and sat looking down on the hot deserted square, 
 with a bunch of donkeys and their drivers asleep in 
 the shade of the convent-wall across the way. I re 
 member noticing the blue beads about the donkeys 
 necks . . . Were you ever *in an earthquake? No? 
 I d never been in one either. It s an indescribable 
 sensation . . . there s a Day of Judgment feeling in 
 the air. It began with the donkeys waking up and 
 trembling ; I noticed that and thought it queer. Then 
 the drivers jumped up I saw the terror in their faces. 
 Then a roar ... I remember noticing a big black crack 
 in the con vent- wall opposite a zig-zag crack, like 
 a flash of lightning in a wood-cut ... I thought of 
 that, too, at the time ; then all the bells in the place 
 began to ring it made a fearful discord ... I saw 
 people rushing across the square . . . the air was full 
 of crashing noises. The floor went down under me in 
 a sickening way and then jumped back and pitched 
 me to the ceiling . . . but where was the ceiling? 
 And the door? I said to myself: We re two stories up 
 the stairs are just wide enough for one ... I gave 
 one glance at Collis : he was lying in bed, wide awake, 
 looking straight at me. I ran. Something struck me 
 on the head as I bolted downstairs I kept on 
 running. I suppose the knock I got dazed me, for I 
 don t remember much of anything till I found myself 
 [152] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 In a vineyard a mile from the town. I was roused 
 by the warm blood running down my nose and heard 
 myself explaining to Meriton exactly how it had hap 
 pened . . . 
 
 "When I crawled back to the town they told me 
 that all the houses near the inn were in ruins and that 
 a dozen people had been killed. Collis was among 
 them, of course. The ceiling had come down on him." 
 
 Mr. Carstyle wiped his forehead. Vibart sat looking 
 away from him. 
 
 " Two days later Meriton came back. I began to tell 
 him the story, but he interrupted me. 
 
 " There was no one with him at the time, then? 
 You d left him alone ? 
 
 " No, he wasn t alone/ 
 
 " Who was with him ? You said the sister was out. 
 
 (< I was with him. 
 
 " You were with him ? 
 
 " I shall never forget Meriton s look. I believe I had 
 meant to explain, to accuse myself, to shout out my 
 agony of soul ; but I saw the uselessness of it. A door 
 had been shut between us. Neither of us spoke an 
 other word. He was very kind to me on the way 
 home ; he looked after me in a motherly way that 
 was a good deal harder to stand than his open con 
 tempt. I saw the man was honestly trying to pity 
 me; but it was no good he simply couldn t." 
 [ 153] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 Mr. Carstyle rose slowly, with a certain stiffness. 
 
 " Shall we turn toward home ? Perhaps I m keep 
 ing you." 
 
 They walked on a few steps in silence ; then he 
 spoke again. 
 
 "That business altered my whole life. Of course I 
 oughtn t to have allowed it to that was another 
 form of cowardice. But I saw myself only with Meri- 
 ton s eyes it is one of the worst miseries of youth 
 that one is always trying to be somebody else. I had 
 meant to be a Meriton I saw I d better go home 
 and study law . . . 
 
 "It s a childish fancy, a survival of the primitive 
 savage, if you like ; but from that hour to this I ve 
 hankered day and night for a chance to retrieve my 
 self, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. 
 I want to prove to that man that it was all an acci 
 dent an unaccountable deviation from my normal in 
 stincts ; that having once been a coward does n t mean 
 that a man s cowardly . . . and I can t, I can t ! " 
 
 Mr. Carstyle s tone had passed insensibly from agita 
 tion to irony. He had got back to his usual objective 
 stand-point. 
 
 "Why, I m a perfect olive-branch," he concluded, 
 
 with his dry indulgent laugh ; " the very babies stop 
 
 crying at my approach I carry a sort of millennium 
 
 about with me I d make my fortune as an agent of 
 
 [ 154] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 the Peace Society. I shall go to the grave leaving that 
 other man unconvinced!" 
 
 Vibart walked back- with him to Millbrook. On her 
 doorstep they met Mrs. Carstyle, flushed and feath 
 ered, with a card-case and dusty boots. 
 
 " I don t ask you in," she said plaintively, to Vibart, 
 " because I can t answer for the food this evening. My 
 maid-of-all-work tells me that she s going to a ball 
 which is more than I ve done in years ! And besides, 
 it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot 
 evening in our stuffy little house the air is so much 
 cooler at Mrs. Vance s. Remember me to Mrs. Vance, 
 please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no 
 longer include her in rny round of visits. When I had 
 my carriage I saw the people I liked, but now that 
 I have to walk, my social opportunities are more 
 limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot 
 when I was younger, and my doctor tells me that to 
 persons accustomed to a carriage no exercise is more 
 injurious than walking." 
 
 She glanced at her husband with a smile of unfor 
 giving sweetness. 
 
 " Fortunately," she concluded, " it agrees with Mr. 
 Carstyle." 
 
 [ 155 ] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 I 
 
 A Newport drawing-room. Tapestries, flowers, bric-a-brac. 
 Through the windows, a geranium-edged lawn, the cliffs 
 and the sea. Isabel Warland sits reading. Lucius War- 
 land enters in flannels and a yachting-cap. 
 
 ISABEL. Back already ? 
 Warland. The wind dropped it turned into a 
 drifting race. Langham took me off the yacht on 
 his launch. What time is it ? Two o clock ? Where s 
 Mrs. Raynor? 
 
 Isabel. On her way to New York. 
 Warland. To New York? 
 
 Isabel. Precisely. The boat must be just leaving; 
 she started an hour ago and took Laura with her. 
 In fact I m alone in the house that is, until this 
 evening. Some people are coming then. 
 Warland. But what in the world 
 Isabel. Her aunt, Mrs. Griscom, has had a fit. 
 She has them constantly. They re not serious at 
 least they wouldn t be, if Mrs. Griscom were not 
 so rich and childless. Naturally, under the circum 
 stances, Marian feels a peculiar sympathy for her; 
 her position is such a sad one ; there s positively no 
 [159] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 one to care whether she lives or dies except her 
 heirs. Of course they all rush to Newburgh whenever 
 she has a fit. It s hard on Marian, for she lives the 
 farthest away ; but she has come to an understanding 
 with the housekeeper, who always telegraphs her first, 
 so that she gets a start of several hours. She will be at 
 Newburgh to-night at ten, and she has calculated that 
 the others can t possibly arrive before midnight. 
 
 Warland. You have a delightful way of putting 
 things. I suppose you d talk of me like that. 
 
 Isabel Oh, no. It s too humiliating to doubt one s 
 husband s disinterestedness. 
 
 Warland. I wish I had a rich aunt who had fits. 
 
 Isabel. If I were wishing I should choose heart- 
 disease. 
 
 Warland. There s no doing anything without money 
 or influence. 
 
 Isabel (picking up her book). Have you heard from 
 Washington ? 
 
 Warland. Yes. That s what I was going to speak 
 of when I asked for Mrs. Raynor. I wanted to bid 
 her good-bye. 
 
 Isabel. You re going? 
 
 Warland. By the five train. Fagott has just wired 
 me that the Ambassador will be in Washington on 
 Monday. He hasn t named his secretaries yet, but 
 there isn t much hope for me. He has a nephew 
 
 [160] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Isabel. They always have. Like the Popes. 
 
 Warland. Well, I m going all the same. You ll 
 explain to Mrs. Raynor if she gets back before I 
 do? Are there to be people at dinner? I don t sup 
 pose it matters. You can always pick up an extra 
 man on a Saturday. 
 
 Isabel. By the way, that reminds me that Marian 
 left me a list of the people who are arriving this 
 afternoon. My novel is so absorbing that I forgot to 
 look at it. Where can it be? Ah, here Let me see: 
 the Jack Merringtons, Adelaide Clinton, Ned Lender 
 all from New York, by seven p. M. train. Lewis 
 Darley to-night, by Fall River boat. John Oberville, 
 from Boston at five P.M. Why, I didn t know 
 
 Warland (excitedly). John Oberville? John Ober 
 ville? Here? To-day at five o clock? Let me see 
 let me look at the list. Are you sure you re not 
 mistaken? Why, she never said a word! Why the 
 deuce did n t you tell me ? 
 
 Isabel. I did n t know. 
 
 Warland. Oberville Oberville ! 
 
 Isabel. Why, what difference does it make ? 
 
 Warland. What difference? What difference? Don t 
 look at me as if you did n t understand English ! 
 Why, if Oberville s coming (a pause) Look here, 
 Isabel, didn t you know him very well at one time? 
 
 Isabel. Very well yes. 
 
 [161] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Warland. I thought so of course I remember 
 now ; I heard all about it before I met you. Let me 
 see didn t you and your mother spend a winter in 
 Washington when he was Under-secretary of State? 
 
 Isabel. That was before the deluge. 
 
 Warland. I remember it all comes back to me. I 
 used to hear it said that he admired you tremend 
 ously; there was a report that you were engaged. 
 Don t you remember ? Why, it was in all the papers. 
 By Jove, Isabel, what a match that would have been ! 
 
 Isabel. You are disinterested ! 
 
 Warland. Well, I can t help thinking 
 
 Isabel. That I paid you a handsome compliment ? 
 
 Warland (preoccupied). Eh? Ah, yes exactly. 
 What was I saying? Oh about the report of your 
 engagement. (Playfully.) He was awfully gone on 
 you, was n t he ? 
 
 Isabel. It s not for me to diminish your triumph. 
 
 Warland. By Jove, I can t think why Mrs. Raynor 
 didn t tell me he was coming. A man like that 
 one doesn t take him for granted, like the piano- 
 tuner! I wonder I didn t see it in the papers. 
 
 Isabel. Is he grown such a great man? 
 
 Warland. Oberville ? Great? John Oberville? I ll 
 
 tell you what he is the power behind the throne, 
 
 the black Pope, the King-maker and all the rest of 
 
 it. Don t you read the papers ? Of course I 11 never 
 
 [162] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 get on if you won t interest yourself in politics. And 
 to think you might have married that man ! 
 
 Isabel. And got you your secretaryship ! 
 
 Warland. Oberville has them all in the hollow of 
 his hand. 
 
 Isabel. Well, you 11 see him at five o clock. 
 
 Warland. I don t suppose he s ever heard of me, 
 worse luck ! ( A silence.) Isabel, look here. I never ask 
 questions, do I ? But it was so long ago and Ober 
 ville almost belongs to history he will one of these 
 days at any rate. Just tell me did he want to marry 
 you? 
 
 Isabel. Since you answer for his immortality (after 
 a pause) I was very much in love with him. 
 
 Warland. Then of course he did. (Another pause.) But 
 what in the world 
 
 Isabel (musing). As you say, it was so long ago ; I 
 don t see why I shouldn t tell you. There was a mar 
 ried woman who had what is the correct expression? 
 made sacrifices for him. There was only one sacrifice 
 she objected to making and he didn t consider him 
 self free. It sounds rather rococo, doesn t it? It was 
 odd that she died the year after we were married. 
 
 Warland. Whew! 
 
 Isabel (following her own thoughts). I ve never seen 
 him since ; it must be ten years ago. I m certainly 
 thirty-two, and I was just twenty-two then. It s curi- 
 [163] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 ous to talk of it. I had put it away so carefully. How 
 it smells of camphor ! And what an old-fashioned cut 
 it has ! (Rising.} Where s the list, Lucius ? You wanted 
 to know if there were to be people at dinner to 
 night 
 
 Warland. Here it is but never mind. Isabel 
 (silence) Isabel 
 
 Isabel. Well? 
 
 Warland. It s odd he never married. 
 
 Isabel. The comparison is to my disadvantage. But 
 then I met you. 
 
 Warland. Don t be so confoundedly sarcastic. I won 
 der how he 11 feel about seeing you. Oh, I don t mean 
 any sentimental rot, of course . . . but you re an 
 uncommonly agreeable woman. I daresay he ll be 
 pleased to see you again ; you re fifty times more 
 attractive than when I married you. 
 
 Isabel. I wish your other investments had appre 
 ciated at the same rate. Unfortunately my charms 
 won t pay the butcher. 
 
 Warland. Damn the butcher! 
 
 Isabel. I happened to mention him because he s 
 just written again ; but I might as well have said the 
 baker or the candlestick-maker. The candlestick-maker 
 I wonder what he is, by the way? He, must have 
 more faith in human nature than the others, for I 
 haven t heard from him yet. I wonder if there is a 
 [164] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Creditor s Polite Letter-writer which they all consult ; 
 their style is so exactly alike. I advise you to pass 
 through New York incognito on your way to Washing 
 ton ; their attentions might be oppressive. 
 
 Warland. Confoundedly oppressive. What a dog s life 
 it is ! My poor Isabel 
 
 Isabel. Don t pity me. I did n t marry you for a home. 
 
 Warland (after a pause). What did you marry me 
 for, if you cared for Oberville ? (Another pause.) Eh ? 
 
 Isabel. Don t make me regret my confidence. 
 
 Warland. I beg your pardon. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, it was only a subterfuge to conceal the 
 fact that I have no distinct recollection of my rea 
 sons. The fact is, a girl s motives in marrying are 
 like a passport apt to get mislaid. One is so sel 
 dom asked for either. But mine certainly couldn t 
 have been mercenary : I never heard a mother praise 
 you to her daughters. 
 
 Warland. No, I never was much of a match. 
 
 Isabel You impugn my judgment. 
 
 Warland. If I only had a head for business, now, I 
 might have done something by this time. But I d 
 sooner break stones in the road. 
 
 Isabel. It must be very hard to get an opening in 
 that profession. So many of my friends have aspired to 
 it, and yet I never knew any one who actually did it. 
 
 Warland. If I could only get the secretaryship. 
 [165] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 How that kind of life would suit you ! It s as much 
 for you that I want it 
 
 Isabel. And almost as much for the butcher. Don t 
 belittle the circle of your benevolence. (She walks 
 across the room.) Three o clock already and Marian 
 asked me to give orders about the carriages. Let me 
 see Mr. Oberville is the first arrival ; if you 11 ring 
 I will send word to the stable. I suppose you 11 stay 
 now? 
 
 Warland. Stay? 
 
 Isabel. Not go to Washington. I thought you spoke 
 as if he could help you. 
 
 Warland. He could settle the whole thing in five 
 minutes. The President can t refuse him anything. But 
 he does n t know me ; he may have a candidate of his 
 own. It s a pity you haven t seen him for so long 
 and yet I don t know ; perhaps it s just as well. The 
 others don t arrive till seven? It seems as if How 
 long is he going to be here? Till to-morrow night, I 
 suppose ? I wonder what he s come for. The Merring- 
 tons will bore him to death, and Adelaide, of course, 
 will be philandering with Lender. I wonder (a pause) 
 if Darley likes boating. (Rings the bell.) 
 
 Isabel. Boating? 
 
 Warland. Oh, I was only thinking Where are the 
 matches? One may smoke here, I suppose? (He looks 
 at his wife.) If I were you I d put on that black gown 
 [166] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 of yours to-night the one with the spangles. It s 
 only that Fred Langham asked me to go over to Nar- 
 ragansett in his launch to-morrow morning, and I was , 
 thinking that I might take Darley; I always liked 
 Darley. 
 
 Isabel (to the footman who enters). Mrs. Raynor wishes 
 the dog-cart sent to the station at five o clock to meet 
 Mr. Oberville. 
 
 Footman. Very good, m m. Shall I serve tea at the 
 usual time, m m ? 
 
 Isabel. Yes. That is, when Mr. Oberville arrives. 
 
 Footman (going out). Very good, m m. 
 
 War land (to Isabel, who is moving toward the door). 
 Where are you going? 
 
 Isabel. To my room now for a walk later. 
 
 Warland. Later? It s past three already. 
 
 Isabel. I ve no engagement this afternoon. 
 
 Warland. Oh, I didn t know. (As she reaches the 
 door.) You ll be back, I suppose? 
 
 Isabel. I have no intention of eloping. 
 
 Wirland. For tea, I mean? 
 
 Isabel. I never take tea. f Warland shrugs his shoul 
 ders.) 
 
 [167] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 II 
 
 The same drawing-room. Isabel enters from the lawn 
 in hat and gloves. The tea-table is set out, and the footman 
 just lighting the lamp under the kettle. 
 
 ISABEL. You may take the tea-things away. I 
 never take tea. 
 
 Footman. Very good, m m. (He hesitates.) I under 
 stood, m m, that Mr. Oberville was to have tea? 
 
 Isabel. Mr. Oberville? But he was to arrive long 
 ago ! What time is it ? 
 
 Footman. Only a quarter past five, m m. 
 
 Isabel. A quarter past five ? ( She goes up to the clock.) 
 Surely you re mistaken? I thought it was long after 
 six. (To herself.) I walked and walked I must have 
 walked too fast . . . (To the Footman.) I m going out 
 again. When Mr. Oberville arrives please give him his 
 tea without waiting for me. I shall not be back till 
 dinner-time. 
 
 Footman. Very good, m m. Here are some letters, 
 m m. 
 
 Isabel (glancing at them with a movement of disgust). 
 You may send them up to my room. 
 
 Footman. I beg pardon, m m, but one is a note from 
 Mme Fanfreluche, and the man who brought it is 
 waiting for an answer. 
 
 [168] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Isabel. Didn t you tell him I was out? 
 
 Footman. Yes, m m. But he said he had orders to 
 wait till you came in. 
 
 Isabel. Ah let me see. (She opens the note.) Ah, yes. 
 (A pause.) Please say that I am on my way now to 
 Mme Fanfreluche s to give her the answer in person. 
 You may tell the man that I have already started. Do 
 you understand? Already started. 
 
 Footman. Yes, m m. 
 
 Isabel. And wait. (With an effort.) You may tell 
 me when the man has started. I shall wait here till 
 then. Be sure you let me know. 
 
 Footman. Yes, m m. (He goes out.) 
 
 Isabel (sinking into a chair and hiding her face). Ah! 
 (After a moment she rises, taking up her gloves and sun 
 shade, and walks toward the window which opens on the 
 lawn.) I m so tired. ( She hesitates and turns back into 
 the room.) Where can I go to ? (She sits down again by 
 the tea-table, and bends over the kettle. The clock strikes 
 half -past Jive.) 
 
 Isabel (picking up her sunshade, walks back to the win 
 dow). If I must meet one of them . . . 
 
 Oberville (speaking in the hall). Thanks. I 11 take tea 
 first. (He enters the room, and pauses doubtfully on seeing 
 Isabel.) 
 
 Isabel (stepping towards him with a smile). It s not 
 that I ve changed, of course, but only that I happened 
 [169] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 to have my back to the light. Isn t that what you 
 are going to say? 
 
 Oberville. Mrs. Warland ! 
 
 Isabel. So you really have become a great man ! They 
 always remember people s names. 
 
 Oberville. Were you afraid I was going to call you Isabel ? 
 
 Isabel. Bravo ! Crescendo ! 
 
 Oberville. But you have changed, all the same. 
 
 Isabel. You must indeed have reached a dizzy emi 
 nence, since you can indulge yourself by speaking the 
 truth ! 
 
 Oberville. It s your voice. I knew it at once, and yet 
 it s different. 
 
 Isabel. I hope it can still convey the pleasure I feel 
 in seeing an old friend. ( She holds out her hand. He takes 
 it.} You know, I suppose, that Mrs. Raynor is not here 
 to receive you ? She was called away this morning very 
 suddenly by her aunt s illness. 
 
 Oberville. Yes. She left a note for me. (Absently.} 
 I m sorry to hear of Mrs. Griscom s illness. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, Mrs. Griscom s illnesses are less alarming 
 than her recoveries. But I am forgetting to offer you 
 any tea. ( She hands him a cup.) I remember you liked it 
 very strong. 
 
 Oberville. What else do you remember? 
 
 Isabel. A number of equally useless things. My mind 
 is a store-room of obsolete information. 
 [170] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOB 
 
 Oberville. Why obsolete, since I am providing you 
 ^dth a use for it? 
 
 Isabel. At any rate, it s open to question whether 
 it was worth storing for that length of time. Especially 
 as there must have been others more fitted by op- 1 
 portunity to undertake the duty. 
 
 Oberville. The duty? 
 
 Isabel. Of remembering how you like your tea. 
 
 Oberville (with a change of tone). Since you call it a 
 duty I may remind you that it s one I have never 
 asked any one else to perform. 
 
 Isabel. As a duty ! But as a pleasure ? 
 
 Oberville. Do you really want to know? 
 
 Isabel. Oh, I don t require and charge you. 
 
 Oberville. You dislike as much as ever having the i s 
 dotted? 
 
 Isabel. With a handwriting I know as well as yours I 
 
 Oberville (recovering his lightness of manner ). Accom 
 plished woman ! (He examines her approvingly.) I d no 
 idea that you were here. I never was more surprised. 
 
 Isabel. I hope you like being surprised. To my mind 
 it s an overrated pleasure. 
 
 Oberville. Is it ? I m sorry to hear that. 
 
 Isabel. Why? Have you a surprise to dispose of? 
 
 Oberville. I m not sure that I have n t. 
 
 Isabel. Don t part with it too hastily. It may improve 
 by being kept. 
 
 [171] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Oberville ( tentatively ). Does that mean that you don t 
 want it? 
 
 Isabel. Heaven forbid ! I want everything I can get. 
 
 Oberville. And you get everything you want. At 
 least you used to. 
 
 Isabel. Let us talk of your surprise. 
 
 Oberville. It s to be yours, you know. (A pause. He 
 speaks gravely.) I find that I ve never got over having 
 lost you. 
 
 Isabel (also gravely). And is that a surprise to you 
 too? 
 
 Oberville. Honestly yes. I thought I d crammed 
 my life full. I didn t know there was a cranny left 
 anywhere. At first, you know, I stuffed in everything 
 I could lay my hands on there was such a big void 
 to fill. And after all I have n t filled it. I felt that the 
 moment I saw you. (A pause.) I m talking stupidly. 
 
 Isabel. It would be odious if you were eloquent. 
 
 Oberville. What do you mean? 
 
 Isabel. That s a question you never used to ask me. 
 
 Oberville. Be merciful. Remember how little practise 
 I ve had lately. 
 
 Isabel. In what? 
 
 Oberville. Never mind ! (He rises and walks arvay ; 
 then comes back and stands in front of her.) What a fool 
 I was to give you up ! 
 
 Isabel. Oh, don t say that! I ve lived on it! 
 [ m] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Oberville. On my letting you go ? 
 
 Isabel. On your letting everything go but the 
 right. 
 
 Oberville. Oh, hang the right! What is truth? We 
 had the right to be happy ! 
 
 Isabel (with rising emotion). I used to think so some 
 times. 
 
 Oberville. Did you ? Triple fool that I was ! 
 
 Isabel. But you showed me 
 
 Oberville. Why, good God, we belonged to each 
 other and I let you go ! It s fabulous. I ve fought for 
 things since that weren t worth a crooked sixpence ;, 
 fought as well as other men. And you you I lost 
 you because I could n t face a scene ! Hang it, suppose 
 there d been a dozen scenes I might have survived 
 them. Men have been known to. They re not neces 
 sarily fatal. 
 
 Isabel. A scene? 
 
 Oberville. It s a form of fear that women don t un 
 derstand. How you must have despised me ! 
 
 Isabel. You were afraid of a scene? 
 
 Oberville. I was a damned coward, Isabel. That s 
 about the size of it. 
 
 Isabel. Ah I had thought it so much larger! 
 
 Oberville. What did you say? 
 
 Isabel. I said that you have forgotten to drink your 
 tea. It must be quite cold. 
 
 [173] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Oberville. Ah 
 
 Isabel. Let me give you another cup. 
 
 Oberville (collecting himself}. No no. This is perfect. 
 
 Isabel. You haven t tasted it. 
 
 Oberville (falling into her mood}. You always made 
 it to perfection. Only you never gave me enough sugar. 
 
 Isabel. I know better now. ( She puts another lump in 
 his cup.) 
 
 Oberville (drinks his tea, and then says, with an air of 
 reproach}. Isn t all this chaff rather a waste of time 
 between two old friends who have n t met for so many 
 years ? 
 
 Isabel (lightly}. Oh, it s only a hors d oeuvre the 
 tuning of the instruments. I m out of practise too. 
 
 Oberville. Let us come to the grand air, then. (Sits 
 down near her.} Tell me about yourself. What are you 
 doing ? 
 
 Isabel. At this moment? You ll never guess. I m 
 trying to remember you. 
 
 Oberville. To remember me? 
 
 Isabel. Until you came into the room just now my 
 recollection of you was so vivid ; you were a living 
 whole in my thoughts. Now I am engaged in gather 
 ing up the fragments in laboriously reconstructing 
 you .... 
 
 Oberville. I have changed so much, then? 
 
 Isabel. No, I don t believe that you *ve changed. It s 
 
 [ m] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 only that I see you differently. Don t you know how 
 hard it is to convince elderly people that the type of 
 the evening paper is no smaller than when they were 
 young ? 
 
 Oberville. I ve shrunk then ? 
 
 Isabel. You could n t have grown bigger. Oh, I m 
 serious now ; you need n t prepare a smile. For years 
 you were the tallest object on my horizon. I used to 
 climb to the thought of you, as people who live in a 
 flat country mount the church steeple for a view. It s 
 wonderful how much I used to see from there ! And 
 the air was so strong and pure! 
 
 Oberville. And now? 
 
 Isabel. Now I can fancy how delightful it must be 
 to sit next to you at dinner. 
 
 Oberville. You re unmerciful. Have I said anything 
 to offend you ? 
 
 Isabel. Of course not. How absurd! 
 
 Oberville. I lost my head a little I forgot how long 
 it is since we have met. When I saw you I forgot 
 everything except what you had once been to me. 
 (She is silent.} I thought you too generous to resent 
 that. Perhaps I have overtaxed your generosity. (A 
 pause.) Shall I confess it? When I first saw you I 
 thought for a moment that you had remembered as 
 I had. You see I can only excuse myself by saying 
 something inexcusable. 
 
 [175] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Isabel (deliberately). Not inexcusable. 
 
 Oberville. Not? 
 
 Isabel. I had remembered. 
 
 Oberville. Isabel! 
 
 Isabel. But now 
 
 Oberville. Ah, give me a moment before you unsay 
 it! 
 
 Isabel. I don t mean to unsay it. There s no use in 
 repealing an obsolete law. That s the pity of it ! You 
 say you lost me ten years ago. (A pause.) I never lost 
 you till now. 
 
 Oberville. Now? 
 
 Isabel. Only this morning you were my supreme 
 court of justice ; there was no appeal from your ver 
 dict. Not an hour ago you decided a case for me 
 against myself! And now . And the worst of it is 
 that it s not because you ve changed. How do I 
 know if you ve changed ? You have n t said a hun 
 dred words to me. You haven t been an hour in the 
 room. And the years must have enriched you I 
 daresay you ve doubled your capital. You ve been 
 in the thick of life, and the metal you re made 
 of brightens with use. Success on some men looks 
 like a borrowed coat ; it sits on you as though it 
 had been made to order. I see all this ; I know it ; 
 but I don t feel it. I don t feel anything . . . any 
 where ... I m numb. (A pause.) Don t laugh, but 
 [176] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 I really don t think I should know now if you came 
 into the room unless I actually saw you. ( They are 
 both silent.) 
 
 Oberville (at length ). Then, to put the most merci 
 ful interpretation upon your epigrams, your feeling for 
 me was made out of poorer stuff than mine for you. 
 
 Isabel. Perhaps it has had harder wear. 
 
 Oberville. Or been less cared for? 
 
 Isabel. If one has only one cloak one must wear it 
 in all weathers. 
 
 Oberville. Unless it is so beautiful and precious that 
 one prefers to go cold and keep it under lock and key. 
 
 Isabel. In the cedar-chest of indifference the key 
 of which is usually lost. 
 
 Oberville. Ah, Isabel, you re too pat! How much I 
 preferred your hesitations. 
 
 Isabel. My hesitations ? That reminds me how much 
 your coming has simplified things. I feel as if I d had 
 an auction sale of fallacies. 
 
 Oberville. You speak in enigmas, and I have a notion 
 that your riddles are the reverse of the sphinx s more 
 dangerous to guess than to give up. And yet I used 
 to find your thoughts such good reading. 
 
 Isabel. One cares so little for the style in which 
 one s praises are written. 
 
 Oberville. You ve been praising me for the last ten 
 minutes and I find your style detestable. I would 
 [177] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 rather have you find fault with me like a friend than 
 approve me like a dilettante. 
 
 Isabel. A dilettante! The very word I wanted! 
 
 Oberville. I am proud to have enriched so full a 
 vocabulary. But I am still waiting for the word 1 
 want. (He grows serious.) Isabel, look in your heart 
 give me the first word you find there. You ve no 
 idea how much a beggar can buy with a penny! 
 
 Isabel. It s empty, my poor friend, it s empty. 
 
 Oberville. Beggars never say that to each other. 
 
 Isabel. No ; never, unless it s true. 
 
 Oberville (after another silence). Why do you look 
 at me so curiously? 
 
 Isabel. I m what was it you said ? Approving you 
 as a dilettante. Don t be alarmed ; you can bear ex 
 amination ; I don t see a crack anywhere. After all, 
 it s a satisfaction to find that one s idol makes a 
 handsome bibelot. 
 
 Oberville (with an attempt at lightness). I was right 
 then you re a collector? 
 
 Isabel (modestly). One must make a beginning. I 
 think I shall begin with you. (She smiles at him.) Posi 
 tively, I must have you on my mantel-shelf ! ( She rises 
 and looks at the clock.) But it s time to dress for dinner. 
 (She holds out her hand to him and he kisses it. They look 
 at each other, and it is clear that he does not quite under" 
 stand, but is watching eagerly for his cue.) 
 [ "8 ] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 War land (coming in}. Hullo, Isabel you re here 
 after all? 
 
 Isabel. And so is Mr. Oberville. ( She looks straight at 
 Warland.) I stayed in on purpose to meet him. My 
 husband (The two men bow.) 
 
 Warland (effusively). So glad to meet you. My wife 
 talks of you so often. She s been looking forward tre 
 mendously to your visit. 
 
 Oberville. It s a long time since I ve had the pleas 
 ure of seeing Mrs. Warland. 
 
 Isabel. But now we are going to make up for lost 
 time. (As he goes to the door.) I claim you to-morrow 
 for the whole day. 
 
 Oberville bows and goes out. 
 
 Isabel. Lucius ... I think you d better go to Wash 
 ington, after all. (Musing.) Narragansett might do for 
 the others, though. . . . Could n t you get Fred Lang- 
 ham to ask all the rest of the party to go over there 
 with him to-morrow morning ? I shall have a headache 
 and stay at home. (He looks at her doubtfully.) Mr. Ober 
 ville is a bad sailor. 
 
 Warland advances demonstratively. 
 
 Isabel (drawing back). It s time to go and dress. I 
 think you said the black gown with spangles? 
 
 [179] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 IT was three o clock in the morning, and the cotil 
 lion was at its height, when Woburn left the 
 over-heated splendor of the Gildermere ball 
 room, and after a delay caused by the determination 
 of the drowsy footman to give him a ready-made 
 overcoat with an imitation astrachan collar in place 
 of his own unimpeachable Poole garment, found him 
 self breasting the icy solitude of the Fifth Avenue. 
 He was still smiling, as he emerged from the awn 
 ing, at his insistence in claiming his own overcoat: 
 it illustrated, humorously enough, the invincible force 
 of habit. As he faced the wind, however, he discerned 
 a providence in his persistency, for his coat was fur- 
 lined, and he had a cold voyage before him on the 
 morrow. 
 
 It had rained hard during the earlier part of the 
 night, and the carriages waiting in triple line before 
 the Gildermeres door were still domed by shining 
 umbrellas, while the electric lamps extending down 
 the avenue blinked Narcissus-like at their watery im 
 ages in the hollows of the sidewalk. A dry blast had 
 come out of the north, with pledge of frost before 
 daylight, and to Woburn s shivering fancy the pools 
 in the pavement seemed already stiffening into ice. He 
 [ 183] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 turned up his coat-collar and stepped out rapidly, his 
 hands deep in his coat-pockets. 
 
 As he walked he glanced curiously up at the ladder- 
 like door-steps which may well suggest to the future 
 archaeologist that all the streets of New York were 
 once canals ; at the spectral tracery of the trees about 
 St. Luke s, the fretted mass of the Cathedral, and the 
 mean vista of the long side-streets. The knowledge 
 that he was perhaps looking at it all for the last time 
 caused every detail to start out like a challenge to 
 memory, and lit the brown-stone house-fronts with the 
 glamor of sword-barred Edens. 
 
 It was an odd impulse that had led him that night to 
 the Gildermere ball ; but the same change in his condi 
 tion which made him stare wonderingly at the houses in 
 the Fifth Avenue gave the thrill of an exploit to the 
 tame business of ball-going. Who would have imagined, 
 Woburn mused, that such a situation as his would pos 
 sess the priceless quality of sharpening the blunt edge 
 of habit? 
 
 It was certainly curious to reflect, as he leaned 
 against the doorway of Mrs. Gildermere s ball-room, 
 enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the accustomed, 
 that twenty-four hours later the people brushing by 
 him with looks of friendly recognition would start at 
 the thought of having seen him and slur over the 
 recollection of having taken his hand ! 
 [184] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 And the girl he had gone there to see : what would 
 she think of him? He knew well enough that her 
 trenchant classifications of life admitted no overlapping 
 of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalcul 
 able interplay of motives that justifies the subtlest 
 casuistry of compassion. Miss Talcott was too young 
 to distinguish the intermediate tints of the moral 
 spectrum ; and her judgments were further simplified 
 by a peculiar concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up 
 had fostered this tendency and she was surrounded 
 by people who focussed life in the same way. To 
 the girls in Miss Talcott s set, the attentions of a 
 clever man who had to work for his living had the 
 zest of a forbidden pleasure ; but to marry such a 
 man would be as unpardonable as to have one s car 
 riage seen at the door of a cheap dress-maker. Poverty 
 might make a man fascinating; but a settled income 
 was the best evidence of stability of character. If there 
 were anything in heredity, how could a nice girl trust 
 a man whose parents had been careless enough to 
 leave him unprovided for? 
 
 Neither Miss Talcott nor any of her friends could be 
 charged with formulating these views ; but they were 
 implicit in the slope of every white shoulder and in the 
 ripple of every yard of imported tulle dappling the 
 foreground of Mrs. Gildermere s ball-room. The ad 
 vantages of line and colour in veiling the crudities of 
 [ 185 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 a creed are obvious to emotional minds ; and besides, 
 Woburn was conscious that it was to the cheerful 
 materialism of their parents that the young girls he 
 admired owed that fine distinction of outline in which 
 their skilfully-rippled hair and skilfully-hung draperies 
 cooperated with the slimness and erectness that came 
 of participating in the most expensive sports, eating 
 the most expensive food and breathing the most ex 
 pensive air. Since the process which had produced 
 them was so costly, how could they help being costly 
 themselves ? Woburn was too logical to expect to give 
 no more for a piece of old Sevres than for a bit of 
 kitchen crockery; he had no faith in wonderful bar 
 gains, and believed that one got in life just what one 
 was willing to pay for. He had no mind to dispute 
 the taste of those who preferred the rustic simplicity 
 of the earthen crock; but his own fancy inclined to 
 the piece of pate tendre which must be kept in a 
 glass case and handled as delicately as a flower. 
 
 It was not merely by the external grace of these 
 drawing-room ornaments that Woburn s sensibilities 
 were charmed. His imagination was touched by the 
 curious exoticism of view resulting from such condi 
 tions. He had always enjoyed listening to Miss Talcott 
 even more than looking at her. Her ideas had the 
 brilliant bloom and audacious irrelevance of those trop 
 ical orchids which strike root in air. Miss Talcott s 
 [186] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 opinions had no connection with the actual ; her very 
 materialism had the grace of artificiality. Woburn had 
 been enchanted once by seeing her helpless before a 
 smoking lamp : she had been obliged to ring for a ser 
 vant because she did not know how to put it out. 
 
 Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes 
 of taking it for granted that people are born with car 
 riages and country-places : it never occurred to her 
 that such congenital attributes could be matter for self- 
 consciousness, and she had none of the nouveau riche 
 prudery which classes poverty with the nude in art 
 and is not sure how to behave in the presence of 
 either. 
 
 The conditions of Woburn s own life had made him 
 peculiarly susceptible to those forms of elegance which 
 are the flower of ease. His father had lost a comfortable 
 property through sheer inability to go over his agent s 
 accounts ; and this disaster, coming at the outset of 
 Woburn s school-days, had given a new bent to the 
 family temperament. The father characteristically died 
 when the effort of living might have made it possible 
 to retrieve his fortunes ; and Woburn s mother and 
 sister, embittered by this final evasion, settled down 
 to a vindictive war with circumstances. They were the 
 kind of women who think that it lightens the burden 
 of life to throw over the amenities, as a reduced house 
 keeper puts away her knick-knacks to make the dust- 
 [187] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 ing easier. They fought mean conditions meanly; but 
 Woburn, in his resentment of their attitude, did not 
 allow for the suffering which had brought it about : 
 his own tendency was to overcome difficulties by 
 conciliation rather than by conflict. Such surround 
 ings threw into vivid relief the charming figure of 
 Miss Talcott. Woburn instinctively associated poverty 
 with bad food, ugly furniture, complaints and recrimi 
 nations : it was natural that he should be drawn to 
 ward the luminous atmosphere where life was a series 
 of peaceful and good-humored acts, unimpeded by 
 petty obstacles. To spend one s time in such society 
 gave one the illusion of unlimited credit; and also, 
 unhappily, created the need for it. 
 
 It was here in fact that Woburn s difficulties began. 
 To marry Miss Talcott it was necessary to be a rich 
 man : even to dine out in her set involved certain 
 minor extravagances. Woburn had determined to marry 
 her sooner or later ; and in the meanwhile to be with 
 her as much as possible. 
 
 As he stood leaning in the doorway of the Gilder- 
 mere ball-room, watching her pass him in the waltz, 
 he tried to remember how it had begun. First there 
 had been the tailor s bill ; the fur-lined overcoat with 
 cuffs and collar of Alaska sable had alone cost more 
 than he had spent on his clothes for two or three years 
 previously. Then there were theatre-tickets ; cab-fares ; 
 
 [ 188] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 florist s bills ; tips to servants at the country-houses 
 where he went because he knew that she was invited ; 
 the Omar Khayyam bound by Sullivan that he sent 
 her at Christmas ; the contributions to her pet chari 
 ties ; the reckless purchases at fairs where she had a 
 stall. His whole way of life had imperceptibly changed 
 and his year s salary was gone before the second quar 
 ter was due. 
 
 He had invested the few thousand dollars which had 
 been his portion of his father s shrunken estate : when 
 his debts began to pile up, he took a flyer in stocks 
 and after a few months of varying luck his little patri 
 mony disappeared. Meanwhile his courtship was pro 
 ceeding at an inverse ratio to his financial ventures. 
 Miss Talcott was growing tender and he began to feel 
 that the game was in his hands. The nearness of the 
 goal exasperated him. She was not the girl to wait 
 and he knew that it must be now or never. A friend 
 lent him five thousand dollars on his personal note 
 and he bought railway stocks on margin. They went 
 up and he held them for a higher rise : they fluctu 
 ated, dragged, dropped below the level at which he 
 had bought, and slowly continued their uninterrupted 
 descent. His broker called for more margin ; he could 
 not respond and was sold out. 
 
 What followed came about quite naturally. For 
 several years he had been cashier in a well-known 
 [ 189] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 banking-house. When the note he had given his 
 friend became due it was obviously necessary to pay 
 it and he used the firm s money for the purpose. To 
 repay the money thus taken, he increased his debt to 
 his employers and bought more stocks ; and on these 
 operations he made a profit of ten thousand dollars. 
 Miss Talcott rode in the Park, and he bought a 
 smart hack for seven hundred, paid off his trades 
 men, and went on speculating with the remainder of 
 his profits. He made a little more, but failed to take 
 advantage of the market and lost all that he had 
 staked, including the amount taken from the firm. 
 He increased his over-draft by another ten thousand 
 and lost that; he over-drew a farther sum and lost 
 again. Suddenly he woke to the fact that he owed 
 his employers fifty thousand dollars and that the 
 partners were to make their semi-annual inspection 
 in two days. He realized then that within forty-eight 
 hours what he had called borrowing would become 
 theft. 
 
 There was no time to be lost : he must clear out and 
 start life over again somewhere else. The day that he 
 reached this decision he was to have met Miss Talcott 
 at dinner. He went to the dinner, but she did not ap 
 pear : she had a headache, his hostess explained. Well, 
 he was not to have a last look at her, after all ; better 
 so, perhaps. He took leave early and on his way home 
 
 [ W] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 stopped at a florist s and sent her a bunch of violets. 
 The next morning he got a little note from her: the 
 violets had done her head so much good she would 
 tell him all about it that evening at the Gildermere 
 ball. Woburn laughed and tossed the note into the fire. 
 That evening he would be on board ship : the exami 
 nation of the books was to take place the following 
 morning at ten. 
 
 Woburn went down to the bank as usual ; he did 
 not want to do anything that might excite suspicion 
 as to his plans, and from one or two questions which 
 one of the partners had lately put to him he divined 
 that he was being observed. At the bank the day 
 passed uneventfully. He discharged his business with 
 his accustomed care and went uptown at the usual hour. 
 
 In the first flush of his successful speculations he 
 had set up bachelor lodgings, moved by the tempta 
 tion to get away from the dismal atmosphere of home, 
 from his mother s struggles with the cook and his sis 
 ter s curiosity about his letters. He had been influenced 
 also by the wish for surroundings more adapted to his 
 tastes. He wanted to be able to give little teas, to 
 which Miss Talcott might come with a married friend. 
 She came once or twice arid pronounced it all delight 
 ful : she thought it so nice to have only a few Whistler 
 etchings on the walls and the simplest crushed levant 
 for all one s books. 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 To these rooms Woburn returned on leaving the 
 bank. His plans had taken definite shape. He had en 
 gaged passage on a steamer sailing for Halifax early 
 the next morning ; and there was nothing for him to 
 do before going on board but to pack his clothes and 
 tear up a few letters. He threw his clothes into a 
 couple of portmanteaux, and when these had been 
 called for by an expressman he emptied his pockets 
 and counted up his ready money. He found that he 
 possessed just fifty dollars and seventy-five cents ; but 
 his passage to Halifax was paid, and once there he 
 could pawn his watch and rings. This calculation com 
 pleted, he unlocked his writing-table drawer and took 
 out a handful of letters. They were notes from Miss 
 Talcott. He read them over and threw them into the 
 fire. On his table stood her photograph. He slipped it 
 out of its frame and tossed it on top of the blazing 
 letters. Having performed this rite, he got into his 
 dress-clothes and went to a small French restaurant 
 to dine. 
 
 He had meant to go on board the steamer immedi 
 ately after dinner ; but a sudden vision of introspective 
 hours in a silent cabin made him call for the evening 
 paper and run his eye over the list of theatres. It 
 would be as easy to go on board at midnight as now. 
 
 He selected a new vaudeville and listened to it with 
 surprising freshness of interest ; but toward eleven 
 
 [ 192] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 o clock he again began to dread the approaching ne 
 cessity of going down to the steamer. There was some 
 thing peculiarly unnerving in the idea of spending 
 the rest of the night in a stifling cabin jammed against 
 the side of a wharf. 
 
 He left the theatre and strolled across to the Fifth 
 Avenue. It was now nearly midnight and a stream of 
 carriages poured up town from the opera and the 
 theatres. As he stood on the corner watching the fa 
 miliar spectacle it occurred to him that many of the 
 people driving by him in smart broughams and 
 C-spring landaus were on their way to the Gildermere 
 ball. He remembered Miss Talcott s note of the morn 
 ing and wondered if she were in one of the passing 
 carriages ; she had spoken so confidently of meeting 
 him at the ball. What if he should go and take a last 
 look at her? There was really nothing to prevent it. 
 He was not likely to run across any member of the 
 firm : in Miss Talcott s set his social standing was good 
 for another ten hours at least. He smiled in anticipa 
 tion of her surprise at seeing him, and then reflected 
 with a start that she would not be surprised at all. 
 
 His meditations were cut short by a fall of sleety 
 rain, and hailing a hansom he gave the driver Mrs. 
 Gildermere s address. 
 
 As he drove up the avenue he looked about him like 
 a traveller in a strange city. The buildings which had 
 [ 193] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 been so unobtrusively familiar stood out with sudden 
 distinctness : he noticed a hundred details which had 
 escaped his observation. The people on the sidewalks 
 looked like strangers : he wondered where they were 
 going and tried to picture the lives they led ; but his 
 own relation to life had been so suddenly reversed that 
 he found it impossible to recover his mental perspec 
 tive. 
 
 At one corner he saw a shabby man lurking in the 
 shadow of the side street ; as the hansom passed, a 
 policeman ordered him to move on. Farther on, Wo- 
 burn noticed a woman crouching on the door-step of a 
 handsome house. She had drawn a shawl over her head 
 and was sunk in the apathy of despair or drink. A well- 
 dressed couple paused to look at her. The electric 
 globe at the corner lit up their faces, and Woburn saw 
 the lady, who was young and pretty, turn away with 
 a little grimace, drawing her companion after her. 
 
 The desire to see Miss Talcott had driven Woburn 
 to the Gildermeres ; but once in the ball-room he 
 made no effort to find her. The people about him 
 seemed more like strangers than those he had passed 
 in the street. He stood in the doorway, studying the 
 petty manoeuvres of the women and the resigned amen 
 ities of their partners. Was it possible that these were 
 his friends ? These mincing women, all paint and dye 
 and whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as 
 [ 19*] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 much alike as the figures that children cut out of a 
 folded sheet of paper ? Was it to live among such pup 
 pets that he had sold his soul ? What had any of these 
 people done that was noble, exceptional, distinguished ? 
 Who knew them by name even, except their trades 
 men and the society reporters? Who were they, that 
 they should sit in judgment on him? 
 
 The bald man with the globular stomach, who 
 stood at Mrs. Gildermere s elbow surveying the dan 
 cers, was old Boylston, who had made his pile in 
 wrecking railroads ; the smooth chap with glazed eyes, 
 at whom a pretty girl smiled up so confidingly, was 
 Collerton, the political lawyer, who had been mixed 
 up to his own advantage in an ugly lobbying trans 
 action ; near him stood Brice Lyndham, whose recent 
 failure had ruined his friends and associates, but had 
 not visibly affected the welfare of his large and ex 
 pensive family. The slim fellow dancing with Miss 
 Gildermere was Alec Vance, who lived on a salary of 
 five thousand a year, but whose wife was such a good 
 manager that they kept a brougham and victoria and 
 always put in their season at Newport and their spring 
 trip to Europe. The little ferret-faced youth in the 
 corner was Regie Colby, who wrote the Entre-Nous 
 paragraphs in the Social Searchlight : the women were 
 charming to him and he got all the financial tips he 
 wanted from their husbands and fathers. 
 [195] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 And the women? Well, the women knew all about 
 the men, and flattered them and married them and 
 tried to catch them for their daughters. It was a 
 domino-party at which the guests were forbidden to 
 unmask, though they all saw through each other s 
 disguises. 
 
 And these were the people who, within twenty-four 
 hours, would be agreeing that they had always felt 
 there was something wrong about Woburn ! They 
 would be extremely sorry for him, of course, poor 
 devil ; but there are certain standards, after all 
 what would society be without standards? His new 
 friends, his future associates, were the suspicious-look 
 ing man whom the policeman had ordered to move 
 on, and the drunken woman asleep on the door-step. 
 To these he was linked by the freemasonry of failure. 
 
 Miss Talcott passed him on Collerton s arm : she was 
 giving him one of the smiles of which Woburn had 
 fancied himself sole owner. Collerton was a sharp fel 
 low ; he must have made a lot in that last deal ; prob 
 ably she would marry him. How much did she know 
 about the transaction? She was a shrewd girl and 
 her father was in Wall Street. If Woburn s luck had 
 turned the other way she might have married him 
 instead; and if he had confessed his sin to her one 
 evening, as they drove home from the opera in their 
 new brougham, she would have said that really it was 
 [ 196] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 of no use to tell her, for she never could understand 
 about business, but that she did entreat him in fu 
 ture to be nicer to Regie Colby. Even now, if he 
 made a big strike somewhere, and came back in ten 
 years with a beard and a steam yacht, they would all 
 deny that anything had been proved against him, and 
 Mrs. Collerton might blush and remind him of their 
 friendship. Well why not? Was not all morality 
 based on a convention? What was the stanchest code 
 of ethics but a trunk with a series of false bottoms? 
 Now and then one had the illusion of getting down 
 to absolute right or wrong, but it was only a false 
 bottom a removable hypothesis with another false 
 bottom underneath. There was no getting beyond the 
 relative. 
 
 The cotillion had begun. Miss Talcott sat nearly 
 opposite him : she was dancing with young Boylston 
 and giving him a Woburn-Collerton smile. So young 
 Boylston was in the syndicate too ! 
 
 Presently Woburn was aware that she had forgotten 
 young Boylston and was glancing absently about the 
 room. She was looking for some one, and meant the 
 some one to know it : he knew that Lost-Chord look 
 in her eyes. 
 
 A new figure was being formed. The partners circled 
 about the room and Miss Talcott s flying tulle drifted 
 close to him as she passed. Then the favors were dis- 
 .[ W ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 tributed; white skirts wavered across the floor like 
 thistle-down on summer air ; men rose from their seats 
 and fresh couples filled the shining parquet. 
 
 Miss Talcott, after taking from the basket a Legion 
 of Honor in red enamel, surveyed the room for a mo 
 ment ; then she made her way through the dancers 
 and held out the favor to Woburn. He fastened it in 
 his coat, and emerging from the crowd of men about 
 the doorway, slipped his arm about her. Their eyes 
 met ; hers were serious and a little sad. How fine and 
 slender she was ! He noticed the little tendrils of hair 
 about the pink convolution of her ear. Her waist was 
 firm and yet elastic ; she breathed calmly and regu 
 larly, as though dancing were her natural motion. She 
 did not look at him again and neither of them spoke. 
 
 When the music ceased they paused near her chair. 
 Her partner was waiting for her and Woburn left her 
 with a bow. 
 
 He made his way down-stairs and out of the house. 
 He was glad that he had not spoken to Miss Talcott. 
 There had been a healing power in their silence. All 
 bitterness had gone from him and he thought of her 
 now quite simply, as the girl he loved. 
 
 At Thirty-fifth Street he reflected that he had 
 better jump into a car and go down to his steamer. 
 Again there rose before him the repulsive vision of the 
 dark cabin, with creaking noises overhead, and the cold 
 
 [ W] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 wash of water against the pier: he thought he would 
 stop in a cafe and take a drink. He turned into Broad 
 way and entered a brightly-lit cafe ; but when he had 
 taken his whisky and soda there seemed no reason for 
 lingering. He had never been the kind of man who 
 could escape difficulties in that way. Yet he was con 
 scious that his will was weakening ; that he did not 
 mean to go down to the steamer just yet. What did 
 he mean to do ? He began to feel horribly tired and 
 it occurred to him that a few hours sleep in a decent 
 bed would make a new man of him. Why not go on 
 board the next morning at daylight? 
 
 He could not go back to his rooms, for on leaving 
 the house he had taken the precaution of dropping his 
 latch-key into his letter-box ; but he was in a neigh 
 borhood of discreet hotels and he wandered on till he 
 came to one which was known to offer a dispassionate 
 hospitality to luggageless travellers in dress-clothes. 
 
 II 
 
 HE pushed open the swinging door and found 
 himself in a long corridor with a tessellated 
 floor, at the end of which, in a brightly-lit enclosure 
 of plate-glass and mahogany, the night-clerk dozed 
 over a copy of the Police Gazette. The air in the corri 
 dor was rich in reminiscences of yesterday s dinners, 
 [ 199] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 and a bronzed radiator poured a wave of dry heat into 
 Woburn s face. 
 
 The night-clerk, roused by the swinging of the door, 
 sat watching Woburn s approach with the unexpectant 
 eye of one who has full confidence in his capacity for 
 digesting surprises. Not that there was anything sur 
 prising in Woburn s appearance ; but the night-clerk s 
 callers were given to such imaginative flights in ex 
 plaining their luggageless arrival in the small hours of 
 the morning, that he fared habitually on fictions which 
 would have staggered a less experienced stomach. The 
 night-clerk, whose unwrinkled bloom showed that he 
 throve on this high-seasoned diet, had a fancy for clas 
 sifying his applicants before they could frame their 
 explanations. 
 
 "This one s been locked out," he said to himself as 
 he mustered Wobum. 
 
 Having exercised his powers of divination with his 
 accustomed accuracy he listened without stirring an 
 eye-lid to Woburn s statement ; merely replying, when 
 the latter asked the price of a room, "Two-fifty." 
 
 "Very well," said Woburn, pushing the money un 
 der the brass lattice, " I 11 go up at once ; and I want 
 to be called at seven." 
 
 To this the night-clerk proffered no reply, but 
 stretching out his hand to press an electric button, re 
 turned apathetically to the perusal of the Police Gazette. 
 [ 200 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 His summons was answered by the appearance of a man 
 in shirt-sleeves, whose rumpled head indicated that he 
 had recently risen from some kind of makeshift repose ; 
 to him the night-clerk tossed a key, with the brief 
 comment, " Ninety-seven ; " and the man, after a sleepy 
 glance at Woburn, turned on his heel and lounged 
 toward the staircase at the back of the corridor. 
 
 Woburn followed and they climbed three flights in 
 silence. At each landing Woburn glanced down the 
 long passage-way lit by a lowered gas-jet, with a double 
 line of boots before the doors, waiting, like yesterday s 
 deeds, to carry their owners so many miles farther on 
 the morrow s destined road. On the third landing the 
 man paused, and after examining the number on the 
 key, turned to the left, and slouching past three or 
 four doors, finally unlocked one and preceded Woburn 
 into a room lit only by the upward gleam of the elec 
 tric globes in the street below. 
 
 The man felt in his pockets ; then he turned to 
 Woburn. "Got a match?" he asked. 
 
 Woburn politely offered him one, and he applied it 
 to the gas-fixture which extended its jointed arm above 
 an ash dressing-table with a blurred mirror fixed be 
 tween two standards. Having performed this office with 
 an air of detachment designed to make Woburn recog 
 nize it as an act of supererogation, he turned without 
 a word and vanished down the passage-way. 
 [201 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 Woburn, after an indifferent glance about the room, 
 which seemed to afford the amount of luxury generally 
 obtainable for two dollars and a half in a fashionable 
 quarter of New York, locked the door and sat down at 
 the ink-stained writing-table in the window. Far below 
 him lay the pallidly-lit depths of the forsaken thor 
 oughfare. Now and then he heard the jingle of a horse- 
 car and the ring of hoofs on the freezing pavement, or 
 saw the lonely figure of a policeman eclipsing the 
 illumination of the plate-glass windows on the opposite 
 side of the street. He sat thus for a long time, his el 
 bows on the table, his chin between his hands, till 
 at length the contemplation of the abandoned side 
 walks, above which the electric globes kept Stylites- 
 like vigil, became intolerable to him, and he drew 
 down the window-shade, and lit the gas-fixture beside 
 the dressing-table. Then he took a cigar from his case, 
 and held it to the flame. 
 
 The passage from the stinging freshness of the night 
 to the stale overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere 
 Hotel had checked the preternaturally rapid working 
 of his mind, and he was now scarcely conscious of 
 thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would 
 have thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to 
 oversleep the hour fixed for his departure. He thought 
 it safest, instead, to seat himself once more by the 
 Uble, in the most uncomfortable chair that he could 
 [ 202 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 find, and smoke one cigar after another till the first 
 sign of dawn should give an excuse for action. 
 
 He had laid his watch on the table before him, and 
 was gazing at the hour-hand, and trying to convince 
 himself by so doing that he was still wide awake, when 
 a noise in the adjoining room suddenly straightened 
 him in his chair and banished all fear of sleep. 
 
 There was no mistaking the nature of the noise ; 
 it was that of a woman s sobs. The sobs were not loud, 
 but the sound reached him distinctly through the frail 
 door between the two rooms ; it expressed an utter 
 abandonment to grief; not the cloud-burst of some 
 passing emotion, but the slow down-pour of a whole 
 heaven of sorrow. 
 
 Woburn sat listening. There was nothing else to be 
 done ; and at least his listening was a mute tribute to 
 the trouble he was powerless to relieve. It roused, too s 
 the drugged pulses of his own grief: he was touched 
 by the chance propinquity of two alien sorrows in a 
 great city throbbing with multifarious passions. It 
 would have been more in keeping with the irony of 
 life had he found himself next to a mother singing 
 her child to sleep : there seemed a mute commiseration 
 in the hand that had led him to such neighborhood. 
 
 Gradually the sobs subsided, with pauses betokening 
 an effort at self-control. At last they died off softly, 
 like the intermittent drops that end a day of rain. 
 [ 203 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " Poor soul," Woburn mused, " she s got the better 
 of it for the time. I wonder what it s all about ? " 
 
 At the same moment he heard another sound that 
 made him jump to his feet. It was a very low sound, 
 but in that nocturnal silence which gives distinctness 
 to the faintest noises, Woburn knew at once that he 
 had heard the click of a pistol. 
 
 " What is she up to now ? " he asked himself, with 
 his eye on the door between the two rooms ; and the 
 brightly -lit keyhole seemed to reply with a glance of 
 intelligence. He turned out the gas and crept to the 
 door, pressing his eye to the illuminated circle. 
 
 After a moment or two of adjustment, during which 
 he seemed to himself to be breathing like a steam- 
 engine, he discerned a room like his own, with the 
 same dressing-table flanked by gas-fixtures, and the 
 same table in the window. This table was directly in 
 his line of vision ; and beside it stood a woman with a 
 small revolver in her hands. The lights being behind 
 her, Woburn could only infer her youth from her slen 
 der silhouette and the nimbus of fair hair defining her 
 head. Her dress seemed dark and simple, and on a 
 chair under one of the gas-jets lay a jacket edged 
 with cheap fur and a small travelling-bag. He could 
 not see the other end of the room, but something in 
 her manner told him that she was alone. At length 
 she put the revolver down and took up a letter that 
 [ 204 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 lay on the table. She drew the letter from its envelope 
 and read it over two or three times ; then she put it 
 back, sealing the envelope, and placing it conspicu 
 ously against the mirror of the dressing-table. 
 
 There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show 
 that Woburn felt sure that her next act would be to 
 return to the table and take up the revolver; but he 
 had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After put 
 ting the letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, 
 standing a little sideways, so that he could now see 
 her face, which was distinctly pretty, but of a small 
 and unelastic mould, inadequate to the expression of 
 the larger emotions. For some moments she continued 
 to study herself with the expression of a child looking 
 at a playmate who has been scolded ; then she turned 
 to the table and lifted the revolver to her forehead. 
 
 A sudden crash made her arm drop, and sent her 
 darting backward to the opposite side of the room. 
 Woburn had broken down the door, and stood torn 
 and breathless in the breach. 
 
 " Oh ! " she gasped, pressing closer to the wall. 
 
 "Don t be frightened," he said; "I saw what you 
 were going to do and I had to stop you." 
 
 She looked at him for a moment in silence, and he 
 saw the terrified flutter of her breast ; then she said, 
 " No one can stop me for long. And besides, what right 
 have you " 
 
 [205] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "Every one has the right to prevent a crime," he 
 returned, the sound of the last word sending the blood 
 to his forehead. 
 
 " I deny it," she said passionately. " Every one who 
 has tried to live and failed has the right to die." 
 
 "Failed in what?" 
 
 "In everything!" she replied. They stood looking 
 at each other in silence. 
 
 At length he advanced a few steps. 
 
 "You ve no right to say you ve failed," he said, 
 * while you have breath to try again." He drew the 
 revolver from her hand. 
 
 " Try again try again ? I tell you I ve tried seventy 
 times seven !" 
 
 "What have you tried?" 
 
 She looked at him with a certain dignity. 
 
 " I don t know," she said, " that you ve any right to 
 question me or to be in this room at all " and sud 
 denly she burst into tears. 
 
 The discrepancy between her words and action 
 struck the chord which, in a man s heart, always 
 responds to the touch of feminine unreason. She 
 dropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in 
 her hands, while Woburn watched the course of her 
 weeping. 
 
 At last she lifted her head, looking up between 
 drenched lashes. 
 
 [206] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 (t Please go away," she said in childish entreaty. 
 
 "How can I?" he returned. "It s impossible that 
 I should leave you in this state. Trust me let me 
 help you. Tell me what has gone wrong, and let s 
 see if there s no other way out of it." 
 
 Woburn had a voice full of sensitive inflections, and 
 it was now trembling with profoundest pity. Its note 
 seemed to reassure the girl, for she said, with a begin 
 ning of confidence in her own tones, " But I don t even 
 know who you are." 
 
 Woburn was silent : the words startled him. He 
 moved nearer to her and went on in the same quiet 
 ing tone. 
 
 "I am a man who has suffered enough to want to 
 help others. I don t want to know any more about you 
 than will enable me to do what I can for you. I ve 
 probably seen more of life than you have, and if you re 
 willing to tell me your troubles perhaps together we 
 may find a way out of them." 
 
 She dried her eyes and glanced at the revolver. 
 
 "That s the only way out," she said. 
 
 "How do you know? Are you sure you ve tried 
 every other ? " 
 
 " Perfectly sure. I ve written and written, and hum 
 bled myself like a slave before him, and she won t 
 even let him answer my letters. Oh, but you don t un 
 derstand" she broke off with a renewal of weeping. 
 [ 207 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " I begin to understand you re sorry for something 
 you ve done ? " 
 
 "Oh, I ve never denied that I ve never denied 
 that I was wicked." 
 
 "And you want the forgiveness of some one you 
 care about ? " 
 
 "My husband/ she whispered. 
 
 "You ve done something to displease your hus 
 band ? " 
 
 " To displease him ? I ran away with another man ! " 
 There was a dismal exultation in her tone, as though 
 she were paying Woburn off for having underrated 
 her offense. 
 
 She had certainly surprised him ; at worst he had 
 expected a quarrel over a rival, with a possible com 
 plication of mother-in-law. He wondered how such 
 helpless little feet could have taken so bold a step ; 
 then he remembered that there is no audacity like 
 that of weakness. 
 
 He was wondering how to lead her to completer 
 avowal when she added forlornly, " You see there s 
 nothing else to do." 
 
 Woburn took a turn in the room. It was certainly 
 a narrower strait than he had foreseen, and he hardly 
 knew how to answer; but the first flow of confession 
 had eased her, and she went on without farther per 
 suasion. 
 
 [ 208 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "I don t know how I could ever have done it; I 
 must have been downright crazy. I did n t care much 
 for Joe when I married him he wasn t exactly hand 
 some, and girls think such a lot of that. But he just 
 laid down and worshipped me, and I was getting fond 
 of him in a way ; only the life was so dull. I d been 
 used to a big city I come from Detroit and Hinks- 
 ville is such a poky little place ; that s where we lived ; 
 Joe is telegraph-operator on the railroad there. He d 
 have been in a much bigger place now, if he had n t 
 well, after all, he behaved perfectly splendidly about 
 that. 
 
 " I really was getting fond of him, and I believe I 
 should have realized in time how good and noble and 
 unselfish he was, if his mother had n t been always sit 
 ting there and everlastingly telling me so. We learned 
 in school about the Athenians hating some man who 
 was always called just, and that s the way I felt about 
 Joe. Whenever I did anything that wasn t quite right 
 his mother would say how differently Joe would have 
 done it. And she was forever telling me that Joe didn t 
 approve of this and that and the other. When we were 
 alone he approved of everything, but when his mother 
 was round he d sit quiet and let her say he did n t. 
 I knew he*d let me have my way afterwards, but 
 somehow that didn t prevent my getting mad at the 
 time. 
 
 [ 209 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "And then the evenings were so long, with Joe 
 away, and Mrs. Glenn (that s his mother) sitting there 
 like an image knitting socks for the heathen. The 
 only caller we ever had was the Baptist minister, and 
 he never took any more notice of me than if I d been 
 a piece of furniture. I believe he was afraid to before 
 Mrs. Glenn." 
 
 She paused breathlessly, and the tears in her eyes 
 were now of anger. 
 
 "Well?" said Woburn gently. 
 
 "Well then Arthur Hackett came along; he was 
 travelling for a big publishing firm in Philadelphia. He 
 was awfully handsome and as clever and sarcastic as 
 anything. He used to lend me lots of novels and maga 
 zines, and tell me all about society life in New York. 
 All the girls were after him, and Alice Sprague, whose 
 father is the richest man in Hinksville, fell desperately 
 in love with him and carried on like a fool ; but he 
 wouldn t take any notice of her. He never looked at 
 anybody but me." Her face lit up with a reminiscent 
 smile, and then clouded again. " I hate him now," she 
 exclaimed, with a change of tone that startled Woburn. 
 " I d like to kill him but he s killed me instead. 
 
 " Well, he bewitched me so I did n t know what I 
 
 was doing ; I was like somebody in a trance. When he 
 
 wasn t there I didn t want to speak to anybody; I 
 
 used to He in bed half the day just to get away from 
 
 [210] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 folks ; I hated Joe and Hinksville and everything else. 
 When he came back the days went like a flash ; we 
 were together nearly all the time. I knew Joe s mother 
 was spying on us, but I didn t care. And at last it 
 seemed as if I could n t let him go away again without 
 me ; so one evening he stopped at the back gate in a 
 buggy, and we drove off together and caught the east 
 ern express at River Bend. He promised to bring me to 
 New York." She paused, and then added scornfully, 
 "He didn t even do that!" 
 
 Woburn had returned to his seat and was watching 
 her attentively. It was curious to note how her passion 
 was spending itself in words ; he saw that she would 
 never kill herself while she had any one to talk to. 
 
 "That was five months ago," she continued, "and 
 we travelled all through the southern states, and 
 stayed a little while near Philadelphia, where his 
 business is. He did things real stylishly at first. Then 
 he was sent to Albany, and we stayed a week at the 
 Delavan House. One afternoon I went out to do some 
 shopping, and when I came back he was gone. He had 
 taken his trunk with him, and had n t left any address ; 
 but in my travelling-bag I found a fifty-dollar bill, 
 with a slip of paper on which he had written, No 
 use coming after me ; I m married. We d been to 
 gether less than four months, and I never saw him 
 again. 
 
 [211 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " At first I could n t believe it. I stayed on, thinking 
 it was a joke or that he d feel sorry for me and come 
 back. But he never came and never wrote me a line. 
 Then I began to hate him, and to see what a wicked 
 fool I d been to leave Joe. I was so lonesome I 
 thought I d go crazy. And I kept thinking how good 
 and patient Joe had been, and how badly I d used 
 him, and how lovely it would be to be back in the 
 little parlor at Hinksville, even with Mrs. Glenn and 
 the minister talking about free-will and predestination. 
 So at last I wrote to Joe. I wrote him the humblest 
 letters you ever read, one after another ; but I never 
 got any answer. 
 
 " Finally I found I d spent all my money, so I sold 
 my watch and my rings Joe gave me a lovely tur 
 quoise ring when we were married and came to New 
 York. I felt ashamed to stay alone any longer in Al 
 bany ; I was afraid that some of Arthur s friends, who 
 had met me with him on the road, might come there 
 and recognize me. After I got here I wrote to Susy 
 Price, a great friend of mine who lives at Hinksville, 
 and she answered at once, and told me just what I had 
 expected that Joe was ready to forgive me and crazy 
 to have me back, but that his mother wouldn t let 
 him stir a step or write me a line, and that she and 
 the minister were at him all day long, telling him how 
 bad I was and what a sin it would be to forgive me. 
 [212] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 I got Susy s letter two or three days ago, and after 
 that I saw it was no use writing to Joe. He 11 never 
 dare go against his mother and she watches him like 
 a cat. I suppose I deserve it but he might have given 
 me another chance ! I know he would if he could only 
 see me." 
 
 Her voice had dropped from anger to lamentation, 
 and her tears again overflowed. 
 
 Woburn looked at her with the pity one feels for a 
 child who is suddenly confronted with the result of 
 some unpremeditated naughtiness. 
 
 " But why not go back to Hinksville," he suggested, 
 ee if your husband is ready to forgive you ? You could 
 go to your friend s house, and once your husband knows 
 you are there you can easily persuade him to see you." 
 
 " Perhaps I could Susy thinks I could. But I can t 
 go back; I haven t got a cent left." 
 
 " But surely you can borrow money ? Can t you ask 
 your friend to forward you the amount of your fare ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Susy ain t well off; she couldn t raise five dollars, 
 and it costs twenty-five to get back to Hinksville. And 
 besides, what would become of me while I waited for 
 the money ? They 11 turn me out of here to-morrow ; 
 I haven t paid my last week s board, and I haven t 
 got anything to give them ; my bag s empty ; I ve 
 pawned everything." 
 
 [213]. 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " And don t you know any one here who would lend 
 you the money ? " 
 
 " No ; not a soul. At least I do know one gentleman ; 
 he s a friend of Arthur s, a Mr. Devine ; he was stay 
 ing at Rochester when we were there. I met him in 
 the street the other day, and I didn t mean to speak 
 to him, but he came up to me, and said he knew all 
 about Arthur and how meanly he had behaved, and 
 he wanted to know if he couldn t help me I suppose 
 he saw I was in trouble. He tried to persuade me to 
 go and stay with his aunt, who has a lovely house 
 right round here in Twenty-fourth Street ; he must 
 be very rich, for he offered to lend me as much 
 money as I wanted." 
 
 "You didn t take it?" 
 
 " No," she returned ; " I daresay he meant to be 
 kind, but I did n t care to be beholden to any friend 
 of Arthur s. He came here again yesterday, but I 
 wouldn t see him, so he left a note giving me his 
 aunt s address and saying she d have a room ready 
 for me at any time." 
 
 There was a long silence; she had dried her tears 
 and sat looking at Woburn with eyes full of helpless 
 reliance. 
 
 "Well," he said at length, "you did right not to 
 take that man s money ; but this is n t the only alter 
 native," he added, pointing to the revolver. 
 [214] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " I don t know any other," she answered wearily. 
 " I m not smart enough to get employment ; I can t 
 make dresses or do type-writing, or any of the useful 
 things they teach girls now; and besides, even if I 
 could get work I couldn t stand the loneliness. I can 
 never hold my head up again I can t bear the dis 
 grace. If I can t go back to Joe I d rather be dead." 
 
 " And if you go back to Joe it will be all right ? " 
 Woburn suggested with a smile. 
 
 " Oh," she cried, her whole face alight, " if I could 
 only go back to Joe ! " 
 
 They were both silent again ; Woburn sat with his 
 hands in his pockets gazing at the floor. At length 
 his silence seemed to rouse her to the unwontedness 
 of the situation, and she rose from her seat, saying in 
 a more constrained tone, " I don t know why I ve told 
 you all this." 
 
 "Because you believed that I would help you," 
 Woburn answered, rising also; "and you were right; 
 I m going to send you home." 
 
 She colored vividly. 
 
 " You told me I was right not to take Mr. Devine s 
 money," she faltered. 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "but did Mr. Devine want to 
 send you home?" 
 
 "He wanted me to wait at his aunt s a little while 
 first and then write to Joe again." 
 [215] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "I don t I want you to start to-morrow morning; 
 this morning, I mean. I 11 take you to the station and 
 buy your ticket, and your husband can send me back 
 the money." 
 
 "Oh, I can t I can t you mustn t " she stam 
 mered, reddening and paling. "Besides, they ll never 
 let me leave here without paying." 
 
 "How much do you owe?" 
 
 "Fourteen dollars." 
 
 " Very well ; I 11 pay that for you ; you can leave 
 me your revolver as a pledge. But you must start by 
 the first train; have you any idea at what time it 
 leaves the Grand Central ? " 
 
 "I think there s one at eight." 
 
 He glanced at his watch. 
 
 " In less than two hours, then ; it s after six now." 
 
 She stood before him with fascinated eyes. 
 
 "You must have a very strong will," she said. 
 "When you talk like that you make me feel as if I 
 had to do everything you say." 
 
 "Well, you must," said Woburn lightly. "Man was 
 made to be obeyed." 
 
 " Oh, you re not like other men," she returned ; " I 
 never heard a voice like yours ; it s so strong and kind. 
 You must be a very good man ; you remind me of Joe ; 
 I m sure you ve got just such a nature ; and Joe is the 
 best man I ve ever seen." 
 
 [216] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 Woburn made no reply, and she rambled on, with 
 little pauses and fresh bursts of confidence. 
 
 " Joe s a real hero, you know ; he did the most 
 splendid thing you ever heard of. I think I began to 
 tell you about it, but I did n t finish. I 11 tell you now. 
 It happened just after we were married ; I was mad 
 with him at the time, I m afraid, but now I see how 
 splendid he was. He d been telegraph operator at 
 Hinksville for four years and was hoping that he d 
 get promoted to a bigger place ; but he was afraid to 
 ask for a raise. Well, I was very sick with a bad attack 
 of pneumonia and one night the doctor said he was n t 
 sure whether he could pull me through. When they 
 sent word to Joe at the telegraph office he could n t 
 stand being away from me another minute. There was 
 a poor consumptive boy always hanging round the 
 station ; Joe had taught him how to operate, just to 
 help him along; so he left him in the office and tore 
 home for half an hour, knowing he could get back 
 before the eastern express came along. 
 
 "He had n t been gone five minutes when a freight- 
 train ran off the rails about a mile up the track. It was 
 a very still night, and the boy heard the smash and 
 shouting, and knew something had happened. He 
 could n t tell what it was, but the minute he heard 
 it he sent a message over the wires like a flash, and 
 caught the eastern express just as it was pulling out 
 [ 217 ].. 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 of the station above Hinksville. If he d hesitated a 
 second, or made any mistake, the express would have 
 come on, and the loss of life would have been fearful . 
 The next day the Hinksville papers were full of Op 
 erator Glenn s presence of mind; they all said he d 
 be promoted. That was early in November and Joe 
 didn t hear anything from the company till the first 
 of January. Meanwhile the boy had gone home to his 
 father s farm out in the country, and before Christmas 
 he was dead. Well, on New Year s day Joe got a notice 
 from the company saying that his pay was to be raised, 
 and that he was to be promoted to a big junction near 
 Detroit, in recognition of his presence of mind in stop 
 ping the eastern express. It was just what we d both 
 been pining for and I was nearly wild with joy ; but I 
 noticed Joe did n t say much. He just telegraphed for 
 leave, and the next day he went right up to Detroit 
 and told the directors there what had really happened. 
 When he came back he told us they d suspended him ; 
 I cried every night for a week, and even his mother 
 said he was a fool. After that we just lived on at 
 Hinksville, and six months later the company took 
 him back ; but I don t suppose they 11 ever promote 
 him now." 
 
 Her voice again trembled with facile emotion. 
 
 " Was n t it beautiful of him ? Ain t he a real hero ? " 
 she said. " And I m sure you d behave just like him ; 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 you d be just as gentle about little things, and you d 
 never move an inch about big ones. You d never do 
 a mean action, but you d be sorry for people who did ; 
 I can see it in your face ; that s why I trusted you 
 right off." 
 
 Woburn s eyes were fixed on the window ; he hardly 
 seemed to hear her. At length he walked across the 
 room and pulled up the shade. The electric lights were 
 dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn. A milk- 
 cart rattled down the street and, like a witch return 
 ing late from the Sabbath, a stray cat whisked into an 
 area. So rose the appointed day. 
 
 Woburn turned back, drawing from his pocket the 
 roll of bills which he had thrust there with so different 
 a purpose. He counted them out, and handed her fif 
 teen dollars. 
 
 " That will pay for your board, including your break 
 fast this morning," he said. "We ll breakfast together 
 presently if you like ; and meanwhile suppose we sit 
 down and watch the sunrise. I have n t seen it for years." 
 
 He pushed two chairs toward the window, and they 
 sat down side by side. The light came gradually, with 
 the icy reluctance of winter ; at last a red disk pushed 
 itself above the opposite house-tops and a long cold 
 gleam slanted across their window. They did not talk 
 much ; there was a silencing awe in the spectacle. 
 
 Presently Woburn rose and looked again at his watch. 
 [219] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "I must go and cover up my dress-coat/ he said, 
 " and you had better put on your hat and jacket. We 
 shall have to be starting in half an hour." 
 
 As he turned away she laid her hand on his arm. 
 
 "You haven t even told me your name/ she said. 
 
 " No," he answered ; " but if you get safely back to 
 Joe you can call me Providence." 
 
 "But how am I to send you the money?" 
 
 "Oh well, I ll write you a line in a day or two 
 and give you my address ; I don t know myself what 
 it will be ; I m a wanderer on the face of the earth." 
 
 " But you must have my name if you mean to write 
 to me." 
 
 "Well, what is your name?" 
 
 "Ruby Glenn. And I think I almost think you 
 might send the letter right to Joe s send it to the 
 Hinksville station." 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 "You promise?" 
 
 " Of course I promise." 
 
 He went back into his room, thinking how appropri 
 ate it was that she should have an absurd name like 
 Ruby. As he re-entered the room, where the gas sick 
 ened in the daylight, it seemed to him that he was 
 returning to some forgotten land ; he had passed, with 
 the last few hours, into a wholly new phase of con 
 sciousness. He put on his fur coat, turning up the 
 [ 220 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 collar and crossing the lapels to hide his white tie. 
 Then he put his cigar-case in his pocket, turned out 
 the gas, and, picking up his hat and stick, walked 
 back through the open doorway. 
 
 Ruby Glenn had obediently prepared herself for 
 departure and was standing before the mirror, patting 
 her curls into place. Her eyes were still red, but she 
 had the happy look of a child that has outslept its 
 grief. On the floor he noticed the tattered fragments 
 of the letter which, a few hours earlier, he had seen 
 her place before the mirror. 
 
 " Shall we go down now ? " he asked. 
 
 ee Very well," she assented ; then, with a quick move 
 ment, she stepped close to him, and putting her hands 
 on his shoulders lifted her face to his. 
 
 " I believe you re the best man I ever knew," she 
 said, "the very best except Joe." 
 
 She drew back blushing deeply, and unlocked the door 
 which led into the passage-way. Woburn picked up her 
 bag, which she had forgotten, and followed her out of the 
 room. They passed a frowzy chambermaid, who stared 
 at them with a yawn. Before the doors the row of boots 
 still waited ; there was a faint new aroma of coffee 
 mingling with the smell of vanished dinners, and a fresh 
 blast of heat had begun to tingle through the radiators. 
 
 In the unventilated coffee-room they found a waiter 
 who had the melancholy air of being the last survivor 
 [221] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 of an exterminated race, and who reluctantly brought 
 them some tea made with water which had not boiled, 
 and a supply of stale rolls and staler butter. On this 
 meagre diet they fared in silence, Woburn occasionally 
 glancing at his watch ; at length he rose, telling his 
 companion to go and pay her bill while he called a 
 hansom. After all, there was no use in economizing his 
 remaining dollars. 
 
 In a few moments she joined him under the por 
 tico of the hotel. The hansom stood waiting and he 
 sprang in after her, calling to the driver to take them 
 to the Forty-second Street station. 
 
 When they reached the station he found a seat for 
 her and went to buy her ticket. There were several 
 people ahead of him at the window, and when he had 
 bought the ticket he found that it was time to put her 
 in the train. She rose in answer to his glance, and to 
 gether they walked down the long platform in the 
 murky chill of the roofed-in air. He followed her into 
 the railway carriage, making sure that she had her bag, 
 and that the ticket was safe inside it ; then he held out 
 his hand, in its pearl-coloured evening glove : he felt 
 that the people in the other seats were staring at them. 
 
 "Good-bye," he said. 
 
 " Good-bye," she answered, flushing gratefully. " I 11 
 never forget never. And you will write, won t you? 
 Promise ! " 
 
 [222] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " Of course, of course," he said, hastening from the 
 carriage. 
 
 He retraced his way along the platform, passed 
 through the dismal waiting-room and stepped out 
 into the early sunshine. On the sidewalk outside the 
 station he hesitated awhile ; then he strolled slowly 
 down Forty-second Street and, skirting the melancholy 
 flank of the Reservoir, walked across Bryant Park. 
 Finally he sat down on one of the benches near the 
 Sixth Avenue and lit a cigar. 
 
 The signs of life were multiplying around him ; he 
 watched the cars roll by with their increasing freight 
 of dingy toilers, the shop-girls hurrying to their work, 
 the children trudging schoolward, their small vague 
 noses red with cold, their satchels clasped in woollen- 
 gloved hands. There is nothing very imposing in the 
 first stirring of a great city s activities ; it is a slow 
 reluctant process, like the waking of a heavy sleeper ; 
 but to Woburn s mood the sight of that obscure re 
 newal of humble duties was more moving than the 
 spectacle of an army with banners. 
 
 He sat for a long time, smoking the last cigar in 
 his case, and murmuring to himself a line from Hamlet 
 the saddest, he thought, in the play 
 
 For every man hath business and desire. 
 
 Suddenly an unpremeditated movement made him 
 [228] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 feel the pressure of Ruby Glenn s revolver in his 
 pocket ; it was like a devil s touch on his arm, and he 
 sprang up hastily. In his other pocket there were just 
 four dollars and fifty cents ; but that did n t matter 
 now. He had no thought of flight. 
 
 For a few minutes he loitered vaguely about the 
 park ; then the cold drove him on again, and with the 
 rapidity born of a sudden resolve he began to walk 
 down the Fifth Avenue towards his lodgings. He 
 brushed past a maid-servant who was washing the 
 vestibule and ran up stairs to his room. A fire was 
 burning in the grate and his books and photographs 
 greeted him cheerfully from the walls ; the tranquil 
 air of the whole room seemed to take it for granted 
 that he meant to have his bath and breakfast and 
 go down town as usual. 
 
 He threw off his coat and pulled the revolver out of 
 his pocket ; for some moments he held it curiously in 
 his hand, bending over to examine it as Ruby Glenn had 
 done ; then he laid it in the top drawer of a small cabi 
 net, and locking the drawer threw the key into the fire. 
 
 After that he went quietly about the usual business 
 of his toilet. In taking off his dress-coat he noticed 
 the Legion of Honor which Miss Talcott had given 
 him at the ball. He pulled it out of his buttonhole 
 and tossed it into the fire-place. When he had fin 
 ished dressing he saw with surprise that it was nearly 
 [224] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 ten o clock. Ruby Glenn was already two hours nearer 
 home. 
 
 Woburn stood looking about the room of which he 
 had thought to take final leave the night before ; 
 among the ashes beneath the grate he caught sight 
 of a little white heap which symbolized to his fancy 
 the remains of his brief correspondence with Miss 
 Talcott. He roused himself from this unseasonable 
 musing and with a final glance at the familiar setting 
 of his past, turned to face the future which the last 
 hours had prepared for him. 
 
 He went down stairs and stepped out of doors, has 
 tening down the street towards Broadway as though 
 he were late for an appointment. Every now and then 
 he encountered an acquaintance, whom he greeted 
 with a nod and smile ; he carried his head high, 
 and shunned no man s recognition. 
 
 At length he reached the doors of a tall granite 
 building honey-combed with windows. He mounted 
 the steps of the portico, and passing through the 
 double doors of plate-glass, crossed a vestibule floored 
 with mosaic to another glass door on which was em 
 blazoned the name of the firm. 
 
 This door he also opened, entering a large room with 
 wainscotted subdivisions, behind which appeared the 
 stooping shoulders of a row of clerks. 
 
 As Woburn crossed the threshold a gray-haired man 
 [225] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 emerged from an inner office at the opposite end of 
 the room. 
 
 At sight of Woburn he stopped short. 
 
 " Mr. Woburn ! " he exclaimed ; then he stepped 
 nearer and added in a low tone : " I was requested to 
 tell you when you came that the members of the firm 
 are waiting ; will you step into the private office ? " 
 
 [226] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 IT was at Mrs. Mellish s, one Sunday afternoon last 
 spring. We were talking over George Lillo s por 
 traits a collection of them was being shown at 
 Durand-Ruel s and a pretty woman had emphatically 
 declared: 
 
 ee Nothing on earth would induce me to sit to him ! " 
 
 There was a chorus of interrogations. 
 
 <e Oh, because he makes people look so horrid ; 
 the way one looks on board ship, or early in the 
 morning, or when one s hair is out of curl and one 
 knows it. I d so much rather be done by Mr. Cum- 
 berton ! " 
 
 Little Cumberton, the fashionable purveyor of rose- 
 water pastels, stroked his moustache to hide a con 
 scious smile. 
 
 " Lillo is a genius that we must all admit," he said 
 indulgently, as though condoning a friend s weakness ; 
 "but he has an unfortunate temperament. He has 
 been denied the gift so precious to an artist of 
 perceiving the ideal. He sees only the defects of his 
 sitters ; one might almost fancy that he takes a morbid 
 pleasure in exaggerating their weak points, in painting 
 them on their worst days ; but I honestly believe he 
 can t help himself. His peculiar limitations prevent his 
 [229] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 seeing anything but the most prosaic side of human 
 
 nature 
 
 eet A primrose by the river s brim 
 
 A yellow primrose is to him. 
 And it is nothing more. " 
 
 Cumberton looked round to surprise an order in the 
 eye of the lady whose sentiments he had so deftly 
 interpreted, but poetry always made her uncomforta 
 ble, and her nomadic attention had strayed to other 
 topics. His glance was tripped up by Mrs. Mellish. 
 
 "Limitations? But, my dear man, it s because he 
 hasn t any limitations, because he doesn t wear the 
 portrait-painter s conventional blinders, that we re all 
 so afraid of being painted by him. It s not because he 
 sees only one aspect of his sitters, it s because he 
 selects the real, the typical one, as instinctively as a 
 detective collars a pick-pocket in a crowd. If there s 
 nothing to paint no real person he paints nothing; 
 look at the sumptuous emptiness of his portrait of 
 Mrs. Guy Awdrey" ("Why," the pretty woman 
 perplexedly interjected, "that s the only nice picture 
 he ever did ! ") " If there s one positive trait in a nega 
 tive whole he brings it out in spite of himself; if it 
 is n t a nice trait, so much the worse for the sitter ; it 
 is n t Lillo s fault : he s no more to blame than a mir 
 ror. Your other painters do the surface he does the 
 depths ; they paint the ripples on the pond, he drags 
 [ 230 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 the bottom. He makes flesh seem as fortuitous as clothes. 
 When I look at his portraits of fine ladies in pearls and 
 velvet I seem to see a little naked cowering wisp of a 
 soul sitting beside the big splendid body, like a poor 
 relation in the darkest corner of an opera-box. But look 
 at his pictures of really great people how great they 
 are ! There s plenty of ideal there. Take his Professor 
 Clyde ; how clearly the man s history is written in those 
 broad steady strokes of the brush : the hard work, the 
 endless patience, the fearless imagination of the great 
 savant ! Or the picture of Mr. Domfrey the man who 
 has felt beauty without having the power to create it. 
 The very brush-work expresses the difference between 
 the two ; the crowding of nervous tentative lines, the 
 subtler gradations of color, somehow convey a sugges 
 tion of dilettantism. You feel what a delicate instru 
 ment the man is, how every sense has been tuned to 
 the finest responsiveness." Mrs. Mellish paused, blush 
 ing a little at the echo of her own eloquence. "My 
 advice is, don t let George Lillo paint you if you don t 
 want to be found out or to find yourself out. That s 
 why I ve never let him do me ; I m waiting for the 
 day of judgment," she ended with a laugh. 
 
 Every one but the pretty woman, whose eyes be 
 trayed a quivering impatience to discuss clothes, had 
 listened attentively to Mrs. Mellish. Lillo s presence 
 in New York he had come over from Paris for the 
 [231 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 first time in twelve years, to arrange the exhibition of 
 his pictures gave to the analysis of his methods as 
 personal a flavor as though one had been furtively dis 
 secting his domestic relations. The analogy, indeed, is 
 not unapt ; for in Lillo s curiously detached existence 
 it is difficult to figure any closer tie than that which 
 unites him to his pictures. In this light, Mrs. Mellish s 
 flushed harangue seemed not unfitted to the triviali 
 ties of the tea hour, and some one almost at once car 
 ried on the argument by saying : tf But according to 
 your theoiy that the significance of his work depends 
 on the significance of the sitter his portrait of Vard 
 ought to be a master-piece ; and it s his biggest fail 
 ure." 
 
 Alonzo Yard s suicide he killed himself, strangely 
 enough, the day that Lillo s pictures were first shown 
 had made his portrait the chief feature of the ex 
 hibition. It had been painted ten or twelve years earl 
 ier, when the terrible " Boss " was at the height of his 
 power ; and if ever man presented a type to stimulate 
 such insight as Lillo s, that man was Vard ; yet the 
 portrait was a failure. It was magnificently composed ; 
 the technique was dazzling ; but the face had been 
 well, expurgated. It was Vard as Cumberton might 
 have painted him a common man trying to look at 
 ease in a good coat. The picture had never before been 
 exhibited, and there was a general outcry of disappoint- 
 f 23% ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 ment. It wasn t only the critics and the artists who 
 grumbled. Even the big public, which had gaped and 
 shuddered at Vard, revelling in his genial villany, and 
 enjoying in his death that succumbing to divine wrath 
 which, as a spectacle, is next best to its successful de 
 fiance even the public felt itself defrauded. What had 
 the painter done with their hero ? Where was the big 
 sneering domineering face that figured so convin 
 cingly in political cartoons and patent-medicine adver 
 tisements, on cigar-boxes and electioneering posters? 
 They had admired the man for looking his part so 
 boldly ; for showing the undisguised blackguard in 
 every line of his coarse body and cruel face ; the 
 pseudo-gentleman of Lillo s picture was a poor thing 
 compared to the real Vard. It had been vaguely ex 
 pected that the great boss s portrait would have the 
 zest of an incriminating document, the scandalous at 
 traction of secret memoirs ; and instead, it was as in 
 sipid as an obituary. It was as though the artist had 
 been in league with his sitter, had pledged himself to 
 oppose to the lust for post-mortem "revelations" an 
 impassable blank wall of negation. The public was 
 resentful, the critics were aggrieved. Even Mrs. Mel- 
 lish had to lay down her arms. 
 
 " Yes, the portrait of Vard is a failure," she admitted, 
 " and I ve never known why. If he d been an obscure 
 elusfVe type of villain, one could understand Lillo s 
 [ 233] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 missing the mark for once; but with that face from 
 the pit !" 
 
 She turned at the announcement of a name which 
 our discussion had drowned, and found herself shak 
 ing hands with Lillo. 
 
 The pretty woman started and put her hands to her 
 curls ; Cumberton dropped a condescending eyelid (he 
 never classed himself by recognizing degrees in the 
 profession), and Mrs. Mellish, cheerfully aware that she 
 had been overheard, said, as she made room for Lillo 
 
 "I wish you d explain it." 
 
 Lillo smoothed his beard and waited for a cup of 
 tea. Then, "Would there be any failures," he said, " if 
 one could explain them ? " 
 
 " Ah, in some cases I can imagine it s impossible to 
 seize the type or to say why one has missed it. Some 
 people are like daguerreotypes; in certain lights one 
 can t see them at all. But surely Vard was obvious 
 enough. What I want to know is, what became of 
 him? What did you do with him? How did you man 
 age to shuffle him out of sight ? " 
 
 " It was much easier than you think. I simply missed 
 an opportunity 
 
 " That a sign-painter would have seen ! " 
 
 "Very likely. In fighting shy of the obvious one 
 may miss the significant " 
 
 " And when I got back from Paris," the pretty 
 
 J 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 woman was heard to wail, "I found all the women 
 here were wearing the very models I d brought home 
 with me ! " 
 
 Mrs. Hellish, as became a vigilant hostess, got up 
 and shuffled her guests ; and the question of Yard s 
 portrait was dropped. 
 
 I left the house with Lillo ; and on the way down 
 Fifth Avenue, after one of his long silences, he sud 
 denly asked : 
 
 "Is that what is generally said of my picture of 
 Vard? I don t mean in the newspapers, but by the 
 fellows who know?" 
 
 I said it was. 
 
 He drew a deep breath. "Well," he said, "it s 
 good to know that when one tries to fail one can 
 make such a complete success of it." 
 
 "Tries to fail?" 
 
 " Well, no ; that s not quite it, either ; I did n t 
 want to make a failure of Yard s picture, but I did so 
 deliberately, with my eyes open, all the same. It was 
 what one might call a lucid failure." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 " The why of it is rather complicated. I 11 tell you 
 some time " He hesitated. "Come and dine with me 
 at the club by and by, and I 11 tell you afterwards. 
 It s a nice morsel for a psychologist." 
 
 At dinner he said little ; but I did n t mind that. I 
 [235] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 had known him for years, and had always found some 
 thing soothing and companionable in his long absten 
 tions from speech. His silence was never unsocial; it 
 was bland as a natural hush ; one felt one s self in 
 cluded in it, not left out. He stroked his beard and 
 gazed absently at me ; and when we had finished our 
 coffee and liqueurs we strolled down to his studio. 
 
 At the studio which was less draped, less posed, 
 less consciously "artistic" than those of the smaller 
 men he handed me a cigar, and fell to smoking be 
 fore the fire. When he began to talk it was of indif 
 ferent matters, and I had dismissed the hope of 
 hearing more of Yard s portrait, when my eye lit on 
 a photograph of the picture. I walked across the 
 room to look at it, and Lillo presently followed with 
 a light. 
 
 "It certainly is a complete disguise," he muttered 
 over my shoulder; then he turned away and stooped 
 to a big portfolio propped against the wall. 
 
 " Did you ever know Miss Vard ? " he asked, with 
 his head in the portfolio ; and without waiting for my 
 answer he handed me a crayon sketch of a girl s profile. 
 
 I had never seen a crayon of Lillo s, and I lost sight 
 of the sitter s personality in the interest aroused by 
 this new aspect of the master s complex genius. The 
 few lines faint, yet how decisive! flowered out of 
 the rough paper with the lightness of opening petals. 
 [ 236 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 It was a mere hint of a picture, but vivid as some word 
 that wakens long reverberations in the memory. 
 
 I felt Lillo at my shoulder again. 
 
 " You knew her, I suppose ? " 
 
 I had to stop and think. Why, of course I d known 
 her: a silent handsome girl, showy yet ineffective, 
 whom I had seen without seeing the winter that 
 society had capitulated to Vard. Still looking at the 
 crayon, I tried to trace some connection between the 
 Miss Vard I recalled and the grave young seraph of 
 Lillo s sketch. Had the Vards bewitched him? By 
 what masterstroke of suggestion had he been beguiled 
 into drawing the terrible father as a barber s block, the 
 commonplace daughter as this memorable creature? 
 
 "You don t remember much about her? No, I sup 
 pose not. She was a quiet girl and nobody noticed her 
 much, even when " he paused with a smile "you 
 were all asking Vard to dine." 
 
 I winced. Yes, it was true we had all asked Vard 
 to dine. It was some comfort to think that fate had 
 made him expiate our weakness. 
 
 Lillo put the sketch on the mantel-shelf and drew 
 his arm-chair to the fire. 
 
 "It s cold to-night. Take another cigar, old man; 
 and some whiskey? There ought to be a bottle and 
 some glasses in that cupboard behind you . . . help 
 yourself ..." 
 
 [237] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 II 
 
 A&OUT Yard s portrait? (he began.) Well, I ll 
 tell you. It s a queer story, and most people 
 would n t see anything in it. My enemies might say 
 it was a roundabout way of explaining a failure ; but 
 you know better than that. Mrs. Mellish was right. 
 Between me and Vard there could be no question of 
 failure. The man was made for me I felt that the 
 first time I clapped eyes on him. I could hardly keep 
 from asking him to sit to me on the spot ; but some 
 how one couldn t ask favors of the fellow. I sat still 
 and prayed he d come to me, though ; for I was look 
 ing for something big for the next Salon. It was twelve 
 years ago the last time I was out here and I was 
 ravenous for an opportunity. I had the feeling do you 
 writer-fellows have it too? that there was something 
 tremendous in me if it could only be got out ; and I 
 felt Vard was the Moses to strike the rock. There were 
 vulgar reasons, too, that made me hunger for a victim. 
 I d been grinding on obscurely for a good many years, 
 without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that 
 had made a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited 
 the year before. There d been a lot of talk about that, 
 orders were beginning to come in, and I wanted to 
 follow it up with a rousing big thing at the next Salon. 
 Then the critics had been insinuating that I could do 
 [ 238 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 only Spanish things I suppose I had overdone the 
 castanet business ; it s a nursery-disease we all go 
 through and I wanted to show that I had plenty 
 more shot in my locker. Don t you get up every morn 
 ing meaning to prove you re equal to Balzac or Thack 
 eray ? That s the way I felt then ; only give me a chance, 
 
 I wanted to shout out to them ; and I saw at once 
 i 
 
 that Vard was my chance. 
 
 I had come over from Paris in the autumn to paint 
 Mrs. Clingsborough, and I met Vard and his daughter 
 at one of the first dinners I went to. After that I could 
 think of nothing but that man s head. What a type ! I 
 raked up all the details of his scandalous history ; and 
 there were enough to fill an encyclopaedia. The papers 
 were full of him just then ; he was mud from head to 
 foot ; it was about the time of the big viaduct steal, and 
 irreproachable citizens were forming ineffectual leagues 
 to put him down. And all the time one kept meeting 
 him at dinners that was the beauty of it ! Once I re 
 member seeing him next to the Bishop s wife ; I Ve got 
 a little sketch of that duet somewhere . . . Well, he 
 was simply magnificent, a born ruler; what a splendid 
 condottiere he would have made, in gold armor, with 
 a griffin grinning on his casque ! You remember those 
 drawings of Leonardo s, where the knight s face and 
 the outline of his helmet combine in one monstrous 
 saurian profile ? He always reminded me of that . . . 
 [ 239 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 But how was I to get at him? One day it occurred 
 to me to try talking to Miss Vard. She was a monosyl 
 labic person, who didn t seem to see an inch beyond 
 the last remark one had made ; but suddenly I found 
 myself blurting out, " I wonder if you know how ex 
 traordinarily pain table your father is ? " and you should 
 have seen the change that came over her. Her eyes lit 
 up and she looked well, as I ve tried to make her 
 look there. (He glanced up at the sketch.) Yes, she 
 said, was n t her father splendid, and did n t I think him 
 one of the handsomest men I d ever seen ? 
 
 That rather staggered me, I confess; I couldn t 
 think her capable of joking on such a subject, yet it 
 seemed impossible that she should be speaking seri 
 ously. But she was. I knew it by the way she looked 
 at Vard, who was sitting opposite, his wolfish profile 
 thrown back, the shaggy locks tossed off his narrow 
 high white forehead. The girl worshipped him. 
 
 She went on to say how glad she was that I saw him 
 as she did. So many artists admired only regular beauty, 
 the stupid Greek type that was made to be done in 
 marble ; but she d always fancied from what she d 
 seen of my work she knew everything I d done, it 
 appeared that I looked deeper, cared more for the 
 way in which faces are modelled by temperament and 
 circumstance; "and of course in that sense," she con 
 cluded, "my father s face is beautiful." 
 [ 240 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 This was even more staggering; but one couldn t 
 question her divine sincerity. I m afraid my one 
 thought was to take advantage of it ; and I let her go 
 on, perceiving that if I wanted to paint Vard all I had 
 to do was to listen. 
 
 She poured out her heart. It was a glorious thing 
 for a girl, she said, wasn t it, to be associated with 
 such a life as that ? She felt it so strongly, sometimes, 
 that it oppressed her, made her shy and stupid. She 
 was so afraid people would expect her to live up to 
 him. But that was absurd, of course ; brilliant men so 
 seldom had clever children. Still did I know? she 
 would have been happier, much happier, if he had n t 
 been in public life ; if he and she could have hidden 
 themselves away somewhere, with their books and 
 music, and she could have had it all to herself: his 
 cleverness, his learning, his immense unbounded good 
 ness. For no one knew how good he was ; no one but 
 herself. Everybody recognized his cleverness, his bril 
 liant abilities ; even his enemies had to admit his ex 
 traordinary intellectual gifts, and hated him the worse, 
 of course, for the admission ; but no one, no one could 
 guess what he was at home. She had heard of great men 
 who were always giving gala performances in public, 
 but whose wives and daughters saw only the empty 
 theatre, with the footlights out and the scenery 
 stacked in the wings ; but with him it was just the 
 [241] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 other way : wonderful as he was in public, in society, 
 she sometimes felt he wasn t doing himself justice 
 he was so much more wonderful at home. It was like 
 carrying a guilty secret about with her: his friends, 
 his admirers, would never forgive her if they found out 
 that he kept all his best things for her ! 
 
 I don t quite know what I felt in listening to her. 
 I was chiefly taken up with leading her on to the 
 point I had in view ; but even through my personal 
 preoccupation I remember being struck by the fact 
 that, though she talked foolishly, she did n t talk like 
 a fool. She was not stupid ; she was not obtuse ; one 
 felt that her impassive surface was alive with delicate 
 points of perception; and this fact, coupled with her 
 crystalline frankness, flung me back on a startled re 
 vision of my impressions of her father. He came out of 
 the test more monstrous than ever, as an ugly image 
 reflected in clear water is made uglier by the purity 
 of the medium. Even then I felt a pang at the use to 
 which fate had put the mountain-pool of Miss Yard s 
 spirit, and an uneasy sense that my own reflection 
 there was not one to linger over. It was odd that I 
 should have scrupled to deceive, on one small point, 
 a girl already so hugely cheated ; perhaps it was the 
 completeness of her delusion that gave it the sanctity 
 of a religious belief. At any rate, a distinct sense of 
 discomfort tempered the satisfaction with which, a day 
 [242] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 or two later, I heard from her that her father had 
 consented to give me a few sittings. 
 
 I m afraid my scruples vanished when I got him 
 before my easel. He was immense, and he was unex 
 plored. From my point of view he d never been done 
 before I was his Cortez. As he talked the wonder 
 grew. His daughter came with him, and I began to 
 think she was right in saying that he kept his best for 
 her. It was n t that she drew him out, or guided the 
 conversation ; but one had a sense of delicate vigilance, 
 hardly more perceptible than one of those atmospheric 
 influences that give the pulses a happier turn. She was 
 a vivifying climate. I had meant to turn the talk to 
 public affairs, but it slipped toward books and art, and 
 I was faintly aware of its being kept there without 
 undue pressure. Before long I saw the value of the 
 diversion. It was easy enough to get at the political 
 Vard : the other aspect was rarer and more instructive. 
 His daughter had described him as a scholar. He 
 was n t that, of course, in any intrinsic sense : like 
 most men of. his type he had gulped his knowledge 
 standing, as he had snatched his food from lunch- 
 counters ; the wonder of it lay in his extraordinary 
 power of assimilation. It was the strangest instance of 
 a mind to which erudition had given force and fluency 
 without culture ; his learning had not educated his 
 perceptions: it was an implement serving to slash 
 [243] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 others rather than to polish himself. I have said that 
 at first sight he was immense ; but as I studied him he 
 began to lessen under my scrutiny. His depth was a 
 false perspective painted on a wall. 
 
 It was there that my difficulty lay : I had prepared 
 too big a canvas for him. Intellectually his scope was 
 considerable, but it was like the digital reach of a me 
 diocre pianist it didn t make him a great musician. 
 And morally he was n t bad enough ; his corruption 
 was n t sufficiently imaginative to be interesting. It was 
 not so much a means to an end as a kind of virtuosity 
 practised for its own sake, like a highly-developed 
 skill in cannoning billiard balls. After all, the point of 
 view is what gives distinction to either vice or virtue : 
 a morality with ground-glass windows is no duller than 
 a narrow cynicism. 
 
 His daughter s presence she always came with 
 him gave unintentional emphasis to these conclu 
 sions ; for where she was richest he was naked. She 
 had a deep-rooted delicacy that drew color and per 
 fume from the very centre of her being : his senti 
 ments, good or bad, were as detachable as his cuffs. 
 Thus her nearness, planned, as I guessed, with the 
 tender intention of displaying, elucidating him, ot 
 making him accessible in detail to my dazzled per 
 ceptions this pious design in fact defeated itself. She 
 made him appear at his best, but she cheapened that 
 [244] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 best by her proximity. For the man was vulgar to the 
 core ; vulgar in spite of his force and magnitude ; thin, 
 hollow, spectacular; a lath-and-plaster bogey 
 
 Did she suspect it ? I think not then. He was 
 wrapped in her impervious faith . . . The papers? 
 Oh, their charges were set down to political rivalry ; 
 and the only people she saw were his hangers-on, or 
 the fashionable set who had taken him up for their 
 amusement. Besides, she would never have found out 
 in that way : at a direct accusation her resentment 
 would have flamed up and smothered her judgment. 
 If the truth came to her, it would come through 
 knowing intimately some one different ; through 
 how shall I put it? an imperceptible shifting of 
 her centre of gravity. My besetting fear was that I 
 could n t count on her obtuseness. She was n t what 
 is called clever ; she left that to him ; but she was 
 exquisitely good ; and now and then she had intuitive 
 felicities that frightened me. Do I make you see her? 
 We fellows can explain better with the brush ; I 
 don t know how to mix my words or lay them on. 
 She wasn t clever; but her heart thought that s 
 all I can say . . . 
 
 If she d been stupid it would have been easy 
 enough : I could have painted him as he was. Could 
 have ? I did brushed the face in one day from mem 
 ory ; it was the very man ! I painted it out before she 
 [245] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 came : I could n t bear to have her see it. I had the 
 feeling that I held her faith in him in my hands, carry 
 ing it like a brittle object through a jostling mob ; a 
 hair s-breadth swerve and it was in splinters. 
 
 When she wasn t there I tried to reason myself 
 out of these subtleties. My business was to paint 
 Vard as he was if his daughter didn t mind his 
 looks, why should I ? The opportunity was magnificent 
 I knew that by the way his face had leapt out of 
 the canvas at my first touch. It would have been a 
 big thing. Before every sitting I swore to myself I d 
 do it ; then she came, and sat near him, and I didn t. 
 
 I knew that before long she d notice I was shirking 
 the face. Vard himself took little interest in the por 
 trait, but she watched me closely, and one day when 
 the sitting was over she stayed behind and asked me 
 when I meant to begin what she called "the like 
 ness." I guessed from her tone that the embarrass 
 ment was all on my side, or that if she felt any it 
 was at having to touch a vulnerable point in my 
 pride. Thus far the only doubt that troubled her was 
 a distrust of my ability. Well, I put her off with any 
 rot you please : told her she must trust me, must let 
 me wait for the inspiration ; that some day the face 
 would come ; I should see it suddenly feel it under 
 my brush . . . The poor child believed me : you can 
 make a woman believe almost anything she doesn t 
 [246] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 quite understand. She was abashed at her philistinism, 
 and begged me not to tell her father he would make 
 such fun of her! 
 
 After that well, the sittings went on. Not many, 
 of course ; Vard was too busy to give me much time. 
 Still, I could have done him ten times over. Never had 
 I found my formula with such ease, such assurance ; 
 there were no hesitations, no obstructions the face 
 was there, waiting for me ; at times it almost shaped 
 itself on the canvas. Unfortunately Miss Vard was 
 there too . . . 
 
 All this time the papers were busy with the viaduct 
 scandal. The outcry was getting louder. You remember 
 the circumstances? One of Yard s associates Bard- 
 well, wasn t it? threatened disclosures. The rival 
 machine got hold of him, the Independents took him 
 to their bosom, and the press shrieked for an investi 
 gation. It was not the first storm Vard had weathered, 
 and his face wore just the right shade of cool vigil 
 ance ; he was n t the man to fall into the mistake of 
 appearing too easy. His demeanor would have been 
 superb if it had been inspired by a sense of his own 
 strength ; but it struck me rather as based on contempt 
 for his antagonists. Success is an inverted telescope 
 through which one s enemies are apt to look too small 
 and too remote. As for Miss Vard, her serenity was 
 undiminished ; but I half-detected a defiance in her 
 [247] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 unruffled sweetness, and during the last sittings I had 
 the factitious vivacity of a hostess who hears her best 
 china crashing. 
 
 One day it did crash : the head-lines of the morning 
 papers shouted the catastrophe at me: "The Mon 
 ster forced to disgorge Warrant out against Vard 
 Bardwell the Boss s Boomerang" you know the kind 
 of thing. 
 
 When I had read the papers I threw them down and 
 went out. As it happened,, Vard was to have given me 
 a sitting that morning; but there would have been 
 a certain irony in waiting for him. I wished I had 
 finished the picture I wished I d never thought of 
 painting it. I wanted to shake off the whole business, 
 to put it out of my mind, if I could : I had the feeling 
 I don t know if I can describe it that there was a 
 kind of disloyalty to the poor girl in my even acknow 
 ledging to myself that I knew what all the papers were 
 howling from the housetops . . . 
 
 I had walked for an hour when it suddenly occurred 
 to me that Miss Vard might, after all, come to the 
 studio at the appointed hour. Why should she ? I could 
 conceive of no reason ; but the mere thought of what, 
 if she did come, my absence would imply to her, sent 
 me bolting back to Twelfth Street. It was a presenti 
 ment, if you like, for she was there. 
 
 As she rose to meet me a newspaper slipped from 
 [248] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 her hand : I d been fool enough, when I went out, to 
 leave the damned things lying all over the place. 
 
 I muttered some apology for being late, and she 
 said reassuringly : 
 
 " But my father s not here yet." 
 
 "Your father ?" I could have kicked myself for 
 the way I bungled it ! 
 
 " He went out very early this morning, and left 
 word that he would meet me here at the usual 
 hour." 
 
 She faced me, with an eye full of bright courage, 
 across the newspaper lying between us. 
 
 " He ought to be here in a moment now he s 
 always so punctual. But my watch is a little fast, I 
 think." 
 
 She held it out to me almost gaily, and I was just 
 pretending to compare it with mine, when there was 
 a smart rap on the door and Vard stalked in. There 
 was always a civic majesty in his gait, an air of having 
 just stepped off his pedestal and of dissembling an ora 
 tion in his umbrella ; and that day he surpassed him 
 self. Miss Vard had turned pale at the knock ; but the 
 mere sight of him replenished her veins, and if she 
 now avoided my eye, it was in mere pity for my dis 
 comfiture. 
 
 I was in fact the only one of the three who did n t 
 instantly " play up " ; but such virtuosity was inspiring, 
 [ 249 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 and by the time Vard had thrown off his coat and 
 dropped into a senatorial pose, I M r as ready to pitch 
 into my work. I swore I d do his face then and there ; 
 do it as she saw it ; she sat close to him, and I had 
 only to glance at her while I painted 
 
 Vard himself was masterly : his talk rattled through 
 my hesitations and embarrassments like a brisk north 
 wester sweeping the dry leaves from its path. Even his 
 daughter showed the sudden brilliance of a lamp from 
 which the shade has been removed. We were all sur 
 prisingly vivid it felt, somehow, as though we were 
 being photographed by flash-light . . . 
 
 It was the best sitting we d ever had but unfor 
 tunately it did n t last more than ten minutes. 
 
 It was Yard s secretary who interrupted us a slink 
 ing chap called Cornley, who burst in, as white as 
 sweetbread, with the face of a depositor who hears his 
 bank has stopped payment. Miss Vard started up as he 
 entered, but caught herself together and dropped back 
 into her chair. Vard, who had taken out a cigarette, 
 held the tip tranquilly to his fusee. 
 
 "You re here, thank God!" Cornley cried. "There s 
 no time to be lost, Mr. Vard. I ve got a carriage wait 
 ing round the corner in Thirteenth Street 
 
 Vard looked at the tip of his cigarette. 
 
 " A carriage in Thirteenth Street ? My good fellow, 
 my own brougham is at the door." 
 [250] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 " I know, I know but they re there too, sir ; or 
 they will be, inside of a minute. For God s sake, Mr. 
 Vard, don t trifle! There s a way out by Thirteenth 
 Street, I tell you" 
 
 " Bard well s myrmidons, eh ? " said Vard. " Help me 
 on with my overcoat, Cornley, will you?" 
 
 Cornley s teeth chattered. 
 
 te Mr. Vard, your best friends . . . Miss Vard, won t 
 you speak to your father ? " He turned to me hag 
 gardly; "We can get out by the back way?" 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 Vard stood towering in some infernal way he 
 seemed literally to rise to the situation one hand 
 in the bosom of his coat, in the attitude of patriotism 
 in bronze. I glanced at his daughter: she hung on 
 him with a drowning look. Suddenly she straightened 
 herself; there was something of Vard in the way she 
 faced her fears a kind of primitive calm we drawing- 
 room folk don t have. She stepped to him and laid her 
 hand on his arm. The pause had n t lasted ten seconds. 
 
 "Father" she said. 
 
 Vard threw back his head and swept the studio with 
 a sovereign eye. 
 
 "The back way, Mr. Vard, the back way," Cornley 
 whimpered. " For God s sake, sir, don t lose a minute." 
 
 Vard transfixed his abject henchman. 
 
 " I have never yet taken the back way," he eniin- 
 [ 251 ] _ 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 ciated ; and, with a gesture matching the words, he 
 turned to me and bowed. 
 
 "I regret the disturbance" and he walked to the 
 door. His daughter was at his side, alert, transfigured. 
 
 "Stay here, my dear." 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 They measured each other an instant ; then he drew 
 her arm in his. She flung back one look at me a 
 paean of victory and they passed out with Cornley at 
 their heels. 
 
 I wish I d finished the face then ; I believe I could 
 have caught something of the look she had tried to 
 make me see in him. Unluckily I was too excited to 
 work that day or the next, and within the week the 
 whole business came out. If the indictment wasn t a 
 put-up job and on that I believe there were two 
 opinions all that followed was. You remember the 
 farcical trial, the packed jury, the compliant judge, the 
 triumphant acquittal ? . . . It s a spectacle that always 
 carries conviction to the voter : Vard was never more 
 popular than after his "exoneration" . . . 
 
 I didn t see Miss Vard for weeks. It was she who 
 came to me at length ; came to the studio alone, one 
 afternoon at dusk. She had what shall I say? a 
 veiled manner; as though she had dropped a fine 
 gauze between us. I waited for her to speak. 
 
 She glanced about the room, admiring a hawthorn 
 [ 252 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 vase I had picked up at auction. Then, after a pause, 
 she said : 
 
 "You haven t finished the picture?" 
 
 "Not quite," I said. 
 
 She asked to see it, and I wheeled out the easel 
 and threw the drapery back. 
 
 "Oh," she murmured, "you haven t gone on with 
 the face?" 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 She looked down on her clasped hands and up at 
 the picture ; not once at me. 
 
 "You you re going to finish it?" 
 
 "Of course," I cried, throwing the revived purpose 
 into my voice. By God, I would finish it! 
 
 The merest tinge of relief stole over her face, faint 
 as the first thin chirp before daylight. 
 
 " Is it so very difficult ? " she asked tentatively. 
 
 "Not insuperably, I hope." 
 
 She sat silent, her eyes on the picture. At length, 
 with an effort, she brought out : " Shall you want more 
 sittings ? " 
 
 For a second I blundered between two conflicting 
 conjectures ; then the truth came to me with a leap, 
 and I cried out, "No, no more sittings !" 
 
 She looked up at me then for the first time ; looked 
 too soon, poor child ; for in the spreading light of re 
 assurance that made her eyes like a rainy dawn, I saw, 
 [253] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 with terrible distinctness, the rout of her disbanded 
 hopes. I knew that she knew . . . 
 
 I finished the picture and sent it home within a 
 week. I tried to make it what you see. Too late, 
 you say? Yes for her; but not for me or for the 
 public. If she could be made to feel, for a day longer, 
 for an hour even, that her miserable secret was a se 
 cret why, she d made it seem worth while to me to 
 chuck my own ambitions for that . . . 
 
 Lillo rose, and taking down the sketch stood looking 
 
 at it in silence. 
 
 After a while I ventured, "And Miss Vard ?" 
 He opened the portfolio and put the sketch back, 
 
 tying the strings with deliberation. Then, turning to 
 
 relight his cigar at the lamp, he said: "She died last 
 
 year, thank God." 
 
 [254] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 PROFESSOR JOSLIN, who, as our readers are doubtless 
 aware, is engaged in writing the life of Mrs. Aubyn, asks 
 us to state that he will be greatly indebted to any of the 
 "famous novelist s friends who will furnish him with information 
 "concerning the period previous to her coming to England. Mrs. 
 "Aubyn had so few intimate friends, and consequently so few 
 "regular correspondents, that letters will be of special value. 
 "Professor Joslin s address is 10 Augusta Gardens, Kensington, 
 "and he begs us to say that he will promptly return any docu- 
 "ments entrusted to him." 
 
 GLENNARD dropped the Spectator and sat looking into 
 the fire. The club was filling up, but he still had to himself 
 the small inner room with its darkening outlook down the 
 rain-streaked prospect of Fifth Avenue. It was all dull and 
 dismal enough, yet a moment earlier his boredom had been 
 perversely tinged by a sense of resentment at the thought 
 that, as things were going, he might in time have to sur 
 render even the despised privilege of boring himself within 
 those particular four walls. It was not that he cared much 
 for the club, but that the remote contingency of having to 
 give it up stood to him, just then, perhaps by very reason 
 of its insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his 
 increasing abnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that 
 [257] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 was gradually reducing existence to the naked business of 
 keeping himself alive. It was the futility of his multiplied 
 shifts and privations that made them seem unworthy of a 
 high attitude the sense that, however rapidly he elimi 
 nated the superfluous, his cleared horizon was likely to 
 offer no nearer view of the one prospect toward which 
 he strained. To give up things hi order to marry the 
 woman one loves is easier than to give them up without 
 being brought appreciably nearer to such a conclusion. 
 
 Through the open door he saw young Hollingsworth rise 
 with a yawn from the ineffectual solace of a brandy-and- 
 soda and transport his purposeless person to the window. 
 Glennard measured his course with a contemptuous eye. 
 It was so like Hollingsworth to get up and look out of the 
 window just as it was growing too dark to see anything 1 
 There was a man rich enough to do what he pleased had 
 he been capable of being pleased yet barred from all con 
 ceivable achievement by his own impervious dulness; 
 while, a few feet off, Glennard, who wanted only enough 
 to keep a decent coat on his back and a roof over the head 
 of the woman he loved Glennard, who had sweated, 
 toiled, denied himself for the scant measure of opportunity 
 that his zeal would have converted into a kingdom sat 
 wretchedly calculating that, even when he had resigned 
 from the club, and knocked off his cigars, and given up his 
 Sundays out of town, he would still be no nearer to 
 attainment. 
 
 [258] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 The Spectator had slipped to his feet, and as he picked it 
 up his eye fell again on the paragraph addressed to the 
 friends of Mrs. Aubyn. He had read it for the first time 
 with a scarcely perceptible quickening of attention: her 
 name had so long been public property that his eye passed 
 it unseeingly, as the crowd in the street hurries without a 
 glance by some familiar monument. 
 
 "Information concerning the period previous to her 
 coming to England. . . ." The words were an evocation. 
 He saw her again as she had looked at their first meeting, 
 the poor woman of genius with her long pale face and short 
 sighted eyes, softened a little by the grace of youth and 
 inexperience, but so incapable even then of any hold upon 
 the pulses. When she spoke, indeed, she was wonderful, 
 more wonderful, perhaps, than when later, to Glennard S 
 fancy at least, the consciousness of memorable things ut 
 tered seemed to take from even her most intimate speech 
 the perfect bloom of privacy. It was in those earliest days, 
 if ever, that he had come near loving her; though even then 
 his sentiment had lived only in the intervals of its expres 
 sion. Later, when to be loved by her had been a state to 
 touch any man s imagination, the physical reluctance had, 
 inexplicably, so overborne the intellectual attraction, that 
 the last years had been, to both of them, an agony of con 
 flicting impulses. Even now, if, in turning over old papers 
 his hand lit on her letters, the touch filled him with inar 
 ticulate misery. . . . 
 
 f 2591 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "She bad so few intimate friends . . . that letters will 
 be of special value." So few intimate friends ! For years 
 she had had but one; one who in the last years had requited 
 her wonderful pages, her tragic outpourings of love, hu 
 mility and pardon, with the scant phrases by which a 
 man evades the vulgarest of sentimental importunities. 
 He had been a brute in spite of himself, and sometimes, 
 now that the remembrance of her face had faded, and only 
 her voice and words remained with him, he chafed at his 
 own inadequacy, his stupid inability to rise to the height 
 of her passion. His egoism was not of a kind to mirror its 
 complacency in the adventure. To have been loved by the 
 most brilliant woman of her day, and to have been in 
 capable of loving her, seemed to him, in looking back, de 
 risive evidence of his limitations; and his remorseful ten 
 derness for her memory was complicated with a sense of 
 irritation against her for having given him once for all the 
 measure of his emotional capacity. It was not often, how 
 ever, that he thus probed the past. The public, in taking 
 possession of Mrs. Aubyn, had eased his shoulders of their 
 burden. There was something fatuous in an attitude of 
 sentimental apology toward a memory already classic: to 
 reproach one s self for not having loved Margaret Aubyn 
 was a good deal like being disturbed by an inability to 
 admire the Venus of Milo. From her cold niche of fame she 
 looked down ironically enough on his self-flagellations. 
 . . . It was only when he came on something that belonged 
 [ 260 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 to her that he felt a sudden renewal of the old feeling, the 
 strange dual impulse that drew him to her voice but drove 
 him from her hand, so that even now, at sight of anything 
 she had touched, his heart contracted painfully. It hap 
 pened seldom nowadays. Her little presents, one by one, 
 had disappeared from his room, and her letters, kept from 
 some unacknowledged puerile vanity in the possession of 
 such treasures, seldom came beneath his hand. . . . 
 
 "Her letters will be of special value " Her letters ! 
 Why, he must have hundreds of them enough to fill a 
 volume. Sometimes it used to seem to him that they came 
 with every post he used to avoid looking in his letter-box 
 when he came home to his rooms but her writing seemed 
 to spring out at him as he put his key in the door. 
 
 He stood up and strolled into the other room. Hollings- 
 worth, lounging away from the window, had joined him 
 self to a languidly convivial group of men, to whom, in 
 phrases as halting as though they struggled to define an 
 ultimate idea, he was expounding the cursed nuisance of 
 living in a hole with such a damned climate that one had 
 to get out of it by February, with the contingent difficulty 
 of there being no place to take one s yacht to in winter 
 but that other played-out hole, the Riviera. From the out 
 skirts of this group Glennard wandered to another, where 
 a voice as different as possible from Hollingsworth s color 
 less organ dominated another circle of languid listeners. 
 
 "Come and hear Dinslow talk about his patent: admis- 
 [261] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 sion free, * one of the men sang out in a tone of mock 
 resignation. 
 
 Dinslow turned to Glennard the confident pugnacity of 
 his smile. "Give it another six months and it 11 be talking 
 about itself," he declared. "It s pretty nearly articulate 
 now." 
 
 "Can it say papa?" someone else inquired. 
 
 Dinslow s smile broadened. "You 11 be deuced glad to 
 say papa to it a year from now," he retorted. "It 11 be 
 able to support even you in affluence. Look here, now, just 
 let me explain to you " 
 
 Glennard moved away impatiently. The men at the 
 club all but those who were "in it" were proverbially 
 "tired" of Dinslow s patent, and none more so than Glen 
 nard, whose knowledge of its merits made it loom large in 
 the depressing catalogue of lost opportunities. The rela 
 tions between the two men had always been friendly, and 
 Dinslow s urgent offers to "take him in on the ground 
 floor" had of late intensified Glennard s sense of his own 
 inability to meet good luck half-way. Some of the men who 
 had paused to listen were already in evening clothes, others 
 on their way home to dress; and Glennard, with an accus 
 tomed twinge of humiliation, said to himself that if he lin 
 gered among them it was in the miserable hope that one 
 of the number might ask him to dine. Miss Trent had told 
 him that she was to go to the opera that evening with her 
 rich aunt; and if he should have the luck to pick up a din- 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 ner invitation he might join her there without extra outlay. 
 
 He moved about the room, lingering here and there in a 
 tentative affectation of interest; but though the men 
 greeted him pleasantly, no one asked him to dine. Doubt 
 less they were all engaged, these men who could afford to 
 pay for their dinners, who did not have to hunt for invi 
 tations as a beggar rummages for a crust in an ash-barrel ! 
 But no as Hollingsworth left the lessening circle about 
 the table, an admiring youth called out, "Holly, stop and 
 dine!" 
 
 Hollingsworth turned on him the crude countenance 
 that looked like the wrong side of a more finished face. 
 "Sorry I can t. I m in for a beastly banquet." 
 
 Glennard threw himself into an arm-chair. Why go 
 home in the rain to dress ? It was folly to take a cab to the 
 opera, it was worse folly to go there at all. His perpetual 
 meetings with Alexa Trent were as unfair to the girl as 
 they were unnerving to himself. Since he could n t marry 
 her, it was time to stand aside and give a better man the 
 chance and his thought admitted the ironical implication 
 that in the terms of expediency the phrase might stand for 
 Hollingsworth. 
 
 263 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 T T E dined alone and walked home to his rooms in the 
 rain. As he turned into Fifth Avenue he caught the 
 wet gleam of carriages on their way to the opera, and he 
 took the first side street, in a moment of irritation against 
 the petty restrictions that thwarted every impulse. It was 
 ridiculous to give up the opera, not because one might pos 
 sibly be bored there, but because one must pay for the 
 experiment. 
 
 In his sitting-room, the tacit connivance of the inanimate 
 had centred the lamplight on a photograph of Alexa Trent, 
 placed, in the obligatory silver frame, just where, as mem 
 ory officiously reminded him, Margaret Aubyn s picture 
 had long throned in its stead. Miss Trent s features cruelly 
 justified the usurpation. She had the kind of beauty that 
 comes of a happy accord of face and spirit. It is not given 
 to many to have the lips and eyes of their rarest mood, and 
 some women go through life behind a mask expressing only 
 their anxiety about the butcher s bill or their inability to 
 see a joke. With Miss Trent, face and mind had the same 
 high serious contour. She looked like a throned Justice by 
 some grave Florentine painter; and it seemed to Glennard 
 that her most salient attribute, or that at least to which her 
 conduct gave most consistent expression, was a kind of 
 passionate justness the intuitive feminine justness that 
 [264] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 is so much rarer than a reasoned impartiality. Circum 
 stances had tragically combined to develop this instinct 
 into a conscious habit. She had seen more than most girls 
 of the shabby side of life, of the perpetual tendency of want 
 to cramp the noblest attitude. Poverty and misfortune had 
 overhung her childhood, and she had none of the pretty 
 delusions about life that are supposed to be the crowning 
 grace of girlhood. This very competence, which gave her a 
 touching reasonableness, made Glennard s situation more 
 difficult than if he had aspired to a princess. Between them 
 they asked so little they knew so well how to make that 
 little do; but they understood also, and she especially did 
 not for a moment let him forget, that without that little 
 the future they dreamed of was impossible. 
 
 The sight of her photograph quickened Glennard s exas 
 peration. He was sick and ashamed of the part he was play 
 ing. He had loved her now for two years, with the tranquil 
 tenderness that gathers depth and volume as it nears ful 
 filment; he knew that she would wait for him but the 
 certitude was an added pang. There are times when the 
 constancy of the woman one cannot marry is almost as 
 trying as that of the woman one does not want to. 
 
 Glennard turned up his reading-lamp and stirred the 
 fire. He had a long evening before him, and he wanted to 
 crowd out thought with action. He had brought some 
 papers from his office and he spread them out on his table 
 and squared himself to the task. . . . 
 [265] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 It must have been an hour later that he found himself 
 automatically fitting a key into a locked drawer. He had 
 no more notion than a somnambulist of the mental process 
 that had led up to this action. He was just dimly aware of 
 having pushed aside the papers and the heavy calf volumes 
 that a moment before had bounded his horizon, and of 
 laying in their place, without a trace of conscious volition, 
 the parcel he had taken from the drawer. 
 
 The letters were tied in packets of thirty or forty. There 
 were a great many packets. On some of the envelopes the 
 ink was fading; on others, which bore the English post 
 mark, it was still fresh. She had been dead hardly three 
 years, and she had written, at lengthening intervals, to the 
 last. . . . 
 
 He undid one of the early packets little notes written 
 during their first acquaintance at Hillbridge. Glennard, on 
 leaving college, had begun life in his uncle s law office in 
 the old university town. It was there that, at the house of 
 her father, Professor Forth, he had first met the young 
 lady then chiefly distinguished for having, after two years 
 of a conspicuously unhappy marriage, returned to the pro 
 tection of the paternal roof. 
 
 Mrs. Aubyn was at that time an eager and somewhat 
 tragic young woman, of complex mind and undeveloped 
 manners, whom her crude experience of matrimony had 
 fitted out with a stock of generalizations that exploded like 
 bombs in the academic air of Hillbridge. In her choice of 
 [266] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 a husband she had been fortunate enough, if the paradox 
 be permitted, to light on one so signally gifted with the 
 faculty of putting himself in the wrong that her leaving 
 him had the dignity of a manifesto made her, as it were, 
 the spokeswoman of outraged wifehood. In this light she 
 was cherished by that dominant portion of Hillbridge so 
 ciety which was least indulgent to conjugal differences, and 
 which found a proportionate pleasure in being for once 
 able to feast openly on a dish liberally seasoned with the 
 outrageous. So much did this endear Mrs. Aubyn to the 
 university ladies, that they were disposed from the first to 
 allow her more latitude of speech and action than the ill- 
 used wife was generally accorded in Hillbridge, where mis 
 fortune was still regarded as a visitation designed to put 
 people in their proper place and make them feel the superi 
 ority of their neighbors. The young woman so privileged 
 combined with a kind of personal shyness an intellectual 
 audacity that was like a deflected impulse of coquetry : one 
 felt that if she had been prettier she would have had emo 
 tions instead of ideas. She was in fact even then what she 
 had always remained: a genius capable of the acutest gen 
 eralizations, but curiously undiscerning where her personal 
 susceptibilities were concerned. Her psychology failed her 
 just where it serves most women, and one felt that her 
 brains would never be a guide to her heart. Of all this, 
 however, Glennard thought little in the first year of their 
 acquaintance. He was at an age when all the gifts and 
 [267] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 graces are but so much undiscriminated food to the raven 
 ing egoism of youth. In seeking Mrs. Aubyn s company he 
 was prompted by an intuitive taste for the best as a pledge 
 of his own superiority. The sympathy of the cleverest 
 woman in Hillbridge was balm to his craving for distinc 
 tion; it was public confirmation of his secret sense that he 
 was cut out for a bigger place. It must not be understood 
 that Glennard was vain. Vanity contents itself with the 
 coarsest diet; there is no palate so fastidious as that of 
 self-distrust. To a youth of Glennard s aspirations the en 
 couragement of a clever woman stood for the symbol of all 
 success. Later, when he had begun to feel his way, to gain 
 a foothold, he would not need such support; but it served 
 to carry him lightly and easily over what is often a period 
 of insecurity and discouragement. 
 
 It would be unjust, however, to represent his interest in 
 Mrs. Aubyn as a matter of calculation. It was as instinc 
 tive as love, and it missed being love by just such a hair 
 breadth deflection from the line of beauty as had deter 
 mined the curve of Mrs. Aubyn s lips. When they met she 
 had just published her first novel, and Glennard, who after 
 ward had an ambitious man s impatience of distinguished 
 women, was young enough to be dazzled by the semi-pub 
 licity it gave her. It was the kind of book that makes 
 elderly ladies lower their voices and call each other "my 
 dear" when they furtively discuss it; and Glennard exulted 
 in the superior knowledge of the world that enabled him 
 [ 268 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 to take as a matter of course sentiments over which the 
 university shook its head. Still more delightful was it to 
 hear Mrs. Aubyn waken the echoes of academic drawing- 
 rooms with audacities surpassing those of her printed page. 
 Her intellectual independence gave a touch of comrade 
 ship to their intimacy, prolonging the illusion of college 
 friendships based on a joyous interchange of heresies. 
 Mrs. Aubyn and Glennard represented to each other the 
 augur s wink behind the Hillbridge idol: they walked to 
 gether in that light of young omniscience from which fate 
 so curiously excludes one s elders. 
 
 Husbands, who are notoriously inopportune, may even 
 die inopportunely, and this was the revenge that Mr. 
 Aubyn, some two years after her return to Hillbridge, 
 took upon his injured wife. He died precisely at the mo 
 ment when Glennard was beginning to criticise her. It was 
 not that she bored him; she did what was infinitely worse 
 she made him feel his inferiority. The sense of mental 
 equality had been gratifying to his raw ambition; but as 
 his self-knowledge defined itself, his understanding of her 
 also increased; and if man is at times indirectly flattered 
 by the moral superiority of woman, her mental ascendency 
 is extenuated by no such oblique tribute to his powers. 
 The attitude of looking up is a strain on the muscles; and 
 it was becoming more and more Glennard s opinion that 
 brains, in a woman, should be merely the obverse of 
 beauty. To beauty Mrs. Aubyn could lay no claim; and 
 [ 269 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 while she had enough prettiness to exasperate him by her 
 incapacity to make use of it, she seemed invincibly igno 
 rant of any of the little artifices whereby women contrive 
 to hide their defects and even to turn them into graces. 
 Her dress never seemed a part of her; all her clothes had 
 an impersonal air, as though they had belonged to some 
 one else and been borrowed in an emergency that had 
 somehow become chronic. She was conscious enough of her 
 deficiencies to try to amend them by rash imitations of the 
 most approved models; but no woman who does not dress 
 well intuitively will ever do so by the light of reason, and 
 Mrs. Aubyn s plagiarisms, to borrow a metaphor of her 
 trade, somehow never seemed to be incorporated with the 
 text. 
 
 Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know 
 how to do her hair. The fame that came to Mrs. Aubyn 
 with her second book left Glennard s imagination un 
 touched, or had at most the negative effect of removing 
 her still farther from the circle of his contracting sympa 
 thies. We are all the sport of time; and fate had so per 
 versely ordered the chronology of Margaret Aubyn s ro 
 mance that when her husband died Glennard felt as though 
 he had lost a friend. 
 
 It was not in his nature to be needlessly unkind; and 
 
 though he was in the impregnable position of the man who 
 
 has given a woman no more definable claim on him than 
 
 that of letting her fancy that he loves her, he would not for 
 
 [270] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 the world have accentuated his advantage by any betrayal 
 of indifference. During the first year of her widowhood their 
 friendship dragged on with halting renewals of sentiment, 
 becoming more and more a banquet of empty dishes from 
 which the covers were never removed; then Glennard went 
 to New York to live and exchanged the faded pleasures of 
 intercourse for the comparative novelty of correspondence. 
 Her letters, oddly enough, seemed at first to bring her 
 nearer than her presence. She had adopted, and she suc 
 cessfully maintained, a note as affectionately impersonal 
 as his own; she wrote ardently of her work, she questioned 
 him about his, she even bantered him on the inevitable 
 pretty girl who was certain before long to divert the cur 
 rent of his confidences. To Glennard, who was almost a 
 stranger in New York, the sight of Mrs. Aubyn s writing 
 was like a voice of reassurance in surroundings as yet 
 insufficiently aware of him. His vanity found a retrospec 
 tive enjoyment in the sentiment his heart had rejected, 
 and this factitious emotion drove him once or twice to Hill- 
 bridge, whence, after scenes of evasive tenderness, he re 
 turned dissatisfied with himself and her. As he made room 
 for himself in New York and peopled the space he had 
 cleared with the sympathies at the disposal of agreeable 
 and self-confident young men, it seemed to him natural to 
 infer that Mrs. Aubyn had refurnished in the same manner 
 the void he was not unwilling his departure should have 
 left. But in the dissolution of sentimental partnerships it is 
 [271] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 seldom that both associates are able to withdraw their 
 funds at the same time; and Glennard gradually learned 
 that he stood for the venture on which Mrs. Aubyn had 
 irretrievably staked her all. It was not the kind of figure 
 he cared to cut. He had no fancy for leaving havoc in his 
 wake and would have preferred to sow a quick growth of 
 oblivion in the spaces wasted by his unconsidered inroads; 
 but if he supplied the seed, it was clearly Mrs. Aubyn s 
 business to see to the raising of the crop. Her attitude 
 seemed indeed to throw his own reasonableness into dis- 
 tincter relief; so that they might have stood for thrift and 
 improvidence in an allegory of the affections. 
 
 It was not that Mrs. Aubyn permitted herself to be a 
 pensioner on his bounty. He knew she had no wish to keep 
 herself alive on the small change of sentiment; she simply 
 fed on her own funded passion, and the luxuries it allowed 
 her made him, even then, dimly aware that she had the 
 secret of an inexhaustible alchemy. 
 
 Their relations remained thus negatively tender till she 
 suddenly wrote him of her decision to go abroad to live. 
 Her father had died, she had no near ties in Hillbridge, 
 and London offered more scope than New York to her 
 expanding personality. She was already famous, and her 
 laurels were yet unharvested. 
 
 For a moment the news roused Glennard to a jealous 
 sense of lost opportunities. He wanted, at any rate, to 
 reassert his power before she made the final effort of escape. 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 They had not met for over a year, but of course he could 
 not let her sail without seeing her. She came to New York 
 the day before her departure, and they spent its last hours 
 together. Glennard had planned no course of action he 
 simply meant to let himself drift. They both drifted, for 
 a long time, down the languid current of reminiscence; she 
 seemed to sit passive, letting him push his way back 
 through the overgrown channels of the past. At length she 
 reminded him that they must bring their explorations to 
 an end. He rose to leave, and stood looking at her with the 
 same uncertainty in his heart. He was tired of her already 
 he was always tired of her yet he was not sure that he 
 wanted her to go. 
 
 "I may never see you again," he said, as though con 
 fidently appealing to her compassion. 
 
 Her look enveloped him. "And I shall see you always 
 always!" 
 
 "Why go then r" escaped him. 
 
 "To be nearer you," she answered; and the words dis 
 missed him like a closing door. 
 
 The door was never to reopen; but through its narrow 
 crack Glennard, as the years went on, became more and 
 more conscious of an inextinguishable light directing its 
 small ray toward the past which consumed so little of his 
 own commemorative oil. The reproach was taken from 
 this thought by Mrs. Aubyn s gradual translation into 
 terms of universality. In becoming a personage she so nat- 
 [ 273 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 urally ceased to be a person that Glennard could almost 
 look back to his explorations of her spirit as on a visit to 
 some famous shrine, immortalized, but in a sense dese 
 crated, by popular veneration. 
 
 Her letters from London continued to come with the 
 same tender punctuality; but the altered conditions of her 
 life, the vistas of new relationships disclosed by every 
 phrase, made her communications as impersonal as a piece 
 of journalism. It was as though the state, the world, in 
 deed, had taken her off his hands, assuming the mainte 
 nance of a temperament that had long exhausted his 
 slender store of reciprocity. 
 
 In the retrospective light shed by the letters he was 
 blinded to their specific meaning. He was not a man who 
 concerned himself with literature, and they had been to 
 him, at first, simply the extension of her brilliant talk, 
 later the dreaded vehicle of a tragic importunity. He knew, 
 of course, that they were wonderful; that, unlike the au 
 thors who give their essence to the public and keep only a 
 dry rind for their friends, Mrs. Aubyn had stored of her 
 rarest vintage for this hidden sacrament of tenderness. 
 Sometimes, indeed, he had been oppressed, humiliated 
 almost, by the multiplicity of her allusions, the wide scope 
 of her interests, her persistence in forcing her super 
 abundance of thought and emotion into the shallow re 
 ceptacle of his sympathy; but he had never thought of the 
 letters objectively, as the production of a distinguished 
 [274] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 woman; had never measured the literary significance of 
 her oppressive prodigality. He was almost frightened now 
 at the wealth in his hands; the obligation of her love had 
 never weighed on him like this gift of her imagination: it 
 was as though he had accepted from her something to 
 which even a reciprocal tenderness could not have justified 
 his claim. 
 
 He sat a long time staring at the scattered pages on his 
 desk; and in the sudden realization of what they meant 
 he could almost fancy some alchemistic process changing 
 them to gold as he stared. 
 
 He had the sense of not being alone in the room, of the 
 presence of another self observing from without the stir 
 ring of sub-conscious impulses that sent flushes of humilia 
 tion to his forehead. At length he stood up, and with the 
 gesture of a man who wishes to give outward expression to 
 his purpose to establish, as it were, a moral alibi swept 
 the letters into a heap and carried them toward the grate. 
 But it would have taken too long to burn all the packets. 
 He turned back to the table and one by one fitted the pages 
 into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters and put 
 them back into the locked drawer. 
 
 275 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 III 
 
 TT was one of the laws of Glennard s intercourse with 
 Miss Trent that he always went to see her the day 
 after he had resolved to give her up. There was a special 
 charm about the moments thus snatched from the jaws 
 of renunciation; and his sense of their significance was on 
 this occasion so keen that he hardly noticed the added 
 gravity of her welcome. 
 
 His feeling for her had become so vital a part of him 
 that her nearness had the quality of imperceptibly read 
 justing his point of view, of making the jumbled phenom 
 ena of experience fall at once into a rational perspective. 
 In this redistribution of values the sombre retrospect of 
 the previous evening shrank to a mere cloud on the edge 
 of consciousness. Perhaps the only service an unloved 
 woman can render the man she loves is to enhance and 
 prolong his illusions about her rival. It was the fate of 
 Margaret Aubyn s memory to serve as a foil to Miss 
 Trent s presence, and never had the poor lady thrown her 
 successor into more vivid relief. 
 
 Miss Trent had the charm of still waters that are felt 
 to be renewed by rapid currents. Her attention spread a 
 tranquil surface to the demonstrations of others, and it 
 was only in days of storm that one felt the pressure of the 
 tides. This inscrutable composure was perhaps her chief 
 [276] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 grace in Glennard s eyes. Reserve, in some natures, implies 
 merely the locking of empty rooms or the dissimulation of 
 
 awkward encumbrances; but Miss Trent s reticence was 
 
 f 
 
 to Glennard like the closed door to the sanctuary, and his 
 certainty of divining the hidden treasure made him content 
 to remain outside in the happy expectancy of the neophyte. 
 
 "You did n t come to the opera last night," she began, 
 in the tone that seemed always rather to record a fact than 
 to offer a reflection on it. 
 
 He answered with a discouraged gesture. "What was the 
 use ? We could n t have talked." 
 
 "Not as well as here," she assented; adding, after a 
 meditative pause, "As you did n t come I talked to Aunt 
 Virginia instead." 
 
 "Ah!" he returned, the fact being hardly striking 
 enough to detach him from the contemplation of her hands, 
 which had fallen, as was their wont, into an attitude full of 
 plastic possibilities. One felt them to be hands that, moving 
 only to some purpose, were capable of intervals of serene 
 inaction. 
 
 "We had a long talk," Miss Trent went on; and she 
 waited again before adding, with the increased absence of 
 stress that marked her graver communications, "Aunt 
 Virginia wants me to go abroad with her." 
 
 Glennard looked up with a start. "Abroad? When?" 
 
 "Now next month. To be gone two years." 
 
 He permitted himself a movement of tender derision. 
 [ 2771 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Does she really? Well, I want you to go abroad with me 
 for any number of years. Which offer do you accept?" 
 
 "Only one of them seems to require immediate consid 
 eration," she returned with a smile. 
 
 Glennard looked at her again. "You re not thinking 
 of it?" 
 
 Her gaze dropped and she unclasped her hands. Her 
 movements were so rare that they might have been said 
 to italicize her words. "Aunt Virginia talked to me very 
 seriously. It will be a great relief to mother and the others 
 to have me provided for in that way for two years. I must 
 think of that, you know." She glanced down at her gown, 
 which, under a renovated surface, dated back to the first 
 days of Glennard s wooing. "I try not to cost much but 
 I do." 
 
 "Good Lord!" Glennard groaned. 
 
 They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argu 
 ment. "As the eldest, you know, I m bound to consider 
 these things. Women are such a burden. Jim does what he 
 can for mother, but with his own children to provide for 
 it is n t very much. You see we re all poor together." 
 
 "Your aunt is n t. She might help your mother." 
 
 "She does in her own way." 
 
 "Exactly that s the rich relation all over! You may 
 be miserable in any way you like, but if you re to be 
 happy, you must be so in her way and in her old gowns." 
 
 "I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia s old gowns," 
 Miss Trent interposed. 
 
 [ 278] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Abroad, you mean? * 
 
 "I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my 
 going abroad will help." 
 
 "Of course I see that. And I see your considerateness 
 in putting its advantages negatively." 
 
 "Negatively?" 
 
 "In dwelling simply on what the going will take you 
 from, not on what it will bring you to. It means a lot to a 
 woman, of course, to get away from a life like this." He 
 summed up in a disparaging glance the background of in 
 digent furniture. "The question is how you 11 like coming 
 back to it." 
 
 She seemed to accept the full consequences of his 
 thought. "I only know I don t like leaving it." 
 
 He flung back sombrely, "You don t even put it con 
 ditionally then?" 
 
 Her gaze deepened. "On what?" 
 
 He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came 
 back and paused before her. "On the alternative of 
 marrying me." 
 
 The slow color even her blushes seemed deliberate 
 rose to her lower lids; her lips stirred, but the words re 
 solved themselves into a smile and she waited. 
 
 He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the 
 man whose nervous exasperation escapes through his 
 muscles. 
 
 "And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big 
 practice!" 
 
 [279] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Her eyes triumphed for him. "In less !" 
 
 "The cursed irony of it ! What do I care for the man I 
 shall be then ? It s slaving one s life away for a stranger !" 
 He took her hands abruptly. "You 11 go to Cannes, I sup 
 pose, or Monte Carlo ? I heard Hollingsworth say to-day 
 that he meant to take his yacht over to the Mediter 
 ranean " 
 
 She released herself. "If you think that " 
 
 "I don t. I almost wish I did. It would be easier, I mean. * 
 He broke off incoherently. "I believe your Aunt Virginia 
 does, though. She somehow connotes Hollingsworth and 
 the Mediterranean." He caught her hands again. "Alexa 
 if we could manage a little hole somewhere out of 
 town?" 
 
 "Could we?" she sighed, half yielding. 
 
 "In one of those places where they make jokes about 
 the mosquitoes," he pressed her. "Could you get on with 
 one servant ? " 
 
 "Could you get on without varnished boots?" 
 
 "Promise me you won t go, then !" 
 
 "What are you thinking of, Stephen?" 
 
 "I don t know," he stammered, the question giving un 
 expected form to his intention. "It s all in the air yet, of 
 course; but I picked up a tip the other day " 
 
 "You re not speculating?" she cried, with a kind of 
 superstitious terror. 
 
 "Lord, no. This is a sure thing I almost wish it was n t; 
 [ 280] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 I mean if I can work it " He had a sudden vision of the 
 comprehensiveness of the temptation. If only he had been 
 less sure of Dinslow ! His assurance gave the situation the 
 base element of safety. 
 
 "I don t understand you," she faltered. 
 
 "Trust me, instead!" he adjured her with sudden 
 energy; and turning on her abruptly, "If you go, you 
 know, you go free," he concluded. 
 
 She drew back, paling a little. "Why do you make it 
 harder for me?" 
 
 "To make it easier for myself," he retorted. 
 
 IV 
 
 ^ I ^HE next afternoon Glennard, leaving his office earlier 
 than usual, turned, on his way home, into one of the 
 public libraries. 
 
 He had the place to himself at that closing hour, and the 
 librarian was able to give an undivided attention to his 
 tentative request for letters collections of letters. The 
 librarian suggested Walpole. 
 
 "I meant women women s letters." 
 
 The librarian proffered Hannah More and Miss Mar- 
 tineau. 
 
 Glennard cursed his own inarticulateness. "I mean let 
 ters to to some one person a man; their husband or " 
 
 "Ah," said the inspired librarian, "Eloise and Abailard." 
 [281] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Well something a little nearer, perhaps," said Glen- 
 nard, with lightness. "Did n t Merimee " 
 
 "The lady s letters, in that case, were not published." 
 
 "Of course not," said Glennard, vexed at his blunder. 
 
 "There are George Sand s letters to Flaubert." 
 
 "Ah!" Glennard hesitated. "Was she were they?" 
 He chafed at his own ignorance of the sentimental by-paths 
 of literature. 
 
 "If you want love-letters, perhaps some of the French 
 eighteenth-century correspondences might suit you bet 
 ter Mile. Ai sse or Madame de Sabran " 
 
 But Glennard insisted. "I want something modern 
 English or American. I want to look something up," he 
 lamely concluded. 
 
 The librarian could only suggest George Eliot. 
 
 "Well, give me some of the French things, then and 
 I 11 have Merimee s letters. It was the woman who pub 
 lished them, was n t it?" 
 
 He caught up his armful, transferring it, on the door 
 step, to a cab which carried him to his rooms. He dined 
 alone, hurriedly, at a small restaurant near by, and re 
 turned at once to his books. 
 
 Late that night, as he undressed, he wondered what 
 contemptible impulse had forced from him his last words 
 to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough to interfere with the 
 girl s chances by hanging about her to the obvious exclu 
 sion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his 
 [ 282 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 weakness by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. 
 He saw himself sinking from depth to depth of sentimental 
 cowardice in his reluctance to renounce his hold on her; 
 and it filled him with self-disgust to think that the high 
 est feeling of which he supposed himself capable was blent 
 with such base elements. 
 
 His awakening was hardly cheered by the sight of her 
 writing. He tore her note open and took in the few lines 
 she seldom exceeded the first page with the lucidity of 
 apprehension that is the forerunner of evil. 
 
 "My aunt sails on Saturday and I must give her my 
 answer the day after to-morrow. Please don t come till 
 then I want to think the question over by myself. I 
 know I ought to go. Won t you help me to be reasonable ? " 
 
 It was settled, then. Well, he would help her to be rea 
 sonable; he would n t stand in her way; he would let her 
 go. For twc years he had been living some other, luckier 
 man s life; the time had come when he must drop back 
 into his own. He no longer tried to look ahead, to grope 
 his way through the endless labyrinth of his material diffi 
 culties; a sense of dull resignation closed in on him like a 
 fog. 
 
 "Hullo, Glennard !" a voice said, as an electric car, late 
 that afternoon, dropped him at an uptown corner. 
 
 He looked up and met the interrogative smile of Barton 
 Flamel, who stood on the curbstone watching the retreat- 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 ing car with the eye of a man philosophic enough to re 
 member that it will be followed by another. 
 
 Glennard felt his usual impulse of pleasure at meeting 
 Flamel; but it was not in this case curtailed by the reaction 
 of contempt that habitually succeeded it. Probably even 
 the few men who had known Flamel since his youth could 
 have given no good reason for the vague mistrust that he 
 inspired. Some people are judged by their actions, others 
 by their ideas; and perhaps the shortest way of defining 
 Flamel is to say that his well-known leniency of view was 
 vaguely divined to include himself. Simple minds may have 
 resented the discovery that his opinions were based on his 
 perceptions; but there was certainly no more definite 
 charge against him than that implied in the doubt as to 
 how he would behave in an emergency, and his company 
 was looked upon as one of those mildly unwholesome dis 
 sipations to which the prudent may occasionally yield. It 
 now offered itself to Glennard as an easy escape from the 
 obsession of moral problems, which somehow could no 
 more be worn in Flamel s presence than a surplice in the 
 street. 
 
 "Where are you going? To the club?" Flamel asked; 
 adding, as the younger man assented, "Why not come to 
 my studio instead ? You 11 see one bore instead of twenty." 
 
 The apartment which Flamel described as his studio 
 showed, as its one claim to the designation, a perennially 
 empty easel, the rest of its space being filled with the evi- 
 [ 284 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 dences of a comprehensive dilettanteism. Against this 
 background, which seemed the visible expression of its 
 owner s intellectual tolerance, rows of fine books detached 
 themselves with a prominence showing them to be Flamel s 
 chief care. 
 
 Glennard glanced with the eye of untrained curiosity at 
 the lines of warm-toned morocco, while his host busied 
 himself with the uncorking of Apollinaris. 
 
 "You ve got a splendid lot of books," he said. 
 
 "They re fairly decent," the other assented, in the curt 
 tone of the collector who will not talk of his passion for 
 fear of talking of nothing else; then, as Glennard, his hands 
 in his pockets, began to stroll perfunctorily down the long 
 line of bookcases "Some men," Flamel irresistibly added, 
 "think of books merely as tools, others as tooling. I m 
 between the two; there are days when I use them as 
 scenery, other days when I want them as society; so that, 
 as you see, my library represents a makeshift compromise 
 between looks and brains, and the collectors look down on 
 me almost as much as the students." 
 
 Glennard, without answering, was mechanically taking 
 one book after another from the shelves. His hands slipped 
 curiously over the smooth covers and the noiseless sub 
 sidence of opening pages. Suddenly he came on a thin 
 volume of faded manuscript. 
 
 "What s this ?" he asked with a listless sense of wonder. 
 
 "Ah, you re at my manuscript shelf. I ve been going 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 in for that sort of thing lately." Flamel came up and 
 looked over his shoulders. "That s a bit of Stendhal one 
 of the Italian stories and here are some letters of Balzac 
 to Madame Surville." 
 
 Glennard took the book with sudden eagerness. "Who 
 was Madame Surville?" 
 
 "His sister." He was conscious that Flamel was looking 
 at him with the smile that was like an interrogation point. 
 "I did n t know you cared for this kind of thing." 
 
 "I don t at least I ve never had the chance. Have you 
 many collections of letters?" 
 
 "Lord, no very few. I m just beginning, and most of 
 the interesting ones are out of my reach. Here s a queer 
 little collection, though the rarest thing I ve got half a 
 dozen of Shelley s letters to Harriet Westbrook. I had a 
 devil of a time getting them a lot of collectors were after 
 them." 
 
 Glennard, taking the volume from his hand, glanced 
 with a kind of repugnance at the interleaving of yellow 
 crisscrossed sheets. "She was the one who drowned herself, 
 was n t she?" 
 
 Flamel nodded. "I suppose that little episode adds about 
 fifty per cent, to their value," he said meditatively. 
 
 Glennard laid the book down. He wondered why he had 
 joined Flamel. He was in no humor to be amused by the 
 older man s talk, and a recrudescence of personal misery 
 rose about him like an icy tide. 
 [ 286] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "I believe I must take myself off," he said. "I *d for 
 gotten an engagement." 
 
 He turned to go; but almost at the same moment he 
 was conscious of a duality of intention wherein his appar 
 ent wish to leave revealed itself as a last effort of the will 
 against the overmastering desire to stay and unbosom him 
 self to Flamel. 
 
 The older man, as though divining the conflict, laid a 
 detaining pressure on his arm. 
 
 "Won t the engagement keep? Sit down and try one of 
 these cigars. I don t often have the luck of seeing you here." 
 
 "I m rather driven just now," said Glennard vaguely. 
 He found himself seated again, and Flamel had pushed to 
 his side a low stand holding a bottle of Apollinaris and a 
 decanter of cognac. 
 
 Flamel, thrown back in his capacious arm-chair, sur 
 veyed him through a cloud of smoke with the comfortable 
 tolerance of the man to whom no inconsistencies need be 
 explained. Connivance was implicit in the air. It was the 
 kind of atmosphere in which the outrageous loses its edge. 
 Glennard felt a gradual relaxing of his nerves. 
 
 "I suppose one has to pay a lot for letters like that?" 
 he heard himself asking, with a glance in the direction of 
 the volume he had laid aside. 
 
 "Oh, so-so depends on circumstances." Flamel viewed 
 him thoughtfully. "Are you thinking of collecting ?" 
 
 Glennard laughed. "Lord, no. The other way round." 
 [287] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Selling?" 
 
 "Oh, I hardly know. I was thinking of a poor chap " 
 
 Flamel filled the pause with a nod of interest. 
 
 "A poor chap I used to know who died he died last 
 year and who left me a lot of letters, letters he thought 
 a great deal of he was fond of me and left em to me out 
 right, with the idea, I suppose, that they might benefit me 
 somehow I don t know I m not much up on such 
 things " He reached his hand to the tall glass his host 
 had filled. 
 
 "A collection of autograph letters, eh ? Any big names ? " 
 
 "Oh, only one name. They re all letters written to him 
 by one person, you understand; a woman, in fact " 
 
 "Oh, a woman," said Flamel negligently. 
 
 Glennard was nettled by his obvious loss of interest. "I 
 rather think they d attract a good deal of notice if they 
 were published." 
 
 Flamel still looked uninterested. "Love-letters, I sup 
 pose?" 
 
 "Oh, just the letters a woman would write to a man 
 she knew well. They were tremendous friends, he and she." 
 
 "And she wrote a clever letter?" 
 
 "Clever? It was Margaret Aubyn." 
 
 A great silence filled the room. It seemed to Glennard 
 that the words had burst from him as blood gushes from a 
 wound. 
 
 "Great Scott!" said Flamel sitting up. "A collection 
 [ 288 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 of Margaret Aubyn s letters? Did you say you had 
 them?" 
 
 "They were left me by my friend." 
 
 "I see. Was he well, no matter. You re to be congrat 
 ulated, at any rate. What are you going to do with them ? " 
 
 Glennard stood up with a sense of weariness in all his 
 bones. "Oh, I don t know. I have n t thought much about 
 it. I just happened to see that some fellow was writing her 
 life" 
 
 "Joslin; yes. You did n t think of giving them to him? * 
 
 Glennard lounged across the room and stood staring up 
 at a bronze Bacchus who drooped his garlanded head above 
 the pediment of an Italian cabinet. "What ought I to do? 
 You re just the fellow to advise me." He felt the blood in 
 his cheek as he spoke. 
 
 Flamel sat with meditative eye. "What do you want to 
 do with them?" he asked. 
 
 "I want to publish them," said Glennard, swinging 
 round with sudden energy "If I can 
 
 "If you can? They re yours, you say?" 
 
 "They re mine fast enough. There s no one to prevent 
 I mean there are no restrictions " he was arrested by 
 the sense that these accumulated proofs of impunity might 
 precisely stand as the strongest check on his action. 
 
 "And Mrs. Aubyn had no family, I believe?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then I don t see who s to interfere," said Flamel, 
 studying his cigar-tip. 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Glennard had turned his unseeing stare on an ecstatic 
 Saint Catherine framed in tarnished gilding. 
 
 "It s just this way," he began again, with an effort. 
 "When letters are as personal as as these of my friend s. 
 . . . Well, I don t mind telling you that the cash would 
 make a heap of difference to me; such a lot that it rather 
 obscures my judgment the fact is, if I could lay my hand 
 on a few thousands now I could get into a big thing, and 
 without appreciable risk; and I d like to know whether 
 you think I d be justified under the circumstances. . . ." 
 He paused with a dry throat. It seemed to him at the 
 moment that it would be impossible for him ever to sink 
 lower in his own estimation. He was in truth less ashamed 
 of weighing the temptation than of submitting his scruples 
 to a man like Flamel, and affecting to appeal to sentiments 
 of delicacy on the absence of which he had consciously 
 reckoned. But he had reached a point where each word 
 seemed to compel another, as each wave in a stream is 
 forced forward by the pressure behind it; and before Flamel 
 could speak he had faltered out "You don t think people 
 could say . . . could criticise the man. . . ." 
 
 "But the man s dead, is n t he?" 
 
 "He s dead yes; but can I assume the responsibility 
 without " 
 
 Flamel hesitated; and almost immediately Glennard s 
 scruples gave way to irritation. If at this hour Flamel were 
 to affect an inopportune reluctance ! 
 [290] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 The older man s answer reassured him. "Why need you 
 assume any responsibility? Your name won t appear, of 
 course; and as to your friend s, I don t see why his should 
 either. He was n t a celebrity himself, I suppose?" 
 
 "No, no." 
 
 "Then the letters can be addressed to Mr. Blank. 
 Does n t that make it all right ? " 
 
 Glennard s hesitation revived. "For the public, yes. 
 But I don t see that it alters the case for me. The question 
 is, ought I to publish them at all ? " 
 
 "Of course you ought to." Flamel spoke with invigor 
 ating emphasis. "I doubt if you d be justified in keeping 
 them back. Anything of Margaret Aubyn s is more or less 
 public property by this time. She s too great for any one 
 of us. I was only wondering how you could use them to the 
 best advantage to yourself, I mean. How many are 
 there?" 
 
 "Oh, a lot; perhaps a hundred I haven t counted. 
 There may be more. ..." 
 
 " Gad ! What a haul ! When were they written ? " 
 
 "I don t know that is they corresponded for years. 
 What s the odds ? " He moved toward his hat with a vague 
 impulse of flight. 
 
 "It all counts," said Flamel imperturbably. "A long 
 
 correspondence one, I mean, that covers a great deal of 
 
 time is obviously worth more than if the same number of 
 
 letters had been written within a year. At any rate, you 
 
 [291] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 won t give them to Joslin ? They d fill a book, would n t 
 they?" 
 
 "I suppose so. I don t know how much it takes to fill a 
 book." 
 
 "Not love-letters, you say?" 
 
 "Why?" flashed from Glennard. 
 
 "Oh, nothing only the big public is sentimental, and 
 if they were why, you could get any money for Margaret 
 Aubyn s love-letters." 
 
 Glennard was silent. 
 
 "Are the letters interesting in themselves ? I mean apart 
 from the association with her name?" 
 
 "I m no judge." Glennard took up his hat and thrust 
 himself into his overcoat. "I dare say I sha n t do anything 
 about it. And, Flamel you won t mention this to any 
 one?" 
 
 "Lord, no. Well, I congratulate you. You ve got a big 
 thing." Flamel was smiling at him from the hearth. 
 
 Glennard, on the threshold, forced a response to the 
 smile, while he questioned with loitering indifference 
 "Financially, eh?" 
 
 "Rather; I should say so." 
 
 Glennard s hand lingered on the knob. "How much 
 should you say ? You know about such things." 
 
 "Oh, I should have to see the letters; but I should say 
 well, if you ve got enough to fill a book and they re 
 fairly readable, and the book is brought out at the right 
 [292] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 time say ten thousand down from the publisher, and pos 
 sibly one or two more in royalties. If you got the publishers 
 bidding against each other you might do even better; but 
 of course I m talking in the dark." 
 
 "Of course," said Glennard, with sudden dizziness. His 
 hand had slipped from the knob and he stood staring down 
 at the exotic spirals of the Persian rug beneath his feet. 
 
 "I d have to see the letters," Flamel repeated. 
 
 "Of course you d have to see them. . . ." Glennard 
 stammered; and, without turning, he flung over his 
 shoulder an inarticulate " Good-bye. . . ." 
 
 I A HE little house, as Glennard strolled up to it between 
 the trees, seemed no more than a gay tent pitched 
 against the sunshine. It had the crispness of a freshly 
 starched summer gown, and the geraniums on the veranda 
 bloomed as simultaneously as the flowers in a bonnet. 
 The garden was prospering absurdly. Seed they had sown 
 at random amid laughing counter-charges of incompe 
 tence had shot up in fragrant defiance of their blunders. 
 He smiled to see the clematis unfolding its punctual wings 
 about the porch. The tiny lawn was smooth as a shaven 
 cheek, and a crimson rambler mounted to the nursery 
 window of a baby who never cried. A breeze shook the 
 awning above the tea-table, and his wife, as he drew near, 
 [ 293 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 could be seen bending above a kettle that was just about 
 to boil. So vividly did the whole scene suggest the painted 
 bliss of a stage setting, that it would have been hardly sur 
 prising to see her step forward among the flowers and trill 
 out her virtuous happiness from the veranda rail. 
 
 The stale heat of the long day in town, the dusty pro 
 miscuity of the suburban train, were now but the requisite 
 foil to an evening of scented breezes and tranquil talk. 
 They had been married more than a year, and each home 
 coming still reflected the freshness of their first day to 
 gether. If, indeed, their happiness had a flaw, it was in 
 resembling too closely the bright impermanence of their 
 surroundings. Their love as yet was but the gay tent of 
 holiday-makers. 
 
 His wife looked up with a smile. The country life suited 
 her, and her beauty had gained depth from a stillness in 
 which certain faces might have grown opaque. 
 
 "Are you very tired?" she asked, pouring his tea. 
 
 "Just enough to enjoy this." He rose from the chair in 
 which he had thrown himself and bent over the tray for 
 his cream. "You ve had a visitor?" he commented, no 
 ticing a half-empty cup beside her own. 
 
 "Only Mr. Flamel," she said indifferently. 
 
 "Flamel? Again?" 
 
 She answered without show of surprise. "He left just 
 now. His yacht is down at Laurel Bay and he borrowed a 
 trap of the Dreshams to drive over here." 
 [294] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Glennard made no comment, and she went on, leaning 
 her head back against the cushions of her bamboo seat, 
 "He wants us to go for a sail with him next Sunday." 
 
 Glennard meditatively stirred his tea. He was trying to 
 think of the most natural and unartificial thing to say, 
 and his voice seemed to come from the outside, as though 
 he were speaking behind a marionette. "Do you want to ?" 
 
 "Just as you please," she said compliantly. No affecta 
 tion of indifference could have been as baffling as her com 
 pliance. Glennard, of late, was beginning to feel that the 
 surface which, a year ago, he had taken for a sheet of clear 
 glass, might, after all, be a mirror reflecting merely his own 
 conception of what lay behind it. 
 
 "Do you like Flamel?" he suddenly asked; to which, 
 still engaged with her tea, she returned the feminine answer 
 "I thought you did." 
 
 "I do, of course," he agreed, vexed at his own incorrigi 
 ble tendency to magnify Flamel s importance by hovering 
 about the topic. "A sail would be rather jolly; let s go." 
 
 She made no reply and he drew forth the rolled-up eve 
 ning papers which he had thrust into his pocket on leaving 
 the train. As he smoothed them out his own countenance 
 seemed to undergo the same process. He ran his eye down 
 the list of stocks, and Flamel s importunate personality re 
 ceded behind the rows of figures pushing forward into 
 notice like so many bearers of good news. Glennard s in 
 vestments were flowering like his garden: the dryest shares 
 [295] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 blossomed into dividends and a golden harvest awaited 
 his sickle. 
 
 He glanced at his wife with the tranquil air of a man 
 who digests good luck as naturally as the dry ground 
 absorbs a shower. "Things are looking uncommonly well. 
 I believe we shall be able to go to town for two or three 
 months next winter if we can find something cheap." 
 
 She smiled luxuriously : it was pleasant to be able to say, 
 with an air of balancing relative advantages, "Really, on 
 the baby s account I shall be almost sorry; but if we do go, 
 there s Kate Erskine s house ... she 11 let us have it for 
 almost nothing. . . ." 
 
 "Well, write her about it," he recommended, his eye 
 travelling on in search of the weather report. He had 
 turned to the wrong page; and suddenly a line of black 
 characters leapt out at him as from an ambush. 
 
 "MARGARET AUBTN S LETTERS. 
 
 "Two volumes. Out To-day. First Edition of five thousand 
 "sold out before leaving the press. Second Edition ready next 
 "week. The Book of the Year. . . ." 
 
 He looked up stupidly. His wife still sat with her head 
 thrown back, her pure profile detached against the cush 
 ions. She was smiling a little over the prospect his last 
 words had opened. Behind her head shivers of sun and 
 shade ran across the striped awning. A row of maples and 
 a privet hedge hid their neighbor s gables, giving them 
 [ 296 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 undivided possession of their leafy half-acre; and life, a 
 moment before, had been like their plot of ground, shut off, 
 hedged in from importunities, impenetrably his and hers. 
 Now it seemed to him that every maple-leaf, every privet- 
 bud, was a relentless human gaze, pressing close upon their 
 privacy. It was as though they sat in a brightly lit room, 
 uncurtained from a darkness full of hostile watchers. ... 
 His wife still smiled; and her unconsciousness of danger 
 seemed in some horrible way to put her beyond the reach 
 of rescue. . . . 
 
 He had not known that it would be like this. After the 
 first odious weeks, spent in preparing the letters for pub 
 lication, in submitting them to Flamel, and in negotiating 
 with the publishers, the transaction had dropped out of his 
 consciousness into that unvisited limbo to which we rele 
 gate the deeds we would rather not have done but have no 
 notion of undoing. From the moment he had obtained Miss 
 Trent s promise not to sail with her aunt he had tried to 
 imagine himself irrevocably committed. After that, he 
 argued, his first duty was to her she had become his con 
 science. The sum obtained from the publishers by FlamePs 
 manipulations, and opportunely transferred to Dinslow s 
 successful venture, already yielded a return which, com 
 bined with Glennard s professional earnings, took the 
 edge of compulsion from their way of living, making it 
 appear the expression of a graceful preference for sim 
 plicity. It was the mitigated poverty which can subscribe 
 f 2971 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 to a review or two and have a few flowers on the dinner- 
 table. And already in a small way Glennard was beginning 
 to feel the magnetic quality of prosperity. Clients who had 
 passed his door in the hungry days sought it out now that 
 it bore the name of a successful man. It was understood 
 that a small inheritance, cleverly invested, was the source 
 of his fortune; and there was a feeling that a man who 
 could do so well for himself was likely to know how to turn 
 over other people s money. 
 
 But it was in the more intimate reward of his wife s 
 happiness that Glennard tasted the full flavor of success. 
 Coming out of conditions so narrow that those he offered 
 her seemed spacious, she fitted into her new life without 
 any of those manifest efforts at adjustment that are as 
 sore to a husband s pride as the critical rearrangement of 
 the bridal furniture. She had given him, instead, the deli 
 cate pleasure of watching her expand like a sea-creature 
 restored to its element, stretching out the atrophied ten 
 tacles of girlish vanity and enjoyment to the rising tide of 
 opportunity. And somehow in the windowless inner cell 
 of his consciousness where self-criticism cowered Glen- 
 nard s course seemed justified by its merely material suc 
 cess. How could such a crop of innocent blessedness have 
 sprung from tainted soil ? . . . 
 
 Now he had the injured sense of a man entrapped into 
 a disadvantageous bargain. He had not known it would be 
 like this; and a dull anger gathered at his heart. Anger 
 [ 298 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 against whom ? Against his wife, for not knowing what he 
 suffered ? Against Flamel, for being the unconscious instru 
 ment of his wrong-doing ? Or against that mute memory to 
 which his own act had suddenly given a voice of accusa 
 tion? Yes, that was it; and his punishment henceforth 
 would be the presence, the unescapable presence, of the 
 woman he had so persistently evaded. She would always 
 be there now. It was as though he had married her instead 
 of the other. It was what she had always wanted to be 
 with him and she had gained her point at last. . . . ^| 
 
 He sprang up, as though in an impulse of flight. . , , 
 The sudden movement lifted his wife s lids, and she 
 asked, in the incurious voice of the woman whose life is 
 enclosed in a magic circle of prosperity "Any news?" 
 
 "No none " he said, roused to a sense of immediate 
 peril. The papers lay scattered at his feet what if she 
 were to see them ? He stretched his arm to gather them up, 
 but his next thought showed him the futility of such con 
 cealment. The same advertisement would appear every 
 day, for weeks to come, in every newspaper; how could he 
 prevent her seeing it ? He could not always be hiding the 
 papers from her. . . . Well, and what if she did see it ? It 
 would signify nothing to her; the chances were that she 
 would never even read the book. ... As she ceased to be 
 an element of fear in his calculations the distance between 
 them seemed to lessen and he took her again, as it were, 
 into the circle of his conjugal protection. . . . Yet a mo- 
 f 2991 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 ment before he had almost hated her! ... He laughed 
 aloud at his senseless terrors. . . . He was off his balance, 
 decidedly. . . . 
 
 "What are you laughing at?" she asked. 
 
 He explained, elaborately, that he was laughing at the 
 recollection of an old woman in the train, an old woman 
 with a lot of bundles, who could n t find her ticket. . . . 
 But somehow, in the telling, the humor of the story seemed 
 to evaporate, and he felt the conventionality of her smile. 
 He glanced at his watch. "Is n t it time to dress?" 
 
 She rose with serene reluctance. "It s a pity to go in. 
 The garden looks so lovely." 
 
 They lingered side by side, surveying their domain. 
 There was not space in it, at this hour, for the shadow of 
 the elm tree in the angle of the hedge: it crossed the lawn, 
 cut the flower-border in two, and ran up the side of the 
 house to the nursery window. She bent to flick a cater 
 pillar from the honeysuckle; then, as they turned indoors, 
 "If we mean to go on the yacht next Sunday," she sug 
 gested, "ought n t you to let Mr. Flamel know?" 
 
 Glennard s exasperation deflected suddenly. "Of course 
 I shall let him know. You always seem to imply that I m 
 going to do something rude to Flamel." 
 
 The words reverberated through her silence; she had -a 
 
 way of thus leaving one space in which to contemplate 
 
 one s folly at arm s length. Glennard turned on his heel 
 
 and went upstairs. As he dropped into a chair before his 
 
 [ 300] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 dressing-table, he said to himself that in the last hour he 
 had sounded the depths of his humiliation, and that the 
 lowest dregs of it, the very bottom-slime, was the hateful 
 necessity of having always, as long as the two men lived, 
 to be civil to Barton Flamel. 
 
 VI 
 
 I ^HE week in town had been sultry, and the men, in 
 the Sunday emancipation of white flannel and duck, 
 filled the deck chairs of the yacht with their outstretched 
 apathy, following, through a mist of cigarette smoke, the 
 flitting inconsequences of the women. The party was a 
 small one Flamel had few intimate friends but com 
 posed of more heterogeneous atoms than the little pools 
 into which society usually runs. The reaction from the 
 chief episode of his earlier life had bred in Glennard an 
 uneasy distaste for any kind of personal saliency. Clever 
 ness was useful in business; but in society it seemed to him 
 as futile as the sham cascades formed by a stream that 
 might have been used to drive a mill. He liked the collective 
 point of view that goes with the civilized uniformity of 
 dress clothes, and his wife s attitude implied the same pref 
 erence; yet they found themselves slipping more and more 
 into FlameFs intimacy. Alexa had once or twice said that 
 she enjoyed meeting clever people; but her enjoyment took 
 the negative form of a smiling receptivity; and Glennard 
 [301 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 felt a growing preference for the kind of people who have 
 their thinking done for them by the community. 
 
 Still, the deck of the yacht was a pleasant refuge from 
 the heat on shore, and his wife s profile, serenely projected 
 against the changing blue, lay on his retina like a cool 
 hand on the nerves. He had never been more impressed 
 by the kind of absoluteness that lifted her beauty above 
 the transient effects of other women, making the most 
 harmonious face seem an accidental collocation of features. 
 
 The ladies who directly suggested this comparison were 
 of a kind accustomed to take similar risks with more grat 
 ifying results. Mrs. Armiger had in fact long been the tri 
 umphant alternative of those who couldn t "see" Alexa 
 Glennard s looks; and Mrs. Touchett s claims to consider 
 ation were founded on that distribution of effects which is 
 the wonder of those who admire a highly cultivated coun 
 try. The third lady of the trio which Glennard s fancy had 
 put te such unflattering uses was bound by circumstances 
 to support the claims of the other two. This was Mrs. 
 Dresham, the wife of the editor of the Radiator. Mrs. 
 Dresham was a lady who had rescued herself from social 
 obscurity by assuming the r61e of her husband s exponent 
 and interpreter; and Dresham s leisure being devoted to 
 the cultivation of remarkable women, his wife s attitude 
 committed her to the public celebration of their remark- 
 ableness. For the conceivable tedium of this duty, Mrs. 
 Dresham was repaid by the fact that there were people 
 [302] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 who took her for a remarkable woman; and who in turn 
 probably purchased similar distinction with the small 
 change of her reflected importance. As to the other ladies 
 of the party, they were simply the wives of some of the 
 men the kind of women who expect to be talked to col 
 lectively and to have their questions left unanswered. 
 
 Mrs. Armiger, the latest embodiment of Dresham s in 
 stinct for the remarkable, was an innocent beauty who for 
 years had distilled dulness among a set of people now self- 
 condemned by their inability to appreciate her. Under 
 Dresham s tutelage she had developed into a "thoughtful 
 woman," who read his leaders in the Radiator and bought 
 the works he recommended. When a new book appeared, 
 people wanted to know what Mrs. Armiger thought of it; 
 and a young gentleman who had made a trip in Touraine 
 had recently inscribed to her the wide-margined result of 
 his explorations. 
 
 Glennard, leaning back with his head against the rail 
 and a slit of fugitive blue between his half-closed lids, 
 vaguely wished she would n t spoil the afternoon by making 
 people talk; though he reduced his annoyance to the min 
 imum by not listening to what was said, there remained a 
 latent irritation against the general futility of words. 
 
 His wife s gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid 
 
 commentary on the clumsiness of speech as a means of 
 
 intercourse, and his eyes had turned to her in renewed 
 
 appreciation of this finer faculty when Mrs. Armiger s 
 
 [303] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 voice abruptly brought home to him the underrated poten 
 tialities of language. 
 
 "You ve read them, of course, Mrs. Glennard?" he 
 heard her ask: and, in reply to Alexa s vague interroga 
 tion "Why, the Aubyn Letters it s the only book peo 
 ple are talking of this week." 
 
 Mrs. Dresham immediately saw her advantage. "You 
 have n t read them ? How very extraordinary ! As Mrs. 
 Armiger says, the book s in the air : one breathes it in like 
 the influenza." 
 
 Glennard sat motionless, watching his wife. 
 
 "Perhaps it has n t reached the suburbs yet," she said 
 with her unruffled smile. 
 
 "Oh, do let me come to you, then!" Mrs. Touchett 
 cried; "anything for a change of air! I m positively sick 
 of the book and I can t put it down. Can t you sail us 
 beyond its reach, Mr. Flamel?" 
 
 Flamel shook his head. "Not even with this breeze. 
 Literature travels faster than steam nowadays. And the 
 worst of it is that we can t any of us give up reading: 
 it s as insidious as a vice and as tiresome as a virtue." 
 
 "I believe it is a vice, almost, to read such a book as 
 the Letters" said Mrs. Touchett. "It s the woman s soul, 
 absolutely torn up by the roots her whole self laid bare; 
 and to a man who evidently did n t care; who could n t 
 have cared. I don t mean to read another line: it s too 
 much like listening at a keyhole." 
 [ 304 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "But if she wanted it published?" 
 
 "Wanted it? How do we know she did?" 
 
 "Why, I heard she d left the letters to the man who 
 ever he is with directions that they should be published 
 after his death" 
 
 "I don t believe it," Mrs. Touchett declared. 
 
 "He s dead then, is he?" one of the men asked. 
 
 "Why, you don t suppose if he were alive he could ever 
 hold up his head again, with these letters being read by 
 everybody ?" Mrs. Touchett protested. "It must have been 
 horrible enough to know they d been written to him; but 
 to publish them! No man could have done it and no 
 woman could have told him to " 
 
 "Oh, come, come," Dresham judicially interposed; 
 "after all, they re not love-letters." 
 
 "No that s the worst of it; they re unloved letters," 
 Mrs. Touchett retorted. 
 
 "Then, obviously, she need n t have written them; 
 whereas the man, poor devil, could hardly help receiving 
 them." 
 
 "Perhaps he counted on the public to save him the 
 trouble of reading them," said young Hartly, who was in 
 the cynical stage. 
 
 Mrs. Armiger turned her reproachful loveliness to 
 Dresham. "From the way you defend him I believe you 
 know who he is." 
 
 Every one looked at Dresham, and his wife smiled with 
 [305] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 the superior air of the woman who is in her husband s 
 professional secrets. Dresham shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "What have I said to defend him?" 
 
 "You called him a poor devil you pitied him." 
 
 "A man who could let Margaret Aubyn write to him in 
 that way ? Of course I pity him." 
 
 "Then you must know who he is," cried Mrs. Armiger 
 with a triumphant air of penetration. 
 
 Hartly and Flamel laughed and Dresham shook his 
 head. "No one knows; not even the publishers; so they 
 tell me at least." 
 
 "So they tell you to tell us," Hartly astutely amended; 
 and Mrs. Armiger added, with the appearance of carrying 
 the argument a point farther, "But even if he s dead and 
 she s dead, somebody must have given the letters to the 
 publishers." 
 
 "A little bird, probably," said Dresham, smiling indul 
 gently on her deduction. 
 
 "A little bird of prey then a vulture, I should say " 
 another man interpolated. 
 
 "Oh, I m not with you there," said Dresham easily. 
 "Those letters belonged to the public." 
 
 "How can any letters belong to the public that were n t 
 written to the public ? " Mrs. Touchett interposed. 
 
 "Well, these were, in a sense. A personality as big as 
 Margaret Aubyn s belongs to the world. Such a mind is 
 part of the general fund of thought. It s the penalty of 
 [306] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 greatness one becomes a monument historique. Posterity 
 pays the cost of keeping one up, but on condition that one 
 is always open to the public." 
 
 "I don t see that that exonerates the man who gives up 
 the keys of the sanctuary, as it were." 
 
 "Who was he?" another voice inquired. 
 
 "Who was he? Oh, nobody, I fancy the letter-box, the 
 slit in the wall through which the letters passed to pos 
 terity. . . ." 
 
 "But she never meant them for posterity !" 
 
 "A woman should n t write such letters if she does n t 
 mean them to be published. ..." 
 
 "She shouldn t write them to such a man!" Mrs. 
 Touchett scornfully corrected. 
 
 "I never keep letters," said Mrs. Armiger, under the 
 obvious impression that she was contributing a valuable 
 point to the discussion. 
 
 There was a general laugh, and Flamel, who had not 
 spoken, said lazily, "You women are too incurably sub 
 jective. I venture to say that most men would see in those 
 letters merely their immense literary value, their signifi 
 cance as documents. The personal side does n t count 
 where there s so much else." 
 
 "Oh, we all know you haven t any principles," Mrs. 
 Armiger declared; and Alexa Glennard, lifting an indolent 
 smile, said: "I shall never write you a love-letter, Mr. 
 Flamel." 
 
 [307] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Glennard moved away impatiently. Such talk was as 
 tedious as the buzzing of gnats. He wondered why his wife 
 had wanted to drag him on such a senseless expedition. 
 . . . He hated Flamel s crowd and what business had 
 Flamel himself to interfere in that way, standing up for 
 the publication of the letters as though Glennard needed 
 his defence ? . . . 
 
 Glennard turned his head and saw that Flamel had 
 drawn a seat to Alexa s elbow and was speaking to her in a 
 low tone. The other groups had scattered, straying in twos 
 along the deck. It came over Glennard that he should never 
 again be able to see Flamel speaking to his wife without 
 the sense of sick mistrust that now loosened his joints. . . . 
 
 Alexa, the next morning, over their early breakfast, 
 surprised her husband by an unexpected request. 
 
 "Will you bring me those letters from town ? " she asked. 
 
 "What letters?" he said, putting down his cup. He felt 
 himself as vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the 
 dark. 
 
 "Mrs. Aubyn s. The book they were all talking about 
 yesterday." 
 
 Glennard, carefully measuring his second cup of tea, 
 said with deliberation, "I did n t know you cared about 
 that sort of thing." 
 
 She was, in fact, not a great reader, and a new book sel 
 dom reached her till it was, so to speak, on the home 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 stretch; but she replied with a gentle tenacity, "I think it 
 would interest me because I read her life last year." 
 
 "Her life? Where did you get that?" 
 
 "Some one lent it to me when it came out Mr. Flamel, 
 I think." 
 
 His first impulse was to exclaim, "Why the devil do you 
 borrow books of Flamel ? I can buy you all you want 
 but he felt himself irresistibly forced into an attitude of 
 smiling compliance. "Flamel always has the newest books 
 going, has n t he ? You must be careful, by the way, about 
 returning what he lends you. He s rather crotchety about 
 his library." 
 
 "Oh, I m always very careful," she said, with a touch of 
 competence that struck him; and she added, as he caught 
 up his hat: "Don t forget the letters." 
 
 Why had she asked for the book ? Was her sudden wish 
 to see it the result of some hint of Flamel s ? The thought 
 turned Glennard sick, but he preserved sufficient lucidity 
 to tell himself, a moment later, that his last hope of self- 
 control would be lost if he yielded to the temptation of 
 seeing a hidden purpose in everything she said and did. 
 How much Flamel guessed, he had no means of divining; 
 nor could he predicate, from what he knew of the man, to 
 what use his inferences might be put. The very qualities 
 that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him the most 
 dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope 
 among alien forces that his own act had set in motion. . . . 
 [ 309 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Alexa was a woman of few requirements; but her wishes, 
 even in trifles, had a definiteness that distinguished them 
 from the fluid impulses of her kind. He knew that, having 
 once asked for the book, she would not forget it; and he 
 put aside, as an ineffectual expedient, his momentary idea 
 of applying for it at the circulating library and telling her 
 that all the copies were out. If the book was to be bought, 
 it had better be bought at once. He left his office earlier 
 than usual and turned in at the first bookshop on his way 
 to the train. The show-window was stacked with conspicu 
 ously lettered volumes. Margaret Aubyn flashed back at 
 him in endless iteration. He plunged into the shop and 
 came on a counter where the name repeated itself on row 
 after row of bindings. It seemed to have driven the rest of 
 literature to the back shelves. He caught up a copy, toss 
 ing the money to an astonished clerk, who pursued him 
 to the door with the unheeded offer to wrap up the vol 
 umes. 
 
 In the street he was seized with a sudden apprehension. 
 What if he were to meet Flamel ? The thought was intol 
 erable. He called a cab and drove straight to the station, 
 where, amid the palm-leaf fans of a perspiring crowd, he 
 waited a long half-hour for his train to start. 
 
 He had thrust a volume in either pocket, and in the 
 
 train he dared not draw them out; but the detested words 
 
 leaped at him from the folds of the evening paper. The air 
 
 seemed full of Margaret Aubyn s name; the motion of the 
 
 [ 3101 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 train set it dancing up and down on the page of a maga 
 zine that a man in front of him was reading. . . . 
 
 At the door he was told that Mrs. Glennard was still 
 out, and he went upstairs to his room and dragged the 
 books from his pocket. They lay on the table before him 
 like live things that he feared to touch. ... At length he 
 opened the first volume. A familiar letter sprang out at 
 him, each word quickened by its glaring garb of type. The 
 little broken phrases fled across the page like wounded 
 animals in the open. ... It was a horrible sight ... a 
 battue of helpless things driven savagely out of shelter. 
 He had not known it would be like this. . . . 
 
 He understood now that, at the moment of selling the 
 letters, he had viewed the transaction solely as it affected 
 himself: as an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise pre 
 sentable record. He had scarcely considered the act in 
 relation to Margaret Aubyn; for death, if it hallows, also 
 makes innocuous. Glennard s God was a god of the living, 
 of the immediate, the actual, the tangible; all his days he 
 had lived in the presence of that god, heedless of the 
 divinities who, below the surface of our deeds and passions, 
 silently forge the fatal weapons of the dead. 
 
 311 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 VH 
 
 A KNOCK roused him, and looking up he saw his 
 wife. He met her glance in silence, and she faltered 
 out, "Are you ill?" 
 
 The words restored his self-possession. "HI? Of course 
 not. They told me you were out and I came upstairs." 
 
 The books lay between them on the table; he wondered 
 when she would see them. She lingered tentatively on the 
 threshold, with the air of leaving his explanation on his 
 hands. She was not the kind of woman who could be 
 counted on to fortify an excuse by appearing to dispute it. 
 
 "Where have you been?" Glennard asked, moving 
 forward so that he obstructed her vision of the books. 
 
 "I walked over to the Dreshams for tea." 
 
 "I can t think what you see in those people," he said 
 with a shrug; adding, uncontrollably "I suppose Flamel 
 was there?" 
 
 "No; he left on the yacht this morning." 
 
 An answer so obstructing to the natural escape of his 
 irritation left Glennard with no momentary resource but 
 that of strolling impatiently to the window. As her eyes 
 followed him they lit on the books. 
 
 "Ah, you ve brought them ! I m so glad," she said. 
 
 He answered over his shoulder, "For a woman who 
 never reads you make the most astounding exceptions!" 
 [312] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Her smile was an exasperating concession to the proba 
 bility that it had been hot in town or that something had 
 bothered him. 
 
 "Do you mean it s not nice to want to read the book ?" 
 she asked. "It was not nice to publish it, certainly; but 
 after all, I m not responsible for that, am I?" She paused, 
 and, as he made no answer, went on, still smiling, "I do 
 read sometimes, you know; and I m very fond of Margaret 
 Aubyn s books. I was reading Pomegranate Seed when we 
 first met. Don t you remember ? It was then you told me 
 all about her." 
 
 Glennard had turned back into the room and stood 
 staring at his wife. "All about her?" he repeated, and with 
 the words remembrance came to him. He had found Miss 
 Trent one afternoon with the novel in her hand, and 
 moved by the lover s fatuous impulse to associate himself 
 in some way with whatever fills the mind of the beloved, 
 had broken through his habitual silence about the past. 
 Rewarded by the consciousness of figuring impressively in 
 Miss Trent s imagination, he had gone on from one anec 
 dote to another, reviving dormant details of his old Hill- 
 bridge life, and pasturing his vanity on the eagerness with 
 which she listened to his reminiscences of a being already 
 clothed in the impersonality of greatness. 
 
 The incident had left no trace in his mind; but it sprang 
 up now like an old enemy, the more dangerous for having 
 been forgotten. The instinct of self-preservation some- 
 [ 3131 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 times the most perilous that man can exercise made him 
 awkwardly declare: "Oh, I used to see her at people s 
 houses, that was all;" and her silence as usual leaving 
 room for a multiplication of blunders, he added, with in 
 creased indifference, "I simply can t see what you can 
 find to interest you in such a book." 
 
 She seemed to consider this intently. "You ve read it, 
 then?" 
 
 "I glanced at it I never read such things." 
 
 "Is it true that she did n t wish the letters to be pub 
 lished?" 
 
 Glennard felt the sudden dizziness of the mountaineer 
 on a narrow ledge, and with it the sense that he was lost 
 if he looked more than a step ahead. 
 
 "I m sure I don t know," he said; then, summoning a 
 smile, he passed his hand through her arm. "7 did n t have 
 tea at the Dreshams , you know; won t you give me some 
 now?" he suggested. 
 
 That evening Glennard, under pretext of work to be 
 done, shut himself into the small study opening off the 
 drawing-room. As he gathered up his papers he said to his 
 wife: "You re not going to sit indoors on such a night as 
 this ? I 11 join you presently outside." 
 
 But she had drawn her arm-chair to the lamp. "I want 
 to look at my book," she said, taking up the first volume 
 of the Letters. 
 
 [3141 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Glennard, with a shrug, withdrew into the study. 
 "I m going to shut the door; I want to be quiet," he ex 
 plained from the threshold; and she nodded without lifting 
 her eyes from the book. 
 
 He sank into a chair, staring aimlessly at the outspread 
 papers. How was he to work, while on the other side of the 
 door she sat with that volume in her hand ? The door did 
 not shut her out he saw her distinctly, felt her close to 
 him in a contact as painful as the pressure on a bruise. 
 
 The sensation was part of the general strangeness that 
 made him feel like a man waking from a long sleep to find 
 himself in an unknown country among people of alien 
 tongue. We live in our own souls as in an unmapped 
 region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habi 
 tation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know 
 but the boundaries that march with ours. Of the points 
 in his wife s character not in direct contact with his own, 
 Glennard now discerned his ignorance; and the baffling 
 sense of her remoteness was intensified by the discovery 
 that, in one way, she was closer to him than ever before. 
 As one may live for years in happy unconsciousness of the 
 possession of a sensitive nerve, he had lived beside his 
 wife unaware that her individuality had become a part of 
 the texture of his life, ineradicable as some growth on a 
 vital organ; and he now felt himself at once incapable of 
 forecasting her judgment and powerless to evade its effects. 
 
 To escape, the next morning, the confidences of the 
 [ 315 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 breakfast-table, he went to town earlier than usual. His 
 wife, who read slowly, was given to talking over what she 
 read, and at present his first object in life was to postpone 
 the inevitable discussion of the letters. This instinct of 
 protection, in the afternoon, on his way up town, guided 
 him to the club in search of a man who might be per 
 suaded to come out to the country to dine. The only man 
 in the club was Flamel. 
 
 Glennard, as he heard himself almost involuntarily 
 pressing Flamel to come and dine, felt the full irony of the 
 situation. To use Flamel as a shield against his wife s scru 
 tiny was only a shade less humiliating than to reckon on 
 his wife as a defence against Flamel. 
 
 He felt a contradictory movement of annoyance at the 
 latter s ready acceptance, and the two men drove in 
 silence to the station. As they passed the bookstall in the 
 waiting-room Flamel lingered a moment, and the eyes of 
 both fell on Margaret Aubyn s name, conspicuously dis 
 played above a counter stacked with the familiar volumes. 
 
 "We shall be late, you know," Glennard remonstrated, 
 pulling out his watch. 
 
 "Go ahead," said Flamel imperturbably. "I want to get 
 something " 
 
 Glennard turned on his heel and walked down the plat 
 form. Flamel rejoined him with an innocent-looking maga 
 zine in his hand; but Glennard dared not even glance at the 
 cover, lest it should show the syllables he feared. 
 [ 316 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 The train was full of people they knew, and they were 
 kept apart till it dropped them at the little suburban sta 
 tion. As they strolled up the shaded hill, Glennard talked 
 volubly, pointing out the improvements in the neighbor 
 hood, deploring the threatened approach of an electric rail 
 way, and screening himself by a series of reflex adjust 
 ments from the risk of any allusion to the Letters. Flamel 
 suffered his discourse with the bland inattention that we 
 accord to the affairs of some one else s suburb, and they 
 reached the shelter of Alexa s tea-table without a per 
 ceptible turn toward the dreaded topic. 
 
 The dinner passed off safely. Flamel, always at his best 
 in Alexa s presence, gave her the kind of attention which 
 is like a becoming light thrown on the speaker s words: 
 his answers seemed to bring out a latent significance in 
 her phrases, as the sculptor draws his statue from the 
 block. Glennard, under his wife s composure, detected a 
 sensibility to this manoeuvre, and the discovery was like 
 the lightning-flash across a nocturnal landscape. Thus far 
 these momentary illuminations had served only to reveal 
 the strangeness of the intervening country: each fresh 
 observation seemed to increase the sum-total of his igno 
 rance. Her simplicity of outline was more puzzling than 
 a complex surface. One may conceivably work one s way 
 through a labyrinth; but Alexa s candor was like a snow- 
 covered plain, where, the road once lost, there are no land 
 marks to travel by. 
 
 [317] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Dinner over, they returned to the veranda, where a 
 moon, rising behind the old elm, was combining with that 
 complaisant tree a romantic enlargement of their borders. 
 Glennard had forgotten the cigars. He went to his study 
 to fetch them, and in passing through the drawing-room he 
 saw the second volume of the Letters lying open on his 
 wife s table. He picked up the book and looked at the date 
 of the letter she had been reading. It was one of the last 
 ... he knew the few lines by heart. He dropped the book 
 and leaned against the wall. Why had he included that 
 one among the others? Or was it possible that now they 
 would all seem like that . . . ? 
 
 Alexa s voice came suddenly out of the dusk. "May 
 Touchett was right it is like listening at a keyhole. I 
 wish I had n t read it !" 
 
 Flamel returned, in the leisurely tone of the man whose 
 phrases are punctuated by a cigarette, "It seems so to us, 
 perhaps; but to another generation the book will be a 
 classic." 
 
 "Then it ought not to have been published till it had 
 time to become a classic. It s horrible, it s degrading 
 almost, to read the secrets of a woman one might have 
 known." She added, in a lower tone, "Stephen did know 
 her" 
 
 "Did he?" came from Flamel. 
 
 "He knew her very well, at Hillbridge, years ago. The 
 book has made him feel dreadfully ... he would n t read 
 [318] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 it ... he did n t want me to read it. I did n t under 
 stand at first, but now I can see how horribly disloyal it 
 must seem to him. It s so much worse to surprise a 
 friend s secrets than a stranger s." 
 
 "Oh, Glennard s such a sensitive chap," Flamel said 
 easily; and Alexa almost rebukingly rejoined, "If you d 
 known her I m sure you d feel as he does. ..." 
 
 Glennard stood motionless, overcome by the singular 
 infelicity with which he had contrived to put Flamel in 
 possession of the two points most damaging to his case: 
 the fact that he had been a friend of Margaret Aubyn s 
 and that he had concealed from Alexa his share in the 
 publication of the letters. To a man of less than Flamel s 
 astuteness it must now be clear to whom the letters were 
 addressed; and the possibility once suggested, nothing 
 could be easier than to confirm it by discreet research. 
 An impulse of self-accusal drove Glennard to the window. 
 Why not anticipate betrayal by telling his wife the truth 
 in Flamel s presence? If the man had a drop of decent 
 feeling in him, such a course would be the surest means 
 of securing his silence; and above all, it would rid Glen 
 nard of the necessity of defending himself against the per 
 petual criticism of his wife s belief in him. . . . 
 
 The impulse was strong enough to carry him to the 
 
 window; but there a reaction of defiance set in. What had 
 
 he done, after all, to need defence and explanation ? Both 
 
 Dresham and Flamel had, in his hearing, declared the pub- 
 
 [3191 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 lication of the letters to be not only justifiable but obli 
 gatory; and if the disinterestedness of Flamel s verdict 
 might be questioned, Dresham s at least represented the 
 impartial view of the man of letters. As to Alexa s words, 
 they were simply the conventional utterance of the "nice" 
 woman on a question already decided for her by other 
 "nice" women. She had said the proper thing as mechan 
 ically as she would have put on the appropriate gown or 
 written the correct form of dinner invitation. Glennard 
 had small faith in the abstract judgments of the other sex: 
 he knew that half the women who were horrified by the 
 publication of Mrs. Aubyn s letters would have betrayed 
 her secrets without a scruple. 
 
 The sudden lowering of his emotional pitch brought a 
 proportionate relief. He told himself that now the worst 
 was over and things would fall into perspective again. His 
 wife and Flamel had turned to other topics, and coming 
 out on the veranda, he handed the cigars to Flamel, saying 
 cheerfully and yet he could have sworn they were the 
 last words he meant to utter ! "Look here, old man, be 
 fore you go down to Newport you must come out and 
 spend a few days with us must n t he, Alexa?" 
 
 [ 320 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 VIII 
 
 LENNARD, perhaps unconsciously, had counted on 
 the continuance of this easier mood. He had always 
 taken pride in a certain robustness of fibre that enabled 
 him to harden himself against the inevitable, to convert 
 his failures into the building materials of success. Though 
 it did not even now occur to him that what he called the 
 inevitable had hitherto been the alternative he happened 
 to prefer, he was yet obscurely aware that his present 
 difficulty was one not to be conjured by any affectation 
 of indifference. Some griefs build the soul a spacious 
 house, but in this misery of Glennard s he could not stand 
 upright. It pressed against him at every turn. He told him 
 self that this was because there was no escape from the 
 visible evidences of his act. The Letters confronted him 
 everywhere. People who had never opened a book dis 
 cussed them with critical reservations; to have read them 
 had become a social obligation in circles to which liter 
 ature never penetrates except in a personal guise. 
 
 Glennard did himself injustice. It was from the unex 
 pected discovery of his own pettiness that he chiefly 
 suffered. Our self-esteem is apt to be based on the hypo 
 thetical great act we have never had occasion to perform; 
 and even the most self-scrutinizing modesty credits itself 
 negatively with a high standard of conduct. Glennard had 
 [321] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 never thought himself a hero; but he had been certain that 
 he was incapable of baseness. We all like our wrong-doings 
 to have a becoming cut, to be made to order, as it were; 
 and Glennard found himself suddenly thrust into a garb 
 of dishonor surely meant for a meaner figure. 
 
 The immediate result of his first weeks of wretchedness 
 was the resolve to go to town for the winter. He knew 
 that such a course was just beyond the limit of prudence; 
 but it was easy to allay the fears of Alexa, who, scrupu 
 lously vigilant in the management of the household, pre 
 served the American wife s usual aloofness from her hus 
 band s business cares. Glennard felt that he could not 
 trust himself to a winter s solitude with her. He had an 
 unspeakable dread of her learning the truth about the let 
 ters, yet could not be sure of steeling himself against the 
 suicidal impulse of avowal. His very soul was parched for 
 sympathy; he thirsted for a voice of pity and comprehen 
 sion. But would his wife pity? Would she understand? 
 Again he found himself brought up abruptly against his 
 incredible ignorance of her nature. The fact that he knew 
 well enough how she would behave in the ordinary emer 
 gencies of life, that he could count, in such contingencies, 
 on the kind of high courage and directness he had always 
 divined in her, made him the more hopeless of her entering 
 into the tortuous psychology of an act that he himself 
 could no longer explain or understand. It would have been 
 easier had she been more complex, more feminine if he 
 [ 322 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 could have counted on l>er imaginative sympathy or her 
 moral obtuseness but he was sure of neither. He was sure 
 of nothing but that, for a time, he must avoid her. Glen- 
 nard could not rid himself of the delusion that by and by 
 his action would cease to make its consequences felt. He 
 would not have cared to own to himself that he counted 
 on the dulling of his sensibilities: he preferred to indulge 
 the vague hypothesis that extraneous circumstances 
 would somehow efface the blot upon his conscience. In his 
 worst moments of self-abasement he tried to find solace in 
 the thought that Flamel had sanctioned his course. 
 Flamel, at the outset, must have guessed to whom the 
 letters were addressed; yet neither then nor afterward 
 had he hesitated to advise their publication. This thought 
 drew Glennard to him in fitful impulses of friendliness, 
 from each of which there was a sharper reaction of distrust 
 and aversion. When Flamel was not at the house, he missed 
 the support of his tacit connivance; when he was there, his 
 presence seemed the assertion of an intolerable claim. 
 
 Early in the winter the Glennards took possession of the 
 little house that was to cost them almost nothing. The 
 change brought Glennard the relief of seeing less of his 
 wife, and of being protected, in her presence, by the mul 
 tiplied preoccupations of town life. Alexa, who could never 
 appear hurried, showed the smiling abstraction of a pretty 
 woman to whom the social side of married life has not lost 
 its novelty. Glennard, with the recklessness of a man fresh 
 [ 323 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 from his first financial imprudence, encouraged her in such 
 little extravagances as her good sense at first resisted. 
 Since they had come to town, he argued, they might as 
 well enjoy themselves. He took a sympathetic view of the 
 necessity of new gowns, he gave her a set of furs at Christ 
 mas, and before the New Year they had agreed on the 
 necessity of adding a parlor-maid to their small establish 
 ment. 
 
 Providence the very next day hastened to justify this 
 measure by placing on Glennard s breakfast-plate an en 
 velope bearing the name of the publishers to whom he had 
 sold Mrs. Aubyn s letters. It happened to be the only letter 
 the early post had brought, and he glanced across the table 
 at his wife, who had come down before him and had prob 
 ably laid the envelope on his plate. She was not the woman 
 to ask awkward questions, but he felt the conjecture of 
 her glance, and he was debating whether to affect surprise 
 at the receipt of the letter, or to pass it off as a business 
 communication that had strayed to his house, when a 
 check fell from the envelope. It was the royalty on the 
 first edition of the letters. His first feeling was one of sim 
 ple satisfaction. The money had come with such infernal 
 opportuneness that he could not help welcoming it. Before 
 long, too, there would be more; he knew the book was still 
 selling far beyond the publishers previsions. He put the 
 check in his pocket and left the room without looking at 
 his wife. 
 
 [334] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 On the way to his office the habitual reaction set in. 
 The money he had received was the first tangible reminder 
 that he was living on the sale of his self-esteem. The 
 thought of material benefit had been overshadowed by his 
 sense of the intrinsic baseness of making the letters known: 
 now he saw what an element of sordidness it added to the 
 situation and how the fact that he needed the money, and 
 must use it, pledged him more irrevocably than ever to 
 the consequences of his act. It seemed to him, in that first 
 hour of misery, that he had betrayed his friend anew. 
 
 When, that afternoon, he reached home earlier than 
 usual, Alexa s drawing-room was full of a gayety that over 
 flowed to the stairs. Flamel, for a wonder, was not there; 
 but Dresham and young Hartly, grouped about the tea- 
 table, were receiving with resonant mirth a narrative 
 delivered in the fluttered staccato that made Mrs. Ar- 
 miger s conversation like the ejaculations of a startled 
 aviary. 
 
 She paused as Glennard entered, and he had time to 
 notice that his wife, who was busied about the tea-tray, 
 had not joined in the laughter of the men. 
 
 "Oh, go on, go on," young Hartly rapturously groaned; 
 and Mrs. Armiger met Glennard s inquiry with the dep 
 recating cry that really she did n t see what there was to 
 laugh at. "I m sure I feel more like crying. I don t know 
 what I should have done if Alexa had n t been at home to 
 give me a cup of tea. My nerves are in shreds yes, an- 
 [ 325 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 other, dear, please " and as Glennard looked his per 
 plexity, she went on, after pondering on the selection of a 
 second lump of sugar, "Why, I ve just come from the 
 reading, you know the reading at the Waldorf." 
 
 "I have n t been in town long enough to know any 
 thing," said Glennard, taking the cup his wife handed 
 him. "Who has been reading what?" 
 
 "That lovely girl from the South Georgie Georgie 
 What s-her-name Mrs. Dresham s protegee unless she s 
 yours, Mr. Dresham ! Why, the big ball-room was packed, 
 and all the women were crying like idiots it was the most 
 harrowing thing I ever heard " 
 
 "What did you hear?" Glennard asked; and his wife 
 interposed: "Won t you have another bit of cake, Julia? 
 Or, Stephen, ring for some hot toast, please." Her tone 
 betrayed a polite weariness of the topic under discussion. 
 Glennard turned to the bell, but Mrs. Armiger pursued him 
 with her lovely amazement. 
 
 "Why, the Aubyn Letters did n t you know about it? 
 She read them so beautifully that it was quite horrible 
 I should have fainted if there d been a man near enough 
 to carry me out." 
 
 Hartly s glee redoubled, and Dresham said jovially, 
 "How like you women to raise a shriek over the book and 
 then do all you can to encourage the blatant publicity of 
 the readings!" 
 
 Mrs. Armiger met him more than half-way on a torrent 
 [326 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 of self-accusal. "It was horrid; it was disgraceful. I told 
 your wife we ought all to be ashamed of ourselves for 
 going, and I think Alexa was quite right to refuse to take 
 any tickets even if it was for a charity." 
 
 "Oh," her hostess murmured indifferently, "with me 
 charity begins at home. I can t afford emotional luxuries." 
 
 "A charity? A charity?" Hartly exulted. "I hadn t 
 seized the full beauty of it. Reading poor Margaret Au- 
 byn s love-letters at the Waldorf before five hundred peo 
 ple for a charity ! What charity, dear Mrs. Armiger?" 
 
 "Why, the Home for Friendless Women " 
 
 "It was well chosen," Dresham commented; and Hartly 
 buried his mirth in the sofa cushions. 
 
 When they were alone Glennard, still holding his un 
 touched cup of tea, turned to his wife, who sat silently 
 behind the kettle. "Who asked you to take a ticket for 
 that reading?" 
 
 "I don t know, really Kate Dresham, I fancy. It was 
 she who got it up." 
 
 "It s just the sort of damnable vulgarity she s capable 
 of ! It s loathsome it s monstrous 
 
 His wife, without looking up, answered gravely, "I 
 thought so too. It was for that reason I did n t go. But 
 you must remember that very few people feel about Mrs. 
 Aubyn as you do 
 
 Glennard managed to set down his cup with a steady 
 [327] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 hand, but the room swung round with him and he dropped 
 into the nearest chair. "As I do?" he repeated. 
 
 "I mean that very few people knew her when she lived 
 in New York. To most of the women who went to the read 
 ing she was a mere name, too remote to have any person 
 ality. With me, of course, it was different " 
 
 Glennard gave her a startled look. "Different? Why 
 different?" 
 
 "Since you were her friend " 
 
 "Her friend!" He stood up. "You speak as if she had 
 had only one the most famous woman of her day !" He 
 moved vaguely about the room, bending down to look at 
 some books on the table. "I hope," he added, "you did n t 
 give that as a reason ? " 
 
 "A reason?" 
 
 "For not going. A woman who gives reasons for getting 
 out of social obligations is sure to make herself unpopular 
 or ridiculous." 
 
 The words were uncalculated; but in an instant he saw 
 that they had strangely bridged the distance between his 
 wife and himself. He felt her close on him, like a panting 
 foe; and her answer was a flash that showed the hand on 
 the trigger. 
 
 "I seem," she said from the threshold, "to have done 
 both in giving my reason to you." 
 
 The fact that they were dining out that evening made 
 it easy for him to avoid Alexa till she came downstairs in 
 [ 328 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 her opera-cloak. Mrs. Touchett, who was going to the same 
 dinner, had offered to call for her; and Glennard, refusing 
 a precarious seat between the ladies draperies, followed on 
 foot. The evening was interminable. The reading at the 
 Waldorf, at which all the women had been present, had 
 revived the discussion of the Avbyn Letters, and Glen 
 nard, hearing his wife questioned as to her absence, felt 
 himself miserably wishing that she had gone, rather than 
 that her staying away should have been remarked. He 
 was rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the Letters 
 were concerned. He could no longer hear them mentioned 
 without suspecting a purpose in the allusion; he even 
 yielded himself for a moment to the extravagance of im 
 agining that Mrs. Dresham, whom he disliked, had organ 
 ized the reading in the hope of making him betray himself 
 for he was already sure that Dresham had divined his 
 share in the transaction. 
 
 The attempt to keep a smooth surface on this inner 
 tumult was as endless and unavailing as efforts made in a 
 nightmare. He lost all sense of what he was saying to his 
 neighbors; and once when he looked up his wife s glance 
 struck him cold. 
 
 She sat nearly opposite him, at Flamel s side, and it 
 appeared to Glennard that they had built about them 
 selves one of those airy barriers of talk behind which two 
 people can say what they please. While the reading was 
 discussed they were silent. Their silence seemed to Glen 
 nard almost cynical it stripped the last disguise from 
 [ 329] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 their complicity. A throb of anger rose in him, but sud 
 denly it fell, and he felt, with a curious sense of relief, that 
 at bottom he no longer cared whether Flamel had told his 
 wife or not. The assumption that Flamel knew about the 
 letters had become a fact to Glennard; and it now seemed 
 to him better that Alexa should know too. 
 
 He was frightened at first by the discovery of his own 
 indifference. The last barriers of his will seemed to be 
 breaking down before a flood of moral lassitude. How could 
 he continue to play his part, how keep his front to the 
 enemy, with this poison of indifference stealing through 
 his veins ? He tried to brace himself with the remembrance 
 of his wife s scorn. He had not forgotten the note on which 
 their conversation had closed. If he had ever wondered 
 how she would receive the truth he wondered no longer 
 she would despise him. But this lent a new insidiousness 
 to his temptation, since her contempt would be a refuge 
 from his own. He said to himself that, since he no longer 
 cared for the consequences, he could at least acquit him 
 self of speaking in self-defence. What he wanted now was 
 not immunity but castigation : his wife s indignation might 
 still reconcile him to himself. Therein lay his one hope of 
 regeneration; her scorn was the moral antiseptic that he 
 needed, her comprehension the one balm that could heal 
 him. . . . 
 
 When they left the dinner he was so afraid of speaking 
 that he let her drive home alone, and went to the club 
 with Flamel. 
 
 [ 330 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 IX 
 
 T TE rose next morning with the resolve to know what 
 Alexa thought of him. It was not anchoring in a 
 haven but lying to in a storm he felt the need of a tem 
 porary lull in the turmoil of his sensations. 
 
 He came home late, for they were dining alone and he 
 knew that they would have the evening together. When he 
 followed her to the drawing-room after dinner he thought 
 himself on the point of speaking; but as she handed him 
 his coffee he said involuntarily: "I shall have to carry this 
 off to the study; I ve got a lot of work to-night." 
 
 Alone in the study he cursed his cowardice. What was 
 it that had withheld him? A certain bright unapproach- 
 ableness seemed to keep him at arm s length. She was not 
 the kind of woman whose compassion could be circum 
 vented; there was no chance of slipping past the outposts 
 he would never take her by surprise. Well why not 
 face her, then? What he shrank from could be no worse 
 than what he was enduring. He had pushed back his chair 
 and turned to go upstairs when a new expedient presented 
 itself. What if, instead of telling her, he were to let her 
 find out for herself and watch the effect of the discovery 
 before speaking ? In this way he made over to chance the 
 burden of the revelation. 
 
 The idea had been suggested by the sight of the formula 
 enclosing the publisher s check. He had deposited the 
 [331 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 money, but the notice accompanying it dropped from his 
 note-case as he cleared his table for work. It was the for 
 mula usual in such cases, and revealed clearly enough 
 that he was the recipient of a royalty on Margaret Aubyn s 
 letters. It would be impossible for Alexa to read it without 
 understanding at once that the letters had been written 
 to him and that he had sold them. 
 
 He sat downstairs till he heard her ring for the parlor 
 maid to put out the lights; then he went up to the drawing- 
 room with a bundle of papers in his hand. Alexa was just 
 rising from her seat, and the lamplight fell on the deep roll 
 of hair that overhung her brow like the eaves of a temple. 
 Her face had often the high secluded look of a shrine; and 
 it was this touch of awe in her beauty that now made 
 him feel himself on the brink of sacrilege. 
 
 Lest the feeling should control him, he spoke at once. 
 "I ve brought you a piece of work a lot of old bills and 
 things that I want you to sort for me. Some are not worth 
 keeping but you 11 be able to judge of that. There may 
 be a letter or two among them nothing of much account; 
 but I don t like to throw away the whole lot without having 
 them looked over, and I have n t time to do it myself." 
 
 He held out the papers, and she took them with a smile 
 that seemed to recognize in the service he asked the tacit 
 intention of making amends for the incident of the previous 
 day. 
 
 "Are you sure I shall know which to keep?" 
 [ 332 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Oh, quite sure," he answered easily; "and besides, none 
 are of much importance." 
 
 The next morning he invented an excuse for leaving 
 the house without seeing her, and when he returned, just 
 before dinner, he found a visitor s hat and stick in the hall. 
 The visitor was Flamel, who was just taking leave. 
 
 He had risen, but Alexa remained seated; and their 
 attitude gave the impression of a colloquy that had pro 
 longed itself beyond the limits of speech. Both turned a 
 surprised eye on Glennard, and he had the sense of walk 
 ing into a room grown suddenly empty, as though their 
 thoughts were conspirators dispersed by his approach. He 
 felt the clutch of his old fear. What if his wife had already 
 sorted the papers and had told Flamel of her discovery? 
 Well, it was no news to Flamel that Glennard was in re 
 ceipt of a royalty on the Aubyn Letters. . . . 
 
 A sudden resolve to know the worst made him lift his 
 eyes to his wife as the door closed on Flamel. But Alexa 
 had risen also, and bending over her writing-table, with 
 her back to Glennard, was beginning to speak precipitately. 
 
 "I m dining out to-night you don t mind my desert 
 ing you ? Julia Armiger sent me word just now that she 
 had an extra ticket for the last Ambrose concert. She told 
 me to say how sorry she was that she had n t two, but I 
 knew you would n t be sorry ! " She ended with a laugh that 
 had the effect of being a strayed echo of Mrs. Armiger s; 
 and before Glennard could speak she had added, with her 
 [333 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 hand on the door, "Mr. Flamel stayed so late that I ve 
 hardly time to dress. The concert begins ridiculously early, 
 and Julia dines at half -past seven." 
 
 Glennard stood alone in the empty room that seemed 
 somehow full of an ironical consciousness of what was 
 happening. "She hates me," he murmured. "She hates 
 me . . ." 
 
 The next day was Sunday, and Glennard purposely 
 lingered late in his room. When he came downstairs his 
 wife was already seated at the breakfast-table. She lifted 
 her usual smile to his entrance and they took shelter in 
 the nearest topic, like wayfarers overtaken by a storm. 
 While he listened to her account of the concert he began 
 to think that, after all, she had not yet sorted the papers, 
 and that her agitation of the previous day must be as 
 cribed to another cause, in which perhaps he had but an 
 indirect concern. He wondered it had never before oc 
 curred to him that Flamel was the kind of man who might 
 very well please a woman at his own expense, without 
 need of fortuitous assistance. If this possibility cleared the 
 outlook it did not brighten it. Glennard merely felt himself 
 left alone with his baseness. 
 
 Alexa left the breakfast-table before him, and when he 
 went up to the drawing-room he found her dressed to go 
 out. 
 
 "Are n t you a little early for church?" he asked. 
 [334] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 She replied that, on the way there, she meant to stop a 
 moment at her mother s; and while she drew on her gloves 
 he fumbled among the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece 
 for a match to light his cigarette. 
 
 "Well, good-bye," she said, turning to go; and from the 
 threshold she added: "By the way, I ve sorted the papers 
 you gave me. Those that I thought you would like to keep 
 are on your study table." She went downstairs and he 
 heard the door close behind her. 
 
 She had sorted the papers she knew, then she must 
 know and she had made no sign ! 
 
 Glennard, he hardly knew how, found himself once 
 more in the study. On the table lay the packet he had 
 given her. It was much smaller she had evidently gone 
 over the papers with care, destroying the greater number. 
 He loosened the elastic band and spread the remaining 
 envelopes on his desk. The publisher s notice was among 
 them. 
 
 T TIS wife knew and she made no sign. Glennard found 
 himself in the case of the seafarer who, closing his 
 eyes at nightfall on a scene he thinks to put leagues behind 
 him before day, wakes to a port-hole framing the same 
 patch of shore. From the kind of exaltation to which his re 
 solve had lifted him he dropped to an unreasoning apathy. 
 [335] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 His impulse of confession had acted as a drug to self-re 
 proach. He had tried to shift a portion of his burden to his 
 wife s shoulders; and now that she had tacitly refused to 
 carry it, he felt the load too heavy to be taken up. 
 
 A fortunate interval of hard work brought respite from 
 this phase of sterile misery. He went West to argue an 
 important case, won it, and came back to fresh preoccu 
 pations. His own affairs were thriving enough to engross 
 him in the pauses of his professional work, and for over 
 two months he had little time to look himself in the face. 
 Not unnaturally for he was as yet unskilled in the sub 
 tleties of introspection he mistook his temporary insen 
 sibility for a gradual revival of moral health. 
 
 He told himself that he was recovering his sense of pro 
 portion, getting to see things in their true light; and if he 
 now thought of his rash appeal to his wife s sympathy it 
 was as an act of folly from the consequences of which he 
 had been saved by the providence that watches over mad 
 men. He had little leisure to observe Alexa; but he con 
 cluded that the common sense momentarily denied him 
 had counselled her silent acceptance of the inevitable. If 
 such a quality was a poor substitute for the passionate 
 justness that had once seemed to distinguish her, he ac 
 cepted the alternative as a part of that general lowering 
 of the key that seems needful to the maintenance of the 
 matrimonial duet. What woman ever retained her abstract 
 sense of justice where another woman was concerned? 
 [ 336 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Possibly the thought that he had profited by Mrs. Aubyn s 
 tenderness was not wholly disagreeable to his wife. 
 
 When the pressure of work began to lessen, and he found 
 himself, in the lengthening afternoons, able to reach home 
 somewhat earlier, he noticed that the little drawing-room 
 was always full and that he and his wife seldom had an 
 evening alone together. When he was tired, as often hap 
 pened, she went out alone; the idea of giving up an en 
 gagement to remain with him seemed not to occur to her. 
 She had shown, as a girl, little fondness for society, nor 
 had she seemed to regret it during the year they had 
 spent in the country. He reflected, however, that he was 
 sharing the common lot of husbands, who proverbially 
 mistake the early ardors of housekeeping for a sign of set 
 tled domesticity. Alexa, at any rate, was refuting his 
 theory as inconsiderately as a seedling defeats the garden 
 er s expectations. An undefinable change had come over 
 her. In one sense it was a happy one, since she had grown, 
 if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her 
 beauty had become more communicable : it was as though 
 she had learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attri 
 butes and now used her effects with the discrimination 
 of an artist skilled in values. To a dispassionate critic (as 
 Glennard now rated himself) the art may at times have 
 been a little too obvious. Her attempts at lightness lacked 
 spontaneity, and she sometimes rasped him by laugh 
 ing like Julia Armiger; but he had enough imagination to 
 [ 337 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 perceive that, in respect of his wife s social arts, a hus 
 band necessarily sees the wrong side of the tapestry. 
 
 In this ironical estimate of their relation Glennard found 
 himself strangely relieved of all concern as to his wife s 
 feelings for Flamel. From an Olympian pinnacle of indif 
 ference he calmly surveyed their inoffensive antics. It was 
 surprising how his cheapening of his wife put him at ease 
 with himself. Far as he and she were from each other they 
 had yet had, in a sense, the tacit nearness of complicity. 
 Yes, they were accomplices; he could no more be jealous of 
 her than she could despise him. The jealousy that would 
 once have seemed a blur on her whiteness now appeared 
 like a tribute to ideals in which he no longer believed. 
 
 Glennard was little given to exploring the outskirts of 
 literature. He always skipped the "literary notices" in the 
 papers, and he had small leisure for the intermittent 
 pleasures of the periodical. He had therefore no notion of 
 the prolonged reverberations which the Aubyn Letters had 
 awakened. When the book ceased to be talked about he 
 supposed it had ceased to be read; and this apparent sub 
 sidence of the agitation about it brought the reassuring 
 sense that he had exaggerated its vitality. The conviction, 
 if it did not ease his conscience, at least offered him the 
 relative relief of obscurity; he felt like an offender taken 
 down from the pillory and thrust into the soothing dark 
 ness of a cell. 
 
 But one evening, when Alexa had left him to go to a 
 [338] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 dance, he chanced to turn over the magazines on her 
 table, and the copy of the Horoscope to which he settled 
 down with his cigar confronted him, on its first page, with 
 a portrait of Margaret Aubyn. It was a reproduction of the 
 photograph that had stood so long on his desk. The desic 
 cating air of memory had turned her into the mere abstrac 
 tion of a woman, and this unexpected evocation seemed to 
 bring her nearer than she had ever been in life. Was it 
 because he understood her better ? He looked long into her 
 eyes; little personal traits reached out to him like caresses 
 the tired droop of her lids, her quick way of leaning 
 forward as she spoke, the movements of her long expressive 
 hands. All that was feminine in her, the quality he had 
 always missed, stole toward him from her unreproachful 
 gaze; and now that it was too late, life had developed in 
 him the subtler perceptions which could detect it in even 
 this poor semblance of herself. For a moment he found con 
 solation in the thought that, at any cost, they had thus 
 been brought together; then a sense of shame rushed over 
 him. Face to face with her, he felt himself laid bare to the 
 inmost fold of consciousness. The shame was deep, but it 
 was a renovating anguish: he was like a man whom intol 
 erable pain has roused from the creeping lethargy of 
 death. . . . 
 
 He rose next morning to as fresh a sense of life as though 
 
 his hour of communion with Margaret Aubyn had been a 
 
 more exquisite renewal of their earlier meetings. His 
 
 waking thought was that he must see her again; and as 
 
 f 3391 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 consciousness affirmed itself he felt an intense fear of losing 
 the sense of her nearness. But she was still close to him: 
 her presence remained the one reality in a world of shad 
 ows. All through his working hours he was re-living with 
 incredible minuteness every incident of their obliterated 
 past: as a man who has mastered the spirit of a foreign 
 tongue turns with renewed wonder to the pages his youth 
 has plodded over. In this lucidity of retrospection the most 
 trivial detail had its meaning, and the joy of recovery was 
 embittered to Glennard by the perception of all that he 
 had missed. He had been pitiably, grotesquely stupid; and 
 there was irony in the thought that, but for the crisis 
 through which he was passing, he might have lived on in 
 complacent ignorance of his loss. It was as though she had 
 bought him with her blood. . . . 
 
 That evening he and Alexa dined alone. After dinner he 
 followed her to the drawing-room. He no longer felt the 
 need of avoiding her; he was hardly conscious of her pres 
 ence. After a few words they lapsed into silence, and he 
 sat smoking with his eyes on the fire. It was not that he 
 was unwilling to talk to her; he felt a curious desire to be 
 as kind as possible; but he was always forgetting that she 
 was there. Her full bright presence, through which the cur 
 rents of life flowed so warmly, had grown as tenuous as a 
 shadow, and he saw so far beyond her. 
 
 Presently she rose and began to move about the room. 
 [ 340 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 She seemed to be looking for something, and he roused 
 himself to ask what she wanted. 
 
 "Only the last number of the Horoscope. I thought I d 
 left it on this table." He said nothing, and she went on: 
 "You have n t seen it?" 
 
 "No," he returned coldly. The magazine was locked in 
 his desk. 
 
 His wife had moved to the mantelpiece. She stood facing 
 him, and as he looked up he met her tentative gaze. "I 
 was reading an article in it a review of Mrs. Aubyn s 
 Letters," she added slowly, with her deep deliberate blush. 
 
 Glennard stooped to toss his cigar into the fire. He felt a 
 savage wish that she would not speak the other woman s 
 name; nothing else seemed to matter. 
 
 "You seem to do a lot of reading," he said. 
 
 She still confronted him. "I was keeping this for you 
 I thought it might interest you," she said with an air of 
 gentle insistence. 
 
 He stood up and turned away. He was sure she knew 
 that he had taken the review, and he felt that he was 
 beginning to hate her again. 
 
 "I have n t time for such things," he said indifferently. 
 As he moved to the door he heard her take a hurried step 
 forward; then she paused, and sank without speaking into 
 the chair from which he had Arisen. 
 
 341 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 XI 
 
 AS Glennard, in the raw February sunlight, mounted 
 the road to the cemetery, he felt the beatitude that 
 comes with an abrupt cessation of physical pain. He had 
 reached the point where self-analysis ceases; the impulse 
 that moved him was purely intuitive. He did not even seek 
 a reason for it, beyond the obvious one that his desire to 
 stand by Margaret Aubyn s grave was prompted by no 
 attempt at a sentimental reparation, but rather by the need 
 to affirm in some way the reality of the tie between them. 
 
 The ironical promiscuity of death had brought Mrs. 
 Aubyn back to share the hospitality of her husband s last 
 lodging; but though Glennard knew she had been buried 
 near New York he had never visited her grave. He was 
 oppressed, as he now threaded the long avenues, by a 
 chilling vision of her return. There was no family to follow 
 her hearse; she had died alone, as she had lived; and the 
 "distinguished mourners" who had formed the escort of 
 the famous writer knew nothing of the woman they were 
 committing to the grave. Glennard could not even remem 
 ber at what season she had been buried; but his mood in 
 dulged the fancy that it must have been on some such day 
 of harsh sunlight, the incisive February brightness that 
 gives perspicuity without warmth. The white avenues 
 stretched before him interminably, lined with stereotyped 
 [ 342 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 emblems of affliction, as though all the platitudes ever 
 uttered had been turned to marble and set up over the 
 unresisting dead. Here and there, no doubt, a frigid urn or 
 an insipid angel imprisoned some fine-fibred grief, as the 
 most hackneyed words may become the vehicle of rare 
 meanings; but for the most part the endless alignment of 
 monuments seemed to embody those easy generalizations 
 about death that do not disturb the repose of the living. 
 Glennard s eye, as he followed the way pointed out to 
 him, had instinctively sought some low mound with a quiet 
 headstone. He had forgotten that the dead seldom plan 
 their own houses, and with a pang he discovered the name 
 he sought on the cyclopean base of a shaft rearing its 
 aggressive height at the angle of two avenues. 
 
 "How she would have hated it !" he murmured. 
 
 A bench stood near and he seated himself. The monu 
 ment rose before him like some pretentious uninhabited 
 dwelling: he could not believe that Margaret Aubyn lay 
 there. It was a Sunday morning, and black figures moved 
 among the paths, placing flowers on the frost-bound hill 
 ocks. Glennard noticed that the neighboring graves had 
 been thus newly dressed, and he fancied a blind stir of 
 expectancy through the sod, as though the bare mounds 
 spread a parched surface to that commemorative rain. He 
 rose presently and walked back to the entrance of the 
 cemetery. Several greenhouses stood near the gates, and 
 turning in at the first he asked for some flowers. 
 [343] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Anything in the emblematic line?" asked the anaemic 
 man behind the dripping counter. 
 
 Glennard shook his head. 
 
 "Just cut flowers ? This way then." The florist unlocked 
 a glass door and led him down a moist green aisle. The hot 
 air was choked with the scent of white azaleas, white lilies, 
 white lilacs; all the flowers were white: they were like a 
 prolongation, a mystic efflorescence, of the long rows of 
 marble tombstones, and their perfume seemed to cover an 
 odor of decay. The rich atmosphere made Glennard dizzy. 
 As he leaned in the doorway, waiting for the flowers, he 
 had a penetrating sense of Margaret Aubyn s nearness 
 not the imponderable presence of his inner vision, but a life 
 that beat warm in his arms. . . . 
 
 The sharp air caught him as he stepped out into it again. 
 He walked back and scattered the flowers over the grave. 
 The edges of the white petals shrivelled like burnt paper 
 in the cold; and as he watched them the illusion of her 
 nearness faded, shrank back frozen. 
 
 xn 
 
 / TT A HE motive of his visit to the cemetery remained unde 
 fined save as a final effort of escape from his wife s 
 inexpressive acceptance of his shame. It seemed to him 
 that as long as he could keep himself alive to that shame 
 he would not wholly have succumbed to its consequences. 
 [344] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 His chief fear was that he should become the creature of 
 his act. His wife s indifference degraded him: it seemed to 
 put him on a level with his dishonor. Margaret Aubyn 
 would have abhorred the deed in proportion to her pity 
 for the man. The sense of her potential pity drew him back 
 to her. The one woman knew but did not understand; the 
 Other, it sometimes seemed, understood without knowing. 
 
 In its last disguise of retrospective remorse, his self-pity 
 affected a desire for solitude and meditation. He lost him 
 self in morbid musings, in futile visions of what life with 
 Margaret Aubyn might have been. There were moments 
 when, in the strange dislocation of his view, the wrong he 
 had done her seemed a tie between them. 
 
 "To indulge these emotions he fell into the habit, on 
 Sunday afternoons, of solitary walks prolonged till after 
 dusk. The days were lengthening, there was a touch of 
 spring in the air, and his wanderings now usually led him 
 to the Park and its outlying regions. 
 
 One Sunday, tired of aimless locomotion, he took a cab 
 at the Park gates and let it carry him out to the Riverside 
 Drive. It was a gray afternoon streaked with east wind. 
 Glennard s cab advanced slowly, and as he leaned back, 
 gazing with absent intentness at the deserted paths that 
 wound under bare boughs between grass banks of prema 
 ture vividness, his attention was arrested by two figures 
 walking ahead of him. This couple, who had the path to 
 themselves, moved at an uneven pace, as though adapting 
 [ 345 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 their gait to a conversation marked by meditative inter 
 vals. Now and then they paused, and in one of these 
 pauses the lady, turning toward her companion, showed 
 Glennard the outline of his wife s profile. The man was 
 Flamel. 
 
 The blood rushed to Glennard s forehead. He sat up 
 with a jerk and pushed back the lid in the roof of the 
 hansom; but when the cabman bent down he dropped into 
 his seat without speaking. Then, becoming conscious of 
 the prolonged interrogation of the lifted lid, he called out 
 "Turn drive back anywhere I m in a hurry " 
 
 As the cab swung round he caught a last glimpse of the 
 two figures. They had not moved; Alexa, with bent head, 
 stood listening. 
 
 "My God, my God " he groaned. 
 
 It was hideous it was abominable he could not under 
 stand it. The woman was nothing to him less than noth 
 ing yet the blood hummed in his ears and hung a cloud 
 before him. He knew it was only the stirring of the primal 
 instinct, that it had no more to do with his reasoning self 
 than any reflex impulse of the body; but that merely low 
 ered anguish to disgust. Yes, it was disgust he felt almost 
 a physical nausea. The poisonous fumes of life were in his 
 lungs. He was sick, unutterably sick. . . . 
 
 He drove home and went to his room. They were giving 
 a little dinner that night, and when he came down the 
 guests were arriving. He looked at his wife: her beauty 
 [346] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 was extraordinary, but it seemed to him the beauty of a 
 smooth sea along an unlit coast. She frightened him. 
 
 He sat late in his study. He heard the parlormaid lock 
 the front door; then his wife went upstairs and the lights 
 were put out. His brain was like some great empty hall 
 with an echo in it: one thought reverberated endlessly. 
 ... At length he drew his chair to the table and began to 
 write. He addressed an envelope and then slowly re-read 
 what he had written. 
 
 "My dear Flamel, 
 
 " Many apologies for not sending you sooner the enclosed 
 "check, which represents the customary percentage on the 
 "sale of the Letters: 
 
 " Trusting you will excuse the oversight, 
 " Yours truly 
 
 "Stephen Glennard." 
 
 He let himself out of the darkened house and dropped 
 the letter in the post-box at the corner. 
 
 The next afternoon he was detained late at his office, 
 and as he was preparing to leave he heard some one asking 
 for him in the outer room. He seated himself again and 
 Flamel was shown in. 
 
 The two men, as Glennard pushed aside an obstructive 
 [3471 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 chair, had a moment to measure each other; then Flamel 
 advanced, and drawing out his note-case, laid a slip of 
 paper on the desk. 
 
 "My dear fellow, what on earth does this mean?" 
 
 Glennard recognized his check. 
 
 "That I was remiss, simply. It ought to have gone to 
 you before." 
 
 Flamel s tone had been that of unaffected surprise, but 
 at this his accent changed and he asked quickly: "On what 
 ground?" 
 
 Glennard had moved away from the desk and stood 
 leaning against the calf-backed volumes of the bookcase. 
 "On the ground that you sold Mrs. Aubyn s letters for me, 
 and that I find the intermediary in such cases is entitled 
 to a percentage on the sale." 
 
 Flamel paused before answering. "You find, you say. 
 It s a recent discovery?" 
 
 "Obviously, from my not sending the check sooner. 
 You see I m new to the business." 
 
 "And since when have you discovered that there was 
 any question of business, as far as I was concerned?" 
 
 Glennard flushed and his voice rose slightly. "Are you 
 reproaching me for not having remembered it sooner?" 
 
 Flamel, who had spoken in the rapid repressed tone of a 
 man on the verge of anger, stared a moment at this and 
 then, in his natural voice, rejoined good-humoredly, 
 "Upon my soul, I don t understand you !" 
 [348] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 The change of key seemed to disconcert Glennard. "It s 
 simple enough," he muttered. 
 
 "Simple enough your offering me money in return for 
 a friendly service ? I don t know what your other friends 
 expect!" 
 
 "Some of my friends wouldn t have undertaken the 
 job. Those who would have done so would probably have 
 expected to be paid." 
 
 He lifted his eyes to Flamel and the two men looked at 
 each other. Flamel had turned white and his lips stirred, 
 but he held his temperate note. "If you mean to imply 
 that the job was not a nice one you lay yourself open to 
 the retort that you proposed it. But for my part I ve never 
 seen, I never shall see, any reason for not publishing the 
 letters." 
 
 "That s just it!" 
 
 "What-?" 
 
 "The certainty of your not seeing was what made me 
 go to you. When a man s got stolen goods to pawn he 
 does n t take them to the police-station." 
 
 "Stolen?" Flamel echoed. "The letters were stolen?" 
 
 Glennard burst into a laugh. "How much longer do you 
 expect me to keep up that pretence about the letters? 
 You know well enough they were written to me." 
 
 Flamel looked at him in silence. "Were they?" he said 
 at length. "I did n t know it." 
 
 "And did n t suspect it, I suppose," Glennard sneered. 
 [ 349 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 The other Was again silent; then he said, "I may re 
 mind you that, supposing I had felt any curiosity about 
 the matter, I had no way of finding out that the letters 
 were written to you. You never showed me the originals." 
 
 "What does that prove ? There were fifty ways of finding 
 out. It s the kind of thing one can easily do." 
 
 Flamel glanced at him with contempt. "Our ideas prob 
 ably differ as to what a man can easily do. It would not 
 have been easy for me." 
 
 Glennard s anger vented itself in the words uppermost 
 in his thought. "It may, then, interest you to hear that 
 my wife does know about the letters has known for some 
 months. . . ." 
 
 "Ah," said the other, slowly. 
 
 Glennard saw that, in his blind clutch at a weapon, he 
 had seized the one most apt to wound. Flamel s muscles 
 were under control, but his face showed the undefinable 
 change produced by the slow infiltration of poison. Every 
 implication that the words contained had reached its mark; 
 but Glennard felt that their obvious intent was lost in the 
 anguish of what they suggested. He was sure now that 
 Flamel would never have betrayed him; but the inference 
 only made a wider outlet for his anger. He paused breath 
 lessly for Flamel to speak. 
 
 "If she knows it s not through me." It was what Glen 
 nard had waited for. 
 
 "Through you, by God? Who said it was through you? 
 [ 350 1 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Do you suppose I leave it to you, or to anybody else, for 
 that matter, to keep my wife informed of my actions? I 
 did n t suppose even such egregious conceit as yours could 
 delude a man to that degree!" Struggling for a foothold 
 in the landslide of his dignity, he added in a steadier tone, 
 "My wife learned the facts from me." 
 
 Flamel received this in silence. The other s outbreak 
 seemed to have restored his self-control, and when he 
 spoke it was with a deliberation implying that his course 
 was chosen. "In that case I understand still less " 
 
 " Stillless?" 
 
 "The meaning of this." He pointed to the check. "When 
 you began to speak I supposed you had meant it as a 
 bribe; now I can only infer it was intended as a random 
 insult. In either case, here s my answer." 
 
 He tore the slip of paper in two and tossed the fragments 
 across the desk to Glennard. Then he turned and walked 
 out of the office. 
 
 Glennard dropped his head on his hands. If he had hoped 
 to restore his self-respect by the simple expedient of assail 
 ing Flamel s, the result had not justified his expectation. 
 The blow he had struck had blunted the edge of his anger, 
 and the unforeseen extent of the hurt inflicted did not alter 
 the fact that his weapon had broken in his hands. He now 
 saw that his rage against Flamel was only the last pro 
 jection of a passionate self-disgust. This consciousness did 
 not dull his dislike of the man; it simply made reprisals 
 [3511 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 ineffectual. Flamel s unwillingness to quarrel with him was 
 the last stage of his abasement. 
 
 In the light of this final humiliation his assumption of 
 his wife s indifference struck him as hardly so fatuous as 
 the sentimental resuscitation of his past. He had been living 
 in a factitious world wherein his emotions were the syco 
 phants of his vanity, and it was with instinctive relief that 
 he felt its ruins crash about his head. 
 
 It was nearly dark when he left his office, and he walked 
 slowly homeward in the complete mental abeyance that 
 follows on such a crisis. He was not aware that he was 
 thinking of his wife; yet when he reached his own door he 
 found that, in the involuntary readjustment of his vision, 
 she had once more become the central point of con 
 sciousness. 
 
 xin 
 
 ITT had never before occurred to him that she might, 
 after all, have missed the purport of the document he 
 had put in her way. What if, in her hurried inspection of 
 the papers, she had passed it over as related to the private 
 business of some client ? What, for instance, was to prevent 
 her concluding that Glennard was the counsel of the un 
 known person who had sold the Aubyn Letters? The sub 
 ject was one not likely to fix her attention she was not a 
 curious woman. 
 
 f 3521 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Glennard at this point laid down his fork and glanced at 
 her between the candle-shades. The alternative explana 
 tion of her indifference was not slow in presenting itself. 
 Her head had the same listening droop as when he had 
 caught sight of her the day before in FlameFs company; 
 the attitude revived the vividness of his impression. It 
 was simple enough, after all. She had ceased to care for him 
 because she cared for some one else. 
 
 As he followed her upstairs he felt a sudden stirring of 
 his dormant anger. His sentiments had lost their artificial 
 complexity. He had already acquitted her of any conni 
 vance in his baseness, and he felt only that he loved her 
 and that she had escaped him. This was now, strangely 
 enough, his dominant thought: the sense that he and she 
 had passed through the fusion of love and had emerged 
 from it as incommunicably apart as though the transmu 
 tation had never taken place. Every other passion, he 
 mused, left some mark upon the nature; but love passed 
 like the flight of a ship across the waters. 
 
 She dropped into her usual seat near the lamp, and he 
 leaned against the chimney, moving about with an inat 
 tentive hand the knick-knacks on the mantel. 
 
 Suddenly he caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. 
 She was looking at him. He turned and their eyes met. 
 
 He moved across the room. 
 
 "There s something that I want to say to you," he 
 began. 
 
 [353] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 She held his gaze, but her color deepened. He noticed 
 again, with a jealous pang, how her beauty had gained in 
 warmth and meaning. It was as though a transparent cup 
 had been filled with wine. He looked at her ironically. 
 
 "I ve never prevented your seeing your friends here," 
 he broke out. " Why do you meet Flamel in out-of-the-way 
 places ? Nothing makes a woman so cheap " 
 
 She rose abruptly and they faced each other a few feet 
 apart. 
 
 "What do you mean?" she asked. 
 
 "I saw you with him last Sunday on the Riverside 
 Drive," he went on, the utterance of the charge reviving 
 his anger. 
 
 "Ah," she murmured. She sank into her chair again and 
 began to play with a paper-knife that lay on the table at 
 her elbow. 
 
 Her silence exasperated him. 
 
 "Well?" he burst out. "Is that all you have to say?" 
 
 "Do you wish me to explain?" she asked proudly. 
 
 "Do you imply I have n t the right to?" 
 
 "I imply nothing. I will tell you whatever you wish to 
 know. I went for a walk with Mr. Flamel because he asked 
 me to." 
 
 "I did n t suppose you went uninvited. But there are 
 certain things a sensible woman does n t do. She does n t 
 slink about in out-of-the-way streets with men. Why 
 could n t you have seen him here?" 
 [354] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 She hesitated. "Because he wanted to see me alone. * 
 
 "Did he indeed? And may I ask if you gratify all his 
 wishes with equal alacrity?" 
 
 "I don t know that he has any others where I am con 
 cerned." She paused again and then continued, in a voice 
 that somehow had an under-note of warning, "He wished 
 to bid me good-bye. He s going away." 
 
 Glennard turned on her a startled glance. "Going 
 away?" 
 
 "He s going to Europe to-morrow. He goes for a long 
 time. I supposed you knew." 
 
 The last phrase revived his irritation. "You forget that 
 I depend on you for my information about Flamel. He s 
 your friend and not mine. In fact, I ve sometimes won 
 dered at your going out of your way to be so civil to him 
 when you must see plainly enough that I don t like him." 
 
 Her answer to this was not immediate. She seemed to be 
 choosing her words with care, not so much for her own 
 sake as for his, and his exasperation was increased by the 
 suspicion that she was trying to spare him. 
 
 "He was your friend before he was mine. I never knew 
 him till I was married. It was you who brought him to the 
 house and who seemed to wish me to like him." 
 
 Glennard gave a short laugh. The defence was feebler 
 than he had expected: she was certainly not a clever 
 woman. 
 
 "Your deference to my wishes is really beautiful; but 
 [ 3551 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 it s not the first time in history that a man had made a 
 mistake in introducing his friends to his wife. You must, at 
 any rate, have seen since then that my enthusiasm had 
 cooled; but so, perhaps, has your eagerness to oblige me." 
 
 She met this with a silence that seemed to rob the taunt 
 of half its efficacy. 
 
 "Is that what you imply?" he pressed her. 
 
 "No," she answered with sudden directness. "I noticed 
 some time ago that you seemed to dislike him, but since 
 then" 
 
 "Well since then?" 
 
 "I ve imagined that you had reasons for still wishing 
 me to be civil to him, as you call it." 
 
 "Ah," said Glennard with an effort at lightness; but 
 his irony dropped, for something in her voice made him 
 feel that he and she stood at last in that naked desert of 
 apprehension where meaning skulks vainly behind speech. 
 
 "And why did you imagine this?" The blood mounted 
 to his forehead. "Because he told you that I was under 
 obligations to him?" 
 
 She turned pale. "Under obligations?" 
 
 "Oh, don t let s beat about the bush. Didn t he tell 
 you it was I who published Mrs. Aubyn s letters ? Answer 
 me that." 
 
 "No," she said; and after a moment which seemed 
 given to the weighing of alternatives, she added: "No one 
 told me." 
 
 f 3561 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "You did n t know, then? * 
 
 She seemed to speak with an effort. "Not until not 
 until" 
 
 "Till I gave you those papers to sort? * 
 
 Her head sank. 
 
 "You understood then?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He looked at her immovable face. "Had you suspected 
 before ? " was slowly wrung from him. 
 
 "At times yes ." Her voice dropped to a whisper. 
 
 "Why? From anything that was said ?" 
 
 There was a shade of pity in her glance. "No one said 
 anything no one told me anything." She looked away 
 from him. "It was your manner " 
 
 "My manner?" 
 
 "Whenever the book was mentioned. Things you said 
 once or twice your irritation I can t explain." 
 
 Glennard, unconsciously, had moved nearer. He 
 breathed like a man who has been running. "You knew, 
 then, you knew " he stammered. The avowal of her love 
 for Flamel would have hurt him less, would have rendered 
 her less remote. "You knew you knew " he repeated; 
 and suddenly his anguish gathered voice. "My God !" he 
 cried, "you suspected it first, you say and then you 
 knew it this damnable, this accursed thing; you knew it 
 months ago it s months since I put that paper in your 
 way and yet you ve done nothing, you ve said nothing, 
 [ 3571 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 you *ve made no sign, you Ve lived alongside of me as if 
 it had made no difference no difference in either of our 
 lives. What are you made of, I wonder ? Don t you see the 
 hideous ignominy of it ? Don t you see how you ve shared 
 in my disgrace? Or have n t you any sense of shame?" 
 
 He preserved sufficient lucidity, as the words poured 
 from him, to see how fatally they invited her derision; but 
 something told him they had both passed beyond the 
 phase of obvious retaliations, and that if any chord in 
 her responded it would not be that of scorn. 
 
 He was right. She rose slowly and moved toward him. 
 
 "Haven t you had enough without that?" she said 
 in a strange voice of pity. 
 
 He stared at her. "Enough?" 
 
 "Of misery. . ." 
 
 An iron band seemed loosened from his temples. "You 
 saw then . . ? " he whispered. 
 
 "Oh, God oh, God " she sobbed. She dropped beside 
 him and hid her anguish against his knees. They clung 
 thus in silence a long time, driven together down the same 
 fierce blast of shame. 
 
 When at length she lifted her face he averted his. Her 
 scorn would have hurt him less than the tears on his hands. 
 
 She spoke languidly, like a child emerging from a passion 
 of weeping. "It was for the money ?" 
 
 His lips shaped an assent. 
 
 "That was the inheritance that we married on?" 
 [358] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She drew back and rose to her feet. He sat watching her 
 as she wandered away from him. 
 
 "You hate me," broke from him. 
 
 She made no answer. 
 
 "Say you hate me !" he persisted. 
 
 "That would have been so simple," she answered with 
 a strange smile. She dropped into a chair near the writing- 
 table and rested a bowed forehead on her hand. 
 
 "Was it much ?" she began at length. 
 
 "Much ?" he returned vaguely. 
 
 "The money." 
 
 "The money?" That part of it seemed to count so little 
 that for a moment he did not follow her thought. 
 
 "It must be paid back," she insisted. "Can you do 
 it?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," he returned listlessly. "I can do it." 
 
 "I would make any sacrifice for that !" she urged. 
 
 He nodded. "Of course." He sat staring at her in dry- 
 eyed self-contempt. "Do you count on its making much 
 difference?" 
 
 " Much difference ? " 
 
 "In the way I feel or you feel about me?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "It s the least part of it," he groaned. 
 
 "It s the only part we can repair." 
 
 "Good heavens! If there were any reparation " He 
 [ 3591 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 rose quickly and crossed the space that divided them. 
 "Why did you never speak?" 
 
 "Have n t you answered that yourself?" 
 "Answered it?" 
 
 "Just now when you told me you did it for me." 
 She paused a moment and then went on with a deepen 
 ing note "I would have spoken if I could have helped 
 you." 
 
 "But you must have despised me." 
 "I ve told you that would have been simpler." 
 "But how could you go on like this hating the money ? " 
 "I knew you d speak in time. I wanted you, first, to 
 hate it as I did." 
 
 He gazed at her with a kind of awe. "You re wonder 
 ful," he murmured. "But you don t yet know the depths 
 I Ve reached." 
 
 She raised an entreating hand. "I don t want to !" 
 "You re afraid, then, that you 11 hate me?" 
 "No but that you 11 hate me. Let me understand with 
 out your telling me." 
 
 "You can t. It s too base. I thought you did n t care 
 because you loved Flamel." 
 
 She blushed deeply. "Don t don t " she warned him. 
 "I have n t the right to, you mean?" 
 "I mean that you 11 be sorry." 
 
 He stood imploringly before her. "I want to say some 
 thing worse something more outrageous. If you don t 
 [ 360 ] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 understand this you 11 be perfectly justified in ordering 
 me out of the house." 
 
 She answered him with a glance of divination. "I shall 
 understand but you 11 be sorry." 
 
 "I must take my chance of that." He moved away and 
 tossed the books about the table. Then he swung round 
 and faced her. "Does Flamel care for you?" he asked. 
 
 Her flush deepened, but she still looked at him without 
 anger. "What would be the use?" she said with a note of 
 sadness. 
 
 "Ah, I did n t ask that" he penitently murmured. 
 
 "Well, then" 
 
 To this adjuration he made no response beyond that of 
 gazing at her with an eye which seemed now to view her 
 as a mere factor in an immense redistribution of meanings. 
 
 "I insulted Flamel to-day. I let him see that I suspected 
 him of having told you. I hated him because he knew 
 about the letters." 
 
 He caught the spreading horror of her eyes, and for an 
 instant he had to grapple with the new temptation they 
 lit up. Then he said with an effort "Don t blame him 
 he s impeccable. He helped me to get them published; 
 but I lied to him too; I pretended they were written to 
 another man ... a man who was dead. . ." 
 
 She raised her arms in a gesture that seemed to ward off 
 his blows. 
 
 "You do despise me !" he insisted. 
 [361] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 "Ah, that poor woman that poor woman " he heard 
 her murmur. 
 
 "I spare no one, you see !" he triumphed over her. She 
 kept her face hidden. 
 
 "You do hate me, you do despise me!" he strangely 
 exulted. 
 
 "Be silent!" she commanded him; but he seemed no 
 longer conscious of any check on his gathering purpose. 
 
 "He cared for you he cared for you," he repeated, 
 "and he never told you of the letters " 
 
 She sprang to her feet. "How can you?" she flamed. 
 "How dare you? That I" 
 
 Glennard was ashy pale. "It s a weapon . . . like 
 another. . ." 
 
 "A scoundrel s!" 
 
 He smiled wretchedly. "I should have used it in his 
 place." 
 
 "Stephen ! Stephen !" she cried, as though to drown the 
 blasphemy on his lips. She swept to him with a rescuing 
 gesture. "Don t say such things. I forbid you ! It degrades 
 us both." 
 
 He put her back with trembling hands. "Nothing that 
 I say of myself can degrade you. We re on different 
 levels." 
 
 "I m on yours, wherever it is !" 
 
 He lifted his head and their gaze flowed together. 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 XIV 
 
 I ^HE great renewals take effect as imperceptibly as 
 the first workings of spring. Glennard, though he 
 felt himself brought nearer to his wife, was still, as it 
 were, hardly within speaking distance. He was but labori 
 ously acquiring the rudiments of a new language; and he 
 had to grope for her through the dense fog of his humilia 
 tion, the distorting vapor against which her personality 
 loomed grotesque and mean. 
 
 Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest 
 know us enables us to live with them. Love is the most 
 impregnable refuge of self-esteem, and we hate the eye 
 that reaches to our nakedness. If Glennard did not hate 
 his wife it was slowly, sufferingly, that there was born in 
 him that profounder passion which made his earlier feeling 
 seem a mere commotion of the blood. He was like a child 
 coming back to the sense of an enveloping presence: her 
 nearness was a breast on which he leaned. 
 
 They did not, at first, talk much together, and each- 
 beat a devious track about the outskirts of the subject 
 that lay between them like a haunted wood. But every 
 word, every action, seemed to glance at it, to draw toward 
 it, as though a fount of healing sprang in its poisoned 
 shade. If only they might cut a way through the thicket 
 to that restoring spring ! 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 Glennard, watching his wife with the intentness of a 
 wanderer to whom no natural sign is negligeable, saw that 
 she had taken temporary refuge in the purpose of re 
 nouncing the money. If both, theoretically, owned the 
 inefficacy of such amends, the woman s instinctive sub- 
 jectiveness made her find relief in this crude form of pen 
 ance. Glennard saw that she meant to live as frugally as 
 possible till what she deemed their debt was discharged; 
 and he prayed she might not discover how far-reaching, in 
 its merely material sense, was the obligation she thus 
 hoped to acquit. Her mind was fixed on the sum originally 
 paid for the letters, and this he knew he could lay aside in 
 a year or two. He was touched, meanwhile, by the spirit 
 that made her discard the petty luxuries which she re 
 garded as the sign of their bondage. Their shared renuncia 
 tions drew her nearer to him, helped, in their evidence of 
 her helplessness, to restore the full protecting stature of 
 his love. And still they did not speak. 
 
 It was several weeks later that, one afternoon by the 
 drawing-room fire, she handed him a letter that she had 
 been reading when he entered. 
 
 "I ve heard from Mr. Flamel," she said. 
 
 It was as though a latent presence had become visible 
 to both. Glennard took the letter mechanically. 
 
 "It s from Smyrna," she said. "Won t you read it?" 
 
 He handed it back. "You can tell me about it his 
 hand s so illegible." He wandered to the other end of the 
 [364] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 room and then turned and stood before her. "I ve been 
 thinking of writing to Flamel," he said. 
 
 She looked up. 
 
 "There s one point," he continued slowly, "that I ought 
 to clear up. I told him you d known about the letters all 
 along; for a long time, at least; and I saw how it hurt him. 
 It was just what I meant to do, of course; but I can t leave 
 him to that false impression; I must write him." 
 
 She received this without outward movement, but he 
 saw that the depths were stirred. At length she returned 
 in a hesitating tone, " Why do you call it a false impression ? 
 I did know." 
 
 "Yes, but I implied you did n t care." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 He still stood looking down on her. "Don t you want me 
 to set that right ? " he pursued. 
 
 She lifted her head and fixed him bravely. "It isn t 
 necessary," she said. 
 
 Glennard flushed with the shock of the retort; then, with 
 a gesture of comprehension, "No," he said, "with you it 
 could n t be; but I might still set myself right." 
 
 She looked at him gently. "Don t I," she murmured, "do 
 that?" 
 
 "In being yourself merely? Alas, the rehabilitation s 
 too complete ! You make me seem to myself even what 
 I m not; what I can never be. I can t, at times, defend 
 myself from the delusion; but I can at least enlighten 
 others." 
 
 [365] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 The flood was loosened, and kneeling by her he caught 
 her hands. "Don t you see that it s become an obsession 
 with me ? That if I could strip myself down to the last lie 
 only there d always be another one left under it ! and 
 do penance naked in the market-place, I should at least 
 have the relief of easing one anguish by another? Don t 
 you see that the worst of my torture is the impossibility of 
 such amends ? " 
 
 Her hands lay in his without returning pressure. "Ah, 
 poor woman, poor woman," he heard her sigh. 
 
 "Don t pity her, pity me ! What have I done to her or 
 to you, after all ? You re both inaccessible ! It was myself 
 I sold." 
 
 He took an abrupt turn away from her; then halted 
 before her again. "How much longer," he burst out, "do 
 you suppose you can stand it ? You ve been magnificent, 
 you ve been inspired, but what s the use ? You can t wipe 
 out the ignominy of it. It s miserable for you and it does 
 her no good !" 
 
 She lifted a vivid face. "That s the thought I can t 
 bear!" she cried. 
 
 "What thought?" 
 
 "That it does her no good all you re feeling, all you re 
 suffering. Can it be that it makes no difference?" 
 
 He avoided her challenging glance. "What s done is 
 done," he muttered. 
 
 "Is it ever, quite, I wonder?" she mused. He made no 
 [ 3661 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 answer and they lapsed into one of the pauses that are a 
 subterranean channel of communication. 
 
 It was she who, after a while, began to speak, with a 
 new suffusing diffidence that made him turn a roused eye 
 on her. 
 
 "Don t they say," she asked, feeling her way as in a 
 kind of tender apprehensiveness, "that the early Chris 
 tians, instead of pulling down the heathen temples the 
 temples of the unclean gods purified them by turning 
 them to their own uses ? I ve always thought one might do 
 that with one s actions the actions one loathes but can t 
 undo. One can make, I mean, a wrong the door to other 
 wrongs or an impassable wall against them. . ." Her voice 
 wavered on the word. "We can t always tear down the 
 temples we ve built to the unclean gods, but we can put 
 good spirits in the house of evil the spirits of mercy and 
 shame and understanding, that might never have come 
 to us if we had n t been in such great need. . ." 
 
 She moved over to him and laid a hand on his. His 
 head was bent and he did not change his attitude. She sat 
 down beside him without speaking; but their silences were 
 now fertile as rain-clouds they quickened the seeds of 
 understanding. 
 
 At length he looked up. "I don t know," he said, "what 
 
 spirits have come to live in the house of evil that I built 
 
 but you re there and that s enough. It s strange," he 
 
 went on after another pause, "she wished the best for me 
 
 [367] 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 so often, and now, at last, it s through her that it s come 
 to me. But for her I should n t have known you it s 
 through her that I ve found you. Sometimes do you 
 know? that makes it hardest makes me most intoler 
 able to myself. Can t you see that it s the worst thing I ve 
 got to face ? I sometimes think I could have borne it bet 
 ter if you had n t understood ! I took everything from her 
 everything even to the poor shelter of loyalty she s 
 trusted in the only thing I could have left her ! I took 
 everything from her, I deceived her, I despoiled her, I 
 destroyed her and she s given me you in return !" 
 
 His wife s cry caught him up. "It is n t that she s 
 given me to you it is that she s given you to yourself. * 
 She leaned to him as though swept forward on a wave of 
 pity. "Don t you see," she went on, as his eyes hung on 
 her, "that that s the gift you can t escape from, the debt 
 you re pledged to acquit ? Don t you see that you ve 
 never before been what she thought you, and that now, 
 so wonderfully, she s made you into the man she loved ? 
 That s worth suffering for, worth dying for, to a woman 
 that s the gift she would have wished to give !" 
 
 "Ah," he cried, "but woe to him by whom it cometh. 
 What did I ever give her?" 
 
 "The happiness of giving," she said. 
 
 THE END 
 
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